Peter Stampfel used to play with a lot of folk raunch groups like MacGrundy's Old Timey Wool Thumpers ("wool thumping" being an esoteric euphemism for when the boy sticks his thing in the girl's thing and makes babies), the Lower Telegraph Avenue Freedom Fighters String Band (which changed its collective name to The Merrie Order of St. Brigit String Band–which appellation was derived from an eighteenth century whipfreaks–after Stampfel was sick of explaining that the band was against "freedom bull-shit" –"we weren't doing any 'If I Had a Hammer shit'"), the Strict Temperance String Band of Lower Delancey Street, et cetera.

Steve Weber, who holds the all-time record of walking barefoot in New York City without pedal injury (seven months), poet and creator of such masterpieces of contemporary sculpture as "Chinese Sailor Eaten by Octopus," met up with Stampfel in 1964, whereupon the two men metamorphosed toot sweet into the Holy Modal Rounders, produced two nifty efforts for Prestige Records, joined the Fugs for public appearances and the first Fugs LP on Broadside Records, left the Fugs in a dubious state of mental stability (said state being preserved for posterity on the ESP Rounders album, Indian War Whoop, the first LP to establish amplified amphet-aminism as a valid genre of American folk music), subsequently met up with: (a) a drummer; (b) a renegade church organist; (c) a minister's son who was once Cowboy Bob on a Syracuse, NY, TV kiddie show who played bass; and, lastly, (d) an ex-masseur with a complexly weird autobiography who played fiddle, mandolin, guitar, clarinet, and miscellaneous.

Together they created (with the exception of (d), who came later) an album for Elektra. The Moray Eels Eat the Holy Modal Rounders (subsequently brushed aside by Stampfel), got involved with doing the score to Sam Shepard's Operation Sidewinder, split from Elektra, drank a lot, almost signed with Atlantic, and finally signed with the newly-founded Metromedia. Which brings us to Good Taste Is Timeless.

There's not really all that much to say about the new Rounders LP except that it's great. They've finally produced an album of what they're best able to do–create beautiful flowing, stomping waves of wort-ripped, futomaniac honk. With two exceptions, Jimmy Newman's "Alligator Man" and Virginia Joe Maphis' "Melinda," it's all original stuff, from the wonderful reel of bathroom mastophilia "Boobs Alot" (which is lots better than the original Fugs version), to the shitkicker melancholia of J. Michael McCarthy's "Once a Year" to the joyous insane raunch of "Happy Scrapple Daddy Polka" and "Black Bottom" (not to be confused with the Fats Waller wax of yore). Which is why they say: Are you ready, Hezey? (RS 84)

NICK TOSCHES