Chicago Oriental Band – Chicago Oriental Band (Medinah Temple)

That this record hasn’t been championed — how any of its 14 tracks haven’t been featured on a comp curated by some crate-digger DJ or turntablist — is beyond me. Take a nearly-unlistenable but awesome marching band album, cross it with Asian-inspired instrumentation, add a weird Shriner/Masonic twist. This is the Chicago Oriental Band. It’s borderline unlistenable and it will blow your mind.

Shockingly the album is available for sale on eBay right now for $15. Other than a shady mail order list on some far corner of the Internet you’d likely not even know it exists. And in all of my scouring for weird records, and all of my conversations with collectors who have been at this decades longer than I have, it wasn’t until last month I learned about this gem. The discussion at that time centered on the Ophir State Marching Band. I was espousing the joys of hearing one of the worst recorded performances in the history of music for the first time. The Ophir State privately-pressed album has long been on my list of bizarro outsider LPs I refused to write about because I didn’t want it tainted by outsiders. Now there’s a Discogs listing for it. Most of the songs are on YouTube. I imagine in the coming months the Chicago Oriental Band will receive similar treatment.

I didn’t clean up the audio because I never learned how, so if one of you wants to take a stab at that by all means hip me to the finished product. Sorry about that. An interesting note is that this record was pressed by Universal Recording in Chicago, the same company that pressed the Beatles first album in the States, Introducing The Beatles, in 1963.

Chicago Oriental Band
Chicago Oriental Band
(Medinah Temple, 196?)
MediaFire DL Link

Sample Tracks:

• Red Fez [MP3]
• Bengal Bounce [MP3]
• Rameses [MP3]