LP-Mad River-Paradise Bar & Grille 1970 W.Coast Psych Garage-Freakout

$

70

(PARADISE BAR & GRILL ) by (MAD RIVER )...... ....(Original 1970 first pressing on the hard to find lime green Capitol Records label that was only in print some 18 months... Here the second and last MAD RIVER album...a group of talented San Francisco Sound hippies who played along side the best of the rest of the Ballroom & club scene in the Summer Of Love '67 thru 1970... In the onslaught of innovative San Francisco Bay Area psychedelic bands that recorded in the late 1960s, it was inevitable that some would get unfairly overlooked. Foremost among them were Mad River, whose two Capitol albums made barely a ripple saleswise. Overexposure of the San Francisco scene, however, was likely only part of the reason for their commercial failure. For Mad River were one of the hardest psychedelic bands to get a handle on, their eclecticism, oblique lyrics, and tortuous multi-segmented songs defying quick summarization. It may not have helped that Mad River's brand of psychedelia was decidedly dark, often venturing into distraught visions in stark opposition to the feel-good stereotype of the San Francisco Sound. Their second and final album, 1969's Paradise Bar and Grill , was for the most part an abrupt about-face from the debut. The tracks largely retreated into the calmness of rural-rock. At the same time, the band's propensity for inscrutable acidic tunes with hard rock guitar and impossible-to-hum melodies did rear its head occasionally, making for an extremely diffuse record that seemed torn between several artistic paths. The instrumental opener, "Harfy Magnum," indicated the band may have been listening to John Fahey, with its similar avant-garde-tinged folk guitar. Hammond got to stretch his sorrowful pvocals to the max on the rural-rock title track, and Richard Brautigan provided the words and spoken narration for "Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend," backed by mellow folk picking. (Mad River, mindful of Brautigan's kindness when they were starving, had used some of their Capitol advance to pay for the printing of Brautigan's collection of poems, Please Plant This Book.) Having prepared the listener for an easygoing hippie rock record, on "Leave Me/Stay" the band then veered back into the agonized hard rock that had typified the previous LP. This was an extremely downcast romantic lament, as if the desperation of Mad River's "Eastern Light" had been followed by the desertion Hammond seemed to have feared all along. The jarring roller coaster ride continued with the good-time uptempo honky-tonker "Copper Plates" and the quasi-classical guitar-and-recorder instrumental "Equinox." The second side of the LP was no more predictable, "They Brought Sadness" being yet another lyric punctuated by twisting, occasionally atonal guitar. "Revolution in My Pocket" broke up strutting rock verses with odd stretches of serene folk guitar and wordless humming, segueing into "Academy Cemetery," an amazing psychedelic-acid laced showcase for squiggly electric guitar leads backed by strong drumming. And what could follow that, of course, but another homespun slice of rustic-rock, "Cherokee Queen"? It is hard to imagine exactly how Capitol planned to market such an all-over-the-place effort, yet the album did peek into the charts. Frustrated by their lack of recognition, Mad River broke up by the end of the 1960s, most likely victims of the daring recklessness of their musical experimentation. Yet this disc, combining both of their Capitol albums, testifies to their place among the most durable and intriguing San Francisco bands of their era Harfy Magnum Paradise Bar and Grill Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend Leave Me/Stay Copper Plates Equinox The They Brought Sadness Revolution's In My Pockets Academy Cemetery Cherokee Queen DISC IS A BEAUTIFUL M- SL IS VG+++ SLIGHT WEAR --THIS IS A RARE NON-PROMO COPY WITH NO PUNCH HOLE--A TRUE GEM ).......

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