Music is why I still love music.

Every now and then, something blasts the patina off this old plate of a brain. At the time, that something just seems "right" or maybe it's just good old-fashioned inspiration. Recently, a friend dropped the Devil's Anvil in my lap and I've been screaming with pleasure ever since.

The band released one album, Hard Rock From the Middle East, and according to the All Music Guide, it dropped into record stores (and seemingly out of existence) the same day in 1967 that the Arab-Israeli War broke out. Supposedly, not a station in New York would touch the album even though the band was from the Village. Several members in the band were born in or had family from the Middle East, but the Devil's Anvil was an American band, granted one that sang mostly in Turkish (and Greek?) and played songs not only with a traditional psych rock setup including guitars, drums, and organ, but also with an array of untraditional rock instruments like accordion, tamboura, and bouzouki. The group was together a year before the album and only a year after. A few members went on to form the more successful group Mountain.

More than being an exotica album or simply a set of rock songs in harmonic minor with "guest" sitar or tabla, Hard Rock fuses rock and roll and Eastern musical elements beyond gimmickry. It's not perfect, but at its best fits nicely next to R.D. Burman and Ananda Shankar's work of the same period, although the production isn't as inspired. (Then again, how could it be?)

My favorite tracks tend to be the rockers in odd time signatures (although "hard rock" means "midtempo" on this album), but there are some nice ballads here including "Kley," which has a twisting melody and a vocal that sounds oddly like Henry's Dream-era Nick Cave. Also, the album has a slow version of "Misirlou" with English lyrics. Not my favorite track, but it's definitely unlike any version of that song I've ever heard.