Uther Pendragon - San Francisco Earthquake No matter how many years separate the 60's from the present, it seems that the mines run deep for finding more fallout from the explosion of bands that permeated the time. Its getting rarer though
to find one that's had virtually no exposure or reissues to date, but Guerssen has unearthed a band from the outer rim of the San Francisco sound. Existing under the names Blue Fever, Timne, Hodological Mandala, Mandala, Kodiac, Justus, Pendragon and then finally Uther Pendragon, the band lived as a family for years; making music from '66 until '78 and growing with the sweeping change of sounds from that time. Guerssen's reissue follows the band from their teen years, just discovering teen centers and fuzz pedals, to a more sweeping and much heavier territory; you know, the kind of band that could prop up a name like Uther Pendragon. This one seems to be a pure discovery of the internet age, the band wasn't out that much in the the pages of SF rock lore and the label found them floating around in fan posts. They're not totally without status, they opened once for Country Joe and the Fish, recorded at Pacific Sounds before building their own studio and had some ties to management that overlapped a few other outer rim psych acts, but in general they were off most radars, probably because they had no released material. Some of the songs are rough, kids finding their way, but for the most part they make good examples of the West Coast psych and proto metal sounds, feeling their way through the era on the fringes of cool. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE