Chicago’s South Side in the early ’70s was an epicenter of African-American musical creativity: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra’s Arkestra, Phil Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble, and others led the charge away from mainstream, commercial music. Many followed: The Pharaohs, Pieces of Peace, and Earth, Wind & Fire would attain local, national, and then international acclaim. An outsider even in an outsider subculture, Boscoe—both band and self-titled album—has been denied a place in the Great Black Music only by its own profound obscurity. Issued in a pressing of just 500 copies, 1973’s Boscoe documents an explosive live act unclouded by the passage of time. Free of studio polish or perfectionism, every bass run booms, every vocal rumbles over a patina of reverb. Before Side A ends, we witness the invocation of death, a war for peace that black America must fight, Malcolm X’s violent passing, brains already in the grave, God’s damning of us all, and a glib parody of “The Star Spangled Banner,” all delivered by a crawling funk fusion as eager to blast us awake with harsh words as with insistent horns.
