‘The world is
full of magical things, waiting for our senses to grow sharper’
W.B. Yeats
PINK FLOYD FLAMING
In your hipper
circles, tea was very much a euphemism for marijuana, although why this is so
has been lost to the psychedelic mysts of tyme (although there’s a very
enjoyable article about it in a recent issue of the trusty Shindig! magazine). Having clearly
partaken of an odd cuppa or two, New York’s The Naturals changed their name to
The Tea Company in 1967 and released their only album, COME AND HAVE SOME TEA
WITH THE TEA COMPANY in 1968. Sitting somewhere between the far superior
Vanilla Fudge and The Beatles, the album strikes a balance between West Coast
flower child idealism and east Coast Velvet Underground style noise rock with
added stereo sound effects - Come And Have Some Tea With Me, which opens
the album, pretty much sets out their stall and drips with lysergic touches,
including a music box, echoed horns and the sound of tea being poured into a
cup.
SHIRLEY COLLINS SONG OF SELF DOUBT
This is actually the
opening track from the debut album, ANDROMEDA, by Alex Rex, the nom de
guerre of Alex Neilson, formerly the drummer with much-lamented psych-folksters
Trembling Bells. Song Of Self Doubt, however - a sparse assemblage of
spoken words layered upon bright chimes and birdsong - is voiced by the
legendary folk singer Shirley Collins, and provides a beautiful moment on an
album otherwise characterised by songs of self-loathing and family tragedy.
THE DOORS LOVE STREET
I’m no great fan of
The Doors, me, finding them too beholden to the lumpen blues for my tender tastes, but
you’d have to be a black-hearted Shakespearian villain to resist the charms of Love
Street, Morrison’s ode to
girlfriend Pamela Coulson. Taken from their third album, 1968’s WAITING FOR
THE SUN, Ray Manzarek’s keyboards delight and charm in equal measure making
this, by far, one of the loveliest songs the band ever produced.
BLOSSOM TOES LOOK AT ME I’M YOU
This is the opening
salvo from the debut release by Blossom Toes, WE ARE EVER SO CLEAN, released in
1967, at the height of flower-power. It is sometimes described as the greatest
pop-psych album ever produced, or, at the very least, ‘Georgio Gomeslsky’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band’, after their manager - the former Stones/Yardbirds
svengali - who forced a new name and a new lysergic direction on an r’n’b
covers band formerly called The Ingoes. It certainly touches on all those bases
covered by Pink Floyd and The Beatles - tea and cakes are consumed on the lawn,
budgerigars and balloons waft by on a summer’s breeze, and pharmaceuticals are
ingested in Royal Gardens. Ignored at the time of its release, it is now
considered something of a lost classic - a whimsical and melodic musical-hall
vision of London’s sun-drenched Summer of Love.
THE YARDBIRDS THINK ABOUT IT
Think About
It is the absolutely blistering b-side to The Yardbirds 1968
release Goodnight Sweet Josephine. This was to be their last single
before the split, and the a-side was nothing to jump up and down about, but
this track, which features a barely restrained guitar wig-out Jimmy page would
later re-purpose a year later for Led Zeppelin’s Dazed And Confused, was
the shape of things to come.
JOHN CARTER AND RUSS ALQUIST THE LAUGHING MAN
John Carter was a
remarkably prolific songwriter who left his fingerprints on a number of hit records
throughout the sixties and seventies but seldom released anything under his own
name. The Laughing Man, released as a single in 1968 with fellow
song-smith Russ Alquist, is something of a psychedelic oddity that falls just
shy of being a novelty track due to its almost disturbing weirdness. By all
accounts, much tea was consumed during the creation process.
WIMPLE WINCH LOLLIPOP MINDS
Wimple Winch (old English for ‘Deep Well’, linguist fans) were one of the few Merseybeat bands who managed to incorporate psychedelic components into their sound. Originally calling themselves Just Four Men, they didn’t start gaining their cult following until they changed up their sound a bit, although their fame, such as it was, didn’t extend much further than the environs of Stockport. They released a handful of singles that sadly failed to set the charts alight but recorded a lot more. Over the years all these tracks have been anthologised on a number of albums - the whimsical Lollipop Minds (typical lyrics include: “Oh what pretty little beautiful lollipop minds we have/Butterfly's a fellow always dressed in yellow”), recorded after they split in 1967, can be found on the compilation TALES FROM THE SINKING SHIP, released in 2009. Erol Alkan is a fan.
