Jungle Exotica Volume 1

不可解なエキゾチカムードのR&R不思議世界な曲ばかり集めたガレージ・モンド・コンピレーションの第一弾が、新装アートワークのデジパック仕様にてリマスター再発。タイトル通り選りすぐりのガレージにかかせないジャングルリズムやエキゾな珍曲多数収録!!

For every big early rock star, or even one-hit wonder, there were plenty of hopelessly obscure rock & roll singles with no chance of making it big in the marketplace. This didn't stop a lot of people from trying to find the right gimmick. Sometimes that gimmick would involve downright nutty marriages of raw rock & roll with "jungle" rhythms and chants, striptease bump-and-grind cheapness, silly Middle Eastern and Chinese melodies (and accents), and horror movie sound effects and screams. That's what you'll find on this amazing compilation, which has 32 tracks, and nearly 70 minutes, of early rock & roll at its most ridiculously sublime. There's not a star or even a recognizable name in sight on this CD, which rescues impossibly rare singles -- known only to the hardest of the hardcore collectors -- from oblivion. This is not "exotica" in the Martin Denny easy listening sense of the term. These are early rock & roll novelties that are, without exaggeration, breathtakingly frantic and absurd. The "jungle" culture adopted by a lot of the performers came not from real jungles, but from the jungle as it was pictured in Hollywood movies. As such, the chest-beating ape mating calls and bird noises decorating many of these tracks -- not to mention phrases like the fake Chinese "Ah, so!" (which was used as the title for two separate songs) or the Bela Legosi-intoned "come with me to the casbah" -- skirt stereotypes that, in later times, would be called politically incorrect. Nonetheless, these cuts are so infectiously silly, and the primeval rock & roll/R&B guitar-and-sax riffing so hot, that you'll have a hard time not laughing at and enjoying this, no matter what your world view is. ~ Richie Unterberger