factory

...very cool archival release from lowell when he was a young stoner on the LA music scene during 1966 hanging with zappa and beefheart and kicking around some top folk rock grooves with touches of out there blues expression via the good captain...the title track of this compilation is a truly brilliant teenage take on the beefheart/howlin wolf vocal gymnastic shreiking, not too many have tried to approximate the beefheartian growl and certainly no one back when it was fresh on the club floor...this is mostly the sound of folk jangle meets sunshine pop all put through a prism (LA combo kaleidoscope have the sound the factory were looking for), this is the sound of the sunset strip at midnight with a head full of acid, just grooving in the neon reflection...nice flourishes of psychness via bells jingling and sitar twang add to the feeling of basking in a long lost west coast bong haze...the last four tracks come from '68/9 and as such aint as flipped out with the beginnings of lowells little feat are pitter patting ever nearer...track thirteen is a embryonic 'teenage nervous breakdown' and track fourteen is kind of like an electric dan hicks groove and mighty fine it is...
...candy cane...