Ed Kuepper (far left) and some schizophrenics on day-release.Ed 'the Head's' best songs.
Ed Kuepper is one of my all-time Aussie rock heroes. As a teenager I really got into his 'electrical storm' record, and then dug through his Laughing Clowns stuff, and a few of his solo records, including the stuff he did as the Aints. But I have a big problem with Ed. For all his prolificness, the guy really knows how to churn out buckets of shit. Sure it's difficult to deal with his whiney/droney voice, and his guitar playing is always quite excellent, tasteful and rock n' roll, but he puts out so much music/dreck, that ultimately most of it is really unlistenable dreck. More often than not his albums might have one or two killers (which happened more often after 'Honey Steals Gold') with the rest all quirky rubbish.
So I thought I'd sift through the back catalogue of his that I actually own, and pick out what I reckon are the real winners, and see if there's enough to make an Ed Kuepper 'megamix' so the young shnooks can get a grasp on his inconsistent 'genius' without wasting to much time and money.
NOTE : These are not in order of best, but there is some chronological order going on:
Eternally Yours – post-punk drone-boogie bliss
No words of honour – Velvets type guitar and pp beat
New Bully in the Town – killer with a disco beat
Crystal Clear – another floor stomper
Holy Joe – rumble and weird jazz
Mr. Uddich-Schmuddich goes to town
The only one that knows – Ed's got something with the E-A-D chords
That's only 7 killers/classics off the 'Laughing Clowns collection of 51 songs, so go figure...
8. Car Headlights – hasn't dated well, be still pretty strong
9. No more sentimental jokes – solid
10. Master of two servants – it that badly recorded mandolin that does it
11. Another story – great outtro guitar solo
12. Electrical Storm – all the re-recorded versions were never as good as this one.
13. Told Myself – not sure if Ed was listening to Junior Kimbrough back in the 80's but this is the best white version of JK I've heard.
14. Palace of Sin – big-beat
7 tracks of 'Electrcial Storm' which has 11 track, so IMHO, his 'masterwork'
15. Without your mirror – nice folky/blues acoustic track, shows Ed's guitar skills
16. Show pony – there's an instrumental break thats really cool
17. Not a soul around – Ed starting to get a bit more 'commercial'
18. Nothing changes in my house – ditto, he was going for the Mellencamp thing.
19. Everything I've got belongs to you – it's cheesy and sentimental but its a good song.
20. Honey Steals Gold – fantastic spag/western/noir instrumental with droney loop
21. The way I made you feel – another killer song
22. Closer (but disguised) – great upbeat number in Ed;s weird way.
23. Blind Girl Stripper – great instrumental, with Spacemen3 type drone
24. Black ticket day – another uplifting Ed number
25. It's still nowhere – The Aints. Flanged-out electric guitar, but it works!
26. What's it like out there – more flange hysteria, the outro is friggen killer, good example of Ed's guitar work when its good.
27. Ascension – noisy guitar, for 11 minutes. I wish Ed did this more often, he's a fucken great rock n' roll guitarist. Maybe Australia's best!
But that's only 27 songs out of 300 or something, that's like 9%!! But that 9% outweighs nearly 98.9% of all recorded Aussie music. So go figure.
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