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“We have
drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods
discovered"From
the Rig Veda
PINK FLOYD SEE EMILY PLAY
What more is there to be
said about Syd Barrett’s finest moment? Supposedly inspired by a girl he saw
after he woke up one night following a night asleep in the woods - it’s unclear
whether the girl was real or an acid-induced hallucination - See Emily Play began
life as a song written for Pink Floyd’s Game’s For May happening - a ‘space
age relaxation for the climax of Spring’ which promised ‘electronic
composition, colour and image projection, girls and the Pink Floyd’ - the sort
of event which still causes aching bouts of anemoia in me if I dwell upon it
too much. Recorded in 1967, and originally titled Games In May, See Emily
Play is a psychedelic classic, of course; playful; buoyant; and employing the full gamut of production trickery, including backward tapes and much use of
echo and reverb - I still hold my breath waiting for the speeded-up piano
bridge. It’s absolutely one of my favourite records of all time and rightly
finds its place at the top of the show. Be sure to check out Sunday Afternoon With Emily,
something of a rebuttal by the Christian band Whispers Of Truth which I played in Show 44, who suggest that the answers that Emily is seeking might
better be found in Christ, but, then, that’s exactly the sort of thing that
they would say.
THE DUKES OF
STRATOSPHEAR MY LOVE EXPLODES
It was hard to pick just
one track from XTC's alter-ego’s the Dukes of Stratosphears’ mind-bending
psychedelic catalogue but in the end, I chose the orgasmically unhinged My
Love Explodes from their 1985 debut release 25 O’CLOCK, possibly because of
the Woody Allen-esque voiceover at the end. The song is a lysergic thrill-ride
which imagines The Yardbirds’ Over Under Sideways as performed by The
Pretty Things, or anyone who had an armful of maracas and a basin haircut to
hand. The irate voiceover is, in fact, not Woody Allen at all, but a recording
taken by producer John Leckie of a caller responding to a performance of Allen
Ginsberg’s ‘Hey, Go Fuck Yourself With Your Atom Bomb’ by The Fugs’ Tuli
Kupferberg on a New York radio station (fact fans). You can hear a clip of the
song reversed and speeded up, at the end of the album.
‘The DUKES’ say it's
time. . . it's time to visit the planet smile. . . it's time the love bomb was
dropped. . . it's time to eat music. . . it's time to kiss the sun. . . it's
time to drown yourself in SOUNDGASM and it's time to dance through the mirror. ‘The
DUKES’ declare it's 25 O'CLOCK.
OS MUTANTES PANIS ET CIRCENSES
The deliriously trippy Panis Et
Circenses is taken from the debut album by subversive Brazilian
psychedelicists Os Mutantes. Released in 1968, the bands’ self-titled release
was a glorious collision of styles that defined Tropicália - the avant-garde movement which grew to oppose the fascist takeover of their country four years
earlier. Almost entirely at home to SGT PEPPERS and SATANIC
MAJESTIES, Panis Et Circenses (misspelled
Latin for ‘Bread and Circuses’, as any fule kno) is a suitably carnivalesque collision of trumpet
fanfares, changing time signatures and what sounds at one point like scattered
cutlery, containing more ideas in one song than many bands have in a lifetime.
THE ROLLING STONES SHE’S A RAINBOW
By far the prettiest track recorded by the
Stones, it remains the jewel in the crown of their oft-derided psychedelic
period. Recorded for THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST in 1967, the song acts as
an auditory head trip driven by the supple heave of a Mellotron, bathed in
phased vocals and playful sound effects. It’s my favourite song in the Stones
catalogue and more than justifies their dalliance with psychedelia. The first
time I heard it was at a magical mystery trip organized by the legendary Alice
in Wonderland club in the 1980s - I was in something of a heightened state and
the notes from Nicky Hopkins piano just floated through the air like flickering
Christmas tree lights in a, frankly, captivating fashion. I have remained
captivated ever since. John Paul Jones, who would of course later go on to
conquer the world with Led Zeppelin, arranged the strings of this song during
his days as a session musician.
