The Head Shop: New York, B-Rate Psych

The fact that the Head Shop don’t have an intriguing back story, nor any break up shenanigans to relate should make the group an uninteresting thing to invest time writing about. That’s kinda true.

Comprised primarily of Joe Siano (vocals), Prosseda Danny (guitar), Drew Sbordone (bass), Jesse Luca (percussion), the New York based group were joined on their lone 1969 Epic album by a few other folks - and most impressively by a young Larry Coryell. At the point in time that this self titled album from the Head Shop was completed, Coryell had just come off of his first two releases as a date leader, which somehow didn’t exactly solidify his career as a guitar giant. The six-stringer’s inclusion on the almost six minute “I Feel like Comin’ On” doesn’t make the track, but it provides an appreciative amount of fuzz to the proceedings. Coryell was generally known to be the jazz world’s Hendrix (after the likes of McLaughlin, of course) and that prowess is amply displayed here.

There are, obviously, efforts here without Coryell’s presence and none really suffer as a result – there’s just not a sheet of guitar behind it all. Listeners, though, should ignore the two ill fated Beatles cops during the first half of the disc. After that, it’s still pretty choppy unfortunately. Not that there aren’t highlights, but mediocrity and material that comes off as nothing other than dated doesn’t render the Head Shops long player a lost grail of sorts.

As the Head Shop takes few stabs at being willingly psychedelic, each attempt doesn’t necessarily work out too well. The short “Prophecy” feels as if it takes two hours to get through its two minutes. And while offering a bit of spoken word chicanery may have gone over back in the psych heyday even as it still seems genuine now, modern audiences aren’t going to be too taken with the whole thing.

Including an organist in the form of Geoff Wright, who apparently wasn’t a full fledged member, served the Head Shop pretty well, though. So when Coryell wasn’t there to inject his backing, the stabs and melody being wrenched from Wrights instrument went a long way to fill up any neglected space. “Sunny,” a Bobby Hebb cover, has a bit of dicey key work, but on the album’s proper closer, “Infinity,” some of Wrights vamping adds a much needed dash of subtleness to the whole work out.

Sadly tacked onto the end of the Head Shop’s disc, released via World in Sound, are a few bonus tracks partially made up from offerings released as a single. It’s a nice addition for completists, although the songs are pretty standard fare and in more of a straight garage style as opposed to some of that other gritty psych stuff. Bonus tracks – here specifically – don’t generally add too much to a re-release. And as for the Head Shop, the additional music only lessens the impact of the nine tracks that precedes it. Nice addition in theory, just not in practice.