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