Why bananas again?! I crossed this phrase several times now and it sounds weird every time again. Maybe this slogan arose from completely naive believes of parents in the 60's about psychedelia and their tripping youth. Well, "Banana, the mindexpanding fruit!". Bananas found their way into a psychedelic hippie movement on various ways. Sooner or later you will cross "The Electric Banana - Blows Your Mind" LP or a book called "Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art"... you see, it's a topic to explore! About the song: It's an instrumental psych rock piece by this Colorado band, that only released that one single with the b-Side "Peak Beat". The drony bass-line is building the basement for the fuzzed guitar patterns. Great psychedelic sound indeed!
The Quit Jungle's '67 single got bootleged quite often. starting with the countless amount of psych comps and ending with the recent Garage Greats exact repro 45's ... What is known about this band? Let's ask Canuckistan Music: "Toronto's Doug Rankine and the Secrets scored huge in early 1966 with a rather goofy novelty hit, a quintessentially Canadian ode to the burly Toronto Maple Leaf forward Eddie Shack called 'Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack'. This tepid Merseybeat clone rocketed to number one on the CHUM-AM charts in Toronto in February, 1966, ultimately and inexplicably charting for nine weeks. However, by early '67, having by then adopted the hipper-sounding Quiet Jungle, the lads debuted with the first of two seven-inchers for the Yorkville label, later home to fellow garagesters the Ugly Ducklings. 'Ship of Dreams', is stellar psychedelia, opening with an eerie guitar squeal that presages Fever Tree's 'San Francisco Girls', and with delicious organ riffs and mellifluous harmonies that would justifiably see it hit #31 in February of that year. Flip it over and the wax explodes with some gruff and snarly - if not a tad formulaic - garage punk. The Quiet Jungle followed this with the less interesting, though much tougher to find, Too Much in Love / Make Up Your Mind (also on Yorkville), before vanishing from Toronto's Yorkville scene. Unbeknownst to many, though, is that the band found gainful employment as session musicians for the budget label Arc, churning out fodder for hundreds of K-Mart and Kresge bins with an entire set of Monkees hits, as well as a totally lame-o Christmas disc, The Story of Snoopy's Christmas and Other Favourite Children's Songs (Arc)."
A nice interview with Doug Rankine from the band can be read at: The Garage Hangover!
I doubt if I should post this song on the jukebox, since it's more than worn out and everybody of you might have heared it about 100 times already on several comps... however, this is a classic psych pop tune you should not miss to listen to once again. highly driven in that UK "Pepperish" psychedelic vein with a lot of echoing effects swirling around your head, even if you have no headphones on.
"The Baroques had a fuzz-guitar/keyboard-damaged sound that retained much of the garage intensity of ’66 while plunging into the experimentation that marked the latter part of the decade." (~therisingstorm.net)
Starting like a psych-pop ballad, you'll later get overwhelmed with tons of heavy fuzz storming through your mind. Iowa is one of this sort of songs, wich might suprise you of their short runningtime. If you hear the experimental garage-psych-jams you probably would expect an 8-10 minute journey. However, this way it's been a nice flipside for their single "Mary Jane" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqDa5hCSQX0).
"baaaahhh, aaah, baaaahhh, aaaaah, ..." the Alarmclock's '67 single "Incense and Peppermints / The Birdman of Alcatrash" is a landmark in the history of the psychedelic music of the 60's. to be honest, their full length debut is really awesom! gentle and soft psych pop melodies merge there with rocking tunes and touches toward jazz. "The Birdman of Alcatrash" for example is another great piece, wich becomes very surreal shortly after it beginns. more tracks from the album are coming someday for sure! the soundtrack of the '68 psychedelic cult-movie "Psych-Out" (starring Susan Strasberg, Jack Nicholson, Dean Stockwell and others...) also feat. a nice selection of Strawberry Alarm Clock songs. below you'll find the trailer:
The lyrics:
Ba-ba, ba-ba
Ba-ba, ba-ba
Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind
Dead kings, many things I can't define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time
Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothin' to lose
Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around
Look at yourself, look at yourself, yeah, yeah
Look at yourself, look at yourself, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
To divide the cockeyed world in two
Throw your pride to one side, it's the least you can do
Beatniks and politics, nothin' is new
A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view
Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothin' to lose
Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind
Dead kings, many things I can't define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time
Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothin' to lose
I was really surprised, when I read for the first time of the Hollies doing psychedelic music. I was checking their '67 album "Evolution" due to the trippy coverart, but I was rather disappointed when it turned out to be another standard pop record. Shortly afterwards I gave a try to the "Psychedelia at Abbey Road" compilation and found a pretty song by the Hollies called "Maker". It's maybe nothing special and as normal as their other works, but the sitar in there gives it a completely new character. So it turned out to be a really cool psych-pop track.
