It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine: September 2017

Bubble Puppy Psych Del Rio

Flavor Crystals in the Arneson River Theather

In the mid to late 1960s, it is indisputable that Austin, Texas was the epicenter of the burgeoning psychedelic music scene with The 13^th Floor Elevators leading the way. However, San Antonio, a mere 80 miles South, were close behind with their own psychedelic heroes such as Bubble Puppy, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Lord August and the Visions of Light/Lite, and The Swiss Movement – granted that most of these bands frequently played Austin clubs and/or actually physically moved to Austin as at the time it was “the place to be”. Now, some 50 years later, San Antonio has its own psychedelic festival in the vein of Austin Psych Fest (rest in peace). On Saturday, September 23^rd, the Psych Del Rio Music Festival came to fruition on the sleepy San Antonio Riverwalk. The small-scale festival, hopefully to become an annual happening, was beautifully organized by the K23 Gallery with a handful of sponsors and achieved the impressive feat of being a completely free festival for the masses – think about that for a minute, Levitation. It truly was a labor of love rather than a labor of commerce. The night was headlined by San Antonio legends Bubble Puppy with support from well-known names such as The Warlocks, Psychic Ills, and Flavor Crystals as well as a smattering of Texas bands that lean heavily toward psychedelia.

Day Three of Kozfest started out quite unexpectedly. Ozric Tentacles guitarist and founder Ed Wynne had made his presence known simply by being in attendance at some of the weekend’s spectacular performances, highlighted by such bands as The Roz Bruce Infusion, Magick Brothers, The Cary Grace Band, and Zofff. This was despite the rain and wind that grew more intense on the final day of the festival, eventually turning the main path through the grounds and the road down the hill to the entryway into virtual swaths of mud.

The fifth album by Boston’s Perhaps will be coming out on Riot Season on September 29th. It’s a complete trip of an album, one that’s beyond hard to pigeonhole and one that really needs to be sat and listened to in all it’s 36 minutes of weird and wonderful glory.

A Devil’s Din are the psychedelic brainchild of UK-born Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist David Lines; joined on his creative journey by disciple of the Rickenbaker bass Thomas Chollet, and virtuoso drummer Dom Salameh.

“If I had to describe the album in one word it would be: fun. There’s plenty of head-boppin’ moments and there’s a really nice flow that takes you from earth to the stars and back in less than an hour. We got sweet fuzzed-out guitar tones, harmonies, melodies, hooks...and gongs! It’s a nice ride. And embedded throughout are certain words and phrases designed to elicit new ideas, widen the field of perception, and inspire a more cosmic outlook on life. Which is also fun. Especially on acid. It’s an incredible place to be as an artist: creatively free, without any limitations, so we can offer the world our fun and fuzzy freakadelic rock music.” - Dave Lines vocalist / guitarist.

The Sand Pebbles - “Pleasure Maps” (2017) review

The Sand Pebbles - Pleasure Maps (Kasumuen Records, 2017)

This is a 5 Star Vinyl Worthy body of music ...

Pleasure Maps by The Sand Pebbles, their first release in nearly six years floats in on the most beautiful blue vinyl, and if you live outside of Australia, a rather pricey adventure to say the least.

Lenny Helsing talks to The Pretty Things’ Wally Waller about the exciting remastering project that now gives us a brand new restorative re-release of the album “Rock St. Trop – Philippe Debarge with The Pretty Things” out now on Madfish/Snapper on both LP/CD formats.

With their truly magnificent S.F. Sorrow LP complete – yet still languishing in record racks – and the groundbreaking Parachute opus yet to be dreamed up; and with founder / lead guitarist Dick Taylor choosing to have a sabbatical from the group, the summer of 1969 looked a little dour for the Pretty Things. But that didn’t stop vocalist Phil May and bassist Wally Waller from creating an endless vat of songs within their infamous Westbourne Terrace digs. Furthermore, a new experimental idea brought to them by well-heeled French fan Philippe Debarge had just been agreed upon; a project that would involve Debarge taking on the role of lead vocalist, with the Pretty Things providing all the songwriting and musical backing – all other vocal duties would also be carried out by the group’s strong vocal arsenal: Phil May, Wally Waller, keyboards player and percussionist Jon Povey and the group’s new guitar maestro Vic Unitt – on loan from fellow underground freaks the Edgar Broughton Band.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - On The Echoing Green (Mexican Summer, 2017)

https://shiningskullstudio.bandcamp.com/album/on-the-echoing-green

On The Echoing Green is a definitive change of heart for prolific ambient and noise artist Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Released this summer, the album is ripe with a warm haze that beguiles and transfixes. The journey is gentle yet visceral, tenebrous yet astral. Swimming in and out of hard-edged loops and syrupy walls of sound, we float down into our seats. The bus has left the station. We are already on our way.

