Thee Fourgiven "Anything"

SUPERLATIVES…

In Los Angeles, Lee Joseph meets the very active Greg and Suzy Shaw and Rich Coffee.

Lee wants to publish something by the Fourgiven and aims to take a big leap with the release of a debut album under the Dionysus label: Greg Shaw decides to transfer the rights to Lee for the first album by the Fourgiven, production included.

Thus, It Ain't Pretty Down Here is born, the debut album by the Fourgiven and Dionysus Records.

The Fourgiven aren't a widely beloved band, despite their background in Unclaimed.

1984 is the year when the sixties fever reaches its peak.

If you don't sound like the Music Machine, you're out.

And the Fourgiven don’t exactly sound like the Music Machine.

They claim to love MC5, Alice Cooper, and Bob Dylan as much as the Count Five.

And it's not exactly the right time to say that.

Rich is a fanatic of the sixties but also of seventies music and a lot of exotic music from the fifties. He enjoys playing surf music, imagining he's in Bela Lugosi's crypt.

The music of the Fourgiven sounds a bit like this: sinister, cryptic, enigmatic.

They're paisley shirts moving in the shadows (Smile No More), slightly macabre fuzz vibrato (Anything), punk whirlwinds (You Surprised Me), small hidden psychedelic gems in dark nooks (Besides Me), beat caves echoing with cramps-like sounds (It’s Calling You) if not bat-cavian (Lost in the Beat). In short, the Fourgiven throw down the gauntlet and no one picks it up.

Their first two albums stand as a testament to a small legend that few of us still strive to tell.