Like Samson, the hair maketh the man, bestowing its bearer with superhuman powers and the ability to extract the most vindictive of riffs from a Fender Strat, while simultaneously protecting them from the ravages of hard drugs, hard booze and even harder women.

It’s widely known that Edgar Broughton used his barnet to avert the destruction of California, when nuclear rockets were fired into the San Andreas Fault by a rogue businessman. That Mick Farren managed to stop the nefarious actions of an alien emperor, determined to obliterate the earth through a series of seemingly natural disasters. And who can forget certain members of The Pink Fairies foiling a fearsome foursome who’d dehydrated and kidnapped members of the United World Organisation’s Security Council?

Happy days. And you’ll be pleased to hear that the aforementioned left-leaning, heroes of hirsute hedonism are all represented on Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78, along with a roll call of similarly tuned hairy heathens. All of whom inhabited this enclave of the English counterculture back when it was acceptable for “the fuzz” to unleash their truncheons upon anybody merely suspected of growing their hair in public.

A glance at those assembled herein is enough to flood the sensory receptors with the pungent scent of hashish and the herbal aroma of gently smouldering sweat. Hawkwind, Quintessence, Arthur Brown, The Deviants, Stray, The Pretty Things and Peter Bardens are all present and correct, unleashing an arsenal of psychedelic and progressive rock upon those that mean to do the world harm. But there are also some fine excursions from lesser known acts.

‘Children of the Sun’ is a suitably energetic spaced out romp, courtesy of Misunderstood, as is ‘Man in the Moon’ by The Village. With the sun and the moon accommodated for what else is there?

Worthy of mention is The Action’s ‘A Saying for Today’, Skin Alley’s ‘Bad Words, Evil People’ and, former Pretty Things and Pink Fairies drummer, Twink’s ‘Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box’.

Add to this the acid-infused growl from the darkness that is Sam Gopal’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Mighty Baby’s ‘House Without Windows’, and the fact you’re onto a good thing goes without saying. High Tide’s ‘Death Warmed Up’ and Robert Calvert’s ‘Ejection’ shakes hands on the deal without even having to mention what line of excellence the Broughtons, Hawkwind or Quintessence have to offer.

With 32 tracks of the psychedelic, the progressive and the proto-punk, Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78 is a compilation well worth paying on the door for. There may be one or two duds peppered along the way (for example, Tomorrow’s ‘Revolution’ will always be ruined for me by the embarrassing intro), but one can only assume that the artists in question had had the shears taken to their barnets prior to entering the studio, thus draining them of their far-out abilities. But for the vast majority of Cries From the Midnight Circus the hair has triumphed, ensuring this world remains a safer place to live. Thank you, collective hairies*, how can we ever repay you?

*Not to be confused with the Special Branch underground infiltrators, dubbed “the hairies”

Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78 is released as a two disc box-set by Sanctuary, and is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Cries From the Midnight Circus – Ladbroke Grove 1967-78

That can be the only the reason they saw fit to put out albums as though they were playing at a festival. And you could do worse than getting stoned yourself prior to listening to this. I didn’t and still enjoyed it. Imagine what it would be like having smoked half a kilo of Dutchman’s fancy, or even tripping on an acid-soaked Yellow Pages.

Heavy, man. REAL heavy.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology is a two disc affair, collecting together the lion’s share of these fabulous furry freak brothers’ Decca output, recorded between 1969 and 1971. I say lion’s share as there’s no inclusion of the tracks from debut album Clark-Hutchinson, which Decca refused to release on the grounds that the track ‘Make You’ was obscene. But that’s a very different sounding album and not really missed when you tot up what we’ve got here.

1969′s A=MH² – Check. 1970′s Retribution – Check. 1971′s Gestalt – Check. It’s all here, all present and correct and in the appropriate order.

Disc 1 takes the five tracks from A=MH² and also slips in the first two tracks from Retribution at the end, presumably for purposes of space.

Extensive instrumental workouts are the order of the day in the first instance, solely delivered by the two named players, Andy Clark and Mick Hutchinson. They were multi-instrumentalists and veterans of the underground scene, having played with, among others, psychedelic tabla abuser, Sam Gopal.

The opening track, the ten minute ‘Improvisation on a Modal Scale’, features a horrendously catchy hook and lays the foundations for what’s to come, in its implementation of all manner of instrumentation and heavy misuse of a guitar. Only the Eastern-influenced ‘Improvisation on an Indian Scale’ can match it for intensity, hitting the 13 minute mark and leaving you to wonder who snuffed out the joss-sticks.

For Retribution, here spread over the two discs, they kept to the five song format but hauled in a band to help out along the way. When you’re bassist’s name is Amazing Steven Amazing, you know things are going to be good. This time around they also included lyrics, which are howled in a manner that suggests somebody was stood on vocalist Andy Clark’s foot.

