Rust - Come With Me (Reissue) (1969/2002)

Great late '60s trio (two Brits and one Australian living in Germany). Loaded with mental fuzz guitar, phased vocals, sound effects and infected with serious dose of late '60's garage psych, this is a little known progressive / psychedelic album, but deserves much wider exposure. Someone went mad with the distortion effects not only on the guitar work but also on the vocals. recorded their sole LP for the German Hor Zu label in 1969

Featuring all original material (all three members contributed songs), 1969's "Come with Me" was interesting in a spot-the-influence kind of way. The LP liner notes (printed in English and German) didn't include performance credits, but all of the singers were good with the guitarist displaying a nice penchant for fuzz guitar (check out the solo on 'Should I'). Musically the set wasn't particularly original offering up a period piece mixture of English R&B (the Cream-ish 'Delusion'), psych, and hard rock moves. Moreover, whatever it lacked in terms of creativity was more than compensated for via the enthusiastic performances and an uncanny knack for catchy melodies. Songs like the opening title track snippet and the rocker 'You Thought You Had It Made' should've appealed to both the underground crowd and top-40 radio. The ballad 'Find a Hideaway' should have been a major radio hit. The band were also interesting when they took off in a more experimental direction including 'Think Big' (offering up a weird mixture of effects and a Western epic feel) and 'Doesn't Add Up To Me'. Elsewhere the psych touches embellishing 'Please Return' and 'Rust' would have sounded fine on a Small Faces LP. One has to wonder what would have happened had they recorded for an American or UK label.

Monaghan's career continued as a member of Freedom, the Mick Abraham Band, the jazz-rock combo If, and as a member of Ted Nugent's late-1970s band.