Sendelica are the latest band to sign up for some fishy frolicking in the past, with the crabby claws of Fruits de Mer releasing A Nice Pear, their take on The Velvet Underground’s ‘Venus in Furs’ and Funkadelic’s ‘Maggot Brain’; two bands you might be excused for thinking could never find any common ground.

Now, I’m not particularly a fan of The Velvet Underground; I found their The Velvet Underground & Nico album quite dull, and Nico’s tuneless drone, however sporadic, quite irritating. However, if there’s one redeeming feature the album has, it’s ‘Venus in Furs’. Die-hard fans of the group would probably be horrified by such an admission, dismissing the track as “commercial” – as far as a song about a bondage mistress can be deemed “commercial” – or populist, especially as it was chosen to soundtrack an advert for tyres a few years back. But I likes it. Especially when taken in contrast to the turgid noise that makes up the rest of the album. Each to their own and all that.

Of course, this isn’t about The Velvet Underground, or my opinions on their proto-punk garage dealings in despair. It’s about ‘Venus in Furs’… and ‘Maggot Brain’… Oh, and most importantly, Sendelica.

Their version of ‘Venus in Furs’ lacks the industrial grind of the original, but in its place is an equally pleasing psychedelic vibe, seductively ridden by the sultry vocals of lead singer Glenda Pescado, which lends a female aspect to the original song.

Funkadelic I can take or leave. George Clinton is one of the more unapologetically bizarre characters to have come out of the music business in the last fifty or so years; one who has blended psychedelia, funk, soul and whatever else he could find in the kitchen drawer at the time, into the eclectic sound of one nation under a groove, launched into the furthest reaches of space and sampled to death by every rapper and his mentally unhinged dog(g).

Unfamiliar, as I am, with the original ‘Maggot Brain’ – though a quick trip to YouTube would’ve easily remedied that – I can’t compare, but only pass judgement, as is my lot in life, on the Sendelica version.

An altogether more contemplative number than the Funkadelic I’m familiar with, Peter Bingham (the final piece in the Sendelica puzzle) drives this largely instrumental track with a set of guitar strings wrenched from the heart of a grieving mother. The spoken intro is a little unfortunate, as I imagine it would’ve once been delivered by Clinton himself, in those heavy, slightly off-whack tones of his. In Sendelica’s case it sounds a little reedy, but that’s a mere quibble on my part. ‘Maggot Brain’ is a subdued affair, kept alive by a mounting undercurrent of scorching psychedelic guitar. It tugs at the emotions throughout, almost pleading with the listener, and when Glenda Pescado’s ghost-lit vocals drift in at the end, it makes for a haunting climax.

A Nice Pear finds Fruits de Mer back at what they do best, and, in Sendelica, another fine addition to the stable.

A Nice Pear by Sendelica is released on limited edition colour vinyl and available to buy at the end of November. You can place your order at the Fruits de Mer website.

Never fear, all is well, and what better way to return than with the final release from what, for many, will be the sorely missed Bracken Records. The label ran by Andy Bracken, one half of the team behind Fruits de Mer Records – and, incidentally, a very erudite interviewee, as witnessed here and here – is calling it a day.

What better way for the label to go out than to enlist the aid of FdM favourites Cranium Pie (their version of ‘Madman Running Through the Fields‘ is a particular highlight in the Fruits de Mer canon), whose blend of psychedelic progginess keeps the flag flying in 2010 and beyond.

Hailing from the city of Bath, the West Country home to cider-crunchers and the birthplace of the words “ablution” and “gullible”, Cranium Pie sport a sound that, if such a thing was possible, might easily raise the dead from the apathy to which they’ve become accustomed. With the sleeves of their wizard gowns caught firmly in the car door of 1970, the band capture the spirit of the post-psychedelic/proto-prog era with the two songs that make up this limited edition 7″ final offering.

