BOHEMIAN VENDETTA 1968 ORIG mono garage psych LP LISTEN

$

306

For as long as I’ve been collecting, this one’s always been one of the “biggies.”  Much has been written – or rather, hyped – about Bohemian Vendetta’s 1968 album on the Mainstream label, and nearly everyone agrees that if you had to own ONE album on the label, and remortgage your house to do it, this would be the one to have.  First of all, I have to say I LOVE the cover – that’s the kind of cheesy op-art collage that you used to order in poster size from the back of National Lampoon magazine – a weird cross between the curtains my mom used to have in our living room in 1970 and someone on acid fumbling around with a spirograph.  But does the music inside live up to the cover, or, more importantly, does it live up to the hype that’s been given to it for the past 30 years?  Well, yes and no, to be honest.  I’d still take the Jelly Bean Bandits and Ellie Pop over it any day, if hard pressed to own a few Mainstream label albums and that’s it.  But it’s certainly not one of the awful ones on the label either, like Katmandu, or Lacewing, or December’s Children.  It’s comfortably in the middle, resting nicely near the Tangerine Zoo and the Tiffany Shade, good company to keep.  If anything, I’d say it’s one of the punkiest albums on the label, loud and raw and steeped in the Nuggets teen garage tradition more than any other Mainstream act save the Jelly Bean Bandits – and its primal energy and simplistic songwriting are both its strengths and its limitations, depending on what you look for when you slap this puppy on your turntable and crank it up.  Sure, the Bohemian Vendetta TRY to be psychedelic – just look at that sleeve again for starters – or listen to the twisted soliloquoy in “Paradox City”:    “So follow me to the depths above, Where the skies are paved with marshmallow love. And flowers stand guard, armed in self-seeking pity, Daring you enter in Paradox City.”   Thing is, they’re no more “marshmallow” and “flowers” than the Seeds were, or the Lollipop Shoppe for that matter.  These guys are garage punkers through and through, and they’re not fooling anyone with the trippy lyrics and bad black light poster art.  And so, “Paradox City” is not some lost flower power hippie anthem, but an angry, aggressive in-your-face garage punker that rides on an ear-piercing Twilight Zone guitar riff.  They may want to blow your mind, but they end up ripping out your eardrums.  Garage punk heads, like those who own multiple copies of every “Pebbles” and “Back From the Grave” volume released, will swallow this stuff whole.  Likewise “I Wanna Touch Your Heart”, which opens up with some of the most annoying, ear-shredding high-pitched guitar feedback ever committed to vinyl (pre-Mercury Rev), then turns inexplicably into the Vendetta’s twisted attempt at Motown soul, like Teddy and His Patches covering “Bernadette.”  Again, subtlety is not a major issue here.  I really like their cover of the Stones “Satisfaction”, a song I’m frankly sick of and never thought I’d enjoy again.  Which is probably why I love the Bohemian Vendetta’s outright strangling of it – here, even Keith’s famous guitar riff is demolished and ripped to shreds by a bunch of kids who don’t have even an ounce of respect for the Glimmer Twins, and god bless ‘em.  It opens with a flurry of rage-fueled, fuzzed-out distorted guitar feedback, as great shards of electric noise rip and tear at the grooves for a good minute before even approaching anything near that infamous Stones riff.  When they finally get to it, it’s clear they have no respect for it, slowing it down like the Vanilla Fudge would, but also strangling and choking it under thick layers of fuzz-drenched noise so loud and impenetrable that the singer literally has to scream at the top of his lungs just to be heard!  If housewives in the 60’s thought the Rolling Stones were the devil’s music, the Bohemian Vendetta’s fuzz-fueled Stygian inferno makes Mick and Keith sound like the Bugaloos.  About the only time the Vendetta actually approach subtlety is on the basement psychedelia of “Deaf Dumb and Blind”, a relatively subdued Sunday morning sermon against the Man, complete with chanting monk background vocals and pealing church tower bells.  This trippy hybrid manages to combine elements of the Yardbirds’ “Still I’m Sad”, the Doors “Crystal Ship” and Max Frost and the Troopers’ “Shape of Things to Come” into a groovy diatribe against the sins of those in power.  “Evil and sin in prejudice prey, while falsified truths in bigotry play.”  It even ends with a chanted “A-men,” proving that these angry young men would do equally well preaching the Seven Deadly Sins in the Church of Rock.  Of course, giving your confession to a band who could collapse an apse with a single burst of demonic feedback is a decision you’ll have to make on your own.  As for the album, it’s a good one, not to mention the rawest, most primal music the Mainstream label ever allowed.  Marshmallows and flowers my ass.  Original MONO pressing on the Mainstream label from 1968.  Cover's in VG+ shape with some edgewear, no seam splits, cover slick just starting to peel near the spine, Dj stamp on back and "3/18/68" written in blue pen.  Vinyl has a few visible scuffs and marks that aren't feelable, plays VG+ with some crackle and surface noise.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!
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