HIGH TIDE Sea Shanties LP Liberty 1969 (Misunderstood)

	£		62
	$		82

HIGH TIDE
 

Sea Shanties

Vinyl album issued in the UK as Liberty LBS83264 in 1969

Condition of the record is Near Mint
The gatefold cover is VG+

[I never use a 'Mint' grading unless the item is new, unplayed or sealed]

 

Legendary, nay infamous, first album by High Tide featuring Tony Hill (ex-Misunderstood) and Simon House (pre-Hawkwind)

I doubt if any sort of description of the music is necessary.  Guitar, violin, bass, drums...  Suffice to say, Simon House's electric violin is the heaviest and hardest imaginable and is a fair match for Tony Hill's amazing guitar work.  This album sounds incredible in 2005, so it must have sounded absolutely unbelievable in 1969!  Nihilistic prog rock?

The cover is predominantly plain white card and consequently has become rather grubby during the past 36 years.  There is visible ring wear on the back cover.  However, the glorious full colour gatefold inner is beautifully clean and unmarked.

The disc is in superb condition and fully deserves an audible grading of Near Mint.  Labels are clean with no spindle marks.  The music simply screams off the vinyl and begs to be played at a volume approaching the threshold of pain.

 

futilist's lament
death warmed up
pushed, but not forgotten
walking down their outlook
missing out
nowhere

 

Here's a suitably enthusiastic review from Julian Cope's website...

‘High Tide’ is putting it lightly—it’s an extremely apt description of where this group’s muse was at when they recorded this rollicking and utterly distorto-screech out, and live in the studio, no less. And where they were at was to approximate the feel in every track of a Flying Dutchman pitching uncontrollably on heavenly seas. Furthering this connection is not only the title, but also the beautiful Peter Whitehead colour gatefold painting of a cosmic sailing ship, complete with superimposed photograph of a nude woman as masthead in open-mouthed ecstasy as her bow receives the breaking waves beneath, while the fully-caught sail above her reads “PAX”.
From beginning to end, “Sea Shanties” is a mammoth and early UK power trio trip despite the fact they had a fourth member, none other than future Hawkwind keyboardist/violinist, Simon House. But the absolute dementedness of the guitar-based energy field is so high throughout the album that a goodly amount of violin and organ passages are practically wiped out. And the guitarist responsible was none other than Tony Hill, his fierce outings here exhibit at least a degree of influence from Glenn Ross Campbell, the steel guitar player from his earlier band, The Misunderstood. Campbell mutated his indigenous country instrument into a truly hectic and haywired domain, and Hill likewise pushes his entire guitar into a grinder of wah-wah, fuzz and supreme tearing at its throat distortion in a revolving fever dream kept barely grounded by Pete Pavli’s bass and Roger Hadden’s explosive Keith Moon-like drum presence, which is everywhere at once effortlessly. In fact, excepting the slight opening finesse ness of “Missing Out” (which hurtles headlong into a massive power trio jam by the end, anyway), the entire album is track after track of unrelenting, screeching guitar and muscular backing like Sabbath and The Groundhogs joined by Dave Swarbrick during the highlights of a messy methedrine binge. There’s an abundance of ever-screeching guitar work from Hill, and his vocabulary of distortion and interplay only surpassed by its volume. It SCREAMS of the hardest rock, although the cover barely allows for this to be perceived. In fact, it looks the entire world a low-rent Fairport Convention/Flock fizzle-fest, with it’s Arthur Rackham-esque 2 colour cover, the old timey title and Simon House’s violin credit on the back cover. Never was sleeve art more deceptive.
”Futilist’s Lament” begins with incoming mail from the overblown stacks of Tony Hill, and he’s singing like someone else’s version of Jim Morrison minus the range, over which violin and organ hover overhead and often intertwining with the guitar until they become a single Gordian knot of sound. And yes, the amps are already smoking, and they start to really fry them out on the next track, the 9:10 instrumental opus, “Death Warmed Up”. More roiling currents, this time in the appearance of Hill’s totally over the top heavy, heavy, heavy guitar, coloured even heavier by Pavli’s bass engine. But then THAT wah-wah cuts in, and you’ve never heard such a fucking ugly yet awesome din in all your life. But that’s not to say it’s not musical, because it is and besides, it’s so fluid and heavy and buzz-sawing for all its worth, and at a pace too fast to be progressive, but too shifting in time signatures and tempos to be hard rock. So High Tide are an example of going for it with your guts, and let everybody else figure it out…if they still left standing after this pulverising epic. Everything is pulsing around a centrally-located beat and Tony Hill’s demented leads, and “Death Warmed Over” only ends because the producer probably allowed them only 9 minutes to get it all out, and not because they couldn’t continue it into the far side of next week if they wanted.
The entire album is one of highlights, and the last track, “Nowhere” is one of the most complex of the album, with a skewered intro guitar piece that runs into a jamming fit at top volume, and it slips neatly into a plateau of simmering dynamics with segued vocals into a crazy, cymbal-filled, violin-led hoedown. Hill is now cramming those crazy screech-ola bursts into every crack, whether they exist, and if they happen not to, doesn’t prevent him from bulldozing straight ahead. House’s violin breaks square into a heart-opening violin passage, and when the passage is restated a second time after the final vocals, Hill falls in with interlocking penetration guitar crosstalk. This coda evokes a Wyeth-animated ocean scape as High Tide’s careening galleon rocks into the far horizon, into the sun and a shining oblivion beyond this world, and all words.
Their endurance is apparent, and their stamina is downright frightening at times.

 

 

 

Music is the basis of all life