Tom Rapp is back! I just learned by hearing an interview on NPR this morning that the Sixties songsmith (who once finished ahead of Robert Zimmerman in a New York talent contest) released a new studio recording last year — A Journal Of The Plague Year.. The NPR interviewer commented that Rapp is well thought of by many younger musicians who weren’t even out of diapers when his band Pearls Before Swine — consisting of the loose assemblage of whoever Rapp gathered around him in the studio — was around… but this fan is old enough to remember him fondly from back then, and I still have them on vinyl and a rerelease of the first two, most interesting, Pearls albums One Nation Underground and Balaklava (originally on the venerable ESP Disk underground record label where Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Paul Bley, the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders among others resided) on CD. Sonic Youth and others acknowledge him as an inspiration, and there was a 1997 tribute album by lots of artists I’ve never heard of. Rapp has been a civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia for many years and says his work is too important for him to take time off to tour behind his new recording.

In browsing around for material on Rapp and Pearls Before Swine, I just hit upon this wonderful and encyclopedic site, Fuzz Acid & Flowers, ” (an) extensive guide to U.S. psych(edelic) and garage music 1964-1972.