Robert Callender "Vincent Van Gogh"

Robert Callender is one of those underexposed batty rock enigmas that collectors and archivists go nuts over. He was a marginal 1960s songwriter and DJ before releasing two high-concept/low sales psych records, Rainbow and The Way (First Book of Experiences) (both of which were, well, of their time) and then disappearing---destined to be a dusty vinyl footnote. But in the manner one might expect a story like Callender's to work itself out, there started a mill of rumors a decade or so ago about a "lost" record he'd released in the early 1970s, but only in Holland. It turned out to be true, it's called (ahem) Le Musée de L'Impressionisme, and Fallout Records has remastered and reissued it. It's a relic, to be sure; the sort of sprawling, pseudo-intellectual opus that could have only come from a psychedelic veteran during the halcyon days of early 1970s conceptual-soul. Divided into two "stages" (etages, sorry), it's the equivalent of an aural tour through one of those huge coffee table art books, only led by a dude obsessed with Curtis Mayfield but sounding like David Clayton-Thomas from Blood, Sweat and Tears. Yeah, it's like that. And I love it. Especially "Vincent Van Gogh" (mp3) from the end of the second etage. The lyrics are priceless, approaching the painter's life in the manner of "Freddie's Dead," but with a bit more fatherly condescenscion. Callender refers to Van Gogh as "little man" (running wild?), and speaks to him as follows: "Little did you know when your time occurred, you'd become an invalid," "alcohol didn't do you no good," and something like "how you able to paint the world you live in, miraculous as you did" before lapsing into French, and then vamping for a while about Toulouse-Lautrec. If that doesn't pique your interest, you've already stopped reading anyway.

Buy Le Musee de L'Impressionisme from Forced Exposure.