Heavy
Iron Butterfly
is easily the most well-known band I've covered in this series, but they're just too good to ignore. The California psychedelic rock band is one of the most important influences on early metal. Not only is "Iron" in their name, but they have an album called Heavy, and they are definitely that. The dude's voice is also one of the best and most under-appreciated in rock music, period. Everyone already knows "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", so here's something you might not know.
Groovy. This is the stuff my folks listened to when I was a kid -- in fact, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was the first song I learned on drums.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is really fascinating is the conspiracy theory about Phil Kramer, who was one of the bassist/singer's for the band. Apparently, he was a rather intelligent man who worked with the military, helping on projects concerning rockets and other high-end mathematical formulas. Yet, one of his biggest feats was disproving Einstein's theory about speed-of-light, in which he (Kramer) was working on a formula to do just that. Then suddenly, he vanished. His bones were found years later in his minivan at the bottom of some canyon. It was ruled a suicide, but you never know . . .