Godz - Contact High With the Godz - Original MONO - Shrink - VG+/E- RARE

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The Godz - Contact High With the Godz.  ESP 1037, original MONO pressing, released in 1966.  Cover is still in shrink wrap and VG+ with some corner wear, a punch hole in upper right corner, and small abrasion in lower right corner where a small amount of shrink has peeled back.   Vinyl is E- with a few light hairline scratches and scuffs; plays great.

From AllMusic:  Few bands in the annals of rock & roll were stranger than the New York City-based Godz. Recording for the wonderfully idiosyncratic ESP-DISK label from the mid-'60s until the early '70s, the Godz coughed up some of the strangest, most dissonant, purposely incompetent rock noise ever produced. Part of the Lower East Side scene that produced post-Beat avant-hippie rockers/performance artists the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders, as well as honest-to-God beat performers like Allen Ginsberg, the Godz recorded the most extreme music while being secretive about themselves. As the late critic Lester Bangs noted in an essay in Creem in 1971, the Godz "...are a pure test of one of the supreme traditions of rock & roll: the process by which a musical band can evolve from beginnings of almost insulting illiteracy to wind up several albums later romping and stomping deft as champs."

Despite Bangs' essay, there are few, if any, detailed histories about this enigmatic band. What is known is that the Godz consisted of guitarist Jim McCarthy, bassist Larry Kessler, autoharpist Jay Dillon, and drummer Paul Thornton. McCarthy, the ostensible leader of the group, went solo in 1973, but the Godz were pretty much over by that point. As to what happened after they split, McCarthy became a photographer, Kessler is a record dealer, Thornton is an actor, and Dillon is living in the wilds of New Jersey. But none of that is as interesting as the three squalling bits of avant-garde noise/junk they recorded from 1966-1968. Sounding like a prototype for Half Japanese or the Shaggs, the Godz play as if they discovered their instruments ten minutes before the tape started rolling. The singing is intentionally off-key, almost parodic, and the songs...well, they sound more like improvised snippets than actual compositions. And while that may not be your idea of pop music, this works, in large part, due to the absolute glee and unself-consciousness with which they approached their peculiar brand of aural nonsense. You may not want to play this every day, but if your tastes run to the fringes of popular music, missing out on the Godz would be unforgivable.

Grading: Cover/vinyl.  All LPs are conservatively graded visually.  Play graded if questionable marks are perceived in the visual grading.  Vinyl will be graded from Fair to Near Mint with plus (+) or (-) gradations, as defined below.  Any cover wear will be described in detail.

Near Mint (NM)  -  Like new, but not perfect (unless sealed).  Excellent (EX) -  Light hairline scuffs that do not affect play.  Very Good (VG)  -  All original gloss, but with a few more hairline scratches and scuffs that do not materially affect play.  Good (G)  -  Lots of scuffs and light scratches that are audible in the play back; occasional hiss, clicks, and pops will be heard, but the LP still plays all the way through and the background noise does not overwhelm the listening experience.  Fair (F)  -  LP is a "filler" copy for your collection while you seek out a nicer copy; will have lots of background noise and may even skip.