Leaf Hound "Growers of Mushroom" 1971

Ah yes, the fabled Leaf Hound. Many have spoken of this mythical record in the most glowing terms. But is all the hype true? Only you can decide that, but I am going to add my 2 cents to the debate.

The late 60's London blues scene is where it all began. It was a bubbling cauldron of blues that would become the new rock. Cream and Hendrix. Free, Zeppelin and Jeff Beck. And right in the middle of it all, a band called Black Cat Bones that boasted at one time or another as members, Paul Kossoff and Simon Kirke, who later started Free, and Rod Price who became a member of Foghat. Black Cat Bones alums Peter French, Stuart and Derek Brooks, Mick Halls, and Keith Young formed Leaf Hound. Peter French later replaced Rusty Day as the singer for the American rock behemoth Cactus(on the 'Ot and Sweaty album), and also later sang with Atomic Rooster. The lone Black Cat Bones recording, Barbed Wire Sandwich, is a hard and heavy blues romp. Sticking closely to blues forms, like Free's first, Tons of Sobs, it was also looking to the future, with some heavy electric guitar riffing, especially on songs like Chaffeur and Save My Love, which believe it or not always makes me think of the nasty gut punch riffs of Church of Misery. It is not, however, fully realized heavy rock. Like I said, it is very much a straight ahead blues record in form.

Man, check out dude's wicked vest!
"Freelance Fiend"

Leaf Hound Growers of Mushroom takes the next step. It has moved beyond the standard blues format into solid riff rock, albeit for only about half the album. The opener, the brutal Freelance Fiend, is worth the price of admission on it's own. It's a tough swaggering tune based on a wicked driving riff. The heaviness is then ramped down for Sad Road to the Sea, which brings in the acoustic guitars for a Zeppelin meets May Blitz kind of vibe. Drowned My Life in Fear steps it back up with a very cool Dazed and Confused-like blues. The album continues it's pattern of alternating heavy for not-so-heavy with Work My Body, which is a bit like the somewhat funky Free self titled 2nd album. Clean guitars, mellow groove, soulful vocals, building to a couple of rockin' guitar solo workouts. It doesn't quite have the Stax soul funk that is more present with Free, though. Again bringing to mind May Blitz. Then we're back to Riffland with the smokin' Stray, which, by the way, was covered by Unida. Great riffage on this one. A little too short though.

With a Minute to Go unpacks the acoustic guitars again for an uplifting, light gospel rock song with a pretty cool minor key Zeppelinesque guitar/vocal vamp at the end. The title track, Growers of Mushroom, sounds quite dated compared to the rest of the album. It's a very 60's hippy-ish trip.
Stagnant Pool ratchets the rock back up. Killer riffage once again. If only they could sustain this level of Rock throughout. Sawdust Caesar goes back to the funky Free territory, even sounding a little Trapeze-like, yet lighter.
Bonus tracks on the Repertoire reissue that I have are It's Going to Get Better, which is another gospel rock piano/organ driven song, and Hip Shaker, that starts of with a slammin' riff but then turns into just a straight ahead boogie blues.

As I said, about half the album is a hard rockin' kick to the groin. The rest is good quality welterweight rock. Freelance Fiend, Drowned My Life in Fear, Stray and Stagnant Pool make the whole thing worth checking out. They are completely riff based and if you can get past the pretty thin, piercing mix, are pure rock goodness. The album was recorded in 11 hours according to the liner notes and it does kind of sound like it. With a better mix, this would have been a much more powerful record. It's too bad they didn't stick around for a followup effort. Given the prevailing vibe of the times around them, I think they would have pounded out some harder heavier tunage the second time around.
Here's my rating:


Riff Density-5
Riff Caliber -10 (though somewhat few and far between, the riffs that are present slay)
Post-Blues Factor - 8
Groove Factor - 7
Dig it Factor - 6

Deep Purple "Come Taste the Band"

