… Cast your mind back ten years to the girl who’s next to me in school, If I put my hand upon her leg she’d hit me with a rule …
Surely one of the greatest opening lines to a song in musical history, provided by one of its greatest bands. Birmingham’s very own, The Move.
Here at Head Full of Snow, we love The Move. They sit exclusively on a list of bands that could do no wrong, having disbanded and become the equally mighty Electric Light Orchestra in 1972 – long before the dawning of the 80s turned many a fine group sour.
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music vid
Hippy Love Camp Atrocity
“Man alive! Please make it stop!” Listen very carefully on a crystal clear, dark winter’s night and you may well hear these words carried on a distant breeze, emanating from yours truly as I dream that once again I’m listening to The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter by The Incredible String Band.
Personally I blame Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. It was following his recommendation that I bought said album in the first place. Word to the wise: Don’t be fooled if Mister Plant tries the same trick with you, tis all lies. Not that he sidled up to me in the bar of my local and out of the blue suggested I should part with some hard-earned in exchange for a ropy, hippy-folk recording. It was, in fact, within the pages of a Mojo magazine Psychedelic special a few years back, so heaven knows how many other unsuspecting record collections have been infected on the strength of his words.
The hirsute Zeppelin frontman had me in. Please don’t let the same happen to you.
Which brings me to the actual album, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, which along with Wee Tam and the Big Huge was the first of two releases by The Incredible String Band in 1968. I’ve done my damnedest to put it off, as you may well have suspected, but it’s my duty to listen once again so that you won’t have to. It’s not all peace and love here.
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acid-folk, album reviews, psych-folk
Well well! Who’d have thought a group harbouring the future Prince of Darkness™ could’ve produced something as breathtakingly evocative – and yes, beautiful – as this?
Image from: Black Sabbath Fans
‘Planet Caravan’ is for anybody who at sometime in their life has closed their eyes and wished they were someplace else, far away. It’s for all the dreamers and those that live in hope that one day there might just be something better than what they’ve presently got.
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psychedelic rock, song reviews
The latest issue of Shindig! arrived on my weather-worn doormat today and, as ever, the standard of this excellent magazine is exceptionally high.
For those that don’t know, Shindig! is a bi-monthly magazine specialising in – to quote their own tagline – “Psych, Garage, Beat, Powerpop, Soul, Folk… For People Who Want More!” But mainly psychedelic, progressive and underground tunage.
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news
It has been announced that Kelly Groucutt, bassist with progressive-band-turned-hitmakers, Electric Light Orchestra, died yesterday (February 19th 2009) of a heart attack aged 63. Born Michael William Groucutt in 1945 and raised in Coseley, West Midlands, he joined the band in 1974 and played on the albums Face the Music (1975) through to Secret Messages (1983).
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news, prog rock
The Rolling Stones were long over their brief psychedelic phase when they released Sticky Fingers in 1971. And what more can be said other than it’s singularly the greatest album ever written, recorded or released by any musical act this side of hell. Does anything need adding to that?
Oh well, I suppose if needs must.
Sticky Fingers represents the pinnacle of the Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership and a band at the peak of their musical prowess, narrowly shaving Exile On Main Street to steal the hard-contested honour. It also came at a time when they could do no wrong. You have Their Satanic Majesties Request (much maligned, but loved for its psychedelic goodness by this reviewer), followed by Beggar’s Banquet, followed by Let It Bleed, then Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, and Goats Head Soup. Just one of those albums would be enough to cement the name of any lesser band in the halls of music immortality. But indeed, ‘the hardest working band in rock ‘n’ roll’ pumped them out in a space of five years and were never quite the same again.
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album reviews, classic rock
‘Porpoise Song’ was a single released by The Monkees in 1968 and taken from the soundtrack album to their psychedelic film, HEAD.
