Lost and Found

rare and not-so-rare items worth finding again...

By Andrew Lau

Item #0004 –New Tweedy Bros!

Who: Arguably the most obscure San Francisco (via Portland, Oregon) psych band.

What: New Tweedy Bros! (Ridon 234, 1968): insanely hard-to-find, self-titled debut album and one of the best of its era. Original copy recently sold on Ebay for $1775.00

Where: By saying that it’s “doubtful” that you or I will ever lay our grubby little paws on an original copy is putting it lightly. Thankfully re-issued on CD (Shadoks 018, 2001) with extra tracks (who knew those even existed?) and therefore not very hard to find.

Why: Of all the words that’s been written about the oh-so grand, swinging, free loving, psychedelic, drug-taking, love-making no-holds-barred sixties (and the bay area’ involvement in particular) very, very, very, very little has been written about the New Tweedy Bros! These guys pounded out an album sparkling with LSD visions and finely crafted folk-rock only to watch it sink like a stone. Not all the bands from this period followed Jefferson Airplane to the top of the charts and into their own mansions; in fact the missing-in-action list of this era is long as it is grim; some bands make it and others don’t, it’s as easy as that.

What you have here is a blend of folk rock, jug band and acid rock…quite a combination, sure, but it works. The instrumentation make-up of this little record is bountiful: drums, guitar (acoustic and electric), bass, banjo, violin or fiddle, cans, kazoos, maracas, washboard, harmonica, triangle, autoharp and tenor vocals that blends and contrasts against each other. Fred and Dan Lackaff, Steve Ekman and Dave Mclure share song writing duties and proceed to make a subtle stroke of genius. The joyous stomp of “I Can See It” and “What’s Wrong With What”; the creepy chant-like dirge of “Wheels Of Fortune”; the grinning haze of “Lazy Livin’” and “Danny’s Song”; the confident strut of “I See Your Looking Fine”; the death-like sounds “Her Darkness In December” and “Someone Just Passed By” …all of it apparently steeped in the finest quality liquid LSD that only someone like Owsley Stanley III could provide. There is an unmistakable glee these boys produce in their music that can only be matched by the early work of Country Joe & The Fish. Judging by the calamity of the music, these guys liked to trade off instruments and stir things up in the studio, which only deepens the singular air of this record.

So why did this thing disappear?

Well, they were sunk by their own design. It’s the artwork for this record gets more attention than the music…and that’s not hard to discount since it’s such a marvel. Here’s the deal: The cover is supposed to be shaped like a cube (but in 2-D, of course) (a sugar cube to be exact since that was where the real heads would store their precious hits of liquid LSD-25) and if you study the cover long enough you’ll see what they were going for since it has six sides to it…it’s shaped like a hexagon fer cryin’ out loud. And it has a foil finish (as opposed to the usual paste-on paper covers of that time). PLUS it folds out three times. So what you have here is a die-cut, hexagon shaped, triple gatefold, foil finished LP cover. Damn, how much did that cost in 1968? You gotta hand it to the boys for their perseverance on this one. It makes that Warhol designed peel-off banana on the front of the Velvet Underground’s first LP look like a junior high art project. Nuts to that. Anyway, the album notes modestly reads: “jacket design—Fred”. One can only figure that is Tweedy Bro Fred Lackaff.

So, yeah, it looks pretty sweet…except that when the retailers pulled this gem out of the boxes and prepared to stock it in their hip little stores they found that this hexagon shaped record WOULDN’T FIT INTO THE RACKS. And we know what happens to records that don’t fit into the shelves, right? They get stored behind the counter and away from the curious eyes of the costumers, that’s what. But this little record didn’t have a major label to promote and advertise it and therefore not too many kids were walking in asking for the hot new The New Tweedy Bros! record. It dies a lonely death, perhaps selling even worse that Skip Spence’s Oar. Their fate was sealed.

But fear not, curiosity seekers, those crazy German folks over at Shadoks Music (forcedexposure.com) reissued this baby in 2001 and mercilessly kept the original 2-D cube triple gatefold, die-cut hexagon, foil finish design; a miniature version of the real thing, even down the original serial numbers on the spine. And guess what? THIS ONE DOESN’T FIT INTO THE RACKS EITHER, which I’m sure the Shadoks people knew all along because only the perverse would pull a gag like that.

The New Tweedy Bros!: four young men who not only knew how to make a solid acid/rock/folk/jugband album but could assemble a record cover so elaborate that it ends up sinking their ship. Yeah, that’s right, this thing is a masterpiece. Remember, this CD is available to you, the consumer, and I would strongly suggest looking for it behind glass counters, in display cases or ask for it by name…it’s out there.