Disc of the day
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
Features Disc of the day
Chubby Checker
Chequered
(London, 1971)
Buttoned-down ’60s dance tubbo turns batshit psych wacko
Before The Fat Boys gave him a comeback hit of sorts with The Twist (Yo Twist!) in 1988, Chubby Checker’s last trip to the charts had been back in 1965 when he scraped into the US Top 50 with Let’s Do The Freddie, a half-hearted discotheque coronach based around the irksome on-stage gyrations of flash-in-the-pan UK pop gurner Freddy Garrity. A pop career over, at the age of 24? Well, not quite. Towards the end of the ’60s the still-young Checker found himself living in Holland and working with notorious record company “entrepreneur”, Ed Chalpin, the man behind the much-flogged Jimi Hendrix/Curtis Knight chitlin-circuit recordings. With Chalpin, Checker cut this Europe-only psych cash-in which, despite its pungent whiff of cynical trend surf, stands up rather splendidly as a rare example of moonshot Aquarian psych soul. The album starts on a super-stoopid high with the massed-voices drum-freak of Goodbye Victoria (“Everybody’s going to the moon”) and the post-Jimi acid-guitars and cave-chants combo that drives the oddly threatening My Mind Comes From A Higher Place (title!) but barely flags after that. As with Chairmen Of The Board’s mid-’70s incarnation you almost suspect the spiked demon hand of Parliafunkadelicment to be involved somehow, especially during the wacked-out carnival beats and rubber riffs of Stoned In The Bathroom and the bad-trip Christ requiem He Died. But there’s also Checker’s freaky Arthur Lee/MC5 assimilation Love Tunnel (“Don’t get caught up in the love tunnel / You got to have it ’fore you lose your mind!”) before it all ends with a literally deranged organ and drums hippie-hitchhike fuzz freakout entitled Gypsy in which Checker makes very little actual sense - “Yes, I’m trying to find myself! / I’m a gypsy! / I don’t give a damn / Trying to find my mind / Movin’ cross the highway / Comin’ to your town to see your FACE! / Time is a wastin’ / and no time to WASTE!” – but is as exciting as hell while he doesn’t. While it’s hard to imagine how this was ever a legitimate release, with master tapes squirreled away somewhere safe, Chequered (also released as New Revelation and Goes Psychedelic, vinyl fans) is an album desperately in need of a clean and tidy reissue so that we can remember that even this man went far out into inner space as America entered the ’70s.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 07/11/2008
Further Listening
Chairmen Of The Board – Skin I’m In (Invictus, 1974)
Baby Huey & The Babysitters – The Living Legend (Curtom, 1971)
Bobby Womack – Communication (United Artists, 1971)
Previous Disc of the day
-
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
6:00 AM GMT 20/11/2009
-
-
Isley Brothers - The Brothers: Isley
The Cincinnati siblings bed into their heavy period.
6:00 AM GMT 18/11/2009
-
Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land
The trumpeter's most soulful excursion entrances MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 16/11/2009
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-
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hey!, great review of a "lost" classic. all in all I believe this to be an amazing album and one that is hard to imagine even saw the light of day.I have and enjoy the CD release titled "Goes Psychadelic"...and I do the twist...
Posted by Brad Tilbe at 8:43 AM GMT 07/11/2008 Report Abuse
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Hi all
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