‘Rememberrr’ is awash with intergalactic extrapolations and sounds invoked from the ether, driven on by superior keyboard noodling and occasional bursts of acid-rock guitar, torn from the fingers of Cranium Pie axeman Dano Herro. Occasionally reminiscent of Dark Side of the Moon, it’s safe to say that ‘Rememberrr’ provides a fitting farewell to the Bracken label, without slipping into the needless tedium of the aforementioned Floydian slip.

But wait. There’s more. As I said, there are two tracks on this short but sweet, shining jewel in the often overwhelming slurry that is rather disparagingly referred to, by me if nobody else, as “modern music”.

‘Mothership’ has a title pulled directly from the ethos of many a 70′s prog excursion and mixes meditative passages with gradually building explosions of grinding space rock. Its six minutes represent an otherworldly ecstasy rarely seen in the asinine age of X-Factor, BGT and N-fucking-Dubz.

With the likes of Circulus, The Chemistry Set, Vibravoid and a few more choice bands plying their trade in 2010, long may Cranium Pie reign. As for Bracken Records, may they rest in peace.

Bracken Records website

Cranium Pie website

Cranium Pie MySpace page

The 7″ limited edition vinyl (300 only) that marks the swansong of Bracken Records, is available to buy right here.

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Although known primarily as practitioners of no-nonsense blues-rock boogie, Humble Pie’s second album, Town and Country, did depart to greener pastures, with an almost entirely acoustic and altogether more pastoral sound demonstrated thereon.

It yielded this psychedelic gem, ‘The Light of Love’, easily the best thing Steve Marriot recorded post Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake.

Written by bassist and former Spooky Tooth member, Greg Ridley, ‘The Light of Love’ resonates with the sound we at HFoS love. The sitar that permeates throughout gives it that Eastern-tinged mysticism prevalent within a certain brand of acid rock. It captures the essence of a 1960′s bedsit and sitting cross-legged on the floor around a Dansette record player, toking on Moroccan black as joss sticks burn off-camera.

Arriving in 1969, when the shift towards progressive rock had already rendered psychedelia a spent force, ‘The Light of Love’ provides a decorous farewell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lovnNoGVsOk

‘The Light of Love’ appears on Town and Country by Humble Pie, available from Amazon.co.uk

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Whether you love or hate it, there’s no denying that if at some point over the last 42 years you’ve heard a bit of music, there’s more chance of it being ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ than anything else.

Though not their best song, it managed to capture a moment in the summer of 1967 when, if you were fortunate enough not to have to work for a living and bought into the whole flower power freedom movement, anything seemed possible. The fact it caught on with the mainstream too, quickly elevated AWSoP to the legendary stature it enjoys today.

Its phenomenal success was not solely down to it being a damn fine song. A spot of canny marketing saw the disc released to a pirate radio station first (Radio London), creating a deluge of interest. The single was given an immediate, yet limited, release of 1000 copies, further stoking public enthusiasm for something not everyone had the chance of getting their hands on. When the enormous demand was finally met, record stores in the UK were seen with makeshift signs in the window declaring “A WHITER SHADE OF PALE AVAILABLE HERE”, and the record hit the top spot of the singles charts on June 10th 1967.

Since then ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ has gone on to be both a blessing and a curse to the group. A blessing in that it has made Gary Brooker (vocalist and songwriter) and Keith Reid (the band’s behind the scenes lyricist) a ton of cash. And a curse in that Procol Harum could never shake free of its considerable presence. Despite going on to produce ten albums in ten years, some people will only ever think of them as a one hit wonder.

Court cases aside – Hammond organist Matthew Fisher won a claim to a percentage of the royalties in 2009 – ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ remains to this day a stone cold classic of psychedelia.

Enough of my nonsense, behold the beast!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA

‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ appears as a bonus track on the 40th Anniversary reissue of Procol Harum’s debut album, available from Amazon.co.uk

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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.

