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LOTTI GOLDEN

An extraordinary song suite provoked by a teenager’s six months immersed in New York’s late-’60s underground.

Wyndham Wallace

“Michael let me ride his motorcycle”

FEBRUARY 2023 TAKE 335

1 TELEVISION PERSONALITIES (P48) 2 THE BLUE AEROPLANES (P49) 3 BRIDES OF FUNKENSTEIN (P51) 4 DOUG SAHM (P52)

REISSUES | COMPS | BOXSETS | LOST RECORDINGS

Motor-Cycle (reissue, 1969)

HIGH MOON

JIM CUMMINS

‘‘ASATANIC-BIKER motown-psych outsider drug-rock concept album...” “As if The Velvet Underground recorded for Motown...” These are two of the elaborate, bewildering descriptions offered over the years for Lotti Golden’s debut. Not that many are available. Few have heard it since the summer of ’69 – it’s only ever been reissued once as a limited-edition bootleg CD – so appraisals are hardly commonplace.

Surprisingly, nonetheless, one needn’t hand over one’s first-born for a copy, even an original pressing. Motor-Cycle has been rumbling beneath the (speed) radar half a century, always hiding in plain sight.

Here’s another rave from Richard Hell, who’s contributed liner notes to the new reissue of this intoxicatingly peculiar collection. “She’s all in, a psychedelic daughter of the Beat generation, among her equally hippie cohort, in swirls of free-loving, drug-chasing, multiracial, pansexual abandon.” And here’s one final take. “It was this whole Elvis-style production and she’s not Elvis... It’s a bit of an Aretha Franklin rock, R&B party album.” That’s Stephen Malkmus, who chose “Gonna Fay’s”, Motor-Cycle’s second track, for a list of his more unlikely inspirations. “The song keeps building, and she’s screaming about drugs. So to me it’s an epically ballsy song and just fucked up, you know?”