Flower Travelin' Band- From Pussies to Death in 10,000 Years of Freak Out!

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And yet the recent bootleg of CHALLENGE studio out-takes, available on the spectacularly-named FROM PUSSIES TO DEATH IN 10,000 YEARS FREAK OUT, contains an un-released version of Led Zeppelin�s �How Many More Times� which is as exhilarating and enthralling as any Big Brother show ever could have been. It is James Brown-brilliant; a call-and-answer knee-trembler crossing the Misunderstood with the Yardbirds (with Jimmy), and Big Brother without their cack-handedness. That this was rejected from the final CHALLENGE tracklisting defies comment � it was their best recording ever and still sounds like a lost �60s soul classic.
But it was not until the fashion for Hendrix and Cream-inspired Heavy Rock of the late 60s had spawned such sonic behemoths as Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, Mountain and Grand Funk that Yuya Uchida, the Flowers� erstwhile leader, producer and mentor, decided to act. And, just as Terry Knight had left his own band, Terry Knight & the Pack, in order to turn them into Grand Funk, so Yuya Uchida now ejected himself and the other singers in an act of Blue Cheer-like self-pruning.

Continuing as their producer, it was Uchida who picked Joe as their new singer. But how should their new band sound? Just as Jimmy Page had vacillated between making Led Zeppelin exclusively heavy and joining the CSN&Y brigade, so Yuya Uchida had grave doubts about the direction in which Flower Travellin� Band should be seen to be travelling. And so, for their first few months, Flower went off in all directions. First, they recorded the monumental 27-minute guitar�n�atmosphere freakout �I�m Dead�, which transports the listener through every Amon Duul 2 jam session and burns every escape route as you pass along it. �I�m Dead� is a monument of experimentation, of highs and even of lows, yet it was a spectacular success, and � in terms of space and ambience - beyond what even the guitar-based Krautrock bands were later doing.
But this pure freak out music was not for Yuya Uchida

The past couple of years has seen a re-appraisal of the band in all its configurations, with two excellent releases. First came a dedication to The Flowers with the awesomely-titled FROM PUSSIES TO DEAD IN 10,000 YEARS OF FREAKOUT. It was on this vinyl-only release that we finally got to hear the incredible Joplinised version of Zeppelin�s �How Many More Times�, which I told you about earlier.
-Julian Cope(as strange as always)

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