Velvett Fogg
Velvett Fogg

THE REVIEW

"There is a lot of good music on this album. Remember Velvett Fogg - you will hear the name again..."

And yet the famous John Peel (author of the well-known introduction) brought quite a bit of bad luck to Velvett Fogg. After all, with a cover like that, the breasts of the two models prominently displayed, they could do whatever they wanted. And they did: an exciting hodgepodge of hard, beat, psychedelia, folk, prog ...too bad that in 1969, few noticed.

In the Birmingham scene, the original lineup of Velvett Fogg hosted Tony Iommi for a few gigs before he was replaced on lead guitar by his cousin Paul Eastment. The other key players were the organist/vocalist Frank Wilson and especially the guitarist/composer friend Keith Law, who wrote the best tracks on the album.

For example, the opener is one of those manifestations of human art that condemns one to perpetual infatuation, a bit like the sight of Katharine Ross on Paul Newman's bicycle handlebars in Butch Cassidy. "Yellow Cave Woman".... and we all would like to have a woman to love in our yellow cave built with sugar cubes soaked in LSD: the tribal rhythm and the trip governed by Wilson's organ and Eastment’s lead guitar grip from the first notes, plunging you into the putrid, unhealthy atmosphere of the swamp where the "monster" with female features hides. Hit the repeat button and listen to it fifteen times in a row; it will give you more satisfaction than buying any current compact disc and being weighed down by its twenty-four tracks that have no flavor. The charm of the track also infected our Standarte (devoted to the Vincent Crane/Atomic Rooster myth) who brilliantly covered it in their "Stimmung" from 1999.

Instead, a ballad like "Once among the trees" is extraordinarily capable of taking you by the hand to lead you happily along folk expanses driven by electric arpeggios that lift that melancholy veil of velvet fog discreetly protecting yet another embrace between lead guitar (Eastment's solo is fantastic) and the Hammond organ. Their version of "Come Away Melinda", from the first album by American singer-songwriter Tim Rose, has something epic and theatrical, just as it is dominated by the gothic and unsettling keyboards à la Iron Butterfly and the duet between Wilson's falsetto and Eastment's virile voice. It all wraps it in a tension unknown to the sweet (...and bland) folksy rendition by Uriah Heep a few years later.

And do we want to talk about the pulsing rhythm of a track like "Within 'the Night" with a piercing interlude by Eastment's lead guitar and the continuous oriental flavor of the Hammond for a dirge that will cloak your most colorful dreams in black? The instrumental "Owed to the Dip" itself could serve as your ideal soundtrack while you try to regain your energy from a catastrophic day as you prepare the evening's alcoholic bomb: the funky groove of the rhythm base provides the vine on which the soul jazz keyboards entwine with the counterpoint from the six-string.... "torture never stops" the whiskered expert from Cugamonga would say!

Is this enough to spark your curiosity? Or should we bring up the beat-psychedelic version of "New York Mining Disaster", the success of the Gibbs brothers (yes, precisely the Bee Gees), or the obscure hard rock of "Plastic Man" with the obsessive riff crafted by drummer Graham Mullet and bassist Mick Pollard?

Despite John Peel's wish, Velvett Fogg disbanded after this singular accomplishment, and keyboardist Wilson got involved with Nick Simper (former Deep Purple bassist) to form Warhorse while Eastment fired a few shots with Ghost, a progressive band that had to remove the adjective Holy from its name due to the usual prudes.

And since then, the velvet fog has descended to cover all memory, but now it's time to clear it away! "Remember Velvett Fogg: you'll hear of them again" ...holy words John, forty years later here they are on DeBaser!