Early this year there was an interview and a few really interesting live recordings of the Hampton Grease Band. The band only released one album Music To Eat, which is now considered a classic. The record is in the same sort of genre as Captain Beefheart and weird early Zappa. It has been reissued over the years but was still elusive up until recently where it is now available on Spotify, and of course on this PHC podcast as well.
Earlier this year an
interview of the band on WKCR on 8.30.71 magically appeared on the internet,
revealing the band’s experiences in New York City dealing with indifferent
audiences and talking about their influences in a dada absurdist tone that was
their trademark. It really provides some much-needed context of the band for
the time and their attitude towards the art that they were creating. An entire
concert of Hampton Grease Band at the
1970 Atlanta Pop Festival was also uploaded, as well as a couple of other live
tracks.
All of this comes at a
very productive time for Col. Bruce
Hampton. He has a movie coming out on April 3rd called
Here Comes Rusty. He has also just done a reunion with Hampton Grease Band, Aquarium Rescue Unit (Including a sit in with John Mclaughlin from Mahavishnu Orchestra) and there was a recent documentary on him called Basically Frightened. On top of all of
that his most recent 2014 Pharoah’s Kitchen was really good. He’s been at it as
long as anybody, and still continues to make interesting and challenging music.
If that's not a total information overload, here is a really sweet recent article by Glen Phillips, founding member and guitarist of Hampton Grease Band.
