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Speaker 2Hello and welcome back to the album years and this episode, Tim, we're going back in time, we're getting in our time machine, we're going all the way back. Have we done a 60s year before?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think we did 1969 and 1967 but I might be wrong there. 69 for sure.
Speaker 2Okay, so we're going back a year earlier, we're going to 1968. Okay, so we haven't done a lot of 60 stuff and I think the original remit of the album years was we sort of dated the classic years of the album from around the mid 60s, didn't we until the end of the end of the century, basically. And what we have delved into the sort of 2000s as well subsequently. So anyway, we're going back to 1968. Another amazing year, I've got the list of albums that came out this year. I mean this is, you know, this is an era of the late 60s when so many people are exploring the possibilities of music, rock is coming into its own with people like Jimmy Hendrix bursting onto the scene the year before. But also there's a lot more hybrids of people combining different kinds of music and creating these new kind of hybrids and we're going to talk about all that. It's probably going to be another long episode, isn't it? I reckon it's six parts. It could be a six part, but let's find out. Now one thing we also said at the very beginning when we sort of laid out the mandate for the album is is that we wouldn't sort of dwell on the canonical albums that have been discussed and add in for item. But we have to mention them at least, aren't we? Because there's a sense that I think these albums inform almost all of the other music that came out this year. I think that's it.
Speaker 3I think the point is that the mainstream was hugely influential on the experimental scene as well. I think that it's very different from maybe how it was in other decades really that everything seems to be exploding and taking chances and the biggest bands in the world, sometimes the best and most interesting bands in the world as well.
Speaker 2That's certainly true at the time, isn't it? And you know, there's a sense that everyone was looking to see what the Beatles were doing and hadn't been, had been by this time for at least the last five years. So the Beatles made obviously 1968 famously the Beatles released the album. The Beatles, known as the White album, this double album, sprawling double album, which in some cases was a reaction to the previous album, wasn't it? Which was very produced, very psychedelic. This is almost like they're back to basics album. And you can hear how that had an influence on a lot of the other music that came out this year. We're not going to discuss the White album because it's been discussed so much already by so many people who have more insightful things to say about it than we would. But let's just briefly summarise the other big hit as you say, the mainstream artist that kind of having an effect on everything that's going on. Jimmy Hendrix, electric lady and a lady land, another sprawling double album.
Speaker 3Well that is one of the things that's quite a number of sprawling double albums. I mean, Richie Havens did I think two albums this year, one of them a sprawling double album. And in a lot of the cases I've got to say I feel they'd be better as single albums and it's kind of interesting isn't it that one of the things I was going to say about 68 was that it's where excess is contained yet. It is one of the original ages of the truly excessive double album where perhaps people could have really contained themselves a little.
Speaker 2But we're also in the year of still aren't we where artists are being expected to make at least two albums a year. Several make three or as you suggested one double and one single. So the equivalent of three albums. We're still in that era, this is the 60s, this is the era when record companies were still signing artists to contracts that basically necessitated the artist to deliver at least two albums a year and sometimes three, which is crazy. You know, you think now you're lucky if you get an album every 10 years from your favourite artist, you know, or five at least. So we have a lot of artists delivering more than one album this year and some of them are doubles. So other big mainstream big hitters as we've got it here, the kinks are the village green preservation society, the Rolling Stones, beggars, bankrin. Another one we've got here in the big hitters section which I do want us to talk about because you put it in the big hitters section but I don't think it well, I think the artist is a big hitter in the sense their influence is phenomenal, you know, arguably as great as any of the other artists we've just mentioned. But this album was definitely the beginning of their commercial decline and we're talking about the beach boys here although you could argue the pet sounds had not been the success it was expected to be. I know, it was a smile.
Speaker 3I think actually they had a couple of huge singles around that time.
Speaker 2Smile never even came out, did it? I mean it was the smiley smile out.
Speaker 3I mean friends I think it's a great out. I think one of the things it does is give the light this idea that they were really down and out after the smile debacle because people don't know that after pet sounds which for a lot of people in a sense became the state of the art production masterpiece of its era and Wilson was seen as a visionary. Smile he never quite got together and in the end they released this kind of slightly reduced raw version and it's fair to say that pet sounds didn't sell as well as people thought though there were a couple of huge singles, did so smiley smile. So at this stage people saw Wilson as burnt out and saw the beach boys as a commercial force that were also spent and friends to me is an incredibly opulent, confident, beautiful record that supposedly marks the band's decline.
