Going way back here for this early monster, one that deserves a spot on the pedestal right next to Holy Ghost Reception Committee #9. The Wanderers are five young fellows from Hartford, Connecticut, three in college, two seniors in high school. Their custom production has an excellent 1966/1967 garage/rock/psych feel that’s thick with basement electric guitar, cheesy organ, bass and drums. Side one is the “sacred” side, covering selections from early Avant Garde releases which was basically the only known Jesus rock at the time. A reverend opens with a brief spoken message on accepting “the profane” and bringing it to God in worship (obviously such a radical project must be justified and sanctioned to concerned skeptical parents). That out of the way, it’s on to covers of John Ylvisaker (‘Sing To The Lord’, ‘Lament Of The City’), Robert Edwin (‘Are You Running With Me Jesus’, ‘Keep The Rumor Going’) and the Medical Mission Sisters (‘The Wedding Banquet’), all performed with fun unrefined creative garage-band teenage zest. Selections on the secular side include ‘Testify’, ‘Knock On Wood’ and ‘Midnight Hour’. There’s some smokin’ lead guitar on Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Fire’ (yeah!), as well as the closing self-written track: a classic 9-minute hunk of up-tempo trippy fuzzed swirly-organ summer-of-love psychedelia with the cryptic title ‘B.S.R.S’ that’s been likened to Country Joe & The Fish. This piece especially makes The Wanderers a big $$$ hit among ‘60s psych private press collectors. Back cover says they participated in a high school youth gathering sponsored by several Catholic churches in the fall of 1967, performing a celebration of The Eucharist. “So great was the response that the need to make this music available to a wider audience has produced this recording”. (Ken Scott – The Archivist). Thanks anders for providing this one.
Tracks:
01. Reverend Talk
02. Sing To The Lord
03. Lament Of The City
04. Are You Running With Me Jesus
05. The Wedding Banquet
06. Keep The Rumor Going
07. I Wanna Testify
08. Fire
09. Knock On Wood
10. Midnight Hour
11. BSRS (instrumental)
Biterate: 320 Download
DOWNLOADS OK, BUT SONG FILES ARE "MPC" WHICH CAN'T BE PLAYED. MAYBE CORRUPT?
ReplyDeleteSTORMCHASER
I am working on the correction, Will take awhile to re-up them.
ReplyDeleteI had a week where my CD drive died and I was searching for a program to make MP3's. I found the program that turned them into MPC's which I had no problem with as I also have a program to play them. I soon discovered the problem and I thought I had gotten rid of all the MPC files but I guess I missed some. Will leave aother comment when the new link is posted.
diakoneo
MPC: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-musepack.htm
ReplyDeleteThanks for all stuff blogger,
God bless us
the new MP3's are uploading now. I will change the link in the morning.
ReplyDeletediakoneo
The link has been changed the MP3's are now linked. Again I appologize for my mistake.
ReplyDeletediakoneo
Interesting comparison with the Holy ghost reception NO.9 as there are certain similarities between the works of the two bands, not least their youth although the Holy ghost were a bit younger overall and wrote infinitely more of their stuff over their two LPs. Their two albums are indeed remarkable and I find it hard to believe that they were so young as they sound pretty mature, likewise the Wanderers. But you know, that has long been a feature for me of 60s rock in general. While the standard line has been that pop / rock tries to promote almost eternal youth with a modicum of irresponsibility, the lyrics of young teens and 20 somethings from the 60s are often years ahead of the ages that the writers were actually at. And in the christian genre, late 60s songs like "Walking backwards down the stairs", "Ha ha world" and "Last supper" show tremendous insight for a 24 year old.
ReplyDeleteThe Wanderers LP doesn't hit me quite like the Holy ghost and on their 9 minute psych special, I feel they over reach themselves and show their limitations. It's a shame because the piece starts off really well. That said, in '67, few groups outside the Stones (and even then they only did it once), Pink Floyd and the Mothers of invention would dare attempt a song on a record of that length so I applaud their daring and chutzpah.
So Their songwriting overall is not as strong as HGRN9, but then, with the Ghost, it wasn't only the band writing - some of their school mates were too. It's silly I know but sometimes I struggle with being a songwriting purist and I tend to think everyone should write their own songs if they can write songs at all. There are loads of cover versions that I love although I'm critical if they stick too closely to the original; part of me thinks 'what's the point ?'. But then, I also get cruffy if they depart too far from the original and almost make a new song !! A bit like in the old days when I'd feel that a band should improvise in concert but then, if they didn't play a song the way it was on the record I'd think 'what was that all about ?'.I did say it was silly !! I've grown away from my contradictions. Now I just revel in paradox !!
But I digress. It's, even now, quite encouraging to see young people writing songs and I guess in the Wanderers favour is the fact that even in '67/'68 even well funded mainstrem artists were only just cottoning on to the fact that entire albums could be filled with ones' own songs. And record companies were still working on the logic that they knew what the public would want to hear.
But there are two areas where the Wanderers LP is clearly superior to their younger contemporaries of HGRN9. Firstly, the playing is better. On both the sacred and secular tracks, the playing is tight and inventive and smokes where necessary. Secondly, it's recorded far better. No disrespect to HGRN9 as both recordings ("Songs for liturgical worship" and "The torchbearers" ) were school projects and not recorded as such, in a studio, but both are the worst two recorded I've ever heard, worse even than awful live bootlegs that I've heard. Here you can hear the instruments clearly...and loudly.
At the end of the day, if this is from '67, it is a vital historical artifact that pre-dates much that we have come to accept as nascent Jesus rock. Pretty neat songs, too {grimtraveller}