Little known Canadian fuzak band ZAK from 1979

What a brilliant scifi cover, a collage done by one Jacques Cleroux.  A man in a rowboat in the sand dunes of a desert is shocked by the animal-like presence of two burned out hulls of blue fiats or minis with, in the background, some kind of alien planet living space dome...  What do you make of that one, October Country?

Most of this album, unfortunately, given the hope of the cover, is generic light fuzak style jazz-rock, entirely instrumental.  The idiotic (and idiotically named) Spiro Agnew made (in)famous the line Nattering Nabobs of Negativity which here is applied to a very interesting, experimental and condensed short piece, unfortunately far too short:





I'll quote from wikipedia the sad story of the so-called "worst vice-president in the history of America:"

Addressing the California Republican Convention in San Diego, Agnew targeted "the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club—the 'Hopeless, Hysterical, Hypochondriacs of History'." 

This in reference to the anti-war demonstrators. To the contrary, those who were frothing at the mouth in support of Vietnam, turgid, even erect, with their missiles and assault rifles, today we can unanimously say were the ones who were on the wrong side of history.  But a bunch of hysterical thesaurus pages spoken from a middle-aged white man in a suit and tie with the mathematical absolute value of arrogance can seem oh so right sometimes.  Let's think about it for a bit.  After the (American) war of course Vietnam 'fell' to the communist forces, despite the millions killed and bombed all over Southeast Asia (don't forget the 'collateral damage' of destruction of Cambodia leading to Pol Pot and the genocide there) and in fact, to this day, if you go visit the country, you will see that nominally it still is governed by the communist party, so, historically, the whole war was hopeless-- more than that-- useless.  On the other hand Spiro resigned in disgrace over a bribery scandal, having accomplished nothing, then remained hidden away and ashamed to be seen in public.  Yet to this day we still hear the same words from the same sorts of people, usually white ones like Mitch McConnell, words to the same effect deriding all those demonstrators even though by and large they are ordinary people like you and me stating the majority opinion quite plainly.  A good recent example is Theresa May's comment about the children's protest against political inaction on the climate change front: 'they should go back to school to find the solution to the problem.'  Or, you could do your job, Theresa May, and implement those solutions (which are obvious).  At least the kids weren't called "some very bad, very very bad people, who did some very very bad things..."

But millions of them versus one lobbyist with millions of dollars to share?  That's truly hopeless, folks.  Think back to the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico.  Were the thousands of 'extra deaths' following also a case of  'hysterical hypochondria'?  Certainly not to the families of the dead.  Human society is a bitch.  There are too many of us, the situation is getting untenable.  As Sartre said so well, 'L'enfer c'est les autres' i.e., hell is the others.  At least if you're not getting a bomb or napalm dropped on your head, in which case, hell is a bomb being dropped on your head.

The last track closes out this interesting yet utterly unknown LP with some nifty fusionary ideas, and it's called Galactic: