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The Fallen AngelsI'll Drive You From My Mind
'The Fallen Angels hailed from Washington DC, an area that in the mid 60's, was a breeding ground for rock bands and where such artists as Jim Morrison (Doors), Roy Buchanan, Mama Cass Elliot, EmmyLou Harris and many more got their start. The Fallen Angels were formed in 1966 and recorded two LPs for the Roulette label. Both of the albums have been re-released on separate CD's as The Roulette Masters Parts 1 & 2. The music of the Fallen Angels was aimed for a pop audience as the label was trying to repeat the success of it's major act, Tommy James and The Shondells. It proved that The Fallen Angels were much too "far out" for the commercial radio audience and despite good sales of the first album, the band was dropped by their label after recording a second album entitled Its A Long Way Down. Both album remain prime examples of psychedelic pop music which many band's in the late 90's are trying to copy.'-- Keith Pettipas
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The GodzRadar Eyes, Soon the Moon, Permanent Green Light
'Few bands in the annals of rock & roll were stranger than the New York City-based Godz. Recording for the wonderfully idiosyncratic ESP-DISK label from the mid-'60s until the early '70s, the Godz coughed up some of the strangest, most dissonant, purposely incompetent rock noise ever produced. Part of the Lower East Side scene that produced post-Beat avant-hippie rockers/ performance artists the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders, as well as honest-to-God beat performers like Allen Ginsberg, the Godz recorded the most extreme music while being secretive about themselves. As the late critic Lester Bangs noted in an essay in Creem in 1971, the Godz "...are a pure test of one of the supreme traditions of rock & roll: the process by which a musical band can evolve from beginnings of almost insulting illiteracy to wind up several albums later romping and stomping deft as champs."'-- allmusic
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Ultimate SpinachBallad of The Hip Dead Goddess
'Ian Bruce-Douglas was in the wrong place at the wrong time - Boston, 1968, just in time for one of the biggest PR disasters in the history of the music business. The debacle was called "Bosstown" or the "Boston Sound," and Bruce-Douglas's band Ultimate Spinach was the major casualty. Conceived by producer-arranger Alan Lorber, the Boston Sound was an attempt to promote several Boston bands simultaneously, for the sake of efficiency and momentum. MGM Records liked the idea and released the debut albums of Ultimate Spinach, the Beacon Street Union, and Orpheus in early 1968, all promoted as the first wave of a new "Boston Sound" movement. MGM called it "the sound heard 'round the world." Rolling Stone's review by Jon Landau said the sound was "kerplop." In castigating the MGM albums, Landau presented what quickly became the Final Word on the subject: there was no Boston rock scene; the Boston Sound was pure hype; the bands weren't very good; the music was "derivative." In retrospect, it's clear that Ultimate Spinach deserved a much better fate. The Bosstown hype was not their idea, and their records are some of the best psychedelic music available then or now. Their brief time in the spotlight brought them not well-earned glory but unexpected trauma, which fractured an already-fragile band.'-- Terrascope
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NazzOpen My Eyes
'Nazz was an incredibly under-recognized British influenced mod-psych band from Philadelphia that formed in 1967 and remained together for only a few short years. For the time, their music was highly original and still holds up very well to this day. Original members included Robert "Stewkey" Antoni (vocals, keyboards), Thom Mooney (drums), Carson Van Osten (bass) and future rock star Todd Rundgren (guitar). It should be noted that many now consider the Nazz to have had one of the best rhythm sections in sixties rock and Mooney's excellent drum styling has been closely compared to Keith Moon of the Who. Nazz played their first concert in July, 1967, opening for the Doors. By September of that year, the group had received some financial support from a local record store, which also put them in touch with John Kurland, a record promoter who was looking for a guitar-pop band. Kurland took a liking to the Nazz and signed on as their manager. Unfortunately, he and his associate, Michael Friedman, prevented the band from gigging regularly, believing that a lack of performances would increase demand for the group. The managers were also convinced that the Nazz could be marketed as a sharp, stylish boy-band for the teenybopper audience, and helped the quartet refashion themselves in that mode.'-- collaged
