Muddy Waters - After the Rain

Muddy Water's Electric Mud was arguably the first example of post-war bluesmen adapting their sound to the burgeoning psych scene, and unlike many of his contemporaries, Muddy fully embraced the style.  After the Rain, the follow up album, gave Muddy a chance to compose in the style and adapt some of his older riffs and motifs.   Consequently the songs are a bit less far-out, but noticeably heavier and grimier.   With sidemen who played for everyone from Earth Wind and Fire to Miles Davis and early flower power group Rotary Connection, he brews up a potent stew of soul, jazz, rock, funk, and weirdness, stretching the limits of the blues and slicing razorlines in it with his slide guitar.

Bottom of the Sea

Max Frost and The Troopers - Shape of Things to Come

Max Frost and The Troopers were the fictional rock band from the early psychsploitation picture "Wild in the Streets."  There is some mystery regarding exactly who play on this album, as the members were credited to match characters in the movie, but it is widely believed to be the work of pioneering psych/surf band Davie Allan and the Arrows with lyrics and vocals provided by Paul Wibier (of biker movie soundtrack fame).  The title cut will be instantly recognizable to fans of the Nuggets series, and the other songs generally follow that formula: three minute snatches of psychedelia-infused garage pop with soaring harmonies and concise structure.  There's actually quite a bit of variation among the songs, though - one can feel Wibier playing around with various styles and ideas, perhaps assuming that the album was more of a novelty than a genuine artistic endeavor.  This seems to be his approach in general, now that I think about it, but it's not without merit: sometimes studio musicians and professional songwriters, liberated from the need to write actual hits, can come up with some soulful, mind-expanding stuff.  

Let your mind run free

Scorpio Rising Soundtrack

This appears to be a fan-made collection of the songs from Kenneth Anger's transgressive biker-Nazi fetish-film Scorpio Rising. Divorced from context, it's fairly benign; mostly soul, doo-wop, girl groups, and surf, it nonetheless holds darker intimations for those who have had images from the short movie seared into their retinas. If you haven't had the pleasure, by all means do so here. The next time you're on a picnic with the family or hosting a tea party, pop this on in the background and try to think nice thoughts.
Hit the Road, Jack

Small Talk

Who'll pay reparations on my soul?

Daniele Luppi - An Italian Story

An Italian Story is a love note to Italian soundtrack music made with many of the core players on such famous films as The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, notably the unmistakeable whistling stylings of Alessandro Alessandroni. The album shifts through diverse moods, from laid back summer hedonism to tense fight music and horrific psychedelia. Composer Luppi became famous for his collaborations with Danger Mouse but this fine little record seems to be out of print, making it Swamp fodder for sure.
Psychovision

Rikki Ililonga - Soweto

Rikki Ililonga was a pioneer of the sound retroactively known as Zam-rock, fusing African rhythm and consciousness with psych rock, soul, and funk. His group Musi-O-Tunya was debatably the first to play in the style and perhaps the most varied and ambitious as well. Rikki possesses a sweet high tenor similar to Curtis Mayfield or Jimmy Cliff, and like those men his honeyed voice is used to convey dark, fiery political conviction and righteous anger, as well as more reflective self-examination and the occasional song of love. Crucial, heartbreaking work from a mysterious visionary, Soweto is a monument to a man who should have taken a seat in the pantheon of greats but remains mostly unheard and unknown.
You Got the Fire

Nips - All the Time in the World

I've got to make this a quick one as well, but let me just say that this single by the Nips, a.k.a. the Nipple Erectors, features future walking cautionary tale Shane MacGowan of the Pogues on vocals, as well as band members who would go on to be in such diverse projects as the Pretenders, Skrewdriver, the Damned, and Culture Club. Blending the standard '77 punk sensibility with hints of northern soul, Animals-ish R&B, and nary a whiff of Irish ballardry, these two songs are over before you can brush your teeth. Astute Swamplings may recognize the b-side from that Drags record I posted a while back, and those with brain cells to kill might want to try Googling "nips all the time" just for wheezy, whiskey-induced giggles.
Don't Mess Around With Me

James Brown - The Payback

Continuing with yesterday's theme, and similarly short on time, I give you James Brown's landmark double album The Payback. One can make the argument that soul and funk were almost exclusively singles-based forms until around this time, when expanding song length, thematic continuity, and sustained groove began to overtake radio readiness and the three-minute cap as artistic parameters. Either way, this is definitely Brown's first real Album, a collection of hard-driving, one-or-two-note riffs, a gaggle of back-up singers, and some cinematic experimentation. This shift also brought somewhat to the forefront Brown's burgeoning social conscience and identification with the Black Power movement, as evidenced by the cover art and the tagline “We got a right to the tree of life”.
link removed

HUMAN SANTAPEDE

HO

Screamin' Jay Hawkins and The Fuzztones - Live EP

Screamin' Jay Hawkins, of course, is the mad godfather of horror rock, and the Fuzztones are hirsute garage revivalists now approaching their fourth decade of activity. This brief EP from 1984 captures four songs from a live performance replete with Hawkins' trademark weird gibberish and profanity and the band's prime, organ-heavy psychedelia. Not much else to say about this one except "Some father's son is gonna get a furburger."

