The HFoS ‘Who is/are:’ series provides handy bite-sized blasts of info for those who live their lives on the move.

If at some point during the late ’60s or the early ’70s you had inadvertently set foot in the Notting Hill Gate area of London known as Ladbroke Grove, you may well have been lured further into this heartland of Bohemia and the British underground by a distant cry of “Out Demons Out!” Further investigation would’ve revealed the source of this exorcism to be the politicised bark of one of England’s finest bands; one for who the term “criminally underrated” could well have been coined. Just who are the left-wing-anarcho-psychedelic-blues-prog-agit-rock outfit, the Edgar Broughton Band?

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feature, who is/are

The latest issue of Shindig! magazine (August – September 2009) hit the doormat yesterday and lo and behold, within its pages there’s an article written by yours truly. Not that you’d know it though, as they’ve neglected to mention this website. Ah well…

Anyway, beg, borrow or steal a copy if you’re interested and thumb through to the piece on late ’60s psychedelic rock group H.P. Lovecraft, entitled “Whirling, Twirling, Swirling”. That be the beast, right there.

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The Edgar Broughton Bands’ debut album, Wasa Wasa, laid down the blueprint of progressive-anarcho-agit-freakrock for which this criminally underrated band would become known.

The then trio of Rob ‘Edgar’ Broughton, Steve Broughton and Arthur Grant – who had built up a following in their hometown of Warwick (just down the road from the HFoS hub) with a fourth member, Victor Unitt, under the name the Edgar Broughton Blues Band – had signed to EMI’s prog rock label Harvest in December of 1968, following a move to the Notting Hill Gate area of London. It was here that they became a part of the Ladbroke Grove scene, a frantic haze of underground rock,  left-wing and anarchist politics, illicit substances, and incredible hairiness. In July of 1969, Wasa Wasa was unleashed.

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album reviews, freak rock, prog rock, psychedelic rock, the blues

Clear Light’s one and only album, a self-titled spurt of fast-paced US psychedelic rock, takes few chances, electing to play safe along the well-trodden path lined by jangly guitars, flowery melodies and folkish harmonies. As a result it provides a pleasing, if unremarkable, window onto one of the many L.A. psych bands that sprang up and took a shot at the underground scene during the late sixties.

Favouring an almost bubble-gum blueprint for the most part, although successfully replicating a Love sound in others, Clear Light comes into its own on two particular tracks. The darkly industrial ‘Street Singer’ and the terrifically sinister ‘Mr. Blue’. Dismissing the flowery formula that the rest of Clear Light adheres to, these two songs are worth the admission price alone.

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album reviews, psychedelic rock

“When will Salty Dog have its day?” So asked Alan White of Berwick-Upon-Tweed in the July 26th 1969 issue of Melody Maker. The letter is  reproduced within the lush packaging of Fly Records and Salvo’s latest Procol Harum reissue, the masterful A Salty Dog.

When, indeed?

If ever a band were a victim of their own good fortune then Procol Harum was it. Such was the shadow cast by the phenomenal success of 1967′s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ that the band was fated to be remembered as the one-hit wonders responsible for that song. But Procol Harum were an album band, hugely influential amongst their peers and noted pioneers in progressive rock. Even so, the succession of albums released in the aftermath of ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ slipped beneath the radar, largely ignored by a record buying public in the throes of  Pale-induced denial.

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album reviews, prog rock

Once again dipping a tentative toe into the shark-infested waters that are “modern music”, HFoS came across this self-titled album by San Francisco prog-psych-noise foursome, Mahikari.

Taking their name from a Japanese religious movement meaning ‘new light’, Mahikari deliver a four song album that stakes its claim firmly in the progressive rock camp, chucking in plenty of psychedelic blasts along the way to create a vast and complex, multi-layered musical soundscape.

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album reviews, prog rock, psychedelic rock

The HFoS ‘Who is/are:’ series provides handy bite-sized blasts of info for those who live their lives on the move.

To kick off what will be an occasional series (basically when I haven’t the time to write anything more substantial), who better than Birmingham’s own musical magi, unfairly remembered by most for the perennial Christmas fave ‘I Wish it could be Christmas Everyday’? The mighty Roy Wood!

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feature, who is/are

Ah, Jefferson Airplane, those fair-weather freedom-fighters who set the American folk-rock/psychedelic scene ablaze between 1967 and 1970, before falling from the perch and metamorphosing into Jefferson Starship. Granted, there were albums released either side of this three year catchment zone, but none that would have the influence or raw power of Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing at Baxter’s, Crown of Creation and this one, Volunteers.

Jefferson Airplane weren’t afraid to play with politics. They were the self-appointed spokespersons of a generation, riding the revolutionary wave of the time and profiting handsomely from it. 1969′s Volunteers is the result of all this fragmented rhetoric, packaged neatly onto a slab of vinyl and sold back to “the kids” for a nice little earner.

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album reviews, folk rock, psychedelic rock

“… Well, the embarrassment of stopping is far worse than the mild pain of having a bit of tear gas down your lungs. That’s just uncomfortable for a few minutes. If you suddenly stopped or something, that would be something you’d have to live with for weeks afterwards — the embarrassment of it …” – Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull, 1971

And so the mighty Jethro Tull managed to quell a riot at the Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver, Colorado, 38 years ago to this day (June 10th).

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news, prog rock

You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig. - The Man With No Name (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly)

No, I’ve not given leave to my senses. This is just a spot of shameless self-promotion for an article I’ve had published over at the excellent LateMag – of which you can find out more in the Groovy Cats section.  Indeed, Five Spaghetti Westerns not directed by Sergio Leone looks at another passion of mine, the Spaghetti Western (see how I secreted a subtle clue in the title?).  Obviously, the Man With No Name quote is made redundant by the fact it’s from a Leone Spaghetti Western… But I likes it!

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There are dark places within the human psyche some are fortunate enough never to visit. Then there are others that can never escape. Syd Barrett was one such casualty of the human mind’s vociferous self-destructive capability. It can’t be said when first Barrett took his initial tentative steps into the darkness of this windowless room of despair, whether there was always something lurking just beneath the surface awaiting the right set of circumstances to free it or if it was simply excess that took its toll, but what seems certain is that too much LSD definitely played a part in closing the door behind him.

Photograph: Dezo Hoffmann/Rex Features

‘Jugband Blues’ was Barrett’s final song for the band he’d fronted and given the name to, psychedelic space-rockers Pink Floyd, and appeared on their second album, 1968′s A Saucerful of Secrets.

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psychedelic rock, song reviews