Saturday Spins Vol. 29
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's Live Boogie!
Every Saturday I use the Discogs Randomizer Gizmo to pick a record from my collection and write about it here.
This week on Saturday Spins I get to talk about two of my favorite things: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and boogie rock. Even better when its KGLW doing boogie rock. One of the best things about KGLW is their love of bootleggers taking their music and creating something cool out of it. All they ask for is credit and a few units they can sell on the Gizzverse.
There are so many variants out there because of this. For example, 2017’s Polygondwanaland was given away and indie and bigger labels took it upon themselves to press their own variants to sell. Want to make your head spin? Check out the “See All Versions” of that LP on Discogs.1
I am a sucker for variants, but not that much of a sucker. However, some small labels recently took to the interwebz to crowdsource some KGLW bootleg albums, including today’s pick. The way this was done was through Qrates, which has a sketchy rep—I for one thought I threw away $20 by preordering today’s spin since it was crickets for over a year. But then, all of a sudden, tracking! Arrival! Spinning!
What arrived on my doorstep was a hand-numbered re-pressing of KGLW’s first EP, Anglesea, and today’s record, Live Boogie! The latter was put together, sequenced, and pressed by Domestic Ham Records out of Denver, CO. It should be noted that this is a one-man operation. Per his Instagram page, the idea was to make a compilation LP where the tracks include “boogie” in the title, and they should flow together as if part of the same set.
My copy, like all the others, is a green-splatter with the album art being a homage to the old Blue Note style of graphic art. I must say, the jackets are not only quality, but the artwork is very well done. Score one for Qrates on the execution. The b-side of the LP features a zoetrope animation that is best viewed with your phone set to 30 FPS. There are little photos of front man, Stu Mackenzie that boogie while the record spins. Sound quality is excellent, because the source material is right from the band—this ain’t no Deadhead taping.
The song choices feature some of my favorites, like “Plastic Boogie” and “Boogieman Sam”. Four of the song selections, one of the previously mentioned, “Sleepwalker (Boogie)” and “Cutthroat Boogie” are from the Live at Red Rocks’ 22 show. I am the proud owner of that 12-LP box set. The two other songs are the rarely played live “Cyboogie”2 (Live in Milwakee ‘19) and the also from Red Rocks “The Bitter Boogie.” “Plastic Boogie” is from Live in Chicago ‘23.
Other than the novelty of “Cyboogie” being played live, the biggest standout for me on this album is the live version of “Boogieman Sam.” It is 11 and a half minutes of Ambrose Kenny-Smith doing his best Paul Butterfield impression to great effect. That song effortlessly fades into “Sleepwalker”, one of my favorite KGLW songs—only this one is done with a mid-tempo boogie arrangement that stays true to the original low-tempo arrangement in key ways.
All in all, this is an excellent official bootleg release. It is not featured in its entirety on Spotify, however, the albums the tracks are pulled from are, so I cobbled it together in a playlist for y’all, enjoy!
Maybe finish that Saturday morning coffee first.
Kraftwerk’s favorite KGLW song.
I’m a big KGLW fan and have been since about the start but it’s a full-time job trying to keep up with all their official releases let alone the bootlegs! So I’m grateful that you’ve taken on that task so I don’t have to! And thanks for the playlist too.
That is really interesting about their "authorized bootleg" culture. I really need to listen to these guys more.