It took a couple of years for their impact to be fully felt, but once the Velvet Underground connected there was simply no stopping the spread of the band's influence. By the early 1970s, the VU were an underground staple. By the early 80s, sounding like the Velvet Underground was a virtual cottage industry. Jonathan Richman. The Dream Syndicate. The Feelies. The Vulgar Boatmen. Galaxie 500. The Violent Femmes. All these acts and many, many more owe pretty much everything to the Velvet Underground.
We can add Ham1 to the list, too. Ham1 was formed by Athens, Georgia schoolteacher Jim Willingham and a few buddies that happened to be around, including Chris Sugiuchi from Willingham's former band the Prince Rondavels. Maybe that explains why The Captain's Table seems such a casual yet eminently enjoyable affair. It's got no pretensions whatsoever, coming off a bit like a refreshing blast of an opening act when you get to the club a little too early for the headliner.
It's this loose, almost unfinished quality that helps the disc stay afloat, despite the fact that Ham1 telegraphs pretty much all it's going to say, musically, in the first track "Clown-Shoed Feet", which runs well under a minute. Frenetic strumming and brushed (but still oddly forceful) drums are joined by a blurt of horns in a pop dronerific embrace before inevitably fuzzing out à la Eno (another early VU adherent). The rest of the disc is basically variations on the same.
That's not to say there aren't some nice surprises and subtle change-ups to be found. If "Hare Lipped Bust" perfectly recalls prime college rock jangle, "Saluki" takes a successful turn toward surf-informed garage rock. "How Can You Watch T.V. With A Dead Person?" hails from the Lee Hazelwood school of atmospheric twang, with a touch of dreaming, drifting psychedelic listlessness. The concluding title track crunches together all these slightly different sides of the band into a good approximation of prime Elephant 6 lo-fi indulgence.
What certainly helps Ham1 rise slightly above the pull of the anonymous VU-derived indie-rock black hole is that Willingham and Sugiuchi both sing with a tad more warmth than Lou Reed and his descendents. They also try just hard enough to tell that they care about their craft, but not too much that they actually think many people will care quite as much. It's as if they know the band won't change the world, recognizing in the end that their efforts are, in the best sense, a bit if a goof.
So, yes, it's totally redundant music, adding absolutely nothing new to the lexicon and doing absolutely nothing that thousands of flash in the pan (or worse) bands haven't done before. What makes Ham1 better than a lot of them is their shambling modesty, which gives the impression these are the kind of guys for whom getting together to make a racket now and then constitutes the bulk of the fun, and getting people to listen is just gravy.
