David Del Conte was born and raised in Rochester, New York and moved with his family to southern California as a young teen. Obviously the freewheeling 60s culture of The Bear Republic captured the imagination of Del Conte wildly, and he transformed from a lounge crooner to the ultimate outsider psych head - complete with an ankh earring. Damon's singing style isn't that far removed from Jim Morrison and there are many parallels in their approach to music.
Song of a Gypsy is such a bullseye for what record collectors are looking for, one would almost think it was manufactured to be so from some modern enterprising record label. The album combines the loner, real people, authentic lost-soul archetype with screaming fuzz psychedelics. It's almost too good to be true. But it is absolutely real, and thus Song of a Gypsy is most certainly in the top 10 of sought after psychedelic LPs, if not #1 for those who love the obscure.
In what has to be one of the odder conclusions for such a psychedelic gypsy, what did Damon do for a living during the 1980s? Obvious he played street corners and panhandled for money, or lived a secluded life in a forest hidden from everyone but wolves and deer. Right? Nope. He ran a bowling alley in So Cal owned by his family. That must have been some bowling alley! Will require more than a fingertip grip to Strike that one from the mind. Though, come to think of it, the Amoeba in Haight Ashbury was an old bowling alley. There's a hidden meaning in there somewhere. Perhaps I listened to Damon too much last night....
7/16/97 (UTR magazine); 2005; 7/9/20 (new entry)
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