JIGSAW NORTHERN SKETCH #2/SAY HELLO TO MRS JONES/NORTHERN SKETCH #3
SIMON AND GARFUNKEL SCARBOROUGH FAIR/CANTICLE
The loveliest of all songs by Simon and Garfunkel, I think, taken from their 1966 release PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY AND THYME. It’s a song with a story, of course - Martin Carthy arranged it in the form we know today, based on the traditional English ballad that’s at least 300 years old, but, much to his displeasure, it was a young Paul Simon who took that particular chord progression, and alongside Art Garfunkel’s counter-melody, turned it into the song we know today. No matter how often I come across it, it still has the power to stop me dead in my tracks, transfixed by its almost celestial grace. Time and repetition have not dimmed its transcendent beauty.
LINDA THOMPSON EMBROIDERED BUTTERFLIES
Well, this is really quite lovely - Linda
Thompson, one of Britain’s finest interpretive singers, puts a poem by my
favourite poet, Brian Patten, to music, on a very rare album of his poems
recorded in 1972. The album, VANISHING TRICK, was released in 1976 and features
contributions from the likes of Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy and Neil Innes,
but Linda’s interpretation of Embroidered Butterflies absolutely shines.
The album is next to impossible to find but a couple of her contributions
appear on Disc 1 of the recent career retrospective by Richard and Linda
Thompson, HARD LUCK STORIES 1972-1982.
THE ROLLING STONES LADY JANE
On which Brian Jones picks up the dulcimer, Jack Nitzche provides accompaniment on the harpsichord, and Mick Jagger takes on the role of troubadour, and the band invent baroque pop - Lady Jane, taken from their 1966 album AFTERMATH, is by far one of the loveliest tracks the band ever recorded. My favourite story regarding the album doesn’t even feature the Stones, though. It is said that when considering names for their album REVOLVER, released later that year, Ringo suggested calling it AFTER GEOGRAPHY. I’ve always been slightly disappointed that they didn’t run with that one.
THE EXECUTIVES MOVING IN A CIRCLE
Deeply psychedelic vibes from Australia’s The Executives, who hid the trippy Moving In A Circle away on the b-side of their 1968 release It’s A Happening World. Although this was a big hit at home, they were never really known outside of Australia - a move to the United States came to nothing, but, back home in Sydney, their polished sound was considered the equivalent of the 5th Dimension, or the The Mamas and The Papas, who seemingly had a big influence on their sound.
THE BEATLES PENNY LANE
THE SPENCER DAVIS GROUP AFTER TEA
Another tea reference
- there was clearly something in the water in 1968 (apart from tea leaves, I
mean). Following Steve Winwood’s departure, the group briefly dabbled in
psychedelia, but to no avail. After Tea was the last minor hit for The
Spencer Davis Group before they broke up in 1969. Spencer Davis, of course,
sadly passed away earlier this year.
PERMANENT CLEAR LIGHT PEASANTS AND PEONS
Superb baroque-pop loveliness from Finland's top, and for all I know, only psychedelic group, Permanent Clear Light, but what a sound they produce. The shimmering Peasants And Peons is taken from their second album, COSMIC COMICS, released earlier this year, but with one foot firmly embedded in 1968 (whilst the other is busy shuffling around the early 70s Finnish prog-rock scene - about which I know nothing, tbh). Keyboards and mellotrons abound and, all in all, it sits somewhere very nicely between early Pink Floyd and The Dukes of Stratosphear, which should give some indication of just how much I love this album.
JEAN-EMMANUEL DELUXE & FRIENDS OUVERTURE ROUENLLYWOOD
The absolute far-out and gone trippiest track on this evening’s show comes courtesy of Jean-Emmanuel, probably best known for running the record labels Martyrs du Pop and Euro-Visions as well as the celebrated author of a 2013 book documenting France's yé-yé pop music scene of the 1960s. ROUEN DREAMS, released earlier this year, is almost entirely French-sung project around a loose inner narrative depicting "a kind of trip to Hollywood from a French point of view." Inspired by the pioneer of lo-fi/DIY production R. Stevie Moore and, bizarrely, MOR singer/songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan, it’s a hip mix of spoken-word sections and trippy, lush chamber-pop and deeply lysergic passages of ambient psychedelia - and a couple of Gilbert O’Sullivan covers. Weird.
