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“You know, if you stop and think about it, Christmas is really the most psychedelic time of the year”
James Lowe
James Lowe
HER PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS
Strictly speaking, this is more groovy
than psychedelic but it’s not a distinction I particularly wish to labour. HER
are one of those bands that don’t seem to exist enough for anyone to know
about. This track appears on the very fine WORLD IN WINTER: EL CHRISTMAS,
(2002), a fantastic collection of sugary Christmas songs from the now sadly
defunct EL record label that once upon a time brought us the brilliantly
realised albums by Death By Chocolate and The Lollipop Train that I’m so fond of;
as well as other candy coated pop confectionaries from the 70’s and 80’s, and which
acts as the perfect example of what you can expect to find on the rest of the
album.
THE ELECTRIC PRUNES JINGLES BELLS
“You
know, if you stop and think about it, Christmas is really the most
psychedelic time of the year”, so says
singer James Lowe, and you must admit he has a point, what with “all those
coloured lights, a guy flying around the sky with animals” and all those “elves
and bells” and all. I don’t know
when they recorded this single, but I found it on the album CHRISTMAS A-GO-GO, released
in 2011.
CORPORAL BLOSSOM WHITE CHRISTMAS
CORPORAL BLOSSOM is the sampler based
moniker of Layng Martin III. White Christmas can be found on the album A
MUTATED CHRISTMAS, released in 2001. This is the best track on it, but it is a
very good track indeed.
Which is followed by what I’m choosing
to call a gentle pastiche of The Beach Boy’s Good Vibrations which I’m pretty
certain isn’t anything to do with the Beach Boys at all. I expect it’s one of
those mash-ups. I found it hidden away on my hard drive with no idea how it got
there which is why I can’t tell you much more about it.
FANTASTIC EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPER SCHOOLGIRL PSYCHEDELIA
Apparently recorded when she was just 12
years old, FANTASTIC EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPER was the name by which the wonderful
Angie Tillett delivered her first songs to the world in 1997. She released just
four songs under this name before becoming The Lollipop Train for a short while,
until releasing three marvelous albums of sugary pop perfection as Death By
Chocolate. At this point she was, legendarily, a chambermaid in the faded
English seaside resort town of Clacton-on-Sea which somehow made her perfect; (I wrote her a fan letter
once but she didn’t reply). I think I read somewhere that her recording days
are now behind her and she was trying to become a councillor or a Mayoress or something
, which somehow really upset me. That may have been a different Angie Tillett,
though (actually, it was) (a different Angie Tillett). You can find this track on SONGS FOR THE JET SET VOL. 1, a fantastic
compilation of suave, space-age, chic psychedelic pop released in 1997, and
that WORLD IN WINTER: EL CHRISTMAS album I mentioned earlier.
PLAN 9 MERRY CHRISTMAS
Plan 9 are a neo-psychedelic band of the
trance-a-delic variety who seem to have been around for the last 30 odd years
or so which is surprising what with them having made no impact on me
whatsoever. Merry Christmas was released as a single in 1984 and has a certain
lysergic quality to it.
SCOOBY DOO AND THE MYSTERY OF THE
MISSING SANTA
It is
Christmas time at the Home Sweet Home Orphanage. All the kids are anxiously
awaiting the annual visit from the local department
store Santa,
who is bringing presents for everyone. But Santa never arrives! No one knows
where he is!! SANTA IS MISSING!!! What kind of a Christmas will the orphans
have? Scooby-Doo and his friends go into action. Can they find Santa in time to
make it a Merry Christmas for the orphans?
Taken
from the album EXCITING CHRISTMAS STORIES WITH SCOOBY DOO AND FRIENDS, released
in 1978, this story features the voices of the original cast, so I’ve given you
the whole 14 minutes. Best of all, there’s not a Scrappy-Doo in sight.
LITTLE
CINDY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS
THE
VIRGINEERS CHRISTMAS IN MY MIND
THE
BEATLES 1968 CHRISTMAS RECORD
MISTY’S BIG ADVENTURE HAVE YOURSELF A PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS
Misty’s Big Adventure are an 8-piece
band from Birmingham who specialize in an eclectic, if not exhausting, mix of
jazz, lounge, psychedelia, 2-tone, pop
and punk, but for this, the B-side to their 2005 single release Where Do Jam
Jars Go At Christmas Time, they set the phasers firmly on psychedelia and knock
out a wonderful little Christmas stocking filler.
