As is inevitably the case with a human race as shallow and self-obsessed as our own, sometimes a song will come along that either speaks directly to us, or we think, “Ay up, lad. They’ve surely written this about me and me alone”.
For some, this uninvited intrusion into our very souls may manifest itself in Led Zeppelin’s majestic ‘Stairway to Heaven’. For others it could be Black Lace’s ‘Agadoo’. For me there is a particular Who song that I believe Pete Townsend pilfered from my conscious, even though it was written four years before I was born. And now I have discovered another, one that ticks all the boxes.
‘Good Times’ by Eric Burdon and the Animals was released in 1967 but could well be reading my mind 42 years down the line.
“… When I think of all the good time that I’ve wasted, Having Good Times…”
Indeed so. There’s some serious regret going on here. A lament for time flittered away in the pursuit of hedonistic activities. “… All that boozin’, I was really losin’ …” And as is the nature of regret, it comes too late as the ongoing list of things done is countered by the now redundant things that should’ve been done, becoming ever more desperate to the point that this relentless melancholy builds to what can only be an outpouring of the bitterness that is eating away inside.
Hereby (is that the right word?) begins an occasional series that aims to celebrate, applaud or simply take the piss out of album covers from the psychedelic and prog era. First up for this admittedly dubious honour are The Rolling Stones and the album cover of 1968′s Their Satanic Majesties Request.
What can you say?
Michael, dear boy, what the devil had you, Keith, Brian, Bill and Charlie been smoking to think you might get away with this? The album may be great (despite the critical mauling it received) but the cover?
Not quite sure why, but I felt a little underwhelmed by the Classic Rock Presents… Prog! special I mentioned earlier this week. I’ve had it a couple of days now and despite there being some excellent interviews and features on the mighty Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, ELP, etc.(and who’d have thought Matthew Wright of Channel 5′s The Wright Stuff would be a prog fan?) I was left with the uneasy feeling that it could’ve been better.
Granted, it may well be my prejudices colouring my opinion, as the Head Full of Snow musical tastes tend to start late 1966 and peter out around 1979. Despite the occasional sojourn into the realms of the modern, albeit admittedly retro (see Matt Berry’s Witchazel review), it’s between these 13 solid years that they largely remain.
Unfortunately (for me, anyway) the magazine had too many items on modern progressive rock. I wanted to read about the bands of the 70s in all their barmy, spaced out, self-indulgent glory. I wanted tales of excess and folly from the likes of Camel, Web, Arthur Brown, Gentle Giant, The Pink Fairies et al. Fickle, I know, but that’s the cut of my jib. The review pages were largely made up of post 1980 stuff too.
It’s not often Head Full of Snow will review anything later than the 70s but following a tip-off from Feral of the splendid LateMag, the rulebook has well and truly been chucked out the window. To review an album that was released *shudder* just this month.
What madness is this? Who can it possibly be? Well it’s none other than Matt Berry and his splendid little album, Witchazel.
Matt who?
Well for anybody who has seen the first series of The Mighty Boosh, they will surely remember his barnstorming performance as Dixon Bainbridge, or failing that there’s the equally scene-stealing turn as Douglas Reynholm in The IT Crowd series two and three. And as well as other TV stuff he’s only gone and released a ruddy album! And believe me, it’s no joke. (Pun courtesy of clichés incorporated)
Lovers of the avant-garde, the psychedelic, the progressive, the canterbury scene, art rock or just the downright bizarre, will be chuffed to buggery to hear that this coming Monday (30th March) sees the remastered reissues of three solo albums from ex-Soft Machine bassist, writer, singer and English eccentric, Kevin Ayers.
The three albums picked for some of the special treatment are Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories (1974), Sweet Deceiver (1975) and Yes We Have No Mananas (1976).
Following on from the short progressive rock season on BBC4 earlier this year (all right, it was only one night), it would appear that Britain has gone prog mad. Nice!
So much so that tomorrow (March 25th) sees Classic Rock magazine release their Prog special.
Man alive! Does it get any better than this? Possibly. But until then we can make do with what promises to be a prime paradigm in prog rock prose and all-round goodness.
As was so often the case with many a band signed during the psychedelic heyday of the late 60s (Focal Point being a case in point), The End remain one of those enigmas lost to time amidst a swirl of colour and a cloud of hash smoke.
