JACK BEDIENT & CHESSMEN Where Did She Go? RARE psych LP

$

76

I can relate to Jack Bedient and the Chessmen.  I’ve lost count of number of times I’ve chatted up some hottie at the local bar, then went to buy her a drink, only to come back and quote the name of this album.  Hey!  “Where Did She Go?”  Of course, if the cover’s any indication, three dudes dressed like Siegfried and Roy’s opening act are gonna have trouble getting action no matter where they hang out.

That’s a fair assessment too, since Jack Bedient and the Chessmen were, in fact, primarily a Lake Tahoe showband, playing the pop standards of the day, scoring Dexamil from the pit club bosses and hitting on the newest young Playboy Club bunnies fresh off the bus from Des Moines.  By the time 1967 rolled around, lead singer Jack Bedient began to see fame and fortune as a solo act, and started to sack the Chessmen one by one until they were down to only three members.  I guess he was also torn between performing the supper club pop standards he knew well and jumping on the garage psych bandwagon that might’ve made picking up the younger Bunnies a little easier.  And so, thanks to Jack’s confusion, out popped this completely deranged two-headed pop garage punk monster of an album, half of which is the kind of pop standards that would sound great opening up for Waylan Flowers and Madam.  While the other half is the only cool stuff you’ll ever hear by this band.  You can tell the band were in some sort of musical quandary just by the front cover alone – there they are, in their Lake Tahoe finest, surrounded by someone’s crude attempt to get all “psychedelic” with a sub-Spirograph starburst pattern and some groovy purple on black type.  By the cover alone, it would seem that these guys knew garage punk like Air Supply knew speed metal.  But if you make it through Side 1, Side 2 of this unassuming little album is probably the world’s greatest example of a showband on acid.  Or Dexamil, as the case may be here.

Things start off with a spelling error (“Repunzel”), then get right down to business with one of the most amazing garage punkers ever to appear outside of a Monks album – the crazed, stutter-step mind-fryer “Glimmer, Glimmer Sunshine.”  Its manic, breakneck tempo must’ve sent older casino patrons fleeing for the exit doors, and those wicked knife-scraping guitar solos surely shredded the paint from the walls of the Silver Nugget ballroom.  You can also hear this corker on the Let’s Dig ‘Em Up and Quagmire compilations, both fitting places for a feral slice of garage punk whose closest cousins would be the Monks “Complication” and “Shut Up.”  One band dressed like friars, the other like dinner club lounge singers on mescaline.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide who’s cooler.

From there, we head into the very trippy sunshine pop of “Love Work Shop,” which might’ve been a holdover from Side 1, if it weren’t for a flurry of distorted organ washes and some of the most sinister buzz-saw fuzz licks this side of a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion album.  “I Used to Feel Bad” follows, another coked-up runaway buffalo herd of Nuggets garage punk, all flying organ, echoed-out twangy surf guitar licks and 150 mph 4 a.m. dragrace down the Vegas strip style tempo.  It’s like listening to the Castaways “Liar Liar” at 78 rpm.  While on amphetamines.

But if that’s still not enough to convince you that our very own Seizure’s Palace show band is slowly ripping their old audience a new one, get ready for the biggest bomb drop yet – and watch in awe as Jack Bedient and the Chessmen completely and disrespectfully dismantle Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” like it meant nothing to ‘em.  Still angry that Bob plugged in at Newport?  Well, imagine a scenario where he not only plugged in, but then replaced the Butterfield Blues Band with the MC5 and a poorly hotwired fuzz pedal.  That’s what we’re dealing with here, boys and girls, and trust me, it ain’t gonna play well on the folk circuit.  This crude, seething, white-hot version of the Dylan classic opens up with what sounds like a fuzz guitar being ripped apart at the bottom of a well – big thick poorly-recorded swaths of distorted noise that could’ve singlehandedly ushered in the grunge movement three decades early if if the Gossard family vacationed in Tahoe.  And don’t expect those nasally New Yawk Bob the folkie vocals here – this is Bob the soul man, Bob the original Sonic Youth frontman, growling and snarling his way through the noise while his guitarist wrenches solo after solo of twangy, jittery, 200mph electric mayhem.  No disrespect to Bob, but if Blonde on Blonde were more like this, I’d still be listening to it.

Strangely enough, the Chessmen went back to recording tame, lame pop standards after this, and aside from their dismantling of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” a few years later, there’s nothing else in the Jack Bedient back catalog worth your hard-earned dollars.  But Where Did She Go? remains a rare, sought-after glimpse of what could’ve been – a tantalizing taste of a band who clearly had the chops, but seldom the guts.  For 15 wonderful minutes, however, they showed every other Pebbles band in America how a real Lake Tahoe showband could rip it up.  They’re still fixing the foundation at Harvey’s Hotel and Casino to this very day.

ULTRA RARE ORIGINAL pressing on the Satori label.  Cover's in VG++ shape with small corner bend, 2-inch seam split along top edge, 1 inch split along bottom (both near opening).  Vinyl plays NEAR MINT!

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