Bob Parks - The R and B Feeling

Bob Parks eclectic career stretches back almost 40 years and has its roots in the experimental performance art of the 1960s and early 1970s. Bob moved from the UK to Watts, South Central Los Angeles in 1972 and joined the black Pentecostal church COGIC (in order to discover the roots of R+B) at the same time as developing experimental performance work with artist John Duncan (later notorious for a work in which he had sex with a corpse). His years in LA included a three-month phase during which he only wore a jock strap, and a period enrolled at the Lee Strasberg acting school which led to a walk-on role in Martin Scorceses 1977 film New York New York. During this time, Bob formed the performance group Bignose, staging confrontational performances in LA punk clubs such as The Masque, twice appearing on Chuck Barris The Gong Show on national TV. His psychotic, polyphonic brilliance and productivity in the face of obscurity is reminiscent of outsider artists and musicians such as Henry Flynt, Daniel Johnston and Henry Darger. Bob Parks work is profoundly celebratory, filtered through his love of rhythm and blues (a term propagated by his friend Johnny Otis) and includes poetry, photo-realist portrait paintings, music, video and installation works as well as site-specific performances. The R+B Feeling is an album of raw, psychedelic gospel featuring period recordings made with the gospel community in Watts, LA and Bobs own, unique brand of low-fi songwriting. Limited - 500 copies with gatefold LP, interview and free CD-R with MP3s, bonus track and 2 MP4 video clips Bob Parks performs on The Gong Show, American TV in 1978 and Bob Parks at COGIC, South Central Los Angeles, 2005. we are getting 400 copies, this is one of the best archival releases yet to reach our ears...ask for a cdr, be suitably blown away...incredible stuff...truly incredible...

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