Musicology

Max Frost & The Troopers - Shape of Things to Come 1968

Max Frost & the Troopers weren't a real rock band -- it's been reported that the musicians on this LP are actually from Davie Allan & the Arrows -- and their big "hit" was prominently used in the psychsploitation film Wild in the Streets. Thus it's no surprise that the album is also cheesy psychsploitation, albeit not as enjoyable on the whole as Wild in the Streets is. That's not true of the hit, "Shape of Things to Come," which for all its tacky origins is a pretty great slice of moody 1968 psychedelic pop, written by top songwriting team Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil no less. Yet that classic aside, almost every single track on this album is clumsy, forgettable late-'60s pop/rock with artificial-sounding psychedelic and soul-rock trappings. It sounds, in fact, like what it almost is: a fictional rock group pretending to be actual rock stars in a low-budget movie, with slightly retro (by 1968) shades of go-go music, mod rock ("It's Wrong" even briefly quotes the power chord riffs from "My Generation"), garage psychedelia, white-boy soul, and lyrics that are poutily anti-authoritarian or naïvely blissful. There were yet more tawdry psychedelic bandwagon-jumping projects in the late '60s. But "Shape of Things to Come" alone should be enough Max Frost & the Troopers for almost anyone, and it's well-represented on several various-artists compilations. AMG.

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