Mu + The Animated Egg - LA Psych Double (1968 & 1971) Psychedelic Rock - Morning Stream

For today’s psychedelic trip this morning I’m spinning a double feature of Los Angeles studio psych from two very different corners of the same city. Mu’s self-titled 1971 debut on Guerssen’s 2024 remastered reissue of the RTV original, followed by The Animated Egg’s 1968 Alshire exploitation LP. Two LA records, two completely different stories, same city at a different end of the counterculture. 00:00 Intro 00:00 MU LP 00:00 Animated Egg LP 0:00:00 Close MU - Mu (1971 RTV, Guerssen Reissue 2024) Mu was Jeff Cotton on guitar, sax, and backing vocals, Merrell Fankhauser on vocals and guitar, Larry Willey on bass, and Randy Wimer on drums. The band formed in LA in 1969. Cotton and Fankhauser were old Mojave Desert friends from way back, Willey and Wimer came from the same desert musician circle. Cotton had just left Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band after playing Antennae Jimmy Semens on Trout Mask Replica. The band got its name from Fankhauser seeing clouds shaped like the letters “MU”, which led him to Col. James Churchward’s book on the lost continent of Lemuria. They recorded with Phil Meldman at Wally Heider’s famous LA studio. “Ballad of Brother Lew”, “Blue Form”, and “Nobody Wants To Shine” were composed during LSD trips. “Mumbella Baye Tu La” was Fankhauser’s nonsense syllables that an African student later identified as a Swahili chant about “the sinking of the motherland”. The Mu mythology surfacing on its own. In 1973 the band flew to Maui and bought a banana plantation to live the Lemurian idea out for real. Cotton and Wimer eventually left for Christian ministry. Fankhauser stayed in the Maui jungle for 14 years. THE ANIMATED EGG - The Animated Egg (1968 Alshire) Flip side of the LA story. The Animated Egg was never a real band. The record is Wrecking Crew session guitarist Jerry Cole and his studio musicians cutting under one of many fake names used by Alshire, a California budget label best known for the 101 Strings easy-listening series. Alshire turned to counterculture material between 1967 and 1971. Producer Paul Arnold would recycle the same Jerry Cole session tapes across multiple pseudonymous releases. Jerry Cole was a real player. Pet Sounds, Byrds, Nancy Sinatra, Paul Revere & the Raiders. In The Champs with Glen Campbell. Pit bands for Hullabaloo and Shindig!. Many of these tracks appear to be outtakes from The Inner Sounds of the Id, Cole’s 1967 RCA LP. “I Said, She Said, Ah Cid” is widely read as a play on “Ah Cid” sounding like “acid”. Cherry Red named their 2018 Alshire box set after it. A few months after this came out, Alshire reused the exact same recordings for 101 Strings’ Astro Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000 with Monty Kelly adding strings and space-themed titles. Two LA records, two opposite ends of the industry, both landing somewhere worth hearing fifty years later. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vinyl_piper/ Full vinyl rips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj0yF7-9YQ9pEOi1yCUyAZikNmWVdz8Hn Shop: https://vinylpipershop.com/ #Mu #TheAnimatedEgg #JerryCole #VinylStream #VinylPiper