Customer Reviews

Before Obscurity: The Bushflow Tapes

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Tin Huey was a band that never got its due. This is material that was recorded before its major label release, Contents Dislodged During Shipment (also available on CD now and also highly recommended). It's surprisingly well recorded considering, and it's a fine introduction to a very unique band. I won't try to characterize its sound, but Tin Huey was another one of the idiosyncratic bands that were coming out of Ohio in the late 70s (like Pere Ubu and Devo, check out The Akron Compilation album for an overview of some the scene's even more obscure artists). Each one sounded unlike each other and unlike anything else that was going on at the time. This was not a recipe for commercial success, but this release proves that Tin Huey had something special, and we're lucky that those of us who did not live in that part of the country then can hear this stuff now after all these years.

It's impossible to characterize Huey. They were part punk, part noise, part prog, part jazz, all completely unselfconscious in their relentless quest to shift genres and tempos. If you like Pere Ubu, Devo, Beefheart, Tom Waits, The Residents, and other quintessential purveyors of Weird American Music, you will likely love these early recordings of various Huey configurations (including an early version of The Waitresses, sort of). As these are archival recordings, the technical quality varies from track to track, but Huey's "close your eyes and floor it" eclecticism is its own cohesiveness. Journey back in time to an America where Watergate was still a hangover, Keith Emerson was still a star, and guys with heart and talent would try just about anything in the name of rock and roll. The amazing thing...all these songs still sound like they were recorded yesterday.