Search - Col. Bruce Hampton :: One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist

Shoe Polish Strained Through Bread

George Mostoller | Philadelphia, PA | 08/25/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Probably Col. Bruce Hampton has been most widely heard playing with the southern rock-folk-funk Aquarium Rescue Unit, but many less have heard the Colonel's proto-Surrealist roots. Starting with the terminally weird Hampton Grease Band in the late sixties, which recorded a lone double album on the Columbia label, Col. Bruce embraced a Dadaist approach to music. The liner notes to 1978's "One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist" list gospel, jazz, blues, concrete poetry and rock & roll as the colors on Col. Bruce's palette, and he uses his unique creative vision to combine these into a music that can go from atonal improv music to swing jazz to deep bluesy funk at the drop of a hat. This is a joyous CD and a weird CD, and highly recommended, with three bonus tracks that are a real treat. Imagine Captain Beefheart as a Baptist preacher leading the original Allman Brothers Band in a set of Sun Ra and John Cage numbers, and you might end up with something like this - but no comparison can do a true artist justice. Col. Bruce is a true artist."