Glenn Phillips, Guitarist extraordinaire,  has the inside story of The Hampton Grease Band history as only a member of the bandknows it.

The Hampton Grease Band were a main stay of the community and seemed always ready to play for a good cause. This show was memorable because I was at Emory and knew the Young Republicans who supported Nixon and his Vietnam policy. They stopped just short of being pro-war activists. 

We had driven to Emory’s AMB, really enjoyed the Greaseband experience of that evening, even though Young Republicans could be heard outside trying to be disruptive. I had driven The Celestial Omnibus, my hippie VW bus. We returned to leave and the bus would not go backwards.   We assumed a flat tire but found more when we checked in the dark. ‘Someone’ had slashed all four tires to ribbons; their idea of debate. Luckily a friend ran Mother’s Tire Company and brought over four replacements.

The unique Mr. Bruce Hampton. Bruce’s site

 Scott Freeman on the band.

Suck Rock

Hampton Grease Band review

What’s Grease?

Julian Cope’s Review  of  Music to Eat  for unsung heroes 

2006 Reunion concert

Harold Kelling, RIP, helped raise funds for the new Little Five Points community.

Col. Bruce Hampton @ 2007 Inman Park Festival

The tragedy and triumph of Glenn Phillips’ ‘Lost at Sea’

Glenn Phillips Band 2008 Redlight Cafe St. Patrick’s Day

The Glenn Phillips Band RainShadows live

Glenn Phillips – Scotland

Glenn Phillips w/ Peter Stroud-11/07

Glenn Phillips – Live in Athens, Georgia – “John Marshall”

Glenn Phillips- Live in Athens, GA-1996 – “Vista Cruiser”

The Great Speckled Bird  vol 2 #26 pg. 14

hot grease

Sunday in the Park. Coo] breeze, light rain, sun – shine, sweet air and green, summer held motionless before fading gently out. People filter down and come to rest around the pavilion, inhaling the pleasant sounds of a folk-rock trio named Robin. More people materialize, exchange greetings and mill about while Robin leaves the stage and the Hampton Grease Band begins to bring up equipment. A couple drops mescaline because they know this will be good; the music will be a gift to them.

The band is set up then and they begin a long instrumental riff, relaxed and feeling out the day, getting themselves together and the audience together with them. Harold Kelling’s long easy guitar notes climb up and soar out over insistent rhythms working though bass, drums, and second guitar. The music is alive and the audience is getting behind it now as the band finishes out the number and Bruce Hampton takes the mike, tightens the tempo and starts to take care of business, laying down hard driving lyrics that soon have the crowd swaying, clapping and then some are up dancing.

And on. The music and the gathering went steadily up from there. Shouting and stomping vocals. Beautiful stretched-out instrumentals, silver singing guitar solos beating against the raindrops. “Gonna Let My Love Light Shine.” Blues. Soul. Rock. The drummer leans into it. Incredible counterpoint guitar work between Glen Phillips and Harold Kelling. perfectly matched, pushing each other on out, exploding in sound, exploding the people who are following the music now like a jazz audience, applauding riff after riff.

An afternoon of music. People radiate out from its center, circling the pavilion, populating the hill behind it. An afternoon of life, peace and consciousness, a still center in Piedmont while our brothers get castrated in Taos, heads beaten elsewhere. We needed it. They’re some of the best things we’ve got, these afternoons. Space to breathe. And live. We need our musicians.

Look for another one of these medicine shows around the middle of September. They are free, because music and medicine and people and expression should be free. Musicians have to eat, though. Maybe we can do something for them, too, next time?

—Clifford endres

The Great Speckled Bird May 3, 1971 Vol. 4 #18 pg. 5

MUSIC TO EAT! FIVE YEARS IN THE MAKING! A CAST OF THOUSANDS!

Music to Eat

by the Hampton Grease Band  columbiaG30555

My first thought about the Hampton Grease Band’s new album is the same I had when the Allman Brothers’ record came out—it’s not the same music, of course, but the same feeling’, this is the band which has shared their music a thousand different times and a thousand different ways with our (their) community, and finally their efforts result in a chance for them to reach all the rest of those people out there, who I believe are gonna get their minds blown by music which I almost take for granted now—surely a kind of mild arrogance on my part, but more a natural pride and silent thanks as I witness Good Karma completing a cycle.

