Tuesday, November 22, 2005

CHARLIE TWEDDLE'S FANTASTIC GREATEST HITS

Charlie Tweddle's 1971 self-released home recording, "Fantastic Greatest Hits", could be the work of Hasil Adkin's hippie nephew: avant-hillbilly-psychedelia is one possible description of it's contents. According to Companion Records, who have reissued this rare-as-hens'-teeth album on CD, "Charlie's pharmaceutical wanderings led him to believe he was a real life prophet and that his brand of Appalachian Psychedelia would change the world. Instead, the LP was almost universally panned and he spun off into a deep depression from which he wouldn't emerge for several years."

Several years after recording these odes to nature (and flying saucers), he meticulously created artwork and packaging, pressed up 500 copies and released it (under the name "Eilrahc Elddewt") to a puzzled, scornful world: "The LP was hand-distributed and received only minimal positive feedback; sales were poor.Why? Well for one, side two of the album is 25 minutes of chirping crickets and sound fragments. The abrupt patches of dead air on side one probably didn't help much either. More than a few of these albums were returned as "defective". Of course, all of these production moves were intentional."

Scroll to the bottom of this page for mp3 excerpts.Track #8 sounds like three recordings playing simultaneously - spoken word, country music, and a sci-fi soundtrack.

No comments: