This is one of the strangest records in my collection, but also one of the most interesting. It is, supposedly, the second-lowest selling album in Columbia Records' history, second only to a yoga instructional record.
Still, it got a re-release in 2018, and if you're looking for something to compare it to I'd suggest Captain Beefheart, or maybe Frank Zappa.
The band - from Atlanta, Georgia - was signed to Columbia in 1970, although they'd been around since the mid-60s and had shared the stage with the Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band. So they had some cred by the time they got their deal. The ringmaster is Bruce Hampton - or as some people referred to him, Colonel Bruce Hampton - who was the quirky heart of the group and handled vocals, even though he couldn't sing very well, and sometimes strummed the guitar and tooted the occasional horn.
Hampton was a real character who would win a lot of respect among other musicians over the years for being such a trailblazer, and many of them would come together to help him celebrate his 70th birthday party decades later by playing alongside him at a benefit for Atlanta's Fox Theatre. The band that night included Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers and Gov't Mule), Tinsley Ellis, Chuck Leavell (Rolling Stones) and Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, among others, and during the encore performance of Turn On Your Love Light the colonel would slip off the chair he was seated in, slump over the monitor beside it and die. The band kept on playing because they thought Hampton was fooling around or, who knows, maybe he just decided to take a nap mid-song. But he was deader than a signpost, and on reflection it really was the only way for the colonel to make his exit. Anything else would have been completely out of character.
But anyway …
I bought this record at a time when my son, Madison, was planning on moving from Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scotia. He hadn't told me about it yet, although he'd confided in his sister. He'd landed a really good job on the left coast and was still putting the logistical pieces together and didn't want to tell his mom and dad before it was a sure thing.
I sent Madison a link to the song Halifax - which opens this record - because it was so weird - and I just thought he'd like to hear it. It starts with Hampton screaming an invitation to move to Halifax, after which he more-or-less recites a tourist brochure verbatim.
Madison listened to the song and then phoned his sister. "Dad knows!" he said. "He just sent me the most insane song about moving to Halifax! How does he know?" Colonel Hampton would appreciate that!
It's a strange song that would be very comfortable on a Captain Beefheart record, and it was certainly head-turning on first listen. It's one of those songs that I had to listen to over and over again and learn to appreciate - the whole album is like that, actually - but each time I listened to it I gleaned something new. I'd hear this bit or that bit which I hadn't noticed before, and this happened every time I played the record. It's still happening.
The fact that Music To Eat is a double LP is remarkable, especially since it bombed so perfectly on release. I can't imagine any record executive listening to what was going down in the studio and saying, "This thing needs to be a double set!" But it has become something of a cult favourite, and the CD reissue from a few years ago features liner notes full of interviews with some of the band's members, as well as record company executives who admit they probably shouldn't have marketed Music To Eat as a comedy album. Now - that's funny!
Frank Zappa's influence is very much evident in the guitar riffs that are mostly played really fast, but there's also a hefty dose of southern-style blues-rock that references the Allman Brothers - who were, after all, also from Georgia.
Glen Philips and Harold Kelling are stellar guitar players, and drummer Jerry Fields is a splendid time keeper. I had to wonder at first if this record wasn't intended as a joke, particularly after hearing Hampton and his bizarre vocal stylings. Beefheart or Roky Erikson come to mind, but it's his lyrics that I at first had to struggle to take seriously.
But I kept on listening anyway, and eventually discovered that what I was initially inclined to fob off as the dumbest hippy nonsense joke I'd ever heard was, in fact, a masterpiece waiting to be discovered, to have its layers slowly pulled back to reveal the onion with the happy face drawn on it underneath.
