THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,464) Roger Bunn – “Fantasy and Fiction”
Here is a fleeting glimpse into Piece of Mind, an “[e]pic in scope” and “[f]ascinating LP of eccentric whimsy and symphonic psychedelia” (Bradx, https://www.discogs.com/master/235435-Roger-Bunn-Piece-Of-Mind?srsltid=AfmBOoo3mDfkXmzDyg2auqpDuiYa2qSaPvq9NF6x10G0tX5HzN-yRMhy), “an enjoyably bizarre mixture of funky pop, freedom poetry and orchestrated ballads” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited)”, a “delightfully weird-ass stream-of-consciousness creation . . . mixing soul horns, acid rock, freakbeat spaciness, jazz, and folk-pop” that “has been “long regarded as one of the great lost albums of the psychedelic era”. (Bruce Eder, https://www.allmusic.com/album/piece-of-mind-mw0001446817, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/roger-bunn-mn0001614978)
Wah Wah Records tells us that:
K.J. Gustin [called the LP] a work of “exotic psychedelic free-jazz-meets-rock, East-meets-West, progressive and smoky moment in late Twentieth Century music history”. Add to that a spice of jazzy brassed R&B and a touch of minor-key popsike sensitivity and you get an accurate description of the sounds contained in Roger Bunn’s astonishing 1969 LP . . . .
Have we left out a genre? No power ballads?
Joe McFarland adds:
[I]n 1969 Roger Bunn put together “stream-of-consciousness” words with jazz rhythms and acid-psych, punctuated by the occasional James Brown horns, to make a unique album. How many albums, even in the sixties, captured the real sense of unknown territory evident in Ken Kesey’s “Merry Pranksters” bus rides? All through Piece of Mind we hear songs that have the same mythic sense of exploration that was about more than fashion and drug use.
http://www.krautrock-musikzirkus.de/de,Bunn-Roger_835,N.html
Someone who calls him or herself Jimi Hendrix writes:
All the songs on the album, including the music and lyrics, were by Roger and John Mackie, with a very original sound and ahead of anything that was happening in the UK and the US at the time. Piece Of Mind . . . [has] its own personal aura, and very difficult to pigeonhole into any particular style since it fuses countless sounds and styles, such as blues, country, ballads, with a common denominator of jazz that splashes the sound for the most part. The result of this mix is an acid folk that takes different forms, with the different interventions of jazzier parts, parts with classical arrangements, piano parts, but always with the ironic, somewhat bizarre and always acidic seal that Bunn applies to it.
Some are more equivocal. Breakwind says that “[Bunn] himself is singing all kinds of nonsense, reminding us all this album belonged in the 60s. [He] clearly loves himself and his style of folk music, he’s not a bad singer, and the music can be beautiful, it’s just sorta… “far out man”. (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/roger-bunn/piece-of-mind/) Others are downright catty: “Dopey 60s fantasy pop/rock that while not earth shattering scratches a very specific itch”. (Oliverkjohnson7, https://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/693618-roger-bunn-piece-of-mind.php) Cat-scratch fever?
As to Bunn, Hendrix adds:
[Bunn] was born in the middle of the war, with his father dead as a war hero and his mother shortly after abandoning him at a young age. . . . During the sixties he dabbled in drugs and music and began to train as a guitarist and bassist, also playing jazz with some jazz orchestras . . . . At 24 he took his own path with music, which took him to Afghanistan, then Turkey and Iran. He would also pass through Hamburg and a couple more years of comings and goings found him in London meeting the Beatles, where at Paul McCartney’s request he would record some demos for Apple which would be sent to ”Philips Records” in Holland. The work caught the attention of producer Frans Peters, who called him and put him together with composer Ruud Bos, as well as having the Dutch National Orchestra at his disposal for the arrangements and other jazz musicians. That’s how [Piece of Mind] was born . . . .
Bruce Eder tells us that:
By the end of the 1950s, he was . . . gravitating to the work of the American beat poets and jazz musicians. Bunn had started playing guitar in his teens, and by the end of the decade had taken the lead guitar spot in a group called the Bishops. In the early ’60s, however, he made the switch to playing jazz bass, and was working for Cockney rockabilly icon Joe Brown. . . . Bunn’s real love lay with jazz, and not the trad style . . . he was a serious Charlie Parker devotee. But he found most of his opportunities playing rock and soul . . . . During the mid-’60s, he worked with a wide array of players, including Graham Bond, Zoot Money, and Joe Harriott . . . . By his own account, he also used a massive amount of recreational, often hallucinogenic drugs across the years leading up to the late ’60s . . . . He played . . . in Marianne Faithfull’s backing band . . . . [and a]fter a stint playing with the expatriate South African Blue Notes . . . ended up working . . . in . . . Giant Sun Trolley, which played on the same bills as Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and Procol Harum at the UFO Club. . . . [and] . . . [was a] part of “The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream[.]” . . . Bunn spent a significant chunk of 1967 and early 1968 traveling around the Middle East . . . . Back in England, he founded Djinn, a quartet that became a footnote in music history . . . by allowing a youthful David Bowie into its ranks very briefly, part of a professional liaison that didn’t last . . . . Bunn’s solo career seemed to take off after he walked into the Apple offices on Baker Street and — apparently based on the fact that Paul McCartney remembered him from . . . Hamburg — was able to talk his way into getting the use of one of their studio facilities to cut a series of demo sides. Those eventually became the basis for . . . Piece of Mind. . . . [But] Philips licensed the new recording to Major-Minor, a tiny outfit that went bankrupt soon after. It took some doing to get the album issued a couple of years later, and in the interim Bunn . . . join[ed] the progressive rock band Piblokto . . . . [A]fter leaving them and forming his own outfit, Endjinn . . . . [Bunn was] the original guitarist for Roxy Music . . . . [but] was long gone by the time they were signed to a recording contract . . . .
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