Knights Of Fuzz
Timothy Gassen

Purple Cactus Media Productions
PO Box 121
Tucson
Arizona
85702
USA

Availability:

www.bomp.com
www.gethip.com
www.sundazed.com/store

Some years ago a truly awesome book was unleashed on an unsuspecting world, the title of this valuable tome was The Knights Of Fuzz and it was written by Timothy Gassen from Arizona. It came out on Borderline Publishing and quickly became a much sought after classic eventually selling out leaving many many Psych/Garage without a copy.

The book was the definitive guide to the Garage and Psychedelic Music Explosion, 1980-1995 and for the first time documented the rise of the second generation of Psychedelia/Garage Punk that kicked off in the early 1980’s.

We have now all been saved from years of darkness without this book because Tim has reworked The Knights Of Fuzz into an enhanced CD-ROM (Windows & Macintosh).

(For those of you crying out that this is a literature section and that THIS is not really literature then TOUGH.......It will get moved into a new section later but for now it’s home is HERE OK?)

What we have here is an additional 300 pages of material containing many updated features from the original book.

As an ‘Extra’ there are also 6 ‘vintage music videos’:

CHESTERFIELD KINGS "99th Floor"
FUZZTONES "Ward 81"
YARD TRAUMA "I've Seen You Walking"
THE GRUESOMES "Hey!"
MARSHMALLOW OVERCOAT "The Mummy"
FORTUNE & MALTESE AND THE PHABULOUS PALLBEARERS "Leave No Stone Unturned"

On top of this is a 26-song 72-minute MP3 compilation featuring such delicacies as :
Gravedigger V, Plasticland, The Unclaimed, The Cynics and The Fuzztones.
Featured in this compilation are some seminal classics that arguably launched the entire 80’s Garage/Psych revival such as the United States of Existence (1978), The Unclaimed (1980) and The Last (1979)

If you already own the original Knights Of Fuzz then there is enough new material here to justify buying this as well, if only for the MP3 rarities and video clips and if you do not own this and have not seen the original book we would DEFINATELY recommend acquring one FAST

There is literally so much information about modern Garage/Psych bands presented here that you cannot fail to be impressed with this CD ROM.
We though we had heard of a LOT of bands until we read this!!

The new material includes over 20 Garage Nation articles, various interviews with the likes of Greg Shaw, Lee Joseph, Rich Coffee, a whole bunch of Psychedelicatessen articles from the webzine Cosmic Debris and some great historic articles from the legendary Psychedelicatessen Fanzine.

To view this CD all you need is a web browser on your PC or Mac and if you don’t already have Real Player or Quicktime etc to view the videos then they too are included on the CD with full instructions on their use.

Our only criticism is to do with the design of this CD ROM and we feel we should mention this. Most of the material here comprises of scanned in pages from the original book and scanned in photo montages. Why is this an issue you may ask? Well, it stops you from being able to search the CD ROM for a particular band or artist if you are researching or just plain browsing.

Basically if this CD ROM had keyed in text and a Search Engine rather than scanned in pages it would literally be THE best thing we have ever seen, but even without it, its VERY damn close!! .

If you are into Garage/Psych then you cannot possibly live without owning this CD-ROM. All you need to do is point your browser at www.purple-cactus.tv and dig out yer $25 it WILL be money well spent......WE PROMISE YOU THAT