Episode #91: Effects with 29.9's Doug Harrison & John Harrison

The label RidingEasy Records has made a name for themselves with a focus on heavy rock 'n' roll. While the label's released any number of modern acts, including Swedish rockers Monolord, the real treat is their long-running series of Brown Acid compilations. The label, in conjunction with curator Lance Barresi of music shop, Permanent Records, compiles and releases some of the best undiscovered heavy rock from the '60s and '70s. It's always a joy to read through the press releases for upcoming iterations to see what nuggets the next installment will bring. For the ninth trip, RidingEasy did a really deep pull for the last track on the compilation. Per the press release: "This band came into our lives while watching the cult horror film Effects. The film is entertaining to say the least, but the star for us is a very short clip of background music in a scene where one of the characters is looking through a stack of bondage polaroids. As the photos are being flipped through, a boombox blasts a Pentagram-esque hard rocker that caught our attention immediately. We tracked down the director of the film, John Harrison. Turns out the song in Effects was by a band John played in with his brother, Doug, and a couple of other guys in the late-60s. They called themselves 29.9, and they recorded “Paradiddle Blues” and a few other tracks, but never released any of them, until now." We reached out to the folks at RidingEasy, and they put me in contact with Doug Harrison, who put me in contact with John Harrison, and so we did a conference call with the brothers and chatted about the history of 29.9, how the band came to be in Effects, John's work as composer for George Romero, and a lot more. Stick around after the interview to hear an unreleased cut from 29.9, unavailable anywhere else.