Crazy People - Bedlam 1968
This 1968 exploito psych release has always been shrouded in mystery - we can now reveal that UK bandleader and instrumentalist Johnny Kitchen was the mastermind behind this album. Largely recorded in Canada, and featuring a very odd mixture of samples and radio jingles mixed with the over the top garage psych-rock, it's an interesting release with some very psychedelic passages. Weird and wired !
Personnel:
anonymous A
ALBUM:
1(-) BEDLAM (Condor CST 2457) 196?/7? R3
A rare sixties album from this mysterious budget label, based in Burnaby, B.C.. Condor also issued a plethora of wide-ranging exploitation albums including Blues Train and The Jimmy Cole Unlimited. Although the performers are uncredited, there is some speculation that a prominent Vancouver "personality" (and local T.V. weatherman) was involved in putting together the "Rock" orientated exploit efforts on this label, and it is likely that some of the musicians involved also appear on the Blues Train and Jimmy Cole Unlimited albums. The Crazy People's effort, is a hodge-podge mixture of original studio material, and "samples" taken from other records, which are dropped into the mix at random. One of these otherwise unrelated albums is An Evening With Wildman Fisher, who can be heard sporadically throughout, leading to some speculation that Wildman was involved with The Crazy People. This is not the case, however, as the short clips are clearly taken from the Wildman Fisher album on Zappa's Bizarre label, which was released well before The Crazy People made its way into the shops a couple of years later. At least one collector is positive the Crazy People were led by the ubiquitous Johnny Kitchen, and, in fact there is another album on the Condor label called This World With The Trio Of Tyme (# 2459) on which Kitchen is credited as writer of several tracks... so it is known that Kitchen was in Canada at the time, and associated with the label. Kitchen ended up in Los Angeles in 1969, making records. As arcane as this might seem to the casual reader, his name is synonymous with at least a dozen weird underground records released on various private labels in the U.S.A. and still nothing is known about them. All the albums connected to Johnny Kitchen are strange amalgams of musical style, having tracks sounding like they were recorded years apart, and covering rock, swing, blues, folk, etc. all on one album side! The Crazy People album also rather fits this mould, as well as having the "goof factor" of comedy segments during breaks in the opening track. It was very clearly intended as a psychedelic "cash-in" exploitation album, and the song titles are pure exploitation cash-in: Head Amusement, Head Games And Other Assorted Crap, Trans-Love Airlines, but instead of the standard R'n'B work-outs that many labels attempted to pass off as "psychedelic", The Crazy People does in fact have a skewed point of view all of its own, and at least one extended fuzz guitar and wild organ track. There's no doubt that some of the sound 'montages' attempted on this album are very crudely edited together, but that only seems to add to its overall strangeness. A virtual unknown and disregarded album for many years in the Vancouver area, it has until recently languished in the bargain bin. A very eclectic album for collectors of the bizarre!
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Tracklisting
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The Crazy People - Parade At The Funny Farm
The Crazy People - Head Amusement
The Crazy People - Raunchy Boog-A-Loo
The Crazy People - After Six
The Crazy People - The Truth
The Crazy People - Head Games and Other Assorted Crap
The Crazy People - Head Job
The Crazy People - Happy Academy
The Crazy People - Trans Luv Airlines
The Crazy People - Let's Split
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