Kim Fowley’s a weird animal. As a producer and song writer the man’s had so many hits, it’d take weeks to count ‘em all. Additionally, he’s recorded a litany of albums under his own name. So, why didn’t he have any hits?

There’s no such thing as being ahead of or behind time. Anachronisms aren’t really. There might be people out there who feel detached from normalcy, but that doesn’t change the time frame in which each functions. Fowley perceived what was in motion or what there was an emerging audience for. There were all girl groups before the Runaways, but none were presented in the way that group was. An that’s why Fowley’s something like a genius. He understands culture. He even understood the Modern Lovers better than John Cale. That’s gotta be worth something.

Fowley, though, just couldn’t cash in on his own albums. An early single “The Trip” should be included in the discussion of psych music and it exploding out of acid dungeons in and around Los Angeles. The song still didn’t make Fowley any money.

For such a strange and twisted man, though, money wasn’t the force behind his career. He surely wanted some, but wanted just as much to create a unique body of work. The fact that that includes writing songs with KISS is something of a side note. That was a job. A job that he was compensated for. Would Fowley proclaim his admiration for Gene Simmons – probably for the (supposed) debauched life-style. But who knows if he even liked that band.

International Heroes, issued in 1973 is generally perceived to be Fowely’s high point as a date leader. I’m apt to disagree with that. But media says what it does. Sandwhiched around that disc, though, are a number of albums that sport a bit more immediacy when tossed on today.

1974’s Automatic comes off as a disc concocted simply for radio play. And that’s probably why it didn’t get any.

Six years earlier in 1968 Fowley released Outrageous. It sounds like a sixties album should. There’s enough organ to choke a hooker, some fuzzed out guitar and a funky bass behind Fowley yelping about drugs, being a country boy and whatever else. It might seem kitschy at this point to folks who don’t sift through sixties’ ephemera. But it’s more than that. Outrageous actually counts as the realization “The Trip” promised.