Fugs manifesto over primitive Lower East Side psych-folk; Slum Goddess, Supergirl and Boobs A Lot out-crude

their contemporaries, while Kupferbergs Nothing predated Blank Generation as a nihilists anthem. I Couldnt Get High contained the first mention of LSD in lyrics. The Fugs, recorded at RLA with Richard Alderson and session musicians including drummer Bernard Purdie, amped into garage-psych on Group Grope and Tulis anti-war singalong Kill For Peace. In June 1967, ESP released first-album outtakes as Virgin Fugs (ESP 1038), contradicting the companys slogan, The artists alone decide what you will hear on their ESP-Disk. PATTY WATERS Sings ESP 1025 Introduced to Stollman by Ayler, Waters suggested an album of jazz standards, which didnt fit the ESP ethos. She hooked up with pianist Burton Greenes trio at RLA on 19 December 1965 to record her own misty compositions, plus avant tour de force Black Is The Colour Of My True Loves Hair, which saw Greene playing his piano from the inside; this influenced both Yoko Ono and Diamanda Galas. VARIOUS The East Village Other ESP 1034 A proper period piece cementing ESPs place in the activist counterculture, EVO was recorded at RLA on 6 August 1966 to raise funds for an underground newspaper being started by local artist/bartender Walter Bowart and budding novelist Ishmael Reed. They gathered Steve Weber, Gerard Malanga, Ingrid Superstar, Marion Brown, drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, The Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground to express themselves over live TV coverage of President Lyndon Johnsons daughters wedding, intercut with harrowing Vietnam War footage. THE GODZ Contact High With The Godz ESP 1037 Recorded in 45 minutes on 28 September 1966, Contact High was designed to torpedo the standard rock LP; in just 25 minutes, it
54 Record Collector

established their punk-presaging manifesto. Jim McCarthy and Larry Kessler howl like deranged hillbillies on the self-explanatory Turn On, and like horny felines on White Cat Heat. WILLIAM BURROUGHS Call Me Burroughs ESP 1050 Eight spoken word pieces such as The Fish Poison Con were captured by Ian Sommerville in the basement of Paris cultural landmark The English Bookshop to comprise Burroughs first album, initially released in France in summer 65. Stollmans youngest brother Steve knew store owner Gait Froge, who had acquired the rights from Burroughs. ESP released the US edition in late 66.

plight of black communities in frightening close-up. Released in 1966, the album appeared on the soundtrack of the Martin Luther King documentary. HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS Indian War Whoop ESP 1068 The folk elite looked down their beards at speedcrazed old-time pranksters Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, who produced a clutch of gloriously unhinged albums. For their 1967 ESP debut, they were told to go as far out as possible. Having weirded-out from The Fugs, they made perhaps the most demented outing in the whole catalogue, traversing mutant old-time, lysergic lunacy and gargling psychobabble. They were joined by future playwright Sam Shepard on drums. TIMOTHY LEARY Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out ESP 1027 CHARLES MANSON Lie: The Love And Terror Cult ESP 2003 Two of the eras most infamous figures released albums on ESP. Learys 1966 set captured the most dangerous man alive at his Millbrook estate, expounding on drugs, past exploits and current events, requiring painstaking editing to remove lengthy pauses but unleashing a counter-culture rallying call. By the time Mansons album was released, he was serving life for the murders that shook the world in 1969 and provided the establishment with a hippie for the masses to revile as a diversion from the swelling anti-war groundswell. Manson recorded his album of wired psych-folk in 1967 at Beach Boy Dennis Wilsons studio (they famously turned Mansons Cease To Exist into 20/20s Never Learn Not To Love). The album was initially released in 1970 by producer Phil Kaufman, who sold it to Stollman, who pressed 500 as Sings. ESP reissued this macabre, much-covered (Guns N Roses, Marilyn Manson) document in 2006, with royalties going tothe family of one of Mansons victims. ED ASKEW Ask The Unicorn ESP 1092 Askew recorded Ask The Unicorn in August 1968, its otherworldly ambience partly due to his use of a lute-like stringed instrument called a tiple. Askew then disappeared, until surfacing last year with the fragile melancholy and melodic playfulness For The World.

KKK goons were threatening murder and arson

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE One Nation Underground ESP 1054; Balaklava ESP 1075 Two genredefining psychfolk albums with strong anti-war sentiments couched in hauntingly lustrous backdrops, and heralded by a hellish Hieronymus Bosch sleeve. With the band staying at Stollmans parents house, the album was recorded over four days at Impact with Richard Alderson, who brought in stellar drummer Warren Smith. It sold a reported 200,000 copies. 1968s Balaklava amped-up the anti-war message by harking back to Charge Of The Light Brigade, expanding the sound with hallucinogenic arrangements and period recordings of Florence Nightingale. MOVEMENT SOUL Live Recordings Of Songs And Sayings From The Freedom Movement In The Deep South 1963-1964 ESP 1056 In 1966, journalist Alan Ribback taped a terrorstricken Selma church congregation surrounded by KKK psycho-goons threatening murder and arson, capturing the

ESP.indd 54

3/13/2014 1:07:33 PM