MIND DE-CODER 37
‘To rally every Black Sheep is my goal’
Julian Cope, 2008
MICHAEL COLE AND MICHAEL JESSETT FINGERMOUSE AND FLASH PLAY
THE GUITAR
Does anyone remember Fingerbobs? If you’re English and grew up in front of the telly in the 1970’s then you probably do – in fact, it probably brings a nostalgic lump to the throat and a yearning for something once familiar now half-forgotten. Johnny Trunk of the very fine Trunk Records feels the same way too. With music by Michael Cole and Michael Jassett, and sung by Canadian folk singer and former Play School presenter Rick Jones, FINGERBOBS – ORIGINAL TELEVISION MUSIC, released in 2011, is a musical collage put together by Mind De-Coder favourite Jon Brooks of The Advisory Committee, taking in songs, instrumentals and even a story from the 1973 series. It’s a lovingly created work and exactly the kind of release Trunk specialises in. Check them out here
Rick Jones, the show’s gentle presenter, has admitted that he was pretty much high all through the show's 13 episode run.
THE FOCUS GROUP ELEKTRIK KAROUSEL
This is title track from The Focus Group’s most recent release by Julian House, ELEKTRIK KAROUSEL, which came out earlier this year on his very own record label, the fairly wonderful Ghost Box, through which House releases all things of a hauntological nature. His sound is a blend of influences, taking in old library music LPs, public information films from the 1970’s and soundtracks from that era, but on this album he’s also added a playful acid folk feel to the Victorian steam fair music and broken melodies, distorted children’s TV programme themes, Cold War psychedelia and all-round English weirdness. Check out Ghost Box records here.
SENDELICA MAGGOT BRAIN
The first of three singles served up to you by splendid Fruits de Mer record label who produce covers of classic psychedelia, prog-rock, acid folk and Krautrock all lovingly reinterpreted by new bands and released on ludicrously limited coloured vinyl. In 2010 they got the Welsh astral rockers in to record a cover of Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain and The Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs. If the Velvet’s cover is truly mesmerising then their take on the Funkadelic classic is jaw-dropping - they take the original and turn it into a Morricone atmospheric work-out that will have you drifting across the prairies of your mind.
To find out more about Fruits de Mer check them out here
SCHIZO FUN ADDICT THEME ONE
Ever since George Martin thought to add brass to The Beatles Strawberry Fields I’ve liked the idea of your psychedelic trumpet, but apart from, oh, Love on their classic FOREVER CHANGES, who has picked up on the challenge of a psychedelic brass section? Well, Schizo Fun Addict for one, who, on the debut release for the brilliant Fruits de Mer record label, cover Van Der Graaf Generator’s Theme One, (which was, by no small coincidence, written by George Martin) and is awash with Mexican brass and lysergic prog bliss.
Other than that I know very little about the band, who appear to be an American four-piece who’ve released three albums so far that pretty much sound like the band’s name suggest they might.
MOON WIRING CLUB BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
More hauntological going’s on from Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club who, on the CD version of his 2012 release TODAY BREAD, TOMORROW SECRETS (the vinyl version of the album comes with a different cover and different content) creates music for the accompaniment for almost all of the ‘pre-digestion dances’ that are sweeping the private woodlands and secret societies of the country.
COUNTRY JOE AND THE FISH BASS STRINGS
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I came quite late to Country Joe and The Fish because I think I didn’t like the name. I’ve since learnt that they were one of America’s most politically inspired bands and that the group’s name was derived from communist politics; "Country Joe" was a popular name for Joseph Stalin in the 1940s, while "the fish" refers to Mao Zedong's statement that the true revolutionary "moves through the peasantry as the fish does through water." And it turns out I really like their debut album, 1967’s ELECTRIC MUSIC FOR THE BODY AND MIND, too. It’s a psychedelic masterpiece, in the same way that debut albums by fellow San Franciscans, The Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful dead weren’t; released at the very beginnings of the Summer of Love and in many ways a defining moment, capturing the psychedelic zeitgeist of the underground as it introduced itself to mainstream society. It’s as musically creative as anything The Beatle’s were doing at the time and as tripped out as it is accessible. I’m quite the fan, me.
