MAXIMILLIAN - s/t LP

Riding Easy Records brings this very special heavy psych rocker back into the fold.

New York City based African-American and Latino hard rock/psych trio Maximillian released their sole self-titled album on ABC Records in 1969, then promptly vanished. It has remained a collectors’ conversation piece ever since. Maximillian combined elements of beat poetry, a little bit of The Fugs, a hit of Funkadelic, a lick of Cream and a vibe of Hendrix worship with an ambition that seems to have jumbled these influences.

The Maximillian album is a rare artifact of late-60s psychedelic rock whose appeal is not the skill of their musicianship, but the downright strangeness of it. While at times it sounds like the trio is playing entirely different songs at the same time, it’s said that producer Teddy Vann had a hand in the album’s sometimes confusing production. The group credited on the album consists of singer Buzzy Bowzer (aka Maximillian), lead guitarist Mojack Maximillian, and bassist Moby Medina (aka Moby Maximillian) with drummer Jerry Nolan later of the New York Dolls oddly uncredited on the LP. However, according to Nolan’s official biography, the band was actually co-founded by Buzzy and Nolan in 1968. The drummer was reported to have feuded with Vann, who disliked his Mitch Mitchell influenced style, and was subsequently mixed very quietly and not credited on the album. The album’s eye-catching artwork features the sharp dressed band crucified on flower-covered crosses, with a cryptic and self-aggrandizing manifesto describing them as “new prophets of love and truth.” Be that as it may, their prophecy was short-lived, though it may have foretold the chaotic, rudimentary sounds to come in punk, and even, the grunge era.