Ten Miles Of Fucked-up Road

Knock-down loaded
Asphalt rollin'...
I feel nothin'- I feel it all the time
I feel nothin'- doin' just fine

I spend a lot of time thinking, writing and talking about music, I could tell you exactly why I like this, admire them, or appreciate that but some bands you just love because.

Fu Manchu have been that for me since I first heard the opening seconds of ‘Hell On Wheels’ back in the last century. I am absolutely buzzing about seeing them for the third time tomorrow night in Manchester. So as an appetizer I have been blastin’* my favourite Fu Manchu In Search Of … By Crom’s grey beard it’s a magnificent album!

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Fu Manchu’s third LP, hailed from 1996 and somewhere on the outer fringes of the rings of Saturn, cut with the line-up of Hill, Davis, Glass and Romano**, prior to the latter two splitting and forming Nebula. It’s a great LP and it would have been an influential one even if it had been blank, the cover of In Search Of .. has been credited with turbo-charging stoner rock’s visual obsession with 70’s muscle cars and gaseous spiral nebulae in starry skies.

In Search Of… is a spikier, gnarlier incarnation of the classic Fu sound, helped by a clearer punchier production from the band and Brian Jenkins. At this remove it is a beautifully balanced combo of their punk antecedents and more expansive sunnier tendencies. What really sets In Search Of… apart for me is the guitaring of Eddie Glass, he plays all over this sucker in a much more flamboyant manner than hitherto and it powers everything up to the next level.

Every track here is a winner, but lets slice and dice a few of my faves.

First exhibit is the super hard chargin’ ‘Asphalt Risin”, the sheer attack of this one absolutely sets it out on its own in the Fu discography. It prompted me to break my air guitar out of storage this morning – not recommended, gentle reader, if you were drivin’ at the time as I was. This tale of building a drag car is just perfecto ‘I pushed a button for a ride into the sky / With a super C/ A Super C is what I need’^.

Or take the guitar fest that is ‘Seahag’ which is just drenched in guitar heroics, it is such a lift on a stormy, wet Autumn day like this. It is impeccable sequencing that this is followed by the numb slo-mo stoned boogie of ‘The Bargain’.

Let’s face it, dive into In Search Of… anywhere and you’ll come up clutching a pearl between your teeth. Opener ‘Regal Begal’ comes on tough and powerful, like an experienced barroom brawler, solid, immovable, looking you up and down before punching you half way to San Clemente. That sequencing again … follows it up with the slow/fast/all stoned ‘Neptune’s Convoy’.

Slice it again and up you come with ‘Strato-Streak’ thrashing in your beak. It doesn’t get much fuzzier riffed than this UFO chasin’ beauty, although Glass’ lead guitar flashes around the barrelling power of the track flashing off the chrome accessories to dazzling affect.

Ten miles of fucked-up road
Solar burnin' things have turned to stone
Ready for the next time they show

Contrast that against the sheer grunged out monolith that is ‘The Falcon Has Landed’. Christ knows what its about, seeing the lyrics doesn’t help very much, but that’s not the point, the sheer heft of the cut is; perfect Fu Manchu heavy/light.

I could go on, but I would be doin’ you and In Search Of… a disservice, buy it, live it for a while and develop your own favourites. It is absolute primo Fu Manchu and from a band I love this much that means it is absolutely Everestin’.

The line-up fractured right after In Search Of… and for all the glories that followed I remain humbly grateful, but there is a part of me that wonders what they would have sounded like if the Nebula boys had stayed and could have made it work.

Whatever, no point bumpin’ down ten miles of fucked-up road unnecessarily, in this dimension we at least get to enjoy the glories of the whole Fu continuum. Long may it continue and I can’t wait to wake up with a neck hurtin’ on Tuesday mornin’.

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My copy of In Search Of… is sadly not a ’96 original but a 2011 reissue on Fu’s own label At The Dojo Records. It’s an excellent quiet pressing, but if you come to In Search Of… in search of audiophile excellence you’re totally missin’ the point.

Time to roll those tyres.

1251 Down.

*final g’s are very much not a thing amongst the Fu community.

**which makes them sound like a specialist tax accountancy firm.

^great post here from Monster Riff that explores just how gear-headed our chums are.