Monday 30 November 2020

MIND DE-CODER 98

MIND DE-CODER 98
To listen to the show just scroll to the bottom of the page

‘The world is full of magical things, waiting for our senses to grow sharper’

                                                                                                                                  W.B. Yeats

PINK FLOYD     FLAMING


This is the 2011 remastered version of the song which originally appears on Pink Floyd’s debut album, the classic PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN, of course, which was released in 1967 and remains, to this head, the greatest psychedelic album of all time and pretty much the benchmark against which all others are measured. Flaming remains as an exuberant piece of playful nursery-psych as you’re ever likely to hear, and one which sends us whirling through Syd Barrett’s acid wonderland in two minutes and forty-two seconds - unicorns are encountered and buttercups catch the light. Yippee, indeed. 

THE TEA COMPANY     COME AND HAVE SOME TEA WITH ME

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

I don’t pretend to know much about the band Jigsaw, although I understand they enjoyed much success around the world and even wrote the hit song Who Do You Think You Are, much beloved by fans of Candlewick Green and St. Etienne, but their debut album, LETHERSLADE FARM, released in 1970, is a thing apart. Essentially it’s a concept album about musical theft, and the title refers to the hideout used by the Great Train Robbers in 1963. We get an assortment of musical styles that take in a Frank Sinatra pastiche, prog-rock classicism, the blues, and in the case of Say Hello To Mrs Jones, a Zombies-esque imitation, but that’s just the half of it. Littered amongst the tunes you’ll find the Northern Sketches, interviews with crooked managers, and a story arc about a pop star (whose stolen music we’re listening to) complete with interviews and vignettes from his life.  I return to these vignettes throughout the show but, really, file under: They don’t make them like this anymore. 

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


Penny Lane is McCartney’s sunny hallucinogenic yin to the dense experimental yang of Lennon’s Strawberry Fields Forever on what is possibly the greatest single release of all time. Stylistically the two songs couldn’t be more different, but both display a surreal sense of hallucinatory lyricalism - on Penny Lane it’s both sunny and raining, summer and winter - that suggest the band were very much at home to LSD at this point. Bizarrely, some people don’t like The Beatles, but if Penny Lane, released as a precursor to SGT PEPPERS in 1967 at the height of the Summer of Love, doesn't put a melon-sized grin on your face every time you hear it, then I’m afraid that something has died within you; you might even have worms wriggling and writhing away in the space where your joie de vivre used to be.

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


The hypnotically compelling Stand And Deliver is taken from the ON THE BLINK EP, a taster for the upcoming album of the same name from the wonderful Nathan Hall and The Sinister Locals. I understand that Ennio Morricone, dub reggae, JJ Cale and The Beatles will all get a look in so, as you might imagine, I’m positively a-quiver with anticipation.

CAM’S JAMS     PAISLEY CURTAINS (HITS OF SUNSHINE)

 

Cam’s Jams (Cameron Cowles to his mum) has produced an album that is entirely in love with psychedelia in all of its kaleidoscopic manifestations - a psychedelic pop influence runs throughout the ravishing VOL. 1, released last year, but essentially what your getting is something akin the The Strawberry Alarm Clock - groovy, harmonic loveliness that’s gentle on the senses, except for when it needs to rock out. Paisley Curtains (Hits Of Sunshine) captures its vibe precisely - experimental, lysergic and very, very pretty.

KOOBAS     CONSTANTLY CHANGING 


Koobas have the distinction of being the least well-known of Brian Epstein’s post-Beatles charges from the Merseybeat era. Despite some good press and highly visible gigs - they opened for The Who and toured with Hendrix - their singles failed to chart and by the time they came to record their only album they’d already decided to split. With the pressure off they were clearly able to enjoy their time in the studio, including little jokes and skits between the off-kilter psychedelia. Released in 1969, a year after the group had gone their separate ways, the eponymous album was doomed to obscurity. These days, of course, it fetches ridiculous sums on eBay.

 THE FREEBORNE     A NEW SONG FOR ORESTES

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


Christina Vantzou is a composer of ambient chamber music. Her most recent release, MULTI NATURAL, released earlier this year, is an hallucinogenic marvel, abstract and non-linear, coming in and out of focus in an almost quantum fashion, as the sounds appear and dissolve with one’s focus. Snow White shimmers like a dreamworld with its own internal logic. In a show packed with proper songs, I wanted to include something smudged and woozy to get lost in.

KAVUS TORABI     PEACOCK THRONE

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 swirling slice of kaleidoscopic fancy, And, opens the album CHAOS WONDERLAND, the latest release from Carwyn Ellis. It’s an eclectic mix of multi-coloured psych-pop, cosmic tiki-flavoured psychedelia, soulful balladry, carnival-organ funk and soft-spoken latin rhythms.

WAX MACHINE     TIME


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

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