GURU GURU - UFO LP (Ohr/1970)

This is a really, really great album. Originally released in 1970, it remains one of the all-time great power-trio freakout rock 'n' roll albums, far superior to Blue Cheer's efforts, in this humble blogger's opinion (well, actually, I possess no humility whatsoever, and I say all of that as a massive fan of Blue Cheer's first two LPs, if that counts for anything). UFO features four tracks of massively plodding psychedelic doom-rock, stabbing in the dark like the ultimate Amon Duul/Black Sabbath/Stooges/Hawkwind combination, and whilst such rabid namedropping probably only leads one to expect grand disappointment, UFO lives up the hype. Two things come to mind when the words "Guru Guru" are uttered in my presence: the sheer greatness of their first three LPs (that'd be this, along w/ Hinten and Kanguru) and that one fateful evening back in... what was it, 2005 or '06? I can't remember. It was the night Neil Young played at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl down here and fried everyone's brains w/ his own 45-minute free-form freakout. A good buddy of mine whom I attended the show with was similarly freaked out, and not just on the music. There were a cocktail of other substances in the mix. So mind-frying were Young's guitar jams, my friend was seen running around the venue gasping, "What the fuck, man, what is this? What is this shit, man, it's like... it's like Guru Guru meets Fushitsusha". Aaah, maybe you had to be there.