Frumious Bandersnatch - A Young Man's Song

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jujub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!
- Lewis Carroll "Throuhg The Looking-Glass"

Frumious Bandersnatch to jeden z najbardziej zapomnianych zespołów "psychedelicznych", które działały w Kalifornii pod koniec lat sześćdziesiątych podczas hippisowskiej eksplozji miłości. Nazwa grupy nawiązuje do wersetu wiersza o potworze Jabberwocky'm z powieści "Po drugiej stronie lustra". Tego typu nazwy były w owym czasie bardzo popularne z uwagi na skojarzenia z podświadomością i środkami chemicznymi, które ponoć wspomagają jej eksplorowanie. O samej grupie generalnie nie wiadomo zbyt wiele choć była jedną z najbardziej kultowych i cieszyła się dużą popularnością. Grupa nie nagrała też żadnej płyty, co jest zjawiskiem bardzo dziwnym. Nagrania na płycie "A Young Man's Song" zostały zebrane i wydane dopiero w 1996 roku. Pierowtnie ukazały się na singlach i EP'kach. Muzyka, którą proponuje Frumious Bandersnatch nawiązuje do twórczości grup takich jak Grateful Dead, HP Lovecraft i Jefferson Airplane, ale stworzyła swój własny, niepowtarzalny styl i osobiście należy do grona moich ulubionych. Skład grupy:

Ross Valory - Bass & Lead Vocals
Jack King - Drums and Lead Vocals
Jimmy Warner - Lead Guitar
David Denny - Lead Guitar and Vocals
R.P. Winkelman - Rhythm Guitar and Lead Vocals
George Tickner - Rhythm Guitar
Jack Notestein - Bass Guitar & Vocal Harmony

If any one group can legimately qualify as the "great lost psychedelic band', then Frumious Bandersnatch is that group. The few tantalizing glimpses of the combo afforded by their solo release in the 1960s gained them an enormous reputation. The subsequent fortunes of its members in groups like Journey and The Steve Miller Band have only added to the phenomenon. The name, derived from Lewis Carroll's proto-psych 'Jabberwocky', has an air of psychedelic mystery to it. So, after years of wishful thinking on the part of psychedelic music aficionados all over the world we find the earnestness of this their latest achievment all the more extraordinary.

Bay area group that put out one ep in '68 of prime acid rock, including an outstanding song called "Hearts to Cry," which has to be one of the great lost psychedelic classics. A popular live act in San Francisco, who opened up for many big names and played all the big venues- The Fillmore,The Avalon, The Straight Theater, etc. Although besieged by record companies wanting to sign them, managerial blunders and personnel turnovers plagued them, and despite a great reception by the crowd at the Seattle Pop Festival, they failed to release anything but that three track ep. Some of these guys went on to acts like Steve Miller and, gulp, the awful Journey, what's funny about that timeframe is that a lot of people who went on to produce dreck in the next decade made good music in the previous one. An album of live tracks, outtakes, and an early version of a song on this ep was released about a decade ago, but it's mediocre at best overall, though there's a few decent tracks on it.

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