The 1982 Listening Post - Bobb Trimble - Harvest of Dreams

 Reviewed by Tom Mott / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY

Released: December 16 1982 Bobb Trimble Harvest of Dreams Genre: Obscure Psychedelic Folk! Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5 Tom’s Rating: 5 out of 5 Highlights: (everything!) Bobb Trimble ... ? Huh. Never heard of him. PUT ON THE FIRST TRACK. DO IT! PLEASE! "Premonitions - The Fantasy" . . . Are you listening to it yet? PUT IT ON! . . . I am completely bonkers hooked. Strummy folk guitar, Harmonica, a synth whistling, high vocals. Reverb, echo, weirdness, mesmerizing beauty. It sounds like ... > Russel Mael as a folk singer > Demo tracks for the Millennium's "Begin" (1968) > A second lost album by Ted Lucas ("Ted Lucas" 1975) > A deep cut from T. Rex when they were still Tyrannasaurus Rex > A Big Star obscurity, if Chris Bell sang falsetto > An early Salvation Army/Three O'Clock demo > Klaatu, if Klaatu was a little fucked up > Thunderclap Newman on acid Track 2 "If Words Were All I Had" is a tad too medieval for my taste, but still lovely. Donovan sucking on helium. Track 3 "The World I Left Behind" is 1:18 of silence. On AllMusic, it's not silence but 2:58 of tape hiss. I'm giving him a pass here. Track 4 "Armour of the Shroud" starts with a tape recorder click, a recorded voice telling us if we want to make a call, please hang up and try again, followed by a busy signal. Guitars, layered spooky voices buried way in the background, maracas (an immediate +1 for me), and what sounds like a kids' xylophone. Dreamy. If we stop here, this album gets a 5. ------------------------------------- INTERLUDE/ASIDE #1: The MKL (Most Knowledgable Listeners) of who I am not, will know that Bobb Trimble released two albums in limited editions of 300 apiece, and had a backing band called The Kidds which included kids aged 11-14 years old--until their parents questioned why their kids were spending all their time making "weird" music with this adult. This is one of those holy grails of obscure psychedelic folk collectors. INTERLUDE/ASIDE #2: The OKL (Other Knowledgable Listeners) will connect the dots between this and later artists. Neutral Milk Hotel, Joanna Newsom -- accordingly to AllMusic. I don't know enough here. Elucidate! INTERLUDE/ASIDE #3: Thanks to modern streaming algorithms, I was very recently introduced to Ted Lucas's 1975 psychedelic folk album, and I love it. This is in that same "psychedelic folk" space that I didn't really know existed, but of course it does. Rule 34 applied to music. Too Dead-ish for some, but Lucas writes deceptively simple, pretty songs (think: Moondog as a folkie) and does some lovely self-harmonizing. Check it out! ------------------------------------- Track 4: Album still gets a 5. Track 5: Wait, wha-?? This is Track 1 repeated, but mixed slightly differently. The whistling synth is gone. It's a little less dense. Nearly identical though, like when the Stones give you the Glyn Johns alternate mix of a song. The song is good enough I'm happy to hear it again. Album still gets a 5. Track 6: Some kids talking. His backing band? Album still gets a 5. ------------------------------------- INTERLUDE/ASIDE #4: The album is beautiful. And unsettling. Drug music! ------------------------------------- Track 7: Still a strong song, but like too many Madness songs in a row, I'm slipping a twee bit ... until that whacked-out super-fuzzed guitar appears out of nowhere. Whoa! WTF! Brilliant! Track 8: The first outlier: A 2-minute blast of rough garage rock by his young bandmates. Overlaid with backwards-tracked instruments and backwards kids' voices. And star chimes. Shaggs-like live singing and thudding away at drums. ------------------------------------- INTERLUDE/ASIDE #5: Track 8 reminds me of my old band Legion of Rock Stars. We wore sound-blocking earphones and sang/played along to songs without being able to hear ourselves at all. Always out of key, and always in sync! ------------------------------------- Track 9: Back to the lovely, languid, sleep psychedelia. Track 10: The second outlier: a more agressive, angular song. At least for the first minute! And then back to psychedelic found sounds, maracas, echo, reverb, layered voices, and whistles. The Wrap-Up: I did not know this album existed. It's fantastic. It's going into heavy rotation over here. Accessible Psychedelic Sunshine Pop-Folk!

The 1980 Listening Post - Bobb Trimble - Iron Curtain Experience

Bobb Trimble - Iron Curtain Experience 

#495

By David Jackson

December 9 1980
Bobb Trimble
Album: Iron Curtain Innocence 

Genre: Experimental Rock 

Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5

David’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0 

Highlights: 

When the Raven Calls

One Mile from Heaven

Fun fact according to Wikipedia: Nothing really specific for this album, but during the early 1980s, when he would have been in his early to mid-20s, Bobb had two backing bands: The Kidds, where the average age of the band members was 12 years old, and The Crippled Dog Band, where the average age was 15 years old, however, "suspicious parents" apparently pulled the plug on both bands for, well, obvious reasons.

 

Maybe it isn’t a fair place to begin with an album review, but the cover art for this record is noteworthy. It features the artist, Mr. Bobb Trimble, sitting alone in front of the same background used for my third-grade school picture that was taken during the same year. No words are on the cover, just Bobb sitting there holding a guitar (of course) on his lap while his right hand is holding up a machine gun. 

A fair amount of the music here is as disturbing as the cover art, but interesting enough to warrant more than a casual listen. In fact, I don’t imagine it is even possible to give the chilling “Night at the Asylum” even a casual listen without feeling at least a little bit creeped out. That track along with the folky-psychedelic “When the Raven Calls” would make for nice conversation starters if included on your Halloween Party playlist. 

 

Side B of the record signals a notable transition to a bit softer sounds while some of the weirdness persists as evidenced by some of the track titles (i.e., “Killed by the Hands of an Unknown Rock Star”). While arguably less interesting than the songs on Side A, these songs tend to be a little more melodic and showcase Trimble’s vocal ability. “One Mile from Heaven,” in particular, shines as a strikingly beautiful song amidst all the peculiarities going on throughout this album. Bobb himself must have thought quite highly of this one as the album features both a short (about four minutes) and closes with a long (nearly six minutes) version of the song. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/5AWGhGT2Xohl0kyTTyJZGg?si=7FD-lnh2S0KsuznoSJKSlA