Jeff Simmons: The Straight Years

After years of listening to scratchy vinyl (with all their inherent pops and hisses), poor quality tape recordings, and substandard mp3’s, I finally received the 2CD set of Jeff Simmons‘ classic psychedelic album, “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up” combined with the original soundtrack from “Naked Angels” in the mail yesterday from The Jazz Loft out of Bellevue, Washington. Both albums were re-issued on CD in 2007 by World In Sound Records.

Lucille… contains 10 catchy and heavy, hard-driven, blues-rock and folk tracks that we are all familiar with, particularly those tracks that Frank Zappa either composed himself, or co-wrote with Simmons — under the synonym ‘La Marr Bruister — such as the title track ‘Lucille…’ or ‘Wonderful Wino’ or performed lead guitar on such as ‘Raye’. Carefully re-mastered, Lucille… also has two bonus tracks, ‘Bucket of Blues’ and a more than eight minute extended live blues jam of ‘Lucille HMMU’. These two tracks alone make this purchase worthwhile. Listening to ‘Bucket of Blues’ one can easily understand what Zappa saw and heard in that young Jeff Simmons that led him to sign him to Straight Records. These tracks sound as fresh now as when they were first recorded. Also included in this 2 CD-set is a 20 page booklet with all original artwork, and other memorabilia Simmons’ vaults (posters, cool photos, linernotes).

CD #2 Naked Angels, a soundtrack for the Roger Corman-esque biker movie is a sequence of mostly instrumentals which combine melody and fuzz guitar; heavy, psychedelic surf-rock. At times, it reminds me of some of the shorter instrumental tracks found on ‘Uncle Meat.’