Bob Azzam and The Great Expectations

This 1969 oddity goes for big bucks if you can find it for a couple of obvious reasons. First, the drum break on the cover of Alvin Toussaint’s classic “Rain Rain (Go Away)” has become legend among crate diggers and samplers. The other is that the version of the Stones’ “The Last Time” is astonishingly psychedelic, a delirium of fuzz guitar, electric sitar, rumbling piano, and throbbing bass punctuated by soaring, Left Banke-esque vocal choruses. But, those highlights aside, this one-off album from Egyptian vocalist Wadie George "Bob" Azzam and his merry band of pranksters is a refreshingly eclectic and highly listenable affair leavened with a hint of electronic weirdness a la Lothar and the Hand People or Silver Apples. “Mon Amour” pays tribute to Azzam’s Middle Eastern roots with a jaunty Arabic melody, while he brings a Beatle-esque sensibility to the two Les Reed covers, “Mr. Lovin’ Luggage Man” and “One Little Packet of Cigarettes.” And “Berimbau” offers an unexpected outburst of Tropicalismo. In short, not just a rarity, but a record to appeal to anybody with a warped pop sensibility…and ain’t that all of us? Remastered and pressed in fire orange vinyl for its first reissue in any format!