ah....it did have 'Sweet Lorraine', but I swear...

I am thinking that...well, they did alot of 'tolerance enhancement' drugs back then...

...this would help explain the existence of the Fugs, the Bonzos!, the Groundhogs and the Electric Flag...

--- where can I get these drugs today?

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�Who Will Save The World? The Mighty Groundhogs� was the fifth Groundhogs album released on Liberty/United Artists, concluding the run of the classic trio comprising Tony McPhee, Pete Cruickshank and Ken Pustelnik (Pustelnik left several months after its early �72 release) and it was every inch a classic. Following in the established Groundhogs tradition of aggressive, rough hewn playing that nevertheless flowed evenly into a welter of swiftly executed time signatures zigzagging against the speed of sound, or then dropping off entirely as though seeking to disrupt the tempo only never did but kept the beat all at the same time, �Who Will Save The World?� was guided by the splintery SG Gibson guitar playing and songwriting of Tony (T.S.) McPhee.

Just as their previous album �Split� had focused on the psychological ills of the times so did �Who Will Save The World?� set about tackling the major problems facing the world under the guise of comic book super heroes whose abilities to vanquish overpopulation, war, pollution and other such sundry blightings of humanity were only matched by their collective musical prowess. It says so when you flip over to the back cover and read the cleanly composed comic panels penned by no one less an artist than �The Nefarious� Neal Adams of DC and Marvel fame:

�It is said in the hall of fame of super-heroes that the rock group GROUNDHOGS might even accomplish more with music than the superhero GROUNDHOGS will, with all their muscle��

And accomplish they did, stating their case with four tracks per side that all shift in approach and feel ranging from bulky to transcendental, tragic to hopeful and when their slowburn fuses get lit at the drop of a hat, the combustive properties of Groundhogs in heat explode within thickets of clotted bloozy raves and roiling psychic turbulence stabbed by the forked, greased lightning of the counterpointing McPhee guitar throughout. It was also here where McPhee embarked in positioning keyboards to a higher capacity role, which only graced the proceedings in a fashion that wholly integral and complimentary to the proceedings, and not just as vogue icing, either. For when the stark and foreboding mellotron piercings appear in the opening track �Earth Is Not Room Enough� a flanking gateway of clouds slowly closes in front of the only patch of blue sky and cuts off the last ray of sunlight forever. What this powerful middle passage snaked out from is a duel between McPhee�s quickly strummed get-up-and-gotcha guitar riff and contrasting riffs chipping away at the atomic centre that the elastic bass and drums plays as tight as possible. Wafting currents of filtered amplifier noise ushers in the mid-tempo death boogie, �Wages Of Peace.� The pace is overburdened by a sackful of trouble in a place where those dark, psychic clouds the mellotron summoned in the previous song have chosen to remain, reducing McPhee to lament defiantly through choking sulfur fumes that there are �so many ways to die�so invent some more� at the tyrannically overcast heavens (as) above, and the polluters (so) below. �Body In Mind� opens with a single guitar brazenly hacking out a saw-toothed riff that is jarring as hell and barges in out of nowhere while daring to go everywhere at once. McPhee gruffly spits out a couplet of hawk-eyed social observation �Greed takes place of trust/love gives way to lust� against an endless supply of multi-tracked guitar riffs that contrapuntally carry and force the melody down a whitewater river to hit every visibly jutting rock at top speed. Cruickshank and Pustelnik contribute to these raging rapids with flexible intensity, yet maintain acutely aware to every melodic and rhythmic change. A trapdoor false ending opens, sending the track unpredictably and just as rudely back into the jerking, involuntary response of the opening riff. And with an assembled multitude of guitar tones to choose from what does McPhee do but switch between them all -- all over the place until one of the most complex moments of the album fades off into the howling beyond.
After this trio of apocalyptic vistas a glimmer of hope breaks through with �Music Is The Food Of Thought�, a solemn plateau that is the most reflective moment of the album: especially with its opening of some of the most gently plucked guitar introspective-ness outside of Jimi�s philosophically quiet riffing on �Castles Made Of Sand�. If motivation is the key, then responsibility is the lock and McPhee begins to open the door with the line �We need to trace the source of power and fuse it� just a choir of dry mellotron chords stab out from behind as though in heralding the positive future expressed within: not entirely out of reach, only one that requires conscious consideration and effort. Gentle and flutey mellotron melody courses through the background and with sad, lilting tones lays the piece to rest.

