Listen: Pigman / Amon Duul II
Pigman

Back when Rich Fazekas oversaw the college promotion department at United Artists Records with Marty Cerf, the label was pretty much my favorite. I was nuts about Family and anything Roy Wood had involvement with. That meant The Move, The Electric Light Orchestra and Roy Wood’s Wizzard, all on the roster. Then there was Hawkwind, Brinsley Schwarz and their distributed labels too, especially Blue Note, with Bobbi Humphrey and Marlena Shaw. He and I were on the phone daily, literally daily. Rich at the label’s Sunset Blvd office in Los Angeles, me at my college radio station’s pathetic office in Rochester New York, fairly desperate for a way to trade up, out and to a label job located in a real city.

Rich meanwhile, always tried to convince me about some of the German acts they had too. Occasionally he’d slip one of the UK pressings he’d been serviced with by bands like Neu or Can, and often pounded me on the US released albums from Amon Duul II. I was clearly more in pocket with the pop singles by Roy Wood’s projects or even Family 7′s, as opposed to six or eight minute meandering album tracks.

Then one afternoon, Rich called to say he’d just overnighted me a new Amon Duul II release, but this time it was a 7″. Well alright, a single by any prog rock act, usually sliced into three minutes from something much longer, had always been a form of collectibility. I never needed much justification to horde a 7″, and still don’t.

When ‘Pigman’ arrived the next day, the title alone had me interested. After all, it put everyone else at the station off immediately, a good initial sign. Although not what I was expecting, having aligned them more with Kraftwerk or Faust, I still wanted to like this, the label copy looked great. The band’s name being one I’d never seen on a 7″. These things excited me.

Those ahead of the curve college radio programmers never gave their albums much of a break with airtime, and ‘Pigman’, the band’s first and only US single, didn’t change the shut out. And I don’t understand it any more clearly now than then, given the record had tongue in cheek country verses with hard rock chorus riffs. Seems it should’ve been eaten up.

Oh well, a nice 7″ pressing to have. I never see it around much these days either.