Speaker 2But it's interesting because there's wild honey also between those two records as well which is almost like a back to basics low fire rock and roll out by this standards anyway. What's interesting is if you look at the fortunes of the beach boys and the beetles who were their main sort of competition in that sense. I think Len and McCartney and Wilson were fiercely competitive in a very positive and productive way always trying to one up you know each other right through the mid 60s. The fortunes how they fallen in the space of 18 months I mean Sergeant Pepper and pet sounds kind of are you know well revolver and pet sounds actually were the most contemporary of each of each other weren't they. In the meantime the beetles have kind of gone from strength to strength and the beach boys have all but kind of disappeared off the radar and yet as you say it's a very beautiful amp but it's almost like got a willfully underachieving quality it's recorded it sounds like it's recorded in their home and I think it was but at the same time there's the irony that the beetles are doing the whitetown which is kind of the equivalent of a wild honey.
Speaker 3I think you're right and I think also another you know huge album from this period running Stone's Beggars banquet was the back to basics because of course they'd done which I quite like. Great record and yeah you're right you know maybe wild honey sort of it predates both of those in this idea of okay we're going to pull back from the psychedelic excess and it's we're going to find when we go through albums from this era one of the interesting things is that you have this division there are the bands like the beetles the stones who are thinking okay we're pulling back the band being another example of this and then there are the artists who were taking a psychedelic of forward so there's a kind of this there's a tension in the 1968 pop scene and I think Hendrix who we just kind of brush past he's probably taking it forward Hendrix is kind of really expanding his palette of sounds and the length of his song because you know one of the things about early Hendrix you know his debut album is it's very concise you know really powerful potent sort of psychedelic blues pieces whereas he's pushing the edges with electric lady-loaned and yeah the beetles the stones they are suddenly pulling back it's almost like we're trying to get back into the era of rock and roll where we were excited by music but you're right friends is this absolute anomaly and I think it's beautiful I don't think the voices have ever sounded more beautiful the harmonies are rich everyone sounds on great form the lyrics are
Speaker 2kind of funny not there's a whole song about Brian just basically doing nothing you could busy doing nothing with the apostrophe yeah well he's
Speaker 3nothing there's a one there's one there you know you know Genghis we like the madness of Brian Wilson there's one where he just goes through this almost monologue about how to get to his house that's the song
Speaker 2that's busy doing nothing yeah and
Speaker 3basically it is it's the rest rock he's basically sitting in
Speaker 2his house with his set of feet in his sand pit or whatever he was he's not going out he's not doing anything he's got nothing to write about he's busy doing nothing it's busy doing nothing yeah it's busy doing nothing but I think there is a sense that Hendrix in a way I see the influence of Hendrix possibly more than any other artist through everything else on this list because he's made the sort of heavier approach to guitar rock yeah the center of the music universe in a very short period of time so between the two sort of albums you know Sergeant Pepper on one side and are you experienced on the other I think everything else is kind of informed by in some way by those two not everything yeah but there's an almost there's a this is kind of these are the albums that seem to be saying the tenor for what people are doing in 1960 so let's explore that and I think that's the sense that the beach boys so far out of that now they're making this very sweet harmony vocal aid and music but then you know BG's but I think
Speaker 3it's him yeah BG's are doing that and
Speaker 2being very successful at it so he's in it
Speaker 3isn't it because I think the thing is that the Beatles and the Stones had that perfect 67 psychedelic pop image yeah then by 68 they're growing their hair they're growing their beers yeah they're actually looking like the people who are buying their records whereas to be fair the Beach Boys still had that kind of slightly hokey yeah almost four freshmen style image yeah I think it was
Speaker 2hard for them to throw off that image of them as the sort of surfer surfer nerds whereas the Beatles and of course Hendrix was the ultimate kind of exactly you know poster icon wasn't he for psychedelic music and heavy rock going forward so let's so let's look at the legacy of the kind of Hendrix approach to making music and how much he's shaken stuff up in such a short period of time Hendrix and Sergeant Pepper have shaken everything up in a way and there are two strands of psychedelic and underground rock happening at this time one which is very US centric and one which is very UK centric and I think it's also no coincidence that Hendrix kind of spans the two worlds yeah because he isn't American artist but he made his records at least the first two records were both made well he initially made his reputation in Britain as well made his reputation in the UK and was part of that kind of scene happening in the UK yeah so I think it's no