The Fire Escape
American psychedelic rock band
The Fire Escape was an American psychedelic rock band formed in San Francisco, California, in 1967. Existing mainly as a studio group composed of unknown session musicians, the band was masterminded by record producer Kim Fowley and Michael Lloyd. The project produced one album called Psychotic Reaction, which contained mainly cover versions of popular songs from the era. It is reported that Sky Saxon of the garage rock band, the Seeds and Mars Bonfire of Steppenwolf, played on some of the tracks.
History
Prior to the Fire Escape's formation, Michael Lloyd had been involved in multiple projects including the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (WCPAEB), the Smoke, and October Country, among others. Lloyd had collaborated with record producer Kim Fowley ever since he was introduced to him during Lloyd's stint with the WCPAEB, recording a Fowley solo album and later, in 1968, an album for the psychedelic rock band St. John Green. Although how the Fire Escape formed is not revealed, liner notes on the band's album humorously details how a couple of individuals are in search of where the Fire Escape was performing, only to find them regularly playing in "a club called the Gutter". For recording, Lloyd and Fowley teamed up with production duo Larry Goldberg and Harry Levine, who assembled a group of uncredited session musicians for the project.
Eight of the 10 tracks on Psychotic Reaction are cover versions of popular garage rock compositions from the era, including the title track "Psychotic Reaction" by the Count Five, the Music Machine's proto-punk tune "Talk Talk", and ?
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This entry incorporates text from “The Fire Escape” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.