Freedom - Frustrated Woman/ Man Made Laws

Ex-Procol members get hard and heavy with The Standells garage classic

Label: Probe

Year of Release: 1970

This is the second time Freedom have featured on "Left and to the Back" - we covered their highly poppy single "Kandy Kay" last year and also dug into their history back then too... but just to recap: the group were formed by ex Procol Harum members Ray Royer and Bobby Harrison shortly after they were dismissed from that band. While both had contributed to "Whiter Shade of Pale", the track hadn't long been top of the charts before they were told their services were no longer required.

Their subsequent career in the somewhat collectible group Freedom seemed to involve hopping and jumping between various different labels, and initially performing relatively lightweight ditties before eventually getting hard and heavy. "Frustrated Woman" marks the beginnings of that heaviosity, taking The Standells garage classic "Dirty Water" and making it stomping, sludgy and dirty, like a bunch of hairies revving their motorcycles through a muddy ditch.

Curiously, the A-side clearly marks the group (and not Ed Cobb) as the writers of the track which seems like a blatant piece of copyright theft worthy of the KLF - there is no way any court in the land would agree this was entirely Freedom's work, and had it been a hit I suspect the lawyers would have been on the phone immediately.

The flipside is theirs, however, and sees the group getting heavier still while ranting about evil "man made laws" and "selfish" people. I would nod in agreement with them but it's not entirely clear to me what it specifically is they're so angry about, so I'll just stay quiet in my corner to be on the safe side.
Nonetheless, this is a landmark record for the group in that both sides fed into their debut LP "Freedom" which set clear, clean water between both their poppy and Procol pasts, giving the group a distinct, progressive sound of their own which makes their records reasonably valuable to prog collectors. Their two Vertigo LPs "Through The Years" and "Freedom Is More Than A Word" in particular don't tend to sell cheaply.

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