Rock In My World

The Weepies - Antarctica - This husband/wife singer/songwriter duo will release their latest album, Hideaway, next week, but I've heard one song, and I like it quite a bit. I just love Deb Talen's voice, and I hope you will, too.

She & Him - This Is Not A Test - She is actress Zooey Deschanel and he is singer/songwriter M. Ward. Together, they create a magical step back into sixties pop and country (lots more magic than Zooey's appearance in Tin Man last year.)

Sarah Mac Band - Open Fire - When I first heard the song on my Paste sampler, I thought it was Lisa Loeb making some sort of comeback. Not so.

The Raconteurs - Hold Up - Jack White's side project released a follow-up to their fab debut, Broken Boy Soldiers, last month. I just got around to cracking it open, and it's a gem. Consolers of The Lonely reminds me just how much I miss blues-based rock bands and how thankful I am that some of the younger guys won't give up on it.

R.E.M. - Living Well Is The Best Revenge - Accelerate is the best R.E.M. release since Automatic For The People. Yeah, it was a long dry spell, wasn't it? This album rocks!

It's back, baby!

The Yardbirds - Happenings Ten Years Time Ago

This legendary English band catapaulted the careers of three of the rock guitar gods: Clapton, Page, and Beck. This blues-steeped band hinted at psychedelia in much of their early works, and Happenings Ten Years Time Ago is a classic example of this. The song, released in October of 1966, features Page playing colead guitar with Jeff Beck. There is a brilliant fuzzy break about 2 minutes into the tune, and you can definitely pick up on some of the the future Zeppelin sound from Page's deft hands. I learned from songfacts.com that John Paul Jones played bass on the cut, too, which also hints at what is to come.

And those lyrics:

Happenings ten years time ago

Situations we really know

But the knowing is in the mind

Sinking deep into the well of time

Sinking deep into the well of time

Deep, man, deep. Just remember that the knowing is in the mind, man. Oh no, I'm freaking myself out!!

The Bee Gees - Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You

Nearly a decade before they caused perfectly normal people to gyrate under mirrored disco balls, The Bee Gees released a perfectly cool psychedelic record, and it was their debut Polydor album, Bee Gees 1st. This gem is often overlooked, simply because the band became synonymous with white suits, medallions, and Saturday Night Fever. It's worth a visit, though, because the earlier Bee Gees offerings were really good rock records. No, really.

This song carries the signature Bee Gees harmonies, but there's a darkly weird chant opening the song that just creeped out my kid. Really, he yelled from the other room, "Mom, could you turn that off, it's scaring me!" (Obviously, he never saw the Gibb brothers in their white disco suits, since that would really scare the bejesus out of him.)

Anyway, enjoy the trippy Bee Gees. I have no argument with their disco-era tunes, since they really did produce the cream of the crop, and I liked those songs, even back then when I was all "death to disco."

I cracked up when I read the allmusic review of their 1975 album, Main Course. The reviewer says Main Course was "the group's first disco album -- and, for many white listeners, the first disco album they ever purchased." Guilty! But, hey, it's one of the only ones I purchased, too, unless you count those Earth, Wind, & Fire and Ohio Players records. And the one Donna Summer.

Not only did we have crappy weather over the weekend, here in the US, we had to set our clocks ahead and lose an hour of sleep in the wee hours of Sunday. I was just getting used to waking up with the sun peeping through my window, and now I'm back to stumbling in the dark.

I need to laugh.

Hopefully, this set will help:

Flight Of The Conchords - Beautiful Girl (Part-Time Model) - From their Grammy-winning EP, The Distant Future.

Tenacious D - Wonderboy - Just because Jack Black is one of the funniest people on the planet.

Weird Al Yankovic - You're Pitiful - Come on, I can't do a funny music podcast without this guy, and I love that he is poking fun at that sappy James Blunt song.

Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads - I'm finishing off the set with two classics from my Dr. Demento years. I don't know where to find his show anymore, but I do have a couple of cds. Anyway, one of the Barnes in this band is Bill Mumy, who was also known to me as Will Robinson from the tv show Lost In Space, back in the 60's.

Julie Brown - The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun - Everybody run! This one had a video that was quite popular on MTV back in the day (and can still be seen at YouTube, of course). I still crack up when she gets to the "I ran down, and I said, in her good ear," part.

Atomic Rooster - Night Living

I thought it was high time I started featuring early prog and metal in addition to psych rock. Those genres were born from the experimentation of psychedelia, so it seemed like a logical extension of my psychedelic theme, and it gives me the opportunity to shake things up from time to time.

With a name like Atomic Rooster, you might get the idea that this is a psychedelic rock band anyway, sort of like Strawberry Alarm Clock. Make no mistake, this Rooster was crowing to a different tune. Atomic Rooster, formed by Vincent Crane and Carl Palmer in 1969, was one of the premier English heavy metal/prog rock bands. Crane and Palmer had previously been members of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, who had a huge hit in 1968 with Fire. That's Crane on the badass Hammond organ part in that song. Palmer didn't stick with Rooster for long, since he went off to drumming fame with Keith Emerson and Greg Lake in their little prog outfit, and was replaced by Paul Hammond. Crane added John Du Cann on guitar, as well, to deepen the band's guitar sound.

I found this little gem of a song in a compilation in Mojo Magazine late last year, Heavy Nuggets, which has been lots of fun to explore. This Atomic Rooster cut was pulled from an anthology of lives, rares, and B-sides, Atomic Rooster: The First 10 Explosive Years.