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The Freeborne A New Song For Orestes
'This obscure late-’60s band was typical of many young Boston groups of the era in their eclectic blend of psychedelic influences, with a sound heavy on electric keyboards and wailing guitar. Their sole album, 1967’s Peak Impression, was heavy on minor melodies and haunting harmonies, and a little unusual for the time in its wide array of instruments (all played by the band), including cello, recorder, harpsichord, and trumpet in addition to the standard guitars, keyboard, bass, and drum. The record was reissued on CD by Distortions more than 30 years later. The flaws of the album are that there aren't outstanding songs, and that the mood shifts seem more like an attempt to be as eclectic as possible than they do like genuinely well-thought-out compositional statements. The overall spacey, haunting feel of the record sometimes verges on self-conscious creepiness.'-- collaged
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The FugsCrystal Liaison
'Arguably the first underground rock group of all time, the Fugs formed at the Peace Eye bookstore in New York's East Village in late 1964. The nucleus of the band throughout its many personnel changes was Peace Eye owner Ed Sanders and fellow poet Tuli Kupferberg. Sanders and Kupferberg had strong ties to the beat literary scene, but charged, in the manner of their friend Allen Ginsberg, full steam ahead into the maelstrom of '60s political involvement and psychedelia. Starting on the legendary avant-garde ESP label, the Fugs' debut was full of equal amounts of chaos and charm, but their songwriting and instrumental chops improved surprisingly quickly, resulting in a second album that was undoubtedly the most shocking and satirical recording ever to grace the Top 100 when it was released. After cutting an unreleased album for Atlantic, they moved on to Frank Sinatra's Reprise label, unleashing a few more albums of equally satirical material that were more instrumentally polished, but equally scathing lyrically. By breaking lyrical taboos of popular music, they helped pave the way for the even more innovative outrage of the Mothers of Invention, the Velvet Underground, and others.'-- collaged
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Blues MagoosPipe Dream
'A Bronx-based quintet, the Blues Magoos were formed in 1964 and were originally known as the Trenchcoats before changing their name to the Bloos Magoos and then subsequently adopting the more conventional spelling as they became fixtures on the Greenwich Village club scene. In 1966, after an intense makeover and a marketing blitz, they emerged as a sort of East Coast answer to the then-emerging San Francisco flower power psychedelic scene with a big single, “(We Ain’t Got) Nothing Yet,” that same year, and attracted further attention with the album Psychedelic Lollipop, which also charted. Really more a blues-rock band with a garage band’s approach and intentions than they were a Summer of Love band, the Blues Magoos nonetheless continued with psychedelic trappings for the album Electric Comic Book, which appeared in 1967, and the similarly constructed Basic Blues Magoos a year later in 1968.'-- collaged
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CromagnonCaledonia
'The legend goes thusly: production visionary Brian Elliot and his associate Austin Grasmere allegedly had written a string of bubble gum hits when they approached ESP Records to produce an LP that would present their original creative ideas, which Elliot described as "movies for the ears", far removed from the formulas of the market place. They said that they had a Connecticut tribe (mostly the remnants of an earlier Elliot production project, a psychedelic band called The Boss Blues) with which they would bring to fruition the ideas that they needed to express... the ultimate theme being "all is one". ESP gave them engineer Otto Schontze and some studio time. The Cromagnon legend says that it only took three days, but recent interviews claim it took many weeks of recording labor to fulfill their musical dream...producing an album titled "Orgasm", which they credited to Cromagnon. It was released in 1969. There actually was a Connecticut tribe of sorts, a typical hippie commune of the day, with several children included.'-- kingfeeb
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Vanilla FudgeIllusions of My Childhood, Part One/You Keep Me Hanging On
