ROGER
& WENDY
"Love Rog + Wem"
Formerly of 1960’s U.S. psych-folk
band Euphoria (MGM/Heritage), not to mention
veterans of the late 1960’s Greenwich
Village coffee-house scene that spawned many
a career, Roger & Wendy made this
private press album for family and friends
in 1971, in an edition of 50 copies. They
later renamed themselves Bermuda Triangle;
their recently reissued 1977 album under
that name has garnered terrific reviews
throughout the years. "It started in New
York City with the guy across the hall, who
was missing two fingers, saying he earned
money playing flamenco guitar in a Greenwich
Village coffeehouse. Roger and Wendy (we
two, the two of us) exchanged glances. Could
it be that easy to get paid for making
music? We put together some songs which
featured our vocals and Roger's autoharp,
and headed from our 5th floor walk-up slum
tenement, where the holes through the
ancient brick wall were big enough for snow
to blow in, across town to the BASEMENT
coffeehouse on MacDougal St. (in the
Village) to audition. Hired after one song,
we played our first sets that night and
every night thereafter 'til 4 A.M., seven
nights a week, 365 days a year. At the time,
the coffeehouses were called basket houses,
since the only pay you got was what was
collected in a straw basket passed around at
the end of each twenty minute set. Stephen
Stills said, ‘I love your guys’ music,’ and
dropped $20 in, which more than half covered
our $35 a month rent." So begins the tale.
With strong roots in folk music, Roger &
Wendy have electric and often unconventional
arrangements. The lyrics are complex and
symbolic, the instrumentation very unusual.
Roger is also the inventor of much of the
technology required to create multiple
effects that achieve a multidimensional
quality: passages that listeners mistake for
electric guitar are actually autoharp. Roger
redesigned the autoharp's chord structure to
facilitate switching between keys; now all
major autoharp manufacturers worldwide make
autoharps using his design. And as for
Wendy, women bass players were a rarity in
the 60's, and still are today. Consequently,
their groups (then and now) have always been
far out there beyond the leading edge. The
Roger & Wendy "Love Rog & Wem" album
is a alluring collection of shimmering
psych-folk gems, and is the rarest of the
duo’s records (fetching $900+). A superb
artifact from the early 1970’s underground
psych folk scene, taken from the original
master tapes, and using the original sleeve
artwork for this deluxe mini-LP sleeve
reissue. Booklet has photos, great stories,
and five bonus tracks, too!
1 Wind 3:48
2 John Wesley Harding 2:40
3 Acne Blues 3:08
4 Bojangles 4:56
5 Something 3:49
6 There Is Now 4:31
7 Country Pie 1:40
8 Motorcycle Madness 2:48
9 Just Like A Woman 6:17
10 Change Is Gonna Come 4:09
11 Sometimes We Find It, Part ll 4:22
12 Send In The Clowns 3:49
13 Gray Mare 3:49
14 Sleep 4:22
Catalogue number: LION
639
UPC: 778578063924