Freeway Elevator

Howard Roberts was a highly successful jazz guitarist. Bandleader, sessions, part of the Wrecking Crew, high-profile TV and movie soundtrack work; he's probably on more than a few albums you own. But like many sessioners at the top of their game, he grew itchy with the elevator music his label expected of him. I think pharmaceutical research may have impacted his creativity.

Antelope Freeway ('71) is like no other guitar album I've ever heard, except maybe his next one. It's like he's remembering The Firesign Theatre's How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, without trying to interpret it. There's spoken word and sound effect interludes, and the whole thing is seamlessly edited together as a suite. It's off-beat, left-field, funny and funky, and stoned as a heretic in old Jerusalem. That's him sitting on the edge of the earthquake-destroyed titular freeway on the cover, and the music is like a fault-line running through contemporary L.A. A freaking, freaked-out masterpiece.

Equinox Express Elevator ('72) is more of the same, yet different. At some point, out of nowhere, he shreds. It's startling. Like Freeway, there are echoes of Zappa's studio techniques, and the titles of the pieces are hilarious - how could you not want to hear Real Freak Of Nature Historical Monument? 

This is the kind of unclassifiable stuff that crimps the sphincters of record labels, and after getting it out of his system he returned to standards and sessions, much to the relief of everyone who benefited from his royalty checks.