SATAN & DECIPLES 1969 RARE strange evil psych LP LISTEN

$

256

You can’t possibly count the number of rock musicians who say they have a working relationship with the devil, but let’s face it – just as God couldn’t possibly have time for every rapper who wins a Grammy each year, Satan’s rolodex is way too crowded to find room for the likes of Vince Neil or Rob Zombie.  Besides, musicians can’t even get the facts straight on the Big Evil – some say the Devil came from Kansas, others say he went down to Georgia, and others claim he hung around St. Petersburg (when it was time for a change).  And anyone who has the nerve to say he wears a blue dress has a special place saved in the afterlife on the Eternal Line of A** Whuppin’.

Truth is, Satan came from New Orleans, plain and simple.  He’s also one of rock music’s first rappers, when he isn’t dabbling in some swampy Cajun funk or, just for the Hell of it, crooning like a drunken dinner club lounge singer (he’s really evil).  How do I know all this?  Because this album that stands before you, a little privately-pressed, previously-buried gem on the Goldband label out of New Orleans 1968, was actually recorded by Satan himself.  Now this ain’t Ronnie James Dio pretending to be Satan, or Marilyn Manson pretending to be…er, whatever he’s supposed to be.  No, it says so right on the album jacket.  This album is by Satan and His Deciples.  A man so friggin’ evil, he can’t even spell the word “disciples.”  Because if there’s anything Satan hates more than Mormon presidential candidates, it’s English teachers.  Especially the ones who held him back in the third grade.

Go ahead and waste your time playing Hotel California backward looking for messages from the dark side.  Feel free to hold as many mirrors up to the gatefold sleeve of Led Zeppelin IV as you want – it’s your dime.  But when you’re finally man enough to hear the real poop straight from Old Scratch’s lips, bid on this slab of brimstone and prepare to hear his side of the story.  And remember, God might have a better message, but Satan’s got the better band.

Hells yeah he does, and you’ll recognize that right away from the opening groovy go-go beats laid down on Satan’s first theme, a little ditty called…uh, “Satan’s First Theme.”  Over a steady, pounding dancefloor rhythm, Satan laughs uproariously for the first 20 seconds straight, and not only that, he laughs in time with the beat!  When he finally gets around to singing, you find out he’s a big fan of Muddy Waters (which is understandable), because his litany of evil goes pretty much like this:

“I’m a devil!  I’d like to spell it out for ya now…

D-E-V-I-L, that’s Devil,

And my home is Hell!

Ha ha ha ha haaaaa, it’s your home now!”

Well, he certainly seems like a gracious enough host - always in a good mood, and that never-ending bellylaugh kinda gets infectious after awhile.  Although I swear his backup singers let him down, ‘cuz to me it really sounds like they’re singing “He’s a booger man!  He’s a booger man!”   Which reflects less on his awesome fearfulness and more on his poor hygiene skills.  The man can’t spell, and now he can’t even find a Kleenex.

Hey, no one said it was easy being the Lord of the Underworld, a fact Satan bears out by going off on a long “rap” for the next few minutes describing exactly how hard it is to be the Big Man.  He claims he’s been misrepresented in the Bible, threatening some sort of post-apocalyptic lawsuit, which also gives him the chance to rhyme “libel” with “Bible.”  He portrays God as an egotistical iron-fisted autocrat who fires anyone who dares to oppose him (guess who that might be referring to?).  And worst of all, he says God is a big “Dancing With the Stars” fan, specifically “that hottie Edita.” 

The greatest thing about Satan’s rap, besides the fact that he’s predating Snoop Dogg and Kriss Kross by almost 25 years, is that it goes on for a full 8 friggin’ minutes, while a droning “Pushin’ Too Hard” farfisa organ keeps the swingin’ go-go groove moving and the midriff-bearing backup succubi writhing in the background like the Hilton sisters after their fifth cosmopolitan.  This is Kim Fowley without an editor, a Jim Morrison rant at the Fillmore South, and I gotta say, it almost makes me wanna sin just to hear more.

You’ll have to wait a little bit here in the corporeal world, however, because even Satan’s not sure how to follow that epic soliloquy properly.  So instead he gives us a god-awful garage country ballad called “Why the Seas are Salty” and ends up sounding like Lee Hazelwood doing a Roky Erickson impersonation.  “Tears made the river, and the river made the sea”?  Yo, Satan, you can keep your rivers and seas…just make us some more Olsen Twins, okay?

Luckily for us, Satan’s just recharging, and after his crappy ecological lecture, he gets right back to entertaining us like a good Antichrist should, this time channeling James Brown himself in the mighty Stygian dancefloor craze “Devil Time!”  Yeah, that’s right, even the Devil knows the value of good marketing, and what better way to spread the gospel of hate and sin than by creating a hip new dance craze?  Hey, it worked for the Electric Slide, didn’t it? 

Only here it’s downright hilarious to hear the Anti-Godfather of Soul rattling off lines like “I’m a dancin’ Devil!  Get in the groove now, watch while I move now!” over a pounding funk beat, sounding less like James Brown and more like Wolfman Jack with a throat infection.  But it stands to reason that if you spend your whole afterlife stealing souls, it’s bound to put a little soul into your music, right?

Satan wraps things up on Side 2 with another cosmic monologue of grandiose proportions, this time called “Satan on Universe,” more proof that all the good English teachers went to Heaven.  Surprisingly, it’s not nearly as ponderous as it sounds – in fact, this is the trippiest and coolest track on the whole album.  Here he sounds like Sky Saxon, vamping over a groovy jazz funk boogaloo rhythm, effortlessly swingin’ and sexy in his crushed red velvet smoking jacket, looking to pick up a few ladies from Hades before heading off to claim the souls of a few recently-deceased corporate attorneys.  One of his…ahem… deciples gets off some great shivery wah wah licks, which leads me to believe I now know where Jimi Hendrix ended up.   Despite the unwieldy title, “Satan on Universe” ends up sounding like some unholy cross-pollenization of the Seeds “Mr. Farmer,” Kim Fowley’s “The Trip” and a million screaming undead souls.  This is the real devil’s music – confident, sexy and bad to the bone.

So whether the Symbol of Darkness (formerly known as Prince of Darkness) is rapping, crooning or vamping like a brimstone-snorting Mel Torme, you can be certain that this, my friends, is his side of the story.  Sure he’s biased, he’s not the best lyricist, and he spells as bad as Slade.  But his power is in the music, and this messed-up, tripped-out, coked-up flurry of Cajun swamp rock, acid funk and go-go beats makes me wanna go out and find a virgin and a goat.  Make that two virgins.  Two twin virgins who may or may not have been on a show with John Stamos at one time.  Look, the way I see it is this:   This holiday season, you have two gift choices:  the Satan and His Deciples album, or the new 19-DVD Sex and the City box set.  One is a horrific vision of eternal damnation and endless suffering at the hands of an all-powerful, merciless half-human half-goat creature.  And the other is this album.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

Original 1969 pressing on the Goldband label (this hasn't been reissued).  Cover's in NEAR MINT shape (this has been well kept).   Vinyl looks unplayed, plays VG++ with light crackle due to shoddy lo-budget pressing. 

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