ZERFAS

Yet another band that put out only one album in the early 70s. Founded by Dave and Herman Zerfas after the breakup of their former band Jubal. This album was totally forgotten and obscure until it was resurrected after the song "I Need It Higher" appeared on the compilation "Love, Peace & Poetry: American Psychedelic Music" in 1997.

Although this is labeled as psychedelic rock, which some tracks are, most tunes to me sound more like well-written 60s psychedelic pop of the Beatles type and even at times like the sunshine pop of The Turtles with pyschedelic overtones. Many of the songs start out with really tripped out intros. Don't think this is just a blatant ripoff of those bands. This has a character all it's own. Some tracks are more psychedelic than others but all are really catchy.

I found this by chance listening to an album on YouTube and it caught my eye as a suggestion on the right hand side. After giving it a listen, I really liked it a lot and snagged myself the unofficially released CD version on Radioactive Records. After giving this a few listens I still like it a lot. Recommended to anyone who loves well-crafted pop/rock with psychedelic touches. Only mildly progressive here at times and not sure if it really warrants being on PA but I refuse to penalize an album for being misplaced.

Zerfas were a psychedelic rock band from Indianapolis, formed by the brothers Dave and Brian Zerfas. At the beggining, the band was called Jubal, but the other members has left the party, so the Zerfas brothers finally had a chance to record their material in 1973. This obscure one shot is totally apart from the knowledge of the masses. At the very first minutes of the album, you will find just another acid blues rock band with some psychedelia touch, drowned in a dated pool from the 60s. But they are not! The highlight of the album is the experimentalism, especially talking about the keyboards and strange effects. The tracks aren't lenghty at all. Running time from 3-7 minutes, eight tracks and total playing of 40 minutes. Zerfas never reached anything before a collection of psychedelic rock in the early 2000s, featuring their track I Need it Higher. This probably broke their limited access chains, and the album was re-released (unauthorized) by the Radioactive Records in a high quality vynil. The album has some heavy and great passages, but some uninspired pedestrian rock riffs too. My favorite is the annoying trippy progressive third track, I Don't Understand. Weird track, sick experimental intro. A good choice if old school psychedelic rock is what you are searching for.