Undersung Hero: M. Frog

I bought this LP because of its Milton Glaser-designed cover featuring the colored pencil musical notations of composer/synthesist and former monk Jean-Yves Labat, alias M. Frog. It was 1973; I was about to become a high school senior, and I had hitchhiked to New York City with my friend Al Crump. The multi-floor Sam Goody record store in filthy Times Square was where I first laid eyes on it; hands instantly followed. Produced and recorded around the same time as Todd Rundgren’s psychedelic masterpiece “A Wizard/A True Star,” to which Labat contributed heavily, “M. Frog” is an unclassifiable 36 minutes of musical joy combining elements of garage rock, psychedelia, electronica, prog rock, and avant-garde. The Book of Seth reviews the record, tells who played on it besides M. Frog (you’ll be amazed!) and how it came to be made, and shares M. Frog’s subsequent art and life history—a tale including the accordion playing of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, an escape from a Ugandan death camp, a…