Blues Magoos - Psychedelic Lollipop / Electric Comic Book
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CD Details
Artist: Blues MagoosEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1999-07-27
Music Label: Collectables
Soundtracks:
- (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet
- Love Seems Doomed
- Tobacco Road
- Queen of My Nights
- I'll Go Crazy
- Gotta Get Away
- Sometimes I Think About
- One by One
- Worried Life Blues
- She's Coming Home
- Pipe Dream
- There's a Chance We Can Make It
- Life Is Just a Cher O'Bowlies
- Gloria
- Intermission
- Albert Common Is Dead
- Summer Is the Man
- Baby, I Want You
- Let's Get Together
- Take My Love
- Rush Hour
- That's All Folks
Music reviews of Psychedelic Lollipop / Electric Comic Book
Music Review: they put the alkaline in acid-rock
Rating: 3 Stars
While it may be easy to poke fun at the Blues Magoos (the quintessential one-hit-wonders who could double as the Hee-Haw of psychedeia), the band put together, at the very least, one good album side of respectable 1960's rock. The sum of their production was one massive hit, 1967's 'We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet', which checked out at number 72 for the year, and number five at its peak in January. The band hailed from the Bronx in New York, but first gathered a following as residents at the Night Owl Club in Greenwich Village. They started out as The Trenchcoats, evolved into the Bloos Magoos (true to their psychedelic persona, though it's hard to believe any of this music is truly tripped-out), and became the Blues Magoos at the insistence of their manager, though the blues are hardly the band's forte, which appears to be recording garage-rock covers.
Aside from their singular hit, which leads off the first of two studio albums offered on this CD, the Magoos best work consists of cover songs, which fortunately are also the lengthiest tracks. The vocals on track three, the familiar 'Tobacco Road', sound much like the original version by The Nashville Teens, which hit number 14 in 1964. Though also covered by the likes of Eric Burdon, Rare Earth, and Jefferson Airplane, this version by the Magoos more than holds its own, and at four and 1/2 minutes is the second longest number performed. 'Psychedelic Lollipop' also features robust covers of David Blues 'Queen of My Nights', James Brown's 'I'll Go Crazy' (the lead song on Brown's famed 'Live At the Apollo' disc), and a sincere attempt at Maceo Marriweather's 'Worried Life Blues', although the Farfisa organ lines and vocals that don't bleed tend to mock rather than sing the blues. Their only other attempt at the blues, 'Sometimes I Think About', only serves to reveal the irony of the band's namesake. Another song of note on 'Psychedelic Lollipop' is 'One By One', a nice pop tune released as a follow-up single to 'Ain't Got Nothin' Yet', but which never cracked the Top-40 (a cover of Alan Gordon's 'Gotta Get Away', with its great chorus of "Gotta get away, gotta get away, gotta get away... I wanna be free!", probably had a much better shot at success).
Tracks 11-22 on this disc were originally released on vinyl as the band's sophomore effort, 'Electric Comic Book'. It is, in some respects, a novelty album (tracks 15, 'Intermission' and 22, 'That's All Folks' aren't really songs, but bookends intended to give the unrelated compositions a sense of cohesion; and the liner notes are actually a fold-out mini-poster featuring black and white comic book-like panels featuring the band members as characters). Another novelty track appears on the disc, 'Life Is Just a Cher O' Bowlies', which really makes little sense at all. The gradual deterioration of the compositions on 'Elecric Comic Book' reveal the lack of substance the band possessed. Side two of the original vinyl offered tracks which are just a cut above disturbing aural chaos, 'Albert Common Is Dead', and 'Take My Love'. Clearly, something is amiss by the time 'Rush Hour' begins delivering the questionable lyric "take my love and shove it up your heart". While some of the tracks may have represented passable attempts at late-1960's psychedelia ('Summer Is the Man' and the vibrato-lined sounds of 'Baby, I Want You', which are heavy on sunshine, flowers, and love), the cumulative effort here makes one wonder why the band ever got a shot at a third album, which I'm too afraid to hear. The band might have really had something going had they stuck to covers, such as their rich rendition of Van Morrison's 'Gloria' (which the Shadows of Knight took to number ten in 1966), track fourteen on this disc, which at just over six minutes is also the longest number. The song features some bold variatons on the original organ and guitar lines. If the Vanilla Fudge could subsist on cover songs, why not the Blues Magoos? I should have been a manager...
This two-fer 'Blues Magoos' disc is a fun CD to pop into your player for one or two listens, and there are some redeeming tracks, but by-and-large there is way too much filler here to make this a staple of any respectable music collection. It is an interesting artifact, indeed a caricature, of what was considered fashionable in the late-1960's rock scene. This band performed with neon tubes outlining their bell bottoms, and lava lamps decorating the stage. It's op-art, both visual and auditory. If you're a synesthete, you can probably smell and taste psychedelia all over this one, too. If you truly "dig" this, you either took the 1960's way too seriously, or way too superficially. I'm not sure which is the greater error, but a mistake it is.
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