PRESS AND REVIEWS
George Brigman Rags in Skull (Bona Fide) It was a happy occasion when local rocker George Brigman's '70s vinyl catalog was finally brought into the digital age last year. However, Bona Fide Records promised even more Brigman--and it has arrived in the form of Rags in Skull, Brigman's first new work in a quarter century, a love of heavy guitar having kept his spirit as well as his fingers young and supple despite the passage of time. He shifts into gear for "Borderline," the album's first rave-up, a tune dipped in the 1969-'70 sound of psychedelia changing into hard rock, with provocative neo-prog guitar and drum-break change-ups. "Somebody put milk in my eggs and someone has got to pay," Brigman sings over descending fuzz on a song of the same title. Reflecting his mood, apparently sour enough to make the devil leave the room, Brigman then lurches into a cymbal-smashing shuffle for "Some of My Best Friends Are Snakes." It's the kind of treatment that retro-loving stoner rockers never nail even though they ought to. A promotional clip, slated for the web and originating from a local access cable show out of Dundalk in the mid-'80s, shows Brigman and cohorts in dapper denim explaining to the interviewer that Baltimore clubgoers liked a little more homogeneity in their rock than the band served up. Anyone who's endured such interviews for the sake of exposure knows it's always necessary to explain why bookings were scanty without appearing supercilious, a job Brigman handles with aplomb. For Rags in Skull's finish, "Goin' to Pieces" and "Swell," Brigman indulges the guitar hero in everyone, the latter throwing arena-echoed ax squiggles into the sunset, showing he was always fit for that big national stage--our loss, not his. by George Smith Baltimore City Paper Legendary guitarist George Brigman returns with his first new LP in 25 years, and it quite remarkably picks up exactly where his oft-bootlegged boogie-psych classic Jungle Rot leaves off. On each of these eleven tunes, Brigman retains the artless approach to virtuosic guitar playing that is his trademark, but his songs have a decidedly nastier feel this time around, perhaps owing to the years he spent getting mercilessly ripped off by unscrupulous labels. But while the general mood of the album is bitter and uncompromising, lighter moments like the breezy instrumentals “Donna Leigh” and “No More Humans” are welcome respites and showcase Brigman’s playing, which has only improved over the years. His Fred Cole-like dedication to an aesthetic would be noble enough even if the album didn’t rock so mightily, but rock it does. In short, Rags in Skull is everything The Stooges’ bogus ‘reunion’ album should have been but wasn’t, and very near the top of a relatively short list of essential 2007 releases thus far. [Bona Fide] -James Jackson Toth, Yourfleshmag.com Gregory Conner writing in Tufts Daily seemed to agree, "Brigman sounds totally stuck in the '70s on this album, but still manages to let loose, heavyweight hard rock riffs that knock out present day contenders...when you find yourself at the end of Brigman's tour through his torn up and dragged down world, you find yourself only wanting to go back down for more." Click on the mags name to read the full review. With his 1975 debut, Jungle Rot, guitarist George Brigman produced the white version of inner city blues. Hovering in like a cloud of smoke from a factory in Brigman's native Baltimore, the album conveyed urban blight from its sound, a primitive haze whose rainbow reflects only shades of grey akin to the polluted concrete jungle (rot) that Brigman grew up in...He was truly unique and when he learned stronger riffs as heard on I Can Hear the Ants Dancin (reviewed last issue) the results were often stunning. The path to his blossoming is revealed in this reissue's three bonus tracks all recordedby Brigmans band from 1976, Hogwash....But the bonus tracks are the least of the reason to pick up this reissue. Remastered using source tapes this completely blows away the hissing, near bootleg quality of the original vinyl which was used for several worthless boots. In short, the definitive reissue of Jungle Rot and its also available (sans extras) on Anopheles vinyl as well-----Doug Sheppard, Ugly Things #24 From "1975, nearly alive" by Jon Savage, Mojo magazine, April 2006: "4 stars" The urban desolation cover of Brigman's Jungle Rot perfectly defines the punk attitude before it was industrialised, there they are in pre-gentrification Baltimore, 18 yr old Brigman and two friends, beat, but defiant with their long, long hair and engineer boots in their paradise of dusty bricks, smashed windows, and moldy hardboard. The music is as advertised: gutbucket 1975 energy crisis blues, awash in effects and teenage hormones...Brigman felt he had no future but he could still rock. Jungle Rot features two astonishing 1975-76 tracks by his later band Hogwash(available only on the CD version): Imagine soaring soul vocals over epic doom riffage and you've got Easy Stranger and Witch Doctor. The reappearance of these records 30 years or so later affirms how on the money their creators were. Brigman's sleeve iconography would be echoed by the Ramones and the Saints in 76 and assumed by almost every British punk band in 1977. His punk/blues approach also prefigured the White Stripes, to whose fans Jungle Rot would appeal to in particular...These two reissues (Brigman and Todd Clark) deep-mine a moment that, because it has not been referenced to death, remains startling and vital.