I'm a Freak Baby: A Journey Through the British Heavy Psych & Hard Rock Underground Scene 1968-1972

The really interesting stuff here is from those groups that barely scraped out an album before disappearing into obscurity or never even got to release a record at the time, many of them victims of being outside of what was still largely a London-centric scene.

I’m a Freak Baby’s four hours seem to be teeming with ideas. Some of these ideas are, admittedly, ludicrous. ... Others, however, are really interesting.

For connoisseurs of the form, there is so much to recommend, from previously unreleased, grime-caked demos (including Street Walking Woman by The Phoenix and Trust by Hellmet) to ringers that somehow managed to claw their way into the light of mass acceptance (Race With The Devil by The Gun, Gypsy by Uriah Heep).

Of late, Cherry Red have rediscovered a role which had eluded them for years, as curators of scenes and scenes in-between. The material here doesn't do that reputation much harm, revealing a thin but potent seam of transitional, very hairy hard rock. [Sep 2016, p.95]

As with any compilation, it’s never entirely clear how much clearance from publishers impacts on the criteria for inclusion, but there are rare treats to be mined here.