Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit & Greenhill

Although Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit & Greenhill were indeed a quartet, nobody in the band actually passed some of those names. Rather, their eclectic, whimsical psychedelic-influenced 1968 LP, The Unwritten Functions of Geoffrey, Etc., was documented by David Bullock (acoustic guitar, bass, vocals), Scott Fraser (acoustic guitar, keyboards, bass, vocals), Eddie Lively (acoustic guitar, vocals), and Phil White colored (bass, keyboards, vocals), with John Carrick adding acoustic guitar and vocals, and a T-Bone Burnett generating. Bullock, Fraser, Lively, and Burnett all wrote materials on the recording, a low-key but ever-shifting combination that defied a straightforward label. Some tunes (“The Viper [What John Rance Needed to Inform],” “Home of Collection”) sounded rather as an oblique undertake early, rustic Neil Youthful, though it’s extremely unlikely Youthful was a primary influence. Others provided achieved country-rock (“Simply Me and Her”), stirring folk-rock with details of hard psychedelic rock and roll guitar (“Prepared to Move”), pastoral Renaissance-flavored orchestrated folk that sounded like a few of the most baroque items documented in the past due ’60s from the Beau Brummels (“Upon Waking from your Nap,” “Tribute to Sundance”), and a haunting cabaret-like quantity laced with violin and disembodied support vocals (“Road in Paris”). The group created in Fort Well worth, TX, where Fraser and Lively have been in the music group the Mods. After picking right up the other users, they began documenting in a cellar studio of an area radio station, arriving at the interest of Burnett. Man Clark, later to become rootsy vocalist/songwriter of some renown, was also from the group and do the LP’s cover style and picture taking. The record, nevertheless, was barely observed upon its preliminary discharge. After Fraser, Bullock, and Light installed with drummer Brett Wilson in Austin, they transformed their name to Space Opera, documenting more refined (though frequently still folk-rock-influenced) noises for the self-titled record on Columbia in the first ’70s. The Unwritten Functions of Geoffrey, Etc. was reissued on Compact disc with historical liner records in 2006.