Various Artists - An Alternative Hendrix (1990)

I was listening to my New Fast Automatic Daffodils 'Peel Sessions' album the other day, and was reminded at just how great their take on 'Purple Haze' was, which in turn prompted memories of another couple of Hendrix covers by new wave/alternative bands that I'd always loved - 'All Along The Watchtower' by XTC and 'Foxy Lady' by The Cure. I wondered if there were any more punky versions of Hendrix's songs out there, and found that although there have been two tribute albums released, with 'Stone Free' in 1993 and 'If Six Was Nine' in 1990, they seemed to concentrate on more mainstream groups to contribute to them, and so I only had to borrow four songs from the latter to flesh out this collection of re-imaginings of Hendrix classics by some of my favourite new wave/alternative bands. 

Track listing

01 Purple Haze - New Fast Automatic Daffodils
02 Can You See Me - Thee Hypnotics
03 Stone Free - Supergrass
04 Are You Experienced - The Mock Turtles
05 Who Knows - Bevis Frond
06 Foxy Lady - The Cure
07 Love Or Confusion - The Screaming Trees
08 Hey Joe - Patti Smith
09 All Along The Watchtower - XTC
10 Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) - The Membranes
11 Crosstown Traffic - Richard Hell & The Voidoids

The Bevis Frond - We've Got It Covered (1992)

Thanks go to Frederick for getting me started on this one as following my last Bevis Frond post he sent me a track that he'd had on an old compilation album for ages, with a suggestion that I added it the 'Frondant Fancies' album. It was a cover of 'Who Knows' from a Jimi Hendrix tribute album, and as I know The Frond have contributed to a lot of these over the years I decided that rather than add it to the previous post I'd use it as the starting point for a follow-up post. There's quite an eclectic selection here, from rock (Hendrix), pop (The Hollies), psyche (Iron Butterfly), punk (The Saints), blues (The Groundhogs), and Krautrock (Electric Sandwich), but they're all done in the Frond's unique style, and so the album as a whole sounds pretty cohesive. It was going to be a concise 40 minutes until I remembered that I have the Fruits De Mer box-set 'Side Effects', which included a 24-minute take on Electric Sandwich's 'China', and this bumped up the playing time to just over an hour, but 'China' is just too good to leave out. Visitors with long memories will get what he's doing on 'Hey Joe', but if you don't know then check out this video at around the 7 min 40 sec mark. 

Track listing

01 Who Knows (Jimi Hendrix 1970)
02 Hey Joe (The Leaves 1965 / Jimi Hendrix  1967)
03 Hard Hard Year (The Hollies 1966)
04 Express Man (The Groundhogs 1969)
05 Hey Bulldog (The Beatles 1968)
06 Possession (Iron Butterfly 1968) 
07 Let's Live For Today (The Rokes 1966)
08 This Perfect Day (The Saints 1977)
09 You Never Give Me Your Money (The Beatles 1969)
10 Grounded (The Syn 1967)
11 When Will The Rain Come (The Troggs 1967)
12 I've Been Waiting For You (Neil Young 1968)
13 20th September (Equipe 84 1967)
14 China (Electric Sandwich 1973)

The Bevis Frond - Frondant Fancies (1990)

The Bevis Frond is basically Nick Saloman and whoever he can get at the time to help him out with his recording. He's been involved in music from the 60's, but really came into his own in 1997 when he started recording under the name of The Bevis Frond. Saloman was originally in a band known as the Bevis Frond Museum in the late 1960's, and in the 1970's, whilst at college, he played bass guitar, congas and electric piano for a duo called Oddsocks, who released one album, 'Men of the Moment', in 1975. In 1979 he formed The Von Trap Family, who released their one and only single on Saloman's own Woronzow Records label in 1980. The next release on Woronzow was a 12" single by Room 13 in 1982, featuring Saloman on guitar and future Bevis Frond member Martin Crowley on drums. After Room 13 reached the end of its natural life, Nick Saloman had a bad motorbike accident that left him with a constriction of movement in his left arm, but he had the arm set so that he could continue playing guitar. With the proceeds from a damages claim he bought a 4 track recorder and recorded some music which he decided to press as a limited release of 250 albums, more for the sake of just releasing an album than anything else, and he was very surprised when Funhouse records in Kent phoned him up and asked for a couple of hundred copies as they had been selling the album quite briskly. Subsequent albums were also recorded in a home studio and released on Woronzow until 1988, when he signed a deal with Reckless Records for the UK and USA. 
To date he has released 23 albums (the 22nd one was called 'Example 22' to help you keep track), and they are all first-rate psychedelic rock music full of scorching guitar solos. However, for this albums I'm going right back to the start of his career, and have compiled an album featuring songs by Oddsocks, The Von Trap Family, Room 13, The Bevis Frond Museum, and The Bevis Frond themselves. His first single as The Bevis Frond was a split flexi-disc with The Steppes which was given away with issue 4 of Freakbeat magazine, and subsequent singles followed suit, with 'Bad Time' being included with issue 36 of The Bob magazine, and 'High In A Flat' added to issue 27 of Bucketful Of Brains. A couple of years later he released a split single with The Walking Seeds on Clawfist Records, which I wanted to include as it's a cracking track and it's nigh on impossible to find online (so you'll have to excuse the sound quality of my vinyl rip), and pointing the way to the sound that we would hear on the albums that followed. There have been recent retrospectives for both The Von Trap Family and Room 13 made available on Bandcamp, so if you like what you hear then do check them out.   

Track listing

Oddsocks
01 Sphinx (1975)
02 Blind And Unknowing (1975)

The Von Trap Family
03 Brand New Thrill (1980)
04 Dreaming Again (1980)
05 No Reflexes (1980)

Room 13
06 Murder Mystery (1982)
07 Need Some Dub (1982)

The Bevis Frond Museum 
08 African Violet (1987, given away with issue 4 of Freakbeat magazine)

The Bevis Frond
09 Bad Time (1988, given away with issue 36 of The Bob magazine)
10 High In A Flat (1988, given away with issue 27 of Bucketful Of Brains magazine)
11 Sexorcist (1990, split single with The Walking Seeds covering each other's songs)