Hopney - Cosmic Rockout 1977

Perhaps because of its title, this 1977 album is listed in some psychedelic rock discographies. It's indisputably rare, but it's not much more psychedelic than a can of beer. It really sounds more like some '60s rock veteran, psychedelic or otherwise, nursing a hangover as he re-emerges to play some hole-in-the-wall bar for gas money. There's a burnt-out, lounge-y feeling to this eccentric but vaguely displeasing music, whatever psychedelicisms there are coming through in some of the guitar leads. "Long Ago Far Away," for example, makes it clear that Hopney, or whoever the guitarist was, long ago studied the classic guitar lick in Cream's "White Room," here bastardizing it in the service of a pretty dull song. Much of the album drifts between crummy bar band rock and some pretty strange, goofier songs that don't make it clear whether Hopney's trying to be funny or he's just being unwittingly funny by doing his sincere best. What's one to make, for instance, of "Hey Girl," a smarmily sung number pretty much devoted to chiding a girl to not stick her tongue at the singer (and which actually ranks among the better tracks, sad a statement as that is)? Don't be fooled by high collector prices into thinking this is something special -- it's second-rate, though slightly weirder than many '70s just-this-side-of-vanity obscurities in the vinyl trash bin. AMG.

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