Let the trumpets play, let the doves fly free. That was my reaction in 1993 when, after years in limbo, the ESP catalogue was finally reissued. Why such rejoicing? In the pantheon of independent labels, ESP resides just one step below Sun and Chess and a few thousand above Sub Pop, that's why.

The label was formed in the early sixties by Bernard Stollman in order to document the experimental jazz scene of the time. Albert Ayler was the first; later came Pharaoh Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and nearly everyone else who was important in that music. Over the next ten years, this sound filtered into rock through people like Capt. Beefheart and the Velvet Underground. If that were all the label did, it would have been an interesting footnote to rock history, sort of like Louis Jordan, who didn't really play rock but was an important link in the chain of its development, but there was more. After a few years, ESP branched into the New York Rock Underground.

There were records by the Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, even an early Velvet Underground track, but the best rock on the label was by the Godz. My introduction to the Godz was back in '79 when I read a "history of psychedelic music" that described their song, "Radar Eyes", as "floating like a feather above the dross of Psychedelia." After reading that, I had to rush right out and find a copy, too naive to realize how difficult a task that might be. Luckily, I not only found a copy, but was perceptive enough to buy it right away. That was the last time I saw a Godz record selling for under $30 until 1990.

Anyway, the article was right. Almost 20 years later, it's still an amazing record. Opening with a tremeloed E minor chord, the rhythm is picked up by tambourine and maracas, leaving Paul Thornton free to play some stumbling Ringo Starr fills. Somehow it all locks into an incredible groove. Then the vocals come in. The main lead vocal, a typical garage band voice, harsh and strained but perfect for trashy rockand roll, is echoed by a smoother vocal, sort of the calm center of the hurricane. Surprisingly, both vocals were overdubbed by Jim McCarthy. Lyrically, the song consists of a few phrases alternated for two minutes, but remember, the right phrase is stronger than the endless verses that most songwriters use to stretch a simple idea into "rock poetry." "In your eyes, I found hope," and "Don't die, don't die" might look plain on the printed page, but when they're delivered with some passion they're strong, evocative expressions of optimism, tenderness, and need, so why dilute them with three verses and a chorus?

The music to the song is equally Spartan. "Radar Eyes" is a drone on E minor that occasionally surges into A minor. Maybe that doesn't sound too impressive, only one chord change, but it was the right change. Listen to the Fuzztones' version. They get the change wrong and the song loses everything that made it special, smoothing its rough beauty into standard garage rock. It doesn't matter, we still have the original and I've been know to spend an evening listening to it seven times in a row. In fact, I think I'll do that later tonight.

How could the Godz, a group known for recording some of the strangest music ever, come up with a pop classic, all right, a twisted pop classic such as this? Well, everyone has their moments, The Red Crayola had "Hurricane Fighter Plane," and the Fugs had "Morning Morning," but The Godz actually had a thread of catchy hooks running through their work. Staying on the second album, there was "Soon the Moon" and "Permanent Green Light," two more minor key songs in a similar vein. However, the one that sounds most like the hit they would have had in a more just universe is "Traveling Salesman" with it's upbeat melody and the same vaguely countryish sound as The Beatles' "What Goes On." The lyrics, also, were the most commercial that the group had written, reminding me of the kind of thing that Ray Davies was doing at the time.

Paul Thornton's choice for their lost hit is "Soon The Moon" which does have a haunting atmosphere to recommend it, but it's much less overtly commercial. The sound is similar to "Radar Eyes," but without most of the pop touches. Jim McCarthy's vocal is freer and more improvised, as are some piano parts from Jay Dillon. This is probably what their later live shows sounded like, where they would take a song's framework and improvise around it, with all the members contributing riffs and jumping in and out of the mix. It's not hard to listen to at all, and it does show the intensity that the Godz were capable of reaching but "Traveling Salesman" was more commercial.

Getting back to the question, where did this pop side come from? A little context may help explain. Before the Godz, both Jim and Paul were members of the Dick Watson Five, a pseudo British Invasion group. This group had some success at the time. They gigged, they made an appearance on Joe Franklin, they were even interviewed by Cousin Brucie. There was a slightly uncomfortable moment during the interview when Brucie asked the group where in England they came from. Not wanting to give the scam away, Jim pretended to be preoccupied and directed him to Paul. Paul did the same, and so on down the line until Brucie reached the drummer. Having nowhere to turn, the drummer, a burly Italian guy, responded in a note-perfect Brooklyn accent, "Chelsea."

