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Okinawa (1974, 40.47/73.55) ***½/TT (TT½) |
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| Laughing Duva Hyphenate Iceless Horse Remorse Parts & Ponds Ain't Life Dumb? A Frog for You Hogshead Manic Detective Brown Algae is Attractive |
Plymouth Ascendants The Salient Sickle Sucker Hairy Bag Fast Bananas The Unfortunate Frankfurter Vendor Last Dance Fill the Sheet The Still Nite (sic) Dance of the Ivy Dog Gotta Write a Poem |
The Insipid City of York Board Organ (edit) The Continuing Story of Cragwheel the Corpse, part 2 Lemon Flowers Corrective Shoes Pale Hippo Sorry Chess is Boring The Plague |
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Vitamin OHO (1991, recorded 1975, 39.35) ****/TT½Seldom BoughtHyphenate Ice-less Lemon Flowers No Fewer Days Fwombat Lois Jane Hogshead Nocturnal Recurrence Tinker's Damn |
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Ecce OHO! (1998, recorded 1974-5, 42.44) ***½/TT |
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| On Motion of Motion The Plague Per Ipsum Here Come(s) the Oysters Maiden Voyage Duva [live] |
Rock Song (a.k.a. We Never Wanted This) Cragwheel Hogshead [live] |
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Recollections (1974-1976) (2002, recorded 1974-76, 73.07) ****/TTT½ |
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| Tinker's Damn Parade/Charade The Salient Sickle Sucker The Three Lez Lee Hyphenate Ice-less No Fewer Days Nocturnal Recurrence |
The Plague Dance of The Ivy Dog Fwombat Albumblatt Ms Mouse Snow Lady pt II Naming OHO The Hand Over Isaac's Head |
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According to their website, OHO (from the initial three members' initials: O'Connor/Heck/O'Sullivan) coalesced around 1973, releasing the rare-as-rocking-horse-shit Okinawa independently a year later, losing a fair bit of money in the process. It's more than a little off-the-wall, a vein of dark humour running through most of the lyrics (sample: "They buried her mother today"); it's probably a rather overworked comparison, but I detect some distinctly Zappa-esque nuttiness, with fewer knob gags. OK, none. I'd swear blind that Akron's finest, Devo, heard the middle section of The Continuing Story Of Cragwheel The Corpse somewhere down the line, while there's any number of other bits here that remind one of later acts, most of whom can't possibly have heard OHO. Mark O'Connor plays Mellotron, The Salient Sickle Sucker managing some rather un-Mellotronlike strings, although the choirs give the game away. The other highlighted tracks feature the string sound again (string section?), with a more upfront part in Gotta Write A Poem, though it's certainly not one of the album's chief components. A 1995 reissue of the album, on five 10" EPs (!), adds another fifteen tracks, a few of which turn up on Vitamin OHO (italicised in tracklisting above). Minor extra Mellotron, with faint choir and strings on Hyphenate Iceless, choir on Lemon Flowers and strings on Sorry.
Many years and many lineup changes down the line, not to mention an eponymous 1989 album, Vitamin OHO was released on Germany's Little Wing of Refugees label and seems to be the first of several attempts to collate the band's somewhat disparate history. Compared to Okinawa, it contains fairly straightforward material, although that has to be taken in the context of OHO, so we're not exactly talking top thirty stuff here. Actually, several of these tracks are exemplars of interesting song-based progressive (notably the fabulous Tinker's Damn), making it all the odder that the band are so little known in progressive circles. It's actually quite difficult to work out what's going on here, Mellotronically speaking; the band had clearly bought some form of string synth which wasn't a Solina, which I believe can be heard on Hyphenate Ice-less, but are those Mellotron choirs on Lemon Flowers? And strings on No Fewer Days and Fwombat? Definitely brass on Lois Jane and plenty of strings on Tinker's Damn, a song written after seeing Genesis in 1974 as mentioned on the band's site - clock the opening lyric: "Tales and nursery crymes [sic], fill my head this hour...". Cheeky buggers. Incidentally, I can't hear Nocturnal Recurrence on my copy, although assuming it's the same version as on Recollections below, it seems to have some slight Mellotronic input.
