MIND DE-CODER CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 2021

MIND DE-CODER CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

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       Let the psychedelic lights of Christmas shine

 

JOSIE BRECHNER     INTRO/12 DAYS/SIMPLIFIED

What better way to kick off the show than with a rousing chorus of The 12 Days Of Christmas, severely truncated in this instance, by sound designer Josie Brechner on the 2012 release COAL: AN EXPERIMENTAL CHRISTMAS, an album which, as the title suggests, is full of arch experimentation. It’s free to download from Bandcamp, but it’s probably not the sort of thing you want playing while roasting chestnuts on an open fire, with Jack Frost nipping at your nose.

 

RAW THRILLS     IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

A fuzzed-up, lysergic cover of Michael Bublé’s Christmas classic by Zak Mering, from his playfully kaleidoscopic album ALL GOOD WISHES: A PSYCHEDELIC CHRISTMAS, released under the nom de plume Raw Thrills in 2011. It’s one of those albums which appears in lists of obscure Christmas albums but about which very little is known - Mering is the sort of fellow who’s recorded under so many pseudonyms, and been in so many bands, this album seems to have got lost and can’t even be found in his voluminous discography.

 

GREEN SEAGULL    GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN

An authentically tripped-out organ-drenched interpretation of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by London-based psychedelicists Green Seagull, who bring their harmony-laden baroque/freakbeat sound to this traditional English carol (dated back to the 16th Century and perhaps earlier). This was released in 2018 by the Dutch label Snowflakes Christmas Singles, founded in 2013 to celebrate the Christmas 7" single. Every year, the label releases new Christmas singles (usually 3 or 4) by current artists, that feature an original song on side A and an interpretation of a classic or obscure Christmas song by this artist on side B. The singles are released on snow-white vinyl and are an eminently collectible addition to your Christmas stocking.

 

UNCLE CHARLIE     WHOSE BIRTHDAY?

It takes a special sort of Christian to ruin Christmas for everyone, and here's Uncle Charlie. This heart-warming tale of selflessness and delusion is to be found on the album A CHRISTMAS CAROUSEL, released in 1975 by the good folk behind The Children’s Bible Hour - a syndicated radio show presented by Uncle Charlie (who has since gone to meet his maker to explain himself). Amidst the music and fun, Uncle Charlie asks just what kind of birthday is it when the person whose birthday it is doesn't get any presents? Whose Birthday answers that question, and in doing so emphasizes to young and old alike the importance of "keeping Christ in Christmas", and furthermore provides an explanation, perhaps, for the growth in the number of people worshiping at the Church of Satan these days. Betty’s parents sound like they should be reported to the social services.

 

HE 5     JINGLE BELLS/IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA

Raw psychedelic sounds from Korea’s HE 5. I think MERRY CHRISTMAS PSYCHEDELIC SOUND, released in 1969, was actually their debut album, on which they unleashed fuzzed-up garage-style instrumental covers of Christmas classics to a bemused record-buying public. Their interpretation of Jingle Bells is astonishing, morphing into a ten-minute freak-out which not only covers Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida but also manages to take in The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black before returning to Jingle Bells again. I enjoyed it so much I played around outrageously with the fade-out.

 

SATURDAYS CHILDREN     DECK FIVE

Is this the first mash-up? A quick Google search suggests that, yes, it might just be. Chicago’s Saturdays Children released this little Christmas cracker, singing the carol Deck The Halls with a tune suggested largely by Dave Brubeck’s jazz standard Take 5, back in 1966 on an eponymously titled EP that’s more at home to The Beatles than this groovy novelty track might suggest, but nevertheless, this is a cool addition to anyone’s Christmas list.

 

THE MONKEES     RIU CHIU

Michael Nesmith, the coolest Monkee, sadly passed away last week so in his memory here are The Monkees singing Riu Chiu, a Spanish villancico (a common poetic and musical form of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America popular from the late 15th to 18th centuries, that has attained some contemporary fame as a Christmas carol, for those of you with an interest in this sort of thing) which appears to have evolved into a Christmas carol over the past few centuries. The Monkees performed the song live on a Christmas episode of their show in 1967, although this is the studio version which was released on subsequent compilation albums and on the 2018 album CHRISTMAS PARTY, which is where I came across it. The complex vocal harmonies are a quiet thing of wonder and ought to put paid to the idea that the group were little more than a prefab four (which was The Rutles, of course).

 

 YOKO ONO     LISTEN, THE SNOW IS FALLING

Now that Peter Jackson has shown once and for all that Yoko didn’t cause The Beatles split (if anything, there’s a good argument to be made for Michael Lindsay-Hogg taking on that particular role: "forget about George - do it in Tunisia") what better time to play her transcendentally fragile Listen, The Snow Is Falling? Originally recorded as the B-side to Lennon’s ubiquitous 1971 single Merry Christmas (War Is Over) this is the version that eventually re-appeared as a bonus track on the 2007 CD release of John and Yoko’s WEDDING ALBUM (it includes Yoko's soft, breathy vocal at the beginning and at the end of the song that was removed from the single release in hopes of achieving more radio airplay, which sadly had no influence on the amount of airplay it’s actually received over the years at all). Ethereal, simple, and poetic, the frailty of Yoko's vocals is exactly right in this context - it makes you wonder why she ever spent so much time caterwauling like a hungry vulture that's chanced upon the three-week-old carcass of a water buffalo rotting in the desert, really. That's performance art, that is.

