Sunday, June 06, 2004

The Kenne Highland Clan & The Exploding Pidgins
Self-titled
Stanton Park Records, 1987

This must be Boston suburbs day. Ken Highland, of course, was the other guy behind the pre-punk Gizmos (Eddie Flowers tells their story here) and, later, Afrika Korps (among others). He eventually re-located to Boston where he currently gigs with his Vatican Sex Kittens.

The first side is the above-average girl-guy psyche-punk band Exploding Pidgins wherein Highland plays a mere sideman role. "Crazy People" sort of epitomizes their world view.

The second side featuring Kenne Highland Clan is a mixture of some confidently done roadhouse blues ("Fiasco"), barband rock ("Bummerama", "Humdinger") and psychedelic garage freakout ("Conspiracy"). And while the production is much better than the Pidgins, it's still, at the end of the day, minor, albeit well-done, jamming that will sound best with a pitcher of PBR.

The highlights are the opener, a rework of Count Five's "Peace of Mind" and "Reincarnation", capturing some of the wierdest lyrics this side of the Lincoln Street Exit.

I believe in reincarnation
like a euki cat
using up all it's nine lives
I believe in reincarnation
wanna chop off the heads of all my wives
Hey hey


Vwoot!

This album is no longer in print. My copy is in pretty good condition with original inset and very little wear and tear on the cover or vinyl...(VG+)

The Exploding Pidgins: Crazy People
The Kenne Highland Clan: Piece of Mind

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice idea for an mp3 blog... there's so much great stuff not yet on cd. But why not encode vbr? When you're dealing with a demanding/noisy source it can help minimize encoding distortion. e.g. LAME --aps

Jim H said...

Thanks -- I'll look into it. Here's a FAQ on VBR: http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusicclassical/vbr-encoding.htm

Anonymous said...

Ok faq but a bit out of date in places. More up-to-date stuff here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=7516