The thing about being "ahead of your time" is that you never get full credit for your innovations if time never actually catches up to you. So it went with the Silver Apples, who used a fairly limited sound palette to produce some of the coolest, most distinct music of the '60s (also some of the least '60s sounding). There are so many ways the space age could've gone. These guys charted a course we still haven't even embarked on. Silver Apples - Lovefingers [...]
The Beach Boys - Little Bird Dennis Wilson comin' at ya off of Friends . I feel like the string section should be given the sample treatment. Or maybe it has been? Whatever. I'd still probably prefer this version.
So there was this thing on facebook today where I was asked to find out the number one song from the week I was born. I already knew the answer, because it's ALWAYS been a song related to my birthdate. My parents had pretty decent taste in music, and I've always credited our drives to [...]
Roy Panton - Endless Memory
The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band is one of those remarkable quasi-underground groups from the 1960s which nowadays inspires a sort of obsessive cult interest among certain individuals. As such, there's been more than enough amateur scholarship written on them for me to safely forgo much of an introduction or studied band history (I'd strongly recommend Tim Forster's comprehensive article ). In fact, if it were not for their conspicuous absence on the Rising Storm, I might think that any more ink shed on the band's records would be a waste of time. As it stands, [...]
The 1968 self-titled debut by California based country rock group Southwind is a rather obscure little gem. The unique combination of country, psych, soul, funk, and just good old rock & roll turns this record into a stew of great listening, and really makes this record stand out. The band's origins can be traced back to Norman, Oklahoma, while members were attending the University of Oklahoma. Coming together first as a rockabilly-flavored band known as "The Disciples," the group comprised John "Moon" Martin (guitar, vocals), Jim Pulte (bass, vocals), Phil Hope (organ), and Eric Dalton (drums). Soon after [...]
I have a weird soft spot for provably British singers who sound like they're putting on the accent. I also love that sunny British psych sound from the hazy '60s. Put them together and I'm a smiling fool. A big hi-five to my friend Ali, who hipped me to this track a couple years ago. Also, fun fact — Peter Frampton wrote it. He should have closed up shop immediately afterward. The Neat Change - I Lied To Auntie May
This record is like a river, ebbing and flowing. That may sound vague, but it's probably the best way I can think to describe the music contained on the 1964 recordings that make up Terry Callier's debut record The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier. Every time I put this music on I drift away, caught up in the slow, rolling rhythms and sad, rambling lyrics. Though Callier is best known for his run of unique psychedelic records in the early seventies, it's his earliest material that has taken the strongest hold on my soul: a molasses-thick concoction [...]
The Freeborne were a youthful Boston-based psych outfit whose five members, despite their tender years, all had considerable experience of playing a wide range of styles in earlier combos. Adapting their name from the movie Born Free and discovering the freewheeling creative delights of LSD, they signed to Monitor in early '67 and concocted a set of highly psychedelic originals which were laid down at A&R Studios in NYC. Peak Impressions sold only modestly, probably because of a dilatory campaign of live appearances to support it. After [...]
Bull Of The Woods (an International Artists release) is the Elevators most controversial offering. Some fans claim it's their best LP but many, myself included, feel Psychedelic Sounds and Easter Everywhere are the group's finest discs. Frequent personnel changes, drug busts and Roky Erickson's fragile state had destroyed the original core of Sutherland, Hall and Erickson. Stacy Sutherland was the only original member left by 1968 and he made a game effort by putting together some newly recorded "solo" tracks with older, stray Elevator tunes that were cut during the previous year. The excellent [...]
These pages are overflowing with tales of bands that came within a whisker of making it big in the halcyon years of rock: bands for which talent, originality and a fine first album wasn't enough to propel them into the commercial big-time and which subsequently fell by the wayside. Few came closer than Hardwater; only their timing probably let them down. Their back pedigree was immaculate; guitarist Richard Fifield and bassist Robert McLerran had been members of the Astronauts, the Boulder-based surf outfit who'd released a string of nationally successful singles and albums on RCA between 1962 and [...]
1st Review: C.Q. (Seek You) packs a huge punch straight off . Misfit is a fucking sledge hammer. The Outsiders were pretty well unknown in the states when they released their 3rd LP, and some of that had to do with them being from the Netherlands. They are not to be confused with the other, American, Outsiders of the blazingly hot Nuggets track Time Won't Let Me . C.Q. is thoroughly psychedelic however, and a must own for fans of [...]
