Knocker Jungle

There seems to be a pretty huge avalanche of beard-rock/psych/folk reissues these days and frankly quite a few remind me why the original records remained in the dollar bins all these years. But with high bar holders in the genre like Comus, early Bolan, Jan Dukes de Grey, Linda Perhacs, Heron and ICB to name a few, there are plenty of contenders left to sort through and some gems still in need of rediscovery. The UK label Acrobat just sent along a reissue of Knocker Jungle's 1970 debut, allegedly left off of store shelves at the time due to an image of one of the two members of the group flippin' the bird on the sleeve. Not much else known about the record other than Fairport's drummer guests, and the album was produced by Tony Cox who had worked with Magna Carta and Tir Na Nog. While the album itself isn't quite a classic, and a bit less outward-looking than some of the above-mentioned high bar purveyors, there's a subtle bit of charm and acid damage going on. Check out the fluttery "I Don't Know Why" (MP3), courtesy of Acrobat.

Comments

[Dale Hazelton]

Not bad, further investigations showed that Cox played keyboards here. I didn't know he was married to Yoko Ono

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob70.html

Magna Carta's 'Seasons' is always worth a drag out of the closet. They turned to Rick Wakeman on keyboards for 'Lord of the Ages' and it got a bit trippy.

[Dale Hazelton]

Not bad, further investigations showed that Cox played keyboards here. I didn't know he was married to Yoko Ono

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob70.html

Magna Carta's 'Seasons' is always worth a drag out of the closet. They turned to Rick Wakeman on keyboards for 'Lord of the Ages' and it got a bit trippy.