---Mojo April 2006 From George Brigman and the Secret History of a Lost Psychedelic Classic by Jess Harvell, Baltimore City Paper: It’s not hard to understand why the era of the Carpenters would be put off by Jungle Rot’s caustic grooves. Released on the cusp of punk rock, it’s a mess of throwback fuzz guitar and swamp-bass hoodoo. Brigman’s vocals are delivered with the I-don’t-give-a-fuck insolence of a high-school kid staring down the clock. On “Schoolgirl,” probably his best song, he struts in a hairy-palmed, lecherous approximation of a rock lothario. Brigman may think the record sounds muddy and poorly recorded today, but that sewage-tank ambiance adds a great deal to the subterranean-garage feel that’s endeared it to a new generation of dirt rockers. Read the entire article here! From Magnet--Jan/Feb 06. George Brigman's Jungle Rot is some of the filthiest scuzziest psychedelia since the first Blue Cheer album; think Can, Chrome, the Stooges and Captain Beefheart forming an acid blues band...From the fuzzed out paranoid dementia of DMT to the reverb baked, Slim Harpo-esque, "I Feel Alright," Brigman was at odds with the feel good fare of the mid-70s and his sneering vocal monotone cleary portended the oncoming punk explosion.---Fred Mills "I Can Hear the Ants Dancin"-- The title instrumental is a mammoth forbearer to the stoner stuff beloved today ....George obviously went to the 78 equivalent of Guitar Center and bought some effects gadgets prior to recording this one, but rather than make him seem like a gearhead clown, they reveal his amazing indulgent originality. "Jungle Rot"--Heard of more than heard, Jungle Rot is a legendary psych blues masterpiece from the 7os that features a title track that has a guitar sound that brings to mind a Clapton impersonator playing guitar in a turned-on garbage disposal. You need to buy these.--Wayman Timsdayle Jungle Rot makes best of 2005 lists already! Reissues of the Year---John Loftus--All Music Guide --Jon Bywater's list from the New Zealand Listener --Other Music's Holiday Guide--from one of the coolest stores anywhere! "Eddytor's Dozen"-- Village Voice Jungle Rot--4 star review----Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide "An Armchair Iggy"--New Zealand Listener So you're 18, the good vibes of the 60s have turned ugly in a PCP/STP haze, and yer living/surviving in an urban wasteland. There's little doubt fate has you pegged to be another pasty zombie victim of the American dream… so what do you do? You record a fucking killer record that's what!! In 1974, George Brigman, hunkered down in a 'studio' called The Hole in his Baltimore apartment and laid down a series of tracks that would eventually become Jungle Rot. It ended up being released in a small private press run and promptly disappeared. Over the next 30 years it would be bootleg a number of times and then given a proper resurrection and clean up by Karl Ikola & Rick Noll. In the annals of record collecting, there are hundreds of local unknowns who don’t have the artistic merit to match their reputation and/or High prices their records command.\George Brigman, Baltimore’s baddest axe-slinger is not among them. Brigman’s witches brew of Harvey Mandel, the Groundhogs, Blue Cheer, and Captain Beefheart has made a few of his releases coveted collector’s items, and it’s no accident. I Can Hear the Ants Dancin’, recorded mostly in the late 70's and originally released on a microscopic run of 300 cassettes in 1982 was one of Brigman’s trophies till Or unearthed it in this vinyl only release. On this release, Brigman has expanded the heavy stylings of 1975's Jungle Rot (his debut) into a sound that more strongly reflects his diverse tastes.Before launching into his usual heavy fuzz/dirty rock sound, Brigman starts the album with two psychedelic, slow blues tunes, “Part Time Lover” and “I Can Help the Way I Feel.” With the fuzztone turned off on both, Brigman’s guitar plays a role similar to a jazz piano on Thelonius Monk’s “Misterioso;” in addition, “Can’t” has a brilliant ethereal melody. From there, it’s back to the heavy guitar distortion that’s most often characterized Brigman. “Vacation” and “Blowin Smoke” are live in the studio (like the rest of the LP incidentally) fuzz crankers that sound like proto grunge and the remaining 5 