JOE BYRD AND THE FIELD HIPPIES PATRIOT’S LULLABY
A lovely bit of acid folk from Joe Byrd And The Field Hippies; the band he put together following the demise of his previous group The United States Of America. Patriot’s Lullaby appears on the band’s only album THE AMERICAN METAPHYSICAL CIRCUS (named after a particularly lysergic track from the United States Of America’s sole album) released in 1969 – the group in this case consisting of the most avant garde studio musician’s Byrd could find and who existed only for the length of time it took them to record the album – they never actually played live or anything. Nevertheless, it’s a cult album and one which, with its use of synthesisers, vocorders, effects, delays, echoes and other studio trickery took it years ahead if its time. It’s also very pretty in places.
JON BROOKS WALKING FROM WOOD GREEN
Jon Brooks, he of The Advisory Circle, took a wrong turning in North Somerset and found himself in the village of Shapwick. Inspired by it’s psycho-geographic location as much as anything else, he produced the album of SHAPWICK in which he creates an imaginary impression of the village, conjuring up an atmosphere of bucolic ease morphing into subtle oddness. We get piano, plucking acoustic guitars, tape effects and field recordings, the spectral radiophonics of A Cognitive Distortion, the analogue synth, pastoral Winter’s Hamlet, and a bloke talking about bats, all recorded onto pre-used tape for that authentic hauntological feel.
MICHAEL COLE AND MICHAEL JESSETT FINGERMOUSE PLAYS THE ORGAN
Another example of just how high presenter Rick Jones actually was during the recording of the series.
PETER PAN AND THE GOOD FAIRIES BALLOONS
Very little is known about Peter Pan and the Good Fairies, possibly because there was no such band and this is the B-side to a one-off single called Kaleidoscope released in 1967 by a group of session musicians put together by the semi-legendary Jim Gordon. Gordon served time in Derek and the Dominos (he played the elegiac piano coda for the title track, Layla, co-written by himself and Clapton); played drums on The Notorious Byrds Brothers, and was responsible for that drum break on The Incredible Bongo Band’s cover of Apache which is so beloved by your hip hop artists. These days he’s sadly serving time in jail for murdering his mother in a schizophrenic attack. But I might be talking about someone else.
CRANIUM PIE MADMAN RUNNING THROUGH THE FIELDS
Another single release from the hip, cool and groovy Fruits de Mer record label, this time featuring Mind De-Coder favourites Cranium Pie, who in 2009 covered Dantalion’s Chariots Madman Running Through The Fields and made it even more tripped out and messed up than the original – featuring a manic trombonist, Sparky's Magic Piano and possibly a Romanian wrestler on vocals. Inspired. As the blurb goes: If you've heard an excerpt on Amorphous Androgynous’s Monstrous Bubbles…, you've only heard half of it.
VELVETT FOGG COME AWAY, MELINDA
Velvett Fogg, are something of a curio, notably for featuring Tommy Ioni before he went off and made good with Black Sabbath. He was long gone by the time the band recorded their one and only album, the eponymous VELVETT FOGG, released in 1969. Come Away Melinda is something of a hard rock psychedelic cover of the anti-war folk anthem popularised by Judy Collins and later, indeed, by Uriah Heep. It’s the best thing on the album otherwise characterised by pretty turgid acid-rock work-outs. Good cover, though.
PETER SELLERS SHE LOVES YOU
This must have been recorded around 1965 (by George Martin, by the way, who started life as a comedy producer) but doesn’t appear to have been released until 1999 on the album A CELEBRATION OF SELLERS. Always gets a laugh out of me – send them home smiling, that’s my motto here on mind De-Coder.
TAME IMPALA FEELS LIKE WE ONLY GO BACKWARDS
THIS IS JUST ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS, Kevin Parker has away with a tune that makes yearning sound absolutely delicious. Taken from 2012’s LONERISM – my album of the year.
BOREDOMS 7 (BORIGINAL MIX)
Inspired acid wig-out from Japanese psyche-rockers, the Boredoms who, on the sixth installment of their SUPER ROOTS EP series (released in 1998) take a riff by post-punk agit-poppers The Mekons (their 1978 indie-smash hit Where Were You?, for the train-spotters amongst you) and turned it into a 20 minute long meltdown that comes across like a speed-induced freak-out between Jonathon Richmond’s Roadrunner; that incredible groove the Velvet Underground lock into on that live version of What Goes On that appears on their 1969 album, and a spaceship taking off. It’s really that good.