coincidence in a way that he kind of spans the two worlds but we have these two different strands of underground rock music psychedelic music happening in the UK and the US so let's start by looking at the UK so straight away we have an album like The Pretty Things SF Sorrow which a lot of people have pointed out and said well that's the first real concept record you know yeah Sergeant Pepper wasn't really a concept record didn't try and tell a story but here's an album that's actually trying to tell you a story through music something that famously Townsend would do the following year with Tommy and people always say well Pretty Things got there before Townsend and you know it's true it is true this this album is a conceptual pop record with elements of rock psychedelia but also doing something new which is trying to create a narrative driven concept record and arguably the first one of its kind what do you think of this record too
Speaker 3I like it a lot actually and I think it's surprisingly inventive I think the thing is that you know this is a band that started off as a much more hard hitting basic almost kind of R&B stone style band and although it became more sophisticated and they tried the odd ball of this to me just goes off the chart as regards where they were you know this is a fantastic record where they've used if you like Sergeant Pepper's or Satanic Majesty's and one of the things I like about this compared to another album that we'll probably discuss the small faces isn't the pretty things play it seriously you know this is a serious concept album there's some great melodies some really quiet unusual tangents musically as well and they're good players you know like the small face I think again what they share the small faces is they're fundamentally a really good band but they just go off at tangents that you would have never dreamed they're going off from six months earlier so is yet it's quite an impressive cutting edge psychedelic rock album from its period really and some lovely melodies as well and
Speaker 2also interesting it was recorded at EMI Studios now now known as Abbey Road by Norman Smith producer Norman Smith who previously produced Piper the Gates of Dawn for the Floyd the previous year so there's an element of that also that album also I think informing a lot of this music that's coming out this year psychedelic music this is a psychedelic rock opera so this is this is really the idea that rock music can be as serious and as arty as anything that could come from the world of classical music or jazz music and we have to remind ourselves that this is a very new thing in 1968 and the Beatles particularly have been responsible for legitimizing pop music and rock music as something which can stand alongside you know the most serious operatic or symphonic classical music so here's a band as you say that are very much taking that on board and made a record arguably before anyone else that is a rock yeah and it's
Speaker 3something I don't know whether they ever did anything better I think this is another thing we'll come back to is that 68 there are a lot of albums where I don't think bands ever bettered what they did in this period there's so much potential and also fulfilment of potential in this age and interestingly
Speaker 2enough that Leicester Banks the famous Rolling Stone critic at the time gave the album a very bad review and described it as ultra pretentious now I'm a great believer as I know you are Tim but there's not enough pretentiousness in pop music of course that we love pretentiousness and tuberculosis pretentiousness is just that when you say something is pretentious it's just another way of saying that these people are reaching they're reaching for something yeah they may fall flat on their face they may not pull it off but by god at least they're
Speaker 3trying well there's a lot of pretension in 68 which I kind of like there's a healthy pretension people just pushing everything about what they do lyrically musically production and it's kind of exciting because there's not a
Speaker 2lot of pretension in brides doing busy doing nothing there isn't
Speaker 3but it's still mad it's still mad yeah it's quite it's experimental in a much more casual unusual way in a sense I mean again that is an album on its own as we said the beach boys so let's
Speaker 2talk about the other the other sort of conceptual or sort of stab a conceptual rock music to come from a previously more R&B bass band you already alluded to as the small faces so how do you feel about the small faces attempt at psychedelic conceptual music I'm sort
Speaker 3of less keen on it I mean I really like Tichikku part which is their definitive psychedelic single yeah which is not on the album which isn't on the album yeah but there's some great music and they're a great but that's one thing you know listening to they're a great band there's a couple of instrumentals on it and they really groove and they really have that 68 sound um but the songs they sort of flip between quite hard-edged R&B rock numbers you can see that mario is going to do humble pie see there's the kind of birth well that was why he's going to talk
Speaker 2you about it because so it's in trouble but that's what I'm going to talk about because it's interesting isn't it that both when the band kind of broke up yeah and half of them became faces and Steve mario went off to form humble pie it's almost like a complete you know you turn on what they were doing on this record they go back to basics sort of like blues heavy rock roots rock so this is almost like an anomaly in the careers of all of these musicians isn't it
