Lily - V.C.U. (We See You). 1973 Germany

As the liner notes of the Garden of Delights CD state: "(Lily) had a specific style of their own and were almost uninfluenced by other bands." Amen to that. You'll hear snippets of other Krautrock bands such as Nine Days Wonder, Nosferatu, Out of Focus, Thirsty Moon, and Brainstorm. And yet none are really that similar. Psychedelic guitar and saxophone are the primary instrumental vehicles here, while the rhythm drives forward the compositions at a healthy clip. An excellent album.

The album cover and band moniker, of course, does the band no favors at all. Completely misrepresented as some sort of 3rd rate and unfunny glam rock band, Lily is none of the above. The actual name of the group was Monsun. But some moron at Bellaphon thought that since Tiger B. Smith were selling well with their glam image, so should Lily. And one and done Monsun goes...
 
The CD version contains 40 minutes of bonus material (tracks 7 to 10) meant for a second, yet unreleased, album from 1974. These are of lesser sound - and music - quality. It's loose jam material for sax/guitar for the most part, and certainly are worthy as bonus tracks.

Personal collection
CD: 2002 Garden of Delights

Originals are a single sleeve with a particularly dumb cover (we discuss this above). Good thing they interpreted VCU, otherwise who would know? All the same, originals are scarce and fairly expensive. The only CD is from the always great Garden of Delights, and this was my introduction to the album upon its release. On this reissue, you get a full album's worth of material from what was to be their second album in 1974. And of course all the usual great liner notes, photos, etc... Garden of Delights is the gold standard for CD reissues!