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Simply Saucer-PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED ARCHIVAL RECORDINGS CD-R (no label)

Here's a very limited item (100 only) that certainly caught me by surprise, a Cee-Dee-Are consisting of five rare Simply Saucer numbers that surprisingly enough haven't seen the light of day until now. Packaged in a plain white sleeve with a pasted on yellow information sheet, this one reminds me of the bootlegs of yore, PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED ARCHIVAL RECORDINGS is a definite must-have for any of you readers who consider yourselves up-and-front Simply Saucer fans or at least unrepentant followers of the massive underground squall that sorta caught me up in a whirlpool of intense compulsion, and what healthier form of expression could one hope to aspire to anyway?

Nice selection even if skimpy (the creator of this package could have at least nicked the two Third Kind tracks available via youtube to pad this out) with only one familiar tune ("Limitless Love") seeing the light of day in a new performance, and not only that but the sound quality is surprisingly good considering the recording techniques of the seventies which were more than adequate enough even if they weren't always reliable. As far as I can tell all of these tracks were recorded during the group's post-electronic days even if at least one song ("Baby Nova") dates back to the mid-seventies. And, as anyone who was smart enough to latch onto a copy of PHFUDD #10 (hopelessly out of print) could tell you, this music is whatcha's call vital not only to your private juices but to the whole sum and substance of just what was happening across the globe in the late-seventies when at least a substantial part of the ages 18-34 crowd FINALLY HAD THEIR HEADS ON STRAIGHT and knew enough to make the best of rackets "borrowing" from some of the finer groups on the planet rather than the most diseased, rotted reflection of youth gone flabby and lazy. Which is why it is always better to have a million groups copping ideas from the Velvets and Stooges rather than the Dead and Airplane, just as long as the groups in question know enough to look beyond the superficial aspects of the quest (which is why we have a million groups out there playing loud but signifying very little). And Saucer, along with a few thousand other aggregates of the day, knew enough to take from the best and make it their own.

This little collection ends not with a bang or a whimper, but a solo performance by none other than Edgar Breau on acoustic guitar singing the autobiographical more or less "Story of Simply Saucer", a number he was frequently performing during his solo folk club stomping days in the mid-eighties. If you have that aforementioned copy of ish #10 you've probably already read the lyrics to this one but they're clear enough and understandable here if you haven't. It's a nice ditty too done in a kinda heartfelt and perhaps even slightly bitter way (or at least I take it that way), though one thing about this song really bugs me and that when one hears Breau clearly breaking of the Second Commandment not once, but twice! I say "clearly" because this is nothing he can wiggle outta sorta like John Lennon tried to on "The Ballad of John and Yoko", and I am surprised, nay, shocked that a fine upstanding man like Mr. Breau would stoop to the usage of such language in an attempt to get gullible children who want to look "hip" to patronize him! I hope Mr. Breau has made amends for his obvious lapse in judgment, and if you don't want your impression of this man to be taken down a few notches I suggest for you to either not get hold of this disque (as if a 100-only press run's easy enough to buy at your corner drugstore), or if you do don't listen to the closing track which I will reiterate I am totally aghast at/about. I mean JD King, well we all know what a vulgarian he can be, but Edgar???>