It’s this time of year when the demise of Woolworths hits hardest. The lack of a local dispensary of Pick ‘n’ Mix, lightbulbs, shoelaces, cookery books and blank C90 cassettes pales into insignificance when the realisation dawns that there’s nowhere that sells cheap and cheerful Christmas decorations. I have been charged this year with the task of getting the decs in for the office at work, and can I find any tinsel for sale anywhere? Can I buggery. It’s becoming a somewhat clandestine operation, where I pop into a shop that I would reasonably expect one to sell it (ie, anyone with some in the window) and ask the assistants in hushed tones where I can find some, in a manner that would suggest that the only acceptable response would be an equally hushed reply directing me to a room in the back where the more “specialist” items are kept. Instead, I get “dunno”.
The other Woolies-related pining lies in the fact that when the local branch shut its doors for the last time, it left my hometown without a record store. Not a very good record store admittedly, but it’s still a shame. Not least because it also rang the death knell of the cheapie compilation, of which I have plenty. Most are awful 80s compilations containing one or two wonderful gems, but there are a couple of start-to-finish corkers with loftily-ambitious titles – although without a comparative point of reference, I have no idea if The Best Prog Rock Album in the World… Ever! really is or not.
My favourite by far amongst all this “It’ll do for a party” ephemera is this 3-discer, probably unique amongst all lunchtime impulse-buy purchases because its title really does reflect the claim it makes in its title. And for something that at first glance looks like it’s been thrown together on a Friday afternoon, it’s a very interesting compilation, mixing familiar and obscure to show just what a broad church this genre actually is. And also manages to take the Tremeloes along for the ride as well…
In all honesty, they could have just put out disc 1 of this set and it would still be rather splendid – opening with Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit (which works equally well as a pro or anti-drug song depending on whether or not you have an opinion on the subject), and followed by the uniquely English Small Faces with Itchycoo Park, a song that will always evoke fond memories of dancing lovelies Pan’s People on Top of the Pops performing this song on top of oversized mushrooms.
The first disc as a whole is probably the most accessible of the three, taking in as it does the Byrds (Eight Miles High), the Velvet Underground & Nico (Venus in Furs) and Strawberry Alarm Clock (Incense and Peppermints). So far so good, certain to go down well at anyone’s themed party. However, it’s probably about this point where things get a bit weird. As I suppose they’re obliged to.
The proto-Garage drive of The Mooche (who sound like they should have come from Detroit but hailed instead from East Anglia)’s Hot Smoke and Sassafrass rubs shoulders with The Purple Gang’s jaunty and whimsical (and banned by the BBC!) Granny Takes a Trip, The 13th Floor Elevators pitch in with their excellent and disquieting Slip Inside This House, The Glass Menagerie pull off a corking (and, for the purposes of this compilation, cheaper) rendition of The Rolling Stones’ She’s a Rainbow and H.P. Lovecraft (probably not that one though) tidies up with the odd and ambient Electrallentando.
Disc 2 continues in the general eclectic and eccentric vein, with famous names such as Marc Bolan (Misfit), Moby Grape (Hey Grandma) and indeed Kenny Rogers (Just Dropped In, with The First Edition in tow), pop up among various oddities as Onyx (Tamaris Khan, which evokes than Manfred Mann song with the whip whose title evades me), Nirvana (not th… oh, I’ve already done that gag. Anyway, this lot pipe up with Rainbow Chaser, which tends to come across as a very weird pre-Damehood Shirley Basseyesque James Bond theme). It’s a fun disc, although I have to admit that this filling is not quite as good as the 2 discs either side of it, especially the final one of the set which spent an entire summer wedged in the car CD player…
Special mention however has to be made of Blonde on Blonde’s Spinning Wheel – a lot of bands around this era tended to get a bit beyond themselves and started bringing in instrumentation and ideas that simply sounded terrible in the wrong hands; especially the hands of guitarists everywhere who suddenly bought sitars after listening to Revolver and thinking “well, how hard can it be?” before finding out but recording it anyway, to the consternation of the rest of us. BoB avoid this neatly by learning how to play the thing properly before attaching it to a gleefully mad song that finishes long before it probably should. A great, fun, unhinged song it sounds as if they’re having the time of their lives whilst playing it.
But yeah, CD3 is far and away my favourite, being the most varied and largely least dated of the lot. Opening with the West Coast hippy splendour of (and what a great name for a band this is, as well as being a top snapshot of the time) It’s a Beautiful Day’s White Bird which reminds me of Sleepy Sun’s approach to vocal harmonies and song structure. It’s probably allegorical or something, but it’s just a pleasant driftalong song that’ll have you swaying without you even noticing. The Nice are next up with the mostly goodnatured Flower King of Flies until Keith Emerson pipes in with his “can I do my bit now?” overdriven Hammond interludes.
This is all followed by my favourite song on the entire compilation – the Youngbloods’ Darkness, Darkness. The guitar solo is neither big nor clever, but it’s 100% perfect for the song and everything else fits so well around it. Director James Cameron also seems to feel this way, including covers of it on the soundtracks to both True Lies (Screaming Trees) and Ghosts of the Abyss (Lisa Torbin), and indeed why shouldn’t he – it’s stirring stuff.
More controversy ahoy with the Smoke and My Friend Jack, another song banned by the BBC who obviously weren’t convinced that Jack wasn’t fond of more than just the sugarlumps mentioned in the song’s lyrics. Pussy go a bit mental with the partly spoken-word The Open Ground which probably seemed really profound poetry at the time but in the 21st Century just sounds a bit weird. Top use of the word (if indeed it is a proper one) “Mushroid” though. The Bystanders’ Cave of Clear Light is reminiscent of the Beatles at their most folksy-experimental and makes for pleasantly strange listening, and Nico glums her way beautifully through Little Sister as only she can.
And so we come to the Tremeloes. Known almost exclusively as a cheerful Merseybeat band and infamous for being the band who auditioned for a contract on the same day as, and got the gig instead of, the Beatles. Suddenly Winter is a b-side (presumably to another jaunty, smiley skiffle-based song) and it’s definitely a sterling effort from a generally play-it-safe pop act who all of a sudden thought that they’d give this “Psychic Delia” (as my Dad would have had it) a bit of a go.
What This is Psychedelia achieves is to point out that there is no way at all of saying what Psychedelia actually was. Going off this compilation, my conclusion is that it’s a whole bunch of people from a whole variety of musical backgrounds (folk, country, skiffle, even that safe haven of the Hit Parade) deciding to do something different and enjoying the company of others doing similar things. It is a “style” that got rather stale rather quickly, with invention replaced quickly with repetition which then became self-parody when the ideas ran out and the drugs became a hindrance rather than a help. But this extended snapshot of a lot of the best stuff makes for a fun listen, especially when the sun is out and the car windows are down.
Just make sure you expect some funny looks at red lights sometimes.
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