If you're not a huge prog fan, worry not. This song leans more toward the heavy metal sound. In fact, it reminds me of Deep Purple or of one of the songs from the Heavy Metal soundtrack, which hubby and I played ad nauseum on the car cassette player back in the day. I love the heavy-handed organ in the song, which, when accompanied by the sinister vocals, give this song that dark metal bent.

t's difficult to play just one cut from The Soft Machine's debut album, Volume I, since there really is no defining line from one cut to another, but I'll post Joy Of A Toy, even with the awkward, abrupt ending.

This is a fine piece of jazz-infused psychedelia from a band who, along with Pink Floyd and Tomorrow, led the way in the British psychedelic scene. Although band members Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt have remained relatively obscure to US audiences, they have had long and fruitful solo recording careers. One band member most everyone would recognize is one of the early members, Andy Summers, who went on to a brilliant career in one of the most successful band of the late 70's and early 80's, The Police. Andy was only with the band for a short time, though, so it seems he was not a driving influence in their work.

Joy Of A Toy is an instrumental piece that breaks up two parts of the album opener, Hope For Happiness. It's kind of light and breezy until the last 27 seconds, when the tempo picks up, then slows down again to segue into Hope For Happiness (reprise), which is rather trippy, but features some very avant-garde vocals and a weird organ freak-out midway through the song. I'm only playing Joy Of A Toy today, to spare you of all the freakiness. Perhaps when I'm feeling a bit more freaked up, I will play the entire piece.

The Velvet Underground - Venus In Furs

Psychedelic Sunday has been a weekly feature in my blog for just over two years, but I didn't spotlight anything from The Velvet Underground until November of 2007. What was I smokin'? Each of the eleven songs included on that album deserves a separate post! Venus In Furs is the fourth song on The Velvet Underground & Nico, a groundbreaking 1967debut album from the band. The song was written by Lou Reed with inspiration from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's book of the same name. I've never read the book, but apparently it's about kinky stuff like bondage and sadomasochism. Mistress Nat would approve.

Originally recorded by band members Lou Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison in their NYC loft in July 1965, the song was rearranged for the album cut, and, according to rock critic David Fricke, the final version is a "stark, Olde English-style folk lament." To be sure, the tempo is rather dirge-like, and the lyrics contain masochism references (shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather; whiplash girlchild in the dark; clubs and bells, your servant, dont forsake him; strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart.) Cale's viola wails in the song and gives it that sinister flavor, and Reed plays a guitar with all of its strings tuned to the same note. There is a heartbeat-like thump of a bass drum throughout, and very simple tambourine beat keeps the pace. This is a classic "head" music for me, meant to be heard in a darkened room when I'm in just the right mood.

The song remains beloved by music fans and has been covered by everyone from The Melvins to Smashing Pumpkins to Bettie Serveert. Oliver Stone used it as background music in a scene in that awful Doors movie (clip here.) Why? Well, not only 'cuz it's a cool song, but because of the Andy Warhol link. Warhol, of course, did that famous cover.

As memorable and distinctive as that cover is, I still don't get the banana.

Pink Floyd - See Emily Play

Written by Syd Barrett and recorded in May of 1967, See Emily Play was the second single released by Pink Floyd, following Arnold Layne.

I've read various accountings of the origination of this song, but according to this source, he was quoted in NME in 1974, revealing, "I was sleeping in the woods one night, after a gig we'd played somewhere, when I saw this girl appear before me. That girl is Emily." The wikipedia article claims he later admitted he made this up. Some have speculated that Emily was really Emily Young, the 16-year-old daughter of politician. She was known as "the psychedelic schoolgirl" to those at the UFO club, where Floyd were the house band.

Syd was a druggie and suffered from severe mental problems, so who knows how it really came about.

There is a black and white video on YouTube, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F94vHO7okZQ)which really reminds me more of something you'd have seen on The Monkees tv show. It's psychedelic, man!

Enjoy some good, psychedelic Pink Floyd.

Tinker Taylor - Terry Reid

In the late 60's, psychedelic rock reached its nadir and spawned hard rock and progressive rock. In '68, when The Yardbirds broke up, Jimmy Page was looking to expand his horizons and wanted to rock loud and hard, and was forming a new band. He offered the vocalist job to Terry Reid, who had been in a band called The Jaywalkers. Reportedly, Reid turned it down, suggesting that Page check out a guy named Robert Plant, who had been with Band Of Joy. Bad move on his part? Perhaps. He also turned down a spot in Deep Purple that was filled later by Ian Gillan.

Still, the guy put out some good solo work and is still out there working.

(You can find a London Times podcast online to catch up on what he's up to.)

Here's Terry with a song called Tinker Taylor, from his 1968 album, Bang, Bang You're Terry Reid. This record, by the way, also features a cover of Sonny Bono's song Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down.)

To continue with the countdown:

6. All You Need Is Love - The Beatles - The album closer of 1967's Magical Mystery Tour record, with a hopeful, if naive, message.

5. Viola Lee Blues - The Grateful Dead - The only band to have two appearances in the countdown.

4. Hot Smoke And Sassafras - The Bubble Puppy - Their only hit, which made it to #14 on the pop singles chart in 1969.

3. Hole In My Shoe - Traffic - Trippy sitar music makes this one a stand-out.

2. Nantucket Sleighride - Mountain - Really, this song was tied for first with the next song, but I decided to give Vanilla Fudge the edge with the shorter song. Here is the 17-minute version of Mountain's classic jam.

1. You Keep Me Hangin' On - Vanilla Fudge - A classic slower-tempo cover of The Supremes big hit, with a funky organ part.

That's it for 2007's countdown. Stay tuned for lots of jammin' hippy music all throughout 2008!