Hiya, here’s some new recordings by Los Marbles.

This first studio recording is three songs and we’re currently looking to see if some like minded soul would be interested in pressing it up on vinyl together with us.

Musically it’s a mix of all stuff we love, with no limitations. The pop sensibilities are here in form of melodies and arrangements and at the same time it’s a free form soundtrack to the movie we live - or would like to live - in. Our influences are everything and nothing.

Philosophical questions about the constructionist reality of past present and future and how to maybe change things for the better by altering how we see and describe it are there - but there’s also hedonism, freedom to choose how to live your life and of course the eternal call to just let go of your ego and come on and dance!

Music may even be a wormhole to other dimensions and maybe magic will seep into the world through it!

The band:

Måns P Månsson - Guitar, vocals, fx

Indy Neidell - Keyboards, vocals, fx

Tobias Resch - Bass

Jim Halvarsson - Drums

Jeremy Morris - “Invitation” (2017) review

Jeremy - Invitation (JAM Recordings, 2017)

Comprised of material recorded between 1975 and 1979, Invitation not only features Jeremy Morris’s freshman recordings, but the disc also marks the first time any of these pieces have been issued. Several years after these home tapes were laid down, Jeremy formed his own label - JAM Recordings - and since then, he has cut one album after another, which continually garner high-fives all over the world. Aside from being an ace singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, the Portage, Michigan artist plays and excels at a variety of genres, encompassing radio-ready pop rock, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, instrumental rock and spiritual rock.

JuJu is the brainchild of Sicilian multi-instrumentalist Gioele Valenti (Lay Llamas, Herself). Following on from the project’s 2016 S/T debut – widely hailed as one of the best, most innovative psych albums of the year – Valenti has signed to Fuzz Club for the release of sophomore LP Our Mother Was A Plant. Carrying on in its predecessor’s footsteps, the new LP is a continuation of JuJu’s ritualistic sonic exploration into the cultural implications of the ongoing refugee crisis and humanities increasingly strained relationship with Mother Earth.

Our Mother Was A Plant Pre-order:

https://fuzzclub.com/products/juju-our-mother-was-a-plant

One of the most out of sight singles was recorded by the Glass Sun. “Silence Of The Morning” is now considered garage-fuzz classic. The band recently released a wonderful book about their time.

An interview with members of Sir Robin & The Longbowmen. We talked about their latest album, upcoming tour and even upcoming album.

https://sirrobinandthelongbowmen.bandcamp.com/

Who’s in Sir Robin & The Longbowmen and what do you all play? Have you all made any changes to the lineup since you started or is this the original lineup?

Right now we are six people on stage: Konrad Reichel (vocals/percussion), Stefan Hühn (guitar/sitar/vocals), Friedrich Griese (guitar), Manuel Puschmann (organ/synthesizer/vocals), Robin Heller (drums/vocals) and Felix Franzke (Bass). Only Manuel and Robin are playing in the band since it started, we had a pretty intense change of members over the course of the years. The first album for example was recorded with D.A. Humphrey (former member of The Blank Tapes) and Martin Uslaub (guitar) and Felix Raskiewicz (bass) as well as Thomas Jahn (synthesizer).

With their third album Are You Waiting ? the French psychedelic jokesters Frank Sabbath present a concentrate of their composition style in four songs, ranging from high energy psychedelic rock, to progressive doom-laden melodies, and trippy atmospheric soundscapes.

The first track off the album, “Sasume,” is a japanese infused psychedelic tune, reminding the seemingly forgotten times where humor did belong in rock music.

Are You Waiting ? will be released on CD and digital format by the new associative label Bermuda Cruise, which is focusing on psychedelic, experimental and improvised music. The date of release for the album is set to October 2nd.

https://www.facebook.com/franksabbath.band/

https://franksabbath.bandcamp.com/

Remembering Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970)

In four years he built a world

Between Venus and Neptune

Planets of love and the sea

Stoned from the sun

Lighting its pastel colors

The lightning comes at midnight

Again in late November

And the road is revealed

Some dare to walk

Though many follow in his

Footsteps, none have filled his shoes.