This outfit was based in Phoenix, Arizona between 1966-68 and were earlier known as The Mile Ends. Their first 45 contains the fine garage-psychedelic of The Other Sidewalk, and the flip features sitars and has a mellow trippy feel, with the vocalist wishing that he'd never come down... After such an interesting start, they went on to chart regionally with their People In The Street 45, but their album had a strong country influence and is largely dispensable. Most of the band later went on to greater things - Black and McFadden joined Goose Creek Symphony and later worked for Linda Ronstadt. Anderson later joined Beans who evolved into The Tubes. (~by mza-garage.blogspot.com)
"The Inner Sounds of the Id" is an ablum compareable to "How To Blow Your Mind & Have A Freak Out Party" by the Unfolding. The album features Westcoast Hippie Psychedelic Rock as well as hindu/eastern influenced Acid Folk. Both records are milestones, even if they are quite unknown to a lot of people that are into that kind of music. So if you never listened to one of them, it's time now to do so!
The British singer and songwriter John Martyn, was at the top of his creativity in 1967, when he released his first album called "London Conversation". Bilbo had following to say on this: "His voice is similar to Davy Graham's, and the style John Martyn plays on his debut is the folk twined with blues that many British singers put out in the mid to late 1960's. All of the songs are wonderful, a surprising guitar leads and picks from start to finish."
The Burbank, California-based Alshire label was best known for it's cheapo international music (eg. The Sounds Of Spain, The Tijuana Sound, Hawaiian Paradise) and 101 String MOR collections. In pursuit of profit rather than content, 1967 saw the label shell out some cash to have anonymous studio musicians write and record a series of psych-oriented instrumentals. Slapping a pseudo-trippy cover on the results (ignore the dazed long haired teens pictured on the cover since they certainly had nothing to do with the set), the cleverly titled The Animated Egg proved surprising accomplished. With little at stake, the anonymous band (no performing or writing credits are provided), roared through an all-instrumental set; material such as A Love Built On Sand, I Said, She Said, Ah Cid and Sock It My Way are heavy on fuzz, feedback and swirling organ. Elsewhere, Sippin' An Trippin' offered up a nifty slice of Byrds-styled jangle rock, while Tomorrow was a blatant rip off of The Spencer Davis Group's Gimme Some Lovin'. (~Fuzz, Acid & Flowers)
Well, all we know about this band is, that it was placed somewhere in colorado (according to the Psychedelic States Series). Gentle glockenspiel and chary guitar, chorus and everything else stereotype we need for a chilled psychedelic Folk-Rock track. Enjoy!
UK Psych-Pop/Rock-Sike from an band that only released an 7" and splitted after 1 year. Band member Andy Summer later joined "The Police", "Soft Machine" and many others... Drummer Colin Allen went to play with John Mayall. And singer Zoot Moneywould also joined Eric Burdon's Animals.
It's 1967 again and "Fapardokly" is actually the album title, but the producer forgot to put Merrell & The Exiles on the cover as the band name! I know it's confusing. The LP is actually a compilation of Merrell Fankhauser & The Exiles tunes written & recorded from 1964-1967.
This song is like the never ending ecstasy from "8 Miles High" followed by some wah-ing psyh-pop to fade out at least.
It's 1967 and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy hit the peak of psychedelic music before they fall into a melting pot of annoying pop. this track is also taken from the "Spreading from the Ashes" compilation that feat. a lot of nice archival material by the PBC. Enjoy!
some psychotic Psychedelic Rock from the "Psychedelic Moods Vol. 2". Here are some infos on the band by Psych-Spaniolos: "This outfit was based in Phoenix, Arizona between 1966-68 and were earlier known as The Mile Ends. Their first 45 contains the fine psychedelic punk of The Other Sidewalk, and the flip features sitars and has a mellow trippy feel, with the vocalist wishing that he'd never come down... After such an interesting start, they went on to chart regionally with their People In The Street 45, but their album had a strong country influence and is largely dispensable. Most of the band later went on to greater things - Black and McFadden joined Goose Creek Symphony and later worked for Linda Ronstadt. Anderson later joined Beans who evolved into The Tubes."
The Velvet Illusions from Los Angeles released this song on one of their 1967 singles. The B-Side was "She Was The Only Girl". Sadly the band existed only two years (1966-68). Enjoy this Garage-Psych track!
One of the classic psych singles to come out of Florida was 'Anxious Color' by The Painted Faces. They were short lived but left behind some fine singles. Their first 45 was released locally on Qualicon. This coupled the moody folk rock lament 'Things We See' with 'I Want You'... The former turning up again as the flip to the Manhattan release.
'Anxious Color' is where it's at though with raga sounding guitar leads giving the song a psychedelic sound. According to the liners of the Distortion compilation this 45 was a big hit in South West Florida, hitting number 1 on some stations. It even got extensive airplay on Los Angeles stations making the Top 10. This was probably due to their Mike Curb connections. (~ Flower Bomb Songs)
