HAPSHASH AND THE COLOURED COAT

While probably nobody was expecting a followup, Nigel Waymouth returned two years later without Michael English to create a second chapter of this bizarre mishap of the 60s. WESTERN FLIER came out in 1969 with a completely new set of vocalists and musicians and therefore sounded absolutely nothing like its predecessor. While the debut focused on loose collective improvisational settings, WESTERN FLIER features genuine musical compositions this time in the form of a more folky psychedelic rock. Michael Ramsden provided the lead vocals and the musical accompaniments featured Michael Mayhew (guitars), Mike Batt (piano, accordion), Andy Renton (drums), Tony T.S. McPhee (lead guitarist of The Groundhogs), Eddie Tripp (double bass), Freddie Ballerina (violin) and the backing vocals of The Rock'n Roll Women. This time around even Waymouth got in on the action and provided some vocals. Mike Batt became an official member of the band at this stage.

While based in real melodic compositions, this album is still tripper's paradise with crazy performances however given the actual musical performers is more in line with late 60s and early 70s folk / country / psychedelic rock of the era. One major difference is that there is a real singer with actual lyrics! While the debut provided strange chants and cult leader type evocations with responses from a drugged out group of followers, WESTERN FLIER is filled with the bluesy shuffles, boogie rock, bluegrass and even some honky tonk piano rolls. It really couldn't be more different from the debut! Like the debut it featured multiple album covers but only two in this case and has had the same album title for its entire history.

Sounding something like Country Joe and the Fish meets Wildman Fischer who joined a Krautrock band, WESTERN FLIER existed in a strange new world where the psychedelic 60s suddenly merged with the folk and country rock style that would become more of a thing in the 1970s. The tracks may sound closer to "normal" but the album's flow is quite wild. The opening "Telephone Budreaux" is a one-minute spoken word segment that makes no sense whatsoever but hey, this was the 60s! "Colinda" follows and is a traditional Cajun tune and for some reason was released as a single in France, Germany and the UK where not surprisingly failed to chart. "Milk Shake Knock" also rocked the Cajun traditionals while "Car-Car" turned the catchy kid's song into a rockin' sensation! "Big Bo Peep" is probably the catchiest track with as a heavy blues rocker with an excellent guitar solo from McPhee.

"Blue Narcissus" is a bluesy ballad with lots of slide guitar while "The Wall" is the only truly sounding psychedelic pop rock song on the album with lots of fuzz guitar and lots of backing from the Rock 'n Roll Women vocal group. Sounds something in the vein of late 60s Moody Blues. "You For Ophelia" features an energetic barrelhouse piano blues style and also displays perfectly the limitations of Mike Ramsden's vocal style. The earnest lyrics tend to outstay their welcome a bit. The closing "Fare You Well" is the longest track at nearly 9 minutes and takes nearly a minute to fade in completely. Somewhat of a country rock song with lots of slide guitar and the backing singers actually engaging in a call and response rather than just the usual ooo's and aaah's.

While neither of HAPSHASH AND THE COLOURED COAT's two releases could be considered essential by lovers of psychedelic rock or competent music in general, this second release WESTERN FLIER will at least be recognized as "music." It's a strange followup to the bizarre psych-fueled freak out of the debut but hey, the Summer of Love burned out and ran its course so the hepcat COLOURED COATS moved on as well. While all of the tracks here are catchy and nicely played, the lead vocals are a bit lackluster and the album's a bit all over the place to have a cohesive feel but in a way that's what makes it unique. It's another anomaly of the 60s where the psychedelic 60s butted heads with the country rock 70s along with some old fashioned Cajun and piano blues thrown in for good measure! While still trippy and psychedelic, if you're looking for freak out jams then skip this and go to the debut. However if you have a hankering for some psych-fueled Cajun country rock then by all means jump in!

This multidiscipline collective went beyond the realms of visual art though and released two musical albums as well, the first being this debut FEATURING THE HUMAN HOST AND THE HEAVY METAL KIDS in 1967 followed by "Western Flier" in 1969. Well ahead of their time, HAPSHASH delivered an album in 1967 that mixed all the free spirit genres of the 1960s including psychedelic rock, free folk, experimental, acid rock and the avant-garde into a bizarre musical statement of five tracks that captured an entire album's worth of material culminating with one of the very first side long tracks in rock history, the near 16-minute "Empires Of The Sun." While English and Waymouth were overseeing all these projects including the musical albums, neither were musicians and therefore didn't play on this album. Despite the title, no there is no connection to the world of heavy metal music to come!