There are only seven songs on the record and they basically break down into four songs of 10-plus minutes or more and three shorter ones. Maria is a mostly acoustic Mexican folk ballad of that relates the tale of a 15-year-old boy losing his virginity, which shows how little the Hampton Grease Band was concerned about making the Top 40. Then there's Lawton, an improvised musical car crash performed by guitarist Philips and drummer Fields, which sounds almost too avante-garde in an album crammed full of nothing but avant-garde. So there's lots of interesting stuff to listen to, and nothing ever sounds the same on repeated listenings.
The real epic on this record is, without a doubt, Halifax, the song I sent my son. It's 20 minutes of pure crazy, and despite it's seemingly randomness is really jazzy and played with a really tight and focused precision. Hampton begins the song by listing some historical facts about Halifax from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica - "Colonol Edward Cornwalis brought strength to the English position, he established a civil government!" - and then he starts reading a tourist brochure: "We would like for you to come to Halifax! The land is fertile! Come and breathe some of our air! We have the largest ships!" Then someone shouts, "We have six thousand, six hundred and thirty-eight miles of graded road! Every city has an airport and lots of gravel, too! The utilities are owned and operated by the federal government!"
There's some incredible guitar noodling on this track, too. And so much more. Every listen is a revelation.
The LP finishes, after four sides of mayhem, with Hendon, another 20-minute scorcher that was, according to the liner notes, recorded in just one take. It features lyrics lifted, supposedly, from the warning label on a can of spray paint - "Keep away from flame, AHHH!!!!" - before heading into a bit of an anatomy quiz and some more vocal riffing during which Colonel Hampton says he saw a Leo who made him vomit while driving in his comet.
If you smoke dope, this is the record you've been dreaming about. But it's also a really great record. In disguise. It does take some getting used to but it will stand the test of time probably better than Madonna or Michael Jackson. It certainly won't suffer from overexposure due to radio airplay.
For reasons I don't understand, I'm calling this one …
This is one of the strangest records in my collection, but also one of the most interesting. It is, supposedly, the second-lowest selling album in Columbia Records' history, second only to a yoga instructional record.
Still, it got a re-release in 2018, and if you're looking for something to compare it to I'd suggest Captain Beefheart, or maybe Frank Zappa.
The band - from Atlanta, Georgia - was signed to Columbia in 1970, although they'd been around since the mid-60s and had shared the stage with the Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band. So they had some cred by the time they got their deal. The ringmaster is Bruce Hampton - or as some people referred to him, Colonel Bruce Hampton - who was the quirky heart of the group and handled vocals, even though he couldn't sing very well, and sometimes strummed the guitar and tooted the occasional horn.
Hampton was a real character who would win a lot of respect among other musicians over the years for being such a trailblazer, and many of them would come together to help him celebrate his 70th birthday party decades later by playing alongside him at a benefit for Atlanta's Fox Theatre. The band that night included Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers and Gov't Mule), Tinsley Ellis, Chuck Leavell (Rolling Stones) and Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, among others, and during the encore performance of Turn On Your Love Light the colonel would slip off the chair he was seated in, slump over the monitor beside it and die. The band kept on playing because they thought Hampton was fooling around or, who knows, maybe he just decided to take a nap mid-song. But he was deader than a signpost, and on reflection it really was the only way for the colonel to make his exit. Anything else would have been completely out of character.
But anyway …
I bought this record at a time when my son, Madison, was planning on moving from Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scotia. He hadn't told me about it yet, although he'd confided in his sister. He'd landed a really good job on the left coast and was still putting the logistical pieces together and didn't want to tell his mom and dad before it was a sure thing.
I sent Madison a link to the song Halifax - which opens this record - because it was so weird - and I just thought he'd like to hear it. It starts with Hampton screaming an invitation to move to Halifax, after which he more-or-less recites a tourist brochure verbatim.
Madison listened to the song and then phoned his sister. "Dad knows!" he said. "He just sent me the most insane song about moving to Halifax! How does he know?" Colonel Hampton would appreciate that!
