#frumpy

A queer man would never wear such an ill fitting, frumpy looking suit. I guess Daniel Craig can no longer afford a stylist as in his James Bond Days.

Bodkin: Bodkin (1972)

Once more into the depths we go, and I felt compelled to consult a dictionary for this one:

bod·kin /ˈbädkən/ noun

A blunt, thick needle with a large eye used especially for drawing tape or cord through a hem;

A small pointed instrument used to pierce cloth or leather;

A Scottish rock band most of us have never heard of.

Nor would we, if not for my boundless/reckless curiosity for hirsute, hoary, heavy-handed, all-but-forgotten groups from the early 1970s, which was precisely when this curiously named quintet briefly walked the primordial Earth before facing historical extinction.

And yet, somehow, Bodkin's name survived among diehard record collectors, even though (or perhaps because) they only pressed a few hundred copies of this set of long-winded jams -- all of them dredged from the foggy realm between the prog-rock highlands and psych-rock lochs (in a manner of speaking) of their homeland.

Fact is: these barely produced efforts by vocalist Zeik Hume, guitarist Mick Riddle, bassist Bill Anderson, drummer Dick Sneddon, and a dominated Doug Rome on Hammond organ were probably no more than demos that no label saw fit to release.

And why would they?

Like similarly flawed contemporaries such as Jade Warrior, Steel Mill, and Ainigma, Bodkin simply lacked the instrumental abilities and songwriting sophistication to pull off these overly ambitious, often plodding, even clumsily arranged explorations.

OK, so the morbidly-named, two-part, side one-spanning "Three Days After Death" sort of keeps it together with its epic blend of marching rhythms, pounding bass, serpentine guitar riffs, and hymnal, semi-classical keyboards, behind Hume's insecure wailing.

But unwanted psychedelic hangovers undermine both the queerly named "Aftur Yur Lumbe" (think Cream at their absolute worst) and the eleven-minute "Aunty Mary's Trashcan," with its dated, whimsical nonsense about tin cans, broken vases, and grandfather clocks.

And besides briefly quoting from Holst's "Mars, Bringer of War," the album's sole, remote connection to proto-metal, "Plastic Man," merely shifts the focus from keys to guitar, but Riddle's leaden tones and sullen power chords hardly resemble Black Sabbath.

Come to think of it, Bodkin's effort does sort of sound like "Iron Man," if he were made of, you know, "plastic."

So keep in mind that vinyl-hawking reissue labels have obviously tried to put a kinder spin on Bodkin's oft-forgotten relic over the years, and, to be fair, I too have heard a lot worse, but (stop me if you've heard me say this before) I've also heard a lot better!

In other words, don't be fooled by the album's inexplicably copious reissues (let alone that one cover overhead boasting a Baphopmet symbol to suggest occult rock or metallic contents), and approach Bodkin with the same caution you would give a "blunt, thick needle."

More Vintage Progressive Rock: Art's Supernatural Fairy Tales, Beckett's Beckett, Birth Control's Operation, A Bolha's Um Passo à Frente, Can's Ege Bamyasi, Clear Blue Sky's Clear Blue Sky, Crack the Sky's Crack the Sky, Culpeper's Orchard's Culpeper’s Orchard, Dies Irae's First, Eloy's Eloy, Flied Egg's Dr. Siegel’s Fried Egg Shooting Machine, Focus' Moving Waves, Frumpy's Frumpy 2, Fuzzy Duck's Fuzzy Duck, Genesis' Nursery Cryme, Goblin's Profondo Rosso, Gracious' Gracious!, Hard Meat’s Hard Meat ...