(in remembrance of September 18, 1970)

By Kevin F. Wozniak

Larry Conklin & Jochen Blum - “Jackdaw” (1980) premiere

Larry Conklin bought his first guitar, a Gibson J-45, in 1970, after he got out of the army. “I taught myself to play. I wrote songs and instrumentals (at that time Bert Jansch was my guiding light). I listened to a lot of people - Leo Kottke, John Renbourn, Django Reinhardt, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson - and especially Rev. Gary Davis, who played only with his thumb and index finger as I did.”

Larry's first record, Jackdaw was self-released in 1980 and includes beautiful solo 12 string acoustic guitar tracks, as well as gentle acoustic duets with violinist, Jochen Blum. Larry met Jochen in Florence, Italy, in 1980 and commented that “his violin playing put excitement into my music. It was special. I pressed 300 copies and sent them out into the world.”

Neil Young - “Hitchhiker” (2017) review

Neil Young - Hitchhiker (2017)

If anything, Neil Young is predictably unpredictable … and truth be told, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a drawback, because right after he releases something brilliant such as Psychedelic Pill, he’ll come out of left field with something that leaves me scratching my head as nearly nothing, other than a few songs here and their come even close to the moving and specular material he laid out during the late 60’s and early 70’s, especially with his band Crazy Horse.

“It evolved into being about my life in music, my record obsession, my role in discovering mysterious LPs, bands I was in, my early days in NYC... a capturing of my human being vibe overall.”

Paul Major has lived resolutely on the vanguard of musical culture for nearly a half-century; as a pioneering record collector turned eminent rock and roller, his influence is vast, far-reaching and woefully unsung – until now. Feel the Music traces Paul’s singular trajectory from his early days in the Midwest, through his years in the New York punk scene, and headlong into his trailblazing career as a connoisseur of the weirdest records of all time. Illustrated throughout with unseen photographs from Paul’s personal scrapbook and eye-popping rare record covers and animated by Paul’s witty, inimitable storytelling style, Feel the Music is a deluxe tour through the farthest-out reaches of rock and roll history. [http://anthology.net/]

Your new book is absolutely fabulous, especially for a guy interested in collecting the “real” stuff.

Thanks man, freaks me out that such a book could exist and that the pre-internet secret society of collectors has grown into a worldwide scene. The “real” stuff that only hundreds of people were into back in the day sometimes hits hundreds of thousands on Youtube. While the book features lots of more famous psychedelic LPs it’s the more bizarre private pressings that are the things that I feel like I had the most to do with saving from the scrap heap of history.

One of the rare occurrences that took place around Kozfest was the performance of Spirits Burning, augmented by Chumley Warner Brothers who played an amazing set on Day Two of the festival. Both bands also gave stellar shows at Widcombe Social Club in Bath the previous Wednesday as a kind of “dress rehearsal.”

Album reissue on Out-Sider (2017) / Originally released on Project 3 (1972)

Guerssen

The lone album from Philadelphia’s Rain is an interesting melting pot of harmonic pop (‘Let Our Hopes Run Our Dreams’ prefigures Supertramp’s prog/pop and ‘Can You Help Me Sing My Song’ could easily have featured in a Partridge Family episode on American TV), hard rock (‘To A Dreamer’ features imaginative synth AND organ solos (!) from keyboardist/songwriter/vocalist Cobb Bussinger), and intricate jazzy prog (‘Mother’s Evil Child’ has some tasty guitar licks from Michael Kennedy). Perhaps the amalgam of styles hurt its chances of finding an audience who couldn’t quite make out what the band’s musical intentions were.

Based in London, psychedelic alternative rock maestros NUKLI have a message: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!” A UK free festival veteran, vocalist and guitarist Kev Hegan originally formed the space punk band PSi, which was a figurehead on the many Stonehenge Festival stages. That band changed its name to PSi NUKLI, putting out an underground cassette in 1988 entitled 9. After dropping the “PSi” from the name, NUKLI released its first cassette in 1993, Mushroom Bunglow Musick, and finally its first CD, The Time Factory, in 1997 on Delerium Records. The band’s current members are Hegan – vocals, guitar and keyboard; Mark Huxley – bass; and Peter Out – drums.

“I’d play drums for 5 seconds, take that tiny loop, loop it over, play a little piano motif, build that, and it all turns into a creature of some sort.”