NICK NICELY HILLY FIELDS (1892)
I sometimes think that Hilly Fields
(1892) is the sort of record that’s so good you remember where you were and
what you were doing when you first heard it, until I realize that I don’t
actually remember what I was doing or where I was at that time, but that I
really ought to, because it really is that good. In fact, it’s generally
regarded as one of the greatest psychedelic records released since the sixties.
Released in 1982, after taking a year to create, It even comes with its own
legends - that’s supposed to be Kate Bush supplying the mocking “pimply little
postboy” voice, it’s not, but the legend seems to have stuck; and the track is
said to contain what is believed to be the first ever example of scratching on
a non-hip hop recording, although the "scratching" was actually
created by moving two tape spools back and forth, rather than on a turntable. I
was probably in the kitchen, by the way, making a cup of tea.
MOON WIRING CLUB HOUSE OF TRICKS
Over the years Ian Hodgson’s Moon Wiring
Club has been my resource for surreal, hypnagogic segues. Operating in the same hauntological landscape
as Ghost Box or Broadcast, Hodgson taps into half-remembered childhood memories
of public service broadcasts and arcane children’s television shows and rewires
them into something altogether hallucinatory. House Of Tricks is taken
from his 2010 release A SPARE TABBY AT THE CAT’S WEDDING - cronky, shonky,
eerie and beautifully confusing.
TRAFFIC
HOUSE FOR EVERYONE
Clockwork, toy-town psychedelia from
Traffic. At two minutes and two seconds, the song is literally wound up at the
beginning and then whizzes along with gleeful abandon before grinding to a
halt, its dizzying energy spent. Guitarist Dave Mason’s pop sensibilities might
have been at odds with the direction the rest of the band were pulling, but
it is this eclecticism that gives their debut album, MR FANTASY, released in
1967 following the bands’ removal to the Berkshire countryside, its whimsical
charm. Following Mason’s departure, the band would go on to create auniquely British form of rock ‘n’ roll that incorporated or, at the very
least, evoked traditional British music more akin to founder Steve Winwood’s
vision for the band (a la JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE), but they were never
this playful again.
TOMORROW REVOLUTION
Probably my favourite track on this
evening’s show - and that’s really saying something - Revolution manages
to capture the entire spirit of British psychedelia in this one track - it’s
catchy, playful, spilling over with ideas and too clever by half. Released in
1967, this is the track that epitomizes everything I love about psychedelia at
this time. If I had access to a time machine, Tomorrow are the band I would go
back to see, at their peak, playing at the UFO club along the Tottenham Court
Road, when England swung like a pendulum do.
THE SMOKE MY FRIEND JACK
An absolutely classic slice of British
psychedelia, The Smoke’s My friend Jack was actually banned in England
by the BBC because of its implicit celebration of LSD - and this was the
modified version; the original
content of the song (which I played in Show 24) was so unacceptable that it to be rewritten before EMI
would touch it. Fortunately, the rest of Europe took a more relaxed approach -
or perhaps didn’t understand the whole reference to sugar lumps and what have
you - and the single reached #2 in Germany in 1967 and charted in Switzerland,
France and Austria as well.
THE PRETTY THINGS DEFECTING GREY
Defecting
Grey is the track that
marked The Pretty Things leap from purveyors of gritty R ‘n’ B into exponents
of mind-blowing psychedelia. By turns visceral, expansive and playful - at some
point it even turns into pub singalong - the single plays out like four
separate songs stitched together in one lysergic rush of creativity. This is
the original 1967 extended version of the track that was edited down for the
single release (I played this version in show 16). Both
versions are essential but the extended version is just so much more.
THE JIMI HENDRIX
EXPERIENCE ARE YOU EXPERIENCED
Possibly the most
hallucinogenic track on this evening’s show Are You Experienced is, of
course, the title track of the 1967 debut release by The Jimi Hendrix
Experience - a band that had existed for less than five weeks when the
recording for it began. It’s still a far-out listening experience, combining pop, rock, soul, jazz, funk, and stoned
experimentation in new, mind-blowing ways, but, Are You Experienced,
with its backward guitars and drums, is a masterpiece of sonic invention,
sounding less like the future of music than something beamed in from
another dimension.