Deep Purple - Come Taste the Band
1975


This often maligned album is maybe my favorite Purple album. Yeah, I love In Rock and Machine Head, too.They are both monolithic and monumental installments in the history of Rock, but I find myself listening to this album more frequently. This is the Deep Purple Mk IV lineup, consisting of David Coverdale, Glenn Hughes, Ian Paice, Jon Lord and the brilliant Tommy Bolin replacing Ritchie Blackmore on guitar. Many hardcore Purple fans hate this record, because of the absence of Blackmore I think, more than anything else. True enough, it does not sound like the earlier Purple, but why should it? This particular line up had amazing potential. They continued the heavy bluesy riff tradition of before and explored the funk that had been simmering under the surface since In Rock, Fireball and Machine Head. This funkiness was magnified by the addition of Glenn Hughes, whose previous band, Trapeze, played a mean proto funk rock that sounded like the Pat Travers Band, except in 1971 instead of '78 or '79. What Purple Mk IV thankfully did not continue was the classical noodling that, as far as I'm concerned, killed the vibe of many a Purple song. Highway Star is a classic example. Great hard rockin' beast of a song until the ridiculous classical inspired guitar/organ theatrics. C'mon man, keep it rocking. Seriously. Tommy Bolin does just that, and without Blackmore's medeival vibe to egg him on, Jon Lord keeps it rocking too, gettin' funky when necessary. The ultimate tragedy of Purple Mk IV really was the lack balls and/or vision on the part of Coverdale/Hughes/Paice/Lord when it came to playing the older Purple songs that everyone knew on tour. Fearing that they'd lose their fans, they wanted Bolin to play Blackmore's solos verbatim and be simply a Blackmore clone. I think this just beat Bolin down and destroyed the remarkable chemistry and vibe that is on display on Come Taste the Band.

When you first drop the needle on Comin' Home, the opening song on this record, Tommy's presence is announced loud and clear with his trademark echoplex feedback which then busts into a classic Hammond organ driven Deep Purple gallop, sending the message from the get-go: "this is Purple meets Bolin." And a winnning combination it is. The songs have a big bluesy riff, arena rock feel to them, with Coverdale just killing throughout. Most of the songs were penned by Bolin, Coverdale and Hughes. Lady Luck, the 2nd tune, is actually a song from the repetoire of Tommy's earlier band from Colorado, Energy. Gettin' Tighter is a hard groovin' mid tempo monster with a funk breakdown in the middle. The Dealer takes us on a ride to the wrong part of town, with a wicked groove and some mean slide guitar, funky clavinet from Jon Lord, and pure vintage Bolin soloing. I Need Love starts out 70's FM radio rock and then turns into southern fried soul funk. Yeah, seems odd, but works. Drifter is back to the hold-your-lighter-in-the-air arena, big riff rock. More briliant Bolin soloing. Love Child hits hard with an evil Sabbatherian riff and a Herbie Hancock-ish moog solo. Yeah, I know. Again, sounds strange, but is actually really cool. This Time Around, the only ballad of the album, is a vehicle for Glenn Hughes' great vocals., that goes straight into Owed to G(the G is for George Gershwin), a fusion-tinged instrumental workout with more vintage Bolin. The album closes with You Keep on Moving, a dark, moody, Pink Floydesque song with a brilliant Hammond B3 solo from Jon Lord and ending cool dual leads from Tommy.


This album is not super heavy in the metal sense, but it rocks hard throughout. This is "put the eight track in the '69 Charger and hang with your friends on summer vacation" music. It stays true to the riff. The entire bands sounds amazing. Paice's drumming is slammming, Hughes grooves hard, Coverdale, like I said earlier, slays, Jon Lord is tasteful, funky and rockin', and I've already mentioned the larger than life greatness of Tommy Bolin. Stay tuned for some in depth reviews of Tommy Bolin and Energy , either here or on the Wo Fat website.



One thing I absolutely hate, though, is the album cover. Really bad design going on here. Kind of dumb, and, honestly, somewhat disturbing.

And the rating is...

Riff Density - 7

Riff Caliber - 8

Post Blues Factor - 9

Groove Factor - 10

Dig It Factor -10

Stray Dog 1973

Stray Dog S/T
1973

This album is one crazy wheels-off ride. I had heard about Stray Dog a few years back and happened across their second album, While You're Down There. I brought it home and gave it a spin on the old turntable only to be hugely disappointed. The guitars were almost heavy, but the songs were sickeningly-sweet-rot-your-teeth pop. Pure tripe. So I crossed Stray Dog off my list of records to find. Fast forward a couple years... I read somewhere somebody comparing a Firebird album to Stray Dog. Hmm... Yeah, right. Whatever. Then, at the used record store what do I stumble across but the first self titled Stray Dog record. I picked it up, looked at it, considered it, then put it back, thinking of the sick stomach I got from the other Stray Dog album I already wasted my money on and left the store. As the next week goes by, the Firebird comparison keeps creeping into my mind, so I finally decide to go back and see if it's still there. Sure enough, it was there and wow, it is night and day compared with the second album.

