gigidunnit (Tokyo, Japan)
Psychedelic artists from Decca/Deram. Well that narrows the field down a bit. Some of these are well known and well loved - "Vacuum Cleaner" is surely in everybody's collection already, but this is as good a place to scoop it up as any. It wobbles along outrageously, drenched to the skin in obscene reverberation. Brilliant. And "In Your Tower" is an absolute masterpiece.
Equally, every fan of the genre should already have a copy of The End's "Introspection" - if you can find it (there's a nifty Korean CD floating about as I speak)! - which has the quite fabulous single "Shades of Orange" on it. The track was produced by Bill Wyman during the thoroughly awful "Satanic Majesties Request" sessions, then the record company sat on the album for about two years before it finally crawled out to world indifference, having effectively missed the boat. "Introspection" is a quite wonderful album, a more mind-blowing version of "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" with the same good humour along with some dazzlingly brain-frying grooves.
"Red Sky At Night" would be great if it wasn't for the dreadful lyrics. Musically, it's a killer. Then we come to the first of the minor league tracks. Every psychedelic compilation is padded out with tourist material and exotica - live with it - and Curiosity Shoppe's psychedelic soul is a dud. Equally The Syn's celebration of the seminal London underground event of 1967 sounds like a joke: "Do what you like/Shoot yourself/Boot yourself/That'll be all right". Umm. Other duds proliferate, but we'll ignore them.
Then there are a few early novelties: "That Man" by the Small Faces is slightly out of place, being the band in their pre-Immediate days putting a toe in the waters. They'd get it right the same year (1967) with "Green Circles", but they're still playing lyseric mod here. The Al Stewart song is the B-side to his well known first single "The Elf" and a straightforward cover of the Yardbirds song. It's OK, but stretching the limits of the collection somewhat. Then there's "Love and Beauty", one of the clutch of flop singles the revamped Mellotron-heavy Moodies released before their last-ditch "Days of Future Passed" album. It's just like one of the least interesting of their album tracks.
The compilation ends with one of those other must-haves. I've never worked out "Nite Is A Comin'" - it sounds like the kind of song the narcs would plant on poor innocent trippers to get them back on the straight and narrow. I love it, but I can't work out what it's all about.
However, if you buy this album for just one reason, it's got to be "Like A Tear" by World of Oz. This band have a really poor image - they released just one album of insipid psych lite (a bit like Gandalf) and had an image as stupid as their name suggests. But "Like A Tear" creeps up on you and suddenly BLAM! It had me in floods of tears first time I heard it, but in my defence I was suffering from chemical apocalypse at the time. Stormed straight into my list of "songs to die for" and still drives me to tears. Listen:
"Sorrow is the one thing we both share."
Nothing silly or naive about that lyric, is there? And how about this:
"Like a tear, I kiss your face."