Instrumentally, these guys were essentially a jug band...washboards, banjos, mandolins, kazoos, all the traditional accoutrements. Do they have jug bands in England? They have skiffle or something, but this sounds like a jug band to me. Even then, to deal in so esoteric a genre was both good and bad. It was good because they were having so much fun with it, bad because everything they did sounded pretty much like everything else they did. They weren’t exactly brimming with technical expertise. Their electric guitarist sounded as if he had learned to play via mail-order. This would have been fine for a punk band, but these were folkies. They did OK in spite of themselves--since all their energies were directed toward not collapsing before the next chord change, there was no time left to overthink what they were doing. They escaped the purist pretentions of their British Blues brethren since they lacked anything to be purist with. And in London in 1967, everybody was too busy having the time of their life to care one way or the other.

They were playing within a scene where, for a few months at least, there was an audience eager to enjoy total freedom. It never lasts long, needs to be stamped out as soon as it appears, but at that time and place anything would and did turn up onstage. Mimes with flowers painted on their tits. Donovan jamming with a dozen sitar players he’d never even met. Syd Barrett stopping the Floyd in mid-song to fry an egg. Joyous freaks rolling naked together in vats of jello. Electrickal banana, incense, strobelight, clowns and jugglers. A British bluegrass band with a bouncy little tune about Granny on holiday were the perfect addition to such exquisite anarchy, a good laugh, just part of the flow. Everything they needed, they had--a good sound, one or two musical ideas, and a few neat songs. I don’t particularly mind that they managed only one brief album, because it’s hard to picture them going any further. After the police came charging up the stairs to ruin the party, what future remained for The Purple Gang? Can you imagine them out on the road? I can’t even imagine them in the studio for a second album, and it’s better that way. Would you want to have to squeeze four or five albums worth of mildly psychedelic but otherwise undistinguished British bluegrass into the shelf space that will barely contain one as it is? I didn’t think so.

While all of their material was pleasant at the very least (and without such filler they would have managed only a single or EP rather than a full album--in the States we would never have heard them) there were the notable exceptions. The aforementioned “Granny” is the sort of thing that will brighten up even your darkest night (which is more than I would ask of James Taylor), and there’s also a rendition of “Viola Lee Blues” much closer to the original than the better-known Grateful Dead version; it’s acoustic, short and sweet. And there’s a strange little slow number called “The Wizard,” which made for some interesting stage business--the lead singer went by the name of Lucifer and dressed no more ridiculously than Marc Bolan at the time or David Bowie some years later. He would jump around and make weird gestures at the audience, presumably during the three-note solo between the chorus and next verse. I hope they had a strobe light as well; if not maybe the Floyd used to loan one of theirs? Ah, the comeraderie of a bygone era...

It’s London’s summer of ’77 that has everybody nostalgic at the moment (the predictable 20-year cycle--I hope that means I’ll live to see Rain Parade reunite ten years on) what with the Sex Pistols touring America again even as I write...but the really seminal stuff was happening back in Pepperland. Here’s one poxy little not-quite-one-hit-wonder band that swilled acid, played Brit bluegrass (which would have been much more fun to see taking the world by storm than mere British blues), and in their fashion sense and stage presence anticipated such diverse 70s phenomena as glitter-rock and Ozzy Osbourne. Who among any of us is doing anything that will so affect the choice of a new generation? Ah, skip it. Forget I even asked. Anyway, their forlorn little LP somehow received an American pressing, disappearing into the bargain bin some fifteen minutes later. To this day, astute rack-browsers on both sides of the Atlantic can find this slice of vinyl wonderment at better record shows everywhere. (Mine is a promo copy, and I’ve seen others.) If it costs less than a serving of fish’n’chips, then buy, I say. Tape some other album, tack on those three happy Purples as filler, and live happily ever after. Amen.