Genre: progressive
Rating: 4 stars ****
Title: Keyboard Tales
Company: Atlantic
Catalog: SD-7230
Year: 1972
Country/State: San Francisco, California
Grade (cover/record): VG+/VG+
Comments: promo sticker on cover, small cut out notch
Available: 2
GEMM Catalog ID: not yet listed
Price: $100.00
Here's one of those obscurities I bought at a yard sale 'cause the album looked obscure and funky ... (Turns out
I was right on both counts. The album's certainly funky and its hopelessly obscure, never having seen a CD reissue.)
Can't say I know much about this guy and there isn't much to be found about him on the web ... Released in 1972, his sole album
"Keyboard Tales" was recorded in San Francisco's Wally Heider Studios, with Geoffrey Haslam producing. Musically the set's a one man show, Perlitch credited with writing all of the material, as well as handling all of the vocals and instrumentation. Starting off with the 14 + minute "Captain Zanzibar", the album's full of material that's simultaneously melodic, atmospheric, bizarre and occasionally downright disturbing (sensitive types should probably avoid the gruesome "Pete the Bondage Freak"). A gifted keyboardist and a decent singer, who sometimes bares a passing resemblance to Neil Young (the vehemently anti-Nixon/anti-war "America"), lyrically Perlitch turned in some of the year's stranger meanderings - "Take Off" (described as
"The customized spacecraft SPECTOCAR blasts off into the outer atmosphere where with a gaseous burst the second stage separates and glides out into distant space.") and "Planet Mission Alpha" (described as "Barbarian space savages drop bomb on
plant.") (The album was originally released with a gatefold sleeve.) The collection didn't sell worth crap and as far as we can tell, this is Perlitch's only release.
"Keyboard Tales" track listing:
(side 1)
1.) Captain Zanzibar (Michael Perlitch) - 14:45
2.) America (Michael Perlitch) - 1:50
3.) Remember Sarah (Michael Perlitch) - 4:42
4.) Take Off (Michael Perlitch) - 2:40
(side 2)
1.) Pete the Bondage Freak (Michael Perlitch) - 8:25
2.) Planet Mission Alpha (instrumental) (Michael Perlitch) - 1:43
3.) Holy Joe (Michael Perlitch) - 8:00
Pertlich apparently continued to dabble in music, in 1999 releasing a cassette-only collection
"Outworlder". I've never heard the tape, so can't tell you much about it.
A couple of years after posting this I got an email from one of Perlitch's old classmates. With his permission, I've posted the material below:
"I was searching for some old schoolmates online and Googled my friend Bruce Perlitch's name and after some digging around his brother Mike's name came up connected to your site. He put out the album "Keyboard Tales" back in the early seventies. I figured you guys would be interested in some info on him. He lived in Morgan Hill California and went to Live Oak High School two years ahead of his brother Bruce and I. Mike was a swimming star and star student. About the time he got serious about music I was dabbling in photography. He asked me to photograph his group, and if I remember correctly he was about the only musician. He dressed up in ratty clothes and had someone tie him up. Not exactly his image at the time (sober). He obviously was experimenting with some major hallucinogenics. He did have talent musically but the drugs took over and the last time I saw him (around twenty years ago) he was missing teeth, bloated and working in a bar for his dad's restaurant. He's one of the drug casualties of the seventies and he had so much potential. I don't know where he is now, but Bruce and his sister are very successful and fulfilled people."
Yours Tom Barrett
June 2007