Fifty Foot Hose: Cauldron 1967

Fifty Foot Hose is an American underground rock band that formed in San Francisco in the late 1960s, and reformed in the 1990s. They were one of the first bands to fuse rock and experimental music. Like a few other acts of the time (most notably the United States of America), they consciously tried to combine the contemporary sounds of rock with electronic instruments and avant-garde compositional ideas.
                                                                

                                                             
The original group comprised three core members: founder and bassist Louis "Cork" Marcheschi, guitarist David Blossom, and his wife, vocalist Nancy Blossom, augmented by Kim Kimsey (drums)

and Larry Evans (guitar). David and Nancy Blossom brought both psychedelic and jazz influences to the band. Together, the trio recorded a demo which led to a deal with Limelight Records, a subsidiary of Mercury Records. They released one album, Cauldron, in December 1967. It contained eleven songs, including "Fantasy", "Red the Sign Post" and "God Bless the Child", a cover of a Billie Holiday number. It was an intriguing mix of jazzy psychedelic rock tunes with fierce and advanced electronic sound effects. "I don't know if they are immature or premature", said critic Ralph J. Gleason.
                                                                                 

The record sold few copies at the time, although the group had a small but intense following in San

Francisco and also toured with other acts including Blue Cheer, Chuck Berry and Fairport Convention, when the band was augmented by Robert Goldbeck (bass). They broke up in late 1969, when most of its members joined the musical Hair.
                                                          

Here is maybe one of the weirdest and strangest records to come out at the time and that’s saying a lot. You would never believe listening to this record that it crept out of San Francisco.  It sounds a million miles away from every other band from there. It’s a heady mixture going on here. Everything from straight ahead rock to blues to psych to soul to folk to avant-garde tape manipulation.

A masterpiece of experimental psych and one of the most unique sounding albums of the late 60s. Despite being so out there, it is still incredibly listenable and, maybe because of the very smooth transitions throughout the album, really carries you along. Essential if you're into psych.
                                                        

And there are the weird electronic sounds interspersed between the songs, all the work of one Louis

Marcheschi who created the synths from scratch. You have the crazed, mind-bending take on Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” that no doubt members of The Residents took to heart. There’s the heavy acid fry of “Red The Sign Post” punctuated throughout what sounds like some otherworldly cow bell, and the gut wrenching psych soul of “If Not This Time”.
                                              

There’s the hypnotic blues folk of “Fly Free”, and it ends with “Desire”, which starts off as what seems to be a rather straightforward uptempo blues vamp only to become a crazed schizo ripper that I bet the Butthole Surfers listened to more than once down in Texas.
                                                      

The album was all but ignored at the time and sadly the original group disbanded and never made another album. Fun fact, most of them went on to be in a touring company of the musical Hair.  

THE ETHIX

                                                                      

Extremely rare 7" by Fifty Foot Hose band members. Bad Trip was recorded with Bob Noto on Guitar - Bob Gibson screaming and hollering and Cork Marcheschi playing bass and hitting a large card board tube with a stick. They recorded it on a two track sony in Cork's parents family room and put Bob in the bath room as a kind of sound booth. It was Cork’s way to deal with Music Concrete and he suggested that the record could be played at any speed, his love for Dadaism was fully realized in Bad Trip.

FIFTY FOOT HOSE – CAULDRON... PLUS RARE AND UNISSUED TRACKS
Label:    Big Beat Records – CDWIKD 158
Series:    Nuggets From The Golden State
Format:    CD, Album, Reissue 1996
Country: UK
Released: 1967    
Genre: Rock
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Experimental

TRACKS

                                                                                     

01. Fifty Foot Hose – And After    2:06
02. Fifty Foot Hose – If Not This Time    3:39
03. Fifty Foot Hose – Opus 777    0:22
04. Fifty Foot Hose – The Things That Concern You    3:30
05. Fifty Foot Hose – Opus 11    0:26
06. Fifty Foot Hose – Red The Sign Post    2:58
07. Fifty Foot Hose – For Paula    0:30
08. Fifty Foot Hose – Rose    5:07
09. Fifty Foot Hose – Fantasy    10:14
10. Fifty Foot Hose – God Bless The Child    2:36
11. Fifty Foot Hose – Cauldron    4:55
12. Fifty Foot Hose – If Not This Time (Demo)    3:39
13. Fifty Foot Hose – Red The Sign Post (Demo)    2:17
14. Fifty Foot Hose – Fly Free (Demo)    2:41
15. Fifty Foot Hose – Desire (Demo)    11:39

THE ETHIX

                                               

16. The Ethix – Bad Trip (33 rpm)    3:21
17. The Ethix – Skins    2:24
18. The Ethix – Bad Trip (45 rpm)    2:03

Notes
Track 1 is a two minute oscillating tone. There is nothing wrong with your CD player.
Tracks 1 to 11 were previously released as the LP "Cauldron" in 1967.

MP3 @ 320 Size: 152 MB
Flac  Size: 322 MB