HW: Magic Muscle

[cjohnson]

I have 4 releases by Magic Muscle, and here are the dates I remember:

* Laughs and Thrills (live 1972 - mostly?)
* The Pipe, The Roar, The Grid (demos recorded in 1973, released 1988!)
* One Hundred Miles Below (live at The Moles Club, Bath UK 1988)
* Gulp (studio, 1991)

My favorite is definitely 'Gulp', which is similar in some ways to
'100 Miles Below'.  'Laughs and Thrills' has terrible sound quality,
while 'Pipe-Roar-Grid' sounds much better from the same period.

Overall, Magic Muscle has a rough early-seventies kind of sound
similar to what High Tide sounded like, but without the same
distinctive vocalist.  The music released in the late eighties
has a generally better audio quality.  (I actually prefer High Tide
over Magic Muscle much of the time.)


Not really similar to Magic Muscle or High Tide, Simon House also
played with the Third Ear Band during the same time period when
all three bands released their main albums.  Check out 'Music
from MacBeth', a soundtrack by Third Ear Band.


For folks interested in Magic Muscle, also check out the band
Outskirts of Infinity for some of the same musicians doing
hard-rocking Hendrix-inspired sets of music.  My feeble brain also
seems to ring a bell regarding the band Etheral Counterbalance II
having some relation to this same crew of rotating players.


One last note:  Crohinga Well #12 mentions an unreleased Simon House
solo album called 'House of Dreams' that featured some involvement
by Adrian Shaw, Rod Goodway, and Pete Pavli.  This was completed
around April 1992, and featured instruments by Simon, vocals by Rod.
(Simon, Adrian, and Pete have all worked with HW and Bob Calvert.)


Captain Cloud
cjohnson at hpsc.hisd.harris.com