I’ve seen this record listed on some collectors’ websites as a gospel/soul record, a folk/country record, and a mysterious outsider record. The reality is, it’s most likely Canadian composer (and Grammy winner!) Galt MacDermot fucking around under a pseudonym. Kilmarnock, the label that released Mystic in 1969/70, was almost exclusively the home of MacDermot, and whose name was attached to nearly every album bearing Kilmarnock’s logo from the mid ’60s to the early ’70s. That said, if it’s indeed a hoax (or, more likely, just a guy having some fun composing less accessible songs) it is a damned good one.
First of all, the music is difficult to pin down. The prominence of the organ is likely what gets this classified as soul music, but as soon as you hear macRoy sing all semblance of soulfulness is removed. You can’t call it white-boy soul because the guy’s voice has absolutely no rhythm to it. Which brings me to the crux of why this album is so unusual. macRoy has almost no sense of timing when it comes to singing, which is AMAZING. I’m the type of listener who — beyond enjoying melody and rhythm — loves to try to listen to the message contained in songs with vocals. I don’t have the best attention span, but something about macRoy’s delivery, the cadence of his voice and the tempo of his delivery makes it almost IMPOSSIBLE for me to tell what the hell he’s singing about. It’s like trying to find a linear message in a Jackson Pollack painting. “Moving You” goes from oceanic imagery to children playing jumprope and a grandmother sewing by a fireplace, and somehow these very vivid images are…what, evidence of a man’s desire to make a woman fall for him? I THINK? I mean, what the hell does any of this mean: “The glass broke in the mirror / Apples on my steerer / This year I fear / And the lace you wore got torn across the seas a doleful horn is blowing / And the cloud is growing / The cloud of all unknowing / Leaning on a mountain / Depending on an ocean / Matching whole continents moving you / Moving you / Saying you’re sorry and knowing what you’re owning but all the same saying you must be going / You must be going / Oh, what you say is untrue but there’s nothing I can do / That will ever be moving you moving you moving you.” EH!? WHAT!?
The whole record is like that. It’s enough to give a guy a migrane, trying to keep up with a singer who is trying to squeeze too many words into each thought he has and indifferent to how he’s carrying each line beyond its natural conclusion. Awesome, though…right?
The liner notes state:
“We must admit all attempts to sell the macRoy talents to the world have failed. Our record Fergus macRoy at the Homestead Upright sits in boxes. Vinyl has not become sound. The spiritual awakening we all (at Kilmarnock) looked for has not taken place.
This you may say is show business and we would agree. Many a young aspirant fails to ring the bell of public acceptance, and returns to his half life of parking cars and selling gas.
But with the macRoys you have something far more tragic. Here is a family that for over a thousand traceable years has held it’s place in the community as THE music makers. A wedding, funeral or even birthday party in Digby Gut without a macRoy performance or better still, composition, was unthinkable.
Then Kilmarnock brings out Fergus’ first record with all the hooplah we could muster. We claimed artistic, ethnic, poetic, musical, even historic importance for our product, but buyers exercise overwhelming restraint. Fergus and Angus remained middle income Nova Scotia fishermen and something unforeseen happened. Their neighbors, friends and to an alarming degree, relatives began to doubt their entertainment value. Within weeks after the release of Homestead a backlash swept over Digby Gut and the outlying countryside. Beatles records, retired Opera singers and misplaced jazz musicians started to dominate the social and religious functions.
Digby Gut had entered the twentieth century, recognized the coming of the Age of Aquarius and dropped the macRoys.
All this we only learned recently because in a sense we had also dropped the macRoys. The utter lack of sales gave us nothing to talk about so we had not communicated. We had failed to make Fergus and he had failed to make us, financially speaking. Perhaps their entertainment value was worn thin.
But life goes on and our curiosity was piqued recently by a news item which spoke of macRoy brothers (same spelling) having been released from a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.
Then a few days later, Fergus himself stopped into say hello. Unfortunately we were busy recording the sound track for Martine’s movie “Woman in Sweeter” and Fergus’ stop over in New York was very short. What with the excitement of seeing him again, the busy studio and the fact that he sat in with the musicians and sang the title song for the movie, it was time for him to leave before we could discuss his life of the past few years. He advised us however that he was going to Vancouver Island where he and Angus were going to be staying with their uncle Sitting Ring (Flianato Tribe). A short while later we had a telephone conversation which excited us.
Apparently their failure to communicate on wax had not bothered the brothers, in fact they weren’t really aware that they had failed and the change of fashion in Digby Gut itself had only lasted until four of Angus’ songs calling themselves the Iroquois had reasserted the macRoy supremacy in the area. What had happened is that the fishing beds had shifted so drastically that they had decided to help North Vietnam against the Americans (it was the result of a flipped coin, no nationalism involved) and had packed up and left.
They were accepted by the Vietcong because of their Indian blood and in the course of the fighting spent three winters in Tibet where they came under the influence of a highly evolved but of course little known Guru called Rampa Opsing (or Sopsin we couldn’t quite catch it).
Fergus was not greatly impressed but on Angus it had a powerful and, we feel, important effect. He took up vegetarianism and celibacy (his mariage to Maud was long over, she was one of the first to doubt his entertainment value, but the Tibetan women apparently are not without charm) and started to write brooding prophetic doom-oriented poetry.
Fergus confesses that this new direction depressed im at first. He likes songs about people and their feelings but the lifelong habit of setting Angus’ words to music stayed with him and resulted in a song cycle that on hearing over the phone we determined once again to let the world have a crack at the macRoy genius.
We aren’t going to praise these songs or sell them on any basis whatsoever. We just know in our souls that they are important and what the world needs now is important.”
Yeah. Guys. This is a good one.
Fergus macRoy
Mystic
(Kilmarnock, 1969/70)
MediaFire DL Link
01. A New Day
- Man finds himself on earth. The possibility and urge to grow wise are there but also the fear and disgust-producing restraints.
02. Moving You [MP3]
- Trying to get oneself off one’s ass to function. Monumental effort.
03. Don’t Think Of Me Then No
- Ironic instructions from God to world infatuated man.
04. Narrow Confine
- The sense of being in touch with very little.
05. They Don’t Want Me Here
- Nobody wants to be here or let anybody else be here.
06. Never Broke A Heart
- Probably ironic reference to the inability of a heart to break.
07. Down In The Southern Ocean
- Reference to the hell which produced this album.
08. His Eyes
- Dead serious — what the experience was we don’t know.
09. They Said Things
- Illustration of the ability of the soul to bog down in irrelevant reflections and coincidence.
10. That’s Loving
- The sound (Holy Ghost).
11. Is God Dead
- Nietze’s [sic] answer
12. I Won’t Be Back Here Twice
- Liberation for Earth
Credits:
vocals: Fergus macRoy
lyrics: Angus macRoy
music: Fergus macRoy
publisher: Wonish Music Inc. (CAPAC)
recorded at: Knickerbocker Sound Studios, Inc.
cover design: Vincent macDermot
Made in Canada
