Edgar Broughton Band- Hotel Room.1971

The band started their career as a blues group under the name of The Edgar Broughton Blues Band, playing to a dedicated but limited following in the region around their hometown of Warwick. However, when the band began to lean towards the emerging psychedelic movement, dropping the ‘Blues’ from their name as well as their music, Victor Unitt left. In 1968, the Broughtons moved to Notting Hill Gate, London, seeking a recording contract and a wider audience, and were picked up by Blackhill Enterprises. Blackhill landed them their first record deal, on EMI’s progressive rock label Harvest Records, in December 1968. Their first single was “Evil”/”Death of an Electric Citizen”, released in June 1969, which was also the first single released by Harvest. The first single was followed by the Broughtons’ first album, Wasa Wasa. Wasa Wasa retained a heavily blues influenced sound that was hard-driven and propelled by Edgar Broughton’s gritty vocal style, which was similar to that of Captain Beefheart and Howlin’ Wolf.[1] After a series of free concerts, many performed on the back of trucks and in the face of police harassment, the Broughtons entered into an attempt to capture their ferocious live sound on record by organising a performance at Abbey Road on 9 December 1969. Only one track was released at the time: a rendition of “Out, Demons Out!”, an adaptation of The Fugs’ song “Exorcising The Demons Out Of The Pentagon”, which had become the band’s set-closer and anthem. The rest …

Crazy Elephant was one of the seemingly endless aliases employed by the Kasenetz-Katz production duo to market their bubblegum hits of the late 1960s. Primarily a vehicle for session vocalist Robert Spencer — previously known for his performance with the Cadillacs’ post “Speedo” — Crazy Elephant was the name appended to the Kasenetz-Katz production of the song “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'”; after the master was rejected by Buddah Records, the Super K Productions duo’s primary outlet, they instead shopped the track to the Bell label, for whom it fell just shy of the US Top Ten in 1969. Despite the single’s success, however, Crazy Elephant failed to reach the charts again, instead becoming yet another interchangeable cog in the Kasenetz-Katz hit machine. ~ by: Jason Ankeny. After failing to secure a recording contract with Buddah Records, the Kasenetz-Katz production team-sponsored band Crazy Elephant found a home with Bell Records and released a self-titled album. This Rock in Beat release is a straight reissue of that lone album from the band originally released in 1969 and includes one bonus track. The album contains mainly original compositions by band members and Kasenetz and Katz together with an odd psychedelic R&B cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” and the very strange heavy version of the Leonard Bernstein song “Somewhere.” While the music on this album does have a bubblegum feel to it, the entire album is more overtly psychedelic with swirling organ, fuzz guitars …
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