XTC THE MEETING PLACE
The toy-town charm of The
Meeting Place has a Listen With Mother quality to it that conjures up
images of Barrett-esque whimsy. Taken from 1987’s troubled SKYLARKING album
(apparently producer Todd Rundgren and Andy Partridge didn’t see eye to eye,
and there’s the whole issue of the reverse polarity) there’s a very cool promo
for this track filmed by The Tube at Port Meirion with the band suitably
attired as prisoners of The Village that I like so much I’ve included it here. This version is taken from the 2014 Corrected Polarity
version of the album - truth be told, I can’t tell the difference.
MAGNET WILLOW’S SONG
This is the version
of Willow’s Song taken from the semi-legendary Trunk Records issue of
the WICKER MAN SOUNDTRACK released in 1998. Until then there had been no
official release of the music from this most cult-ish of films, the original
tapes thought lost, but a four-year search by Jonny Trunk produced a copy of
the original music and effects tape which was duly released and that’s why you
can hear strange noises in the background - which are essentially Britt Ekland’s
body double slapping her arse in a come-hither sort of fashion. Performed by Magnet, a band put together especially to play the songs of Paul Giovanni, a New York composer who wrote all of the music for The Wicker Man, and sung by Rachel
Vearney, about whom nothing appears to be known, this is perhaps my favourite
version of Willow’s Song, its alluring sweetness often leaving me
dumbstruck, although over the years I’ve collected over 20 other versions of
what remains one of the most gorgeous and sensual songs ever committed to
vinyl, or in this case, celluloid. Let’s just say that, had I been in the room
next door, they’ll have had to have found somebody else to keep their
appointment with the Wicker Man.
There are many online articles, books and documentaries about The Wicker man - a good recent one can be found here from the Mind De-Coder favourite A Year In The Country blogsite.
(Or you can try this one from I post I made back in 2013, although the A Year In The Countryside one is better)
GWYDION SPRING STRATHSPEY
But by far the loveliest
song on this evening’s show is this literally enchanting recording of Spring
Strathspey, taken from the album SONGS FOR THE OLD RELIGION, released in
1975 by Gwydion Pendderwen (Thomas deLong to his mum) - musician, writer, poet,
conservationist and witch. This album was a privately pressed affair of
pleasing hippy stoner gypsy folk, backed by the California Wicca Blues Band.
The transcendentally haunting Spring Strathspey is sung by Dana Corby,
no stranger to the Wiccan craft herself, and this is truly a song that stops me
dead in my tracks every time I hear it, such is the radiant nature of its
simple acid folk beauty.
JAN AND LORRAINE NUMBER 33
The wonderful Number 33
is the weirdly delightful little track included on the only album by the
mysterious Jan and Lorraine - a folk duo whose origins are lost to the mysts of
psych-folk folklore. Some say they were from Detroit, others from Canada,
others still that they were English but their only album, GYPSY PEOPLE,
recorded in 1969, was only released in America and Canada. Therefore,
given the album’s obscure provenance, I have no idea to whom the childlike
voices on this song belong, only that I find them ceaselessly enchanting.
Elsewhere British acid folk combines with American psychedelic folk, exotic
moods, and raga chimes to produce an album that, whilst in no way essential, is
an engaging mix of acid-tinged folk.
THE BYRDS EIGHT MILES HIGH
What more is there to be
said about Eight Miles High? Possibly The Byrds’ finest moment, created
through a white-hot period of creativity that has 1966 written all over it.
Roger McGuinn borrows John Coltrane’s four-note saxophone riff from
AFRICA/BRASS’s India and in doing so more or less invents raga rock and,
if some critics are to be believed, psychedelic rock - until this point there
were no pop records with incessant, hypnotic basslines juxtaposed by droning,
trance-induced improvisational guitar, so I’m not going to argue the point. The
Byrds are one of my favourite bands of all time although they’re never quite
given the credit they deserve. Eight Miles High is high art masquerading
as a pop song.
