MIND DE-CODER 28

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MIND DE-CODER 28

The sound of yourself listening…

EDEN AHBEZ      FULL MOON

Eden Ahbez was a hippy some 20 years before the term was invented. Living a bucolic life from at least the 1940s, he traveled in sandals and wore shoulder-length hair and beard, and white robes. He camped out below the first 'L' in the Hollywood Sign above Los Angeles, studied Oriental mysticism, and claimed to live on three dollars a week (which wasn't a lot of money even in those days), sleeping outdoors with his family, and eating vegetables, fruits, and nuts. He wrote Nature Boy for Nat King Cole in 1948, and in 1960 recorded the exotica album EDEN'S ISLAND from which this track is taken. I think he would have liked Waiheke - he liked to dream the dream that the dreamers dream, did ol' Eden.

THE G.T.O'S     THE ORIGINAL G.T.O'S

Miss Lucy and Miss Johna, two of the original G.T.O's - Girls Together Outrageously (or Occassionally; or Only; or Openly; or, well, you get the picture) - the original groupie group, as documented by Miss Pamela Des Barres in her 'candid' biography "I'm With The Band". The G.T.O's  recorded one album, PERMANENT DAMAGE, released in 1969  which was produced by Frank Zappa and consists of some primitive but fairly engaging song writing (none of the girls actually being able to sing) and recorded studio conversations that the girls were apparently unaware of until the record came out. It's a glorious mess of an album that captures a very specific time and place (the Laurel Canyon scene, late 60's) in all its freaky glory and works because everyone involved sounds like they were having a really good time, and in the case of this track at least, a really good time. One of my favourite albums.

KING BISCUIT TIME      I LOVE YOU

King Biscuit Time was Beta Band vocalist Steve Mason's side project until the Beta Band split up and it became his full-time project. This track is taken from the NO STYLE EP, released in 2000. over the years he's gone on to produce a dark electronic disco album under the banner BLACK AFFAIR, but his most recent release, MONKEY MIND'S IN THE DEVIL'S TIME, a big favourite of mine, was under his own name and after a few years in the wilderness seems to be what critics like to call a return to form, by which they mean he's now producing music that is approaching the brilliance of those first three semi-mythical Beta Band EP's. That being said, I Love You has a lovely ambient-folk texture to it that's up there with the best songs he's ever done.

THE G.T.O'S     THE GHOST CHAINED TO THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE (SHOCK TREATMENT)

Another track from PERMANENT DAMAGE - contains the line "I see all the people I want to see, I be all the people I want to be..." which I always thought was pretty wonderful. The song turns into a fully-fledged west coast psychedelic freak-out and features The Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart on vocals) who briefly joined The G.T.O's in 1969. For a hysterical insight into the freak scene at the time I can't recommend Pamela Des Barnes "I'm With The Band" enough - it made me wish that I was sexy young rock singer with a roving eye and a log cabin somewhere up in Laurel Canyon in the late 1960's, and I can tell you, that doesn't happen very often.

THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF THE ALL       WINK OF THE THIRD EYE/

IT HAS NO EYES BUT SIGHT

Released in 1997, this is Andrew Gold of 10cc, scratching a particular itch, who made a faux-lost 1967-era psychedelic album anchored by Beach Boys harmonies, Beatle-esque experimentation and a big nod and a wink towards The Zombies, The Byrds, The Doors and just about anyone else who was around then, on a spot-the-influence tribute album called GREETINGS FROM PLANET LOVE. Like The Virgineers and The Dukes Of Stratosphear, he gets vocals and instrumentation just right and everything about it is trippy as hell. Ironically it became one of the great lost psychedelic albums in its own right on account of nobody buying it. Irony can be so ironic sometimes.

THANE RUSSALL AND THREE      SECURITY

A mighty fine record this - a blistering cover of Otis Redding's Security by long forgotten psych/pop act Thane Russal and Three. First time I played this show out I mistakenly claimed it was released in 1967 only to receive a lovely e-mail from the band's guitarist, Martin Fisher (who'd clearly been Googling himself) informing me that this single was actually released in 1966. Apparently he joined the band in May of 1966 and the single had already been released by then. It was a huge hit all over Australia for some reason, but sunk without a trace in England. The identity of Thane Russell was a matter of some speculation (in Australia, anyway) where it was rumoured it may have been Mick Jagger. It wasn't. It was in fact Australian-born singer Doug Gibbons (for all you trivia fans out there), although Gibbons was an associate of the Rolling Stones in some vague, ill-defined way now lost to the faerie mists of time. The other mad bit of trivia associated with this song was that it was produced by Paul Gadd, also known as Paul Raven, but most (in)famously known as Gary Glitter.

FLEUR DE LYS      CIRCLES

Speaking of blistering cover versions - this track knocks the socks off the original version by The Who. Recorded in 1966, this track is at least 12 months ahead the psychedelic explosion that was to follow - the guitar solo, always one of my favourite guitar solos ever, probably gave producer Jimmy Page something to think about. Nobody bought it, of course.

