Col. Bruce Hampton & the Aquarium Rescue Unit
RS: 4 of 5 Stars Average User Rating:5 of 5 Stars
If the names Hampton Grease Band, the New Ice Age, the Late
Bronze Age, Col. Hampton B. Coles (Ret.) and the Aquarium Rescue
Unit fail to ring any bells, you have a major discovery ahead.
Bruce Hampton, the mercurial mind behind all these manifestations,
has been an American Ascended Master since his 1969 CBS album
Music to Eat was launched upon an unsuspecting world. Passed
over during the heyday of Southem rock for crimes of high weirdness,
Hampton and company built up a rabid regional following playing
grueling club dates across the South until Phil Walden re-formed
Capricorn Records last year. Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium
Rescue Unit is the result: If you were expecting retooled Allman
Brothers, Marshall Tucker or Wet Willie, think again.
Actually, Hampton's Georgia roots are in evidence – there's
a bit of the Allmans' jazzier mode of improvising, Sea Level's
sophisticated song structures and Wet Willie's cranked-up roadhouse
R&B in the ARU's stylistic mix master. But this music is
also post-Beefheart, post-Steely Dan, postbebop, post-Dixie
Dregs, post-Sun Ra – it's just about posteverything. And
somewhere in there, among the superchops soloing on electric
guitar (Jimmy Herring), way-post-bluegrass electric mandolin
(Matt Mundy) and unison electric bass/scat singing (the astonishing
Oteil Burbridge); between the Delta blues/hard soul covers that
open the album and the dada lyrics of Hampton's originals; or
maybe lurking in the thrash churned up by drummer Apt. Q258
and guests Count Mbutu (congas) and Chuck Leavell (keyboards)
– somewhere, at any rate, there's a truly unique sensibility
at work. We get hints. Hampton claims that "we never rehearse,
and while we have a format, I'm not sure what it is." He
sings, "I'm basically frightened of moral turpitude/I'm
scared of politicians who have no hobbies." But Hampton
is also "basically frightened" of "people who
think wrasslin' ain't real." Go figure.
Veteran Capricorn producer Johnny Sandlin (Allmans, etc.) has
given this disc such clarity and depth that you keep forgetting
it was recorded live in Athens, Georgia, in front of a packed
house of Hampton's growing legion of fans. It rocks, swings,
smacks, clangs, walks and runs, this music, with its eyes rolled
back in its head. I'm basically frightened too, Bruce. In the
title tune of an earlier album, you sang of my home state: "I
never had much control/Till I got to Arkansas." After hearing
the latest from the Aquarium Rescue Unit, I'm afraid I almost
understand what that means. (RS 626)
ROBERT PALMER |
From
The Rolling Stone (626) 1992
