If spotting obscure references to even more obscure 60′s psychedelia is your thing (and there are, indeed, worse things you could be doing with your spare time) then The Dukes Of Stratosphear is the band for you.
A side-project of new wave act, XTC, The Dukes Of Stratosphear released an EP 25 O’Clock in 1985 and the album Psionic Psunspot in 1987. Chips From the Chocolate Fireball is the aforementioned records collected onto one disc, and what a belter it is.
Swimming in a sea of Tomorrow, Kaleidoscope, Pink Floyd, Grapefruit and numerous other British and US psychedelic bands, The Dukes Of Stratosphear dip into this proud heritage, gifting us an album that sounds like it’s the real deal and could easily pass for a lost work from that much cherished era.
The quirky, lyrical and often whimsical Idle Race emerged out of the ashes of The Nightriders – the Birmingham beat group that had one time counted Roy Wood amongst its ranks – following the arrival of Jeff Lynne, Wood cohort in The Move and then the Electric Light Orchestra. With the core Nightriders line-up of Dave Pritchard (rhythm guitar), Greg Masters (bass) and Roger Spencer (drums), Lynne took on vocal and lead guitar duties, got busy writing some psychedelic tunes, and in 1968 they released their debut album, The Birthday Party.
Maintaining a steady balance between psychedelic rock and psych-pop, The Birthday Party avoids slipping into the heavily phased and prolonged freakouts that sometimes characterised the former, without drifting into the overt feyness that often brushed a ruffled shirt cuff against the latter.
Jaunty is a good way to describe the album, with plenty of quirky touches and lyrics to match. Jeff Lynne’s vocal style and delivery (long before he acquired the mid-atlantic accent of later ELO records) match his subject matter perfectly and the use of sound effects throughout – and in the case of the exquisite ‘The Lady Who Said She Could Fly’, orchestral lavishment – is spot on.
In need of cheering up? I certainly am. Following a week of unbearable heat and now thunderstorms, lightning and perpetual rain (not so bad, in my opinion), a dose of the absurd might be in order. What better than the Idle Race?
The master class in how to reissue an album continues with Fly Records’ and Salvo’s Procol Harum releases. Yes, the label and distributor behind the recent Move reissues have come up trumps again, putting to shame the first round of Universal’s Rolling Stones ’71-onwards remasters.
First one out the trap, the group’s debut from 1967 (though not released in the UK until January ’68) simply titled Procol Harum, which arrived in the wake of the record breaking success of ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. Recently named number one in a BBC Radio 2 chart of ‘Most played songs in public places’, the “Summer of Love” favourite was left off the original album – as was often the case with singles in those days – but is restored here as one of the eleven bonus tracks in all its classical, Hammond organ-soaked psychedelic glory. The rest of the album’s not half bad either.
What’s this? Why on earth is the bearded chicken-botherer gracing these pages? Is Head Full of Snow really that desperate for something to put up at the weekend?
Maybe… But wait! This isn’t your normal Kenny Rogers. This is Kenny Rogers smacked off his tits on some hallucinogenic, psychedelic sound, whilst idling on a kaleidoscopic duvet.
This is where it all started for Roy Wood and The Move, with their debut album simply titled, The Move, recorded on and off over a 14 month period and finally released in 1968.
Okay, it might seem unfair to single out Roy Wood, as The Move were – at the time of recording, at least – Carl Wayne, Bev Bevan, Trevor Burton and Chris ‘Ace’ Kefford, but being the creative whirlwind responsible for the lion’s share of their songs, the two are, and always will be, inextricably linked. Even if nowadays you are more likely to think of Christmas at the mention of his name.
But back to the album, here presented in another expanded, digipack reissue by Fly Records. This one’s a lavish two-disc affair with the usual, informative booklet, and featuring on disc one the original mono album as it was released in April 1968, complete with bonus tracks of the single A and B-sides that didn’t feature. Disc two is called ‘New Movement’ and is a newly created stereo mix of the original album with a slightly different track listing and a couple of alternate versions.
The End’s one and only album, Introspection, may have fallen along the wayside following its much delayed 1969 release but in the intervening years up until its CD reissue it acquired a certain amount of mystique amongst lovers of psychedelia. This was as a result of the Rolling Stones connections the album enjoyed, having none other than Bill Wyman on production duties.
Partially recorded at the same time as the Stones were recording Their Satanic Majesties Request one might be forgiven for expecting to hear a powerhouse of psychedelic rock; a companion piece to the Stones’ album.
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.
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…
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.
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.
“… 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?
‘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.
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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