But this is music designed to be belted from a stage in the general direction of an audience made up of wild hair and joints the size of a Danvers carrot. ‘Free to be Stoned’ backs this assertion up and, despite the jazzy glitch of ‘After Hours’, things continue in pretty much the same vein, finishing with the Arthur Brown-esque ‘Death, the Lover’, which pummels the listener into a lysergic submission with its vocal refrain repeated over in a manner guaranteed to leave small children disturbed for the next twenty years of their lives.

Gestalt, Clark-Hutchinson’s final album is a less in your face offering (though ‘Poison’ begs to differ), but one that remains tuned to the late sixties/early seventies festival crowd. The songs are shorter but they continue the acid rock, freak out feel with the definite scent of something a little stronger than herbal tea leaking from the speakers throughout.

As said somewhere at the start of this review, what seems like a short lifetime ago, you don’t need to be hairy, a hippy, or sat in a field smoking the contents of granny’s window box to enjoy Free to be Stoned. I did say that, didn’t I?

Of course, if you’re any of the above, it may well enhance your enjoyment.

If you’re a connoisseur of the Great British underground, a place inhabited by a sterling assortment of hairies such as Arthur Brown, the Edgar Broughton Band, Mighty Baby, Quintessence, Sam Gopal and the ubiquitous Hawkwind, then this will be right up your street. Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology gets the seal of approval and is another strong release from the label that’s putting all others to shame with its prog and psychedelic reisssues, the mighty Esoteric Recordings.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology by Clark-Hutchinson is a two disc set, available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Clark-Hutchinson – Free to be Stoned

Sam Gopal’s Escalator, that’s what you get.

I didn’t say it was funny. I don’t think I actually said it was a joke. And neither is this album. Sam Gopal’s Escalator is serious stuff. Serious, acid-induced psychedelic rock, chiselled from a slab of blackest granite.

Travelling on a subsonic undercurrent, 1969′s Escalator menaces and petrifies in turn, and the very presence of future Hawkwind and Motorhead bassist Lemmy, should be enough to ward off the faint of heart. Probably for the best as I fear they wouldn’t survive the trip.

Firstly though, a brief history lesson. Please pay attention there at the back; I may be asking questions at the end.

Tabla playing Sam Gopal came to Britain in 1962 to study music. In 1967 he fell in with the hairiest of hippy-types circulating around the enormously hairy Ladbroke Grove underground scene and launched the Sam Gopal Dream, featuring amidst its fold the eponymous members of Clark-Hutchinson. A year later the band had changed, Lemmy had joined and they were simply called Sam Gopal. Lesson endeth.

Lemmy, who provided vocals as well as playing lead and rhythm guitar, claims to have written all the songs on Escalator in one night, whilst spannered on speed. Anybody who cares to dispute this is welcome to take it up with the man himself, though with the reputation that precedes him, you could well crawl away sporting his bass guitar as a head ornament.

All I can say on the matter is if Methedrine be the drug of creativity, then toot on. You may have sore gums in the morning, but you might also have something as good as this. Escalator is dark, heavy psych, shot through with a mean streak and sense of forboding that’s as far from peace, love and bloody flowers as one can get without actually killing anybody.

Speaking of which, the shot emblazoned proudly across Escalator’s cover depicts a band with physical harm on their minds, and woe betide whoever it was they’d caught looking at their pints.

Is it any good though? You might as well ask if the chance of Aston Villa bringing home any silverware next season is zero. Of course it is. Keep believing.

Yes, Sam Gopal’s Escalator is a crackling, fuzzed out journey through the murkier waters of British psychedelic rock, underpinned by the menacing snarl of a perpetually throbbing bass, courtesy of one Phil Duke. I could pick out individual tracks, such as the bowel-loosening ‘Cold Embrace’ or the trippily mellow ‘Yesterlove’, but that would be pointless. It’s all good stuff! There’s even room for an unsettling cover of Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’, which is no bad thing.

Sam Gopal’s percussion antics, mainly on the aforementioned tabla (a type of Indian drum), add the almost required air of late sixties Eastern promise, occasionally tempering the more sinister elements throughout.

The 2010 reissue of Sam Gopal’s Escalator features two bonus tracks, the single and heroin metaphor ‘Horse’ and its B-side ‘Back Door Man’.

And so to end: how hairy was the Ladbroke Grove underground scene? Hope you were paying attention. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Escalator by Sam Gopal is reissued on Esoteric and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Sam Gopal – Escalator

‘Love in the Rain’ is taken from the debut album Wasa Wasa and is presented here in a shorter version -- the original running for just shy of four minutes.

I’m guessing that it’s been cut down from a much longer Broughton-style freakout of guitars and feedback and would be interested if anybody could tell me where this footage comes from. It appears to be some German TV programme and it would be great to see the rest.