This album drastically deviates (does it ever!) from the write-some-quick-songs-go-into-the-studio-knock-out-an-album-in-two-days thing which is becoming a popular riff among groups. Anyone who has ever been at a Grease Band performance (and I use that word loosely) should know why. Probably the most critical part of the Grease experience is the chaotic interplay between the band and the audience (As Hampton once said, “They’re as much of what we’re playing about as we are …”; the resulting wide-open environment provides the chance for magnificent musical experimentation, and allows moments of weak music to go mostly unnoticed. Thus, for the Grease Band, submitting to the discipline of making tight, flawless music in the unnatural surroundings of a studio was a long, energy-draining process. For example, I was at the studio the night the band cut “Evans.”‘ For six hours they did re-take after re-take, Hampton being confined in a special soundbooth with only close.. friend Sam Whitesides for an audience. As the night progressed, the strain and tension of getting the full lyrical power of “Evans” to a final version was very evident. Now, six months later, I hear the result. I think they did it.

The album is a “family” (ad)venture much in the form of the Grateful Dead’s music: the band provides a core for group of people whose personalities (?) and relationships with the band strongly influence the music look at the song titles “Evans,” “Hendon” “Burt’s Song”,  “Lawton. ‘) And the Grease Band and their family, from what I know and have heard, can usually be found playing on that thin edge where Genius and Insanity come together. Sid (of the family) once told me that they are all simply children who never grew up—1 think I am beginning to understand …

As a final thought, I’d like to reprint the answer the band gave in an old Bird interview to “What kind of music do you play?”: “Suckrock. It’s a combination between suckrock and ointment. See there are a couple of people in the world who are playing Grease -The Mothers, Igor Stravinsky, Bill Haley and the Comets. They all got their own kind of Grease. Otis Rush Blues Band, Albert King, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp. It’s not a musical form, it’s a musical concept. It can include any category. It covers country, it covers everything you do. Grease is a form of life; it’s also a form of eggs; it all leads back to eggs.” And eggs are to eat. So is their music.

—moe

The Hampton Grease Band were a main stay of the community and seemed always ready to play for a good cause. This show was memorable because I was at Emory and knew the Young Republicans who supported Nixon and his Vietnam policy. They stopped just short of being pro-war activists.

We had driven to Emory’s AMB, really enjoyed the Greaseband experience of that evening, even though Young Republicans could be heard outside trying to be disruptive. I had driven The Celestial Omnibus, my hippie VW bus. We returned to leave and the bus would not go backwards.   We assumed a flat tire but found more when we checked in the dark. ‘Someone’ had slashed all four tires to ribbons; their idea of debate. Luckily a friend ran Mother’s Tire Company on Ponce de Leon and brought over four replacements.

(Interview with Bruce Hampton)

Grease rap What’s Grease?

It’s a concept of music. It’s a concept of life. It means lobster eggs and ointment. It means basically to suck, yeah, basically to suck. It’s hard to define.

What kind of music is it?

Suckrock. It’s a combination between suckrock and ointment. Grease is a form of life; it’s also a form of music. It’s all a form of eggs; it all leads back to eggs.

Who understands your music here in Atlanta?

About three people. Every once in a while when we’re playing, people will say, “What’s that they’re doing?” They can’t get into what we’re doing because they’re looking for some local psychedelic be-bop band. What we try to do is create power. We just try to destroy. See, our main ambition in life aside from growing a bosom on top of our heads is to die on stage and when we die on stage that will be when we ultimately reach Grease. People are scared of us around here and they don’t let us play much. What they’re really afraid of is that, if they listen, they’ll find out that they’re really as much of what we’re playing about as we are. We try to be as honest as possible. It’s complete sincerity. There’s no put-on, no stage act.

What about technical ability?

