TAMAM SHUD - Feel Free
ALBUM Evolution (1969)
On 1 December 1948, the body of man was found on Somerton beach in Glenelg, just south of Adelaide in South Australia. The corpse – sitting against the sea wall, fully dressed with feet crossed – carried no identification. Later on, as police investigated the case, a scrap of paper was found sewn inside the man’s trouser pocket. The paper was torn from a New Zealand edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and carried on it the Persian words for “ended” or “finished”: Tamam Shud.
Those words resonated through Australian culture – the case, never solved, became known as “the Tamam Shud case” – and 20 or so years later they made their way back to the country’s beaches, in the form of what might be the world’s only improvisational psychedelic surf band album. Tamam Shud’s first LP, 1969’s Evolution, recently reissued on vinyl by Anthology Records, is very much of its time: wide-eyed balladry sits alongside bass-heavy rock; the lyrics are, to be charitable, naive (“What is the time, Mr Strange? / Do you think it’s time for a change?”); the sleevenote is perfect, in that late-60s way (“The sound of the Shud is heavy. The vocal of the Shud is incidental”). It’s a classic curio,the kind lovers of psychedelia should devour