The first thing that hits you about ‘Jugband Blues’ is that something isn’t quite right. Is this the composition of a man trapped in the throes of delirium, or the frustrated ventings of a lead singer and writer alienated from the rest of his band, fully aware that the gig is up and the other members are about to oust him? Barrett’s lyrics and mood could be interpreted as either. Whichever it is, ‘Jugband Blues’ makes for a disturbing, if eclectic three minutes.

The fragmented structure mirrors the erratic behaviour of Barrett prior to his unceremonious dismissal from the band and demonstrates why this song is widely regarded as an expression of pained anguish, dragged screaming from the deepest pit of his mental turmoil. A third of the way in, what sounds like a brass band disrupts the proceedings, throwing the song completely off track and into the realms of jaunty ragtime as though the Salvation Army has sent the everyone packing with a fearsome blast of a tuba. It finishes with Barrett’s ghostly voice drifting off into the ether, quite possibly taking his sanity with it.

This is dark territory. Territory that would turn even blacker on Barrett’s first solo album The Madcap Laughs, particularly on the traumatic ‘Dark Globe’ – a song that literally sounds like a scream for help from the wilderness of mental deterioration.

In the case of ‘Jugband Blues’, Syd Barrett’s eerily disjointed vocal sounds like a lost soul – as Roger Waters would go on to describe him in ‘Wish You Were Here’ – alone and afraid in that dark,  windowless room, hoping his words will somehow find a way out and relief from the torment will find its way in.

Scary stuff!

‘Jugband Blues’ appears on A Saucerful of Secrets and is available from Amazon.co.uk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuL1CCJqHEc

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In 1970, between the releases of Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones, looking to go it alone and handle their own business affairs, finished with both their record company Decca and their manager Allen Klein. The contract with Decca required the band to deliver one more single.

‘Cocksucker Blues’ was the result.

The very deliberate decision to submit something that would have consigned Mary Whitehouse to an early grave, in some alternate universe where explicit first-person accounts of a rentboy’s misadventures in London could get airplay, was a vintage piece of Jagger mischief-making. They owed a single and so they delivered one. The fact that it was not only unfit for broadcast but also open to prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act should Decca have taken leave of their senses and released it, was neither here nor there. The fact that it would’ve enraged the stuffed-shirt executives of the record company was everything.

The song was locked away until 1983 when it was issued on a West German Stones compilation The Rest of the Best, before being quickly withdrawn. It’s existed as a bootleg ever since.

The two versions of the song I have are markedly different. One is a longer, extremely rough take, possibly recorded further into the ’70s, with an extended slide guitar jam in the middle; the other a shorter, polished version, which I think is just Mick and Keith and is probably the one they gave Decca the option to put out.

The song itself – particularly the longer version – is a slow-burning blues number; the sort that should carry a health warning. Lyrically it’s completely childish and guaranteed to send your nan into an irreversible state of shock should she hear it prior to the Sunday roast being carved. Nevertheless, the little charm the song can muster resides in the overall sound – the Stones at their lowest, downest and sleaziest – not the puerile shock tactics.

Below is the shorter, ‘single’ version.

WARNING As can probably be surmised by the title, ‘Cocksucker Blues’ is no ‘As Tears Go By’. If offended in anyway by explicit sexual references and the sort of language that would make an Irishman blush then don’t play it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEFhuvg1SEA

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That’s no better demonstrated than on the anti-Vietnam war anthem, ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die’, taken from the sincere but patchy 1967 album of the same name. Unlike many of his peers, Country Joe McDonald wasn’t just content to spout crypto-revolutionary soundbites from the comfort of whatever mansion he was staying in that week; he actually made the effort to get involved at the grass roots level of the protest movement, a move that would see him placed on Richard Nixon’s infamous ‘enemy list’ alongside the likes of Paul Newman, Jane Fonda and John Lennon.

‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’ begins with the ‘Fish Cheer’, a call and response spelling out of the word “F-I-S-H” that would later become “fuck” for their live shows, getting the band thrown off of one tour and banned for life from the Ed Sulivan Show. It then opens out into a jaunty, vaudeville-style, ragtime ditty, bitterly laced with a scathingly satirical attack on the war and those in the US government waging it. This juxtaposition of throwaway tune and serious political comment works surprisingly well – perhaps morseo than had the entire thing been some po-faced dirge – and became a rallying cry amongst the protest movement throughout the 60s and into the 70s, also giving Country Joe and the Fish their best known song.

‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die’ was originally released in 1965 as a Country Joe McDonald solo effort, prior to appearing on the band’s second album.

It goes to show the strength of the actual song that if you were to replace Vietnam with Iraq, Afghanistan, or whichever country America sees fit to invade next; and substitute “Commie” with whoever the perceived threat is this week, it would be as apt today as it was in ’67. Just goes to show, some people never learn.

‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’ appears on I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-To-Die, released by Vanguard Records and available from Amazon.co.uk

For your listening pleasure, take your pick from the original album version or a live, acoustic, Country Joe solo version recorded at the 1969 Woodstock Festival:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBCfeM964s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdeCxJmcAo

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Psychedelic music, be it of the rock or slightly more flowery pop variety, is thoroughly adept when it comes to throwing out a haunting tune. For example, just take Pink Floyd’s ‘Julia Dream’, John Wonderling’s ‘Man of Straw’, H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘White Ship’ or Peter Thorogood’s aptly named ‘Haunted’ – mere examples of a musical genre that often excelled in sending a shiver up the old spine. Syd Barrett’s ‘Golden Hair’, based on a poem by James Joyce, is two minutes worth of ethereal eeriness that for me evokes images of a twilight cottage at the edge of a dark, dark wood, sometime in 1969. Don’t ask.

The overall haunting quality of this short-but-sweet spectral sestina is fortified by the ambiguity of Barrett’s mental state during the recording of ‘Golden Hair’ and the album it comes from, 1970′s The Madcap Laughs. Having been unceremoniously ejected from The Pink Floyd, the band he co-founded,  due to erratic behaviour resulting from overt LSD and substance abuse (similar in many ways to Brian Jones with the Stones), the toll it had taken is evident throughout the album and his follow-up, Barrett, particularly in the outtakes included on the CD reissues.

‘Golden Hair’, however, manages to get it just right. Produced by Dave Gilmour, the man drafted into Pink Floyd to eventually replace Barrett, it ticks all the boxes in doing what it sets out to. Barrett’s lilting vocal, the sparsely strummed guitar and haunting single note that sounds ominously in the background, coupled with the intermittent shiver of a cymbal gives this unconventional song – is it more a recital? – a truly unearthly feel.

Golden Hair appears on Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs, available from Amazon.co.uk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfvh8nn_JkM

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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.

There’s a brief moment towards the end of the song where the grimness is suddenly offset by a jaunty, lounge-room style piano interlude, accompanied by Eric Burdon stating in a faux upper class accent, “… Yes, here we all are having a jolly good time, And everything is working out fine …” harking sarcastically back to the repeatedly condemned ‘good times’ with its exclusive cocktail lounge ambience.

But this levity is short-lived as we are thrust back into the dark, churning tumult of self-loathing.

‘Good Times’ is quite different to the Vox Continental (apparently not Hammond) organ-driven sound of the Animals’ biggest hit, their clipped version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’, with a slightly more uptempo, traditional orchestral arrangement, typical of certain Rolling Stones songs of that era.

Indeed, you can’t beat a spot of self-pity and regret on a Sunday afternoon (as I write this), with the prospect of another week in a life-sapping, soul-destroying job facing you and the thought that had you not pissed about so much in the past, things could’ve been so different. For those moments, ‘Good Times’ by Eric Burdon and the Animals is very apt indeed.

“… When I was drinking, I should’ve been thinking …” Wise words, indeed.

