Review: 'Ringo: A Fab Life'

Telling the story of a backline player, even one in a band as massive as The Beatles, can be tricky. Ringo Starr drove the band's beat, but he didn't drive them artistically, barely writing any songs or calling any shots regarding their musical direction. So as distinctive as he is as a person, there is always the danger that he will disappear way back on the riser when writing his biography, at least when covering his years in that band fronted by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #500 - #476

Here at Psychobabble, we love many genres, from punk to soul to new wave to jazz to alt rock to prog to goth. But no genre is dearer to your host's heart than psychedelia. The fanciful lyrics! The cacophonous yet dreamy music! The sitars! The Mellotrons! The unfettered Lewis Carroll references!

And so today begins a new series intended to be the mind-melting equivalent of licking a sheet of acid the size of the Sgt Pepper's gatefold. You will be counting along with me downward toward my personal choice for the single greatest psychedelic song of all time. Along the way, you will drift pass my 500th favorite psychedelic song, my 499th favorite, my 498th, my...well you get the picture. 

Each new installment will go live every Monday from now until it all wraps up in September or whenever (whoa, man, I'm way too high to do calendar math!).

I have limited my selections to the original wave of psychedelia, which means there will be nothing by very worthy later-day trip makers, such as Dukes of Stratosphear and The Flaming Lips, and much by those who did their doings between the years of 1965 and 1971. 

Although the years are limited, the artists will not be, though some are more favored than others because, to reiterate, these are my personal fave raves. So while you will encounter artists from NYC to LA, from Shepherd's Bush to Liverpool, from Brazil to Lebanon, you will not encounter The Grateful Dead. They're bullshit.

So slip into your cleanest Nehru jacket, flick on that lava lamp, fire up a joss stick, repeat "Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō" until you reach nirvana, turn to page 100 of The Wind in the Willows, and we will begin with our first batch of 25 lysergic anthems...

#500. Status Quo- "Pictures of Matchstick Men" (1968), in which a bunch of future pub rockers jump the psychedelic bandwagon with warped wah-wah guitars, a piercing yet infectious riff, and some nonsense about men made out of the sticks you use to light up smokes, though the average Status Quo fan is probably more inclined to light a Chesterfield than an herbal jazz cigarette.

Review: Muddy Waters's 'Folk Singer' (Chess Acoustic Sounds Edition)

The most profound impact Muddy Waters would have on pop was just around the corner when he recorded his second album in the autumn of 1963. Since The Rolling Stones had yet to make Waters a household name in households that didn't include a blues devotee, the folks at Chess needed to think up another scheme to provide their most mature African-American artist with the cross-over appeal to reach the young white market. 

Review: 'Ad Nauseum: Newsprint Nightmares from the '70s & '80s'

As a young child in the seventies and early eighties, I'd flip through the newspaper every day and stop at two sections: the comics and the movies. When I'd come across an ad for a horror movie, I'd inevitably think, "What kind of disturbed, sick individual would want to torture themselves by watching this horrible stuff?" What I should have been thinking when perusing the paper was "Does anyone actually think B.C. is funny?"

Review: 'Pink Floyd: Shine On'

An oral history is of no worth if there is no involvement from the principal players, and the most valuable sort includes original interviews with those characters conducted by the author. So right off the bat, Pink Floyd: Shine On remains true to its title words. 

Mark Blake, who has dedicated a good portion of his career to chronicling Pink Floyd, personally interviewed Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright over a 33-year period, right up until last year when he completed his oral history. Well, Wright's involvement didn't last quite so long, as the keyboardist died in 2008, and it shows in the relative scarcity of his quotes, but he still gets his say.

Review: 'White Zombie' Blu-ray

White Zombie was the first major zombie film, though today's legions of walking dead devotees might find it bewildering unless they somehow came across a musty box of classic E.C. comics. Victor Halperin's film features the voodoo variety of zombies rather than the shuffling brain-eaters that gave them the bum's rush right out the crypt door. Current sensitivities being what they are, this is probably for the best since the original zombie stories were so entwined with real-world issues of race and slavery. Garnett Weston's script does indeed identify slavery as evil, but it takes the zombification of a white woman to get anyone in his film to do anything about it. Plus there's one highly uncomfortable scene involving a white actor in blackface, which is especially galling considering how many genuine black extras there are in this movie. Welcome to 1932.

Review: 'Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles'

Brian Epstein lived with a massive secret at the same time that he was one of the most recognizable men of his era. To this day he remains the most famous band manager in pop history. He was also a gay man living in mid-twentieth century Britain, where homosexuality was outlawed and a man caught having sexual relations with another man faced prison or even chemical castration. When he should have been basking in his immense success as the business brain behind The Beatles, Brian Epstein lived under perpetual thunderheads of stress, fear, and self-loathing. That final quality may even account for why he fell in with The Beatles in the first place, as the Beatle that most enthralled him was regularly horribly cruel to him, Lennon casually ridiculing his manager both for being gay and Jewish. Even worse were some of the men Epstein with whom he had romantic and sexual relationships. It was not unusual for him to be robbed, beaten, or blackmailed. 

Review: 'Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser'

Tigon Films-founder Tony Tenser didn't produce exploitation movies to satisfy a fetish, like Russ Meyer. He was simply a businessman, more like Roger Corman. So despite some of his dubious accomplishments, like opening a member's only movie theater/men's club and coining the term "sex kitten", Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser is only lurid when describing the plots of some of his movies. And along with bringing such smutty stuff as Naked—As Nature Intended and Not Now, Darling into being, he also produced some genuine genre classics, such as Repulsion, Witchfinder General, Frightmare, and The Blood on Satan's Claw. 

Review: 'Bo Diddley' (Chess/Acoustic Sounds Edition)

He didn't have Chuck's knack for storytelling, Buddy's melodic gifts, Elvis's voice, or Little's sheer excitement, but Bo is still probably my favorite Rock and Roll pioneer. His rhythm defined his work—the "shave-and-a-haircut" groove will always be known as "the Bo Diddley beat"—but the artist formerly known as Ellias McDaniel also deserves credit for his spacey atmosphere. He's really the only major early rocker who prognosticated psychedelia, which is my personal fave genre. He was also damn funny.

'Monster Mayhem Collection' Blu-ray

Even in an age when bad movies like Hocus Pocus and Clue achieve classic status there have to be limits. Yet here we are with a special edition set of movies even fans of The Monster Squad will recognize as crappy. According to the ballyhoo for The Monster Mayhem Collection, this two-disc set features four films scanned from 35mm archival prints, maintaining their original aspect ratios, and supplemented with feature commentaries and several featurettes. A presentation fit for Citizen Kane! 

So which classics of Hollywood's golden age were lavished with such cinephile splendor. Well...