The actual musicians on FEATURING THE HUMAN HOST AND THE HEAVY METAL KIDS featured members of Art and Spooky Tooth: Mike Harrison (vocals), Luther Grosvenor (guitarist), Greg Ridley (bassist) and Mike Kellie (drums). Delivering the perfect goods for the Summer of Love, HUMAN HOST was a true psychedelic ensemble of freedom rock that took improvisational jamming techniques and crafted long repetitive party anthems from the simple grooves. The music is more on the meditative side and not at all compositionally challenging. More in line with what the NYC band Godz was cranking out with free form folk and rock songs turning into the equivalent of musical drum circles, HUMAN HOST features various styles including the bluesy opening rocker "H-O-P-P-Why?" to the harmonica rich avant-folk style of "A Mind Blown Is A Mind Shown."

"The New Messiah Is Coming" features an endless acoustic guitar strumming session on perpetual loops and sounds like the mantra of some isolated religious cult that is evoking the return of some messiah figure to lift humankind out of the chaos of its own making. Led somewhat by a lead chanter and an impromptu drum circle, the call and response includes backing singers responding to the evocations of the priest figure. "Aoum" takes a break from the freeform acid rock and jumps into a group chanting session Indian style with only vocalists providing droning, chants and other sounds such as breathing noises, moans and other utterances. The track makes you feel like you've suddenly been transported to some ashram temple in the middle of India.

The album's biggest claim to fame was by featuring one of the earliest side long tracks on an album during the rock era (arguable Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention were the first on their 1966 debut "Freak Out" but those suites were separated into individual tracks). While "Empires Of The Sun" prognosticated the longer playing times of progressive rock tracks to come with its near 16-minute playing time, the track doesn't deliver any musical challenges but is actually a very long receptive bass groove that finds a series of other sounds and instrumentation joining along for a very long hippie jam. While the bass groove bounces along, flutes and chanting and a sitar can be heard with a tribal drumming circle. Other vocalizations come and go which even includes a girl sounding like she's approaching orgasm! The track ratchets up the intensity with everyone totally freaking out by the end! A true 60s psychedelic track if there ever was one!

The reactions to this bizarre 1967 anomaly are as interesting as the music itself. While many immediately write this off as talentless crap and an exercise of futility crafted by drugged out hippies with no musical talent, others cite this as one of the most transcendental musical experiences of the entire flower power era. The truth is somewhere in between really. First of all this was an art collective primarily focused on poster art and graphics. The two albums were released as a side project therefore nobody participating was a classically trained musician. This album is basically a series of repetitive riffs and accompanying melodies that drift in and out. This album is more about the experience of psychedelic ecstasy with all the participants blissing out as they make noise. The lack of compositional fortitude allows the whole thing to explode into a weird frenzy of psychedelic bliss and that's certainly not something you can experience on many other albums. Whatever you call it, it was certainly unique for the day and still is really! What i like about this album is it really makes you feel like you have been transported to the authentic world of 1967 with no record company interference. This is as indie as it got back then. While clearly not an essential 60s release, it is definitely one to be experienced!

This is without doubt the most bizarre entry in our ever growing database. Hapshad and the Coloured Coat are not in fact a band, but a couple of talented artists/designers called Michael English (sadly no longer with us) and Nigel Waymouth. Their posters and album covers are now collectors items, with examples of the former being displayed in the Victoria and Albert museum in London and the latter including Cream's "Disraeli Gears".

When they turned their attention to recording an album, they brought in Guy Stevens (Procol Harum) and several members of Island records band Art (credited in the album title as the Heavy Metal Kids, but not the later glam band of that name) who would later mutate into Spooky Tooth (also listed on this site). The album was released in 1967, hence its proto prog categorisation, during the evolution of the psychedelic era but well before the arrival of prog. The original LP release is now a highly prized rarity, but Repertoire records have re-released the album on CD and LP for the 21st century masses.

Given the background to the album, it should be obvious that we should not come to it expecting a masterpiece of compositional excellent, and such an approach is fully justified. This is too all intents and purposes a collection of 5 improvisations which are not intended to be taken too seriously.

The opening "H-O-P-P-Why?" has an eastern style repeating rhythm with occasional harmonica bursts, lead guitar intrusions and an incessant chanting of the title. It conjures up a picture of a party which has lasted over long, with people sitting around in a semi-conscious state while one long haired freak suddenly finds a last burst of energy and dances around in a mad frenzy. And so it goes on on subsequent tracks for the full 36 minutes or so of the album.

Very much of the 60's then, this is one of those albums to listen to and wonder how it ever saw the light of day. It's not that it is bad, with the performers clearly having so much fun who could deny them their 40 minutes or so on vinyl. This is though one of those projects all us non-musicians have indulged in at some stage, when we found it was so easy to lay down a basic rhythm and lay random instruments on top of it. In fairness, some of the material here is well up to the standard of some of the avant-garde artists who took themselves far more seriously in the 1970's, but whose output was equally devoid of genuine music.

