Peter Stampfel & The Bottlecaps – The Jig Is Up

Two new CDs document the ongoing education of Peter Stampfel, crown prince of the old-timey anarcho-psychofolkadelic American songster tradition at its most contemporary and extreme. He might still be best-known for his first band, the Holy Modal Rounders, which was basically Stampfel and Steve Weber and sometimes whoever else they picked up along the way. This 1971 live radio broadcast catches the group’s final stages, when they numbered seven, including a ka-thwumping drummer and a scree-honking saxist.

They were folkies making a coarsely agreeable, jamming cacophony that came out as neither folk nor rock nor folk-rock. They were enough to restore meaning and class to the word “eclectic.” Stampfel’s then-mate Antonia’s classic “Lowdown Dog” unites the barnyard with the coffee house and the opium den; his fellow former-Fug Sam Shepard’s “Catch Me” adopts a Stonesish progression; and Eddie Palmieri meets Gid Tanner & His Skillet Lickers on “Give Me Your Money”.

The Bottlecaps were Stampfel’s mid-’80s to late-’90s band, a little more traditional on The Jig Is Up than the Rounders on the live disc, but just as Out There. The opener is a hilariously deadpan reading of “Squid Jiggin’ Ground”, which I’ve seen described as both a traditional Newfoundland song and a 1928 composition by one Arthur R. Scammell. At any rate, it’s about those hard-working men who kill the squid and make it possible for you to enjoy calamari at the dinner table. (“There’s poor Uncle Billy, his whiskers are spattered/With spots of the squid juice that’s flying around/One poor little boy got it right in the eye/But they don’t give a hang on the squid-jiggin’ ground.”) Stampfel says he learned it off the radio from Hank Snow in 1957, and the melody and hook are such Velcro that once you’ve heard it, you’re likely to be singing it to yourself for the next few weeks (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but in my experience your friends tend to tire of it rather quickly).

Later, the band pumps new life into Stephen Foster’s “Old Dog Tray”, Stampfel favorite Charlie Poole’s “New White House Blues” (memorializing President McKinley’s assassination), and the only traditional song I know of about a repo man, “New Riley The Furniture Man”. Just as good, Stampfel gets off some world-class venting of his own on the originals “Family Of Man” and “Stupid Jerk”. On the latter, inspired by They Might Be Giants and A.A., he seethes well past the point of overkill as he declares, “You are the kind of guy who hates support groups/But you’re the kind of guy who needs support groups/That is so typical of those who need support groups/You cliche-monger stupid jerk.” That’s my kind of music, and my kind of self-help.