Demon Fuzz was an English rock band which was formed in 1968 and broke up in 1972. Its members had all immigrated to Britain from

Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...

countries. The band's name means "devil's children or bad policemen". The band's music has generally been described as

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...

soul In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being". Etymology The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...

jazz rock Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...

and

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...

. Their album, ''

Afreaka! ''Afreaka!'' was the first album released by the English rock band Demon Fuzz. It was initially issued in 1970 by Dawn Records, to which the group was signed. The following year, a U.S. pressing was made by Janus Records (catalog number JLS 3028). ...

'', has become a popular source for sampling. Since 2008, they have received sporadic airplay by the BBC radio presenters

Huey Morgan Hugh Thomas Diaz Morgan (born 8 August 1968) is an American musician best known as the former frontman of rock/hip hop band Fun Lovin' Criminals. Morgan performs both vocals and guitar and combines rock, hip hop, jazz, reggae, and funk influenc ...

and

Gideon Coe Gideon Jon Quantrill Coe (born 22 September 1967 in Canterbury, Kent) is a radio DJ, presenter, sportscaster, voiceover artist and journalist. Early career He began his broadcasting career in 1976 as a child presenter on the BBC One TV program ...

History

The band was promoted by The Red Bus Company agency in London, which also handled

Mungo Jerry Mungo Jerry are a British rock band, formed by Ray Dorset in Ashford, Middlesex in 1970. Experiencing their greatest success in the early 1970s, with a changing lineup always fronted by Ray Dorset, the group's biggest hit was "In the Summertime ...

, Mike Cooper, Titus Groan and Wildmouth which arranged for them to appear at a concert incongruously named the " Hollywood Music Festival", in May 1970 at a

Leycett Leycett was a small mining village in Staffordshire in the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme which was built in the late eighteen sixties to accommodate the miners and their families. Population details as taken at the 2011 census can be found ...

farm near

Newcastle-under-Lyme Newcastle-under-Lyme ( RP: , ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, England. The 2011 census population of the town was 75,082, whilst the wider borough had a population of 1 ...

. They played at the

Phun City Phun City was a rock festival held at Ecclesden Common near Worthing, England, from 24 July to 26 July 1970. Excluding the one-day free concerts in London's Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park, Phun City became the first large-scale free festival in th ...

Festival, "a major concert event in

Worthing Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Hov ...

". In November 1970, the band played a series of ten concerts called "A Penny Concert" along with Titus Groan, Heron and Comus. Among performances was one at the

Marquee Club The Marquee Club was a music venue first located at 165 Oxford Street in London, when it opened in 1958 with a range of jazz and skiffle acts. Its most famous period was from 1964 to 1988 at 90 Wardour Street in Soho, and it finally closed whe ...

. They appeared on the

BBC television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...

show ''Disco 2'' produced by Stephen Clive Turner who had been offered (but did not take) 25 pounds for having them on the program. After he told BBC management about the incident, he was fired. Subsequently, the ''

News of the World The ''News of the World'' was a weekly national Tabloid journalism#Red tops, red top Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling En ...

'' ran a story about the event. They signed with the

Dawn Records Dawn Records was a subsidiary of Pye Records. Active from 1969 to 1975, it was established as Pye's 'underground and progressive' label rivalling the EMI and Phonogram equivalents, Harvest and Vertigo. The most successful act on the label wa ...

division of

Pye Records Pye Records was a British record label. Its best known artists were Lonnie Donegan (1956–1969), Petula Clark (1957–1971), the Searchers (1963–1967), the Kinks (1964–1971), Sandie Shaw (1964–1971), Status Quo (1968–1971) and Brotherhoo ...

, for whom they released two recordings: the studio album ''

'' (catalogue number DNLS 3013) and a

maxi-single A maxi single or maxi-single (sometimes abbreviated to MCD or CDM) is a music single release with more than the usual two tracks of an A-side song and a B-side song. The first maxi singles Mungo Jerry's first single, "In the Summertime" was the ...

with the songs "

I Put a Spell on You "I Put a Spell on You" is a 1956 song written and composed by Jalacy "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins, whose own recording of it was selected as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. It was also included in Rober ...