Call me old fashioned, but while this album may be fun and it may pre-date most of the music on this site, it is not by any means part of the foundations on which prog was built.

Possibly the earliest use of the term Heavy Metal in reference to rock music, predating Steppenwolf by a good year, this album contains little that resembles Metal music - although it does contain musicians who went on to form Spooky Tooth, one of the earliest Heavy bands, and a notable influence on bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest - so there is a link.

Musically, the most interesting thing about this album, apart from the name, the so-called band (who were (in)famous poster designers by trade that corrobrated with one of the best heavy underground bands of the time, namely Art) and the Heavy Metal reference is the somewhat naive and enticing vibe they manage to create.

The opening track, H.O.P.P.Why seems to predict the more minimal Kosmiche acts - Can spring to mind immediately, and it's not just because this is a simple jam around one chord, as there are lost of little bits floating around in here above the solid, growly bass.

A Mind Blown is a Mind Shown seems to predict Amon Duul in its many incarnations - it may be a jam, but it's organised chaos with a distincly lysergic overtone or three.

This really builds the picture for the rest of the album - a cosmic freakout session that's actually more cohesive than some of the more meandering Kosmiche releases available, and also has a friendly Englishness all of its own - most of this, presumably, due to the distinctive musicianship of the band Art, who more than keep control of the proceedings.

The New Messiah Coming 1985 features enthusiastic shouts of Higher!!!, as bongos are beaten and various other deep percussion instruments make for a quite heavy freakout session with plenty of banged gongs, chiming xylophones and general chaos threatening to overtake and crumble the whole edifice - but never quite managing it. An enjoyable sonic soundscape, even if it doesn't quite warrant the full 7 minutes.

Aoum was the buzzword of many of the hippy communities getting into transcendental meditation - and it's probably Alan Watts fault, among others. This, again, is not the complete chaos it could have been, and puts me in mind of some Gong moments - while, of course, predating that illustrious band. This is a really fun and sensual track.

To round things off, we have the 16-minute superjam, Empires of the Sun, which begins a bit of a rocker (with gongs and soft chanting, naturally!). A wonderful groove emerges before a minute is even up - but due to the freeform nature of the album, this soon gives way to meandering and general acidic silliness - as you would hope, really. Maybe 16 minutes is pushing it a bit - depends on your state of mind, I guess...

As a stepping stone from the underground scene to truly progressive music, this is an intriguing document that proves that not all hippy music is boring meandering nonsense - this is actually very enjoyable (and silly) meandering nonsense, and all good because of it.

Unlike many of the obscure albums from this time (and some of the less obscure albums in following years), this one really is a true gem - when taken for what it is.

Because of the time of its release and the vital link it provides, I'm going to say that this is an Excellent addition to any Prog Music collection - not quite essential, as it'll hardly have you excercising the intellectual muscles - but it does predate and form the foundation of an entire Teutonic genre of Progressive Rock, and you'd be well advised to follow up a listen of this by checking out Supernatural Fairytales by Art, and Spooky Tooth's first 4 or 5 LPs to see how this all ties into heavy metal music.

Hence 3.5 stars, erring on 4.

The album was the follow-up to British artists Michael English and Nigel Waymouth’s first attempt at translating their poster and design art to music. By this second album Michael English had abandoned the band though, and Waymouth only played a nominal role. Instead Waymouth recruited a young Mike Batt (the Wombles, Steeleye Span) on piano and accordion, Michael Mayhew on guitar, guitarist Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs, Michael Ramsden (the Silkie) on vocals, drummer Andy Renton (another Wombles alumnus) and session musician Eddie Tripp along with the Heavy Metal Kids and violinist Freddie Ballerini. This eclectic and rather unrelated crew put together nine of the ten tracks that make the album, combined with a strange recorded-voice intro that sounds like some mid- twentieth century southern American politician’s stump speech.

The best description I can think of for the music here is something akin to a blend of Buckwheat Zydeco’s musical style combined with Joe Byrd’s Americana psych and a little dose of Reverend Glasseye & His Wooden Legs’ off-kilter folk showmanship. It’s a real mixed bag.

The traditional folk tune “Colinda” is the most accessible track on the album, if you can imagine that tune sung as a Cajun love song. The Woody Guthrie standard “Riding In My Car” (titled “Car..Car” here) is recognizable but has a piano line that sounds like one of those nineteenth-century player- pianos and a tinny vocal track from someone trying really hard to sound like a bijou hayseed. The spoon & washboard percussion combined with ball-horns completes the strange arrangement. It’s inconceivable that this rendition of Guthrie’s classic was meant to be taken seriously.