Speaker 3it is but you can hear I think humble pie more than you can hear the faces because actually on this they're really quite you know quite tight an agile band and they pull off the R&B side now he's a great vocalist he's a great singer I'm slightly less keen on the artful dodger cockniness to be honest it's interesting that one
Speaker 2of the main differences I think between the UK brand of psychedelic music and the US brand of psychedelic music is the influence almost of vaudeville this kind of cockney vaudeville I don't know how to describe it almost like this circus it's like the benefit of being for the benefit of Mr. Kai has had a big influence on the UK and another record I want to talk about with reference to that is the first idol race album the birthday party which of course is is Jeff Lin's very first record which which he wrote all the music and again it has this very strong influence from benefit of Mr. Kai which of course is the whole thing comes from like the 1920s vaudeville music the music almost the music hall tradition yeah filtered through LSD I don't know how to describe it it's something it's not something you hear in the US music
Speaker 3I'd say you do to extent Randy Newman had 1920s influences 1910s 1920s and Van Dyke Parks as well had that they're so baroque shuffling through and obviously you know Frank Zappers bowtie daddy has got a kind of 20s true thing I mean I'm going to bowtie daddy and the small faces one of the things again and even in the Pink Floyd album there's actually a lot of humor as well as pretensions so what's interesting about this year is there's pretentiousness galore and people overextending and overreaching but equally there's a lot of absurd humor and I guess why I prefer the pretty things to the small faces is the small faces almost seem to be taking the piss out of psychedelia well that's certain extent so that's kind of what
Speaker 2I was hinting at there was there a sense that this album was a little bit of them trying to go with the times in a way that they didn't feel completely engaged with themselves because when you see what they did immediately after this album you
Speaker 3know I said that pretty things come out of R&B and weirdly SF sorrow it's a totally natural fit for them maybe it wasn't a natural fit for the small faces and so how they made it a natural fit is by making it absurd and they did it well so you know it's not criticism of the album when I'm talking about the humor because equally I really love the humor on other people's albums from the same period but yeah it doesn't grab me as much I mean it
Speaker 2is a classic album it has a great sleeve the novelty sleeve of course is another thing the Beatles have kind of ushered in with with Pepper and a lot of people thinking about the way they present their albums the artwork and all of that stuff which of course all kind of taps into the conceptual nature of some of the records so it's an interesting period for for all to artwork and the way things
Speaker 3are being packaged and again talking concept and that 20s vaudeville album and of course the king's album brings that in and it was also weird as you alluded to earlier the fact that rock is still kind of in its infancy you know a lot of this music is absolutely fresh yet there's a weird nostalgia, you know, there's a weird nostalgia in the or weird nostalgia in the small faces, weird nostalgia in Randy Newman. It's quite unusual, and obviously Van Dyke Parks as well, that this age also usheres in a strange kind of yearning for the 10s, the 20s, an era before many of these artists were ever even born. -
Speaker 2And the best example of that of all from this year is the Bonzo Dog Band album, the Donut and Granny's Greenhouse, which literally has songs for at least, I'm not sure about this record particularly, but certainly the Bonzo's included in their repertoire, a lot of trad jazz music covers. And again, it's that kind of absurdist humour, which in a way almost predates Monty Python, a lot of that. I'm not sure of the chronology here, when did Monty Python start about this '69? - Yeah, so it's just about to come. And Bonzo's very much a precursor to the kind of Monty Python absurdist, surrealist, dar diced sense of humour. And again, I think you're right, a lot of that comes through particularly in the UK Psychedelic music. But there is also some more humorous records, wheels of fire by cream. -
Speaker 3I mean, it's another one of those albums that it's a double that shouldn't be a double, in my view. There's some great stuff on it. I mean, I really like the Jack Bruce's solo albums in the late '60s, early '70s. And you can hear that in this, when you're listening to a politician or white room. This is brilliant. They produce some amazing singles that manage to be cutting-edge, hard-edge, accessible, and experimental at the same time. You know, they had that trick and they were a great band of players as well. So what I like on this album, I really, really like, but what I don't like is the 10-milli-drone solo. - 10-milli-drone solo. Or the kind of Robert Johnson tribute on acid. -
Speaker 2Yeah, in some ways, I think that music has dated less well than perhaps some of the psychedelic experiments. Whereas I can still listen to something like SF Sorro, and it sounds like nothing else. You know, it sounds crazy. Also albums like The debut by tomorrow, Odyssey and Oracle, The Zombies. I'm sure you want to talk about that album, Tim. I mean, that's kind of. We talk about this kind of idea of Baroque pop music. This is a great example of that, isn't it?