You need to learn how to play. Everything has to be together and to destroy and it’s not a question of having a lot of technical capability. The goal is complete expression, and when you completely attain this expression, you won’t sound like anybody. You have your own sound and you just destroy. What we want people to do is just climb in and hear Grease and to destroy. Yeah, that’s it.

“Give me a gun, and I ‘ll blow your fucking head —Bruce Hampton

Like most heavy rock groups, the Hampton Grease Band suffers from overhype. The public has been drenched with news of their comings and goings, their backstage fighting, their messy private lives, their overt attempts to cash in on any current fad. Still, the band feels that in spite of the television, radio, and press coverage of their not-so-innocent antics, the music will endure. According to guitarist Harold Kelling, “Our music reflects BOLTS,” and this seems to be the real strength behind Grease.

One of the heaviest rock groups in the country, the HGB totals in at 785 pounds, not including equipment. They are 109 years old and come from Krele (pronounced krel), “eight light earth years away from this planet,” according to vocalist Bruce Hampton. What has always held them together is their hatred of the Band’s bassist, Charlie, whom they hold at arm’s length because of a Business Law degree from Oglethorpe College. Yet, Charlie is their leader. According to guitarist Glenn Phillips, “Charlie’s my big brother- my father image.” Manager for the HGB is Steve Cole of Discovery: “We first met Steve at the Catacombs- he said we were a good soul band and that if we put on coats and ties and worked on our act, he’d make us a lot of money!”

Unlike most rock groups, the Grease Band is heavily into political struggles: “We stand on our record,” they say when asked to define their politics. . Deeply into the study of communications media, just how hip the HGB is is illustrated by the fact that their politics was formulated not from the book, not even from the movie, but from the television show of “My Friend Flicka”!

Not content to rest on their laurels as musicians and entertainers, the Hampton Grease Band likes to get involved. For February they are planning the First International News Festival which will bring together in Montgomery, Alabama, for the first time Frank McGee, Sander Vanocur, Jerry Psenka, John Doyle, Hal Suit, Walter Cronkite and other news heavies. Hampton says there will be no police. Emcee will be Big Bill Hill, disc jockey from Chicago, fresh from his triumph at the Ann Arbor News Festival.

The HGB is currently working on production of a mammoth one-record album for BITE label which will be an exploration of the musical world of Norma Tanega as seen through the eyes of Immanuel Kant; it will be called Who Ate the World? or, more simply, FLAPS. Sample verse: “CANADE DOWN AND GROPE UNTIL, AROUND THE PEAK AT VQLTAG’S WILL. THE CRAYON FORTH AND SIX SHALL SPEAK, SATEEMUS BLONE CABLATIC GEEK.”

Two experiences that sum up the soul of the Hampton Grease Band most effectively are the time several years ago when Bruce Hampton was playing records in his grandmother’s basement, and she came downstairs yelling, “Turn off that goddam music –it sounds like bees\” Another time the band was playing the Catacombs “coffeehouse” and the Mother David underground establishment threw them out because their music was too loud, too electric, and too rock and roll: “They said we weren’t underground—they said we were sewerground!”

The Great Speckled Bird Oct 13, 1969 Vol. 2 #31 pg. 11

Suck Rock

The Hampton Grease Band is one of the most important staples in Atlanta’s fast-growing youth community of identification. We know they’re great, they are always there, and sometimes they’re better than-at other times; but unlike other rock groups in the area, the Hampton Grease Band seems to be taking on a community function in which music—rock and roll music, loud music, electric music, violent music, the high energy force for change that John Sinclair has talked about—serves as a spring in which a community can periodically refresh itself, a musical fountain of youth consciousness.

The HGB consists of vocalist (and now saxophonist Bruce Hampton (Taurus), guitarists Glenn Phillips (Aries) and Harold Kelling (Leo), bassist Charlie Phillips (Libra), and drummer Ted Levine (Pisces). Usually they do a long suite-type of thing which includes many different songs drawn from different periods in the development of rock, maybe laced with a couple of campy pieces, some from a Southern hymnal, some from nowhere you’re familiar with, all placed within the context of a free-floating cosmic music inspired by the best expressions of revolutionary black music in Amerika.

