Guru Guru - 2018 - Early Archives, Live 1969

Guru Guru

2018

Early Archives, Live 1969

01. intro 2'59"
02. roots of "Der LSD-Marsch" 13'46"
03. unknown jam extract 2'52"
04. roots of "...Dalai Llama" 14'43"
05. Stone-In 7'25"

bonus tracks, with album download only...
06. Der LSD Marsch (1970) 2:34
07. Electric Junk (1971) 5:01
08. Oxymoron (1972) 5:57

Mani Neumeier (drums, percussion, vocals)
Uli Trepte (bass, radio, vocals)
Jim Kennedy (guitar) tracks 1-5
Ax Genrich (guitar) tracks 6-8

Sourced from a 45 year old cassette. Dates and location unknown.

Obtained via a tape swap from a friend in the early 1980s, I sent a copy to Mani Neumeier to see if he could identify when or where the recording was made and who the guitarist would be. He wasn't exactly sure on any of those things, except it was definitely 1969 and not Ax Genrich. We now know (99% sure) it is Jim Kennedy.

That original cassette copy was rather raw and low-fi, but just about listenable. It was obviously brilliant music. The raw roots of a lot of the material heard later on UFO. When converting my cassette archive to digital, I was surprised that by some tweaking, processing and EQing I could get the recording to sound much better than many things I'd heard documented on CD. Several levels of processing further to that you now have what is on this disc. It's still a pretty raw and wild crunchy mid-fi, but played through a good stereo system the quality is now adequate.

Later, when seeking-out material for the audio sector in The Crack In The Cosmic Egg CD-Rom Mani upplied a few other unreleased early live oddments dating 1970 to 1972 which remain otherwise unreleased, so it made sense to add those as bonus tracks here for a better value disc, adding up to an early history of Guru Guru.