Speaker 3I love Odyssey and Oracle. And it goes back again to what we were talking about earlier. Suddenly, it's '68, and it's probably ushered in by the Beatles to an extent. I'm sure there are other examples. But there is a profound Englishness. You know, Odyssey and Oracle, and obviously half of Ogden's nutcom. They couldn't be anything but English that alone British, really. Odyssey and Oracle, it's interesting because it is often seen as a conceptual album. It's often seen as a psychedelic album, but actually, there's not that much fiddling around with production on this album. In fact, if there's an influence on it, it's the Beach Boys and the Harmonies. They'll occasionally do some gorgeous Beach Boys, harmonies to break up the songs. But yeah, there's kind of desolate, melaton, voice, organ voice. There's a real intimacy about this album as well as a great sense of melody. Do you think people look at the cover and say it's a psychedelic record?
Speaker 2Because they just see the cover.
Speaker 3The package, isn't it? Does it? You know, this is a really kind of. A bit like the Beach Boys, actually. It relies on a beautiful set of vocals. You know, Kevin Bluntstone has got. Yeah, great singing. And amazingly, you know, pure. I think it's the only way to describe it. It just seems so natural. The harmonies equally are great. So I think the arrangements are wonderful. A lot of melaton in it, which obviously I'm a big fan of. A bit like the year 2000, we last did. '68 is a real year for melaton over years, which I'm all for. I'm very fond of this album, but it's the single time of the season, which I think was recorded at a different session, which is what really kind of solidified their success in the States. It's. Yes, it's a very orchestral album, isn't it? And choir boy, as well. There's a choir boy pure.
Speaker 2Always like a bit of choir-bond record. Let's talk about the Bee Gees. Because the Bee Gees, again, as always through their career, are kind of an anomaly. It's always important to remember just how old the Bee Gees were. And still are, in the whole history of popular music. They've always been the anomaly. We're not always, but there's a brief moment in the late '70s when they kind of defined the era. And at this point in their career in 1968, there couldn't be further away from Saturday night fever and how deep is your love and staying alive. This is the epitome of melancholic, baroque, orchestrated, pop music. Where does this fit, does it fit? Is it psychedelic? Because very often these albums are horizontal and ideal. Both also get, it's interesting you were saying, well, Odyssey and Oracle, the zombies album, often gets included in the sort of list of the best psychedelic albums of all time. And yet when you listen to it, you think,
Speaker 3well, what psychedelic is about? Yeah, because for me, psychedelic was all about, let's say, phasing guitar treatments. There's a particular psychedelic maelstrom, which you hear in Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead in totally different ways. Which you hear on SF sorrow. But if you listen to Odyssey and Oracle, it's very straight from a production point
Speaker 2of view. It doesn't feel like, I mean, I think the other thing that I think a lot of people think psychedelic music is somehow influenced by LSD and drug culture. Isn't, BG's doesn't sound like that, does it? It sounds quite straight in a way. Yeah. Even though actually it's very odd. I mean, Robin Gibbs has one of the strangest, I don't even know how you describe his voice. It's very odd, isn't it? Yeah. And you'd think, well, that's not a commercial voice. That's too strange to, and yet they're
Speaker 3having massive hits. And nobody seems to comment on it. It's peculiar, isn't it? 'Cause I think that Brian Ferries, another one, where I think he's one of the most distinctive. And Bizarre Vocalist, I love Ferries. But he's distinctive, he's bizarre. How was he ever so popular?
Speaker 2I mean, the songs on these records, I mean, the albums weren't massively successful, but the singles, I started a joke, got to get a message to you, Massachusetts. These were massive, massive hits. And they are kind of standing alone in the sense, they are kind of making this baroque orchestrated. In some respects, very old-fashioned approach, they're making it's commercially successful. And it's very strange, and I still think when you hear BG's albums now, from this era, they do sound like they're coming from some alternate reality that doesn't seem to belong to the zeitgeist at all. And yet, when you look at pictures of them, they're kind of affecting the psychedelic garb, they've got the image. The songs themselves sound like they don't belong to the zeitgeist, they don't belong to this era.
Speaker 3Only in the sense, if you see them as a bridge between the kind of sentimental songwriters that were huge at the time, you know, Engelbert Humperding. Well, that's, yes, that's what I mean. And the Beatles. So maybe there's some kind of bridge between the popular music of the day and psychedelic. You know, perhaps it's Mum's and Dad's idea of what a psychedelic band could all should be in '68. But, you know, if you think of bands who are influenced by them at the time, I remember Jonathan King was hugely influenced, and he pushed Genesis on their debut album to almost be a second BG's. So there were obviously a major force commercially at that point that people would take notice of them.
