This album came up last week in conversation with a big-time LA record collector. We were discussing albums which used to be huge dollar value items, and have recently seen prices drop due to demand/kitsch factor. I mentioned the Dave Bixby record (it’s gone from about a $2000 record to a $500-$600 record in a span of three years) and he brought up the Robbie “The Werewolf” Robison record (which used to be a $500 and up record but now seems to be stuck in the $100 – $300 range), which he then proclaimed to be one of the greatest private press treasures ever.
Ever? Really?
Well…you’re going to have to decide for yourselves. It’s definitely unique (and kind of insane), but I don’t know if I would heap the praise upon it that some of my fellow collector friends do. Robbie’s “music” (there’s a reason for the scare quotes) has been described as everything from “beatnik monster comedy folk” to outsider music, real people music and horror folk. The Acid Archives describes it as a “live jawdropper bohemian folk comic “real person” [album] with [a] monster concept. Strummed guitar lunatic tunes about Frankenstein, the joys of werewolfdom, and Count Dracula. A cover to die for with serial photos of lycanthropic transformation.” Another review states that The Waleback record “manages to be a folk LP and a parody of a folk LP at the same time. Half of it is monster-fan piss-takes on standards such as ‘Tom Dooley’, ‘Tip toe through the tulips’, and the other half is Robbie originals of varying quality hitting an unforgettable apex with the echo-laden Count Dracula track. Also daring for the time marijuana and sex jokes, and a general bohemian counterculture feel to it.”
He was pretty much a ’60s beatnik poet who was joking around playing silly songs set to music. The Waleback a bar/inn used to be in Santa Monica, and it’s believed that this one night performance was recorded sometime between 1960 and 1964. A few years after this album came out Robbie became a member of the LA-based psych band Clear Light, whose 1967 self-titled album is considered to be one of the finest examples of West Coast psych-pop. Robison died a couple of years after that album came out. The legacy of the Werewolf record still remains. Perhaps the most tragic thing about it is that hipsters now call this a lost freak folk classic. Thanks, Devendra.
Robbie “The Werewolf” Robison
Live At The Waleback
(Not On Label, 1964)
MediaFire DL Link
01. Vampire Man
02. Drums And Guns
03. My Little Brother
04. Frankie Stein
05. That Judge
06. Censored Man
07. Count Dracula
08. Lucifer
09. Streets Of Transylvania
10. Rockin’ Werewolf
11. Inside Story Of Flamenco
12. Tip-toe Through The Wolfbane
13. Censored Dooley
