MIND DE-CODER 1

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“…dedicated to all the people who feel obliged to space”

CAROL BATTON     POEM

Carol Batton - Official Poet of the Socialist Health Association 

I start the show with an untitled poem (as far as I know) by the poet Carol Batton who, depending on her mood/medication is, by all accounts, either a winningly eccentric poet genius, or a genuinely disturbed individual. She lives in Manchester, England, and can be found wandering the streets distributing her poetry to passers by on sheets of photocopied A4 paper. 

I follow it with a recording of a chant/mantra for the opening of the heart chakra that may or may not be useful.

THE SOFT HEARTED SCIENTIST     WHATEVER HAPPENED TO YOU

It’s a good question, isn’t it? How far back do you want to go? While you’re thinking about that one, this track is taken from the wonderful Fruits de Mer record label release WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS?, released in 2013; a double album vinyl affair that works as something of an introduction to the band and their gentle whimsical approach to pastoral psychedelia. I’m a big fan of the band, me, having spent a very enjoyable afternoon in their company under what I’ll coyfully refer to as playfully enlightened circumstances. Whatever Happened To You, of course, is a cover of the theme tune to the classic 70s sit-com, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads – a television show likely to cause you to curl up onto the sofa in a tight ball of nostalgia - whose theme tune was sung by the little remembered Highly Likely. This track was recorded especially for the album, and, it turns out, the perfect track with which to start Mind De-Coder. Might I just say, at this point, that my unabashed fondness for the Soft Hearted Scientists and Julian Cope, among other things that may or may not reveal themselves along the way, are one of the reasons that Mind De-Coder exists at all. So it’s only fair that the next track on the show is by… 

JULIAN COPE     SUNSHINE PLAYROOM

This always seemed like the perfect single to me back in 1983, and still does now. This was Cope’s come-back single following the lysergic implosion that took The Teardrop Explodes with it a couple of years before; it also features on his debut solo album WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH. I bought it more or less the same week I left home and have had an affinity with it ever since. It speaks of loss, heartache and hope in a way that made complete sense to this 18 year old boy who had just moved into a bed-sit where all I owned was a record player and a kettle. What more does a boy need?

THE TAPE-BEATLES     LISTEN TO THE RADIO

The Tape-Beatles were a pioneering cut-n-paste outfit back in the days when that meant you needed a very sharp razor and some glue. They were big fans of musique concrete and using the studio as an instrument in itself. Listen To The Radio is taken from their debut album A SUBTLE BUOYANCY OF PULSE, released in 1988. It sounds like this track all the way through, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. I’ve shamelessly plundered from it throughout the show.

PINK FLOYD     LUCIFER SAM

One of Syd Barrett’s finest moments on the legendary PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN, released in 1967 and possibly the greatest psychedelic album ever made.

THE GO! TEAM     WILLOW'S SONG

This gorgeous little version of Magnet’s Willow’s Song can be found on the bonus disc that accompanied The Go Team’s second album, 2007’s PROOF OF YOUTH, which means it was heard by next to nobody, which is a pity because it’s a lovely take on what is quite possibly my favourite song anyway. It’s a pity that, amidst their usual joyful playground chants and roller-rink hip-hop, they didn’t go down this route a bit more often because this is just gorgeous.

GORKY'S ZYGOTIC MYNCI     BETTER ROOMS

Haunting and woozy, this is from the album BARAFUNDLE, released in 1997 and probably my favorite Mynci's release. The overall feel of the album is one of sublimely captivating psychedelic folk music played by someone coming up on magic mushrooms - it just opens up into a whole new world of melodies. Lovely album.

SALAKO     THE QUEEN'S GOT A PRICE ON MY LIFE

Nobody does sad quite like Salako. This is from the VENTIMIGLIA EP, released in 1999. They were never going to change the face of rock music, but their mixture of whimsy and psychedelia was always going to appeal to me. I think I read somewhere that this song is about bees, not Her Majesty. Salako seem to have gone these days, and nobody knows where. Maybe they followed the bees - nobody seems to know where they're all disappearing to nowadays either.