Anyways, enough of that. Here’s HFoS favourites the Edgar Broughton Band with ‘Love in the Rain’.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGTUUDVpNms

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Edgar Broughton Band -- Love in the Rain

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.

The silence that exists just prior to placing this CD in the stereo, is well and truly obliterated by the opening track, ‘Death of an Electric Citizen’. With a throbbing blues riff and Rob Broughton’s unconventional vocal – sounding as though he’s been liberated from a home for rabid preachers for the express purpose of raining fire and brimstone down upon you – it takes a hold, turns you upside down and proceeds to shake the loose change from your pockets.

Wasa Wasa continues the trend set by the opener throughout, representing the Edgar Broughton Band in their rawest, most dishevelled form. It crawls from the deepest, darkest, filthiest ditch, reeking of cheap booze, and sets about you without so much as a by-your-leave or the courtesy of an introduction. The eight tracks on the original release mix psychedelic rock, blues and progressive elements into one foul, frantically bubbling cauldron; creating a uniquely out of this world fug that’s dense enough to bring down small aircraft.

‘Death of an Electric Citizen’ gives way to the biting satirical attack  on American foreign policy, specifically Vietnam, ‘American Boy Soldier’ – an extended, even more acerbic version of which can be found on the excellent live album Keep Them Freaks a Rollin’ – Live at Abbey Road – which sowed the seeds for the full-on approach the Edgar Broughton Band would take towards social commentary within their songs. In fact they, along with partners-in-crime such as Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies,  have often been labelled the proto-punk, not only because of their rough and ready style and healthy distrust of authority, but also their fervour to get behind radical causes and highlight injustices in their lyrics. This would manifest more overtly in future songs such as ‘Up Yours’, ‘Side by Side’, ‘I Got Mad’, ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’,  and ‘Eviction’, to a name a few.

The hard-edged intensity of Wasa Wasa is no better demonstrated than on ‘Evil’, a psychedelic meat market of driving guitar and bass, ferocious drumming and hallucinatory lyrics, whose demonic presence might’ve lead to the band’s rallying cry and show-closer ‘Out Demons Out’. Elsewhere the likes of ‘Neptune’, with its heavy phasing, retain the otherworldly ambience and songs like ‘Crying’ and ‘Love in the Rain‘ ensure the pace never lets up. The only minor blemish on an otherwise spotless hymsheet is the fourteen minute closer ‘Dawn Crept Away’, which perhaps could’ve benefited from being a bit shorter, although it works if taken strictly as a studio representation of one of their live freakouts.

The Harvest reissue features five bonus tracks. Four are demos of blistering blues numbers recorded as the Edgar Broughton Blues Band in 1965/1966 and the fifth is a ten minute instrumental jam called ‘Untitled Freak Out’, simply because it has no actual title.

Less tribal sounding than the excellent follow-up, Sing Brother Sing, and considerably less polished than the remaining Harvest albums, The Edgar Broughton Band, Inside Out, and Oora, Wasa Wasa is nevertheless a remarkably confident and bruising debut.

Wasa Wasa is released on the EMI/ Harvest label and available from Amazon.co.uk

See also:

The Edgar Broughton Band “Meat” Album

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The Edgar Broughton Band – Wasa Wasa

Revolution was, after all, big business.

So in honour of some of these Che charlatons who turned tail and fled as soon as the going got tough, Head Full of Snow brings you 5 songs with which to spark a revolution (or not).

The Rolling Stones -- Street Fighting Man

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRqtKLskPQs

An absolute stormer of a track and one that was written at a time when the anti-Vietnam war protests had spread as far afield as London, sparking riots and encouraging Mick Jagger himself to take to the streets and… stand on the sidelines taking photos of the ensuing chaos. Jagger was perhaps the biggest pretender to the revolutionary throne, toying with the imagery during the era of Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, but soon getting bored and leaving it all behind to concentrate on becoming the mucky little devil we all know today. ‘Street Fighting Man’ appears on 1968′s Beggars Banquet.

The Pink Fairies -- Right On, Fight On

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TU517Qb1Ok

In contrast to Jagger and his cronies, The Pink Fairies (nee The Deviants) at least made some attempt at revolutionary zeal. As part of the Ladbroke Grove underground scene, along with with the likes of The Edgar Broughton Band and Hawkwind, they would play free concerts and benefits for various good causes, sometimes even turning up uninvited and playing, just to further their anarchist agenda of ‘free music for the people’. ‘Right On, Fight On’ comes from their 1972 album What a Bunch of Sweeties and sounds like the precursor to social upheaval, the morning prior to the revolution, so to speak.

