Kak-Ola

The quality of the recording is excellent, and there are some very good songs - and some extremely average ones. Somehow, they got a recording contract before the band existed - and once the album was released, they stayed together for only a matter of months, playing only a handful of gigs. They bridge the gap between the Oxford Circle, and Blue Cheer. A good album.

Highly recommend. Hard psych rock. Good stuff!

Excellent product and first class service.

An album of its time, very very listenable if you like this style of psych rock.

Whenever an expanded version of an album I love is issued I'll always rush out and buy it in the vain hope that those elusive bonus tracks will come up to scratch and put more flesh on the bones of an already much-loved item. The original album, in my mind, is not perfect but has some truly sumblime moments on it - Trieulogy and Lemonaide Kid are both psychedelic classics...though I was half-gutted and half elated when BT used the latter on their recent TV ads! The bonus tracks offered here provide brilliant acoustic versions - I prefer the acoustic version of "Evrything Changes", along with the single version of Rain, which is a punk psyche beauty in this guise. Unfortunately, when you get past the Kak-related songs, the other bits are plain disappointing - if you want to hear other excellent Yoder-Grelecki compositions, get hold of Blue Cheers "Original Human Being" and "Oh! Pleasant Hope". Shame they weren't on Kak-ola...that would have made a stunning CD retrospective...

Kak ( perhaps not the greatest name choice! ) were every bit as good as their contemporaries in the West Coast Psychedelic scene. Their sound shows some similarities with Moby Grape, Fever Tree and others whilst remaining pretty distinctive. The album hangs together pretty well and demonstrates some excellent guitar playing and songwriting. Any psychedelic effects are understated allowing the vocals and instruments to shine through. Definitely worth buying if you like late 60's West Coast Psychedelia

For this reissue of the Kak album, it was not only given a whole host of bonus tracks but a different title in Kak-ola. Those curious about the original Kak album because of its high reputation among some collectors might be like myself, disappointed by its average San Francisco psychedelic rock songs. The ten bonus tracks do much to round out the picture of the little-recorded band, making the album better for them and twice the length of the original LP. These include the 45 version of "Rain" (which is different than the one that appears as part of the "Trieulogy" medley on the LP); 1968 acoustic versions of four songs from the album that may actually be more attractive to some ear along with one acoustic rendition of a song ("Bye Bye"/"Easy Jack") that was not included on the album. Also included are Gary Lee Yoder's solo single "Flight from the East" and "Good Time Music"; and three Yoder demos from late 1967 with Blue Cheer's Paul Whaley on drums and Bruce Stephens on guitar. The Yoder solo material is pretty routine heavy late-sixties San Francisco rock, and not up to the level of the Kak stuff. The sleeve notes are excellent and make an interesting read. It is a shame that the album could not match up to them. Forget the reputation, this is very average stuff indeed.