The Dick Watson Five also recorded an album, versions of songs from the musical "Baker Street," done in , you guessed it, a British Invasion style. It has such highlights as Moriarity's song of triumph over Sherlock Holmes, sung in Jim's best Eric Burdon voice, complete with "House Of The Rising Sun" feel. (To give credit where it's due, the drummer did handle the 12/8 meter better than either John Steel or Ringo could at the time.) There's also "Roof Space," a more standard uptempo Merseybeat song with a guitar solo from Tony Maresca that sounds similar to the Lou Reed of the Pickwick records and early Velvet Underground jams. (The guitar solo in "Short Shorts" also has the feel. Maybe it was a Brooklyn thing.) "Cold Clear World" might be the most interesting song. It starts with the same chords as "You're Gonna Miss Me" and has some very Rokyish screams during the solo, but I think it came out first. ("Cold Clear World" is available on the compilation album "Highs in the Mid Sixties, Volume 22" on Bomp/AIP Records. -- BRAZEN)

This was an apprenticeship similar to the previously mentioned Pickwick work of Lou Reed or Paul Simon's hackwork of a few years earlier. (Not to mention Al Kooper writing "This Diamond Ring" and some Gene Pitney album filler. Isn't it odd how many New York Counterculture heroes had Brill Building skeletons in their closets?) Although the music took some strange turns, Jim gained something from this experience; an ear for pop hooks and melodies. It was an attribute that served him well throughout the Godz' career.

Of course, the Godz aren't remembered for their pop sense although, ironically, "Radar Eyes" is their best known song. Rather, they're known for being "really weird." The critical shorthand on the group is that they were "Pre-punk" and "Dada rock." As always, the critical shorthand is only half right.

The Godz could be called punk in a general sense. Their music was a attack on the popular sounds of the day (remember, I'm hearing those potential hit singles with 30 years hindsight. No one would ever have managed to get past all the strangeness on a Godz album at a time when rock experimentation consisted of a little feedback during the guitar break), and they had their share of run-ins with that sixties bogeyman, the establishment. Like the Sex Pistols, they got in trouble for cursing over the airwaves; in the Godz' case, during a few interviews on WBAI. The first time was inadvertent, but after that, they just felt like causing trouble.

The Godz also had their share of illegal substances and while only high school kids and old hippies think of drugs in terms of "fighting the establishment," those were different times. Back then, there was something revolutionary about drug use. Now, it's still illegal, but it's a crime that challenges the status quo about as much as jaywalking and one committed as frequently as not by the people who should be rebelled against. Rebellious or not, the Godz have plenty of stories on the subject. There was the time that they were playing at the Cafe Au GoGo and were thrown out of the club dressing room. They played shows while on acid and Paul has stories about smoking opium with Buddy Miles before going to The Scene and jamming with Hendrix. (Guess who played guitar and who ended up with a tambourine?)

Their music, however, had little in common with those sounds we've come to know and love as "Punk Rock." It was minimalist and primitive, but it had none of the aggression of Punk. There were no distorted guitars and the drums rarely played a heavy backbeat. Spiritually, they had more in common with the whimsical, experimental side of early British progressive rock (e.g. Syd Barrett, early Soft Machine, Gong). In fact, Paul prefers to refer to them as "underground," while Jim considers them performance artists who had a concept in which live shows weren't a professional presentation, but rather a simulation of a bunch of friends playing in someone's living room.

Don't get the wrong idea though. If they were performance artists, they were Rock and Roll performance artists. Their concept was simply that music should be a celebration that everyone could join. They simply took the Garage Band ethic of "three chords and anyone can play" one step further. They weren't artists like the Fugs, who were poets before they were musicians, had ties to the Beat Writers, and who made artistic statements with their records. When the Fugs did a long track, it was "Virgin Forest," which traced Man's descent from his natural state of grace into the degradation of civilization: All very carefully thought out and complete with Walt Whitman influence. When the Godz did a long track, it involved getting everyone they knew into the studio and having a lot of fun bashing away at their instruments. Dada is a more accurate description. There is a direct line between putting a bicycle wheel on a stand and calling it art, and making cat noises and calling it a song.