 

 TINTERN ABBEY     SNOWMAN (MASTER 2)

 Formed in 1966/7, at the height of the Kings Road scene (it kills me that I was 2 at the time and not the Earl’s Court dandy I was so clearly always meant to be), Tintern Abbey were the quintessential psychedelic band who, I believe, split up before they even managed to play a gig. They released one single, the excellent Beeside/Vacuum Cleaner, and recorded an acetate for the fantastically tripped-out Snowman but it got lost in a line-up change and, before long, the group had disbanded, becoming little more than a footnote to London’s psychedelic scene. How I wish they had managed to record an album - Snowman is an astonishing slice of psychedelia, a disorientating mélange of sinister Mellotron, disembodied voices, and backward tapes that shows just how good they could have been. That being said, the very fine Cherry Red label, who specialize in this sort of thing, have just gathered everything they recorded between the summer of 1967 (when they spent a month in a Cornwall cottage, rehearsing and taping their performances prior to their London launch) and the end of 1968 and released it as a two-disc set called TINTERN ABBEY: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS.

 

TOMITA    SNOWFLAKES ARE DANCING

 Isao Tomita was a Japanese composer who specialized in electronic instrumentation to create spellbinding music. In 1974 he released SNOWFLAKES ARE DANCING, an album that consisted entirely of arrangements of Claude Debussy's "tone paintings", performed by Tomita on a Moog synthesizer and a Mellotron. On paper it seems a terrible idea - the sort of cheesy, classical/prog crossover experimentation favoured by the likes of Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but Tomita brings such an exquisite lightness of touch to Debussy’s fragile atmospheric compositions that the album became a worldwide success.  (Fans of Debussy will appreciate that the title track is more correctly titled The Snow Is Dancing - from his 1908 composition CHILDREN’S CORNER - but I think this is what happens when you translate from French to English to Japanese, and nobody but the most artless pedant really minds).

In 1965 Paul McCartney put together a mixtape for his fellow Beatles as a Christmas present. Of course, having access to Abbey Road, these were turned into three acetates which over the years have taken on the status of legendary totems. There are no new Beatles tunes or anything - it’s pretty much McCartney introducing his favourite tracks of the year in the style of a late-night dee-jay, and if you’re interested you can now find a recording on Youtube. What I have here is the opening few minutes, for your listening pleasure and all.

 

THE TARA EXPERIMENT     EVERYWHERE IT’S CHRISTMAS

This is a deeply psychedelic track from The Tara Experiment, proponents of the sort of Radiophonic psychedelia which reprogrammes your mind with sound hypnosis - when put like that, they sound great, don’t they? Actually, not a lot is known about them because their trip is to remain quasi-anonymous, make Avant-Garde Electronic & Musique Concrete recordings, and live quietly beneath the blue suburban skies. This is the B-side to their single Christmas In The Observatory, recorded late Summer 2013 at the Office of Experimental Music and Film.

 

THE TRANSPERSONALS     HAPPY HOLIDAYS

 Sublimely lysergic vibes from The Transpersonals and the almost transcendentally lovely Happy Holidays, the opening track from their 2016 release SCHIZODELIA. This is the sound of a kaleidoscope of musical notes. I think of all the bands on this evening's show, I'd like to spend Christmas round their house most of all.

 

THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN XMAS RECORD     THE ELVES REVOLT

 A prescient tale of global warming from 1978, although, in this case, it has less to do with COP 26-inspired prevarication than the elves involved in a labour dispute with Santa and threatening to melt the polar ice caps as a means of bringing St. Nick to the bargaining table. Yes, Santa, as we've always suspected, is an evil Capitalist whose treatment of his warehouse staff would give Jeff Bezos pause for thought, but, thankfully, Steve Austin is there to sort everything out in this heartwarming Christmas tale of employment contracts recorded especially for THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN XMAS RECORD - one of two Steve Austin related adventures on vinyl released between 1976 and 1978. Although none of the adventures used the voices, music, or even bionic sound effects of the television program, they all had full-casts, music, and voice-over narration, plus each LP came with a copy of the script in comic book form. “It’s Fun To Read As You Hear,” promised the cover. A proper Christmas treat.

 

DAVID SANTO     JINGLE DOWN A HILL 

David Santo was a folkie and songwriter from New York City in full-on Mark- Fry-gypsy-troubadour-DREAMING-WITH-ALICE-mode for this whimsical Christmas song which closes his 1967 album SILVER CURRENTS. The rest of the album is a bit fey, but I think this track enjoys an understated charm.

