Kit Ream - ALL THAT I AM - PRIVATE D.I.Y. ACID CASUALTY

$

175

        
                                                                                                             KIT  REAM  
 
                                                                                                      " ALL  THAT  I  AM  "

                                                                                         CREATIVE RECORDS   -     KIT REAM

                                                                                             creative records - 1978  M W 1001


                                                                 RECORD AND COVER  EX/EX   EXCELLENT   VG++ CONDITION

                                           ORIGINAL  COPY   ,  NEVER RE-ISSUED  ,  SUPER RARE / NON-EXISTENT , OBSCURE, ELUSIVE
                                                               
                    
                        Tracks ; Intro-universal jam , Don't be so holy poly over my souly , beautiful , memories , wines , cool water , funk , golden drops , the end
                                


I have not said I'm better, and I have not said I'm worse - but I have an idea concerning the universe. The wheelchair general with his head on wrong - or the long haired singer with his wine and song.  To say that I love you with a bomb - or to sing that I hate you: that ain't wrong.  I know better than what you give.  All I ask is a chance to live; my way or your way it's all the same. 'Cause if no one's hurt, there's none to blame. No... I've not said I'm better, and I've not said I'm worse - but I do have an idea concerning the universe.  Always in hell, as I'm sure you can tell.  I see you are blind, so I'll take the time... to teach. You must keep in tune just as the moon, which is never too late or never too soon. Here, there, and everywhere you people be real.  We must congeal and strip the seal.  I'm not saying I'm better and I'm not saying I'm worse - but I have the idea concerning the universe.  I really do... now you hear it through."

- Intro-universal Jam

DESCRIPTION: Whoo boy! Here it is, folks! The ALL-TIME OUTSIDER CULT-CLASSIC MONSTER – KIT REAM’S LEGENDARY "ALL THAT I AM"! Exceedingly RARE and equally BIZARRE – considered by many to be among the STRANGEST (if not THE strangest) LPs of all time! Not easy to put this one into words, but here’s what  Jello Biafra  has to say about the "artist" in the book "Incredibly Strange Music Vol II":

"The most deranged ‘rich person do-it-yourself’ album is All That I Am by KIT REAM, heir to the Nabisco cookie fortune. According to someone who knew him, he dropped tons of acid in the '60's and wound up in a mental hospital where he spent six months staring at his own reflection in a mirror. Eventually the acid wore off, he was deemed ‘cured’ and let loose in society, whereupon he decided to become a guru and make a record. From his maniacal expression you can see that this is a man who has seen it all and knows that he has ‘the answer’….. he chants lines like ‘Don't be so holy, poly, over my soul-y.’ As far as I know his cult is still vastly outnumbered by Maharaj Ji, Rajneesh and the Moonies."

But the music is even weirder than that. The songs are wacko-trancy psych with some FUZZ, quasi-beatnik and free-jazz, oddball funk and ethereal folk-psych mixed with weird (and often creepy) vocal effects. All featuring Ream’s indescribably nutty, over-the-top singing punctuated with the occasional grunt, and mondo-bizarro lyrics – some with quasi-religious overtones - that almost certainly were inspired by acid flashbacks. Appears to be pressed by the "Institute For Creative Living" – a spiritual growth and resource center in Ohio, affiliated with the ultra-conservative "National Heritage Foundation"(!?!?!). Cover features original artwork by Ream.

This one doesn’t come around too often, so DON’T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY TO OWN A COPY OF THIS LEGENDARY OUTSIDER CULT CLASSIC!

  tags ;    No Wave , Punk . Funk  , Psychedelic , Psycho , Acid Casualty , Acid Babble , D.I.Y.  , Do It Yourself , Private Press , Private Label , Acid , L.S.D.  LSD , Drugs , Meltdown ,
               REAL PEOPLE , REAL PERSON , OUTSIDER , CRACKED FOLK PSYCH
                                                   

.........obviously drinking from the same well as wesley willis & gary wilson


Scuttlebutt on the internet suggests that Kit later forswore his meds, killed a man on his father's yacht and eventually retired to the suburbs of San Diego. It's a shame that a man may have died for Kit's art, but what an art it is. Seventies lounge-funk collides with mystical poetry, putrid come-ons, boogaloo blues, free jazz, hallucinatory incantation . None of this is quite 'pulled off' in the traditional sense, making Kit Ream the essence of Outsider Art; the joy is all in the awkward collisions, the tension between the aspirations of the artist and his inability to express them 'eloquently' using the accepted language of the art form.




Some highlights:

• The bubbling cauldron of Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly with its pastel electric piano, insistent flute, roiling congas and loopy drumming gives Kit a platform for some insane glossolalia and sexual preaching. The band is actually really smoking on this and the stereo-panning effects on the drums are great. I also confess a sick weakness for soft electric pianos, perhaps a result of growing up near an AM radio in the seventies.

• Wines is a free-form drunken stumble with retarded drumming like Animal from the Muppets gone jazzbo. The lyrics tell a loose tale of a devotee of Bacchus named Jason Slash while the horns get freaky and a couple of Kit's groupies coo and purr from the sidelines.

