Terry Masters ~ USA ~ Minneapolis, Minnesota

Thesaurus (197?)

We have quite the discovery to share today! It's been a long time, going back to the CDRWL days, that we had something this much fun to share. This one was discovered the old fashioned way - me taking a chance by buying the vinyl online. Score!

So who is Terry Masters anyway? Well if you start digging around the ole' World Wide Web, you'll discover that he had one 45 released under the avoid-at-all-costs name of Terry Masters at the Organ. You can hear one of the three tracks on YouTube (not bad really, guessing a 1970 provenance). Beyond that, what you'll find is Masters was basically a nightclub crooner. You can see and hear live clips on YouTube from 1983 of him sitting at the keyboards and singing Hall & Oates, Bob Seger, that sort of thing. Apparently he was playing Vegas shows, as well as performing lounge music in his native Minneapolis. This ties in with the narrative we then read on the back of this private press (which shows a forlorn Masters in a toga made from what looks like an old bathrobe): "Many people ask Terry to do the music he really enjoys, but limited to dance music on the job, he is not always able to play from the heart. Now, accompanied by John Calder on the drums, Terry creates the music everyone has requested and shows his great versatility on the organ, bass and mellotron. We hope this completely instrumental and spontaneous album will give you a new insight into the "other  side" of Terry Masters."

Ummm... something tells me this isn't what his fan base had in mind. When I purchased the LP, the seller fortunately photo'd the back cover so I could read the above quote. Without that I would not have taken the chance. An instrumental album with mellotron can't be that bad I figured. I actually thought this was going to be an electronic rock album with drums, similar to perhaps Klaus Schulze on Moondawn, but without synthesizers and more organ. Nope. It's an instrumental prog rock album all the way! Just two side long excursions titled rather predictably 'Thesaurus I' and 'Thesaurus II'.  The music is very free form, loose in structure, but not noisy or avant-garde in the slightest. It's very engaging I must say. And it is absolutely slathered in mellotron. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this album has more mellotron than any 1970s era album discovered in the last 20 years. The album really has no obvious comparisons. Of course one could pull out ELP as a desperate attempt, but that's really scratching the surface. Probably the closest comparison I can come up with is Siloah on Sukram Gurk, but more professional sounding than that would imply. Perhaps also The Trip at the time of Caronte, if one considers the instrumental work, and replaces guitar for mellotron. John Calder is going nuts on the drum kit, playing in an almost jazzy manner, but clearly on amphetamines. Calder incidentally was the drummer for none other than Podipto, a relatively well known country rock band from northern Minnesota who had one major label release in 1970.

Finding info about this album is nigh impossible, though there have been a handful of sales on ebay, as archived by Popsike. Mostly not expensive either. One dealer called it "folk psych", clearly they did not take the time to hear the album, as it is of course, neither. Other auctions call it a "synth" album. None of those either (though some people do erroneously call a mellotron a "synth").

An album truly out of nowhere. Not brilliant or the greatest lost album of our time, but certainly excellent on the whole. If for nothing else, worth hearing for its unique sound crafted inside a more familiar terrain. Sadly, Terry Masters passed away in the summer of 2018. Hopefully he got to tell his story to someone, or wrote it down somewhere. I certainly would like to know more.

There is no date listed anywhere on the LP. Judging by his look, the way the album is presented, and the instrumentation, I would think 1973 is about right. Perhaps 1975 as heartland America always had these nutty outliers. But these are pure guesses on my part.

Ownership: Tektra (LP). Brown textured single sleeve with indented red lettering.

No reissues as I update this post (3/8/25).

2/2/19 ( review / new entry); 1/3/22 (update)

Steve Tibbetts ~ USA ~ Minneapolis, Minnesota

Steve Tibbetts (1977)

Steve Tibbetts' debut album is as groundbreaking as his more recognized second album Yr. My recollection of his debut was something more akin to an instrumental acoustic guitar album with a blazing freakout electric piece at the end. But actually there's more than that on display. There are synthesizers throughout, and the acoustic guitar accompaniment is more common in what one would hear on a French electronic album back in the 1970s. Which makes me wonder if Tibbetts didn't spend a bit of time in the Import section of his local Minneapolis record store. And, yea, 'How Do You Like My Buddha?' is still a killer closer.

Ownership: 1977 Frammis (LP)

9/14/18 (acquired / review)

Yr (1980)

Minneapolis based guitarist Steve Tibbett's second album is quite a diversion from his debut, and as well for the ECM label that reissued this a full eight years after the fact (with a new cover). Starting where 'How Do You Like My Buddha?' left off from the otherwise all-acoustic debut, Tibbetts gets straight to the point of the album at hand. The all instrumental Yr features Tibbetts on acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards (including quite a bit of mellotron), and all sorts of stringed instruments. Accompanying him is a bassist, and no less than four credited percussion players. So while the album cannot help but feel tribal, especially looking eastward toward Asia, the album doesn't comfortably fit in genres such as World Fusion or New Age. Primarily this is due to Tibbett's decidedly psychedelic guitar style. There really is no album like Yr in the vast annals of musical history, that I'm aware of anyway. Including from Tibbetts himself who more or less began to adopt the ECM aesthetic going forward. Perhaps early David Torn provides a slight guidepost, but this is far more warm and alive. Even if you've heard other Tibbetts albums, I strongly encourage you to lend an ear to Yr (so to speak). It's a revelation.

Ownership: 1980 Frammis (LP). With signed insert #769. Artist is shown as Steve Tibbtz.

1991 (CD acquired); 7/24/13; 8/11/15; 7/17/18 (review)

7/17/18 (new entry)