�Bog Roll Blues� rolls in lackadaisically with off-beat McPhee lyrics and skewered by a high-pitched slide guitar reminiscent of the same electrified-wire whining violin tones off the first High Tide album as it sits inside a public restroom stall on a miserable and damp Sunday afternoon. It�s as though the entire album is set in a world of eternal overcast, so naturally �Death Of The Sun� breaks in with shimmering, needling textures exquisitely finger-picked on 12-string. It bows out only for McPhee�s vocals which are near-strangulated with all the abusive compression laid upon it, weaving back in to sally forth glitteringly, shored up by further multi-tracked guitar parts that cross-hatch it all together.
A low foghorn harmonium begins pumping out an instrumental rendition of �Amazing Grace� joined by a bombardment of multi-tracked, wringing of the belaboured McPhee guitar fretboard that pass through a battery of effects like a low-rent production of Jimi�s studio �Star Spangled Banner� multi-tracked extravaganza from �Rainbow Bridge�, maintaining the timeless feeling of that soul-searching anthem. It�s usually a radioactive no-man�s zone to tackle any tune of such wide renown � whether �Greensleeves� or �Bicycle Built For Two� -- but McPhee�s vision extends itself powerfully into this traditional arrangement and makes it take flight with a strengthened sense of hope, however bruised.

The extended finale, �The Grey Maze� is a whirling, bloozy-asteroid stew of ampli-fried proportioned, and no trails of bread crumbs will help McPhee and his dynamic duo here as they�re plowing straight through the hedges of the vertigo-inducing labyrinth that is modern day life with all the disorientation of viewing four-second highlights of the past year�s news cross-cut with commercials for ten minutes. McPhee rumbles out �somewhere some light is getting through� and that�s when you realize he ain�t never givin� up the ghost. With the vocals completed, it�s every man for hisself as all breaks loose in an ever-darkening social landscape as the band go whole �Hog with celebratory blast-off extemporisations that cut a serpentine path with everything from a 12 foot wide combine-harvester to electric tweezers. Pustelnik�s most punishing percussion bashes away against the blaring blooziness of McPhee�s marvelous musical machinations and Cruickshank�s collectively crushing bass playing for the duration of the track. McPhee�s in the spotlight here and pulls out all the stops as solo upon solo upon every fractured detuned and feedback-ed moment soon demagnetises the improvisation�s compass into every direction at once. This causes massive detours, continual falling into hedges due to all the too-quick banked turns, trips into gullies of frustration and causing progress to be momentarily slowed by several U-turns in tight cul-de-sacs. But they regroup back at a main junction to search for a better route leading to the exit, and then they�re roaring out confidently at top speed. It takes its time breaking down as seemingly no member will ever cease or desist from squalling; indeed, it takes several yanked flourishes to finally consummates this delirium and draw it to a close.

Kick ass.

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This album is my personal favorite - Ed

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In hindsight, “Hogwash” completed an insanely prolific era for The Groundhogs that had begun with their second album, “Blues Obituary” as the experimental angle was pushed even further to the foreground by lead ‘Hog, guitarist/vocalist Tony (T.S.) McPhee as he marshalled and tamed a near unwieldy thicket of blistering guitars to dance and melt into the heavy, electronic arsenal consisting of ring oscillators, ARP synthesizers and mellotrons that cast mad prog shadows upon the eight compositions that comprised this furiously borderline progressive album that seethed to the core with personal indignations like so many mad darts flung at one man’s maddening target. McPhee and Pete Cruikshank were joined by ex-Egg drummer Clive Brooks, whose expertise remained intuitively well-placed and -paced within a framework which had been painstakingly rehearsed for three years prior to his joining…and the recorded results were nothing sort of magical.

