St. John Green

St. John Green
Origin	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Genres	Psychedelic rock
Years active	1967–1968
Labels	Flick Disc
Associated acts	Jumbo William Saint James
Past members	Mike Baxter Vic Sabino Ed Bissot Bill Kirkland Shel Scott Bob Desimone Brad Delavalley

St. John Green was an American psychedelic rock band who released one self-titled LP, produced by Kim Fowley and Michael Lloyd, in 1968. The album has been described as "by turns frightening, dark, funny and stupid as it reeks of bad trip freak outs in matte black painted rooms with no furniture lit only by a single red bulb and burning cigarette ends.... weirdly dark and epic."

The band emerged in 1967 from among students at Pasadena City College. Keyboard player Mike Baxter, decided to form a band with singer Vic Sabino. They found bass player and aspiring poet Ed Bissot through an audition, and added guitarist Bill Kirkland, also from Pasadena, Ca. and drummer Shel Scott, a resident of the San Fernando Valley, just North of L.A., to complete the band line-up. Bissot wanted to perform his own material under the pseudonym "St. John", and, as a compromise, the group name St. John Green was agreed. The band was managed by local entrepreneur Harry Snegg, and performed around the Los Angeles area playing songs written either by Bissot, or by Baxter and Sabino together.

Early in 1968 they met record producer and promoter Kim Fowley, who encouraged them to develop what he called the "Canyon Sound", unique to the local Topanga Canyon. The group performed alongside other local bands including Canned Heat and Spirit, and became the house band at the Topanga Canyon Corral. Interviewed in 2001, Fowley described singer and songwriter Ed Bissot as "tortured", saying:

"In between sets he threw up blood on a cot. He lay on the cot and he puked blood. He had bad lungs and he chain-smoked. Then he would go up on stage and give this performance and the all the groupies were madly in love with him, and then he’d go back to the cot and puke more blood....He was tragic and near death in the band, and as soon as the band stopped he got healthy and stopped smoking, I guess. Ed Bissot. I mean, what a genius. This fucking guy was Jim Morrison and Leon Russell... He had the stage presence of Morrison and a young Leon. The band played as tight as Vanilla Fudge, minus the fucking bubblegum. What a band! And dripping with darkness. Every heroin addict and gun dealer and radical black person from Venice to Malibu and Hollywood would all come to prowl and just worship this guy."

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Wikipedia