In 1969, the Australian band Tamam Shud improvised as a film was projected onto the wall of a recording studio. The results were heard on the Evolution album. Playing original music live to accompany a film screening isn’t commonplace these days but eyebrows are no longer raised when it happens. Pere Ubu have played along with Carnival of Souls and It Came From Outer Space. Mogwai have done the same for the documentary Atomic. Of course, this was no surprise in the silent era and in the early Eighties Bill Nelson echoed the past by playing his soundtrack for Das Kabinett as the film rolled. They may not have had an audience as they played, but Tamam Shud got there first.
In 1967, Tamam Shud were known as The Sunsets and dealt in harmony filled upbeat pop which was never far from the Australian charts. Their single “The Hot Generation” became internationally known after California garage band The Pandoras covered it in 1984. It had been written for the soundtrack of the surfing documentary of the same name. Evolution was the follow-up film.
By the time it was in production, The Sunsets were renamed Tamam Shud and had undergone a musical makeover. The clean-lined pop was ditched and live sets featuring covers of songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Doors and Love attested to where they were now at. When The Hot Generation’s director Paul Witzig made a new surf documentary, he called on the reconfigured band to provide its soundtrack. Evolution, issued in November 1969 (a tardy six months after the film premiered) included three of the improvisations recorded for the film and eight new tracks so wasn't a soundtrack album as such. The band went on to issue another album in 1970, but it was a conventional set.
The reissue of the Evolution album brings the chance to appreciate Tamam Shud’s peculiarity. Imagine a fuzz-box happy, garage-band, hard-edged version of the Happy Trails-era Quicksilver Messenger Service. The only other roughly contemporary band springing to mind as a musical bedfellow is Canada’s The Plastic Cloud, who also dealt in guitar-dominated, non-linear songs with twisting melodies.
Sonically, it’s not possible to distinguish between the improvisations for the film and the composed songs recorded in a traditional studio setting – a tribute to the band’s consistency of vision. Unfortunately, as their penchant for Creedence attests, “Feel Free” is avoidable boogie rock. “Rock on Top” is an unconvincing Hendrix knock-off and “The Slow One and the Fast One” is a turgid rock ballad. However, when following their own path, Tamam Shud were really on to something. The influence of the Love of Da Capo is evident in sudden time-signature shifts and flurries of jazzy guitar.
It all comes together on the film’s “Mr Strange” which posits a template for a guitar-driven psychedelia that could have – if the band had been relocated – found them fitting snugly into the freak-filled environs of late 1960s/early 1970s Ladbroke Grove. They were better than The Deviants and could have given The Pink Fairies a run for their money.
Evolution – original copies are rare and sell for between £60 and £300 depending on condition – has been reissued before on CD in Japan. This new edition comes on vinyl (with a download code) and includes a booklet with a disjointed, seemingly unedited, essay. Looking for exotic freak-rock thrills? Seek this out.
