or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Greil Marcus once came to see me when I was playing this album. As soon as he walked into the room, he said: "What’s that?"

"It’s the Godz!"

"Hmmmm," he said, puffing his pipe with that wry look he gets, "so that’s the Godz, huh? Well, have fun!" and walked right out!"

[Lester Bangs, "Do the Godz Speak Esperanto?", Creem, 1971.]

When I first heard Contact High I felt the same way that Greil Marcus did, I wanted to leave the room as soon as humanly possible.Not only did I think that it was the worst album I’ve ever heard in my entire life( the only redeeming quality after the first listen was their cover of Hank Williams’ "May You Never Be Alone"), I also thought that the Godz were the most inept band of all time. Jim McCarthy caterwauled more than he sang, Larry Kessler’s bass bleated aimlessly, Jay Dillon’s autoharp stayed on one chord the entire album, and drummer Paul Thornton made Mo Tucker seem like John Bonham by comparison. They were to music what Ed Wood was to film and this was their Plan 9 From Outer Space. I couldn’t believe that ESP (which was home to Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and The Fugs) actually released this piece of crap. But, for some reason I didn’t have the heart to sell it back.

It sat on my shelf for about two months until I decided to give it another try. I said to myself, "It can’t be as bad as I thought" as I put the record on the turntable. I made it through "Turn On" and the first ten seconds of "White Cat Heat" (in which the band impersonates four cats in heat) before I returned the record to its usual spot on my shelf. It stayed there for about a week before I decided to listen to it again, this time I vowed to listen to the entire album. It was still lousy, but at the same time I couldn’t get the sound of Jim McCarthy’s caterwauling out of my head. About an hour and a half later, after I listened to the album three more times I thought to myself, "if this is so bad, why can’t I stop listening to it?" I’ve listened to the album at least one hundred times since and I still can’t answer that question.