cuts (all instrumentals) are similarly raw and late 60's like years before Sub Pop and the siege of Seattle ever existed. Brigman’s production which leaves each instrument in its natural state (e.g. no “kick” sound on the drums) and at equal volume almost sounds like a blueprint for what Jack Endino and Butch Vig would get into later. Still this is no straight ahead hard rock excursion on the contrary, there’s a lot of experimentation–especially on the instrumentals. Though Brigman says he’s not a John McLaughlin fan, the shifting time signatures and improvisational intermingling of jazz and rock sounds on “Jazzma” and the title cut recall the direction of the fusion wizard, circa Devotion. In the same context, the listener will also notice Brigman’s affinity for Soft Machine (From the beginning up to Holdsworth). But as Brigman says, “I just do what I do” Whether a listen to this LP makes you love him, hate him, or notice some of his inspirations, you’ll never be able to say you heard it all before. —Doug Sheppard, Goldmine I went way nuts for the fuzz-fried white blues guitar burn of George Brigman and Split way back in 1982, damn near wearing the oxide off the limited edition cassette of I Can Hear the Ants Dancin’ . Now it’s been exhumed on vinyl (Or LP) where it belongs with the sizzle and snarling clarity it deserves. —David Fricke, Rolling Stone This raunchily complex Maryland power triad’s first long player after a dozen years in oblivion, Human Scrawl Vagabond, turned out to be a flame-thrower, a post-‘lude monument of pedal play that deserves filing on a frazzled shelf alongside the Stooges’ Funhouse, Captain Beefheart’s Lick My Decals Off Baby (note Van Vliet style title non sequitur), the Mighty Groundhogs, Who Will Save the World and the first Dust album, not necessarily ‘cause it’s as good or bad as said plats, but cause that’s the robust, advanced, intense, unbalanced and harsher-than-harsh avant boogie territory from whence it hails. There’s a sassification of the Groundhogs “Status People,” a version of Brigman’s wicked 75 45 “Blowin Smoke”(which does just that–in your face), a few warped experiments-in-beat with nary a word in em (“Symphony in Effigy”, “Animal Dope”, “Grunts”), A Miles Davis-like lump of bump(“Clap Trap”), some startling recurrences from George’s 85 Silent Bones EP where some pederast begs your little sister to yank down her drawers and do the Cambodian Bossa Nova, and even some breath robbingly eerie stairways-of-softness as “Lazy Eyes” and “The Truth” and “Spaced”. Brigman’s a lonely madman with a golden touch and a Nolan Ryan fastball and a backwoods-banshee wail that’ll send you hightailing back to the hacienda. —Chuck Eddy, Stairway to Hell, Da Capo Books Baltimore’s hottest export since John Walter’s–George’s whiskey soaked funky voice and jagged guitar technics will leave you floored. No one written about in Inner Mystique #1 got such a unanimously positive response as George Brigman and Split. Brigman’s intoxicating mix of blues, boogie and raunch is still fresh and I’ve surely played the 45 some 500 times...George’s 1st LP Jungle Rot was cut in 75, but due to some bad breaks didn’t get much exposure and was poorly mastered. Even in a sea of echo, George’s down and dirty Howlin Wolf meets Eric Burdon is salacious to the max, his southern fried guitar is finger lickin good and his slightly askew R & B .boogie beats keep your attention. His 2nd LP I Can Hear the Ants Dancin’ is finally Brigman’s music the way he wants it to sound. The results are 100% better, each instrument is clearly defined and jagged guitar lines dance like St. Elmo’s Fire from one channel to the other. –-William Shute, Inner Mystique Brigman steals from the best of the early 70s HM bands (Dust, Sir Lord Baltimore, The Stooges); I swear he was breastfed by Alice Cooper himself. Standing to remind us those days weren’t half as bad as we thought. George and Split take us through some very heavy but still entertaining exercises in guitar dominance and if you stupid enought to believe that Motley Crue typifies Heavy Metal, you should know that they are only pretenders to the throne that George should sit in. –-Christopher Stigliano, Option Here (Jungle Rot) we have an example of very primitive and very good rock sounds. There is a lot of raw excitement running all the way through this LP. You know it’s hard to believe something this good came out of Baltimore, Maryland in 1975. It seems pretty clear that Brigman was out of sync with the times which is why he’s a subject for my column (Obscurities) instead of a superstar as I think he deserves to be. Ah, well–who said life was fair? Old Weird Dave–Goldmine The word “Spaced” seems to turn up in any conversation about George Brigman and Split–whenever they occur, that is. A real big Deal with a few deep afficionados –his 1975 Jungle Rot LP is a collector’s holy grail–Brigman is an acquired taste who biggest influences