Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 129

Record label: ABC

Produced: Tom Wilson

Recorded: Mayfair Studios, New York; February 1968

Released: 1968

Chart Peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Connie Devanney (v); Ken Frankel (g, banjo); Richard Griggs (g, v); Carey Mann (b, v); David Kinsman (d)

Track listing: Walkin’ And Singin’; People Of The Night; Little Man; Dark World; L.A.P.D.; High Flying Bird; Hung Up Chick; Sleep; Full Cycle

Further listening: The Boston Sound (1968) contextualises Ill Wind’s sound

Further reading: www.zvonar.com

Download: Not currently legally available

For every mediocre hippie band that sold a million records, another excellent one barely registered. Ill Wind had a sound of their own, irreproachable chops, excellent tunes and a major label record deal – but were scuppered by the catalogue of blunders that peppered their album’s path to the few shops it ever appeared in.

The seeds of Ill Wind lay at MIT, the extremely competitive university in Boston where four of the band studied and threw themselves headlong into the counter-culture. ‘We were into unusual music and unorthodox behaviour, and actively sought out marijuana and LSD,’ recalls Richard Griggs, their rhythm guitarist. Renaming themselves Ill Wind in late 1966, they were joined by the icy-voiced Connie Devanney, wife of one of their professors, and gigged solidly throughout the new year, supporting Fleetwood Mac, Moby Grape, Van Morrison, The Who and others.

By summer 1967 things were happening in earnest. Demos were cut at Capitol, but an untimely LSD bust put paid to that. Enter Tom Wilson, legendary producer of Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel and The Velvet Underground, who promptly signed them to his fledgling production company. Having signed away their recording and publishing rights, they delightedly started work on an album – but were soon to be disappointed. For all his promises, Wilson made little effort in the studio. ‘We got to record an album’, remembers Griggs, ‘but weren’t at all happy with the recording process or the finished result’.

Despite this, Flashes contains some of the finest psychedelia conceivable. People Of The Night, for instance, centres on an epic five-minute Eastern-tinged guitar solo that never stops gathering momentum over an ever more frantic rhythm section. The song also shows Devanney to have had one of the great female rock voices of the late ’60s, cold yet surprisingly emotive. But the album’s masterpiece is Dark World, one of the most personal and beautiful of all psychedelic recordings and graced with an unusual, sombre fuzz bass solo.

Recording complete, the band were unprepared for the volley of blows awaiting them. The album’s tacky front cover, complete with incorrect song information and poorly reproduced photos on the rear, was injury enough. But adding insult was a pressing fault that necessitated the recall of the initial pressing. By the time it had been corrected, momentum was lost. No interviews were organised, so no airplay was arranged, so no reviews appeared. A promotional tour was cancelled and, trapped in a contract they resented, Ill Wind blew itself out at the end of 1968.