Jefferson Airplane -- Volunteers

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU

Jefferson Airplane were quick to place themselves behind every single right-on movement going during the lates 60s -- Grace Slick famously blacking up for a performance of ‘Lather’ on the Smothers Brothers show, in support of the Black Panther Party. However, when it came to leading from the front they were a little less forthcoming, content to encourage uprising from the stage before buggering off in their chauffeur-driven Cadillacs. Their commitment was spelt out as little more than youthful rebellion when, once revolutionary fervour had died down, songwriter and rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner said, “We were all punks in high school and we were always rebelling against authority.” The culmination of all this political bravado and revolutionary-chic comes with ‘Volunteers’ from the album of the same name, a sonic call to arms for revolutionaries the world over.

Thunderclap Newman -- Something in the Air

www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9oxyqLWoEI

It’s pretty safe to say that Thunderclap Newman were never going to be the band that kickstarted the revolution. Not unless sedition and social equality were to be brought about by a man who looked like a chartered accountant and a schoolboy. Nevertheless, Pete Townshend’s proteges had a crack of the whip in 1969 with this post-psychedelia standard that’s been used to advertise everything from British Airways to mobile phones… Hand out the arms and ammo, indeed.

Joan Baez -- Joe Hill

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5po2p8V-SRs

Quiet revolutions are often the most effective, shunning the drawn-out battles in favour of change that happens overnight. The Russian revolution has gone down in history as a spectacular event culminating in the storming of the Winter Palace, whereas in reality there was little, if at all any, bloodshed. The real Joe Hill was a Swedish immigrant trade union activist, executed by firing squad on trumped up charges in the United States. His name has since gone on to reach almost mythological proportions within the labour movement, largely thanks to a number of folk songs highlighting his plight. This particular one was written in 1936 and is here performed by Joan Baez -- who was at least prepared to go to jail for her beliefs, as she did for her anti-war activism. It doesn’t need the cannons firing and guns blazing to invoke passion. ‘Joe Hill’ settles for the quieter revolution.

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5 Songs with which to Spark a Revolution

Indeed, nothing else on “The Meat Album”* lives up to this starter for ten, but that’s not to say the rest isn’t any cop. Quite the opposite in fact. It keeps you pinned against the wall throughout, just in case you were entertaining ideas of slipping quietly away.

Warwick’s very own hairy freaks, the Edgar Broughton Band, released their third album in 1971 and strengthened their reputation as the progressive, pro-anarchist frontrunners of the British underground music scene.

The opener gives way to ‘The Birth’, submerging the listener in a mire of sleazy, lowdown and dirty, blues-driven drainage ditch rock. It’s this blues edge – harking back to the band’s roots as The Edgar Broughton Blues Band -  that fuels the rest of the album, notably on ‘Getting Hard (into) What is a Woman Really For?’

There are plenty of other elements thrown into this simmering cooking pot of barely supressed disillusion and anger, such as the country-rock, cinematic soundscape of the aforementioned ‘Evening Over Rooftops’; the raw country-blues of ‘Poppy’ and bonus track ‘Bring it on Home’; the folkie, pastoral sound of ‘Thinking of You’ and ‘Piece of my Own’; through to the progressive panorama of ‘For Doctor Spock  Part One/Part Two’.

The Edgar Broughton Band were always as far from the realms of the spacy/fantasy variety of some of the more excessive prog rock bands as it was possible to get, rooting themselves firmly in the role of social commentators, a la Jethro Tull, and combining it with an infinitely harder edge.

Moving to Notting Hill Gate and becoming a part of the Ladbroke Grove scene – along with the likes of Hawkwind, The Deviants/ The Pink Fairies, The Pretty Things, Quintessence and Mighty Baby – it’s the rawness and dissatisfaction with their lot associated with this underground movement of the late 60s and early 70s that is evident throughout “The Meat Album”.

Bonus tracks are the aforementioned and unreleased ‘Bring it on Home’ and the sublime acoustic single ‘Hotel Room’, backed with the fierce ‘Call me a Liar’, the former of which was named Tony Blackburn’s ‘Single of the Week’ in 1972, despite the toupee’d tit stating that he “hated everything the band stood for”. And if Tony Blackburn hated them, they must be good.

This album sits firmly in the realms of spot on, and is worth getting for ‘Evening Over Rooftops’ alone.

*Incidentally, “The Meat Album” lacks an official title and has come to be known as such because of its cover, which depicts rows of animal carcasses in an abattoir, amongst which a naked human hangs.

The Edgar Broughton Band is released on the EMI/ Harvest label and available from Amazon.co.uk

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The Edgar Broughton Band – “The Meat Album”

The Edgar Broughton Band’s ‘Evening Over Rooftops’ from the 1971 eponymously titled album, is a majestic slice of progessive rock that evokes a certain Western feel with its country rock elements (don’t let that put you off) and the sweeping soundscape that gently builds as the song goes on.

How far are we from dying, indeed!

They don’t come much better than this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3v0ToMWzZQ

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The Edgar Broughton Band -- Evening Over Rooftops