Such was the nature of a musical genre taking its name from the mind-altering effects of acid intake that psychedelia was inevitably going to produce thinly veiled references to the drug’s popular acronym within song titles.
Probably the most famous example of authority-baiting via the medium of song is The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, although John Lennon dismissed such speculation as mere coincidence. Billy Nicholls was another such artist willing to nail his colours to the mast, penning ‘London Social Degree’, taken from his 1968 album Would You Believe.
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music vid, psych-pop
If one were to think of a psychedelic rock band that was largely ignored during its day, yet has gone on to acquire a cult following in the intervening years, rocketing them to the status of psychedelic legends, then Tomorrow would fit the bill perfectly.
Despite being the first band to record a BBC Radio 1 John Peel session, commercial success eluded them, and even a firm, if brief, following on the underground wasn’t enough to make 1968’s self-titled debut anything more than a lone shot at album glory.
The fickle nature of swinging 60’s musical adulation may have prevented Tomorrow from recording beyond 1967, but it doesn’t stop the eponymous record from being anything short of a minor classic.
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album reviews, psych-pop, psychedelic rock
Peter Banks began life as the original guitarist with high-pitched, space-age prog noodlers Yes. Leaving the band following their second album, Time and a Word, he formed the similar sounding Flash in 1970. Following three albums he teamed up with Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman to record this solo debut, Two Sides of Peter Banks, in 1973.
In the process, he also managed to pull in guest spots from Genesis’s Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, and King Crimson’s John Wetton. The result is a peculiar progressive rock piece devoid of words, which serves as a showcase for the fretwork thread work of Banks and Akkerman.
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album reviews, prog rock
If one were to make a list of songs by Traffic worthy of covering, ‘Utterly Simple’ from Mr. Fantasy would surely be somewhere near the bottom. However, in 1968 it seems nobody had shown this list to The Smoke, as they recorded Dave Mason’s sitar-by-numbers ode to flower power-induced, pseudo-philosophical bollocks, just prior to splitting up.
In doing so, The Smoke improved on the original tenfold.
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music vid, psychedelic rock
For those that dismissed prog rock as being overblown, overlong and – heaven forbid – pompous to the point of self-deluded arrogance, there was always the completely bonkers Supersister on hand to shoot down such accusations with a bizarre barrage of off-the-wall lyrics and bohemian tunes.
This is none so more evident than on one-shot side-project Sweet Okay Supersister and the 1974 album Spiral Staircase, upon which not a moment’s seriousness, or indeed sanity, is allowed to escape.
Compared to the previous Supersister album, 1973’s Iskander, this is a very different beast entirely. Whereas that was an about turn in direction, being a somewhat po-faced concept album in the more traditional prog rock vein, Spiral Staircase returned the sense of humour to the Supersister name for what was to be the silliest offering yet.
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album reviews, prog rock
Pete Sinfield, lyricist and sometime producer for the first four albums by prog rock visionaries King Crimson, entered the studio himself in 1973 to record Still, his one and only album.
Released on the newly-formed, ELP-owned Manticore label, Still calls on the assistance of former King Crimson guitarist and the L in ELP, Greg Lake, to help out on a number of tracks along with other leading-light journeymen of the scene such as Ian Wallace (King Crimson), Mel Collins (The Alan Parsons Project) and Keith Tippet (Centipede).
The result is a slightly uneven mix of styles, but one that keeps its footing firmly in the progressive rock camp, despite the odd slip.
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album reviews, prog rock
Within the never-ending, idyllic summer days of perhaps the strangest – and very much uniquely English – of all musical sub-genres, Toytown Psychedelia, ‘Grocer Jack (Excerpt from a Teenage Opera)’ surely remains its most successful export.
Taken from a proposed, yet aborted, rock opera by Mark Wirtz, ‘Grocer Jack’ is possibly the only song featuring a man suffering and dying from a heart attack to reach No. 2 in the UK charts (Madness’s ‘Cardiac Arrest’ having peaked at No. 14). Typifying a good deal of the Toytown psych pop genre, ‘Grocer Jack’ harks back to a bygone era that probably never existed. Keith West of short-lived, but long remembered, Brit-psychedelic band Tomorrow, sings the poignant tale of Jack, a forgotten relic in a world of apathy, who frets about how the unappreciative town will function if he can’t make his deliveries, even as he breathes his last.
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music vid, psych-pop
So begins the first review of 2010. And where better to start than with the latest release from those retro vinyl-pushers, Fruits de Mer Records? This time they’ve called upon the services of Swedish anglophiles (musically, at least) Us & Them, and produced a 3-track EP worthy of Venus herself.
Now, before we crack on, it’s worth mentioning that this site was once tagged by someone out there in the sprawling wilderness of the internets as “anti-folk”. This was on the strength of a review of those warbling cat-stranglers The Incredible String Band and their so-bad-it’s-awful album The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, and to say that Head Full of Snow loves a bit of acid, pastoral or wyrd-folk is a bloody great understatement.
Which is just as well in the case of Us & Them and their brand of gentle, but dark, folk stylings as demonstrated on the Fruits de Mer Volume Eight EP. Now if we’d been tagged “anti-jazz” that would be a different, yet fairer, matter.
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acid-folk, psych-folk
2010. It may be January 5th, but the Christmas decorations are still up at HFoS towers, and the festive spirit will not wear off until at least April. But enough of that. The New Year brings a new decade, and inevitably more of my nonsense.
Jethro Tull look forward to another year of HFoS
2010 marks the official first birthday of Head Full of Snow, February 8th last year being the hallowed date when all this started with a wee profile of lost psychedelic popsters and brief Beatles’ protégés, Focal Point.
To celebrate this momentous occasion we’ll be doing absolutely nothing. Should you wish to wear a sparkly hat or release a party-popper into the wild on said date, you’re more than welcome.
Which brings me to the intentions for Head Full of Snow into 2010.
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acid-folk, news, prog rock, psychedelic rock
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