Take a look at his discography and you see an emerging ambient artist sporting a repertoire evocative of Teengirl Fantasy, Atlas Sound, Sigur Rós, and Animal Collective. His sound began to blossom as a kind of avant-folk wrapped in disjunctive guitars and delicate falsetto, but before long his craft shifted to twirling cello loops and dinner conversation sound collaging. Most recently Panda Rosa has released, Neochina, a concept album that straddles the line between shoegaze and vaporwave.

The Dream Syndicate - How Did I Find Myself Here? (Anti- Records, 2017)

In all honesty, after all this time, I never expected to hear another Dream Syndicate album, so when How Did I Find Myself Here? found its way to my front door, the album’s philosophical title gave me pause to wonder the same thing regarding my own life.

Festival: Folk Music at Newport 1963-1966

A Film by Murray Lerner

Criterion Collection Blu Ray/DVD 2017

Part of what makes D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back – his documentary film of Bob Dylan’s 1965 U.K. tour – so remarkable is that Pennebaker didn’t set out to simply capture Dylan’s gigs from that time and present them in a straightforward way. He shot and edited the footage in an artful manner that made the viewer experience the moments in the heady and often chaotic way they must have felt to those present. You get inside the tour, and not only via the concerts but throughout all the other episodes that were part of the whirlwind series of events. Filmmaker Murray Lerner – who, sadly, passed away earlier this month – accomplished this same kind of comprehensive artistry in his 1967 feature Festival, which presents a collage of moments Lerner shot at the famed Newport Folk Festival over the years 1963-66.

Tom Rapp Pearls Before Swine:

City of Gold / Beautiful Lies You Could Live In

(BGO Records BGOCD 1285)

Pearls Before Swine are placed in the liner notes somewhere between the Incredible String Band, Mimi & Richard Farina, Tim Buckley…and Love: wide indeed, but justified. Some liken one of these albums to alt-country but that’s only a fraction: for most the biblically-named Pearls Before Swine are really a full-throttle vehicle for Tom Rapp and the first dawning of American psychedelic folk. Their nearest cousins this side of the Atlantic are post-debut Dr. Strangely Strange, with American angles rather than the beguiling Irish-English whimsy, though listeners will hear a lot of their likes surfacing while the always-interesting Rapp ploughs his own plot.

Originally from Portland, the New Tweedy Brothers were formed by brothers Fred and Danny Lackaff plus Dennis Fagaly and Steve Ekman. In 1966, they relocated to San Francisco, where they were part of the exploding, nascent psychedelic Ballroom scene, influencing none other than Jerry Garcia and sharing stage with bands like The Warlocks (pre–Grateful Dead), Quicksilver and Big Brother among others. Upon returning to Oregon, they self–released in 1968 their only album, housed in a striking hexagonal, over–sized silver foil cover, now a holy grail between psychedelic collectors. Innocent vocal harmonies, fuzzy bass, jangly guitars, raga sounds... Guerssen Records recently made a wonderful reissue and they managed to get us in contact with Fred Lackaff to talk about their blend of psychedelic jangly folk rock.

Where and when did you grow up? Was music a big part of your family life? Did the local music scene influence you or inspire you to play music?

I was born in Vancouver Wash. in 1941, so I got a good taste of the era of crooners and big band jazz and boogie woogie. Both my parents were talented performers as well as record collectors, so we had access to the sounds of the time; my favorites were the boogie, couldn’t believe what those guys were doing with their left hands and with the rhythm. Most nights after dinner mom and dad would run thru their repertoire on piano and sax: “Sleepy Time Gal,” “I’m Confessin’ That I Love You,” “Sunny Side of The Street,” come to mind, all the pop hits of the day.

Heroin in Tahiti – Remoria (Soave Records, 2017)

https://soave.bandcamp.com/album/heroin-in-tahiti-remoria

Fade in. The echoes of a jaw harp cloak you in a deep apparitional enigma. Shakers and sporadic percussion induce a prodding momentum. In the periphery, high pitched squeals float and turn in on themselves. You feel yourself diving down, perhaps into a hallucination, perhaps into your own hysteria. The drumming subsides into a sea of cicada-like shakers and glistening bells. And then a pound, an omen. You do not belong here. This is not your territory.

