progressive

This is a mind-blowing album on several fronts.

Firstly, because Tamam Shud formed almost 50 years ago: and could be last Australian band still standing from the ‘60s (certainly from the alternative and underground.) I cannot think of anyone else. The album features two of the founding members, Lindsay Bjerre (vocals and guitar) and Peter Baron (bass) from 1967; and two more members who were there four years later, in Tim Gaze (guitar) and Nigel MaCara (drums) from the ”Morning of the Earth” soundtrack era.

Historically, Tamam Shud was the first Australian band to put out a an album full of original compositions when “Evolution” was released late in 1968: There is not one Australian band that I can think of with original members, from their heyday; that has come up with a new album nearly 50 years later so the release of this on vinyl is an historical event.

It’s their fifth studio album and it’s tempting to say the lines have become blurred between Nunchukka Superfly and the Hard-Ons, from which two of its three members are drawn. That’d be convenient but also wrong.

This is one of those “lost album” stories. It’s about a record - no, three vinyl LPs of recordings - by an obscure San Franciscan band that existed in the 1960s and ‘70s - and its body of work that was built, buried and all but forgotten for 40 years.

This is a time capsule of a band you probably never heard of. Uther Pendragon were as underground as they come. They arose out of the San Francisco Bay Area in 1966, played with the likes of Country Joe & The Fish and won local prominence. They recorded extensively for the next 10 years but didn’t release a thing. That's nada. Zilch.

They took on half a dozen different names and morphed from folkish rock into psychedelia and hard rock. They lived communally and played in an occult rock opera. The polar opposite of “Jesus Christ Superstar”, which threw a career lifeline to a gaggle of Aussie rock stars in the ‘70s.