Stray Dog was a Texas power trio, led by singer/guitar player Snuffy Walden, who were tapped by Greg Lake, of ELP, to come to England to record their debut. They subsequently toured with ELP, but the album never really took off.

The album opens with a grandiose pipe organ intro, after which Snuffy sneers at you "Fasten your seatbelts!" and then the ride begins. The first 2 songs assail you with barbaric chaotic power trio bluesrock, full of wicked riffs, Snuffy's swaggering and swaying sidewinder guitar soloing, and a ferocious rhythm section pounding. After a ballad, which I always skip, there's a killer version of ZZ Top's Chevrolet. Next Speak of the Devil, complete with Stax-like background singers, and Slave rock soulful yet savage. The last song reins the wild dog pack in a bit for some more straight ahead 70's pop rock. Not a bad song, but not up snuff, or is it snuffy, in the riff department compared to the rest.
There's only 7 songs on the album, but the 5 serious rockers make it well worth the trip. It's not heavy in a behemoth power chord kind of way, but more like a berserk rabid dog ripping apart your ZZ Top records. This album definitely lands high up on my list of 70's obscurities. And non-obscurities as well really. The Firebird comparison is not a bad one after all. It's very much Texas power trio heavily blues-infused rock.
Don't know what the story is with the 2nd album, While You're Down There. A second guitar player and a new singer were added for it. I would guess it was pressure from the record company to come up with something more palatable for the mainstream based on the lack of success of their first album. Shame.
If you see the first album, buy it.

Anyway, here's my rating:

Riff Density - 7
Riff Caliber - 9
Post Blues Factor - 9
Groove Factor - 8
Dig It Factor -10

The Wo Fat Rating System

Ok, here we go. This is the rating system, mentioned in the previous blog,that I have devised for my record reviews. I have 5 factors that will have a number from 0-10. Of course this is all subjective and completely my opinion, so do with it what you will. Not having actually used this system yet, I may have to make some changes, but let's just see how it works.

The 5 factors are:

Riff Density, Riff Caliber, Post-Blues Factor, Groove Factor, Dig it Factor

Riff Density is just what it says. How full of riffage is the album. Does it only have 2 songs that are rockin or is the entire album chock full of riffy goodness?


Riff Caliber is basically quality of the riffage. The album may only have 2 rockin' songs on it, thus giving it a lower Riff Density, but those 2 songs may be composed of pure unadluterated genius riffs, thus giving it a higher Riff Caliber number. There are plenty of classic must-have albums that are completely worth owning even though they contain only a few killer songs. In fact a lot of the late 60's and early 70's, especially 1970 and '71, albums can be very hit and miss. The style was still being defined at that point. These first 2 factors hopefully address that fact.


Post-blues Factor This one's a bit nebulous. This factor will try to place the music somewhere in the rock and roll spectrum in relation to it's blues influence. In the middle is straight up blues at 5. John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers would get a 5. The higher you get, the more evolved yet still highly blues based(not necessarily structurally based, but definitely conceptually and melodically ,i.e. blues scale/minor pentatonic) . Black Sabbath Paranoid and Master of Reality would both be around a 10 because they are fully realized post blues/proto metal derived directly from the blues. Below 5 we are moving away from the blues. Now why would you want to do that? I dunno. Let's put a good amount of the Beatles catalog below 5. Yeah, I know they played some blues, but for the most part they pushed Rock and Roll in the other direction.
Hopefully my bizarre logic makes some semblance of sense and will be helpful to some of you.
Again, this scale isn't necessarily a reflection of quality. I'm just trying to help describe the difference between Master of Reality, Jeff Beck-Truth and Yellow Submarine.


Groove Factor - This too is a nebulous ephemeral cloudlike formation that probably only makes sense to me. I'm thinking of it basically like this: how much does the record jam or rock or groove. Is the band just slamming? Is there some indescribable intangible something that makes this album work? Can you feel the electricity emanating from the grooves or does it feel cold and stifled? I guess you could say this is partly execution or delivery. This is maybe the least helpful factor, but there are some albums that are great because the delivery is so heavy even though musically it maybe wouldn't rank quite as high.
I suppose I just wanted a way of highlighting the instances when I feel a real chemistry; when it feels like the stars have aligned for certain albums and bands at certain times more than anything else. Led Zeppelin IV is a good example. Not only is the groove that is being laid down by John Bonham and John Paul Jones throughout just sick, but the album as a whole is otherworldy genius. The stars aligned and everything fell into place perfectly for that album.
The first 3 Cactus albums have some serious groove and chemistry goin' on. They have a very live feel to them.
Yeah I know, this is a very subjective category.


and lastly:

Dig It: This is simply how much I like the album.




