“Bulbous Creation seem to have warped directly from the wrong side of the looking glass with a jabberwocky full of surreal lyrics and gratuitous guitar solos…”
After a week of freedom and blissful sea air, I have to say that returning to my blog is one of the few things I’m happy to be back for! I’ve missed this and I miss sharing music!
Today’s offering is a acid-drenched psychedelic rarity from the early 1970’s. Taken from the one and only album this Kansas band released, End of the Page is a gentle meditation with a subtle depth that shines through in it’s questioning lyrics. Bulbous Creation laid down their sole album in the Cavern Sound Studio, Missouri in 1969, with today’s song the record’s opening track. An interesting way to start a record, because this is one of their more chilled songs, so I guess this would lull the expectations of a first time listener into thinking this was a more laid-back country-rock affair…which it is not! This record explores the heavier side of psych-rock with its stormy bass work and snarling guitars…its crying shame there was only this one record!
What’s even more interesting is that this little sonic beauty wasn’t actually officially released until over 20 years later when Dallas, TX psychedelic record label, Rockadelic Records put this out for the first time!! It has since been reissued by the Numero Group who included the notes I’ve pasted below with their press!! So, I shall leave you to peruse through those notes below and have also included the lyrics to End of the Page as well as pasting the full album at the very bottom of this post!! If you’ve not heard this record in its entirety, I’d recommend it!! Enjoy!!
Numero notes: A truly underground document of the national obsession with heavy, mind-bent psychedelia. Originating in the unassuming suburb of Prairie Village, Kansas, Bulbous Creation seem to have warped directly from the wrong side of the looking glass with a jabberwocky full of surreal lyrics and gratuitous guitar solos. Recorded and abandoned in the catacombs of Independence, Missouri’s Cavern Sound studio in 1969, Bulbous Creation’s eight-song screed invokes images of sinners, wage slaves, drugs, out of touch parents, jail, and the devil, naturally.
“He was kind of a loner,” Jan Parkinson said of his younger brother Paul, singer and guitarist of Kansas City’s Bulbous Creation. Born and raised on the west side of the Missouri River in Prairie Village, Kansas, Paul used his semi-isolated surroundings as fuel for his fantastical lyrics. A series of informal bands were formed in high school with his childhood friend Jim “Bugs” Wine and revolving cast of drummers. The band was put on ice in 1966 for Wine’s enlistment, and he spent the next three years stationed in Korea, Germany, and Fort Riley, Kansas, where he spent his downtime honing his bass chops to a fine point. Discharged honorably into the heady climate of the ’60s final year, Wine waded into the potent stream of freedom and higher consciousness that was flowing in every city. He got an apartment in KC with another childhood friend whose hair was gathering around the collar and a job in avionics. It was here he reconnected with Paul Parkinson.
Wine had already been looking into putting a band together. A personal ad in the K.C. Star put him in contact with guitarist Alan Lewis, who had a monstrous talent and a familiarity with Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep. Lewis and Wine gelled immediately, but lacked the introspective nature of true songwriters. Wine invited the wordsmith Parkinson to apply his lyrics and melodic ideas to their heavy foundation. On the drum stool was Chuck Horstmann. For no identifiable reason, Lewis thought the term “Bulbous” applied to their sound, and wanted to name the band thus. His mates balked, but applying the slightly cosmic “Creation” to it at least let it roll off the tongue. Their all-originals set list made them a difficult booking, and profits did not materialize.
In 1971, the quartet poured what little personal surplus they had into a full day of recording at Cavern Studios, tracking enough material for a full length album. Bulbous Creation wouldn’t stay together long enough to save up for a custom pressing. The deeply individualistic Parkinson left to perform his songs as he thought appropriate, as a solo act. He preferred coffee shops to concert halls, and would stick to his craft another 20 years before hanging it up. Horstmann followed suit. Wine and Lewis soldiered on, adding a few components and then shortening their name to the more sensible Creation on the path to a more progressive sound. The Bulbous Creation LP might’ve been doomed to oblivion but for the efforts of Rich Haupt, who issued the seven-song LP in 1995 on his Rockadelic imprint. When Paul Parkinson died of leukemia in 2001, a lone copy turned up amongst his possessions, proof enough that someone, somewhere, was listening.
Time has come together, breath of fresh air to our song
We die quickly from the looting, we have done
Make the life you live become more than just a game
Give the world a chance to think, and live up to it’s name
Can you see the stars at night
To make a certain wish?
Can you find the ocean
Through the fields of dying fish?
Is the air you breathe a colour you can not explain?
Is the place you spend your days a safe place to remain?
Take my hand and make a stand against this life of death
Tell the people, make their choice while they still have on left
Do you want to die, before your children reach the age?
Or are the words you said today the ending of the page?
Take my hand and make a stand against this life of death
Tell the people, make their choice while they still have on left
Do you want to die, before your children reach the age?
Or are the words you said today the ending of the page?
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