Written by: Dave Cantrell
The ‘get-down-get-funky-be-mellow’ ethos of the 70’s that had its roots in the “free your mind and your ass will follow” movement of the late 60’s exerted so strong an influence on the zeitgeist that it still held invincible sway a decade later, a fact no more evidenced than by the existence of these lost, now found recordings of Doug Hream Blunt, recorded in the late 80’s in a San Francisco that still embraced the idea of outsider art.
Responding to his own internal siren’s call to music, the theretofore wholly untrained Hream Blunt answered the lure of of a pole-stapled flyer advertising a workshop on “How To Form A Band.” A whim as much as anything – by all accounts he liked music but wasn’t obsessed – he nonetheless followed through with utmost resolve, ultimately self-releasing an LP (Gentle Persuasion, the first six tracks here before four from the follow-up Big Top EP) that he’d drop off at local record stores on handshake consignments after which, as often as not, he’d never return to see if any had sold. There the story would trail off inside the nameless faceless fizzle of history were it not for two inter-related factors: the teacher at the other end of that flyer was a drummer named Victor that ‘taught’ his student guitar without knowing much of anything about it himself, resulting in a uniquely naive style of playing that’s child-like, idiosyncratic, and wonderful (not to mention, in the end, highly effective), thereby informing the playing and the compositions in such a way as to snag the crate digging curiosity some twenty years later of such fellow spiritual travelers as Devendra Banhart, Ariel Pink, David Byrne and others.
Enlisting classmates as bandmates, setting Victor down behind the kit who in turn brought his girlfriend in on bass (and his sister when a second guitar was needed), the music, pulling as it does from the two decades preceding the one in which it was conceived, lives entirely in its own moment. Accurate to say, in a shorthand way, ‘Imagine a one-man Shaggs weened on Curtis Mayfield and popsike garage,’ it’s also not a stretch to falsely remember what is heard here as the incidental soundtrack to one of those early 70’s, disaffected cultural flicks set on a groovy-but-damaged West Coast where the utopian ideal still clings with a delusional – and therefore poignant – tenacity. Though the LP tracks certainly have their own sui generis gravity, quite often coming off like a gifted hobbyist chasing over-earnest versions of the Tim Buckley mojo circa Greetings From L.A. (“Gentle Persuasion,” the bongo-tattooed “Break Free,” the boy-next-door exoticism of “Caribbean Queen”) while elsewhere pre- post-figuring Half Japanese on a jazz-funk quaalude tear (“Fly Guy”) that’s inutterably addictive in its own alluring way or an inchoate Booker T busting out the teenaged garage grind (“Wiskey Man”), the picks might well be the Big Top selections.
From “Big Top” itself upping the ante in the ‘sexy rock’n’sway’ stakes, the pocket deeper, the lyric more tossed-off inventive and assured, to the perked hypnotic persistence of “Trek” that moves like a drone cadet stuck inside a home-made suburban motorik rhythm, understated and far-out, to “Loveland”‘s AM-tinged foray (part Dead shuffle, part Grass Roots grooviness) and an almost avant instrumental take of “Fly Guy” that – seriously – Flutronix ought to have a listen to, the EP is convincing proof of an artist moving forward, doubling down on the pity that the guy’s self-imposed anonymity didn’t sooner stumble across some random agent of fate that might have thrown him a lifeline or two of opportunity. Hream Blunt’s guitar style alone should have ensured that (offbeat though the path of his instruction may have been, he was clearly an astute and voracious student, his solos presented with unself-conscious verve and honesty, equally ersatz and one-of-a-kind, landing somewhere between Zoot Horn Rollo and The Feelies), but as it didn’t and providence has offered him – and us – a second act, let’s not blow it for him – or, again, us – OK? Buy yourself a copy of My Name Is…, we all win.
In case it’s needed, here’s some gentle persuasion, a clip from public access TV ‘back in the day:’