In fact, mentioning Focal Point is no mere accident as two of the similarities between the misfortunes of the two bands sits firmly on the less desirable side of uncanny. Both had the sort of backing other bands could only dream of – Focal Point had The Beatles and The End had the Rolling Stones (more specifically Bill Wyman). Both were allowed to slip into obscurity through no fault of their own. The death of Beatles manager, Brian Epstein saw Focal Point’s priorities at Apple Records thrown onto the backburner, whilst Rolling Stones’ business manager Alan Klein sat on The End’s one and only album, Introspection, for eighteen months before it saw a release, at exactly the time when musical trends had moved on.
For anybody who, like me, thinks that Genesis were a perfectly good band ruined by a tax-fleeing drummer with ideas above his station, then they may be interested to hear that tomorrow (March 23rd) sees the reissue of the five Peter Gabriel era studios albums (excluding the 1969 cobble-together and completely different sounding From Genesis to Revelation).
As far as tentative links go, this isn’t one. Instead we have three psychedelic tunes with a certain incandesecence about the title.
Pink Floyd – Flaming
A playful, child-like song typical of Syd Barrett’s fairy tale, wispy compositions. Taken from the 1967 album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn when Pink Floyd were still called The Pink Floyd, ‘Flaming’ is not to everyone’s taste, but for those who know Syd Barrett’s splendid psychedelic stylings, it’s a rare treat. Read more…
Here at Head Full of Snow we love a bit of the Electric Light Orchestra – some might say more than life itself. They may be scowled upon by the hardline of prog rock aficionados, but not here. Repeat after me: “There’s nothing to be ashamed of in liking the Electric Light Orchestra”. Not at all. We even like the 1979 album Discovery, and if you listen closely to that record you may just pick out the exact moment at which they lost their magic, for as the 80s dawned, E.L.O faded. But it’s back eight years and seven studio albums to their cracking debut, for this review.
In June of 1971, when The Move released their final bow in the form of the excellent Message From the Country, they were already finished as a group. Despite returning to the studio in December of the same year to record what would be their last top ten hit, ‘California Man’, the three remaining members, Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan had already released their debut experimental album, the self-titled, The Electric Light Orchestra.
Renamed No Answer in the US, following a bizarre mix-up by a record exec, it was the fruits of Wood and Lynne’s desire to diversify The Move’s sound, and Roy Wood in particular who wanted to mix classical music elements into rock music, that gave birth to the Electric Light Orchestra.
I suppose that in 1971 the acid-laced, space rock stylings of the mighty, albeit notoriously hedonistic Hawkwind, might’ve made sense to some people. Possibly those on the same diet of LSD and assorted other substances, legal or otherwise, that is often associated with the band.
This was a time when the naivety of the hippy dream encapsulated in the done-to-death slogan “Peace and Love” had long since shuffled off its mortal coil; trampled beneath heavy boots ideal for cracking skulls, in a mire of mud, unwashed denim, motorcycle grease, and the wild thrust of a Hells Angel’s switchblade at the Altamont Speedway Circuit during the infamous and ill-advised Rolling Stones free concert of 1968. Psychedelic music was no longer the soup de jour, slipping away from the consciousness of the greater public and into the ether like a phased drumbeat. Progressive rock (psych’s heir apparent) was on its steady ascent.
60′s psychedelic baroque-meisters, The Zombies, have announced that a live DVD of their excellent 1968 album, Odessey and Oracle will be released next month (April). Recorded in March of last year at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire, the DVD will see them perform the classic and much lauded album in its entirity.
Oh indeed so. And if you’re after something psychedelic for the weekend, what better than cock-er-nay mod-gods, the Small Faces?
Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones were at the forefront of the mod movement in 1966 but by 1967 the lure of psychedelia had slipped its seductive fingers around their creative craw. This culminated in the 1968 album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, a psychedelic game of two halves, somewhat spoiled by the fairy tale interjections of hired idiot, Professor Stanley Unwin.
Ignoring the aforementioned paid purveyor of all things bollocks, here’s three crackers from the psych phase of one of the great British bands. Read more…
Tolkeinesque imagery was the soup du jour during the days of psychedelia and its natural successor progressive rock. At the height of their psychedelic phase, The Beatles even tried to get a film version of The Lord Of The Rings off the ground with themselves in the main roles. An American group took it one step further and named themselves after the pivotal white/grey wizard from Middle Earth (which incidentally gave its name to a London club, famous for its happenings and freak-outs during the psychedelic era).