Side one’s four tracks practically cross-fade together into a singular territory both familiar and alien to previous Groundhogs albums. “I Love You, Miss Ogyny” is where McPhee rails and tosses a load of excess bad vibes and dissatisfaction from his shoulders as his feelings towards a shaky marriage swirl in a demented current of mixed emotions and synthesized vocal treatments as stark as his guitar playing (This subject -- as well as that of side two’s opening track, “Sad Is The Hunter” -- would both be expanded into side-long suites for his own conceptually split blues/electronic solo album, “The Two Sides Of Tony (T.S.) McPhee”). At times the riffing starts to resemble a more nightmarish version of “My Sharona” as all the while, the lead guitar switches back and forth between tightening and ever slackening in a vertiginous venting of symbiosis. So much so that the modulated effect on his vocals -- especially on the word ‘love’ in the title chorus -- stretches it into a harrowingly bitter sting, rather than a human voice. Guitar and a matching, ultra-one finger-plonked bass line finally both fall away in futility as though to echo the fgailed attempts of reconciliation in a relationship headed for imminent destruction. After a no-man’s land crossing into exactly-when-does-track-two-begin-anyway, the next song, “You Had A Lesson”, a solo electric riff appears. Then it fades. Then a bass line appears with all the levity of a frowning King Tiger Panzer turret turning slowly towards your general vicinity as McPhee switches into an altogether different and higher-toned riffing like a tauter “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. But with that bass line, even that Panzer’s treads are getting clogged with the very mud of that riff, it’s so fucking heavy and oozing. Soon, McPhee is grimly intoning about someone getting theirs, but not gloating, either. The ensuing snakiness of one guitar line starts to run against the sine wave patterning of the simple though effective rhythm section in a perfect fit with the clean and stainless steel guitar lines. Soon passing overhead this plateau of with the gravity of aligned planetary configurations crests the same deep and darkening mellotron clouds that amass during the first minutes of “Watcher of The Skies”. Oh, run away -- run far away! Once more, the song falls away helpless with a single slide guitar falling off the face of the planet and into the WHHEEZZZZZRRRRFFHHHWWW of “The Ringmaster”, the title a pun of this minute and a half ring modulator’d drum freak out, sounding like some interstellar game of pinball as the mega-delayed drum patterning tramples and skitters from speaker to speaker. A far more traditional “1-2-3-4!” gets barked out to begin “3744 James Road” (sung as a slurred, run-on “Three seven foh-foh/ jamesa-row” to great effect). The mid-tempo boogie-ness is interfered with on several different occasions as treated guitar runs ride through with zapping-ness over the durable melody lines as they generally fire off in all directions. Woodier electric guitars were never played nor manhandled as roughly to exact effect as these: strangulated wah-wah, octave-divided feedback, whammy bar ejaculations all shot through this road-weary homesickness It ends with a slap-back riff that then quietly filigrees, raises in volume only to pitch-control itself into silence.

Side two begins with “Sad Is The Hunter”, an electrified, lowdown dirty blues with a wah-wah’ed dirt snarl shoehorned into every foreseeable crevice. Concerning itself with the nature of animal hunting and human cruelty, McPhee’s vocals are given a full trippy, delayed echo treatment upon the last word of every stanza. He seems to take his own advice when he sings “Let music be the hunter/And keep your conscience free”, as he truly lets loose in the instrumental break where as his guitar starts burrowing through the countryside over hill and dale and uprooting everything in its path, burrowing through a mountain of blues and horror, only to return with the above-quoted, closing lyric. “S’one Song” may be about as hook-driven as The Groundhogs ever got. A cheering, high-pitched rhythm guitar shored up by Cruikshank’s earth-anchored bass lines are furthered by a battery of ringing McPhee guitar riffs as he growls in his grizzled-gruff, elder geezer voice how he looks to the future as his passel of glum friends only see the glass half empty and draining quickly in their eternal Eeyore-ness.
Suddenly, silence…
Until a stereo rhythm guitar arpeggio the wrong side of punk cuts enters, chopping everything in its path with all of the vengeance of disfigured, prog timing. McPhee recounts his past life experiences and concludes “I only know I lead the life I like” right before the gaily/menacingly ARP synthesizer dances around multiple guitar runs until it hits a final, stinging note -- stopping dead in its tracks.
“Earth Shanty” opens with the whoosh of passing clouds with only momentary patches of sunlight to filter down from the heavens above, offering only temporary glimpses of new, clear future days. Mellotrons part the waves, wind and fields for McPhee’s heroic “Earth Shanty”. We are in epic, alien territory now with only McPhee’s beacon of hope for the future the only guide. Mellotronic strings cut through the attendant synthesizer wind, only to dissolve into a bare, ringing acoustic guitar and a heartbeat of a bass line, soon joined by McPhee’s backward-echoed vocals. Everything is all perched on the edge of hope until it twists into the final, uplifting verses accompanied by a braced-against-the-wind, cello-low mellotron melody as the rest of the band’s instruments fall in gently behind as peaceful reinforcements. McPhee is soon singing about and embracing the moon, the sun and the stars in the firmament above as he directs those who need to “get their priorities straight” to observe that there are no boundaries but nature in a manner about as straightforward as it is an unboundedly cosmic. Your heart will soar; mine is just thinking about it. The bass pounds behind the high-pitched synthesizer and rocks gently from side to side until it ends with a final acoustic flourish.
The album ends with “Mr. Hooker, Sir John”, in praise of The Groundhogs’ own spiritual grandfather, John Lee Hooker. Even without a big ol’ foot stomp, this 12-string solo acoustic blues tips a wide and respectful hat to Hooker, their American bluesman namesake who also provided the earliest Groundhogs incarnation with their first ever recording session.

Tony (T.S.) McPhee had come a long way from scratching the surface of the blues to fashioning it into a creative launch pad into inner space exploration as he sought to refine his own blues by following his own instincts, personal beliefs and fusing them with into ever-soaring guitar to transcend and blur all stylistic differences between mere “blues”, “rock” or “progressive” into something far more timeless. His own vision of the world, no less: compassionate, righteous and striving ever-upwards and onwards into the future. And “Hogwash” is a projected 21st Century Progressive Blues album yet to be.

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