Juggular's Balls! (1980)

A happy group of artists by the looks of it, aren't they?  Amused by their non-joke, perhaps?

As you can see, the band's name is Juggular (jugular vein + juggler, presumably) and the title of their sole LP is Balls! with an exclamation mark, like when you're texting and you're a teenager but without the dumb emoticons.  Doesn't happen to readers of this blog I'm sure.  Anyways, the whole is a little silly, but typical of the times, as we all know.  And my wife's comment is probably apposite: 'because they were all stoned in those days.'

What the music is, which is what we're interested in, is smooth fusion, all instrumental, maybe a little like Auracle, with slight progessiveness here and there.  For sure it's good and enjoyable if the style appeals to you, not over the top in commercialese.  A positive point is there's NO song with a hispanic title using those simple 3-chord progressions typical of Cuban or Spanish music.  I'd go so far as to say what the hell is wrong with these people? They didn't include a "Viva Cariba!" song with those out of tune steel drums or a bossa nova song with women shouting "tititi! ariba!"??

In terms of progressive fusion the clear standout is Dragonseed:

With many or a handful of other songs (if you have lost a few fingers) that resemble it in odd originality, making this a clear category 4 (mostly ordinary fusion with one track or a few tracks progressive-ish-- whatever that means.)

Quasar Light - Experience This! 1981

If you pay attention closely to this blog (about as likely as Hillary running again in the primaries), you might have noticed that Tom Hayes made some comments for the Rantz post referencing this album as similar with the odd mix of all-out progressive outlandish music and commercial songs some of which are sung by a female vocalist (like the first 2 tracks, throwaways for me).  For those who don't know, Tom has been in suspended animation for the last few years after being ordered to  shut down the cd reissue wishlist in preparation for a top-secret government mission to alpha centauri for a large multinational mining company.  It's expected that if all goes well he'll be in the same suspended animation for more than a hundred years for that trip powered by light sails and an ion drive to close to the speed of light.  When he's revived every few years, he reviews a few prog albums.  For this reason I thought it was appropriate to post this album with its multiple references to space travel.  Unfortunately these crazies only made this one album.  Another commenter pointed out that a band member remastered the record and posted it for everyone to download on archive, in one big file.  Thanks to my wonderful friends we chopped this into digestible tracks, found some decent scans online and reassembled this frankenstein robot for your enjoyment.  Note that the LP is not cheap, in the hundred dollar range usually.

Illusion Confusion always shocked me with its tritonal riff and the way they build it throughout the song--it takes real guts to make a rock song this bizarre:

In some ways it foreshadows the glorious death metal days of the later 1990s with bands like Pantera, Cannibal Corpse, who often used bizarre riffs to heighten the anger, the energy, and let's be honest the repulsiveness (to ordinary people) of their music.  In my younger days I really fell for those bands.  I'm not gonna make my usual comments about how appropriate the song is to today's world with social media and their self-created fake news phenomenon.  (Well, it was created by people with their own motives, so I guess it's more a sad indictment of how the high hopes (in the 90s) of a democratic internet have fallen to the bottom of a garbage dump pit.)

I'll quote Tom's review from 2011 (but not in full):

Quasar Light are from Red Lion, Pennsylvania, which sits in the southeast part of the state, in and around Amish country. This isolation in the middle of farm country may explain a few things, as these guys were tapped into something that has yet to be followed up with anywhere else.
...
The first 4 songs on the album sound like some kind of alien pop with nimble hard rock guitar picking and disembodied female vocals. There is no mistaking its 1980's heritage here. 'Don't Ever Leave Me' seems to be heading down a somewhat normal path, to the point of discouragement. Starting with 'Secret of  the Stars', Quasar Light begins to go completely off the rails. This sounds like a off-kilter version of this list Post psychedelic, proto progressive with female vocals. Then Side 2 all bets are off. They were in their own world. Not that it's avant noise or anything so overt as that. No, they're still going strong with actual composed songs. But they're strange, twisted, distorted, and downright complex at times. It's progressive rock from the 6th dimension. There is absolutely no reference here. Based on their location, one begins to wonder if they're Amish on a Rumspringa binge. The only reference I could find on this album was a stream of consciousness rant from the Quasar Light founder. Yea, a surprise that. Underground America at its weirdest right here. A must.

The usually spot-on Apps was not impressed though:

Uneven mix of plain Rock and high-gear Heavy Rock/Punk and Prog from this unknown quintet of double guitars, bass, drums and vocals out of the States.Things are pretty simple to my ears.Side A is the weakest of the two, reminds me of a poor man's Syn: lots of energy in Pop Rock arrangements with some sophisitication but no further surprising moments.Side B offers better conditions for a more enjoyable listening.Guitars offer some great rhythmic breaks, energy is the key factor here with dual leads and attacking vocals in an aggressive style with progressive values and some Crimson-ian extensions.Some sort of demanding Punk if you know what I mean.Approach with caution.

