WAAAAY RARE PSYCH PRIVATE PRESS * 100 % UNKNOWN FIBERS

$

787

Various Artists - 100% Unknown Fibers Odd Lots (No label, 1970)

Cover: Hard to grade this one, as it it would be really nice if only it didn't have light staining and mildew. Front is better than back (see photos) Tight seams, no creasing or ringwear. Small price sticker residue on front cover. Let's call it VG+
The close-up picture shows the mildew at its worst. Most of the cover is better than this.

Disc: Gorgeous! EX+ (a few light sleeve scuffs and a few small light lines only.)

Original press - NOT the aborted German reissue project.

Basically a copy that looks like it might have been carefully played once or twice back in the day and then sat around in a basement for the next 35 years!

INSANELY RARE live LP documenting the Laguna Beach Christmas Happening festival in December 1970. The LP was probably pressed in 1971. The festival featured a lot of local unknown underground psych bands and was closely tied to legendary LSD distributors the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Patrick of Acid Archives has researched and written a terrific article describing the festival and LP in detail. Read it on the the website.

Only a handful of known copies exist of this monster psych rarity. Some copies came with several inserts pertaining to the festival, but this copy has none.

Here are some excerpts from the AA article, describing the LP itself:

About 25 years later, in the late 1990s, word was starting to spread among rare record specialists about a mysterious album titled “100% Unknown Fibers”. The record showed no track list or credits whatsoever, and from the rubber-stamped sleeve and old pressing it was assumed to be a bootleg, manufactured in the early 1970s. The problem was that noone could figure out who the artist being bootlegged was, as it didn’t sound remotely like anyone famous. As questions were asked, a few more copies of “100% Unknown Fibers” were identified in collections around the US; in total about a half-dozen were accounted for.

An Orange County newspaper back in 1970 mentioned a few participating bands such as Sound Spectrum and Primal Scream, as well as the aforementioned Sea & East Utopian Mission, but gave no details of their performances.

It must be mentioned that “100% Unknown Fibers” is a primitive recording with poor sound quality, even as private pressings go. It’s likely to be an audience tape, rather than from soundboard. The music is mostly jammy acid-rock typical of the era, predominantly instrumental workouts on Hendrix and Cream riffs, with lots of raw fuzz leads and some vocals. One track has a trancey folkrock feeling, including flute. All over it is reminiscent of some of the Yahowa 13 basement jams, like those heard on “I’m Gonna Take You Home”, minus Father Yod. There’s some nice grooves and feedback soloing here and there. It’s hard to determine how many different groups are featured on the album, but my guess is that it’s at least four different outfits, as the mixing and soundscapes differ, even while most of them are stylistically similar. A high point of the LP is the inclusion of several microphone raps from the Laguna Greeter and others, including the plea for Thorazine quoted above. One guy goes into a hostile rant about war, Nixon and Angela Davis, before being cut off with the reminder that the festival is about “love, not aggression”. The stage announcements combine with the crowd ambience, hovering police helicopters, and raw, improvised music to capture a moment in time, warts and all.

Beyond these immediate impressions, the release of the “100% Unknown Fibers” LP remained a mystery. According to an insert sheet, the music had been selected from “72 hours” of recordings, and the performers were “100% unidentified”. The newspaper articles, both old and recent, contained no references to any album release. The prevalent theory was that the record had been put together as a side-project by a local bootlegger, an industry which had its ground zero in the L A/Orange County area.
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