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The New Creation
Troubled
Alphomega - 1970
Michael Panontin
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"The devil has the best music."
That is how the New Creation's Chris Towers summed up the difficulties of fusing psychedelic rock music with Christian ideals. He and his deeply spiritual mother Lorna were what were known as Jesus People, having even written a Christian-themed play that they had entered in a CBC contest. But it was 1967 and the budding guitarist was equally smitten with the near-possessed fingering of Jimi Hendrix and the leaden riffs of Cream. In a couple of years he would discover 'Gimme Shelter', the Stones' apocalyptic anthem that would become his favourite song.
Their play never did win. But in an attempt to prove the devil wrong, Towers and his mother continued writing devotional poems that eventually evolved into songs. With an acquaintance, 21-year-old Janet Tiessen, on drums, the Vancouver trio set themselves up in a rec room in nearby Coquitlam, hashing out their trippy, folk-inspired music and dubbing themselves the New Creation. Before long the group, which Lorna described as "unpretentious and unsophisticated", had amassed a sizeable cache of songs.
"How the songs, in their astonishing force, suddenly 'arrived' was a miracle," Lorna recalled. "And more so the tunes - they kept coming with blazing speed, some fifty of them. What were we to do with what we had? We had no agenda, and the world of music, out there, was hi-tech."
Of course, the believers out there - and even the cynics, sarcastically - might suggest some divine intervention at work. And you would not be so far off the mark. "With the encouragement of family and friends, we prayed much and we practised, we sorted out songs, and, by the grace of God, suddenly found ourselves with a studio." The New Creation allegedly had to pool their resources to come up with the thousand dollars they needed for the six-hour graveyard slot at Studio 3. Once there, the songs poured out with lightning speed, with most needing no more than a single take. The studio crew, she adds, seemed almost alarmed at the group's efficiency.
The resulting LP, Troubled, was pressed up in a tiny run of just a hundred copies and distributed mostly among family and friends. Oh to see their faces when they dropped the needle on 'Countdown to Revolution!', the opening track on side 1! It's a jaw-dropping seven-minute mash-up of religious and anti-religious slogans, Zappaesque feedback and musique concrete that could have fit comfortably on the last side of the Mothers of Invention's Freak Out. Those who hadn't already yanked off the tonearm and had continued listening would have heard a beguiling collection of folk-infused, mostly amateurish tracks (um, one take, eh?). Most are forgettable. Some, like the eponymous 'New Creation' touch on the haunting psych-folk that bubbled under in the late-sixties, while the uptempo groove on 'The Status Quo Song' even hints at the early Velvet Underground, if you strain the imagination a bit. Mostly, though, Troubled is a clumsy mess, leading some to dub the group 'the Xian Shaggs' (which, depending on your views on outsider music, is either an insult or compliment).
Troubled rightfully languished in total obscurity for some three decades until a California collector named Will Louviere happened upon a copy and sought to reissue it on his Companion label. When he finally managed to track down Thiessen, she thought it was a joke. After all, she was not in contact with the Towers nor had the group heard anything about the LP in ages. "No one had ever mentioned the record to them in thirty years," an incredulous Louviere explained. "It was truly and completely lost."
These days it is precisely the 'lost and then found' nature of Troubled that leads collectors to fork over such huge sums - $2900 USD according to Popsike - for an original copy. Some will dismiss it as pure rubbish, while others will hear in it a purity of intent that comes with the best naive art. Irwin Chusid, author of Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music and longtime WFMU program host, is clearly in the latter camp, writing, "Troubled is just a terrific album, a showcase of raw, inventive musicality. Categorically, it's - I dunno - Sixties Garage Godcore? Yet it transcends being a mere period piece. The songwriting is deliriously brilliant, the lyrical perspective haunting. The band's sincerity is unquestionable, even if its meters are unfathomable. And its appeal - undeniable."
Janet Tiessen was much more straightforward, telling The Vancouver Sun, "I thought, 'My gosh, I can't stand this album, it's awful'."
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