Horses was a Los Angeles band pieced together by the crack songwriting team of John Carter and Tim Gilbert following the success of their lysergic bubblegum anthem " Incense and Peppermints " for the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Toting a bag full of new Carter and Gilbert songs, Horses recorded one album for the White Whale label in 1969, likely expecting the excitement around the Strawberry Alarm Clock's record to carry over to their own. However, things weren't quite that easy, and their self-titled record went nowhere fast despite containing a wealth of great material. The first cut on [...]
In 1970, Sandy Denny's departure from British Folk heroes Fairport Convention brought us Fotheringay, named after Denny's original composition "Fotheringay" (about Fotheringay Castle), which appeared on Fairport Convention's 1969 album What We Did on Our Holidays . Two former members of Eclection (Trevor Lucas, who would become Denny's future husband, and Gerry Conway), and two former members of Poet and the One Man Band (Pat Donaldson and Jerry Donahue) completed the line-up. The newly formed group was ready to head in to the studio, and give us their first (and long believed to be) only album. Fotheringay [...]
You may not recognise the name John Charles Alder, but his musical DNA is already deeply ingrained within these pages. Drummer, percussionist and all-round looner Twink, whose nickname was bestowed by his waggish friends because his mass of (naturally) curly hair suggested a 1960s home perm product, thumped the tubs for psych maestros Tomorrow , kept time for the Pretty Things around the time of SF Sorrow and later became one half of the twin-kit power train of the Pink Fairies . Somehow amongst all this collective activity Twink also found time to record his only "solo" album, [...]
For a brief period in time the Swamp Rats were one of Pittsburgh's top rock n roll acts, they even needed bodyguards! The group was basically an updated version of the Fantastic Dee-Jays, a crude garage pop group who released a handful of singles and a fine LP in 1966. Unfortunately there would be no album for the Swamp Rats but most collectors agree that their original 45s represent some of the best (and rawest) music the genre ever produced. The Swamp Rats' Disco Sucks! compilation was released on vinyl in 1979/1980. The original LP had cuts from the [...]
By the time Chris Darrow entered Trident Studios in London to record his self-titled debut solo LP, he was already an accomplished, respected, and in-demand musician. As a member of the wonderful genre-bending Southern California psych band Kaleidoscope he had already contributed his talents to their first couple of albums, 67's Side Trips and 68's A Beacon from Mars -two excellent psych-rock albums that were some of the first to incorporate world music forms from all over the globe. After leaving Kaleidoscope he was recruited by The Nitty Gritty Dirt band, playing on [...]
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is perhaps best known for helping to bridge the gap between the older generation of American folk musicians coming out of the 1940s and 1950s, and the rock and roll youth of the 1960s. Their seminal double record Will the Circle Be Unbroken presented the band alongside a number of country and bluegrass luminaries such as Maybelle Carter and Roy Acuff, and more or less proved that American musical traditions could span the generation gap. Listeners dropping the needle on the Dirt Band's self-titled debut for the first time may be [...]
Just when you think you've heard every little yellow pill of power pop, every filthy pebble of over-amplified teenage angst from the past, and every nugget of garage-rock glory that's come back from the grave, you stumble onto something that stands a cut above the rest, that stands the test of time, that sticks in your brain like flies on sherbet-you come across The Nerves. The Nerves were formed in San Francisco in 1974 by Peter Case, Paul Collins, and Jack Lee. By this time the hippy-dippy Haight Street magic of the late 60s had given way to [...]
Shortly after the sonic experimentalism of Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's, the rules for creating the perfect pop single changed. A catchy refrain wasn't enough– producers and musicians were now expected to use studio technology to dress up pop hooks with trippy effects, unconventional instrumentation, and multilayered harmonies. Book A Trip: The Psych Pop Sounds Of Capitol Records collects twenty-six singles that attempted to capture some of that studio magic. As is to be expected, there's a distinct Beatles/Beach Boys influence throughout the tracks. Although a few betray perhaps a bit too much influence (such as [...]
Long before they were known as the kings of Disco, the Bee Gees were master craftsmen of some of the greatest pop-rock the late '60s and early '70s had to offer. First rumored to be The Beatles under an alias ("Bee Gees" = "Beatles Group," get it?), the Bee Gees exploded in the North American market in the late summer of 1967 with this album (their first US Top 10 album), and three Top 20 singles: "New York Mining Disaster 1941," "To Love Somebody" (originally meant to be recorded for the late great Otis Redding), and "Holiday." The Brothers Gibb were well [...]
