OK, then, what was I talking about? Yes, a band named Xebec. This particular group with the sailing ship moniker was from the western Michigan town of Grand Rapids, and who managed to eek out this one obscure 45 before completely falling off the face of the Earth - and remains undiscovered as we speak. Tragedy that. Because this is - stop me if you've heard this before from moi - a bullseye for the Midwest progressive rock sound of the 1970s. Just down the road from these guys were three Chicago bands: Yezda Urfa, Pentwater, and Graced Lightning. If you're familiar with any of those, then you know what to expect here. This falls on the complex side of the genre. Awesome.
The single itself features a near four minute instrumental ('Dissonet') as well as a seven minute cover of Touch's pioneering Seventy Five, which would have been an enlightened choice in 1975, long before that album enjoyed a renaissance.
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I was also a sent a full live recording from The AC that shows the band stretching out. The original material is fantastic, as well as the covers - which include Yes, Genesis, and Gentle Giant. So yea, these guys were hardcore progheads even back then. The recording itself has many dropouts, but still worthy of a greater audience.
Hopefully Xebec is sitting on a full canister of unreleased studio and live tapes. This one is begging for an archival release.
This was from the last batch of discoveries from The AC in early 2015. Here were his notes to us: "Xebec are one of America's many "lost" progressive rock bands of the 1970s. They existed for a few years in the fertile prog underground scene of the upper midwest (Grand Rapids, Michigan in this case), but only managed to release one virtually unknown EP before packing it in and going their separate ways. However, like many such bands, there is more unheard material sitting in the vault, so to speak. The studio tracks consist of one instrumental original and a very intriguing cover of Touch's seminal "Seventy Five", given a mid 70s midwestern prog makeover. The lengthy and fairly well recorded (though a bit rough in spots) live set consists of a few originals and a number of covers, this time including Yes, Genesis, and Gentle Giant, but once again sounding so distinctly midwest prog as to almost become their own unique entities. The originals are a mixture of very Yes-inspired progressive songs and a couple of more experimental instrumental tracks, including an alternately spacey and aggressive 9+ minute number that's pretty amazing. Back in the heyday of US prog reissues/archival releases, I could have seen labels like Syn-Phonic or Shroom putting this material out, but these days I'm not sure it would fly. Regardless, this stuff is pure gold for those interested in this particular time, place and style."
Ownership: SP: 1975 Ultra Promo. Recent online acquisition (2020). Interesting to note that even though this is a 7 inch, it's still at 33 RPM. They probably figured most prog guys didn't have a turntable that played 45's....
11/5/15 (first listen / review); 1/28/20 (update / new entry)