Speaker 2I mean, a lot of people have described these albums as fake, you know, because, and I understand that, although I love the records, and I think that's unfair, there is an element of that. But there wouldn't be the only ones to sort of adopt. I mean, you could say Satanic Majesties is a psychedelic record, too, isn't it?
Speaker 3It's a scientific psychedelic. Yeah, and I think that still a great record. Obviously, Zap, or I think on his album this year, takes aim at Faker Delica in all its guises.
Speaker 2He does, yeah, yeah, we'll come onto that. In fact, let's do that now. Let's move on to US psychedelic music and underground rock music. One thing I've noticed about listening back to a lot of these records, and I've already kind of hinted at this, for me, a lot of the UK stuff has this kind of dardized humor, this kind of element of vaudevillian musical to it. But as you've correctly sort of pointed out that that is present in some of the American artists, too. But the ones that I think we most often think of as being psychedelic. So bands like Spirit, Steve Miller band, Grateful Dead, Vanilla Fudge, there's more of a sense of this being the early birth of what would become soft rock. It's more earth bounding away to me. They don't have the kind of whimsical, someone to say more feminine sort of element that you hear in things like the zombies, the Bee Gees. They don't have that kind of wacky humor. It seems to take itself a little bit more seriously. I really like a lot of these records.
Speaker 3Do you agree with that? I know what you mean. I mean, I think there is a kind of a magical quality in some American psychedelic. You know, probably on the pop side of it and also on the soul side of it. You know, in bands like Rotary Connection or the Association, it's sort of playing with psychedelic garb as well. There's a magical quality in that music. But yeah, some of the rock bands were definitely more rooted in blues. Although I think that Anthem of the Sun actually is one of the more experimental Grateful Dead. Albums and is worthy of being called the psychedelic masterpiece. I think it's a really interesting piece of production. And again, uses music coming from different sources, live, the studio, heavy processing, no processing. It's really interesting work, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, maybe I'm contradicting myself here because as we pointed out, a lot of the UK artists had been blues and R&B bands only 18 months before and they've kind of, you know, adapting the psychedelic ideologies to what they do. And there's no difference to what say Steve Miller band [BLANK_AUDIO] or spirit we're doing. What about an album like "Waiting for the Sun" by the doors? So where do they fit into the world of psychedelic music?
Speaker 3Are there psychedelic bands? Well, apart from the swirling organs, again, not really. I mean, I think they are, you know, this title track of the software, that's a psychedelic track. Is it? What makes it psychedelic? I think it's the unusual shift. It's the unusual tone. There's a dreamlike quality in the beginning. What's that circus dreamlike quality? And I think there's some kind of bizarre phasing processing on the vocals. I always kind of take phasing as a big psychedelic.
Speaker 2And I know what you mean. Yes, that is a kind of hallmark of psychedelic music. Psychedelic music is much more than that. I think psychedelic music ultimately for me comes down to it feels like there's an influence from drug culture. More importantly to me, there's an influence from dream logic. Yeah. So I think that would fit
Speaker 3the software, the dream
Speaker 2logic. Yeah. So if you take that as the ultimate signifier of psychedelic music, then a lot of this stuff kind of fits in, doesn't it? These are bands that are kind of throwing away the notions of the two-and-a-half-minute pop form. They're experimenting with different textures in the music. But they are also experimenting with the studio for sure. Anthem of the Sun is a great example of that. In many ways, it stands out in the Grateful Dead's catalogue. It's been the only record. Well, the following record, and I never know how to say it, "Aoxamoxa." Yes, it is also very experimental. But Anthem of the Sun is the one where they really experiment with the possibilities of overdubbing in the studio in a way that they certainly didn't when we get to Amazigh American beauty. But for a very short period of time, I remember being very disappointed when I first heard Grateful Dead because I'd heard so much about them as being the ultimate American psychedelic band. And the first records I heard obviously were not Anthem of the Sun. They were albums like American beauty and working bands. And I just remember being so disappointed. Well, this is not psychedelic music. It's just very boring, boogie, American boogie rock. And I love those records now. I love those records. But at the time, my expectation was that this was going to blow my mind with something just expand my mind in what the possibilities of music could be. And I couldn't hear it. But Anthem of the Sun, which I heard many years later, I think that is the record where you can hear them really reaching, isn't it?