are Beefheart and British 70s fuzz-blues band the Groundhogs. As a singer, he is an inspired amateur and some of his songs have an earnest retro-hippie quality. As a guitarist, he is a heady revelation. The title track of his cassette only release is a wall of molten distortion with tin can drumming and a kind of alto fuzz melody that keeps threatening to eclipse into feedback. “Blowin Smoke” comes off like a very earthy Stooges, and the 8 minute instrumental climax “I’d Like to Tie A Knot Around Your Mother’s Throat” (hey, it’s only a title) is a chaotic jam that defies proper technique in a manic search fro the Lost Freakout. The other guitarists here are looking too, reaching into space uncharted even by Hendrix, But it’s great to have someone like George Brigman to show us how low we can still go. —David Fricke, Musician Local Maryland legend that's been popular almost since day one with collectors due to his uncompromising underground attack. He has an amazing voice full of snarl and venom plus layers of murky fuzz and phasing in the background. The overall feel is like looking out at a 70s ghetto street full of garbage and car wrecks from the cracked window of a basement crash pad. Stylistically interesting as it contains elements of both psych, hardrock and 1970s punk/DIY, and has garnered fans in all three fields. The recording has a crude demo sound which isn't entirely to its advantage, and it could be argued that the music would have been even more effective with a more stringent drummer. Nevertheless this is an important document of 1970s inner city despair and madness. Lyrics hit the same renegade vibes as the music, even on the softer songs. [PL] Acid Archives ONE OF THE HOTTER RELEASES OF THE YEAR AND IT ORIGINALLY CAME OUT IN 1975! GEORGE BRIGMAN'S JUNGLE ROT! (Bona Fide, PO Box 185, Red Lion PA 17350)
"Jungle Rot" is special because it exists as not only an absolutely demented record of wide eyed white boy blues but it also acts as one of the missing links between the heavy blues and acid damage of '67-'72 and the major musical revolution that erupted a year after it's release. When you factor in that Brigman was 18 years old when the record was conceived, well it hardly seems possible. The album kicks of with the fuzz-packed proto-punk Stooges Fun House downer trip of "Jungle Rot" & "DMT" (trade Steve McKay's horn for a harmonica) and slides into a bit of snotty kid punk (Don't Bother Me) before hitting the charmingly inept drunk basement blues of "Schoolgirl", "I've Got to Know", and later "I'm Married Too". Mixed in through the album were two tracks that really stood out (T.S. & Worrying) not for anything good or bad, but for the lack of sludge & how much they reminded me of something else. I didn't catch it right away… even though it was pretty obvious what with one track titled T.S., the original label called Solid, and later bands Hogwash & Split…ahhhh this kid was a Groundhogs fan!! At 18 this kid was a fucking Groundhogs fan and even had enough talent, skill, balls to create a song that not only honors Tony McPhee but sounds like he wrote it too!!!
Sonically, the apparently crap pressing has been remastered from the original tapes, but still retains a nice shit-can recording sound that adds to its authenticity. It's nice it was cleaned up, much more so that it 'beats the boots' as it were, but even a lo-fi version of this album would have received rave reviews. The LP version is pretty solid package, but for those strictly in the digital realm the CD adds three other tracks from a later Brigman project.- Chris Jacques , Foxy Digitalis
It's been a pretty hunky dory year for archival underground releases/reissues/whaddevah, something which suits me fine considering my grumpy attitude towards a good hunkering portion of what passes for underground rock of a modern variety. Back in January I was raving at you about the Chinaboise Cee-Dee on Gulcher, a disque featuring Rich Stim and Dave Mahoney's pre-MX-80 Sound project which presented itself as a weird cross between Firesign Theatre-ish (without the drugs) hip guffaws and the better aspects of 1982 local scene gnu wave (that at least seemed part of the original thrust!) done at a time (1975) when the creature hadn't even been invented yet! (Meaning: Talking Heads, Blondie etc. were still firmly entrenched in smart post-Velvets art moves long before the smarm set in!). A month later I was tearin' your ear off about Norton's collection of Arch Hall Jr.'s single sides, live romps and film trax/dialogue packaged in a nice li'l bundle entitled WILD GUITAR which I'm sure all of you have bought by now. And here in July comes this wondrous slab of high energy mildew that I've been anticipating for quite a long time, and given how impatient I tend to get you know I've been awaiting this one with the same fervent vigor and gut-gnawing angst that I've been awaiting the arrival of my Yoko Ono lovedoll!
