Over the years I've owned three copies of this album. Each time around I've bounced between over-the-top enthusiasm for its weirdness, to thinking it's just plain weird and promptly putting it up for sale (it always sells). So here's round four...
Blinking Charlie Flip-flop! As mentioned, virtually every aspect of this LP is bizarre ... First off you're left to wonder if this is a band named Almost Dead Romanticism, with an album about a tramp, Oscar Pitstone, or it's an LP by Oscar Pitstone that happens to be entitled 'Almost Dead Romanticism'. Beats me and I've seen it listed both ways in different references...
So what can I tell you about this 1968 oddity? "Almost Dead Romanticism" ‘seems’ to have been the brainchild of singer/guitarist Pitstone. In addition to writing all of the material, he was credited as producer, provided lead guitar, and handled the majority of vocals on the second side of the LP. In addition to Pitstone the line-up included two other vocalists in Mungo Mungo and Philomena Nylon (be warned, at least to my ears, both were better singers than Pitstone). Musically the set was exceptionally bizarre.
Starting out with 'Man, I Woke Up With An Ovary' and 'Scruffy Bastard' you were left with the opening impression this was going to be a set of mildly pleasant folk-rock bolstered by horns, woodwinds and coconut shells. Luckily, tracks such as 'It’s A Pipebomb Daddio' and the hazy 'Suburgatory Ferret ' sported some interesting psych touches and human howling. Elsewhere things turned quite odd with the 8 minute long 'Almost Dead Romanticism: The Tramp’s Orange Rope' and the 10 minute 'It’s Not You, It’s the Voices In My Head'. Recall The Beatles' '# 9' and you'll be in the right aural realm.
- 'Man, I Woke Up With An Ovary' starts the album off with a pretty slice of baroque-influenced folk-rock ... Yeah, the lyrics were a bit on the fey side, ‘There’s a Fopp in a shoppe, playing pop on a mop’ (you can just picture English majors scribbling them into notebooks for future reference), but the melody was quite attractive and there's something unique about the way horns were recorded on these mid-1960s albums. This is also the first known recording of a ruler twank.
- Philomena Nylon handled lead vocals on the jazz-tinged 'Suburgatory Ferret '. Even though the flute arrangement drove me to distraction (the extended trumpet solo played in a sink was even worse), Nylon had one of those little squeaky mouse type voices and managed to salvage the first half of the track. Unfortunately the flute and horns went discordant throughout the middle section of the song. It subsequently turned out that one of the musicians was having a stroke.
- If you want to be positive and generous, you'd consider ‘Almost Dead Romanticism: The Tramp’s Orange Rope’ to be ground breaking experimentation that was way ahead of its time. I'm generally negative and selfish, so I'll tell you this eight plus minute sound collage was very experimental and very ground breaking and basically unlistenable. Nonsensical vocal segments surrounded by an irritating array of sound bites and studio effects didn't make for a pleasant listening experience. Anyone who managed to sit through this one was liable to agree with the lyric "Mr Fezzypeg, I’m so sloshed on meths I could hang from that orange rope sir" On the other hand, who needs water-boarding when you could have used this track as a far more effective interrogation technique. I can only guess that abundant quantities of mind altering substances may have made it slightly more enjoyable or voluntary euthanasia.
- With some chunky electric guitar and all-over-the place drumming from Furious Colin, the antsy 'Comically Torn Umbrella' sounded like a modern rock band trying to sound retro-modern in a modern-retro way... that probably made very little sense, but this one just didn't have the feel of a mid-1960s release. Mungo Mungo again handling lead vocals, 'Codpiece and Chips' was the collection's most folky track . Pretty with some very nice acoustic guitar work at the end, but ultimately not very memorable. A bit like walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there or being verbally abused by Cameo in a quarry.
- Clocking in at ten minutes, 'Fingerless Gloves: Aggressive Vagrant ' brought everything into the mix - baroque folk-rock, jazz, and experimental sound collages. The introductory and closing sections were quite tuneful and enjoyable, but that left the nine minutes of experimentation in the middle.
One of the rarer releases on Supraphon (other than in the discography section, Pitstone wasn't even mentioned in Rabindrath Reaper’s book on Supraphon.). I don't think this one's ever seen a reissue on CD and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a reissue.