'Known as 'the first of the heavy bands' and 'doyens of punk mysterioso' this Long Island group first came to public attention in 1967 with a revival of an old Supremes hit 'You Keep Me Hangin' On'. Vanilla Fudge had slowed down this song to half its original tempo, inserted plenty of neo-classical organ and Indian guitar licks and swelled it up to an almost Spectoresque extravaganza. A full seven-and-a-half-minute version of this single was included on the 1967 debut album Vanilla Fudge, plus Fudged-up arrangements of such songs as 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Ticket To Ride' (both written by the Beatles), 'Bang Bang' (by Sonny & Cher) and 'People Get Ready' (by The Impressions). Their almost fussy neo-gospel harmonies and cinerama arrangements were irritating a lot of people, but created a certainly exhilarating sound. The second Vanilla Fudge album The Beat Goes On was one of the most gallant disasters in the annals of rock, a musical record of the previous 25 years including the entire history of music in less than twelve minutes. Vanilla Fudge made the whole notion of interpretaion interesting again. But their own songs and in live performance they were almost too hard to take. That mixture of overpowering Rascals organ and psychedelic Hendrix guitar, all those slow build-ups and crescendos, those lulls and storms, every bit of it copied by a hundred other Long Island hard-rock groups-it finally got too much for everyone except the fans of what the Fudge termed "psychedelic symphonic rock."'-- trashcanasian
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Lothar And The Hand People Machines
'The story goes that Lothar and the Hand People formed in Denver in 1965. That city hasn’t exactly been portrayed as a rock Mecca of the period, and it apparently took all of a year for them to hightail it to the greener musical pastures of NYC. They consisted of Rusty Ford on bass, Kim King on guitar, Moog and Ampex tape decks, Paul Conley on keyboards, liner controller and Moog, Tom Flye on drums and percussion, and John Emelin on lead vocals. Oh, and there was Lothar, their trusty Theremin, the responsibilities of which fell mainly onto Emelin’s shoulders, or more appropriately, the motions of his two hands. Rather than forcing the issue by grafting the Theremin into situations where it would’ve been inappropriate, they instead showed common sense in a time where levelheadedness wasn’t at a premium. This hasn’t stopped some from hypothesizing that the Hand People’s lack of sales figures came down to an unfulfilled promise of newly broken ground. In reality, it seems to be more a combined case of geography (the East Coast falling behind the West’s and England’s late-‘60s rock dominance) and the group’s popish traits flying in the face of prevailing American ideals that were rooted in blues, folk, and more aggressively psychedelic visions. Consumers just weren’t pining for a more eclectic expansion upon the template of John Sebastian and crew.'-- the Vinyl District
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The OthersMy Friend The Wizard
'The Others were a Rhode Island garage psychedelic band consisting of Pete Shepley (lead vocals), Mike Brand (rhythm guitar), Mike Patalano (drums), John Costa (bass and vocals) and Jim DeStout (lead guitar/vocals). They formed during freshman week at the University of Rhode Island in fall 1964, and the immediate "click" was evident: a mere six to seven months later the collegians were already recording their major-label debut. This came about through a connection of Mike Brand's father, New York City manager/promoter Bob Marshall. After an impressive audition, Marshall immediately booked them at the hoppin' Rolling Stone club in NYC for the entire summer of 1965. They even were granted Vox amps in exchange for endorsements! Through Marshall, the band then auditioned for producer Clyde Otis, who was instrumental in landing the RCA record deal (and co-authored the b-side of their first single). With a major-label 45 and a summer-long NYC club stint under their belt, the Others could safely be called the top rock and roll band in the state, earning opening slots for the major acts which came through town — the Lovin' Spoonful, Animals, Byrds and Left Banke.'-- Rip It Up
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Pearls Before SwineImages of April
