For years I recall only seeing the front of the album cover, apart from glowing, albeit bewildered reviews in magazines name-checking the strangest recordings ever engraved into vinyl. Even though I had heard and admired other vocal acrobats like Yoko Ono, Tim Buckley, and Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart, you bohemians), Patty Waters' voice blew that dam wide open when I first listened to "College Tour" four, maybe five years ago... and the music is at least as bewildering as the cover.
Everyone who loves this album knows the skinny: this was a live performance which was part of a tour of five upstate New York colleges with music departments for the ESP-Disk label, and funded by a grant from The New York State Council on the Arts. Other acts included in the tour were Ran Blake, Giuseppe Logan, The Sun Ra Arkestra, and Ms. Waters' backing band for that evening, The Burton Greene Trio. The entire performance served as an exercise in minimalism that still covered a storehouse of uncharted territory. Bear in mind that she was nineteen when she cut this record as her voice suggested the world-weariness of a woman three times her age.
Give a listen to Patty Waters on "Wild is the Wind" and you will hear primal brilliance.
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