Gandalf are also one of the enduring mysteries of late 60′s psychedelia. They formed, signed to Capitol records, cut one album, released one single, and then disappeared without trace.
This eponymous debut was released in 1969, two whole years after its recording, and only in the band’s homeland of America. A bizarre mix-up somewhere down the line saw the album issued with the wrong record in the sleeve and by the time this error had been remedied – which involved a costly recall – the band’s momentum had all but fizzled out.
Exciting news from the boys down at Fly Records, curently engaged in the remastering, expanding and reissuing of the first four studio albums of British psychedelic and progressive rockers, Procol Harum.
Photo by: Régis de Logivière
For yes, there was more to Procol Harum than being responsible for the most played record in Britain ever, 1967′s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.
Tis a sad fact in the affairs of all things musical that there isn’t enough use of the kazoo in songs, either nowadays or in times gone by (which is what we’re more interested in, no?).
There are pretenders to this coveted crown such as Jimi Hendrix playing the paper and comb on ‘Crosstown Traffic’, or the use of nose guitar on Jefferson Airplane’s hypnotic ‘Lather’; both emulating a kazoo-type sound, but sadly lacking when it comes to the actual kazoo litmus test.
As far as the real deal is concerned, I can think of only two songs off of the top of my head that feature real kazoo playing. One is the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band’s ‘Urban Spaceman’; the other is this rare gem – 1967′s ‘Granny Takes a Trip’ by The Purple Gang. 2.36 minutes of psychedelic, jug-band jauntiness from a Stockport band all but forgotten in these modern times.
Progressive rock has earned quite the reputation in the 30 or so years since those glory days of the 1970s. Unfortunately it’s the sort of reputation , by and large, that would’ve made Hitler think people were talking about him. Head Full of Snow wishes to redress the balance by pummelling through the pomposity and chiselling away at the chaff that is nowadays associated with this particular musical genre.
What better way than to ease ourselves in gently? There’s nothing wrong with a twenty minute drum solo (honest!) but it might be a touch heavy for the unitiated. Therefore you’ll find nothing of the sort below. No way, Pedro! Instead we have seven short (by prog standards), yet sweet progressive rock pearlers.
Where the deuce is Rick Wakeman when you need him?
Jethro Tull – Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day
When not sporting a rather handsome trilby, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson could often be found attired in other millinery masterpieces, the red bowler displayed in this performance being no exception. When not enthusing on the joys of a good hat, Anderson and his band, the mighty Jethro Tull, also released the odd record. They went from blues, to folk, to prog, stopping at the occasional psychedelic point in between. They took the idea of the concept album to its conclusion, releasing two, Thick as a Brick and The Passion Play, which were just one song split over the two sides. ‘Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day’ is much shorter than that and taken from the 1974 album, Warchild.
As promised last weekend, we will be reviewing the Move’s entire back catalogue over the next few months and there’s no better time than the present to kick it off, not, as you may assume with their debut album, but its follow-up, Shazam. That’s how we do things around here.
And what an album it is. As satisfying as a well placed kick to some self-righteous git’s wedding tackle.
1969′s Shazam was the second album from the Brummy psychedelic/experimental/ prog outfit, The Move. It also saw them shy of two of the original members who’d appeared on the eponymous debut. As way of replacement, Rick Price was brought in on bass. But the core membership (prior to the arrival of Jeff Lynne) remained the same. Carl Wayne on vocals. Bev Bevan on drums. And Roy Wood, the musical powerhouse behind them all.
Despite coming at a time of upheaval within the group, with a change of management and Wayne soon to depart to make way for Lynne (the catalyst that pushed The Move onwards to becoming the Electric Light Orchestra), Shazam doesn’t disappoint.
“… My god, the spiders are everywhere…” Words to send a shiver down the spine of anyone with the slightest aversion to those eight-legged, scuttling terrors.
And that is evidently Kaleidoscope’s intention in the eerily folkish, pop-psych of ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’, employing imagery that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 1970′s BBC adaptation of an M.R. James ghost story.
Just what is the room of percussion, where shadowy friends climb the walls?
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Photo by: Régis de Logivière
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