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Struggling manfully against the prevailing wind, paying scant heed to the vogueish maxim stating that the ownership of a second hand suit jacket and a nifty pair of shades makes one a rock god, Fonda 500 release their second long playing album upon an unsuspecting and uninspiring world. The world politely looks the other way. Bands like Fonda 500 tend to take a while to really get going. Remember Gorky's Zygotic Mynci in those long- forgotten early years, dressing up as wizards and singing songs about peanut dispensers and violin teachers? That's Fonda 500 now- untrained, unrestrained, uncaring. Throwing a great big handful of tunes up into the air to see what sticks. Taking the vintage keyboard apart to find out how it works. Making a glorious noise that dashes off in all directions at once, galloping wildly over the horizon of normality into new and desperately unfashionable territory. Who cares what people think? 'No.1 Hi-Fi Hair' basically sounds like 'Bwyd Time'-era Gorky's attempting to cover the whole of 'Fantasma' by Cornelius, using instruments they made themselves, assisted by a small band of dysfunctional Mexican robots and an onboard computer that just doesn't know when to shut up. It's a hotwire directly from the '60's to the future, missing out all the crap that came in between. The Magic Sunshine Butterfly is a psychedelic indie- pop song to rival any written in the last twenty years, and Computer Freaks Of The Galaxy is perhaps the single of the year so far, joyously mental and deeply, nerdishly stupid though it is. It's popular music journo shorthand to say that in an alternate universe, these guys would be huge. Fonda 500 already occupy an alternate universe, so commercial popularity is irrelevant. 'No.1 Hi-Fi Hair' is merely the second step in a journey of limitless possibilities and unfettered musical exploration. May they live long and prosper.

Tom Huddlestone
August 2002

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