Fantastic Recycled Plastic

There is desperation and urgency in Fantastic Negrito's new album "Please Don't Be Dead." The record sees the Devil around the corner, and each song is plea to make you aware of what's waiting for you. The artist is screaming at you because he knows what comes next. The album art features a real life photograph of Fantastic Negrito waking up from a three week coma. His body is shattered, his eyes are staring past you. They're staring at the Devil. But with his new album we hear the voice of an artist who put that Devil in the rear view. Now he's asking America to do the same. Like Negrito in that photograph, our country is driving off a cliff. We're letting our worst inclinations lead us: hate, division, greed, superficiality. It is going to be a fight to pull ourselves from this toxic mire, and this album is a roadmap by an artist who survived the same journey…battered, scarred, but determined to wake us all up. "Please Don't Be Dead" is a man standing over something wounded. Something he cares about. He's looking around, and he's saying: "do something."

Plastic Penny were a British group who made the U.K. Top Ten in early 1968 with "Everything I Am," a labored ballad augmented by strings, that wasn't even one of their best songs. Much of their material was psychedelic pop with hints of encroaching prog-rock, sometimes recalling the Who a bit, elsewhere going into more fey story-songs. Their guitarist, Mick Grabham, would play with Procol Harum between 1973-1977.