The Raised By Wolves - Sadie Hawkins (2013)

http://music.theraisedbywolves.com/album/sadie-hawkins

This DC-based group has been described in the past as reminiscent of The Flaming Lips with a bit of The Police mixed in. But when I turn on The Raised By Wolves’s debut album, I pick up on a greater eclecticism. Any 90s pop rock comparison only begins to dive into the experimentation that gives this release life.

“We Hear You’re Leaving, That’s OK…”

Walter Carl Becker 1950-2017

Steely Dan. Frank Zappa once famously referred to them as “downer surrealism”. I never got that. They weren’t depressing at all, nor were they “surreal” in any sense of the word. Rather, they crafted their tunes around a series of characters, usually New York/Urban in origin, whose foibles exemplified the human condition in the modern world. Cynical, yes. But surreal? More like hyperreal. Maybe Frank felt some professional jealousy toward a pair who beat him at his own game of “conquering from the fringes”, as Donald Fagen put it, subversively and repeatedly landing their poisoned darts at the top of the charts.

Indeed, their very name was subversive. By hijacking William S. Burroughs’ fictional dildo for their band name, they left thousands of confused girlfriends of musicians in their wake (“which one is Dan, the singer?”, “No babe, that’s Don”, “So why does he call himself Dan?”, “Babe, never mind…”). Becker and Fagen probably giggled like schoolboys when Dick Clark announced them on Bandstand…

Hi Barry, thanks for taking the time to share the story of your musical adventures, especially your time with The Legend, the band that cut one of my all time favorite LPs under the name Dragonfly.

Hi David, thanks for taking the time to share your story as drummer of two of Texas’ most famous psychedelic rock bands, Zakary Thaks and Bubble Puppy. For me, it doesn’t get any better than that!

When and where were you born? What part did music play in the Fore household?

Born in 1950 San Antonio. My dad was a drummer in big bands in the 1940’s and ‘50’s. I never saw him play, as he quit when he married my mom. But I saw newspaper clips of his band, “Records Ramblers”, and every night he played drums with his hands on the arms of his chair in the living room. I do the same thing. We had tons of 78 records, like all families in the ‘50’s.

A brand new podcast hosted by Ross Beattie (The Night Tripper)

A Middle Sex - Cry Waves

Jean Jacques Perrey - Space Light

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Gold And Silver

Vibracathedral Orchestra - South

Robert Wyatt - Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road

William S Burroughs - Manhattan Serenade

SQÜRL - The Dark Rift

Joseph - Trick Bag

Grobschnitt - Food Sicore

Stone Harbour - Grains Of Sand

Fuzz Orchestra - The Earth Will Weep

Ilyas Ahmed - Night Song

Les Rallizes Dénudés - The Last One

The Incredible String Band - A Very Cellular Song

Feel free to submit your music directly to Ross for upcoming podcast at: ross_bt@yahoo.com

Guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Dan McNabb of Washington, D.C. trio The Beginner’s Mynd recently took the time to answer a few questions about himself and the band for It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine readers.

Something unexpected happened in my conversation with David Ivar Herman Dune, when he expressed an admiration for the darkness of Jonathan Richman. Certainly it was true Richman had never spared addressing darkness throughout his career, but I’d always thought of him as someone able to transist that impulse into something better, as in Franny Glass’s understanding, in the Salinger story named for her, that a real poet must leave something beautiful on the page to earn the name.

Magic Bus are from Totnes, Devon, and with two album releases as well as a Fruits de Mer single, they describe their music as “a love-in of late ‘60s early ‘70s Canterbury scene and U.S. West Coast hippie.” A staple of UK psychedelic/progressive rock, the band’s current members are Paul Evans – lead vocals, guitar; Terence Waldstradt – lead guitar, vocals; Jay Darlington – keyboards, vocals; Viv Goodwin-Darke – flute, vocals; Wihil Mellorz - bass; and Billy Burls - drums.

Psychedelic Folk issue available

Dedicated to British psychedelic folk. New issue of printed version projected from the well-known, leading psych on-line site It’s Psychedelic Baby. After the previous issue covering exclusively the US psychedelic folk scene (IPB 002, 2016), this new issue covers the 1960s and 1970s British folk scene, with exclusive interviews of members from acts such as Fresh Maggots, Comus, Mellow Candle, Dr Strangely Strange, Spirogyra, C.O.B., Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Pererin, Courtyard Music Group, Magic Carpet, Sunforest, Oberon, etc. Also includes a few pages of record reviews. Cover by Justin Jackley.

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