If you listened to my recent appearance on KCHUNG Radio’s Inside Outside you likely heard “My New York Woman,” a song by a little-known outsider musician named Jerry Rayson. “The Jerry’s” (Rayson and Solomon) are often spoken of almost as a tandem, though other than being a-traditional songwriters they don’t share too much in common. Solomon is a crooner at heart while Rayson…well, he’s been described using terms like “freak folk” and “lo-fi psych rock,” which I don’t think could ever be used to describe Solomon’s music. That they are both outsiders is unmistakable.
Paul Major’s new book Feel The Music describes Rayson’s full-length album The Weird Thing In Town as:
Perhaps the most unhinged LP ever to come out of New York City. Crude aggressive banging in a new genre “Rockabuafro” he created himself, mixing primitive folk punk guitar assaults with drugged-out lyrics. Ambient noise in the background, gut-ripping vocals, as primitive as it gets. My favorite moments are when he is making this horrendously brilliant racket in his apartment but ranting about the bums outside his window for making so much noise he can’t get any sleep — gonna call the cops on them, those hippie freaks, LSD…gonna call the cops on you… It is hilarious.
Rayson released that one full-length as well as two singles. The aforementioned LP came out in 1969, while the singles date from a year later. To quote from The Weird Thing In Town‘s cover, “My theory of music is to explore in the unknown vibrations of sounds, to create psychedelic ways of thinking which I make mostly with primitive sounds by adding them together…If you enjoy the weird and the new, this is for you.”
You can enjoy two of his tunes (ripped directly from one of the singles) below.
Jerry Rayson
“My New York Woman” / “Do The Boogaloo”
(Psychedelic Worlds Records, 1970)
A. My New York Woman [MP3]
B. Do The Boogaloo [MP3]
