Wow, I don't know how this album escaped my attention for so long. Of course, it had been out of print for many years, but at the time I first discovered Peter Ivers with his wonderful album Terminal Love from 1974, it wasn't that old or rare, but somehow I didn't even know a previous album existed for this quirky, unusual musician, until recently. The fact that this came out in 1969 speaks to the really astonishingly bizarre substance of this music, placing it in a league with Zappa and Beefheart, certainly. Even the strange British and European groups that melded the classical avant-garde with jazz and rock instrumentation and song structures didn't show up until years after this recording.
What can you say about a rock record with a woodwind trio of oboe, bassoon and saxophone, plus harmonica and a rock rhythm section, and melody lines that sound more influenced by Schoenberg than Lennon/McCartney? Peter Ivers wrote this batch of songs after studying with the legendary contrabassist Buell Neidlinger (known for his work with everyone from Cecil Taylor to Karen Carpenter), and you can hear the serialist influence. Anyone with a passion for 'weird' music has got to love this record, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to those rock fans who have an appreciation for somber 20th Century chamber music and free jazz.
A funny story I have to go along with this album... Back in the 1970s I was a teenager living in Massachusetts, and I got much of my musical education from listening to WBCN-FM, which was at the time one of the most progressive 'underground radio' stations in the country. WBCN is where I first heard the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, Steve Reich, White Noise, and so many other then-obscure musical artists. Well, there were a couple songs I heard on that station that I always remembered (for over thirty years, after hearing each song only once in the early 70s), but that I did not know who recorded the songs. I only knew the titles: "Showroom Model" and "Cat Scratch Fever" (not the Ted Nugent staple tune, obviously). I was just about knocked out of my senses when I played this album for the first time, in 2007, and heard BOTH of those songs for the first time in 30+ years, and came to find they were both by Peter Ivers! (but with a female vocalist, otherwise I would've known it was Peter from his distinctive voice). Great songs they are, too, still sounding as potent now as they did when I last heard them around 1972...