PSYCHEDELIC MONSTERJAM

The band's name as shown on both of the recordings they released is NEUMEIER GENRICH SCHMIDT. They named this, the first release "Psychedelic Monsterjam" after the series of live "Monsterjam" events in Wurzburg, Germany in the early 00's. They were involved in the first two events which were held at different venues and 2 months apart. The tracks here are taken from both live shows they did in 2003, the first in June at Cafe Cairo, and the second at Club AKW in August. Man what a draw these guys would have been. How long had it been that Mani and Ax played together in GURU GURU? 30 years?

So we have the drummer and lead guitarist from early GURU GURU, then enter the young guy Dave Schmidt from ZONE SIX, ELECTRIC MOON and many other projects, infusing some passionate energy with his spacebass. Love the picture of the guys in the Bio here. We get nine tracks worth almost 80 minutes. All but the three GURU GURU tracks they cover are spontaneous and furious improvs. These guys were on fire! They went into this with the idea of playing in the style that GURU GURU did on their "UFO" and "Hinten" albums. Yeah they did.

Man this is a lot to take in, but I had such a blast with this one. How about covering GURU GURU's "Stone In" and then following that up with their own "Stone Out" in the same style! Those two make my top three as Ax absolutely shreds on "Stone In" while "Stone Out" has a lot of distortion and builds before kicking in hard and ending with laughter."Moonlight Flight" right in the middle here is my other top three at almost 12 minutes, but it's hard not to be blown away by "Electric Junk" at over 18 minutes, or the 11 1/2 minute "Next Time See You At The Dalia Lhama".

To open with a song called "Bong" and then to end with "Mushroom Moon" just seems appropriate doesn't it? 4 stars for this raging jam.