Back in high school when we were all so obsessed with our classic rock albums (at the time they were not called that) we argued forever over certain LPs; some people absolutely hated them and some people absolutely loved them.  I guess Genesis belonged to that category in those days, and I admit I hated them when I was a teenager.  Couldn't stand the pretentiousness, in those days.  Clearly this record belongs to that category.  At least give them credit for being so utterly original and uncommercial.

So thanks to everyone for bringing this one to us: Tom who reminded me, the commenter who found it online, remastered by the band, and my friends for reorganizing it for safe consumption... and as we used to say in high school, I don't give a sh** if you hate it, I love this record.  And see you all on the 'cybernetic killing floor' one day:

US Gryphon, 1975

These guys made one hard rock/basic rock album in 1975 and then disappeared.  Obviously they shouldn't be confused with the British (dragon) invasion of the same name.  Overall, the sound reminds me a lot of my favourite Ambush with a kind of highly competent DIY vibe and all the trappings of AOR and arena rock without the productionary excesses on the part of a gleeful producer or more likely stoned producer (cf. Phil Spector, Beatles' Let it Be).
Nothing progressive to see here, move on if that's what you want, maybe the oddball song called Controller:





Nonetheless very enjoyable for those who love this late seventies style of US hard rock (like me and Tom Hayes).

Back to Nothin' Sirius with the 'tax scam album' Atomic Cafe

Well, pretty cool cover and verso art  Downing a beer in the middle of the deep space intergalactic for a round of poker couldn't be bad.

These fusioneer pranksters were featured earlier here, a follow-up with more improvisation and much looser is described as a Baby Grand label tax scam album.  I went over that business here, and here & still find it odd.  Perhaps instead we should ask POTUS about it.  He can probably clarify the whole mystery for us? In a few lawsuits from now that is.  Anyways, the discogs page for the label provides a wonderfully concise summary of the scam, which apparently was very short-lived, not surprisingly:

Baby Grand Records was in full swing releasing scores of eclectic recordings, all designed primarily for one purpose…not to turn a profit! The premise behind the label headed by Ron Fair, an ambitious 20 something pianist, composer/arranger and most of all aspiring record executive who would later go on to become the President of A&M Records and Geffen Records Records...had at its foundation a curious loophole in the U.S. tax laws that allowed wealthy investors to realise a tax credit far in excess of their investment. It was really quite simple; an investor would put up a few thousand dollars to cover the production and manufacturing costs. The album would have a minimal number of pressings issued and an accountant would value the recording at 10’s of thousands of dollars above the costs based on what the investor would have realised, had the record been a commercial success. In this manner, someone could invest say $5,000 and receive a tax credit of anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 as a loss on what he “expected” to generate from his initial investment. In the 1970’s the economy in the States was slamming and there was no shortage of investors in search of tax credits. It is considered that some of the investors actually fancied the notion that this was their entrée into the music business, and others perhaps just liked the idea of supporting the arts.

What is most surprising is that some of these tax scam records were so good (e.g. Ilian).  This one, though, is mostly average.  The fusion is competent but a little led astray by the excess extempore and meandering ideas, with a general lack of good concepts underpinning the music.  In overall texture and sound I think it's most like the Natural Life LPs, but as I said, the actual compositions are missing in action here and there and Rambo hasn't shot his way through to release 'em yet.

The title track gets the ball rolling to break the ice and mix the metaphors:





The punning Nothin' Atoll, presumably referencing the Bikini Atoll (given the overall atomic theme):





A nice addition to our collection I think.  The back credits claim the album was produced by keyboardist Marcus Duke and guitarist Lindsay Gillis along with Bill Dashiell.  Seems awfully sad that all their hard work just went to give a few grand to an idiot investor led by a guy who went on to such (sexual) success later.

A blurb by Lindsay states the following:

"It's like, in the midst of the many vessels exploring the coastline of the mother country, a few set out to link the old world with the new, discover Americas, walk on moons... big deal.  It may not be valid to the mass daytime serial, but at certain times, when no one is listening, who else is there to play to but the moon and the stars." 

Well maybe it's fitting if the moon and the stars are the crooked investors.

Jim Zuzow... Just Around the Corner, USA 1982

Now here's an album so rare I can almost guarantee no one has heard (of) it before.  It might be there's a reason for that, maybe not.  Certainly I could be like other vinyl collectors out there and give it a rave review, blog madly about its merits and then demand something valuable be traded with me alone, for the privilege of a listen.  But of course on this blog we long ago went the other way.  As a result I can guarantee the assessments are brutally honest, for the most part, with a lot of records turning out to be trash, often the most expensive ones.  Conversely, tons of 10 dollar LPs wind up having the most absolutely magnificent contents (I think especially of the recent Austrian Peter Wolf).   And this one if you google it could have been found on ebay for a price under ten bucks, once.  Presumably the same guitarist appears on a more recent CD (on the usually comprehensive discogs) but not this earlier privately pressed LP.

Anyways, moving on to the music, we have some light guitar-based fusion and compositions, all instrumental, highly proficiently played I might add, the best track perhaps is Summer is a Lady's Song:





At least to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here.  I guess it's somehow similar in lightness to the late Ratzer material I've posted here.