FAUST FLASHBACK CARUSO
Taken from the legendary FAUST TAPES, released in 1973, an album I
return to time and time again for all my trip needs. Released for 49p by a
nascent Virgin Records, the story goes that Jim Kerr of Simple Minds threw his
copy off the roof of a Glasgow tenement, which pretty much tells you everything
you need to know about the Simple Minds, I think, but not very much about the
album. It’s quite hard to describe - the music is often just bruitages
and montages of industrial noises intercut with moments of unnervingly
beautiful songs, like Flashback Caruso, a song that is almost
exquisitely lysergic.
THE BEATLES TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS
The final track on
REVOLVER, released in 1966, is an otherworldly, aggressively experimental
masterpiece that is still as startling today as it was when it was released.
Could anyone have predicted the group that sang She Loves You just three
years earlier would be responsible for the mind-warping Tomorrow Never Knows?
In many ways it set the template for the future; opened up pop’s possibilities
- nothing had ever sounded this way before and music would never be quite the
same again. Sampling, tape loops, overdubs: the whole of dance music is
contained in this one short song recorded in the summer of 1966, with The
Chemical Brothers going so far as to call it their “manifesto.”
LES FLEUR DE LYS CIRCLES
This is what can only be
described as a blistering cover version of The Who’s Circles, the b-side
to their 1966 single Substitute. The Fleur De Lys (to use their English
name) frankly knock the socks off that version with guitarist Phil Sawyer’s
incendiary guitar solo no doubt giving producer Jimmy Page a few ideas.
Released as a single in 1966, Circles marked that transitional period
between Beat and Psychedelia which came to be called Freakbeat. The band should
have been massive but were hampered by personnel issues which saw the drummer
remain as the only original member - never a good sign.
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE WHITE RABBIT
White Rabbit, of course, is Jefferson Airplane’s unequivocal
masterpiece, gifted to the band by Grace Slick after she joined them in 1966.
Reputedly written after an acid trip in which she listened to Miles Davis’s Sketches
Of Spain for 24-hours straight, the song remains a classic of psychedelia
and a subtle dig at whisky-soaked parents who read their kids books in which a
caterpillar sits on a giant mushroom smoking opium, Peter Pan uses fairy dust
to fly, and Dorothy and her friends cut through a poppy field and wind up stoned
and fast asleep, and then wonder why those same kids grow up to take drugs.
There's an earlier version which she recorded with her previous band, raga-folk
avatars The Great Society,whichis trippy in an entirely
different way butlacks the iconic haunting Boléro influence whichJefferson
Airplane brought to the table (you can hear
that version in Show 11). Recorded for their
seminal album, SURREALISTIC PILLOW, and at just over two minutes long, it still
has the power to stop me dead in my tracks as Slick’s voice peaks with the
crescendo, and the demand: “Feed your head”.
VASHTI BUNYAN WINDOW OVER THE BAY
The exquisitely dainty Window
Over The Bay is taken from the semi-legendary album JUST ANOTHER DIAMOND
DAY, released in 1970 by the lovely Vashti Bunyan to almost universal
indifference, and yet Bunyan’s voice is a rare wonder - humble, lonely,
lovelorn and fragile - whilst her songs - dignified yet slightly sad
meditations upon rain, wind, sunsets, and open fields - are not so much folk
songs as songs gathered from the dreamscape of the British Isles. And they’re
very pretty. The album was produced by the very-legendary Joe Boyd, features
contributions from Fairport Convention’s Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick, as
well as The Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson, but they never detract
from the sincerity and purity of Bunyan’s pastoral vision. Quite lovely - and
timeless.