‘Good Times’ was released as a single in August of 1967, backed with ‘Ain’t That So’, and is available on the album Winds of Change from Amazon.co.uk

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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.

Early Hawkwind was a group embracing both psychedelic and prog rock, touching on the experimental without being avant-garde. If a comparison of their sound is needed then it would have to be with the prolonged spaced-out jams of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. In fact Hawkwind were so spaced out they even recruited legendary sci-fi writer and fellow Ladbroke Grove resident, Michael Moorcock, not only to write some of their lyrics but also to make the occasional appearance on stage to ‘perform’ said lyrics.

But back to ‘We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago’, taken from their second album, In Search Of Space. This is Hawkwind at perhaps their most orthodox – yet still startlingly eerie – and none the worse for it.

The song’s message is as resonant now as it was back then, criticising the path along which society was blindly headed. 38 years on and it’s pretty much the same story. “Think about the things that we should have done before, The way things are going the end is about to fall.” The end might have yet to befall us but the same uncertainty for the future still hangs in the air, with the then ogres of cold war and nuclear threat now shunted unceremoniously aside by global terrorism and economic crisis.

‘We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago’ uses an array of ethereal sounds throughout, gently blending between the jangly-guitar driven foreground, as it pitches its stall firmly in the grounds of what would now be dismissed as new-age, lentil-casserole ideology. Particularly the snatches of seagull calls and bursts of keyboard noodling that reproduce whale song, intended or not. Quite amazing for a band that would go on to become a byword for excess. Nevertheless it all adds up to a mix that is both eerie and “out there”. The “out there” fitting in with the far-out spaciness of the rest of the album.

Written by guitarist, singer and pivotal member through a seemingly ever-changing line-up, Dave Brock, the lyrics foretell nature’s own warnings of the rape and pillage of the planet remaining unheeded, a topic just as popular today, with a chorus of  “… we took the wrong step years ago …” throughout, acting like a refrain.

Overall it is a powerful song, the occasionally off-key and flat delivery underscoring its message perfectly. One for the collection methinks.

‘We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago’ appears on 1971′s In Search Of Space, available from Amazon.co.uk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNE6D5Vp9Pg

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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?).

Image from: The Purple Gang website

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.

If the essence of happiness could be captured, processed, bottled, trussed up with colourful ribbons and glitter, and smashed into the face of clown whose six numbers have just come up on the lottery, then this is what it would probably sound like. And even if it didn’t, it must come pretty damn close. Songs featuring kazoos can’t help but have a jaunty edge – another one I’ve just thought of is ‘Pennsylvania 6500′ on a Muppets record I once had, a veritable kazoo-fest – but this is quickly put into perspective when you listen to the lyrics, which are actually quite sad.

It is a tale of unfilled dreams, as the titular Granny makes her annual pilgrimage to Hollywood to get turned down by the casting producers en masse. If there’s a drug reference in here other than an ambiguous title, then I’m buggered if I can find it. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop the BBC banning the song when it was released in 1967, because of the LSD inference of the word ‘Trip’. The fact that the lead singer, Pete Walker, was also nicknamed ‘Lucifer’ prompted the BBC to announce that the group “would not be tolerated by any decent society”. A statement that now seems lost on an organisation that sees fit to foist Chris Moyles on its listenership each and every morning.

Overall, this is a perfect example of a very British brand of psychedelia. The proponents of which, such as The Kinks, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, The Idle Race, and for a time The Beatles, dealt largely in whimsy as opposed to the more in-yer-face acid freakouts of their American counterparts.

And if a kazoo-solo isn’t enough to warrant your interest, then hell’s teeth! They’ve even thrown in a washboard for good measure!

‘Granny Takes a Trip’ appears on the album The Purple Gang Strikes, presently out of print. It can be found on the compilation, The Story of Transatlantic Records: the UK’s Pioneering Folk Label at Amazon.co.uk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqh_bh77hK0

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Image from: Chelsea Records UK

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?

