Ed Kuepper-Rooms of the Magnificent (1986)

Artist Ed Kuepper

Title: Rooms of the Magnificent

Label: Hot Records

Format: LP

Cat #:HOT 1027

Year of Release: 1986

Country and Year of Edition Issue: UK 1986

Listed Condition: VG+/G+ deleted radio copy, stickers on cover

Sell Date: 5/9/21

Sell Price:$9.99

Discogs Last Sold: 4/8/21 NM/VG+ $19.99

Low: $3.00 VG/VG+ 10/20/19

Median: $6.53

Average: $9.55

High: $19.99

Current low price: $4.97 VG/G+ 

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 19

Have/Want: 307/37

Where Sold:Riner, VA

Time it took to sell: 5 years

Where and When Bought: WERS purge pile

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B+

Sad To See It Go: No

The aural highway is littered with albums that reveal themselves excellent if you just give them time and a chance to sink into your brain.  This purged album from the WERS library by the Saints co-founder is one fine example.  If I remember, damn near the whole Kuepper library was unjustly relegated to the dustbin to make room for some lesser, newer talent.  5 years later the kids weren't playing it.  In all honesty, his solo work wasn't a heavy hitter for me either, although his era of the Saints were loved and respected, so I knew enough to grab those free records when made available to me for the cost of a full hand walk.

As with most Australian rock bands with punk leanings, there is a level of quality devoid of bullshit that the US or even Europe produce.  Perhaps it is the isolation, or the smaller pool size of bands.  Kuepper was German born but emigrated to Brisbane as a child.  The first 3 Saints albums in the later 70's were part of his doing and he followed that with the Laughing Clowns in the first half of the 80's before settling in on a solo career that continues to this day.

This is his second solo album, continuing a year after the first in 1986.  Released on the Hot label in the UK and Australia, the products of this imprint along with the Celibate Rifles and The Triffids regularly made their way into US records stores and left of the dial radio stations.

The music on this album is a bit more "singer/songwriter" "alternative" than rocking band oriented.  That just means harmonica and unsentimental relationship lyrics.  Still a guitar record with organ keys, not synth and a reasonable rock oriented mix that was the MO for Australia. Julian Cope and Peter Perrett come to my mind straight away as great artists with extensive discographies that you have to sit down and put the time in with their records or they will be lost on you or me.   Especially with tracks like "Also Sprach The King of Eurodisco" which was also release as a single and "The Sixteen Days" which would have been a hit if I spent as much time then as I am now on this album.  One or two passes, even in headphones was not enough for Rooms Of The Magnicent and I'm onto another listen or two as I write this.  It really is the purpose of the act of doing this blog to force myself to circle back and focus on records like this that admittedly got lost in the shuffle in it's day.

If anyone's career ever screamed deeper examination it's Ed Kuepper, who has kept going 35 albums on in his solo career AFTER The Saints and Laughing Clowns.  He's only about a decade in at this point.  

It seems criminally unjust not to give the man his due.