 

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE     SNOW QUEEN

 

The Byzantine Empire were a band formed by University of Michigan students in 1965, initially as The Five Bucks, who made guitar pop with delicious vocal harmonies—a style that became hugely popular in the 1960s thanks to the likes of the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, and the Left Banke—but they never made it as far as releasing an album, much less attracting the audience they deserved. Snow Queen, released in 1968, is a cover of a Carole King song that jingles along quite nicely but sadly flopped. Despite opening for the likes of The Animals, The Turtles, Iron Butterfly, and The Doors they were let down by a recording contract that saw them as a light and breezy sunshine act rather than the harder, fuzzier sound they produced on stage - after finishing at University the band split and no doubt went on to pursue rich and rewarding lives outside of the recording industry. I expect.

 

CRICKETBOWS     AMANITA HOLIDAY

 Cricketbows do a fine line in psychedelically tinged old-school rhythm-n-blues, gospel, blues, funk, and country, although the highly suggestive Amanita Holiday, taken from their 2011 release AMANITA HOLIDAY (CHRISTMASTIME SURE LOOKS WEIRD THIS YEAR) has the menacing vibe of a particularly messed-up garage band playing it as they see it.
 

KHRUANGBIN     CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE

 

Originally written for the 1965 television special ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’, Texas-native Thai-funk trio Khruangbin gives the Vince Guaraldi classic an ambling sweetness and a fresh, beat-driven groove all of their own. Released in 2018 as a limited-edition single on red vinyl, it sold out almost immediately, but you can find it now online in all the usual places, should that be your wish.

 

CAN     LITTLE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

 Can’s DELAY 1968 is an archival compilation album of the band’s work with singer Malcolm Mooney comprising previously unissued early recordings of their rejected debut album, PREPARED TO MEET THY PNOOM. When no record company would release that record (which I suspect had as much to do with its title as much as anything else), Can set out to make a somewhat more accessible album, which became their 1969 debut MONSTER MOVIE, although PNOOM finally got issued in 1981. Throughout, Malcolm Mooney sounds mildly psychotic, and the band struggles to find anything as pleasant as a melody, say, and you would be hard-pressed to call Little Star of Bethlehem a Christmas song in any meaningful sense of the word, but is worth it alone for the lyrics: Froggie and Toadie carried off the tangerine seeds one by one and came back for the popcorn after dinner asking: Do you want some? Asking: Do you want water lilies in your bathtub? That’s psychedelia, that is (or mild psychosis -whichever comes first).

 

PARENTHETICAL GIRLS     CAROL OF THE SEASON

 The lysergically-charged Carol Of The Season, by experimental pop group The Parenthetical Girls, is available from their digital album CHRISTMAS, a ‘quirky’ (read: unwieldy and oft-times ugly) collection of the group’s biennial Christmas recordings, taking in their early home-recording experiments to the more fully-realized affairs they achieved before breaking up in 2013. It’s available from Bandcamp should you be interested but be warned - there is much beauty to be found here, but it can be beyond irritating, too.

 

SHANE MORRIS     THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE

 Shane Morris is a multi-instrumentalist who appears to favour the dark tribal ambient side of things, creating the sort of music which, at its best, opens a path to your inner pre-Dawn-of-Man self. You can find The Ghost Of Christmas Future on the 2012 BFW CHRISTMAS ALBUM, available as a free download from Bandcamp 

 

THE MOOG MACHINE     CAROL OF THE BELLS

 Originally released in 1969, CHRISTMAS BECOMES ELECTRIC by The Moog Machine is the Christmas album for Moog-heads, should such a thing be said to exist. It was produced by Norman Dolph, a marketing executive for Columbia records (he financed and helped engineer THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO, festive fact fans) following the success of his previous album, SWITCHED-ON ROCK, which comprised of instrumental covers of popular songs from the 1960s, performed on Moog synthesizer, which, in itself, was one of a spate of albums capitalizing on the success of SWITCHED-ON BACH, released a year earlier, an album of Bach pieces performed on Moog by Wendy Carlos. Clearly, then, there was a market for this most unwieldy of musical instruments, although, arguably, if not somewhat harshly, this is an album best put on when you need to clear the room. Fortunately, most of the tracks come in under two minutes. I remain a fan.

 

SHAWN LEE’S PING PONG ORCHESTRA     LITTLE DRUMMER BOY

 

Downtempo trip-hop beats and groovy low-key grooves permeate electronica artist Shawn Lee’s A VERY PING PONG CHRISTMAS: FUNKY TREATS FROM SANTA’S BAG, released in 2007. Featuring mostly trippy instrumentals, this is, in fact, one of the funkiest Christmas albums ever - a sitar-laden Little Drummer Boy, in particular, has been scratched-up and funked-out to rule the yule (as, I’ve no doubt, some people might say) although this is, in effect, a joyous, category-defying sound. Pour the eggnog and enjoy.

 

GERALDO CHIMERA     INTERMISSION: SIX MINUTES, FIVE GOLDEN RINGS

 

As the title suggests, it goes on like this for six minutes - I think I allow just the two. This closing track is also taken from the 2012 release COAL: AN EXPERIMENTAL CHRISTMAS. Geraldo Chimera, if he or she can truly be said to exist at all, must remain part of the essential mystery of Christmas.

 

And that was the Mind De-Coder 2021 Christmas Special. Please enjoy a happy new year.

 

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