Before we investigate any further it’s worth noting that this is the British Kaleidoscope, not the American psychedelic band of the same name that existed at the same time. Our Kaleidoscope had a far more folky edge to their brand of psychedelia, in places sounding dangerously like The Incredible String Band, but infinitely better.

‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’ is an incredibly dark song. It’s imagery brings to mind the nightmarish stop-motion animations of the Quay Brothers and could either allude to an actual nightmare or a bad acid trip.

“The crooked faces of clocks appear and die in nightmare dreams, While juggling music surrounds us both and turns our thoughts to screams…”

This is a place where silhouettes tap the windows, laughing one-armed bandits disappear into the shadows and, of course, the spiders are everywhere.

Released on the 1967 album, Tangerine Dream, ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’ takes the carefree jollity of some British psych-pop to its more sinister reaches, as far from Kaleidoscope’s own fairytale magnum opus of ‘Sky Children’ or the overwhelming jauntiness of ‘Jenny Artichoke’ – also on Tangerine Dream – as it’s possible to get.

But this is crafted darkness, more in tune with the writings of the Brothers Grimm than the darkness of one of psychedelia’s most famous acid-casualty’s,  Syd Barrett, whose descent into complete mental collapse is suggested on his  final Pink Floyd recording, ‘Jugband Blues’, and sometimes horribly evident on his two subsequent solo albums.

With a pleasantly catchy tune, interspersed with an array of haunting sound effects, and an eerily matter-of-fact delivery from vocalist/songwriter Peter Daltrey, ‘(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion’ is a top-drawer example of psychedelic-folk-pop; something at which Kaleidoscope excelled, yet never gained the recognition they truly deserved.

(Further Reflections) In the Room of Percussion is available on Kaleidoscope’s Tangerine Dream

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Image from: Black Sabbath Fans

‘Planet Caravan’ is for anybody who at sometime in their life has closed their eyes and wished they were someplace else, far away. It’s for all the dreamers and those that live in hope that one day there might just be something better than what they’ve presently got.

It stems from a time long before any unsuspecting bat found itself minus a head to the tune of one and Ozzy Osbourne was still capable of stringing  a coherent sentence together. Although coming from Aston – just up the road from where this reviewer sits now – that’s possibly open to debate.

In all honesty, it’s difficult to convey in words the ethereal wonder of this psychedelic/prog rock classic taken from the 1970 Black Sabbath album Paranoid. To do it any real justice, this review should really read: GO LISTEN, NOW!

But of course that would be rather dull for anyone foolish enough to be hanging upon my every word, so I shall press on regardless and try my best to elaborate on the previous three word instruction: GO LISTEN, NOW!

It has to be said that ‘Planet Caravan’ is markedly different to anything else that appears on 1970′s Paranoid album, both in tone and lyrics. For those expecting a headbanging, sweaty mosh-pit filler of a song (something for which Black Sabbath was to become the chief exponents), it must be said that the whole album rises above such ludicrous posturing and this track elevates it to another plane entirely. The dreamy, abstract quality comes almost as quiet relief when sat (perhaps a little uneasily) alongside the more formal, heavy-duty rockers driven by social issues/concern such as ‘War Pigs’ (insanity of war) or ‘Hand Of Doom’ (drug abuse).

Ozzy’s voice in particular is an essential component of this overall mix. The familiar nasalesque whine discarded in favour of a mellower, lulling vocal, its eerie character achieved by singing through a Leslie speaker, a method pioneered by The Beatles on the psychedelic tripsters ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Blue Jay Way’.

Through a swirling, hazy soundscape consisting of bass, lilting guitar, snatches of interplanetary sounds and bongos it’s possible to imagine yourself drifting off on a hallucinogenic wave to far off, unchartered and nomadic lands. “We sailed through endless skies, Stars shine like eyes” as the opening lines state. A psychedelic trip committed to record.

