Sand - The West is Best
(Zip)
Sand is actually a collaboration between legendary producer, writer, manager, svengali, and rock impresario, Kim Fowley and Roy Swedeen, perhaps most famous as the last drummer in the (also legendary) cult rockers, The Misunderstood. They gave us such prized guitar gods as Glenn Ross Campbell (who later formed Juicy Lucy) and Tony Hill (later of High Tide and currently a solo artist with an album on Nick (The Bevis Frond) Saloman's Woronzow imprint. Kim, of course, gave us The Hollywood Argyles ("Alley Oop"), The Rivingtons ("Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow"), The Runaways, Venus & The Razorblades, The Orchids and wrote, co-wrote, and/or produced material for Gram Parsons, BTO, Soft Machine, Cat Stevens, Mott The Hoople, Warren Zevon, The Byrds, Beach Boys, Alice Cooper, etc. Essentially, he invented rock 'n' roll, or at least helped commercialize it. In effect, he knows a hit record when he hears it...because he probably wrote or produced it!
So, what have these old cowpokes wrought? If you accept the fact that there is more "sand" in the desert than at the beach, you'll begin to catch the whiff of where these guys heads are at—forget fun, sun, and half-nekkid bimbos bouncing up and down the shoreline—this is swamp gas-induced, low-down and dirty, mean, lean and obscene, honky tonkin', get-drunk-and-fightin' music from two originals who've never sounded better, fresher, or more alive. While Fowley co-wrote all but three of these tracks, his appearance is limited to lead vox on only a quarter of these dozen excursions into swampadelic surf music (or is that surfadelic swamp music), so this is essentially a Roy Swedeen solo album (complimented quite nicely on a few tracks by Chris Darrow and Max Buda, co-founders of the US Kaleidoscope and members of the studio band that backed Leonard Cohen on his debut Songs of album; Darrow was also a founder of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and led the musicians on James Taylor's Fire and Rain album—so, we're not dealing with a bunch of namby-pamby, wet-behind-the-ears, wimps here—these guys know their way around the studio and their pores sweat rock and roll!).
And what an album it is. Shades of Zappa and Beefheart permeate "Road To Hollywood," and "Renegade," "Garage Mirage," and "Blue Surf" are nifty, desert stormin' surf instrumentals. The tasty "At The Chili Cook-Off" is a narly, Edmunds-esque twanger, with a how-low-can-you-go Leon Redbone-inspired vocal from Swedeen; think ZZ Top Go Rockabilly. The title track crosses "Hoochie Coochie Man" sensibilities with some swampadelic, Louisiana Lightning a la Creedence Clearwater Revival (in fact, "Area Code 909" is one of the best songs John Fogarty never got around to finishing), and Fowley returns to his white trash roots on "Trailer Parks After Dark."
Highly recommended to down and dirty, trailer trashin' fans of swamp- and surfedelica, who carry honky tonk saloonbeams home in a jar of Uncle Joe's homemade "recipe." If you have any Edmunds, Creedence, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Dick Dale, Zappa, Beefheart, Jon and The Nightriders, etc. in your collections, make room for this one.
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