SANDY DENNY AND THE
STRAWBS TWO WEEKS LAST SUMMER
Something of an earworm,
this song, for me, and I agonized whether to include this early version
recorded with The Strawbs in 1967 over the more reflective version she was to
record with Fotheringay some three years later. Neither version was heard at
the time - Fotheringay’s melancholic version finally saw the light of day in
2008 on the posthumous FOTHERINGAY 2, released some 35 years after it was
recorded, and The Strawbs’ altogether more sprightly version was included on
the 1991 release SANDY DENNY AND THE STRAWBS, curated by Joe Boyd from material
recorded in a Danish studio in 1967. This version lacks the wistfulness of the
later version but enjoys a sort of breathless wonder at how some memories are
so new they’re not old enough to cause pain just yet.
JULIAN COPE METRANIL VAVIN
Mind De-Coder, at heart,
has always been about Julian Cope. Since I first saw The Teardrop Explodes
perform Passionate Friend on Top Of The Pops back in 1981- he and drummer Gary Dwyer were freaking out on an acid trip at the time , but I didn't discover this until I read his autobiography, "Head-On", years later, but clearly there was a connection - Julian Cope
has cowdled me as a mommet (if thee know what I mean). Only Moon Wiring Club
has notched up more plays, with Cope himself appearing in no less than 30
shows. He never has produced that oft-promised full-on psychedelic album (I
think 1996’s INTERPRETER has come closest) but his work, nevertheless, remains informed
by psychedelia, and I would buy an album of him farting in the West Kennet
Long Barrow if he put it out (in fact, I think he has and I already own it).
Metranil Vavin was a
fictional Russian emigré living in Paris in the 1970s who wrote soggily
sentimental poems about his mother, who was either dead or possibly stayed
behind in Russia; I understand it was never made entirely clear. None of this
has anything to do with this track, which for me always sparkles like a jewel
in the Julian Cope treasure chest of songs. You can find it on WORLD SHUT YOUR
MOUTH, his debut solo LP which he released in 1984 and which remains my
favourite of the 50 or so albums I seem to own by him. In the sleeve notes, he
writes: 'Metranil Vavin was a good poet', but I always thought he was
singing about me.
THE TICKLE SUBWAY
I understand that the
mighty Cope is a fan of this single by The Tickle, a band often reduced to a
footnote in history inasmuch as guitarist Mick Wayne went on to perform in the
band backing David Bowie on his SPACE ODDITY album. The Tickle only released
the one single, 1967’s rather excellent Subway (Smokey, Pokey World) but
despite employing fizzing guitars, a kaleidoscopic middle section, and a catchy
ol’ tune, it was never bought in enough numbers to trouble the charts, say.
Produced by Tony Visconti, both sides were apparently voted for by their
fanbase, such as it was, and the slightly more playful Subway (I never
did care for the subtitle) was chosen for what was to be their only release. I
initially came across it on a tape compiled by Clive Jackson of Doctor and The
Medics, and house deejay at Alice in Wonderland. Over the years it must have
speeded up some due to constant play and I was shocked at how much slower the
proper version of the single actually is when I eventually came across it. I
played the speeded-up version that I had grown to love in Show 23, but this is
the original version in all of its psych-pop glory.
APPLE BUFFALO BILLYCAN
On that same tape as The Tickle was this
gem by little-known Welsh psychedelicists Apple, whose only album, AN APPLE A
DAY, released in 1969, was largely ignored at the time but has since become
much sought after by fans of your psych-pop with a bit of money to burn on
eBay. (Les Fleur De Lys’s Circles was also on that tape showing just how
influential Alice in Wonderland has been in my life). Buffalo Billycan was
relegated to the b-side of a rather unremarkable single, Let’s Take A Trip
Down The Rhine, and despite an endorsement the British Apple & Pear
Development Council, who provided a colour brochure extolling the virtues of
apples for the album, the record didn't sell and the band split shortly
thereafter (sigh).
