Ptooff!

PTOOFF!
 
 
Ptooff!  is the debut studio album by English psychedelic rock band The Deviants, released in 1967 by record label Underground Impresarios.  Mick Farren and Russell Hunter had met 21-year-old millionaire Nigel Samuel who funded the £700 required for the recording of the album.  The band sold 8,000 copies on their own Impresario label via mail order through the UK underground press, such as Oz and International Times, before being picked up and released by Decca Records.  The album is self-described on the inside cover as the deviants underground l.p.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Long before Andy Colquhoun joined up, the Deviants were one of the leading “underground rock” bands; their 1967 album Ptooff! is a classic in that little known genre.  The band sprang up in the British psychedelic melange that spawned Pink FloydTomorrowHawkwind, and several other like-minded bands; the epicenter for the scene was the UFO Club (pronounced “oo-foe” in an interview of Mick Farren at the club that is on one of their CD’s).  The Deviants’ music is a dense stew of proto-punk, psychedelia and blues rock, with percussion and voice loops and screaming and a host of other effects.  The album cover on Ptooff! is also a treat, with a water-color science-fiction scene and a remarkable collection of quotes, including a corruption of a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that appears on the back cover:  “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake!!”
 
(August 2011)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021