[back to the future] Index - "Fire Eyes" (S/T "Black Album") DC Records, 1967

Its truly amazing when you stumble across a record that perfectly fits with your current emotional disposition. It doesn't happen to often, so when it does, you gotta run with it. Case in point with The Index, a band that I'd heard nothing about until yesterday during some youtube foraging. The Index was 3 kids from Grosse Point Michigan, John B. Ford, Gary Francis, & Jim Valice. Their first record was recorded in Ford's basement on a reel to reel owned by his father. The tiled floors and concrete walls, in addition to the heavy reverb on Ford's guitar and the inherent youth and innocence of the players help to create an eerie, almost gloomy, atmosphere that is captured beautifully on this record; a great example of music that is perfectly served by its low fidelity recording.

Original copies of the record are extremely rare, since they only pressed around 150-200 copies, but luckily the folks over at Lion have released a 2 disc anthology that contains both the "Black" album and their follow up "Red" album, as well as a second disc of unreleased cuts that was meant to be their third album. You can check it out over at Weirdo Records. If you'd like to sample the "Black" album, shoot me a message and I'll send it over to you. Until then, listen to one of my favorites, "Fire Eyes" below: