Shag - Selftitled (Great Late Sixties Heavy-Psych US 1969)

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This Milwaukee band is remembered for its 1967 psych 7" "Stop & listen". what is not known about them is their 1969 studio recordings in San Francisco. The band layed down some excellent psychedelic tracks at the time the Grateful Dead were finishing their "Workingman's dead". 

These recordings have never been released before and their use of the flute was similar to Jethro Tull's popularisation of this instrument. Recorded in 1969 at the same studio the Grateful Dead were laying down their classic "Workingman's Dead" LP. This Wisconsin band had a minor hit with "Stop & Listen" in 1967. Great late 60's Psych with a tasteful assortment of flute, fuzz guitar, and organ!!

First based in Milwaukee band, The Shag released, over the 60’s two punk/garage singles (the first one under the name The Shags), which are to be found on various compilations. In 1969 the final version of the group, which now had moved to California also have recorded a full album of material at “PHR” at the open hours when Grateful Dead were not recording and creating their “Working Man’s Dead”. Although the recordings were promising they never got a record deal with it and they remained unknown and unreleased until now. Here the group plays hard, mostly bluesy, psychedelic rock with great fuzz guitars and a good rhythm section, as perfect music for night club performances, not only suitable to get drunk on beer to. 

“Gypsies on the Forest” is my favourite track, -a classic if you ask me, a bit reminiscent of Rufus Zuphall-, which is very rhythmic-melodic and has great rocking flute. “Mad Matter” has a great late night fuzz jam rock drive, and some mad laughter on the background. “Riddle” is a harder rock song, while “Anyone’s Song” is an ok common ’baby' rock song. “Cold Duck Wino” continues this way slightly more calmy rocking, with fine fuzz solos. "Lavender Tab, Ooh dilly dilly" is like the first track, has again a partial rhythmical-melodic partly song drive, while "Lovely Lady" rhythmically is a calmer rock song with some more fuzz.

Shag is not a great album qua album (mainly because it was not intended as an album at all) but is certainly strong enough to suggest how impressive a band Shag was at the height of its abilities. And that makes it another eminently worthwhile (if not indispensable) archival find by the folks at Gear Fab. In fact, the collector community to which the specialty reissue label caters had for years been aware of the quartet's prowess on the basis of a 45 cut in its earlier incarnation (when a "the" still came affixed to the band name). At the time calling Milwaukee, WI home, the Shag cut the garage-psych gem "Stop and Listen" on Capitol Records in 1967, a song that, decades later, would be a minor staple of '60s punk and psychedelic compilations (appearing most prominently on the fifth entry in the Pebbles series). Unbeknownst even to most of the aforementioned collectors, the band subsequently moved to the San Francisco area in 1968 and, while establishing a reputation as a live act on the city's famous ballroom circuit, made an album-length, studio-recorded demo that was left unreleased until the appearance of this CD 36 years after the fact. 

What the set tells us about the group is that its variation on the West Coast sound had much to recommend it, even in the rough-cut, unvarnished form this recording comes to us in. If occasionally derivative, particularly of local favorites the Jefferson Airplane (with whom Shag shared a stage), and merely adequate in the songwriting department (at its least charged, the music slots somewhere on the jam continuum between Santana and Grand Funk Railroad), on balance the playing here is pretty terrific. You can't help but to wonder what these songs would have sounded like dressed up by a professional -- or, really, any -- production. Even without a proper finish, though, the pair of tunes that opens the recording is a scintillating combination of the two: in the fuzzy flute funk of "Gypsies in the Forest," the gauzy pre-Woodstock summer might have found one of its themes, had anyone heard it at the time; and the wonderfully hectic, down-the-rabbit-hole jam "Mad Hatter," with its cake layers of bells and whistles and pots & bottle tops percussion, gives an indication of how powerfully Shag must have come across in live performance, as cups of electric Kool-Aid made their way around the dancefloor.

A fine discovery.

01. Gypsies In The Forest - 3.06
02. Mad Hatter - 2.58
03. Riddle - 2.47
04. Anyone´s Song - 2.46
05. Cold Duck Wino - 6.17
06. Lavendar Tab, Ooh Dilly Dilly - 7.26
07. Lovely Lady - 4.08

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