Speaker 3Oh, you can. And I think they did reach, you know, I think 75 blues for I know is a brilliant album. I like quite a lot of their late 70s stuff as well. But I think that we were kind of exposed in Britain to the very bait. They were almost like a slightly more flatulent state was quite because I remember them always growing on old barouville test. And they'd always be doing a 20 minute version of a Chuck Berry piece. That was my memory of them until I started to listen to the music. So I kind of discovered, probably like you, the great full dead albums in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, you know, very late art. And then when you listen to Anthem of Sun, you think, oh, okay, they deserve that reputation. They're really good. Great full dead life is brilliant. And then you can go back to open stations. I love that record
Speaker 2yet. And then you can go back and listen to things like American Beauty and appreciate them as great, you know, Rootsie. I mean, experimenting their own way too, but not a psychedelic. I mean, I think there's a sense for me that when I think psychedelic, what is the archetype for psychedelic songs? I think strawberry fields see Emily play. And that's, and I think that's in a way kind of resonating with what you said. You think you think phasing effects are psychedelic. There's a sense that there are certain singles, which itchicu park, of course. Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah, it's these, these are almost like the archetypes for what we think of as psychedelic music, but that's a very British sense of psychedelic. But they also as well have these kind of a abrupt change. I mean,
Speaker 3I, I suppose I'm seeing more, as you say, I think the itchicu park, the see Emily play, the strawberry fields, I'm the walrus aspect, whether these are abrupt shifts of tempo and tone. You know, that beating see Emily play where suddenly it becomes almost a keystone cops piano. There are these wild moments of invention, unexpected tonal shifts that I also associate with, with the best of psychedelia to a certain extent. And I guess that's what obviously juxtap stratosphere when they become that kind of 80s pastiche of the psychedelic era. They take those elements as a starting point.
Speaker 2But the juxtap also taps into things like the seeds, you know, the American psychedelic bands, but I'm not, so for the 13th Flora Devices, which I'm not such a fan of. But anyway, interestingly enough, we just mentioned there, what are the archetypes, psychedelic singles, strawberry fields forever, see Emily play, itchicu park. One other thing, all of these singles having common is there's almost this sense of wanting to go back to childhood, this kind of nostalgia filtered through Alice in Wonderland and Edward Lear and surrealist, you know, sensibility. Maybe that, because we grew up in England and we always would hear those songs, that kind of formulated our idea of what, this is psychedelic music. So when we heard things like America, you know, America, like bands like Spirit and Steve Miller band and we heard things like, you know, Grateful Dead, it didn't quite fit in with our notion of psychedelic music, it has a different flavour to it.
Speaker 3Yeah, because obviously you think of Jeff Snare playing, you know, the huge hit also had the kind of. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Well-spotted, yeah. You know, there's no, you're right. And I was aware of that. I mean, I think Jeff Snare playing again, that kind of creation, one of the greatest albums actually. And once more, along with Anthem of the Sun, it's a worthy psychedelic experimental effort, whereas what they did prior to that, the same as Grateful Dead, slightly more rooted, because if you listen to the surrealistic pillow, it's not quite as surrealistic as you want it to be. It's slightly more roots in a lot of places. It's got some great pieces, but I think crying a creation is where they come into the rain. And the same as Grateful Dead, that they're, say, self-titled album, it's a lot more
Speaker 2rooted. But as we've already discussed, isn't that true of all of these bands? Are the British ones too? Yeah, yes. If you go back to 18 months, even 12, even six months, if you go back even six months before their psychedelic masterpieces, it's a lot more traditional. It's a lot more R&B bass. It's true of the pretty things. It's true of small faces. Even the Beatles, you know, go back 18 months before Sergeant Pepper. And it's still very much rooted in, you know, American R&B.
Speaker 3Well, also folk rock, I think the thing is as well, which is another big thing. I think, you know, Dylan had a massive influence on the culture from sort of, you know, 62, 63 onwards. And he influences quite a bit of rubber soul. And of course, another band who kind of dabbled in psychedelia and experimentalism, the birds come totally out of a combination of that rubber soul folk rock and Bob Dylan's folk rock, the kind of 12 string guitars and so on of Beatles.
