Thursday, February 28, 2019

Marcus ~ USA ~ Kentucky


From the House of Trax (1979)

You can practically count the number of 1960's styled psychedelic albums from 1979 on one finger, and well.... here it is. I remember reading about this album in Paul Major's Sound Effects catalogs in the late 1980s. His description of the negative blue image with Marcus chained to the Earth is what you'd expect of a literary classic, not a catalog of LP rarities. Funk, disco, punk, hard rock, and early heavy metal are what 1979 was about - not heavily phased folk rock that sounded like it had just come out of a time machine circa 1968. Just like today, there are albums that try to sound like they're from 1971. Most sound like 2014 resembling 1971. But there are a few that pull it off - that really make you think you've transported time. Marcus has done exactly that - except back in 1979 when the idea of doing this hadn't really even existed. Groundbreaking in its own way I suppose.

Vocalist / guitarist / leader Marcus McDonald is an enigma, bouncing around in the beautiful environs between Kentucky and Indiana. His album was truly one of a kind from the era in which it was released. Take out the psychedelic phasing element, and I'm not sure you have much more than a straight ahead rock album with a folk bent. But with that, yea, it's a pretty cool album for certain.

1992 private (LP). Acquired in 1992.

1992; 7/11/14; 2/28/19 (review / new entry) 

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