THE LEFT OUTSIDES     FALLEN BY THE WAYSIDE

Probably my favorite track on tonight's show, the lovely Fallen By the Wayside by the irritatingly named The Left Outsides.  Their blend of dreamy psychedelic folk is not dissimilar to that of their previous band, The Eighteenth Day Of May, which was more of a full on folk act by way of early Fairport Convention, whereas The Left Outsides seem to prefer the Syd Barrett side of things. None of this is to denigrate them - I love the wistfulness of this song, taken from their debut album ...AND COLOURS INBETWEEN, released in 2007.

LED ZEPPELIN     DAZED AND CONFUSED

It’s hard to imagine just how incredibly heavy Led Zeppelin’s debut album must have sounded back in 1969. Cream, Hendrix, even the Yardbirds themselves didn’t come close to producing this sort of transcendent riffage. Recorded largely live with just a few overdubs added, this is an album that’s both powerful and dynamic in its restraint. Despite the fact that London would have been awash with LSD at the time, you get the impression that the band were way beyond repeating familiar psychedelic tropes, but Dazed and Confused enjoys a lysergic melancholy that owes as much to the blues as it does the nascent prog-rock embellishments of the time and instead leads the way to hard rock and heavy metal. I can’t really be doing with either (and don’t even get me started on the blues), but this track, based on the 1967 Jake Holmes song of the same name, is a masterpiece.

SPIROGYRA     OLD BOOT WINE

Ah, here we go - this is fantastic; a haunting, eerie, hypnotic soundtrack to a vivid dream. Spirogyra were led by Martin Cockerham and featured Barbara Gaskin on vocals (she later went on to record It's My Party with Dave Stewart in 1981, trivia fans). This track is taken from their final album, the luscious BELLS, BOOTS AND SHAMBLES, released in 1973. By all accounts it sold poorly, the world having possibly moved on from flowery psychedelic folk by then.

WITTHÜSER AND WESTRUPP     ORIENTA

Your first krautrock offering from the show, the lovely Orienta is taken from Witthüser and Westrupp’s 1971 release TRIPS UND TRAÜME and is, according to Julian Cope, in his authoritative KRAUTROCKSAMPLER, one of the most beautiful kosmiche pieces ever, on an album of flute driven melodies and bizarre FX. Lovely.

DAVY GRAHAM     SHE MOVED THRU’ THE BIZARRE/BLUES RAGA

It's not an encouraging record cover, I know, but this is the legendary Davy Graham demonstrating complete mastery of the finger picking style he more or less invented. This track, a cover of the English folk traditional She Walks Though the Fair, appeared as a bonus track on the 2003 re-release of his 1963 album THE GUITAR PLAYER. I understand that Jimmy Page used the track as the basis for his solo White Summer.

STEELEYE SPAN     THE BLACKSMITH

Steeleye Span were intended to be Ashley Hutchings' more traditionally minded group after he quit the electrically-inclined Fairport Convention. That's Gay Woods on what I can only refer to as the lusty vocals - you can imagine her with a tankard of beer in each hand and a hearty word for the boys. Their only album, HARK! THE VILLAGE WAIT was recorded during a three-month stint in a Wiltshire cottage in 1970. The Blacksmith is about as traditional and rustic as you can get, but in 1971 Hutchings left to form the even more traditional Albion Band . I've always imagined the blacksmith in question as having a commendable set of mutton chops, myself, the sort sported by British Rail ticket collectors in the 1970s.

TIM BUCKLEY     STARSAILOR

Ethereal and weird. Possibly weirder than Captain Beefheart's TROUT MASK REPLICA. Tim Buckley's STARSAILOR, released in 1971, confounded everyone with its highly experimental mix of menace and the avant-garde. It's certainly not to everyone's taste, but the title track does just what it says on the label - it takes you to the stars, whilst at the same time guarantees that any guest that has overstayed their welcome will soon be leaving.

TRIP HILL     THE GOLDEN KITE AND THE SILVER MIND

 Trip Hill is an Italian acid-psychedelic solo project by Fabrizio Cecchi, who seems to do a fine line in Sonic Boom-inspired experimental rock. This track is taken from the vinyl-only release (limited to 500 copies) TALES FROM OBLIVION, released in 2000. I don’t know much more about it than that – I don’t think anyone knows much more about it than that.