Speaker 2So I think we're going to move on to because you're right. Another big, big movement from this year is folk music and the singer songwriter. But let's just briefly conclude with US Underground Rock because we can't talk about US Underground Rock without talking about Frank Zappo. You've mentioned him a couple of times already Tim. Two albums this year, three albums this year, I think, couldn't be more different to each other. We're only in it for the money, lumpy gravy and cruising with Rubin and the Jets. Yes. Cruising with Rubin and Jets. Now, as you've already pointed out, there is a sentiment of nostalgia in the American psychedelic music too. Here's an album that is actually not even trying to be psychedelic. It's just a pastiche of 50s, do-wop and rock and roll records. The one that really blows my mind this year is lumpy gravy. But maybe we're only in it for the money as you say, Zappo's attempt to kind of tap into the experimental underground rock sensibility this year. So, talk to us about this album too.
Speaker 3Well, in effect, he's made a psychedelic masterpiece that rips apart psychedelia. Even in this era that we now nostalgicly look back and I think, you know, God, I think, God, wouldn't it be wonderful to see in Velvet Underground in New York in 6667, Floyd in London in 6667, and equally the grateful dead Steve Miller band or Jefferson airplane at their greatest playing the film or in 6667. And Zappo, who was there at this point, already sees the greed, the exploitation, the fakery, the phoeniness as he's continually sort of referring to. And in its wake, makes a remarkable psychedelic album and sometimes it's even quite touching. Even though you know it's Zappo and he's nearing it. He's sneering, yeah. Yeah. The melodies are so beautiful on this album at times. They're quite moving. So, I think it's a great album and he's adopting a
Speaker 2lot of the tropes of psychedelic music, isn't it? But almost using them against, you know, against it. Exactly. But you know, ironically pulling it off in a way that actually makes it one of the more successful records from this scene, the US psychedelic scene. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's so cynical in a way. It's almost hard for me to think of it as a psychedelic album. You know, the whole notion of the summer of love is completely. Well, it's not absent, but it's, as you say, it's ripped to pieces. It's taken, it's taken the piss out of the whole notion that it's down to the cover, of course, being a pastiche of the Sargent Pepper cover, you know. But it's brilliant. It's brilliant. And it's pure Zappo. It's pure Zappo. As his lumpy gravy, his other, his other sort of very arguably one of the most experimental albums he made, which knits together everything from serious orchestral composition, again, to do what pastiche is to music, concrete. But that's all in wearing in it for the money as well. But it's packaging a more kind of accessible way. Yeah. that I guess rock fans and pop fans can identify with and relate to it.
Speaker 3Well, it was the ultimate cliche of having your cake and eating it, isn't it? On the south and really? It's the idea of a mind with an imagination that vast working in the rock context. You know, because I think lots of people were still chasing the genius that he possessed in that era and never matching it.
Speaker 2He is extraordinary and he's an artist that I think, you know, sounds like no one but himself. Even when he's doing the do-what covers, I don't particularly like that record, but there's something about it that's quintessentially zapper-esque. There's a couple of other songs I just want to mention, I think, are classics. They're two of my favorite psychedelic, American psychedelic songs of all time. Song for our ancestors from sailor by the Steve Miller band. And pop a song from the monkeys album this year ahead. Now, the monkeys, maybe just worth dwelling on this for a moment, the monkeys obviously were a manufactured band, weren't they? And yet here they are, three years on trying to, and to an extent, pulling it off, trying to be taken seriously as a psychedelic rock band. And pop a song, okay, they didn't write it, it was written by Goffin and King. But to me, it's one of the great psychedelic pop songs.
Speaker 3Well, they've done what zapper did, haven't they, in the sense that they're past-deaching the era and making one of the great albums of the era in that start? Because obviously, head was the film and zapper appears in the film, which doesn't really get significant. It was directed, I think, by John Nicholson. And again, in their own way, the monkeys are as cynical and exploitative and aware of the scene as zappers. And I guess that's why zapper appeared in it. Because he recognized a fellow traveler. Even though you think of zapper and the monkeys in a completely different way, I think they were fellow travelers, especially in '68, really.
Speaker 2I'm not sure, but I think the monkeys genuinely bought into the psychedelic spirit. I think they genuinely liked it. But yes, your rights, head now comes across. And of course, a lot of stuff in head, the movie and the soundtrack, is about the notion of packaging and promoting and selling music. And they kind of take the piss out of the whole notion of the monkeys themselves. So they kind of turn the mirror in on themselves and kind of deconstruct this whole notion of a manufactured group. But in the context of making a great psychedelic pop.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's usually a pop-up song in particular. It is absolutely enchanting. You know, it's one of the greatest psychedelic songs by a manufactured pop band.
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