It's a strange song that would be very comfortable on a Captain Beefheart record, and it was certainly head-turning on first listen. It's one of those songs that I had to listen to over and over again and learn to appreciate - the whole album is like that, actually - but each time I listened to it I gleaned something new. I'd hear this bit or that bit which I hadn't noticed before, and this happened every time I played the record. It's still happening.
The fact that Music To Eat is a double LP is remarkable, especially since it bombed so perfectly on release. I can't imagine any record executive listening to what was going down in the studio and saying, "This thing needs to be a double set!" But it has become something of a cult favourite, and the CD reissue from a few years ago features liner notes full of interviews with some of the band's members, as well as record company executives who admit they probably shouldn't have marketed Music To Eat as a comedy album. Now - that's funny!
Frank Zappa's influence is very much evident in the guitar riffs that are mostly played really fast, but there's also a hefty dose of southern-style blues-rock that references the Allman Brothers - who were, after all, also from Georgia.
Glen Philips and Harold Kelling are stellar guitar players, and drummer Jerry Fields is a splendid time keeper. I had to wonder at first if this record wasn't intended as a joke, particularly after hearing Hampton and his bizarre vocal stylings. Beefheart or Roky Erikson come to mind, but it's his lyrics that I at first had to struggle to take seriously.
But I kept on listening anyway, and eventually discovered that what I was initially inclined to fob off as the dumbest hippy nonsense joke I'd ever heard was, in fact, a masterpiece waiting to be discovered, to have its layers slowly pulled back to reveal the onion with the happy face drawn on it underneath.
There are only seven songs on the record and they basically break down into four songs of 10-plus minutes or more and three shorter ones. Maria is a mostly acoustic Mexican folk ballad of that relates the tale of a 15-year-old boy losing his virginity, which shows how little the Hampton Grease Band was concerned about making the Top 40. Then there's Lawton, an improvised musical car crash performed by guitarist Philips and drummer Fields, which sounds almost too avante-garde in an album crammed full of nothing but avant-garde. So there's lots of interesting stuff to listen to, and nothing ever sounds the same on repeated listenings.
The real epic on this record is, without a doubt, Halifax, the song I sent my son. It's 20 minutes of pure crazy, and despite it's seemingly randomness is really jazzy and played with a really tight and focused precision. Hampton begins the song by listing some historical facts about Halifax from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica - "Colonol Edward Cornwalis brought strength to the English position, he established a civil government!" - and then he starts reading a tourist brochure: "We would like for you to come to Halifax! The land is fertile! Come and breathe some of our air! We have the largest ships!" Then someone shouts, "We have six thousand, six hundred and thirty-eight miles of graded road! Every city has an airport and lots of gravel, too! The utilities are owned and operated by the federal government!"
There's some incredible guitar noodling on this track, too. And so much more. Every listen is a revelation.
The LP finishes, after four sides of mayhem, with Hendon, another 20-minute scorcher that was, according to the liner notes, recorded in just one take. It features lyrics lifted, supposedly, from the warning label on a can of spray paint - "Keep away from flame, AHHH!!!!" - before heading into a bit of an anatomy quiz and some more vocal riffing during which Colonel Hampton says he saw a Leo who made him vomit while driving in his comet.
If you smoke dope, this is the record you've been dreaming about. But it's also a really great record. In disguise. It does take some getting used to but it will stand the test of time probably better than Madonna or Michael Jackson. It certainly won't suffer from overexposure due to radio airplay.
For reasons I don't understand, I'm calling this one …
BONUS TRACK
Gustav Valentine Berglund III was born on April 30, 1947. He would later adopt the name Colonel Hampton B. Coles, Retired, or Col. Bruce Hampton, Ret. Famous for being the leader of the Hampton Grease Band, he also formed and fronted several other bands during his life, including The Late Bronze Age, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, The Fiji Mariners, The Codetalkers, The Quark Alliance, Pharaoh Gummitt and Madrid Express.
All household names.
