When it comes to record collecting, I was pretty late to the game with 60’s-70’s psych/folk/garage and everything in between. Coming from a background where there was never a shortage of obscure punk waiting to be discovered, the thought of even dipping my toe into another world was daunting to say the least. As with pretty much any music that was new to me, I never felt like I had the vocabulary to articulate what it was I liked or didn’t like when discussing such matters with older and wiser collectors. Being a regular customer at Thurston Moore and Byron Coley’s Ecstatic Yod store in Western Mass. and Twisted Village in Cambridge in the 90’s I was exposed to lots of far out psych and folk sounds but my punk rock mind still associated it all with dirty hippies, Vietnam, patchouli and other things I was pretty sure I didn’t like. Free jazz was already enough of a step in a new direction for 20 year old me. The vast world of “psych” seemed like too big of a commitment.
I can’t pinpoint when my tastes started to evolve but eventually I started to subconsciously make my own connections between the proto-punk of the Velvet Underground, the MC5, the Stooges that I loved and bands that had more in common with Led Zeppelin than the Ramones. It was around that time when I became aware of the world of “private press” and “real people” records and Paul Major’s catalogs. I don’t remember anyone actually showing me physical copies of the catalogs, I only heard tales of their contents. Besides having found a new appreciation for these sounds in general, I think what really appealed to me was the DIY aesthetic of not only the sounds being made but also the packaging and design. Like a lot of British and American efforts that sprung from punk, a lot of weirdo private press psych, folk and pop records were similarly innocent, naive attempts at interpreting and imitating sounds and visuals created by more technically “talented” musicians and artists. The charm of bands like the Prats or the Scrotum Poles was and is just as evident in the music of the Shaggs or Donnie & Joe Emerson. By the time I developed an appreciation for this world, most of the good stuff was already big bucks. Thanks to the internet, records that were once word-of-mouth, closely guarded secrets were now common knowledge and available to anyone with a computer. Like anything: if you have a deep wallet, you can have a deep collection.
Since paying big bucks for some obscure private press monster on Discogs or eBay wasn’t in the cards, I just decided to try to have more of an open mind when shopping for new sounds. I felt like I had hit a wall with punk and its offshoots and new discoveries were few and far between. I started checking out records I would have flipped by in the past and dedicating a lot more time to checking out things I’d never heard of before. After a while I could just spot private press records from a mile away and even if it turned out to be a dud, at least I learned something. Truth is, most of this stuff isn’t very good. I found myself buying some terrible records just because the cover was amusing and realized that had to stop. Every so often though I’d find a gem and be reminded of why I even bother spending so much time digging through stuff in the first place. I made lists and lists of stuff I was theoretically “looking for” and every so often I’d get a hit and not even remember how I found out about it originally. That’s what happened to me with Steve Hayes’ 1980 LP “Made In Tulsa”. I’d been looking for a cheap copy for years, but I have no recollection why.
Googling this record, the only things that really come up are the Discogs listing and evidence of it having been played years ago on WFMU (shocker). Before I looked it up I gave it a few spins and for the most part it’s pretty standard bar band blues with some kinda boring but technically proficient guitar solos, kinda like a looser George Thorogood maybe? Fairly generic lyrics about love and loss or whatever. There’s a Dylan cover, a Doors cover and a song best known for Eric Clapton’s version (“Tulsa Time”). Steve likes to “get weird” now and then it seems (as evidenced by the photo on the back cover and the Marshall McLuhan quote). It’s the song “Mister H” that really sticks out like a sore thumb. A sore thumb that’s throbbing and sweating and practically DYING for a fix of what I’m assuming the “H” stands for. The song is a bleak 7 minute and 50 second long mid-paced Crazy Horse-style blues workout with vocals coming from someone who sounds very familiar with what being a junkie is like (or at least talking to one.) I’d even go as far as to say the track is reminiscent of some moments on the Stephen David Heitkotter LP (one of the rarest private press “grails” anywhere (though Hayes’ track isn’t quite formless enough to fit on there)). “Mister H” even reminds me a little bit of a few tracks on Pink Reason’s “Cleaning the Mirror” LP, another drug-drenched lo-fi loner psych classic. To me, its a track like “Mister H” that makes days of looking through dusty stacks and listening to hours of boring schlock all worth it. I’m almost happier not finding much info about Steve Hayes and just listening and wondering what made him record this song and put it on an otherwise pretty uplifting promotional LP.
The good news is: you don’t have to dig up a copy of the Hayes LP to hear “Mister H”. It’s the only song anyone bothered to upload to Youtube (from what I can find). Enjoy…
