Various I'm A Freak Baby 3 - A Further Journey Through The British Heavy Psych & Hard Rock Scene (3-CD)

(Grapefruit Records) 53 tracks, gatefold sleeve, digisleeve, incl. booklet

Following the success of the first two volumes in the I'm A Freak Baby series, Grapefruit returns with a third installment of groundbreaking hard rock sounds from the emerging British underground.As with its predecessors, I'm A Freak Baby 3 features many of the acts that were synonymous with the stoner and free-festival elements of the British counterculture, with key tracks from such seminal underground greats as Mick Farren and The Deviants, Edgar Broughton Band, Pink Fairies and Hawkwind.Musicians and bands who were honing their sound before they hit it big are also represented: the embryonic Deep Purple, the youthful Free, Thin Lizzy's first album, Lemmy (fronted by Sam Gopal) and the pre-fame Mott The Hoople are joined by old hands The Yardbirds, who are represented with a sensational live version of “Dazed And Confused” from 1968, a song that Jimmy Page would take into his next band.Other bands featured here have long attracted the interest of record collectors, such as May Blitz, Fuzzy Duck, Leaf Hound, Zior, N. S.U. and Ashkan, all of whom have left behind albums that sell for large sums today.Many of the bands featured here, however, didn't even get as far as attracting the interest of a record label. Outsider bands like Wicked Lady, Grit, Stoned Rose (featuring a pre-Ultravox Chris Cross) and Bone could only preserve their sound in rehearsal rooms or, if they could scrape together enough money, in the cheapest demo studios.Supplemented by a handful of one-shots (Mighty Hard, Distant Jim) and previously unreleased tracks, I'm A Freak Baby 3 - housed in a clamshell box and featuring a lavish 40-page booklet - is another essential window into a burgeoning movement that would later launch a musical revolution. To quote the mighty Edgar Broughton Band: Keep them freaks a-rollin'!