The very mention of The Monkees may bring to mind the ugly spectre of manufactured bubblegum pop, nowadays typified by the sub-lounge-room crooner boyband circuit or whatever annual horror X-Factor sees fit to vomit upon us. But although they were indeed assembled solely for the sake of a chirpy TV series – and thus ‘musical snobbery’ decrees they’d normally have no place on these here pages – the band lost the plot spectacularly during their self-destructive final years and managed to bang out a few memorable and inventive tunes. The sort of stuff Head Full of Snow likes.
This change in direction came with the desire to be taken seriously as musicians (both the critics and their peers were disparaging of the ‘Prefab Four’s’ musical credentials) and manifested itself in the teenybopper fanbase-alienating, cinematic excursion, HEAD.
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psych-pop, song reviews
Kicking off the ‘Something for the Weekend’ strand – which will be something particularly special posted at (when else?) the weekend – we have the excellent ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ by the Quo, from the days when they went by the moniker of The Status Quo.
From 1968, this is the pop-psych classic that put them on the musical map. Such a pity it was downhill from there as they descended into the three-chord dad-rock we all know and hate today.
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music vid
Losttunes.com is a rather splendid website billing itself as ‘the home of rare music’. And there are some rarities galore on there, available for download in all music genres. All downloads are compatible with all mp3 players including the iPod, which is a bonus.
With prices around the £7.99 mark for an album it’s worth checking out for those psychedelic rarities unavailable from the likes of Amazon and iTunes.
Check out the psychedelic treats here and the prog rock festivities here.
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news
Mojo Magazine have released their rather excellent celebration of 1969 (the 40th anniversary, you know), following on from the 1967 ‘Summer of Love’ special, a couple of years back.
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news
This Was is the 1968 debut album by the mighty Jethro Tull, the legendary prog unit led by the charismatic and Catweazle-like Ian Anderson, who like Roy Wood remains a largely unsung and forgotten hero of the songwriting fraternity. Unfortunately it is also their weakest album. Well, the weakest up until the atrocities they saw fit to unleash throughout the musically bereft 80s.
It’s safe to say that Jethro Tull have been through many a line-up, right up until the present day which still sees them touring albeit in a very different guise to when this album was recorded. However, throughout these changes there has been the one constant factor: the aforementioned Ian Anderson. Anchor, flautist, harmonica-monkey and most importantly, the singer-songwriter – the other stalwart, Martin Barre, wouldn’t join until the following album, Stand Up, their first stone-cold classic. But why didn’t This Was make the grade?
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album reviews, prog rock, the blues
Taking their name from the renowned American writer of sci-fi dipped horror fiction and enthusiastic racist, H.P. Lovecraft were a Chicago-formed, psychedelic rock band who decamped to San Francisco and became entrenched in its underground scene for the brief period of time (1967 – 1968) they remained together as a unit.
In the time that H.P. Lovecraft existed in their original form they released two albums; the imaginatively titled H.P. Lovecraft and H.P. Lovecraft II. It is from the second album that ‘Electrallentando’ is taken.
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psychedelic rock, song reviews
Focal Point are a band largely forgotten amidst the kaleidoscopic blur that was late 60’s psychedelic London. What makes their successful courtship of obscurity all the more surprising is the calibre of backing and money that they had – albeit momentarily – behind them. None other than The Beatles themselves.
Focal Point were the first signing to The Beatles-owned company, Apple Publishing, which would go on to become their record label, Apple Records.
Consisting of Scousers, Paul Tennant and David Rhodes, what at the time must have felt like a rare stroke of luck followed a chance encounter with Paul McCartney in London’s Hyde Park. Quickly signed after approval by the likes of John Lennon, Brian Epstein and Apple’s head honcho Terry Doran, the two formed a group with which to perform their songs and Focal Point released ‘Sycamore Sid’ in 1968, backed by the rather old-fashioned, if melodious, sound of ‘Love You Forever’. In the absence of a fully operational record label at Apple, the single was released on the Deram imprint of Decca. It would be the group’s one and only release.
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band, psych-pop
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