Alain Goraguer first made a name for himself as a sideman and arranger for Serge Gainsbourg, including the arrangement for Gainsbourg's 1966 Eurovision grand prize winning song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son". In 1972 he scored the bizarre and moving French language animated feature "Le Planet Sauvage," released in the States as "Fantastic Planet." The soundtrack blends funky psyched out jazz with gorgeous woodwind, choral, and string arrangements. There's also a few subtle appearances by the theremin . The main descending theme appears many times, mostly on the flute or sung by an ominous choir. The [...]
It's quite a challenge for me to write a good, subjective review on these guys. I've been a big fan of their music for some time now, probably since the first time I heard the opening chords of "The Viper" from Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit and Greenhill's 1968 album, The Unwritten Works of Geoffrey, Etc - I was hooked. That album was more of a collection of studio experimentation/tracks whereas Space Opera (1973) was conceived as an actual album - the band played lots of live festivals/gigs during the Space Opera years. The Space Opera LP [...]
A couple decades before the city of Derby in the rural midlands of England was awarded city status by Queen Elizabeth II (1977), residents Tony Doré and John Clark had become boon companions at the tender age of 11. In this gentle and eminently civil environment they quickly began to play music together in various rock bands or "beat groups" as they were then called, eventually stepping up to the folk club circuit in the surrounding boroughs of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. It is this same bucolic atmosphere of the mid-60's folk scene in the UK with its [...]
Daniel Moore is one of countless songwriters in the history of early rock and roll music that, despite attaining a measure of financial success through their material, never quite made a name for themselves as artists in their own right. It's a rather old and tired tale, I'll be honest, but what makes Moore's story so much more frustrating is that in the midst of penning bland, superficial radio hits for artists like Three Dog Night and B.W. Stevenson, he also crafted one of the greatest 'back to the roots' records to come out of the early seventies. [...]
In London's early 60s it seemed all the kids wanted to play American R&B and Chicago blues. Kids all throughout England exchanged guitar licks with one another in the front room of their parent's flat - trying to emulate the sounds of Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo or Elmore James. There was a group of young Londoners in particular who did just this, jamming after art school at the childhood home of budding guitarist Dick Taylor. When these boys, who coined themselves Little Boy Blue & The Blue Boys, started to get serious about their music and parted ways to form [...]
The use of the humble autoharp in rock may come as a surprise. Isn't that the triangular doodad your elementary school teacher used to pull out of the cupboard to strum along to class sing-a-longs of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody"? And why take an instrument specifically designed for simplicity and bust a gut to play complicated stuff on it? Nevertheless, several intriguing instances of its use have come to light on rare albums from the late sixties and early seventies. A zither is a small harp with its strings stretched across its soundbox; it has a [...]
When the Electric Prunes are remembered at all, it's for their seductive nightmare of a 1967 single, "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)." Culled from their first album, "I Had Too Much to Dream" set a template for the best of the band's work: distorted guitars and vocals, bizarre lyrics and a spooky vibe. By the time of their second album, the Prunes were tired of being considered a prefab band. Fed songs from some of L.A.'s best psych-garage writers, controlled in the studio by producer/Machiavelli Dave Hassinger and often replaced on record by studio musicians, [...]
Born at Fort Bragg, NC in '24, Vernon "Lucky" Wray is the much lesser known but no less talented older brother of the original Shawnee rocker Link Wray of "Rumble" fame. Having learned to play guitar by the age of 11, Vernon played rhythm guitar and bass behind Link for the better part of Link's career. Vernon was a tortured innovator. He ran one of the country's first DIY record labels called Rumble Records named after the family hit in 1958, and was host to an American Bandstand knock-off out of DC called "The Milt Grant [...]
Shortly after the release of the million-selling Nancy & Lee , Lee Hazlewood exercised his newfound clout with Reprise and headed to Paris to record a new solo album. Along for the ride were rhythm guitarist extraordinaire Donnie Owens and Wrecking Crew members James Burton, Hal Blaine, Chuck Berghofer, and Don Randi. If Hazlewood's stream of consciousness notes on the back of the album are to be believed, they lived the life of the jet set, their days and nights a bacchanal of fine wine, beautiful women, and Lotus Europas with all the extras. [...]
Before the dust settled on their million-selling debut single "Have I the Right?" produced by Joe Meek , the Honeycombs released their self-titled debut LP on Pye records in September of 1964. Dismissed by some as a novelty act for having a female drummer (bandleader Honey Lantree), they cut consistently good material at Meek's Holloway Road home studio throughout 1965 and released their finest effort All Systems - Go! on Pye in December of that year. Mostly a mix of freakbeat and the bubblegum-pop of their singles, All Systems- Go ! [...]
The Rising Storm
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Shinichi Osawa – Big Beach Mix 2012
Mr Fogg - Eleven
