Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Shiver - San Francisco's Shiver (1972 us, hard fuzz out acid psych, Shadoks bonus tracks release)



Shiver was a late sixties/early seventies band that played heavy acid rock in the vein of Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer. This album is a reissue of a 1972 recording the band did on an old, yet effective, 2-track machine. Re-released by Shadoks Music, a subdivision of Germany's Normal label, it is a startlingly good artifact of the seventies acid rock scene. 

While their brand of psych rock is significantly heavier than that of the more popular bands of the era - the scorching "Touch As Nails" is enough to make The Seeds and Steppenwolf sound like Barbra Streisand - they are no less psychedelic than any of the era's major outfits. In fact, the band's amazing solos are enough to get any stoner's head in the clouds. "Fixer", for example, sounds as if its straight out of the seventies-era West Coast underground - blasting along with yelled vocals and powerful, spacey guitar solos. "Up My Sleeve", meanwhile, will get you moving immediately - its scorching guitar work and super-fast drumming is enough to get anyone shaking. And when the singer starts screaming along to the insane instrumentation, you'll no longer be on this planet.

And, of course, there's the album's epic, "Alpha Man". Like a cross between the melodic perfection of Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" and the acid-influences of Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda-Da Vida", the track starts slowly, build up, halts, and then goes right into a devilishly catchy chorus ("Baby I'm the alpha maa-aaa-aan!"). It's the ultimate stoner paradise; head pounding riffs, brain boggling solos, and stoned drumming all make appearances. You'll wish you could have seen it played live.

Shiver's work is that rare stuff you hear so much about but never actually come across; it packs all the energy of a live performance onto one little cd. If you are at all interested in real acid rock, go find this artifact, lie back, and let the music take over your body. You won't be disappointed.
by Matt Shimmer 
Tracks
1. Tough as Nails - 6:48
2. Fixer - 5:10
3. Bone Shaker - 6:24
4. Interstellar Vision - 5:44
5. Alpha Man - 14:29
6. Rocky Road - 3:35
7. Keep on Rocking - 3:01
8. Up My Sleeve - 5:35
9. Winter Time - 4:25

Shiver
*Don Peck - Drums
*Neil Peron - Bass
*Frank Twist - Guitar, Vocals

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6 comments:

  1. The music on this cd represents the entire recorded output of this obscure early '70s acid-rock band. Shiver recorded this stuff live to two-track tape in the summer of 1972, and while they never released an album back in the day, it's clear that the world is ready for their heavy guitar jams now. Well, maybe not the world -- but certainly those of us, mostly too young to have "been there then", who aren't entirely satisfied with today's stoner metal and are always looking for the real deal, the lost stoner psych monster...55 minutes of heavy guitar rock! Recorded in 1972, but released only in 2000 (by specializing in American ''discoveries'' Rockadelic) contained a deadly dose of heavy rock rozimprowizowanego style: Truth & Janey, Sir Lord Baltimore i .. early Hawkwind narcotic effects, but a very specific play based on solid rhythms of drums and infinite guitar parts. Slightly muffled sound, but you can hear everything very clearly.

    Basically, Shiver were a bunch of hard-rocking hippie freaks, brought together by a Texas-bred drummer who moved to San Francisco to take up where his obvious heroes Blue Cheer left off. They soon had a rather rough, tough reputation, playing Haight street fairs and Hells Angels biker parties. At one point they even had a singer with an iron hook for a hand, which he could use as a slide for his guitar, or for more violent purposes. Shiver played "heavy psychedelic rock" at its most primal -- no overdubs, raw as hell.

    Thx Marios!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marios could you reupload this one please?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown, Shiver - San Francisco's Shiver ..repaired...

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