The most Dada they got was on "Riffin'." Just as Dada was a reaction to the absurdity of the First World War, "Riffin' " was a reaction to the absurdity of Vietnam and the sixties. The song is a stream of consciousness collage of Tarzan yells, impersonations, bad borscht belt comedy, someone whistling "Mary Had A Little Lamb," etc. over an impro-vised backing track that featured Paul Thornton learning how to play Free Jazz. In an era where protest songs were a dime a dozen, both in quantity and artistic value, this went one step further. They weren't just complaining about the "squares," they were laughing at the squares, politics, and everything else in the world. Next to it, The Fugs' "Kill for Peace" seemed simplistic and stuff like The Monkees' "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was at the level of a nursery rhyme.

Let's use Paul's description, they were "underground." That establishes the fact that they sounded nothing like Gary Lewis and the Playboys, but it doesn't tell us what they did sound like; where did these guys fit in?

The Godz tied together most of the various streams of non-commercial music that were floating around New York at the time. One moment, they were a garage band bashing out their warped idea of a great pop song, the next, they were as psychedelic and free-form as anyone. Their best known contemporaries were the Fugs and the Velvet Underground. All three groups once played together in Long Island, along with The Mothers of Invention. At one point, The Ronettes dropped by and asked if the Godz would back them while they went onstage and sang their latest single. The poor girls didn't know what they were getting into and, when they heard what the Godz sounded like, they decided a graceful (and quick) exit out the back door would be their best move.

I wouldn't go so far as to say there was a typical New York Avant Garde Rock sound, but there was some common ground. They shared a comic sensibility and acoustic roots with the Fugs and there are a number of parallels with the Velvet Underground. Some if it is pure coincidence, such as Jim and Lou Reed both having hepatitis in the summer of '66 and ending up in the hospital together, and some of the similarities ran deeper. In sort of a low budget Exploding Plastic Inevitable, some of the early Godz shows were playing behind experimental films. There were also similarities in performance. Lou Reed used to improvise lyrics onstage. The Godz used to ask audience members for suggestions and improvise songs. There was one about chicken soup and another called "Oatmeal Cookies and Red Balloons."

The Godz even outdid the Velvet Underground in one respect. They had a better understanding of the progressive jazz at the time. Generally, a track that incorporated Free Jazz turned out to be a long jam full of Albert Ayler-styled noise. At the time, that was nothing to scoff at and, to give Lou Reed rightful credit, he was familiar with Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor at a time when, most likely, few rock musicians had a clue who they were. The Godz had a track like that, "Crusade," which stands above similar noise jams of the period because it's the only time the damn thing resolved into a decent song. However, they went a step further in tracks like "Where," which attempted to translate the spirituality of the Love Supreme/Live at the Village Vanguard era Coltrane into the Godz basic rock vocabulary. This was the point where Coltrane left his earlier "sheets of sound" approach for one that abandoned traditional concepts of technique so that he could use his playing to reach a higher spiritual level. Along the way he would play any combination of notes, any sounds that he discovered on that path.

The Godz are doing the same thing by vocalizing a single word thoughout the song, the vocals becoming freer as the singer abandons himself to the sound that he is making. It doesn't matter whether he's repeating a word, a phrase or nonsense syllables, semantic sense doesn't matter as much as the emotional release he's trying to achieve. Musically, there are some similarities as well. The nasal tone of Jim's voice sounds like a conscious attempt to imitate the sound of Coltrane's soprano sax. Also there's the eastern sound of the melody and Paul's free Jazz influenced drumming. He may not have had the technique of a Rashid Ali, but he did have the same concept; abandon the steady rhythm and comment on what the soloist is playing. Besides, this isn't just something they made up while stoned. Most of the world's religions use chanting as a way to reach God.

So far, almost all of the songs mentioned have been from their second album. Fair enough, because it is their masterpiece; a hybrid of Rubber Soul and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, three years before Ono's album came out, that doesn't slight either. For over a decade I listened to it without any context. It was an oasis of mad brilliance created by four people who, for all I knew, walked off of a spaceship, spent an hour in a recording studio, and returned to their homeworld. But, of course, that's not what happened.