MAGNETIC FIELDS      EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC LOVE

Taken from the triple album 69 LOVE SONGS, which is a triple album featuring 69 love songs, released by the Magnetic Fields in 1999. As frontman Stephen Merritt says 69 LOVE SONGS isn't remotely an album about love - it's an album about love songs, which is completely different. This particular track can be found half-way through disc three.

TUNNG      OUT OF THE WINDOW WITH THE WINDOW

Psychedelic folkatronica is a dreadful label so let's not use it. Tunng create scratchy pastoral electronica in a quintessentially English folk manner to create albums that are brittle and bright. This track is taken from their 2005 release MOTHER'S DAUGHTERS, AND OTHER SONGS. It is a strikingly original album that reminds me of someone trying to busk along to Bert Jansch on a broken stylophone. More or less. (Perhaps less).

NICK DRAKE      CELLO SONG

This is my favourite track from my favourite Nick Drake album. I may have said this before about a different track from a different Nick Drake album, but I mean it this time. I once heard this track under 'favourable' circumstances and it just dragged me into the urgency of its warm intimacy. Turns out I quite like urgent warm intimacy, so that was alright, then. You can find it on FIVE LEAVES LEFT, released in 1969.

SANDY DENNY      MILK AND HONEY

This is probably my favourite track on tonight's show. Recorded in 1967, this is Sandy's version of ex-boyfriend's Jackson C. Frank's song which eventually ended up on THE COMPLETE SANDY DENNY.  If you listen to this song at about two o'clock in the morning, alone, with a bottle of red wine on the go, and perhaps just a single candle flame to light your way, this song will take you the camp fire of your soul where you will hear songs of love, loss and, just maybe if you're really lucky, redemption. And it's a good place; it really is. You can also find this song on The Original Sandy Denny, released in 1999.

LINDA PERHACS      PARALLELOGRAMS

I just had to look up the definition of outré, to make sure I had the right word. PARALLELOGRAMS an album of outré gorgeousness and elegance, that sounds like nothing I've heard before, but with songs that never lose their sense of fragile magic and melodic beauty. Released in 1970 and ignored by everybody, it was rediscovered in the late 90's and became a big influence on the re-emerging acid-folk scene. Marvellous album, and recently re-released last year with 8 bonus tracks.

GORKY'S ZYGOTIC MYNCI      HALLWAY

Taken from the album SPANISH DANCE TROUPE, released in 1999, an LP that holds moments of rare precious acoustic beauty (as well as tracks like Poodle Rockin', it must be said). This is the opening track from the album and reminds me in part of that Amon Düül vibe from Para Dieswärts. A good album to spend some time with if you ever find yourself alone in a field of magic mushrooms.

KAHIMI KARIE      SLEEP

Syrupy-sweet weirdness from avant-garde pop princess Kahimi Karie and a delirium-inducing track taken from her album TRAPEZISTE, released in 2003.

THE CRANIAL FISHERS     DEADLINE

It's hard to describe what The Cranial Fishers do. They’re just one person for a start – Craig Chambers from Ohio -  a sound collage artist who creates abstract soundscapes, rhythmically driven industrial sounds, throws in a bit of jazz maybe, or a piece of dialogue borrowed from a movie with a cheesy sounding keyboard or lush orchestration, depending on his mood. It often sounds like this, and you can find more of it from the Cranial Fisher audio page here.

XTC      MEETING PLACE

My favourite track from 1986's album SKYLARKING - the band's Andy Partridge describes the album as "a summers day baked into one cake".

SPIRITUALIZED MISSISSIPPI SPACE PROGRAM     ALWAYS FORGETTING WITH YOU

(THE BRIDGE SONG)

This is from the compilation album SPACE PROJECT, released to mark Record Store Day, 2014, featuring music that incorporates sounds recorded in space by both Voyagers 1 and 2. Every track on the album is apparently inspired by a planet or moon in the solar system - Always Forgetting With You (The Bridge Song) is supposedly dedicated to the planet Neptune, but really, it’s dedicated to numbed love.  

THE WHITE KITES     TURTLE’S BACK

Far out sounds from Poland’s White Kites, on their debut album MISSING, released 2013, channelling the spirit of London 1967 into a prog vibe that appears to be the missing link between the lysergic psych-pop of Tomorrow, The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society and Van der Graaf Generator. In a good way.

THE FOCUS GROUP     HEY, LET LOOSE YOUR LOVE

Julian House's Focus Group is a condensed memory of 1970’s British daytime and after-hours television pieced together with musty samples from children’s exercise records, vintage drama, clunky British jazz and library records. HEY, LET LOOSE YOUR LOVE is taken from the album of the same name, released 2005 on the ubiquitous Ghost Box label, and is pretty much an archaeology of emotion, an exploration of the power of not only childhood memories, but of the collective unconscious. Haunting, of course.

