Music to Eat

Bruce Hampton--maybe he was a colonel, maybe he retired?--is a trip, and I love his music, being as he is even more left-field than either Zappa or Beefheart. They wish they were as weird as he is, but Hampton doesn't have the self-consciousness of Zappa, so there's that. At the time of this album's publication, it had the dubious distinction of being its label's second-worst selling album of all time, the only thing worse being a yoga instruction LP! I bet that was just the kind of thing that would've made Hampton proud. Or not. Maybe he would've said, "Fuck you, dude. You have the luxury of wanting me to be a starving artist, but I actually wanted to be able to pay my bills." Who knows? At the end of the day, this album failed hard commercially but succeeded brilliantly in the realms of experimentalism and surrealism. We often think of the avant-garde coming out of the west, earth, or north, but not deep in the until-recently Jim Crow south. Welp, put yer ears on, folks, and listen to this weirdo sing lyrics straight out of the almanac or the local chamber of commerce.