Mormons, Jehova’s Witnesses, Shakers, Memmonites, Baptists, Anabaptists, we all know the ‘States is home to, and the birthplace of, diverse Christian sects due to the freedom from persecution enjoyed by the devout there. Rayongelicals are another sect, virtually unheard of even in their home state of Maine.

The Rayongelicals were founded in 1968 by a retired ship’s captain named William Kransky, aka Cap’n Starched Ballast, after a visionary dream in which the usual things happened; fire and cows and rayon-clad angels with stiff, white underpants, all a boring story so let’s cut to the chase with these albums. The sect, small but keen to spread the good word of the Starched Ballast, had but one member with any musicality; Jack Frawley Caulking. He played all the instruments and sang on every recording seen here. The rest of the people posed on the covers are hobos, store mannequins, and the local librarian, Mr Phipps, a religious tolerant who let the sect use the library meeting room, every Sunday.

Clockwise from top left, over a fifteen year span from 1971 before Jack left the sect, moved to Florida and took up as a pest controller: a) Jack in the middle b) Jack seated c) Jack at bottom looking a helluva lot like Aphex Twin in Come to Daddy, which is no co-incidence but that’s another story d) Jack on the right e) Jack top right, and f) Jack third from left.

Mr Phipps is in b (far right), and f) top right with his natural hair and far left also with his natural hair just a bit puffed out.

The Rayongelicals are still around, all seven of them, but without Jack they are content to stay out of the recording business and instead focus on working out what Kransky’s vision is all about, which is tricky because he wrote it down somewhere and lost it, but it was pretty good.