The other ‘cover’ (so-to-speak) is “Fare Thee Well”, a fleshed-out and psyched-up version of an old American Negro spiritual that is set to a decent blues guitar riff and stark piano. Even this one dips into psych territory on the instrumental passages, with some feedback and vocal echoing to make it sound both creepy and more intense.

The rest of the tracks were apparently written by Waymouth with some help from Mayhew and Batt, and they vacillate between more Cajun-sounding music, blues and psych. None of them really stands out much.

I really have no idea how to assess this album. It has no parallels except for some other irreverent acts of that period (Joe Byrd) and now (Reverend Glasseye), but both of them are American. I’m not sure what Waymouth was trying to accomplish here, but the album faded almost immediately when it was released in 1969 and can only be found today as Repertoire’s CD or Imperial’s vinyl reissue. I’m going to go with three stars simply because this thing is like watching a train wreck – you know it’s no good but you can’t turn away. I’ve found myself playing this CD numerous times over the past couple of months and that’s more than I can say for a lot of my collection, so it deserves at least that much acknowledgement.

peace

As for the music here, like I said it’s not exactly memorable stuff, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t kind of a fun album in a novelty kind of way. Neither Michael English nor Nigel Waymouth had a musical background before they decided to undertake this project, and as far as I know neither of them did much musically after Hapshash. This is basically a forty-minute freak-out of the psych variety that is supposedly vaguely centered on a concept of an acid-trip operetta. That’s not what it ended up sounding like, but the players clearly had some fun in the process regardless.

Most of the rhythms are repetitive and fairly basic, particularly on the opening track and the way-too- long and rather catatonic “Empire of the Sun”. “Aoum” on the other hand is a weird Spock’s Beard’s “June”-meets-Gregorian chanting a capella only with some wraith-like female chanting in the background. Totally self-amusing indulgence, and completely sixties. I’m not panning it, but you should know what you’re getting in to if you pick this one up.

The Nostradamus-like prophecy in “The New Messiah Coming 1985” clearly missed the mark, unless it turns out Corey Hart was the messiah. More ad nausea chanting and tribal-like rhythms on this one too, by the way.

Probably the most creative and interesting track here is the two-minute “A Mind Blown is a Mind Shown”, a brief bongo-driven ditty that gets points more for a cool title than anything else.

So this isn’t a classic for sure, and not even particularly good. But if you’re reading this review and got this far then it’s safe to assume you’re the kind of person who’s a bit of a musical anthropologist, and if so then you may actually find this record mildly interesting. I’ve also had the privilege of hearing the second and final recording under the ‘Hapshash’ name and it isn’t as amusing as this one, so if you have to pick go with this one. Just don’t expect to be blown away – take it for what it is and you’ll have some fun. Three stars, although only recommended if you get off on old bands whose biography has outlived their music.

peace

The album sounds nothing like its predecessor, more than doubling the tracks, with some mega weird Budreaux phone dialogue, than some whacked-out Acadian/Cajun country folk (Callinda), some weird blues (Chicken Run) mixed with strange choirs from the RnR Women and wild percussion works from the Heavy Metal Kids (I imagine not the future Glam rock group), some pure RnR (Big Po Peep) with a country-esque violin, Car Car and Milk Shake Knock are pure country music. The Wall returns with some interesting female celestial choirs, and its high-flying vocals make it the album's highlight, coupled with You And Ophelia. But the closing 9-mins blues Fare You Well is overstaying its welcome by well over its half distance.

Personally this writer's hate for country music (and its successor country rock) is too strong to give any credits to artists that regularly plunge into progressive forms of their crafts, but this album's flipside helps forgetting the catastrophic side A with the last two second last tracks, showing that the Hapshash had some kind of possibilities.

If you can picture Captain Beefheart's long musical delirium and add some of Can's lengthy groovy lunacy, you got a good idea of what this band's like. There is an acoustic side to the band that may induce into thinking of folk, but I tend to think of blues or even slightly country music (Dylan had released his John Wesley Harding album). The idea was to create an LSD trip opera (well it was certainly not higher culture results) including female orgasmic jolts on the 16-mins Empire Of The Sun.

Some claim the album has not aged well, as it seems like it was only hippy-dippy mumbo-jumbo, but inn regards with future albums to come this album has some prophetic qualities, announcing Can. While not exactly essential, this is the type of album that was extremely constructive to the scene, even if most music critics discarded it as junk, back then as they still do nowadays. I beg to differ, but it still won't make this album essential.