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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Mighty Baby

This is a really good one, and hopefully rare enough that it's worth it even if not your thing....British
somewhat folkish psychedelia, Mighty Baby were a really out-there crew, who rose from the ashes of The Action.....the real gem here is the self titled debut......if you've heard it, you know it's pretty good, BUT likely you've heard the CD re-issue with the bonus tracks and Action tracks and all....wish I had it BUT IMO what I have is BETTER, a goddamn VINYL rip of the original, actually from dear departed Dad's vinyl stash......the vinyl edition of this is quite rare, and sounds a HELL of a lot better than the digital versions I've heard........they were highly influenced, despite thier UK origins, by the San Francisco psych sounds of the same era (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, perhaps).....perhaps the highlight is the highly complicated "A Friend You Know But Never See", which I personally would take over ANYTHING the Grateful Dead ever did, and there are other very, very good tracks here ("Egyptian Tomb", "A Point Between Fate and Destiny"......I highly recommend this, in particular in this vinyl-ripped version, you will love it!

Now, thier next release (NOT a vinyl rip), "A Jug of Love", is quite different, in my estimation not nearly as good. Members of the band had adopted religion (Islam, I think, or some other Eastern religion) and it REALLY shows in the record....nonetheless, the instrumentation, in particular the guitar and piano, are quite good, and there have been worse songs of this type than "Virgin Spring" or "Tasting the Life"......this was originally created from a FLAC file, so accordingly has to be split......such is life.

Finally we have "Live From the Attic". Released years later, (2009, I think), is a found tape, evidently from a NY show in support of one of my all time favorite bands, Love.....MUCH different from the studio efforts, with long, experimental, improvisational tracks, notably "Now You See It" and "Now You Don't"......Grateful-Dead like jamming, not really a favorite of mine, but kind of a cool curiosity.

OK, if it were me, I'd jump all over the vinyl rip of the debut, trust me, and then if the other two efforts sound appealing, dive in......the debut is one any psych fan ought to have, the rest is open to personal taste. Please comment, I know that I, at least, don't see these on the net everyday.

MIGHTY BABY-01 Egyptian Tomb/02 A Friend You know But Never See/03 I've Been Down So
Long/04 Same Way With the Sun/05 House Without Windows/06 Trials of a City/07 I'm From the Country/08 A Point Between Fate and Destiny

A JUG OF LOVE-01 A Jug of Love/02 The Happiest man in the Carnival/03 Keep On Jugging/04 Virgin Spring/05 Tasting the Life/06 Slipstreams/07 Devils Whisper/08 Virgin Spring (single version)/09 Messages/10 Ancient Traveller

LIVE IN THE ATTIC-01 Now You See Me/02 Now You Don't/03 A Blanket in My Muesik

12 comments:

  1. LIVE
    http://www100.zippyshare.com/v/hVdcb8Md/file.html

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. JUG part 1
    http://www7.zippyshare.com/v/4CSHwcYJ/file.html

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  4. your link for the vinyl rip is a repeat of the one above it..

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  5. CORRECTED SELF TITLED
    http://www24.zippyshare.com/v/RmhWktH9/file.html

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  6. JUG PART 2
    http://www81.zippyshare.com/v/eUbiWb1G/file.html

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  7. you're correct about the religious conversion - they did a switch over to Islam (apparnetly en masse), and Richard Thompson used them as a backing band for an English tour after his similar conversion. I used to have a boot of this aggregation, but it didn't hold a candle to virtually anything else Thompson has done.

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