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Down Under Duo
And the Great
Australian Identity Crisis of 1970
Popular music – and
Prog is certainly no exception in this case – is filled with band
breakups. Whether derived from public
spats, or “creative differences”, music groups go through lineup changes with
casual regularity. Most of the time we
think about one or more members leaving a group: Waters with Pink Floyd, David
Jackson with VDGG, anyone not named Squire with Yes. But in 1970s
Guitarist Mike Rudd
and bassist Bill Putt recorded more than a dozen studio albums together, but
remarkably, only twice did they record multiple times under the same group
name. The story begins in 1969 when the
two formed the group Spectrum with various other revolving members. In 1971 the album Spectrum Part One was released containing a laid back mix of psych
and prog styles, notable for some long building organs and deep bass
lines. By their second album, Spectrum
assumed an alter-ego known as Indelible Murtceps, which recorded two other
studio albums in the early 1970s: Milesago in 1972 and Testimonial in 1973. All this information I gleaned from the Spectrum Part One liner notes after the
album was released on CD in the early 2000s.
At this point, this
was all I knew about the Spectrum/ Murtceps story, other than a mention that
Rudd and Putt had later formed a group named Ariel a few years after the Spectrum
dissolution. This second point had been
forgotten until I came across an Ariel CD a couple years later, and perusing
the back cover, recognized the Rudd and Putt names on the credits. Ariel produced four studio albums of their
own – A Strange Fantastic Dream in
1974 (similar to Spectrum Part One, but with additional Reggae and Country
influences), Rock ‘n’ Roll Scars in 1974, Goodnight
Fiona in 1976 and Aloha Ariel in
1977.
Now this flash of
recognition between Ariel and Spectrum may have been interesting for a few
minutes, but it soon passed. After
Ariel, Rudd and Putt went on to record together with five other identities
including Instant Replay, Mike Rudd and the Heaters, WHY, No. 9 and Burwood
Blues Band. I thought there was nothing
left to say about the Rudd and Putt history….
LOOK WHAT TURNED UP ON THE BACK OF THIS ALBUM…
Until I happened
across still another Australian Prog Recording – this one much more underground
than the others I had already heard. In
1973, an album called The Star Suite was
released by an outfit calling themselves Patch.
The album consists of four long tracks – Air, Fire, Water and
Earth. The edition I have only has a
handful of notes on the back cover, and it wasn’t until the third or fourth
time listening to the album that I noticed Mike Rudd was credited with writing
three of the songs. I recognized Rudd
instantly, then went back through the other credits to see who else might have
been involved. Sure enough Bill Putt
played bass on one of the tracks. There
is almost no other information I’ve found on this Patch album. It even remains unmentioned on Rudd and
Putt’s own website.
I can only speculate
that there is more prog history to uncover with this pair of musicians. Rudd supposedly wrote and recorded a rock
opera in the mid-70s about the time of Ariel called The Jellabad Mutant, but details on this remain scarce. What do you think are the odds Putt also was
involved in this effort in some form or another?
Learn more:
MIlesago – the Australian
Psychedelic Archive
The Rudd/Putt Timeline:
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