Original released on LP VMC 130-S
(CANADA, September 1968)
You’ve got to hand it to these ultra-tiny record labels, they seem to have a peculiar knack for finding people that redefined the term "artist". Dennis Olivieri was one such person. This is a self-conscious hippie vanity disc that’s filled with strange studio effects and even stranger thematic preoccupations. Much of this is the story of a grown man railing against his overbearing mother. Things come to a head on "Mama’s Funeral Song", wherein our protagonist rants «Oh mama, mama, sometimes I wish that you would die / because you hang me up, mama!» Why would he say such a thing? As a sort of explanation, he informs us in Sinatraesque tones, «I got this fuzzy soft thing in my head!» This album is a paradise of neuroses that would bludgeon Freud if he weren’t already dead. I can’t tell if he’s serious, or if it’s all just a campy put-on, but in the end I guess it doesn’t matter. Either way, Olivieri is on his own wavelength. «I bought me a brand new toy the other day / It’s a two-way radio that only goes one way.» That sums things up better than I ever could. Worthy outsider weirdness. To call this a bad album would be to miss the point. (in RateYourMusic)
