$100 Fine was the Litter’s second LP, coming off the heels of an otherwise excellent, mostly covers album titled Distortions. The $100 Fine LP was released in 1968 by the Hexagon label.

This time around the Litter focused their efforts on more group originals. There are a handful of lesser known covers that were originally written/recorded by artists such as Jeff Beck, the Eire Apparent, the Zombies and Procol Harum. The album opened with the powerful acid punk madness of Mindbreaker. After hearing this track, one would think or hope this album would be a garage psych monster but unfortunately that’s not the case.

Mindbreaker is only matched by another freaky hard guitar psych gem titled Under The Screaming Double Eagle. These tracks are absolutely essential. The rest of the album falls short. Tallyman and the heavily phased Kaleidoscope are solid, worthy covers that have held up over time. Morning Sun, a group original, features lots of excellent Zippy Kaplan fuzz guitar work. She’s Not There, a Zombies cover, is a 9 minute jam that could have been cut in half but was probably added to pad the album out because the group was short on material. Also, Blues One, a pure blues rock number doesn’t fit in with the rest of the album’s psychedelic ambitions. So while $100 Fine isn’t a bad album, it’s not the masterpiece that some record dealers or psych experts claim it to be. Their next and last album, Emerge, would be a more consistent hard rock effort that’s worth tracking down.

Kaleidoscope

Under The Screaming Double Eagle

LP | Sundazed |2016 | buy from Sundazed ]