ANTON BARBEAU COWBOY JOHN MEETS GREENSLEEVES
What to make of this? Cowboy John Meets Greensleeves does exactly what it says on the cover - a surreal singalong
that, for some reason, morphs into Greensleeves and entirely works. This
is taken from Anton Barbeau’s most recent album, MANBIRD, released earlier this
year - kooky and catchy, the whole album is a dreamlike exploration of Barbeau’s
subconscious, described by the man himself as a “Jungian travelogue of
memories, dreams and reflections”. This, obviously, is a recommendation.
NATHAN HALL AND THE SINISTER LOCALS STAND AND DELIVER
CAM’S JAMS PAISLEY CURTAINS (HITS OF SUNSHINE)
The Freeborne were a youthful, prestigiously talented, Boston-based psychedelic band whose success appears to have been hampered by their very youthfulness - they were unable to tour their only album, the marvellously monikered PEAK IMPRESSIONS, released in 1968, due to the fact that three of the band were still high school students. It’s not as though they didn’t have the musical chops - they opened for The Velvet Underground and Love when those bands visited Boston, but somehow, success eluded them. It didn’t help that they were lumped in with the so-called ‘Bosstown Sound’, a faux-musical movement devised to compete with the rather more successful San Francisco Sound - just ask Ultimate Spinach how that worked out - a pity, because the album is great, featuring a highly psychedelic sound that often pre-figures 70s prog, taking in Byrds-like harmonies, pulsating bass, tricksy time signatures, swirling farfisas, baroque pianos, harpsichords, cellos and, in the case of A New Song For Orestes, a cod-poetic spoken outro in the style of The Moody Blues. Well worth checking out, if you’re a fan of this sort of thing, which, clearly, I am. (Orestes, of course, was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification which retain obscure threads of much older ones – but I expect you already knew that. He probably appreciated a new song after all this time).
CHRISTINA VANTZOU SNOW WHITE
A mind-bending track from Kavus Torabi -
one of the newer members of what remains of Gong these days - on what amounts
to his debut solo album, HIP TO THE JAG, released earlier this year. It’s a
cosmic mix of avant-garde space-rock and vintage 60s psychedelia that combines
surreal experimentation with hypnotic manipulation. Marvellous.
CONSTANTINE MY DEAR ALICE
Wyrd-folk loveliness from Constantine, a psychedelic troubadour from Chicago who recommends his music to fans of Mark Fry, Trader Horne and Donovan which, to me, at least, makes his exploratory and transportative missives utterly unmissable. The sitar-soaked My Dear Alice is taken from his acid-drenched IN MEMORY OF A SUMMER’S DAY, released earlier this year, a gorgeous psych-folk masterpiece that’s both evocative and hugely emotive. Absolutely seek this album out.
SKIP BIFFERTY INSIDE THE SECRET
Highly regarded in the music industry, but
shackled to a manager with a reputation for violent methods of negotiation,
Skip Bifferty (I’ve never liked the name) should have been so much bigger than
they were, but no one wanted to touch them. Their one album, eponymously
titled, recorded in 1967, was both whimsical and innovative, featuring
cutting-edge psychedelic studio production and some great songs, as evidenced
by the slightly menacing Inside The Secret. Unfortunately, their record
company held the album back for some 10 months or so, long after any enthusiasm
for the project had dispersed, and initial pressings were flawed with
sub-standard sound quality, botched graphics and mislabelled mono and stereo
editions. The zeitgeist had passed. The band, once the darlings of a London
bursting into vivid technicolour have been largely forgotten, but at least some
of them evolved into the The Blockheads, which gives you some idea of how very
accomplished they were.
COLORAMA AND
This transcendentally
lovely track is taken from the album EARTHSONG OF SILENCE, the debut album from
Brighton’s Wax Machine. It’s a kaleidoscopic mix of classic 60s psychedelia,
tropicalia, jazz and folk, produced by Kikagaku Moyo’s Go Kurasawa, which
should give you a pretty good indication of where this album is coming from
and, indeed, where it might take you. Celestial flute playing, wandering
guitars and sugary vocals are front and forward, creating a soundspace that’s
blissfully cosmic, allowing the mind to float both hither and thither, as the
universe expands and collapses like a mossy eiderdown in the Sussex
countryside.
THE KINKS AUTUMN ALMANAC
The Kinks, of course,
didn’t really do psychedelia, but with Autumn Almanac they managed to raise the
prosaic to the level of enchantment and on this, the stereo mix of their
brilliant 1968 single, someone turned the psychedelic button up to at least 8
for the final few seconds of the fade out