• Cool Water, on which Kit lays out entirely, is sung by one of the aforementioned ladies and is unabashedly lovely in its simplicity. Devendra Barnhart, Joanna Newsom or some other denizen of the 'freak folk' communes should cover this.

• Funk heads into War territory with some great horn lines and a loosely double-tracked Kit sounding like a leisure suited swinger possessed by the Holy Spirit

The full Kit Ream story needs to be told. Kit, if you're out there drop me a line.

Interestingly, Kit's "Institute for Creative Living" still exists, and the site can be found here: http://www.instituteforcreativeliving.org/ In it's current incarnation, the "cult" seems to have transformed into a new age self-help group. It seems the group and its ideologies have survived and will continue well beyond the memory of Kit and his ingenious LP. 

Kit's solo track "Intro-universal Jam" opens the LP (The following "verse" is spoken over a bare cymbal being tapped, along with a lot of subtle background noises: a random bass drum, upright bass, and even a tambourine played off beat and out of sync. As the verse progresses, the tapping and sounds increase. A triangle comes in at the end as the tape seems to be echoed out and cut off on a 2? recorder.)

Some might compare his inward looking, emotional work as the long lost cousin of Gary Wilson's school of lament. Unlike Gary, Kit's content is broader, and his musicianship is clearly not polished nor rock influenced. Often Kit allows his ramblings on his cult ideologies to disintegrate into a goofy SNL Will Ferrell Robert Goulet-like impersonator voice: drunken, delusional, gutteral, and menacing. One track about a wino titled "Wines" is set over cheesy lounge jazz runs for 8:40. Yes, almost 9 minutes of Kit rambling about the transformation of humans into elements into "one." Towards the end of the track his singing devolves into babbling along with a female babble-scat accompanyment as the drumming and saxophones intensifies and borders on amateur free jazz. I believe the same woman appears as the only singer over the folky soulful track "Cool Water" which Kit does not appear on, but it sounds as if his style has influenced this song's lyrics. Similar to Gary Wilson, Kit does express his inner feelings at times in almost a scat-like, confessional/reactionary sing/song fashion. At times the music picks up and grabs onto a a late 70?s soul jazz/funky jazz sound, and especially on the track enitlted "Funk." Towards the end of the track, Kit raps about catching trout in his stomach and then having a "good old honest burp" with his friend, which he explains is only a substitute for a lack of a ladyfriend! Okay, maybe Gary and Kit do have a lot in common. Ultimately, throughout the LP it sounds as if Kit is trying to compensate for his lack of singing talent as the engineer is telling him his time is up in the recording studio. I have no doubt that if Kit were much younger he would have appeared and gained fame as an early goof contestant on American Idol or even the Gong show.

In my previous post on Gary Wilson's 'You Think You Really Know Me', I mentioned a half-hearted comparison to Kit Ream's 'All That I Am' album.  

It might seem a stretch - considering the different types of subject matter that Wilson and Ream specialized in.  However, an underlying sense of paranoia, uneasiness, and individualism unites both.  

While Wilson's jazz-based work would veer into the avant-garde with a touch of early electronica, Ream's work has been described as 'cocktail-by-the-pool crazy'; a compelling mix of soft jazz and new-age hippy philosophy, spiced by a menacingly stoned lounge singer who may or may not have been heir to the Nabisco Cookie fortune.
And who, after the recording of this album, may or may not have murdered his best friend after experiencing a psychotic break.

- All That I Am (Back)


And surely that is the biggest difference between Ream and Wilson:  
Gary Wilson, I would like to think, doesn't actually talk to mannequins named Cindy and Linda during his spare time.  Sure... he is probably an odd duck - but aren't we all?   The 'Gary Wilson' persona is a gimmick.  A good one, mind you - but still a gimmick.

Kit Ream?  Look at that face on the album cover again and tell me his was a put-on.  


Some choice cuts...
* 'Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly'


* The 8:44 long 'Wines'.   The cut pretty much sums up All That Kit Ream Is: Dueling female scat singers for the duration, a hot jazz backing, and Ream drunkenly riffing on wino Jason Slash, the old rugged cross searching for a crown, and changing skins with...  well...  I don't have a clue, actually - but I'm sure Kit must have. 
* The refreshing, 'Cool Water' - a startlingly straight song in which the lovely Mina Judd handles vocal duties.  
* Track 7, the fantastic 'Funk', features some inspired playing by Ream's backing players.  Funky flutes?  Harry Connick Jr. could only hope to feature funky flutes.   The vocals... well, let's just say we can guess what ol' Kit was doing during Miss Judd's session.   He was producing, alright.  Producing vials of differing substances, I'll bet.  
Listening to Kit slur his way through the speech-song, I am reminded of my equally plastered father's late-night diatribes.  Slipping from exuberance to despair to anger and then back again in the same sentence, I never quite knew which emotional vibe to hang on to. After awhile, you deaden yourself and learn to just go for the ride.    
* The final cut, 'The End' is flat-out spooky.  And it is a great one. 
A droning synth chord backs Ream's disturbing ramble, until creeping toward an implosion of such new-age, Johnny Guru stickiness, the whole kit and kaboodle threatens to come down around it.