Hampton helped start the Horizons Of Rock Developing Everywhere (HORDE) tours of the 1990s, and in 1994 formed the progressive rock/jazz duo Fiji Mariners with Dan Matrazzo, recording two albums on Capricorn Records. Matrazzo simultaneously played keyboard, drums and bass.
In addition to music, Hampton voiced the character of Warren, a talking potted shrub, in a 1998 episode of the TV show Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and also starred as a band manager in the 1996 film Sling Blade alongside Billy Bob Thornton, and a guitar instructor in 2001's Outside Out.
Grammy Award nominated blues singer and longtime friend, Susan Tedeschi, wrote a song about Hampton called Hampmotized that appears on her 2002 release Wait For Me. Hampton later returned the favour with the song Susan T.
Basically Frightened: The Musical Madness of Col. Bruce Hampton, Ret. is a documentary about Hampton's life that premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival in 2012. That same year Georgia Governor, Nathan Deal, presented Hampton with the Governor's Award In The Arts and Humanities.
On May 1, 2017, Hampton was honoured at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia for his 70th birthday. Dubbed Hampton 70: A Celebration of Col. Bruce Hampton, it was an all-star concert featuring many of the well-known musicians who admired him, as well as a 13-year-old guitar prodigy named Brandon Niederauer. Look this kid up! You'll be floored by his talent.
During the encore performance of the show, Hampton suffered a massive heart attack and collapsed - or, more accurately, slowly laid himself down on the stage. The other performers either did not notice he had collapsed or thought it was a joke. Hampton laid face down at Niederauer's feet as the kid soloed over him. The band played for several more minutes before realizing something was amiss. Hampton was carried offstage and taken to Emory University Hospital Midtown, where he was pronounced dead.
Gustav Valentine Berglund III was born on April 30, 1947. He would later adopt the name Colonel Hampton B. Coles, Retired, or Col. Bruce Hampton, Ret. Famous for being the leader of the Hampton Grease Band, he also formed and fronted several other bands during his life, including The Late Bronze Age, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, The Fiji Mariners, The Codetalkers, The Quark Alliance, Pharaoh Gummitt and Madrid Express.
All household names.
Hampton helped start the Horizons Of Rock Developing Everywhere (HORDE) tours of the 1990s, and in 1994 formed the progressive rock/jazz duo Fiji Mariners with Dan Matrazzo, recording two albums on Capricorn Records. Matrazzo simultaneously played keyboard, drums and bass.
In addition to music, Hampton voiced the character of Warren, a talking potted shrub, in a 1998 episode of the TV show Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and also starred as a band manager in the 1996 film Sling Blade alongside Billy Bob Thornton, and a guitar instructor in 2001's Outside Out.
Grammy Award nominated blues singer and longtime friend, Susan Tedeschi, wrote a song about Hampton called Hampmotized that appears on her 2002 release Wait For Me. Hampton later returned the favour with the song Susan T.
Basically Frightened: The Musical Madness of Col. Bruce Hampton, Ret. is a documentary about Hampton's life that premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival in 2012. That same year Georgia Governor, Nathan Deal, presented Hampton with the Governor's Award In The Arts and Humanities.
On May 1, 2017, Hampton was honoured at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia for his 70th birthday. Dubbed Hampton 70: A Celebration of Col. Bruce Hampton, it was an all-star concert featuring many of the well-known musicians who admired him, as well as a 13-year-old guitar prodigy named Brandon Niederauer. Look this kid up! You'll be floored by his talent.
During the encore performance of the show, Hampton suffered a massive heart attack and collapsed - or, more accurately, slowly laid himself down on the stage. The other performers either did not notice he had collapsed or thought it was a joke. Hampton laid face down at Niederauer's feet as the kid soloed over him. The band played for several more minutes before realizing something was amiss. Hampton was carried offstage and taken to Emory University Hospital Midtown, where he was pronounced dead.
