A now legendary story surrounds this release and the first thing to point out when telling it is that this album was never actually "released."
It seems the tunes are primarily the brainchild of Prairie Village, KS native Paul Parkinson. He returned home from tour in Vietnam, put together this band and they cut an album's worth of dark, boogie-rock in Independence, Missouri's Cavern Studios circa 1970. The band didn't stay together long enough to put out any sort of private release. Further, they probably didn't hand out many demos of the group's sound.
Despite the fact that band would have only played a handful of shows and demos were probably limited to a few friends of the band, the gloom and doom of the recordings got heard. Those that did hear even snippets of the groups work were likely overwhelmed by not only all the dark, satanic references, but the band's adept psych rock arrangement. The songs were recorded in the Cavern, so there's a echo and basement feel to everything. The tunes go from the morose, war-damaged opener, "End of the Page", to basic blues-rock based psych and stoner jams. It occasionally borders on Sabbath inspired proto-metal, but the real surprise is the lyrical themes and content: 1970's suburban Kansas is not the place you'd expect to find a group tackling topics like death and drug use, but this band went one-step further titling a song "Satan." It's all very war-damaged and serves as a reminder to what these young guys like this were dealing with when coming back from Vietnam.
In 1995, 8 of the Bulbous Creation songs were issued on Rockadelic Records (same label that issued a Wizards of Kansas posthumous release of Cavern recorded tracks). It was unauthorized release and doesn't sound that great, but it represented Bulbous Creation's first release 20 years after it recorded the material.
The Rockadelic become somewhat of a collector's LP as it soon went out of print and word spread on the band. In 2001 Paul Parkinson passed away. It's reported that while going through his belongings, his brother found a complete copy of the Bulbous Creation LP, previously, the Rockadelic material was thought to be it, but 2 additional tracks were unearthed. So there you have it, 10 songs, representing a single band's short-lived existence, now released officially 44 years after it was initially recorded; that's legendary.
Check out the tunes.
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