RARE lounge prog psych Parasite Lovers & Friends 1977

$

251

This is a rare l.p. to my knowledge. I only know of two copies that sold on eBay but there could have been more.  This is a private pressing by Lovers & Friends titled Parasite - I Want To Go Home With You from 1977. It was issued with what appears to be a plain white cover with PARASITE hand written on front but it's actually pre printed on front. There is a paste-on cover on back. I have seen one with a color cover but I'm sure it was hand drawn by whomever it belonged to. This may belong in the Incredible Strange Music category because it's a bizarre one. Mike Ascherman came up with an excellent review for Acid Archives so I'm going to use it here. It's long but worth the effort to read it all.

This is a rather amiable pastiche of hippie goofball roots music and straight lounge band renditions, with one inexplicable moment. The former features a male vocalist doing stoned rambling and rather loose instrumental arrangements. This is exemplified by the rock & roll medley, which has the most restrained r'n'r instrumental backing for a totally wasted, over-the-top singer. The lounge selections feature a bubbly female singer over super tight arrangements. Their rendition of "Send In The Clowns" ranks in the TOP ECHELON of lounge covers. The overall effect of the juxtaposition of these two styles produces the most schizoid musical statement since Robert Schumann split into Florestan and Eusebius. Now for that inexplicable moment, which is actually 8 minutes long and falls into both styles. "Misty" has a 5+ minute intro for a 2 1/2 minute song. It starts off innocently enough, then suddenly veers into proto industrial space, surely earning this the right to be included on an updated Nurse With Wound list. Think Amon Duul playing at your local cocktail lounge. Atonal guitar shards abruptly morph into fiddle-led hoe-down as the intro (called on the label "Intro") ends and the vocal portion (called on the label "The Rest") commences, with a hillbilly vocal that reminds one of Arthur Godfrey's singing on the 2nd Moby Grape l.p. Please note that all the goings on described here are all on the tune "Misty". The l.p. comes in a not surprisingly rather odd cover with the word "Parasite" appearing hand written but it is actually pre printed & on the spine as well. The back cover and the labels call the band "Lovers & Friends". The back also has a series of 36 photos of random objects, and appears to be out of the Jandek school of photography. The labels, rather then calling the sides 1 & 2, call them "Side Of Recluses" and "Windy Side".

Thanks Mike, for a well thought out review ! The cover is in excellent condition. The upper left corner got a tad bit crunched. It's only about 1/2 inch though so it's not bad. The vinyl is near mint. I have a very fair reserve on this l.p. so I can at least get back close to what I have into it.

( I ship on Saturdays. If you pay me after 1:30 p.m. on a Saturday, your l.p. will not be shipped until the next Saturday.)

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