ILONA SEKACZ     LO-FI FROM OUTER SPACE

 Ilona Sekacz is a British composer of concert, film, television and theatre music who you’ve most likely to have heard of because of her score for Alan Bleasdale's Boys From The Blackstuff back in 1982, although her filmography is extensive, to say the least. I found this track, included to provide a bit of classical otherness to the show, on an album called THE HOLLYWOOD SERIES: SCI-FI, released in 1997, a collection of sci-fi influenced themes played in a classical stylee.

THE SCAFFOLD     BUTTONS OF YOUR MIND

 The Scaffold, of course, were a comedy, poetry and music trio from Liverpool consisting of musical performer Mike McGear (real name Peter McCartney, the brother of Paul), the poet Roger McGough and comic entertainer John Gorman. They achieved a level of fame (or possibly notoriety, depending upon your sense of humour) with the singles Lily the Pink and the pre-Prince/text speak Thank U Very Much, although they were also responsible for the theme tune to the popular BBC TV comedy The Liver Birds, which aired from 1969–1978, and is still remembered very fondly in these here parts (Half-Man Half-Biscuits’ I Hate Nerys Hughes not withstanding). The very fine Buttons of Your Mind is to be found on the b-side of their million selling single Lily the Pink, based on an original song about Lydia Pinkham, the iconic concocter of a commercially successful herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" meant to relieve menstrual and menopausal pains, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the record buying public in 1968.

JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE     3^rd ROCK FROM THE SUN

 Even within the context of 1967, Jimi Hendrix’s ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? is still essentially mind-blowing and presented a vision of music that was so far out it was a trip unto itself. 3^rd Rock From The Sun has so many different things going on in it – jazz inflections, weird voices, weird poetry – that it actually seems to transcend the genre of psychedelia whilst simultaneously charting the sonic territories it was to open up. The other greatest psychedelic album ever made.

STERNENMÄDCHEN     BEI TIM/RIGHT HAND LOVER

These two tracks are taken from the album GILLES ZEITSCHIFF, released in 1974 by Krautrock visionary Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, whose record label Kosmiche Musik released some of the most far-out music of the whole Krautrock scene. The album itself was intended to be the final release in a series of recordings released under the banner of the Cosmic Couriers, a band who, according to Krautrock myth, didn’t even know that they existed, and certainly weren’t aware of any records being released under that name. There is a whole legend attached to this story in which guitarist Manuel Göttsching only knew there was a Cosmic Jokers when he walked into a record shop and heard himself playing. They were, in fact, a number of artists on the Kosmiche Musik roster, notably Ash Ra Tempel and Klaus Scultz, who had been recorded secretly by Kaiser, jamming at a number of acid parties thrown by him in 1973 for, it seems, the very purpose of getting his artists jamming on tape. The tapes of these sessions were edited down into album sized chunks and released surreptitiously by Kaiser in a bid to create his own krautrock supergroup. GILLES ZEITSCHIFF mixes tracks from these albums with other artists on the label's roster, also thrown into the mix without their knowledge, and adds Kaiser’s then-girlfriend, Gille Lettmann, in her guise as the Starmaiden, narrating the saga of how the albums came to be, her voice floating over some of the most tripped-out cosmic space rock ever recorded, music Julian Cope referred to as a beautiful orgy of Creation and Magic. Kaiser got the fuck sued out of him and lost everything, but what we’re left with will take you to the very reaches of the cosmos.

BERT JANSCH     ROSEMARY LANE

Still, too much spacerock can make your fillings ache, so let's bring it all back down to earth with the brilliant Bert Jansch and the lovely Rosemary Lane from the album of the same name, released in 1971. This is Bert going back to basics after Pentangle went their separate ways. The album is simple and intimate, featuring Bert at his most beautifully poignant, playing songs that seem to come from the same place that myth and folklore come from.

BRIDGET ST. JOHN     ASK ME NO QUESTIONS

Sombre and beautiful, ASK ME NO QUESTIONS is an album of melancholy and reflection, sung by St. John in her deeply monotone voice that was not entirely dissimilar to Nico's. John Peel produced the album and released it on his own Dandelion record label in 1969.  She's not as immediately as captivating as Vashti Bunyan, say, but she sounds so perfectly poised and so deeply evocative of a pastoral Englishness, you can almost smell the freshly ploughed fields from here.

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