CHRISTOPHE F. AND BLACK SHEEP BROTHER MOTHERFUCKER
This is taken from the album HEATHEN FRONTIERS IN SOUND, released 2009, in which anarcho-folk collective Black Sheep member Christophe F explores the nature of Revolution and the manner in which, he believes, this can all be effected. It’s a gentle track that puts me in mind of Brother John by acid-folk ensemble Bread, Love and Dreams, although without the ‘motherfucker’ in the title, obviously.
SPACEDOG WILLOW’S SONG (HAMMER SANDWICH MIX)
Spacedog seem to be something of an arts collective whose music reflects their obsessions with defunct machines, faded variety acts and the darkest English folk tales. They are loosely aligned to the hauntological aesthetic, if not quite part of it – they collaborate with the Belbury poly on one of the Ghost Box study Series singles, and singer Sarah Angliss appears on the CD version of the Moon Wiring Club’s Today Bread, Tomorrow Secrets. On this lovely live performance of Mind De-coder favourite Willow’s Song, recorded in 2008, they bring their usual mix of instrumentation to the performance using theremin, vocals, percussion, saw, laptop and their famous uncanny musical robots.
3 LEAFS THE GRASS HOPPER LIES HEAVY
Regular listeners might remember how taken I was with Josh Pollock’s DJ Female Convict Scorpion and his particular take on psychedelic non-hip hop turntablism a little while back . Well, 3 Leafs appears to be his day job – an improv based spaced-out psych-rock band from San Francisco. On their second album, TITULAR LINES, released 2011, from which The Grass Hopper Lies Heavy is taken, they create a sprawling canvas that shifts, twists and turns into hypnotic spells of sound that are capable of engulfing the listener in swathes of sonic wonder – or something like that anyway.
SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS SEEING FURTHER
The opening track from FALSE LIGHTS, like a lot of the music I’m listening to of late, has a hauntological quality about it. Released in 2013, the rest of the album is otherwise characterised by haunting pastoral psychedelia but has a darker tone than their earlier releases and was shaped, according to the sleeve notes, by, amongst other things, Job-mageddon and grim, gap toothed, witches mouth high streets; the Grand Prix; tabloid newspapers; certain psychotic corporate titans; and neighbourhood watch groups. On the other hand it was inspired by cats that purr like little motorbikes; jaw dropping South Wales beaches; secret singing sand dunes; foxglove bells singing in the summer; and the sight of the Ghost monks of Tintern Abbey kicking the ghost arse of Henry the Eighth – so there’s something for everyone, really.
RICK JONES THE STORY OF THE WOODEN TOWER
Our last visit to FINGERBOBS – ORIGINAL TELEVISION MUSIC today and I hope you enjoyed your time there. The title doeth what it sayeth on the label.
MOON WIRING CLUB MISTY APPLEYARDS
He’s very good with the titles, Ian Hodgson, isn’t he? This is one of the slightly longer tracks from the vinyl version of TODAY BREAD, TOMORROW SECRETS, released the same time as the CD version but, as mentioned earlier, with an entirely different play list and content.
‘For those amongst us who favour entertainment of a more ‘experimental’ nature, the Moon Wiring Club is as infamous and inevitable as cod-liver oil. One might say that no gentleman whose adventurous instincts have not been warmed and purged by what is on offer here, can hope for much future in the English-speaking world.’
Dame Priapus Fripps, 1936
JULIAN COPE THEY WERE ON HARD DRUGS
REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE is Julian Cope’s 29th studio release. What with his Teardrop Explodes albums and fan club releases, I seem to own 44 albums by the Arch Drude. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after all this time I’d stop getting excited by a new album release, but I never do and this album is the best thing he’s done in ages (following a slump in 2005/2006, say). On Revolutionary Suicide his muse has taken him down something of a pastoral road; he’s singing folk songs now, albeit folk with an umlaut over the ‘o’ – they’re intimate, personal, they invite the listener in. The song They Were On Hard Drugs posits the theory that all of human kind’s greatest achievements were inspired by people on hallucinogenic drugs. Visionary philosophers such as Terrence McKenna and Bill Hicks argued the very same point. I wish Bill Hicks weren’t dead. He and Copey could have made a GREAT record together.
