music Home > Record Reviews

George Brigman Rags in Skull (Bona Fide) It was a happy occasion when local rocker George Brigman's '70s vinyl catalog was finally brought into the digital age last year. However, Bona Fide Records promised even more Brigman--and it has arrived in the form of Rags in Skull, Brigman's first new work in a quarter century, a love of heavy guitar having kept his spirit as well as his fingers young and supple despite the passage of time. He shifts into gear for "Borderline," the album's first rave-up, a tune dipped in the 1969-'70 sound of psychedelia changing into hard rock, with provocative neo-prog guitar and drum-break change-ups. "Somebody put milk in my eggs and someone has got to pay," Brigman sings over descending fuzz on a song of the same title. Reflecting his mood, apparently sour enough to make the devil leave the room, Brigman then lurches into a cymbal-smashing shuffle for "Some of My Best Friends Are Snakes." It's the kind of treatment that retro-loving stoner rockers never nail even though they ought to.

A promotional clip, slated for the web and originating from a local access cable show out of Dundalk in the mid-'80s, shows Brigman and cohorts in dapper denim explaining to the interviewer that Baltimore clubgoers liked a little more homogeneity in their rock than the band served up. Anyone who's endured such interviews for the sake of exposure knows it's always necessary to explain why bookings were scanty without appearing supercilious, a job Brigman handles with aplomb. For Rags in Skull's finish, "Goin' to Pieces" and "Swell," Brigman indulges the guitar hero in everyone, the latter throwing arena-echoed ax squiggles into the sunset, showing he was always fit for that big national stage--our loss, not his.