Bongwater – The Power of Pussy

Bongwater - The Power of Pussy

I was first introduced to this great album 17 years ago and love it as much now as I did then. It’s so whacked out in places that at that time I don’t think I’d heard anything quite like it and it’s definitely responsible for me making the effort to discover the Sixties underground tunes I’d at that point only touched on with Hendrix and The Doors, both hardly that underground. Mudhoney and Bongwater – The Power of Pussy would push me towards Garage Punk but Bongwater opened up the way to Beefheart and Hazlewood, The Kaleidoscope & Kak (and Canned Heat, mainly because “the fat lead singer” is mentioned in the song ‘Chicken Pussy’).

The brainchild of producer/singer/musician Kramer and singer/songwriter/actress Ann Magnuson the band released an ep and four albums (Breaking No New Ground, Double Bummer, Too Much Sleep, The Power of Pussy and The Big Sell-out) between 1987 and 1991 on the Shimmy-Disc label. PoP is to an extent a concept album – following an at times pretty sexy and spacey journey through life for an un-named character voiced by Magnuson. Many of the songs are spoken rather than sung and interspersed between them are sampled snippets of random dialogue, some of which are either sped up or slowed down to amusing ends (not a concept they invented of course but one that many since, from Sebadoh to Cassetteboy, have employed to equally good effect). The bulk of the tunes are written by the two singers but they use the following covers well and make them their own – Pete & Dud’s Bedazzled and Campbell & Newman’s Kisses Sweeter Than Wine. One word of warning though – if you get the album as part of the Box of Bongwater set its unfortunately split over two discs so uploading it to a computer and reconstituting it is a must. From the title track through to the nine minute ‘Folk Song’ it’s a joy to behold. The group split in 1992 with Kramer going on to produce work with Daevid Allen and for King Missle, Alice Donut and others as well as a number of solo albums. Ann Magnuson went on to release The Luv Show album on Geffen (which once again followed a conceptual theme) and pursue many acting roles. Apparently they no longer get along.

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