'Once, a long time ago, Tom Rapp was a rock star. You've probably never heard of him. In 1967, as a scrawny 20-year-old in Melbourne, Fla., he created a band with a name so arrogant it invited failure. Most musicians selected band names that were safely seditious, like the Rolling Stones; or self-consciously silly, like the Strawberry Alarm Clock; or antiseptically straightforward, like Sonny and Cher. You don't need a degree in marketing to realize you shouldn't alienate people from the get-go. Tom Rapp called his band Pearls Before Swine. It was a crisp one-finger salute to the listening public. The band was mostly just Rapp. He wrote the songs, arranged the songs, sang the songs, played lead guitar. He had a dust-bunny beard and Orphan Annie bedspring hair that rode his shoulders and boinged when he walked. His voice could sound thin and doofy like Rudy Vallee, or rich and rumbly like Neil Diamond, or tremulous like a man weeping at his child's grave. Critics called his music acid folk. It trod the familiar 1960s floorboards: anti-war, pro-drug, get-inside-your-mind kindergarten Zen. But upon this floor he built a minaret, a windswept, rococo structure with spooky echoes and forbidding shadows. His lyrics borrowed from A.E. Housman, W.H. Auden, Sara Teasdale, Herodotus. He used cynicism like a horsewhip. When he wrote of love it did not sound like Herman's Hermits. Pearls Before Swine was not always easy to listen to: Rapp made few concessions to popular taste. His instrumentation called to mind lutes and fifes, things from distant places and forgotten times. He used instruments seldom heard in rock: celeste, cello, sarangi, oboe, wind chimes and something called a bowed psaltery. His words sometimes danced just beyond the reach of reason.'-- The Washington Post
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Beacon Street UnionMystic Mourning
' I saw the Beacon Street Union many times. They were my favorite group at the time when I would see them I would stand right up front. I always thought they must have wondered who I and my friends were. Live they sounded much like the records. John Lincoln Wright the singer had a real presence. He always wore a pouch on his belt which we fantasized was dope or 'drug gear'. Just an outrageous thing for the day. Members met when they attended Boston College together. Boston College borders Beacon Street, hence the name. The Union had a few stage tricks. Sometimes they would throw bags of flour around resulting in a low budget fog show. They always fooled me with this next trick no matter how many times I saw them. They would come on stage and we would all clap and yell. They would start plugging in and tuning up. It seemed to take a long time. Eventually your attention would drift and you would just talk to your friends. At some signal the whole band would slam into the opening chord to "My Love Is" at full volume and SCARE THE BEJEEBERS OUT OF YOU.'-- Punk Blowfish
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Autosalvage Land Of Their Dreams
'The most misunderstood of all the so-called "psych" bands of the late 1960s, the only LP by Autosalvage is the first and best US psych-into-prog record of them all. Recorded in 1967, ahead of its time, this record took a Byrds/Airplane-inspired acid-folk-rock mixture and crafted songs unique, catchy, raucous, and truly flipped in an early Zappa-like way (who had a hand in getting them signed, apparently). Autosalvage stays heavily focused on music rather than zaniness, but the song titles indicate that there's plenty of gimlet-eyed humor as well: "Rampant Generalities,""Glimpses of the Next World's World,""The Great Brain Robbery," plus a jaw-dropping rendition of Leadbelly's "Good Morning Blues." Full-on lead guitars, nasally vocals (the worst feature for some, but I find them punkish), and extended yet carefully arranged 6-minute acid/jam/extrapolations are artfully wrapped in hummable tunes. Traditional themes were mixed with jugband music, while the adventurous, quirky compositions blended shimmering guitar with textured instrumentation. Commercial indifference doomed their continuation and by the end of the decade Autosalvage had broken up.'-- Plain and Fancy
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Silver ApplesOscillations