THE BYRDS CHANGE IS NOW
My favourite track by The Byrds grew from
an improvisational piece by Roger McGuinn called Universal Mind Decoder
(so now you know) which you can hear as a bonus track on the 1997 reissue of
their troubled masterpiece THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS, released in 1968. It’s
essentially three minutes of Roger McGuinn wigging out with everything turned
up to 11 and channeled through a kid’s toy plastic speaker - this was
essentially edited down to 30 seconds or so and became the mind-blowing solo in
Change Is Now, possibly The Byrds at their very peak, despite the band
falling apart as they recorded the album. Producer Gary Usher throws everything
into the mix making extensive use of a number of studio effects and production
techniques, including phasing, flanging, and spatial panning whilst The Byrds
experiment with blending together elements of psychedelia, folk-rock, country,
electronic music, baroque pop, and jazz, very often in the same song. They were
never this good again, but this is the album where it all came together and I
love it unreservedly.
THE TRANSPERSONALS TO FIND HER EVERYWHERE
To Find Her Everywhere is a song so transcendentally gorgeous it instills within the listener
an almost-state of narcotic bliss, which it pretty much defines as a state of ‘falling
in love, drinking red wine and taking strange drugs’ - which is pretty hard
to disagree with. Taken from their debut release SAY GOODBYE TO FREE WILL (THE
PERILS OF CHEERLEADING), an album of majestic psychedelia, released in 2011,
this track is simply sublime and is the musical equivalent of being
intoxicatingly loved-up. Every man and woman will become a star, indeed.
THE BEATLES STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
The Beatles’ peerless Strawberry Fields Forever has
never been matched in terms of full-on psychedelia by any band other than
themselves. It’s so weird and far-out that it’s a wonder that this was released
as a single - and yet here it was, a mystic kaleidoscope of sound kept off the
Number 1 spot by Engelbert’s Humperdink’s Release Me, which tells you
nearly everything you need to know about the cultural landscape in 1967.
THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE 1983… (A MERMAN I SHOULD TURN TO BE)
This is Hendrix at his most truly
innovative and exploratory, taking on the producer’s role and playing nearly
all the instruments himself, with Traffic’s Chris Wood supplying the flute. It’s
a surrealistic tale of the apocalypse, with Jimi, despairing for mankind,
returning to the sea, the source of all life. Tape loops, melancholy guitar, and
jazzy time shifts combine with brain-frying wig-outs to create a stone-cold
psychedelic epic of funky space-blues experimentation. Taken from 1968’s
ELECTRIC LADYLAND, I would normally follow this with the track it segues into,
the dream-like Moon Turn The Tides...Gently Gently Away, but time is
short so…
MOODY BLUES THE BEST WAY TO TRAVEL
This track
is taken from The Moody Blues second album IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD,
released in 1968, in which the band discover psychedelic mysticism in all its
manifold glory. It’s a terrific album, featuring sitars, mellotrons, tamburas,
tablas, oboes, cellos, and flutes, all pretty much taken up by the band in the
spirit of switched-on inquiry and more or less dedicated to Timothy Leary. I
remember reading somewhere that this is one of Julian Cope’s favourite
psychedelic recordings and you can see why, with wide stereo panning effects
creating an expansive universe of sound to lose yourself in.
LINDA
PERHACSPARALLELOGRAMS
I understand
that the big thing about cult acid-folk legend Linda Perhacs is that she (no
doubt) enjoys an aural synesthesia which allows her to experience sound as
geometric patterns, a condition which resulted in her defining album,
PARALLELOGRAMS, released in 1970 but largely ignored until it was discovered as
a key text for the emerging wyrd-folk scene of the late 90s. The title track is an incomparably beautiful,
hallucinatory sound sculpture that shimmers with a lysergic beauty - although I’ve
no idea whether Perhacs, a dental assistant at the time, ever experimented with
LSD. It took her 44 years to release another album, and although that album,
and her next, which came a relatively speedy three years after, both enjoyed
moments of fragile magic and outré gorgeousness, it’s for the hypnotic
PARALLELOGRAMS that she is best known.