Here's a few well known albums rated with the system to give you some insight into my thinking:

Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Riff Density 10
Riff Caliber 10
Post Blues Factor 10
Groove Factor 9
Dig It 10


Led Zeppelin - II
Riff Density 6
Riff Caliber 9
Post Blues Factor 8
Groove Factor 8
Dig It 9

Led Zeppelin - III
Riff Density 4
Riff Caliber 7
Post Blues Factor 7
Groove Factor 6
Dig It 6

ZZ Top - First Album
Riff Density 9
Riff Caliber 10
Post Blues Factor 9
Groove Factor 10
Dig It 10

Free - Tons of Sobs
Riff Density 6
Riff Caliber 7
Post Blues Factor 6
Groove Factor 7
Dig It 8

The Quest for Rock

Let the mad rambling begin...
I have spent the majority of my life searching for music, always with a seemingly never ending and ever evolving wishlist. Looking for this or that obscure record by whoever, sometimes finding the most amazing mindblowing music, and sometimes getting home, excited about a new score, only to drop the needle and be sorely disappointed. But that's what it's all about now isn't it? The search. The hunt. Finding that hidden treasure.
These days, you can find out a little bit of information about most albums out there. That information is sometimes helpful, and sometimes not. When I was a kid buying records, the internet didn't exist. You just had to jump in and take a chance. How many times did I buy an album just because it looked cool or the band had a cool name? How many of those cool looking records sucked? Asia anyone? I guess it's still true that you have to take a chance a lot of times when you buy records(like I said, when I first started listening to music, it was the days of vinyl, so I still refer to albums, whether they are vinyl or cd, as "records." That's what it is. A Record). Music is so subjective, and not everyone is looking to get the same thing out of it. As is probably obvious from the sound of my band, Wo Fat, I have a huge love for the blues, 70's hard rock and the early foundational days of metal, which is where a lot of my musical quest is spent these days. Because of this I am always looking for information about this music. Stonerrock.com has a Classic Album reviews section in it's forum that is a good place to find reviews of lots of albums. One thread in particular that asked for reader's votes for the best obscure heavy 70's albums turned me on to a bunch of records I didn't previously know about.
Another resource I found is a great book by Martin Popoff entitled "The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal, Volume 1: The Seventies." In this book, Martin Popoff has done an amazing job of writing excellent brief reviews of thousands of records from bands you've heard of and a bunch you haven't. As cool as Martin's book is and as cool as the Stonerrock.com forum pages are, not to mention lots of other online sources, they sometimes fall short for me, either because of lack of the specific information that I'm looking for, or the fact that the reviewer is, like I said earlier, listening for other things than I am, or just percieves things differently. There are a number of records that I think are pretty much on the lame side and would have left in the record bin had it not been for some Martin Popoff and Stonerrock.com review. Some examples:

Heavy Metal Kids -Do not buy this record if you see it at the used record store. Put it down, back away from it slowly and pretend you never saw it.It will hurt you inside.
Asterix -Martin said "if more people new this existed, you'd have to add it to the short list of important and first heavy metal records of all time..." I beg to differ, but maybe I'll give it another spin;
Hard Stuff-Bulletproof - yeah, this will piss a bunch of people off. Everybody lists this as one of the top 10 obscure 70's heavies. I don't know man, I think it sucks, but that's a subject for another blog entry. Stay tuned...
Therefore, I have decided to add my voice to the din. I am going to dedicate this blog primarily to giving my take on bands and their albums from the 60's and 70's that laid the foundations of all Heavy Metal and today's Stoner Rock, thus hopefully giving another perspective and opinion to anyone interested in this music.

Martin Popoff, in his book, uses a rating system consisting of 2 numbers for his album reviews. The first number is the Heaviness rating, and the second number is a reflection of how much he likes the record. For example, Martin gives Black Sabbath - Master of Reality a 9/10, ZZ Top - Tres Hombres - 7/10, Led Zeppelin II - 5/7,and AC/DC-Let There Be Rock - 9/10. Inspired by Martin's rating system, I have come up with my own rating system that is a little more detailed and has more factors in an attempt to describe some of the things that I dig in a rock and roll record.

Because I have been rambling for awhile here and also in order to have the rating system explanation more accessible, I will make that it's own blog entry.