The BellRays - Let It Blast

This is another album that stays in rotation constantly here in the Swamp. California soul punk group The BellRays inevitably end up described in lazy critical shorthand as "Tina Turner singing for The Stooges" or "Aretha Franklin fronting the MC5" or some such variation, and the band has publicly denounced this line of thinking as the product of feeble minds, but here's the thing: it's true. Not to be reductive, but that really is the basic formula - stop/start bluesy freakouts glazed in molasses vocals and fired in the heat of a nuclear warhead. The record itself, like much of the early BellRays work, is off the cuff and sounds as if it were recorded in one take, with lots of attendant hiss and rattle. The audio equivalent of six glasses of sweet tea and whiskey.
Future Now!

Chubby Checker - Chequered!

It was fairly common by the beginning of the seventies to see surviving blues artist experiment with psychedelia and heavier sounds to varying degrees of success. More surprising is this slab by Twist enthusiast Chubby Checker, both in the fact of its mere existence and in the fact that it's pretty damned good. Backed by a group of anonymous hippies, Chubby branches out from his usual cookie-cutter dance rehashings and gets far out, mostly in soul territory but occasionally bordering on the heavy stylings of Blue Cheer or Captain Beyond. The album has been disowned by the man himself, not only for its content but also because he was ripped off by the sketchy producer, Ed Chalpin, who made a living recording anonymous young bands performing covers of popular songs in various styles (such as the Thin Lizzy "Funky Junction" album of Deep Purple covers). It was all a big scam, but it sometimes produced good records anyway. Still, Checker probably didn't write any of these songs, and judging by the majority of his output he's no authority on the subject anyway. He sure as hell sounds like he means it, though, especially the numerous songs about drug use, such as the killer album centerpiece "Stoned in the Bathroom." Also notable is the Swamp Dogg-like dystopian future dirge "If the Sun Stops Shinin'."
My Mind Comes From A High Place

Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band - This World (Is Going Up In Flames)

Well, this seems to be out of print, and the mp3s are available for free on the Daptone website, so this must be fair game, and a breath of freshly napalmed air after a long stretch of heavy metal. Charles Bradley is an old school soul singer of the James Brown/Lee Fields small-man-big-mouth school backed by an assortment of Daptone house musicians. The a-side is, as the title suggests, a dark Nostradamian prophecy of raining fire, red skies, and war all the time, punctuated by fierce horn bombardments and a rhythm section radioactive enough to melt your turntable (or, in this case, your tiny little computer speakers). Put on your gas mask and your dancing shoes, the end is nigh.
Lemme hear ya now.

Swamp Dogg - Rat On!

Here's the second album by perennial Swamp hero Swamp Dogg, whom I've expounded upon before at length here. The Dogg backs up somewhat from his post-apocalyptic version of soul to tackle more down-to-earth topics such as war and sex. The highlight of the album is the mighty cry for revolution, "God Bless America For What?" a heartbreaking reaction to the war in Vietnam and the Nixon regime. Most of the rest of the songs concern themselves with matters of the heart and other organs.
Do You Believe?

The Undisputed Truth - Cosmic Truth

The Norman Whitfield era of the Temptations is generally regarded of as the dawn of psychedelic soul music, fueled equally by LSD, Cold War paranoia, the Civil Rights movement, and the young psych rock scene. The Temptations, however, were still under pressure to be hit-makers, and Whitfield could only push the envelope so far while satisfying Motown's commercial standard. Not so with his other project, The Undisputed Truth. Hand-selected by Whitfield from the label's vast legions of semi-anonymous background singers and utilizing the same back-up musicians on the more famous Temps albums, and freed from pressure to make hits, the collaboration reached out farther into space than any had journeyed before. This third album was the first to really embrace the wild energy of the burgeoning psych scene and run with it. The first song, the aptly named "Earthquake Shake," is a monster bass riff, and thunderous drum line, and a chorus of bellowing, whooping aliens. The second is a funktified cover of Neil Young's "Down By the River," all eleven minutes of it. The third song is about UFOs. This album, too, was the debut of what became the group's signature look: Huge silver afro wigs and silver face paint.
Face the Truth

Swamp Dogg - Total Destruction to Your Mind

Good evening, precious ones, and pardon my brief absence from the Swamp - I was called into the loathesome fringe of civilization on some unfinished business. Fear not, though, for I return with gifts! I present to you the first and most startling album by Post-Apocalyptic Libertarian Sci-Fi Soul Brother Swamp Dogg, the aptly titled Total Destruciton to Your Mind. The wild-eyed futuristic alter-ego of soul producer Jerry Williams, Swamp Dogg stood out from the hordes of 70's musical hustlers and players in a number of ways: first, in his disdain for consumerism, expressed here in the track "Synthetic World," a dystopian shopping fantasy on par with X-Ray Spex or the Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket." Secondly, in his vocal and active opposition to both the Vietnam war and the domestic war on drugs, which earned him a high-ranking spot on Nixon's enemies list. Thirdly, his strict self-reliant ethic - he lives and publishes his own albums to this day, in addition to producing hundreds of albums for other artists (most of which were primarily comprised of songs he wrote). Fourthly, his eerie visions of the coming apocalypse, which pepper his albums up until the end of the seventies, but most succinctly and jaw-droppingly on this album's centerpiece, "The World Beyond." Swamp Dogg continues to fight the war on greed, hypocrisy, and unfunkiness. Join him.
It's just a little time left.