The best song of an excellent album and a definite high in a long career of highs and serious lows for both the band and Ozzy Osbourne.

As I said, it’s for the dreamers out there – let it take you away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H72-4idYFug

‘Planet Caravan’ is on Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album, available from Amazon.co.uk

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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.

Those turning up expecting to see the clean-cut, cheeky chappy personas immortalised in their popular TV series and fronting worldwide hits such as ‘Daydream Believer’ and ‘I’m a Believer’ were in for quite the shock. For this attempt at a psychedelic headfuck made little sense to their core audience (or anybody else for that matter) and was dismissed by the audience whose acceptance they so craved as a cynical stab at ingratiation. The fact of the matter was – whoever the audience – the faux, crowbarred-in acid trip imagery ensured it would be a box office failure. Throw into this bizarre mix cameos by the likes of Victor Mature, Sonny Liston, Frank Zappa (whose influence was evident in the direction The Monkees wished to take) and Toni Basil, perhaps more famous for the 80′s standard and MTV favourite ‘Mickey’, and you have all the ingredients in place for a musical disaster of Heaven’s Gate proportions – although it didn’t cause the collapse of any film studios.

However, if one good thing came out of the resulting mess then it’s this four minute psychedelic nugget, ‘Porpoise Song’.

Written by the then husband and wife team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Porpoise Song’s abstract lyrics revolve around an unexplained laughing porpoise, as well as throwing in such random lines as “Riding the backs of Giraffes for laughs” and assorted other psychedelic shenanigans. But it is the beautiful string arrangement by a certain Jack Nitzsche – the architect of the early Rolling Stones sound, producer of two of the finest tracks on Neil Young’s Harvest album, and Oscar-winning film composer – that really puts ‘Porpoise Song’ up there with the cream of the late 60′s acid/hippy musical sojourns.

Coupled with the haunting vocals of Mickey Dolenz it evokes images of something mysterious and wonderful – the far off, magical lands that lie just beyond the horizons of our imaginations. And so long as you refrain from doing anything as daft as attempting to analyse the lyrics, or perhaps even listen to them (let the musical landscape envelope you instead) those far-off lands remain for the taking with each and every listen.

‘Porpoise Song (Theme from Head)’ was released as a single and backed by ‘As We Go Along’. Both are available on the Head soundtrack by The Monkees, reissued on Rhino records.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2VxtzQdYg8

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In the time that H.P. Lovecraft existed in their original form they released two albums; the imaginatively titled H.P. Lovecraft and H.P. Lovecraft II. It is from the second album that ‘Electrallentando’ is taken.

This haunting, largely experimental track begins with a prolonged shivering of shimmery bells that sounds a little like something slowly shambling towards the listener adorned in wind chimes. The song slowly seeps into the consciousness with a blend of spaced-out organ sounds and a gentle guitar melody, supported by the occasional beat of a mystical drum, until the words “Whirling… Twirling… Swirling…” drift through on the ethereal breeze.

‘Electrallentando’ practically drips with the essence of the late 60′s counter culture, evoking images of incense heavy bedsits with beaded curtains in place of doors and folk sat around toking joints and sipping hooch. With allusions to flying and dreaming constant throughout, its trippiness weighs as heavy as the intermittent beat of the bass drum, building gradually to a ‘White Rabbit’ style crescendo before floating effortlessly away on a faint ripple of sound.

Not one for everybody as its unconventional form and lack of standard structure may be off-putting to those weaned on the jaunty pop-psych of say, Grapefruit or Tomorrow, but for those willing to sit back and unlock their mind, ‘Electrallentando” is a superior slice of psychedelic rock. One that will certainly leave you – as it did this reviewer – wanting to hear a lot more of the H.P. Lovecraft sound.

‘Electrallentando’ appears on the album H.P. Lovecraft II available from Amazon.co.uk

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