'On a steamy night in 1967 at Cafe Wha? in New York City, one of the world’s strangest electronic instruments was conceived. The inventor, Simeon Coxe III, states, “One night, on a lark, I decided to plug in an oscillator and jam along with the cover band I was in at the time, the Overland Stage Electric Band. Besides the drummer Danny [Taylor] who later joined me, no one in the band was amused.” And so begins the epic story of Silver Apples, the short lived, wildly influential oscillator-and-drum psych duo from the late 1960s. And so also begins the story of ‘The Simeon’ – the mythic, and aptly named, shape-shifting electronic beast of a rig that Coxe played in the band. The band’s well-documented story was one marked by equal parts chaotic energy and catastrophe, so we’ll just delve in briefly. Lacking any formal musical training, Coxe’s playing alternated between droning oscillator tones and rudimentary atonal chords while Taylor’s drums pounded out voodoo-styled, body-awareness rhythms on specially tuned toms. After developing a cult following throughout New York City in 1967, the pair signed a small deal with the floundering KAPP label – oddly enough, better known at the time as the home for Andy Williams, Burt Bacharach and Cher. The Apples released two albums through KAPP, and while the self-titled debut peaked on the Hot 100 on Billboard, the second album Contact became quickly mired in controversy and pulled from the shelves. "The result was that we couldn’t play music to earn a living," Coxe shrugs, "KAPP folded, word quickly spread in the industry that Silver Apples were ‘untouchables’ and Danny and I just said, ‘screw this!’ And we parted ways.”'-- Red Bull Music Academy
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p.s. Hey. ** Damien Ark, Hey. Nude LA, it's true. Oh, I'm very interested, to say the least, in those interviews for my blog, yes! And the Sion Sono Day thing too, if you want to e-post it to me at the usual address. Thanks a ton! The park was great. Amusement parks are my Mt. Olympus. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. The only 100 years ago thing is the spookiest for some reason. And I guess one would naturally think 'gone wrong' re: those photos, but for me it's more like both are perfect. LA is like an exquisite corpse or something. Or then and now are just two rough drafts of something else. The river, yeah, and I had no idea that there had been a Los Feliz River at one time, crazy. I didn't know that your dad shot the 'Ghost Tantra' photos. Wow. I've always really loved those, and that's my favorite of McClure's books. Cool: your encounters with Jim Morrison. I only saw him once, and it was from the audience of a really early, maybe even pre-the first album, Doors concert at Cal State LA. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Joe Brainard used to grope me once in a while, but people told me he groped everybody. Really nice to hear that about Clementi. Big regret that I never got the chance to meet him. Yeah, Griffith's massive Babylon set rested on the spot where my current LA apartment is, or that's what people say and what the photos I've seen of it seem to indicate. ** Bernard Welt, B-ster, hey! Oh, I don't know why the downloading of 'ZHH' is a problem. Did you try the direct link? Punch the gif in the blog's upper right hand corner to get there. You can always just look at it online at the same location. I would be really curious to hear what you say to your kiddos about James Broughton's stuff. I didn't get him and his thing at all. And he was creepy as a person. In my dealings with him. Amazing sounding class. I mean, really amazing. The leather thing is really foreign to me too. I come across a billion of those dudes when I do my relentless searching for slaves for my slave posts. They write the most boring profile texts too, really average and grunty. If you actually did a Day, I would be the opposite of a leather guy, very articulately grateful and feckless. Hm, was I not at that Ear Inn reading? I feel like I was. I know I saw you read at Ear Inn at least once. The Berrigan hug rings a total bell, and I feel like it's a visual bell, but I could be tripping. When I read or rather started to read 'On the Road 'a million years ago, I was really excited for about the first 8 pages, and then I drifted off. Same story with every Henry Miller novel I tried to read. I don't think there actually are set cycles when you can and can't apply to the Recollets. I think that's only for the residences arranged through official channels. Sophie isn't here anymore. You should write directly to Chrystel. Do you still have her email address? Definitely mention that you stayed here before. Definitely use me as a way 'in' in whatever way you like/can. You will need a sponsor. I'm not sure if you need to have that sorted yet. Gisele was and, I think, still is an official Recollets sponsor. She's been sponsoring me. She would no doubt sponsor you, if need be, but we/you would need to cook up a little white lie about you collaborating with her on something. Anyway, yeah, go ahead and send it and cc. me. No, I have to start seriously looking for a new place right away. I'd like to stay in the 10th arr. if I can find a suitable/affordable place around here. Somewhere in this general area of Paris probably. Or else maybe near Parmentier, as I hear places can be cheapish there. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. I really admired your two reviews yesterday. I'll see if I can get my head around the 'Dance Mania' stuff. ** Etc etc etc, Hi. Oh, you can blip away at your leisure. It's that kind of place. Even I blip away sometimes, or sort of. I'll go to an amusement park at the drop of a hat. If I can find someone else who's into it, I'll go any old day. Luckily, Zac is as into them as I am, if not more so, so I get to go a lot. In my life, I've probably been to LA's Disneyland, oh, 40, 50 times? It never loses a smidgen of its charisma. You mean have things turned to normal post-the Charlie Hebdo thing? Basically, I guess, but there's an ongoing stronger police and military presence than before, and every synagogue here has been assigned 24 hour military guards. But it feels fairly 'as before' now. ** Sypha, Two feet of now! I hate you! No, I don't. It's just been the opposite of snowy here, and that's sad. Interesting that Penguin is publishing Ligotti. That's pretty big. ** Kier, You must, must go to LA at Halloween time someday. Within the last two weeks of October when all the spooky houses are up and running. It's god. I like the image of a fluffy Blakkå. Can you tell how he feels about his new fluffiness? Does he seem, I don't know, happier or prouder or weirded out or anything noticeable? My day was a low-key one. First I wrote a short synopsis of Zac's and my film for the producers to put on a flyer or something. It was hard to do, and it took weirdly long, but I guess it was okay. Zac thought it was okay. And the producers responded with a kind of general, blaze okayness re: it. My ankle started hurting for no seeming reason, and then it stopped hurting, weird. I had a huge longing for pancakes, and I wished there was a House of Pancakes here, but there isn't, and I was too lazy and intimidated to make pancakes. I got an idea for a poem, and I started working on it, but, so far, it isn't quite working out the way I dreamed, so it may be a dud. It was raining and windy. I made two blog posts. Not much else. No big, yesterday. Don't know about today yet other than that I'm going to a gig of Stephen (O'Malley) and Peter Rehberg/Pita tonight, and it's the first live solo appearance by Peter in about six years, so that's momentous, and that should be fun. What did you do with your own personal Friday? ** Keaton, Cool glad you liked them. They're haunt-y or something. I recommend knowing LA better, duh. Hat, I know, so many hats! And no hoodies! Not a single hoodie! ** Cal Graves, Hi, Cal. You're ambitious and so much more imaginative and fun-seeking than I am on the language-learning front. Respect. Ha ha, that's true about porn, but, if you play your cards right, you can get a whole novel out of that 'worst', or I have. I love coffee, but disgusting coffee, which I guess in my case would be really thin coffee like the kind you buy in cans in the US. Hm. I think maybe I'll choose the five minutes of unbearable, non-stop speaking just because I would find out what I find completely unbearable, and that would be interesting. You? You sent me a guest post? No, it didn't arrive, shit. Did you get the address right? dcooperweb@gmail.com Oh, I would love it if you don't mind trying again. That's exciting! Thank you! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Cool, the decision made at, yeah, some expense, but I'm sure you did the right thing. Cool! ** Tom Adelman, Hi, Tom! Wow, very cool to have you here! Awesome! And such a beautiful paragraph about LA. Deep bow. I've read the Ryu Murakami, which I liked a lot, but I don't know the Hinojosa one. I'll investigate it immediately. My favorite short books? Let me think. Like short short? Uh, Robert Pinget's 'Fable', Derek McCormack's 'The Show That Smells', Marguerite Duras's 'Malady of Love', ... Now I'm blanking. I love really short books, though. Speaking of, are you working on anything that might become a book, short or not? Ultra-best to you, maestro! ** Misanthrope, That is an eerie story. I think she was ghost. That makes the most sense to me, ha ha. Did you see that viral video clip of the guy texting who walks into a bear? That was kind of funny, but not really eerie. Your story wins. ** Okay. Uh, right, I decided to continue my gig-shaped exploration of late 60s psychedelic music by concentrating this time on the East Coast. Hope it causes something of an unknown (to me) nature to happen inside you. See you tomorrow in any case.