I Am The One I Am

I AM THE ONE I AM

Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice (Omen Blues Band/Sky High Band, etc) were one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me. They seemed to come out of nowhere, and had this impossibly mysterious, gothic/circus/gospel-blues sound that I had never heard anything like before. They also had cultish Manson family names that added to the mystique:

Wooden Wand Jehovah aka Hassara, 27, Virgo
Heidi Diehl aka H Reality, 15, Gemini
Glucas Crane aka Nonhorse, age unknown, Gemini
Steven The Harvester aka "Jarvis," 27, Sagittarius
Satya Sai Jehovah aka Satya Sky aka Scupetty aka Alpha Woman, 18, Aquarius

The other thing that made them so special was that they kept changing.. no two records really sounded much alike. Xiao was black magic, scripture, and terrifying (the last track especially, Return Of The Nose, is the scariest thing I've ever heard), The Flood was summery and creek-side, Gipsy Freedom was psychedelic and Jefferson Airplaine, Buck Dharma was the most uneasy but filled with some of Satya Sai's best vocals and real songs. Her voice is one you will never forget. Wooden Wand's solo album, Harem Of The Sundrum & The Witness Figg might be the most beautiful and traditional-sounding thing to come out of all of this.. there are echoes of Judee Sill, Bill Fay, and even Alice in Chains Unplugged.

Second Attention was also a revelation- a play on the classic John & Beverley Martyn Woodstock masterpiece, Stormbringer. I could listen to these guys all day long, that is how varied and endlessly fascinating their back catalog is. True outsiders singing from the corners of the earth.