I never did get around to getting hold of George Brigman's debut schpiel entitled JUNGLE ROT back when it became one of the hot must-gets of the real-life underground rockist brigades around 1983. My head was in such a daze at the time (don't believe me? Just read some of my then-current writeups that make some of these current posts look coherent!) and besides money wasn't exactly something I had to splooch around like I do now! Frankly, if it weren't for Bill Shute's care packages (parachuted from planes along with white lumpy stuff for me to gobble up like those kidz you used to see on tee-vee alla time!) I probably would have been TOTALLY outta da hipster loop! In fact, there was a tape in one of those very selfsame care packages that had the title track from this 'un front and center, and after hearing that as well as Rick Noll's various releases on his own Bona Fide label (I'd link Bona Fide up if only Noll had a website, so write him the old-fashioned way until he gets it up...the website I mean!), I came to the conclusion that George Brigman was...well, a pretty wild guitarist with a hefty blues influx (not exactly a strong pt. in my book, but Brigman sure didn't sound like your typical bar band Chuck Berry rehasher!) who was such a refreshing switcheroo in the heart of the gnu wave/light metal eighties that you knew he would get ignored! Anyway, if you don't believe me, just read this review of I CAN HEAR THE ANTS DANCING I wrote just a week or so ago, or just scroll down this page a bit if you're that lazy!
Anyway, it's sure great that Noll found it righteous to reissue this classic on Cee-Dee (Karl Ikola at Anopheles pressed up a batch on good ol' vinyl in case you're a latent luddite like me!) because this one certainly is a contender for top reish o' the year. And given that I feel that the proto-punkian sounds that came out prior to the certification of "punk" as a valid rockism form in many ways were much better'n the latterday approved variant, JUNGLE ROT is all the more important in light of what was "to be" a few years down the ol' cliched line. Some may hear a Stooges influence (though Brigman heartedly denied this in an interview with the French fanzine EVERLASTING TRIBUTES way back in 1983) and there is kind of an Iggy growl in Brigman's great monotone rowllff, but them gtrs are straight outta late-sixties British bluezy punkisms a la the Groundhogs (nearest and dearest to Brigman's heart) and maybe even Killing Floor. The garage band primitivism does help (and sounds wonderful thanks to digitalism's ability to take so-called "poor" recordings and exemplify their flat, basic qualities) even to the point where you might even mistake a song like the instrumental "[T.S.]" (after McPhee) for some rare slice of 1966 San Francisco garage psych. And considering the man had not only taught himself but has been playing his guitbox for only a year when this platter was laid down, all I gotta say is that I wish I had Brigman's forsightfullnes and talents when I was teaching myself the instrument wanting so bad to form an early-Velvets feedback-enveloped sound collage back in 1981 when the whole VU trip was starting to flop over into alternative goodie-goodies, but hey, we can't all be as astute as Brigman, eh?
There may be a few low-points here/there but I wouldn't call 'em turdburgers or anything. And even if they don't seem "right" to your pampered ears at first, a few more listens may straighten you out like they did me with the song "Worrying," which originally reminded me of that old Jefferson Starship hit of the seventies that went something like "What you doin' to me with your love"...real post-psych hackdom that helped make punk rock sound all the more better. But a few more listens proved that "Worrying" was a lot more solid (no sic, given this is not only the name of Brigman's own label but a classic Groundhogs side!) and downright wiggle-into-you-like-an-earwig entertaining than anything outta the Starship catalog and I ain't gonna skip over it next or any future spins that I know of. The only track I really don't cozy up to here is the original LP closer "I'm Married Too" which not only features a different lead singer (and a not too good one at that) but standard caucazoid blues with little if anything to differentiate it from about a million other whiteboy attempts o'er the past thirtysome years. Oh well, even my fave LPs have their own clunkers so why should I complain???
Bonus tracks (w/band Hogwash) are fair enough even if a tad bitta mid-seventies post-freeform FM seems to seep in. But on the whole I'd consider JUNGLE ROT one of '05's highlights and a heavy contender for top reish status once I crank out my year end's rundown. I'm still hoping that the competition gets heated up so's making a choice as to which reish/archival dig gets the top award will be a tuffy (who knows, maybe some 1967 Velvet Underground wannabes will see the light of day more sooner than later!), but until then at least I've got JUNGLE ROT to chew on just like my dog Sam's brazen attempts to give himself a sex-change with his bare teeth, and what more can I ask for at least at this point in time! Chris Stigliano, Blog to Comm
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