Hampton Grease Band

Hampton Grease Music group might have ultimately been a music group simpler to appreciate in idea than to hear in practice. Also, they are, for some listeners, a music group that’s a lot more fun to learn about than to listen to. For a limited period, though, these were offering a number of the wackiest rock and roll ever found on a significant label. Clearly inspired by both Zappa and Beefheart, but even more grating and also less accessible towards the rock and roll underground, they had taken early-’70s avant-rock looks close to their extremes. This assured an eternal cult popularity for the group, but additionally made certain that their industrial success within their very own time was practically nil. Hampton Grease Music group began being a blues-rock-oriented clothing in the past due ’60s in Atlanta, where in fact the underground rock and roll scene was hardly big enough to aid them. They were able to carve a popularity at an area underground club, in addition to by playing support to psychedelic/intensifying acts just like the Pleased Inactive, Jimi Hendrix, Procol Harum, as well as the Allman Brothers. The group progressively developed a far more primary sound, emphasizing elaborate, Zappa-esque electric guitar lines and Bruce Hampton’s off-the-cuff, non-sequitur lyrics, generally shouted within a throaty, scratchy wheeze that produced Beefheart appear to be Pavarotti. The music group frequently betrayed the Zappa impact within their theatrical, occasionally confrontational stage display, where Hampton would toss chairs in the viewers, or sing while sitting on a pizza. They polarized viewers, to say minimal; these were pelted with mugs of snow at one unforgettable gig that discovered them playing to some group of 10,000 because the warm-up work for Three Puppy Night (a expenses that must have already been devised by Salvador Dali). Hampton Grease Music group generated enough of the status, though, to pique the eye of Columbia Information, whose attention incited Allman Brothers supervisor Phil Walden to indication the group. The Grease Music group quickly documented two albums’ well worth of material which could by no means become construed as having money-making potential. Fifty percent the tracks, in the first place, weighed in at across the 20-minute tag; the silvery acoustic guitar function of Glenn Phillips and Harold Kelling frequently got its cues from improvised jazz, as the tracks lurched unpredictably between melodies and tempos, all carried out with impeccable finesse from the music artists. The crowning touch was Hampton, whose amelodic rants cross-bred soapbox preachers with bleacher bums. The lyrics got the Dadaist bent of Zappa/Beefheart to even more inscrutable amounts, most notoriously on “Hendon,” with Hampton reading lots of the terms from the label of the can of aerosol paint. Phillips’ ridiculous faux-Latin small “Maria” was a more radio-friendly novelty, but Hampton Grease Music group were obviously likely to be a very much tougher sell compared to the Allman Brothers. Met with the tapes, Columbia reacted most unpredictably, choosing to help make the band’s debut (and, since it turned out, just) record a dual album, Music to consume. Legend provides it that it had been, during its discharge, the second-lowest offering LP within the Columbia catalog (beaten just by a yoga exercises record). Columbia itself didn’t help issues by advertising Music to consume as a humor album. Soon after its discharge, Hampton Grease Music group begun to disintegrate, using the departure of guitarist Harold Kelling. Despite a well-received present in the Fillmore East with Frank Zappa, CBS lowered the group, which in turn authorized with Zappa’s Bizarre/Right label. It appeared like a reasonable combination, but nothing at all came from it record-wise, as well as the music group finally split up in 1973 when Hampton remaining to, ironically, unsuccessfully audition for employment as Zappa’s business lead vocalist. All the members from the quintet that documented Music to consume remained energetic in music, specifically Hampton (who documented albums using the Aquarium Save Unit along with other sets of the “jam music group” scene from the ’90s, and who passed away after an on-stage coronary attack at an all-star tribute concert celebrating his 70th birthday at Atlanta’s Fox Theater in 2017) and Phillips (who released almost twelve instrumental information, including some for the important alternative rock and roll indie label SST). As is indeed usually the case with interesting cult rings, fascination with Hampton Grease Music group actually grew within the years after their separation, culminating within the reissue of Music to consume on Compact disc in 1996 — on Columbia, exactly the same label that got dumped them if they supposedly marketed much less copies than other people who acquired ever documented for the business.