Based in Catalonia, Spain, the Guerssen label, which includes subsidiaries Out-sider Music, Pharaway Sounds, and Sommar, had a productive 2023. We begin the new year by throwing a multi-part spotlight onto a handful of recent Guerssen releases; the first five are Pete Fine’s On a Day of Crystaline Thought, Asgard’s For Asgard and eponymous records by Heavy Rain, Blind Willie, and Majic Ship, all available now and given proper consideration below.
Pete Fine’s On a Day of Crystaline Thought is a wildly ambitious slab of symphonic rock with prog, psych, and folk elements. It was recorded in NYC in 1974, privately pressed in an edition of 100 copies and is therefore totally scarce. In addition, this album is effectively Fine going solo, as he was previously in The Flow, a solid but equally obscure heavy psych band (think Blue Cheer and Cream) who cut a one-sided album, The Flow’s Greatest Hits in ’72 that was given an expanded reissue on CD by Shadoks Music a couple decades back. Guerssen delivered a repress on wax in August of 2023 with copies still available.
One song, “Bijinkes,” made the transition from The Flow to Crystaline, but overall, any similarities are hard to detect. Of course, when dudes in heavy bands fall under the sway of Anton Bruckner there are serious reasons to worry, but Fine had the skills and the organizational smarts to productively realize his flights of imagination. The title composition is a four-part suite loaded with flute, guitar strum and a legit string section; its sweep is lilting rather than ponderous. Even better, the singing across the record adds value, especially the gal vocals by Sam Hardesty on the folkier second side.
While Crystaline doesn’t radiate strong “private press” vibes, neither does it succumb to the sort of slick maneuvers that would’ve surely been thrust upon it by production pros, even those employed by a smaller label. The job in this case was handled by Fine and Hardesty, who captured a sound that is bright, full-bodied, and at times quite intense.
The San Francisco four-piece Asgard cut ten tracks in January of 1972 at Roy Chen Recorders and then in July of the same year put a batch of tunes onto tape during a rehearsal. By the following summer they were done, as vocalist-violinist Gelon Lau moved to Los Angeles and joined the Mary McCreary Band as openers for an arena tour by Leon Russell.
Described as the band’s lost album, For Asgard drops nine of the Roy Chen selections onto wax for the first time. The remaining studio cut and three rehearsal extras are on the download card. Altogether, the music makes clear that had Asgard kept plugging away (having already shared big festival stages with Cat Mother, Sylvester, and It’s a Beautiful Day) and the chips had fallen differently, they had a better than even chance of making it big; it’s not difficult to imagine them refining a sound comparable to Journey and Kansas, and with touches of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Bad Company thrown in.
Asgard’s commercial potential is most strongly detectable in the studio material. But even with a general lack of polish, I’m afraid this stuff falls outside of my bag. And yet, they do get the job done as a unit (guitarist Bob Hardy in particular is cited as a San Fran scene vet), by which I mean, they do “rock.” And in rocking terms, I’m partial to For Asgard’s rehearsal extras, which captures a harder, higher-flying mode where Lau is at his best on violin.
From Blackpool, England, the power blooze/ hard psych trio Heavy Rain’s sole LP, cut in 1973 in London at the Forum Agency, also went unreleased until 2023. It’s a doozy, and this one’s very much my cup of tea. Like Asgard, Heavy Rain played with its share of big names, as the booklet includes flyers and ads for shows where they supported Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Medicine Head, Caravan, and Fumble, plus gigs where they headlined.
This eponymous set reinforces Heavy Rain as capable of playing an effective longer live set. Focused on originals (the vinyl concludes with a sweet version of Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” as half of a medley with their original “Rising of the Tide”) they exuded an even deeper commitment to a sound that continues to resonate with listeners in the present. Had this album been released by a sizable label at the time, it seems a cinch to be part of the hard rock canon. And if Heavy Rain had released it themselves, it’d assuredly be a legendary and highly sought after cult item.
Sourced from an acetate (there is some audible surface noise in the recording), the album doesn’t necessarily register as a revelation, but it is striking how Heavy Rain had stoner-blues proto-metal down pat when it was still cohering as a style. Refreshingly lacking in cliché, the trio’s weak link might be a lack of impact in the vocal department, but by ’73 they’d scaled this element back; the three bonus cuts from a prior ’72 session have too much singing and are not as appealing (but are still welcome). The proper album connects on first listen as a bona fide classic and doesn’t falter with additional spins.
The choice of Blind Willie as a band moniker conjures up an expectation, especially when it’s revealed that the outfit’s guitarist Frank Trowbridge’s prior band was named Sleepy John. In two words, this expectation is acoustic blues, but that’s a considerable fake out. There are a few blues rock touches in the Spokane, Washington band’s earlier material circa 1972 (recorded via 4-track), but overall, Blind Willie’s forte was hearty melodic rock, tough but not too heavy and stylistically varied.
As detailed in Ryan J. Prado’s notes for this set (a 10-song LP with 11 bonus cuts on the download card), Blind Willie was something of a regional touring juggernaut, spreading out from Washington into Idaho and extensively into Canada. All those shows honed a sound that, had they secured a record deal, would’ve likely taken off. In both the ’72 recordings and the live on the radio broadcast from two years later, Blind Willie possess a tangible crowd pleasing quality that’s kept in check in part through a rock edge that only really dissipates when they dip into some likeable country rock.
Blind Willie had their shit so together that it can actually border on the off-putting. Understand that when Dave Shogren left the Doobie Brothers he briefly joined Blind Willie, and that Trowbridge played slide guitar on Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Blue Moanin.” I’ll note that I find Blind Willie preferable to the Doobies and BTO, but I still suspect this record will rarely get pulled off the shelf. And therein lies the conundrum.
NYC’s Majic Ship cut a few singles that are not included with this reissue of their sole, privately pressed album (the only release on Bel-Ami Records), a set of nine originals and one cover medley, the whole described in the notes as a return to the band’s rock roots. The singles are also categorized in the accompanying text as embodying the “easy pop sound” of Majic Ship, who were previously The Primitives, and then the New Primitives before getting a manager, changing names again and cutting those 45s.
Even as opener “Sioux City Blues” is loaded with fuzz guitar and a big raw chunky riff, the band’s pop angle is still very much apparent across the LP’s first side and to a largely non-detrimental result. “We Gotta Live On” does have a bit of a Three Dog Night vibe, but it’s nicely offset with some jazzy guitar. Maybe a better way of tagging Majic Ship’s pop leanings is to praise them as honest-to-goodness songwriters. And while they display elements of hard rock to come, heaviness wasn’t their main thing.
“Sioux City Blues” has a killer vocal harmony shift, for just one instance. But there’s little doubt most collectors will be immediately drawn to the smartly executed cover of Crazy Horse’s “Down by the River” into Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” That they basically dish Young’s ditty in its entirety, sticking close to the original but with deft variants is the biggest part of the medley’s success. Loosely delivered with a harder edge, the Stills-penned number is a fine capper. Quickly jumping out from the record, after ample spins the track is just one highlight amongst many.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
Pete Fine, On a Day of Crystaline Thought
B+
Asgard, For Asgard
B-
Heavy Rain, S/T
A-
Blind Willie, S/T
B
Majic Ship, S/T
B+