" (written by

Screamin' Jay Hawkins Jalacy J. "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins (July 18, 1929 – February 12, 2000) was an American singer-songwriter, musician, actor, film producer, and boxer. Famed chiefly for his powerful, operatic vocal delivery and wildly theatrical performances of s ...

), "Message To Mankind" and "Fuzz Oriental Blues", both released in 1970. Demon Fuzz's cover version of "I Put a Spell on You" was included in the 1971

sampler album A sampler or promotional compilation is a type of compilation album generally offered at a reduced price to showcase an artist or a selection of artists signed to a particular record label. The format became popular in the late 1960s as record lab ...

, ''The Dawn Take-Away Concert'' (catalogue number DNLB 3024). Priced at 99 pence, the LP also had songs by Mungo Jerry, Comus, The Trio, Heron, Paul Brett's Sage, Mike Cooper, Atlantic Bridge, Jackie McAuley, Bronx Cheer, John Surman, John McLaughlin, Dave Holland, Stu Martin, Karl Berger and the Be-Bop Preservation Society. A Demon Fuzz maxi-single was published by

Nippon Columbia , often pronounced ''Korombia'', operating internationally as , is a Japanese record label founded in 1910 as Nipponophone Co., Ltd. It affiliated itself with the Columbia Graphophone Company of the United Kingdom and adopted the standard UK C ...

around 1971. The maxi-single was later made available as a CD. ''Afreaka!'' was distributed in the United States by

Janus Records Janus Records was a record label owned by GRT Records, also known as General Recorded Tape. The label was in operation from 1969 to 1979. History Janus was founded in July 1969 as a joint venture of GRT and British label Pye Records. In its ea ...

(catalogue number JLS 3028). It was a ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' "4-STAR" selection in June 1971. Around 1971, their song "Hymn to Mother Earth" was included in the ''

WDAS-FM WDAS-FM (105.3 MHz) is a commercial radio station, licensed to serve Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It carries an urban adult contemporary radio format and is owned by iHeartMedia. WDAS-FM is widely regarded as one of the originators of the Urban ...

Black Rock''

compilation album A compilation album comprises Album#Tracks, tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one or several Performing arts#Performers, performers. If by one artist, then generally the tr ...

. In 1976, after the band dissolved, their second album, ''Roots and Offshoots'', was self-published under the Paco Media Inc. label. A 1999 compilation CD, ''From Calypso to Disco: The Roots of Black Britain'', includes the Demon Fuzz' recording of "Message to Mankind". Their performance of "Mercy" is included in Harmless Records' 2002 compilation CD (also published as a double-LP set) ''Paint It Black: Kaleidoscopic Funk Collision''. In 2003, the Get Away label made a vinyl reissue in Italy of ''The Dawn Take-Away Concert'' (catalogue number GET 626). Another vinyl pressing was made by Janus under the same catalogue number as the 1971 edition.

Musical style

The band's music was influenced by

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...

n music, calypso,

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

, and

ska Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...

, and saxophonist/founder Paddy Corea had a background in playing ska music. The music they heard during a trip to

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

led to a change in their style. The band's music has predominantly been described as

, soul,

and

. It has also been described as

acid rock Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture. Named after lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the style is generally defined by heavy, di ...

psychedelic soul Psychedelic soul (originally called black rock or conflated with psychedelic funk) is a music genre that emerged in the late 1960s and saw Black soul musicians embrace elements of psychedelic rock, including its production techniques, instrumenta ...

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, ...

, and world music. The band also played reggae.

Discography

* ''

'' (1970) * ''Roots and Offshoots'' (1976)

Members

*Paddy Corea, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute, vibes, congas *Ray Rhoden, piano and organ *Sleepy Jack Joseph, bass guitar *Smokey Adams, vocals *Steven John, drums *W. (Winston) Raphael Joseph, guitar *Clarence Crosdale, trombone *Ayinde Folarin: credited with "additional congas" on ''Afreaka!''. He was brought in on the recording session only.

References

Additional sources

*Corbett, John. "Afreaka!: Demon Fuzz" ''

Down Beat ' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...

'' 71. 1 (January 2004): 18. *Thompson, Ben. "Pop: Demon Fuzz: Afreaka!", ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...

'' 8 January 2006: p. 36.

External links

Paddy Corea's blog about the band
{{Authority control British soul musical groups English funk musical groups English jazz-rock groups English progressive rock groups Musical groups established in 1968