Dead Moon: Unknown Passage [MISSISSIPPI]

Why you'll love it

This Mississippi Records reissue is remastered and cut in mono, the way Fred Cole made Dead Moon's records in the first place. It's the trio at full tilt, with Fred and Toody Cole trading vocals over Andrew Loomis's pounding drums.

This edition

• Remastered
• Mono

About the album

Fred and Toody Cole ran a Portland music shop called Tombstone, and Dead Moon worked a bit like a family business. Fred engineered the records himself and mastered them on a mono lathe that had once cut The Kingsmen's famous Louie Louie single, and the band put them out on their own Tombstone label. Unknown Passage, their second album, came out in 1989, and Europe caught on well before America did.

Drummer Andrew Loomis completes the trio, and the songs hit hard and plain. "Dead Moon Night" became something of a calling card, "54/40," "I'm Wise" and "Evil Eye" rattle along on Fred's wiry guitar and Toody's driving bass, and "A Miss of You" and "Demona" bring the band's dark, lovelorn side to the front. Their cover of the Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today" trades psychedelic sprawl for a tight garage stomp.

The 2004 documentary Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story borrowed this album's name and took the band's story to screens from the US to the Melbourne International Film Festival. Fred trusted that old lathe with everything, and we'd like to think the lathe was quietly proud of him.

Also at Kops: more Dead Moon on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Mississippi Records (cat# MR-090), a reissue of the 1989 album.