At the old Catacombs two years ago, the HGB seemed to be into a Paul Butterfield/Mike Bloomfield white blues thing, with jazz overtones; Hampton was just as insane then as he is now, but more into a self-destruction bag -one night he made use of an obviously spontaneous nose-bleed to turn one set into a horrific bash of monster, crashing blues rock; another night he seemed to be going absolutely wild and threw a drum set into the audience. The Grease Band still digs rock theatrics, but now more often that not expressed in the music itself. They have incorporated into their musical interaction a vocal shout, an antiphonal, non-verbal call and response series of shouts and yelps and exhortations. Hampton now honks and screams on a saxophone, and is experimenting successfully with jazz vocal techniques introduced into American black music by Pharoah Sanders’ group (it sounds like a hip yodel). His vocals are not as uptight as they once were. Whether shouting out some Howlin’ Wolf blues, running through “Rock Around the Clock,” or telling us about “Mr. Bones,” the strain in the voice is going, and the wonderful things Hampton is doing with the yodel technique indicate that he is even more seriously fashioning a vocal relationship with his instrumental pyrotechnics of the band. Hampton’s priorities are not misplaced: his foray into the territory marked by the great black vocalisms of Amerika stems from inspiration, not exploitation.

Instrumentally, what can you say about the Hampton Grease Band except that they are one of the best rockbands anywhere. Guitarists Glenn Phillps and Harold Kelling are fantastic soloists who prove that virtuosity need not be stultifying; together they do a sort of dual battle improvisational collective onslaught of she senses that free-floats with the bass-drum rhythm in a world we don’t often visit except through chemicals or through some equally shattering experience. Charlie Phillips, bassist for the group, is one of the most exciting, firmly swinging in the field; he answers, speaks to, comments on, disagrees, attacks, undercuts, supports, embraces and becomes one with the musical gestalt through which his own instrumental voice is carried. Now the band has a new drummer, Ted Levine, who is the best one they have ever had, a powerhouse of energy that finally provides the rhythmic foundation they have always needed. Together, they are simply dynamite.

At the same time the HGB moves forward, it seems also to reach farther back into its roots. While traveling freely into the cosmic territory of Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane, they will suddenly bring up the rear with Little Richard, or their versions of “That’ll Be The Day,” or “Walk Don’t Run.” It’s not a gimmick; they are saying that both approaches work well, they both express different phases, different levels or planes of the new. On a sunlit September Sunday in Piedmont Park, the Grease Band played what they consider to be the best thing they’ve done. The next Sunday was cloudy and rainy, and music turned into blue uniforms, tear gas, clubs and guns and blood. The following Sunday, the Hampton Grease Band, and other rock groups in the community, brought us all full circle back to free music in the park with a long, inter-connected set that seemed to sum up musically the history of our experience. They were heavily into their blues thing, their jazz thing, their basic rock thing; they made sounds drawn from the Ventures, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, soul, some original stuff, but now they are beginning to reflect the impact of white country music in a campy version of “Wolverton Mountain,” then “San Antonio Rose,” and even in a familiar Southern hymn, “Rock of Ages.”

We don’t recognize them often enough, we don’t “think” about them because they are so much a part of us. We remember them from earlier days, the first band to play in Piedmont Park, the first electric rock band to play at the old Catacombs. We know them from student get-togethers, teeny-bopper clubs in the suburbs, the Lotus “underground” film days at the Peachtree Art Theatre, the Bird birthday party, many beautiful Piedmont Park Saturdays and Sundays—and one ugly one—followed by the Sunday of free music that we won for ourselves by defending our people, our community, from the system that builds Colony Squares it can see and destroys invisible communities of human beings it doesn’t even recognize. There is nothing in the High Mausoleum of “Art” that can approach the relationship between artistic creation and aesthetic response that the Hampton Grease Band has given to Atlanta’s youth community. One kind of art hangs up on the wall, somebody owns it. The other belongs to the people who put the system and its values up against the wall. Hail, hail rock and roll!

-miller francis Jr.