I came to this one working backwards along bassist Jim Colegrove's timeline. I'd heard Colegrove's wonderfully idiosyncratic bass playing on Bobby Charles's eponymous album, whence I'd backtracked him to Hungry Chuck . It turned out that in an earlier life both Colegrove and Charles/Chuck drummer N.D. Smart II were founder members of Bo Grumpus, hence my initial interest in this album. Originally assembling in Boston as a funky jugband comprising Colegrove, Smart and guitarists Ed Mottau and Joe Hutchinson, Bo Grumpus mutated into a New York-based folk-rock outfit in the style of the Byrds and veered towards [...]
There are many albums by unknown artists that deserve to be dug up and reexamined (or perhaps examined for the first time). Then there are the very few that reach up and grab you by the ears, making you wonder why they were ever forgotten in the first place. Harumi falls into the second category. Somehow an unknown from Japan (with feminine name ) managed to locate one of the most renowned producers of the day to record his self titled debut record for Verve in 1968. Tom Wilson, the impresario behind both Dylan and [...]
The MC5 at their peak were the probably the most genuinely threatening of the American Proto-Punk/Garage bands of the late 60s and early 70s. The Velvet Underground could tell disturbing stories, sometimes even based on real life experiences, but Lou Reed's stories were always that - wonderfully told, detached, stories. The Stooges' main man, Iggy, was an onstage, dangerously out of control, force of nature, but his self-abusive live performances were always more disturbing spectacle than threat to the audience. In fact Iggy's audiences in the early days were often more threatening than what was [...]
The cosmopolitan seaside resort of Brighton, Sussex - my own birthplace, as it happens - has been a Mecca for the more unbuttoned forms of the performing arts ever since the louche patronage of the Prince Regent, later King George IV. Strangely, especially given its nearness to "Swinging" London, it produced only a sparse crop of memorable artists and groups in the halcyon years of pop and rock music. During their brief sojourn as a recording act, the Mike Stuart Span were the only such from Brighton - and that at the height of the sixties beat/psych era [...]
By the time Bradley's Barn (Warner Brothers - 1968) recording sessions commenced, the Beau Brummels had scaled down to the duo of founders Ron Elliott (guitarist) and Sal Valentino (vocalist). Nashville session pro contributions (guitarist Jerry Reed and drummer Kenneth A. Buttrey) tend to overshadow the strong batch of Elliott/Valentino originals written for this classic LP. Some 40 years after it's release date, Bradley's Barn is still considered one of the very best country-rock records. Instead of taking their cues from Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams Sr. and The Louvin Brothers (see [...]
For a man who's enjoyed a solid five-decade membership of the British rock establishment, Billy Nicholls must be one of its least-known figures. From being engaged as a staff songwriter to Andrew Loog Oldham's upstart Immediate Records at the tender age of eighteen, to composer of "I Can't Stop Loving You (Though I Try)", the royalties from the multiple cover versions of which should assure his pension, to MD of the Who's and Pete Townshend's concert activities for the last thirty-odd years, Nicholls has enjoyed a fruitful but surprisingly low-profile relationship with the industry, only recently achieving acclaim as the [...]
I keep meaning to drop out of life for a few weeks and immerse myself in Ennio Morricone soundtracks. Actually, it'd take months (I think dude has done over 500 by now), and I'd likely emerge with the kind of intense look on my face that no sane person would want to approach. Short of that level of commitment, here's a beautiful Western theme from the master. I aim to have at least one major life event occur while this is playing. Ennio Morricone - Il Grande Silenzio (Restless)
Beyonce's recent fusion of classic American music with rhythms and guitar styles from Africa inspired us to create a brief selection of similar songs, from both sides of the pond. Of course, most music in either hemisphere consists, in at least a distant sense, of a blend of these two origins, but here it's particularly noticeable: "Taj Mahal" - Jorge Ben "End Of Time" - Beyonce "Zombie" - Fela Kuti "Domingo No Parque" - Gilberto Gil "Mr. Jones" - Talking Heads "Heartbeat" - Nneka [...]
Now you're at Songblague!
Art Decade
The Color Awesome!
The Rising Storm
A Barrel Of Nails
AudioCred
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
