LOST TAPE— LIVE IN 1970

Several of my cohorts theorize that 1971 was the year for rock. You had the Stones’ Sticky Fingers, Sabbath’s Master of Reality, Can’s Tago Mago,

I plus Faust, Ash Ra Tempel, and ZZ Top all plopped upon the earth with debuts. Prog was in extremely innovative, yet-to-be-for-fatsos form (Van der Graaf, Mahavishnu), and proto-metal was in full swing (see Hawkwind, Budgie, Leaf Hound, Sir Lord Baltimore, and Dust checking in with blasters). Surely something was hiding in a closet that year, and perhaps the greatest find came for me in 2000 when I spotted a CD comp of proto-metal someone recommended called Downer Rock Genocide, sitting on a rack with its ridiculous, textless cover depicting a guy in a shell of a bombsquad suit walking around.