Some years on again, 1998's Ecce OHO collects more odds'n'sods together, including several live tracks that don't add that much to the band's legend, to be honest. Not bad, just not that amazing, either. A couple of the studio tracks are especially worth hearing, but overall, this is a rather lesser collection than its predecessor. On the Mellotron front, I think that's strings on The Plague and it definitely is on Per Ipsum and Here Come(s) The Oysters and probably on Maiden Voyage, with an unexpected few seconds of choir on the live version of Hogshead, meaning they used it on stage, if only occasionally.
2002's Recollections (1974-1976) is something of a grab-bag of previously released and unavailable material, thrown together in a random fashion. Several track titles will be familiar to you from the above albums (although at least one, Hyphenate Ice-less, is a different version), while Lez Lee was not only the b-side of 1975 single Seldom Bought (on Vitamin OHO above), but would also have been on an unreleased album from 1976, Dream of the Ridiculous Band (although I've no idea if it's the same version), along with Parade/Charade, Albumblatt, Ms Mouse, Snow Lady Pt II and The Hand Over Isaac's Head, which only leaves a few unreleased album selections still unavailable. The Three is a medley of Seldom Bought, Lois Jane and Hogshead, as performed live and Naming OHO is a studio mess-about. Apart from the previously-available tracks, there's a little Mellotron on Parade/Charade, with some upfront strings on Lez Lee, strings on Ms Mouse and choir on The Hand Over Isaac's Head. Actually, you couldn't get much more of a full-on OHO Mellotron album if you tried, could you? So; heavily recommended for both music and Mellotron.
As a footnote, OHO's Jay Grabowski very kindly sent me their entire works on CD, including the unreleased Crucifixion Lust: 4-Track Demos and Dream of the Ridiculous Band, reviewed below.
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Crucifixion Lust: The Basement Tapes (Recorded 1974-75, 71.29) ****/TTTT |
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| Naming OHO Here Come(s) the Oysters Cragwheel in Spain Horse Remorse Tinker's Damn Parade/Charade Lemon Flowers Seldom Bought |
Lois Jane Hogshead Hyphenate Ice-Less Fwombat Maiden Voyage No Fewer Days The Plague |
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Dream of the Ridiculous Band (Recorded 1976, 44.24) ****/TT½ |
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| Parade/Charade Lez Lee Hogshead (Slight Return) We'll Be Famous When We're Dead Albumblatt Miss Mouse Parties Snow Lady (Part II) |
I Crawled Back to Nothing When I Crawled Back to You Paint Can The Hand Over Isaac's Head |
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OHO were not only one of Baltimore's, but one of America's oddest bands in the '70s, at least that I've heard. See their main review for a better description of their sound; suffice to say, their music is unlikely to appeal to those whose taste strays towards (or entirely inhabits) the mainstream. Crucifixion Lust: The Basement Tapes is an unreleased document of the band's four-track demos from 1974-75, in the days when 'four-track' meant reel-to-reel (often a Revox), not crummy cassette, meaning that they sound pretty good, if not actually studio standard (there are minor dropouts on a couple of tracks, as if to prove the point). Of course, most of these tracks are available in studio-recorded versions, but these are invaluable for hearing the uncluttered instrumental parts, should you feel so inclined. Mellotron on most tracks, from Mark O'Connor, with strings on Here Come(s) The Oysters and (very clearly) on Tinker's Damn and choir and strings on Parade/Charade. Hogshead features a quite bizarre 'underwater' Mellotron choir (male voice?), with more strings and choir on the remaining highlighted tracks, usually far clearer than on their studio recordings.
It seems that 1976's 'legendary unreleased' album, Dream of the Ridiculous Band, has leaked out on bootleg label Gott Discs, assuming you can find it. To say it's more 'mainstream' than the band's previous work is rather irrelevant; everything's relative and this album is only 'relatively' normal. It's certainly an easier listen than their work from a couple of years earlier, although not specifically better for it, merely different. A couple of diversions from their standard ensemble playing are the under-a-minute snippet, Hogshead (Slight Return) and acoustic guitar solo Albumblatt, although most of the material fits their usual remit. Mellotron on Parade/Charade, Lez Lee, Miss Mouse, Paint Can and The Hand Over Isaac's Head, chiefly fairly background strings and choir use. This could be a good entrée to the band's oeuvre (enough French already), so it's cool that Dream of the Ridiculous Band is sort-of available, although every track on it has been commercially released at some point on one format or another. If you don't feel like splashing out, the easiest way to hear half of the album is to get the Recollections (1974-1976) compilation, most of the remainder found on 2003's Best of Baltimore's Buried Bands II.
See: Dark Side | Food for Worms