TURQUOISE 1968 CHRISTMAS RECORD
Turquoise were one of those cult
psych-pop acts who produced two highly regarded psychedelic singles and then
disappeared back into the 60’s never to be heard from again. Despite never
actually cutting an album, I came across this track as a bonus track on their
album THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF FLOSSIE FILLETT, which collects together every
thing the ever recorded for fans of that sort of thing, released in 2006.
CHEECH AND CHONG SANTA CLAUS AND HIS OLD LADY
Released as a single in 1971, would you
believe? And if you are as high as they were when they made it then you no
doubt would agree that is an hilarious holiday skit.
HE5
AULD LANG SYNE
K-pop doesn’t start with Gangnam Style,
you know. In 1969 Korean guitarist Kim Hong Tak’s band HE5 were one of the most
popular groups of the decade, playing a heavy psychedelic sound to a pleasingly
bemused audience. Auld lang Syne is to be found on their far out and gone
Christmas LP MERRY CHRISTMAS PSYCHEDLEIC SOUND, released in 1969, which is just
as good as it sounds.
THREE WISE MEN THANKS FOR CHRISTMAS
A pseudonymous Christmas release from
The Three Wise Men, otherwise known as XTC, who released this cheerily
poptastic single in 1983. Sadly it failed to chart otherwise you’d be hearing
it all over the place come Yuletide. It’s almost impossible to find, but it
appears on the XTC album RAG AND BONE BUFFET, released in 1990.
This was followed by a short promo for
the Toys For Tots foundation from some time in the late 1950’s, I’d think. (Can
I just say if I had a radio voice like Nat King Cole’s I wouldn’t be such a fan
of the speed-it-up-and-slow-it-down button). Toys For Tots, of course, is a
program which distributes toys to children whose parents can’t afford to buy
them toys for Christmas. When I found out it was run by the United States Marine
Corps I naturaly started thinking about napalm and little children running in terror
through the early morning mist with their skin falling off behind them, so I had
it segue into:
MR FAB I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Mr Fab is the man behind the RIAA, a sound
collage project heavily involved in the mash-up scene. I’ll Be Home For
Christmas can be found on the download album MR FAB AND HIS BAG O’ TOYS,
released 2004. Check out his other albums here.
PINK FLOYD MERRY CHRISTMAS SONG
A rare recording written
for a one-off performance on BBC radio in 1969, during the Zabriskie Point
soundtrack sessions. It is notable as the last of only five Pink Floyd songs to
feature Mason on vocals (go on then - Syd
Barrett's Scream Thy Last Scream, also unreleased; Corporal Clegg; Atom Heart
Mother; and One of These Days - somehow, you learn this sort of thing and then
you can’t forget it).
THE BEATLES CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE AGAIN
This is actually the
second half of the 1967 Beatles fan club disc, which was recorded to sound like
a number of groups auditioning for a BBC radio show. It’s not unlike their
great un-released track You Know My Name, Look Up The Number which they’d recorded
earlier that year.
THE CHESTERFIELD
KINGS CANNONBALLS FOR CHRISTMAS
There’s an argument to be
made for The Chesterfield Kings being responsible for launching the 1980’s
garage band revival, but beings I was never a big fan of the scene, it’s not one
I’m prepared to go into – but that’s the sort of band they were. Cannonballs
For Christmas can found on their 1994 album LET’S GO GET STONED, a suitably
festive sentiment, I’m sure you’ll agree; as would, no doubt, the astronaut
Frank Borman, the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the
moon in the last 10,000 years or so (if certain arcane texts are to be
believed) whose seasonal message to earth I played towards the end of the
track.
SIMON AND GARFUNKEL 7 O’CLOCK NEWS/SILENT NIGHT
I’m sure when I had the first
inklings of what to play on this Mind de-Coder Christmas Special, I had a
really ‘up’ track to go out on.
However, whatever that no doubt inspirational track was, I’ve forgotten it.
Instead, I thought I’d go out with this, 7 O’clock News/Silent Night, by Simon
and Garfunkel, which still, after all this time, has the ability to send shivers down,
and, indeed, even up, the spine. It’s from their album PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY
AND THYME, of course, released in 1966, but what not everyone knows is that the
news bulletin contained therein is actually taken from the night of August 3rd
1966 and not, as one might have hoped, from the actual Christmas Eve of that
year. That shouldn’t, however, detract from the chilling power of the song
(although it does a bit, let’s face it).
XTC
PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS
Some wise parting words from XTC’s Andy
Partridge that I’m sure we all share at this time of year. Taken from the album
HOLIDAY GREETINGS FROM GEFFEN RECORDS, released 1991, just before they no doubt
threw the band off the label. Bastards.
