'What the Hell' starts off with some harmonica and that gets into a southern hard rock riff, while chorusing the namesake track. Not bad, but rather typical hard rock for the era. It's the b side that you're after here. 'Stranger' is completely different - and completely out of time. Sounding like Uriah Heep circa 1972, this is a killer heavy prog track with searing guitar leads and beautiful crunchy Hammond organ. Dig the breezy vocals too. I'm really hoping these guys put more to tape here than this. What a great archival release it would be.
I can't find anything about these guys. One Japanese reference says it's related to a group called The Boyzz from Chicago, but none of the names match. In any case I've seen copies turn up on ebay from time to time, so guessing there was some unsold stash found. And Discogs has a few as well (not expensive - so worth nabbing if you collect SPs). My copy is basically new, another sign of that.
There's some evidence that this could be from the Eugene, Oregon area. There's a label from there and the catalog number fits. However, there's no label logo on this release like the others.
Ownership: SP: 1981 Triad. Online acquisition (2020).
Ownership: SP: 1981 Triad. Online acquisition (2020).
5/13/20 (first listen); 2/28/21 (review / new entry)
