Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Heitkotter !!

Stephen David Heitkotter
circa 1971
Sadly, Heitkotter was institutionalized for schizophrenia by his family who didn't know how to care for him. In the same vein of thought as Roky Erickson, and Daniel Johnston, this is a strange "bedroom" produced pysch-rock album which had only about 25 original copies pressed and handed out to local radio stations in California. It became a holy grail to find one of these, and what little collectors knew of Stephen's troubled past became legend. Finally, in 2010 his work was dusted off and reissued, including some demo recordings which had essentially never been heard by anyone else.


8 comments:

  1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hq3nsk6pqdcvcyi/Heitkotter.zip?dl=0

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  2. Certainly sounds like it's worth a listen. thx.

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  3. I'm interested to hear what you guys think of this

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  4. I can see why DJs and label AR people chucked it the waste can back in the day. I can also see why it's so coveted by outsider music types today. As loose as it is, there is a kind of inner cohesion about it. The demos actually sound a bit tighter that what was originally released. I like the way the rhythms are stretched. The players stumble but always fall forward and keep up the momentum. I dunno if I'd call it genius, but i enjoyed it. I wish he was still able to record.

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    1. I thought the same thing, rev.b. I like the demos much more than the official tracks. It was too intriguing of an album to pass up at the record store, so I relented. It's not really the kind of material I typically seek out/ listen to/ post on this blog. But, there's something strangely refreshing about it. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

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  5. I think we're of the same mind on this one. It's a little out of my areas of interest, but I'm happy to go out on a limb it something's intriguing enough, which this certainly was. Thanks for this and the Thornton above. Off the check those out now....

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  6. Any chance of a re-up? I've only recently heard about this LP! Thanks in advance.

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