LEO DELIBES FLOWER DUET
The transcendentally lovely Flower Duet
(or, Sous le dôme épais, mes ami), is taken from the French Romantic
composer Leo Delibes’ LAKME, an opera first performed in Paris in 1883. In
context, I believe the song itself is quite innocuous: set in India during the
time of the British Raj, the song is sung by Lakme, the daughter of a High
Priest, and her servant, Mallika, as they gather flowers from the banks of a
river. Those of us of a certain age, however, will forever associate it with
the music which accompanied the, frankly, exquisitely charged lesbian love
scene between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in Ridely Scott’s 1983
erotique vampire movie THE HUNGER. This version, performed by Elaine Barry and
Judith Rees with the Sinfonia of London Orchestra, is, in fact, taken from that film’s
soundtrack, conducted by composer Howard Blake. Its diaphanous beauty was
somewhat diluted when it was picked up by British Airways for an ad in the late
80s, but that was some 30-odd years ago now - I think it’s okay to come out and
say I think this piece of music is sublime.
JULIAN COPE SAFESURFER
Is this the farest-out Julian Cope has
ever got? AUTOGEDDON’s s.t.a.r.c.a.r is a mind-blowing trip, but PEGGY
SUICIDE’s Safesurfer is a cosmic head-fuck of Dionysian proportions,
guaranteed to take the listener on a burning voyage to the very centre of
infinity. Taken from 1991’s gnostic masterpiece PEGGY SUICIDE - a total
reinvention of the Drude’s canon and general all-round adoption of the ‘moral
code of the mystic’ - this was Cope at his mind-blowing best. It began life as
an altogether more restrained affair on the highly collectible DROOLIAN,
released in 1990, but this is the version that rocks like a mofo. Marvellous.
THE BEATLES I AM THE WALRUS
What to say about this record? That it's
the greatest psychedelic song ever recorded by the greatest English band ever
at the height of their powers? Well, yes, but that doesn't do any justice to
it's sheer linguistic playfulness, or to the fact that it remains a bitter
idiosyncratic assault on the establishment that amounts to an exercise in
self-definition that almost constitutes a manifesto, or that John Lennon never
created anything this good ever again. All of this is true, in some way, I
guess, but if you really want to know why this song is one of the defining
moments of The Beatles' career, and the greatest psychedelic record ever made,
then I'm afraid you will just have to drop some acid and listen to it properly,
again and again and again. It's on THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, of course, and on
the B-side to Hello, Goodbye, released in 1967.
THE MONKEES SWAMI - PLUS STRINGS, ETC.
(Although, in this instance, without the
strings because time is short)
Taken from the soundtrack to the film
HEAD, in which the Monkees deconstruct their teen-pop image in a lysergic
Mobius-strip of a movie that ultimately means nothing, but in doing so kind of
means everything. The album itself, released in 1968, only has six songs, the
rest of it is made up of sound collages taken from the movie and edited
together by Jack Nicholson who co-wrote the script. Pretty made up of a montage
of audio clips, dialogue, and music from the film(with what I imagine is the band groaning “Head...head” in the
background) it eventually evolves into Porpoise Song, the band’s most
psychedelic song. It's one of the trippiest albums I own and one of the
trippiest films I have in my DVD collection, too. A cult classic, in every
sense of the word - I’m a huge fan.
THE SOFT-HEARTED SCIENTISTS ISABELLA (KEEP RIDING THE ROAD TO THE SEA)
And in a show of fine
tunes and forward-thinking psychedelia, I save my favourite track by Welsh
psych-folk troubadours, The Soft Hearted Scientists, for last. Isabella
(Keep Riding the Road to the Sea) is taken from UNCANNY TALES OF THE
EVERYDAY UNDERGROWTH, a collection of their first EP's, released in 2005, or
the MIDNIGHT MUTINIES EP, released that same year. I love this album; it's a
nearly flawless collection of sugary psychedelic pastoral pop, full of great
tunes with sing-along choruses that can make me happy or sad depending on my
mood and the time of day. The seven-way vocal harmony that takes up the second
half of the song...well, I just think it's a wonderful thing in a world that
doesn't have enough wonderful things anymore. I buy this album as a present for
people.
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