I have just got the ‘Best Of’ The Regular Fries album, having seen the review in last week’s Saturday Times which included a picture of the band, in true drude-style garb, wearing gas masks, head-dresses, voodoo top hats and militaria, and am absolutely blown away!!Aside from the mind-boggling sleeve notes..which explain that the Fries printed their own currency, sought independent nation status from the Pope and sold their own merchandise using their own’Fries’ cash (which they would distribute freely at gigs) the music is great: dark, swampy, astro sleaze funk which any fan of Julian’s more wacked out moments would surely approve of. Sort of Silver Apples meets the Floyd via Hawkwind.
No wilful obscurio’s these either…on the back of rabid music press acclaim in the late nineties they were hearlded by Rolling Stone and NME, signed a big deal and even recorded with Kool Keith, Mercury rev and all manner of weird and wonderful other psycehedically minded souls (there were eight of them, by the looks of it). A glorious blast of modern day psych’n’roll which I think even Mr. Cope would wholeheartedly approve of!!Better still, they didn’t even split up, just announced they were ‘leaving then cosmos’. Head on!!
Check it out. Time for a lie-down, methinks, and another listen to ‘Mars Hotel’ and ‘Dream Lottery’.….