PYE AUDIO CORNER     FOLK FESTIVAL

The sound of Pye Audio Corner is brought to you by the mysterious ‘Head Technician’, another radiophonically enchanted member of the Hauntological collective whose ambient washes and sinewave soundscapes bring to mind the flickering mid-60's Doctor Who, but at other times you’re catapulted into a collection of long lost club records, engineered solely for the woozy drive home at 4am. Folk Festival is taken from the album BLACK MILL TAPES VOL. 1, released 2010, which features the tag-line ‘magnetically aligning ferrous particles since 1970’.

PAMELA WYN SHANNON     MOSS MANTRA

Pamela Wyn Shannon is one of those American musicians who was born in the wrong country, and possibly the wrong decade. Originally from Massachusetts she now lives in Wales where her love of Celtic mysticism and pastoral acid-folk is given full expression in her unique compositions. Moss Mantra can be found on the fairly wonderful compilation WEIRDLORE – NOTES FROM THE FOLK UNDERGROUND which came out in 2012, but her album COURTING AUTUMN, released in 2007, is not without its own pleasures, being a collection of melancholic songs that have an elliptical quality which create their own time-frame, rules, and kingdoms, and remind me of the songs of Vashti Bunyan, Nick Drake, Pentangle and Bridget St. John, so as you can imagine I’m quite a fan.

IAN SKELLY     CATERPILLAR

After more than a decade drumming for Liverpool psychedelists The Coral, in 2009 multi-instrumentalist Ian Skelly was struck down by a fever that led to him experiencing dreams and hallucinations. It inspired this solo debut, in which he filters guitars, flutes, mellotrons and sharp pop/folk songwriting through a psychedelic haze. Recorded on a vintage tape machine in The Coral's rehearsal space, much of his album, CUT FROM A STAR, released 2012, sounds as if it could actually have been blasted straight from the late 60’s. Nothing wrong with that, of course – check out Caterpillar, ostensibly a song about a small crawling insect (no doubt smoking a hookah), it gradually submerges beneath extraneous found-sounds to enjoy a butterfly-like metamorphosis into a song of gentle but kaleidoscopic beauty. Lovely.

DAUGHTERS OF ALBION     1968/JOHN FLIP LOCK-UP MEDLEY

Inspired by Sgt. Pepper’s, Daughters Of Albion, named after William Blake’s Visions Of The Daughter’s of Albion, only managed the one self-titled album, which they released in 1968. What an undiscovered gem it is, though; 1968/John Flip Lock-Up in particular shows you where their heads were at – a seven minute visionary collage that concludes the album in a kind of proto-prog, psychedelic folk-prog work-out that at some point sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks dropping acid at Woodstock backing Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lennon and the Pope, all at the same time. Brilliant. No one bought it, of course.

LE STELLE DI MARIO SCHIFANO      SUSAN SONG  

  

Susan Song is the loveliest track on an album of European avant-garde freak-outs and psych-pop inspired by Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable featuring, of course, The Velvet Underground. I came across it while reading Julian Cope’s mighty Copendium, a beautifully produced leather-bound tome that collects together his albums of the month feature from his Head Heritage web-site (www.headheritage.co.uk) and thought: ‘I must own this album!’, which, I think, is rather the point of the book and, indeed, the web-site.

 In the mid-60’s Mario Schifano, as the name suggests, was an Italian artist and sculptor hanging in London with his girlfriend Anita Pallenburg and the key hip figures of the swinging London scene, who realized that no matter how cool he was (and he was – his exhibitions of Pop-Art had been wild successes since 1959) he could not hope to compete in terms of coolness with the rock royalty of the day. Understanding the level of intrigue which Andy Warhol had created with his multi-media packages in New York, Schifano set out to emulate this success, but feeling that such a thing could be easily lost in the Swinging London of late 1966, Mario Schifano chose to set up his project back home in Rome. The result was Le Stelle Di Mario Schifano (The Stars Of Mario Schifano) whose one album, DEDICATO A…, released in 1967, featured a 17 minute cosmic jam as the opening track, taking up all of side one, and a second side of extremely catchy little numbers of which, Susan Song, featuring exquisite rippling piano hooks and Ruby Tuesday-ish strings, is by far the loveliest. I will no doubt play the 17 minute cosmic jam another day. 

MOON WIRING CLUB     THOUGHTS OF A MODERN GHOST

Another Hauntological offering from the second album from Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring Club, SHOES OFF AND CHAIRS AWAY, released in 2008.  Working tirelessly with his copy of Music for the Playstation 2 (seriously, what’s more Hauntological than that?) Hodgson uses the history of forgotten British television to source his banks of samples, and the results pretty much speak for themselves (so I won’t bother).

AMON DÜÜL II      SANDOZ IN THE RAIN

As distinct from Amon Düül I, which was more of an ill-fated politico/musical commune, Amon Düül II is what was left once all the political activists and psychedelic artists cleared off and left the musicians to tidy up after them. Sandoz In The Rain is taken from the album YETI, released in 1970 and featuring the legendary krautrock image of Shrat the bongo-player, weilding a huge scythe across a field of bright yellow ground fog. On this particular track, a nine minute Kosmische folk improvisation that Julian Cope calls an 'unearthly impression of mythical times', Amon Düül I and Amon Düül II re-unite to beautiful pastoral effect.

I Thank you.