Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #25 - 1

Welcome back to Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500, in which I count my personal fave psych songs from 500 all the way down to #1! Today, let's see what's happening in the end, my only friend, the end, from 25 to 1...

25. The Left Banke- "Desiree" (1967), in which the normally mellow Left Banke pound out a spiraling prog riff worthy of King Crimson.

Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #100 - 76

Welcome back to Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500, in which I count my personal fave psych songs from 500 all the way down to #1! Today, let's see what's behind the Joke Wall from 100 to 76...

100. The Monkees- "Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?" (1968), in which Peter Tork feels it's necessary to state the obvious.

Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #125 - 101

Welcome back to Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500, in which I count my personal fave psych songs from 500 all the way down to #1! Today, let's see what's following the White Rabbit from 125 to 101...

124. The Turtles- "You Showed Me" (1968), in which The Turtles take an old folk-rock tune The Byrds couldn't be bothered to release and turn it into something sinister and majestic.

Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #150 - 126

Welcome back to Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500, in which I count my personal fave psych songs from 500 all the way down to #1! Today, let's see what's meditating transcendentally from 150 to 126...

150. The Monkees- "P.O.Box 9847" (1968), in which Boyce and Hart finally get to produce a Monkees record again after a long hiatus but The Monkees take all the credit.

Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #250 - 226

Welcome back to Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500, in which I count my personal fave psych songs from 500 all the way down to #1! Today, let's see what's seeing sounds and smelling colors from 250 to 226...

250. Jefferson Airplane- "She Has Funny Cars" (1967), in which Jefferson Airplane express the belief that owning several cars with pop-up chassis is really what makes a lady attractive. 

Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #475 - 451

Welcome back to Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500, in which I count my personal fave psych songs from 500 all the way down to #1! Today, let's see what's freaking out from 475 to 451...

475. The Association- "Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies" (1966), in which you refuse to listen to today's song because The Association is the band that did the wretchedly sappy "Cherish" and because it's called "Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies", and I shout, "You're the one who's missing out!" just as you turn the corner and disappear from view forever.

Review: Vinyl Reissues of John Cale's 'The Academy in Peril' and 'Paris 1919'

As the bringer of shuddering waves of viola and a general avant-garde spirit to the first two Velvet Underground records, John Cale may have seemed like the Velvet least likely to be poised for a solo pop career. Cale almost immediately confounded any such expectations with his debut solo album. Despite its disturbing cover shot of Cale in a clear mask fit only for the least convivial serial killer, Vintage Violence was a tribute to The Band's rustic yet tuneful Americana-as-seen-by-an-outsider slant. His subsequent sometimes lovely, sometimes cacophonous collaboration with experimental composer Terry Riley, The Church of Anthrax, reminded those listening to not get too comfortable. 

Review: Lol Tolhurst's 'Goth: A History'

If you'd asked one of the original punk groups in the seventies--say, the Clash or the Sex Pistols--if they were punks, they would have sneered at you and damned the very idea of being labeled. Same goes for the original Goths--say, Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Cure. Lol Tolhurst, drummer of the latter group, says as much in Goth: A History. But with time comes a certain perspective, and today Tolhurst obviously embraces that old label, hence his new book celebrating some fifty years of pallor, gloomy songs, wiry hairstyles, black garb, and black moods. 

Review: Expanded Editions of 3 Procol Harum Albums

Procol Harum through Home constitutes one of the finest four-album runs in Rock—reasonably in the same league as Rubber Soul through “The White Album” (damn you, Yellow Submarine!) and Aftermath through Beggars Banquet (no, that is not a massive typo). 1971’s Broken Barricades broke that spell with indifferent songwriting and some of Keith Reid’s worst lyrics (“Luskus Delph” may set the record for ugliest lyrics matched with prettiest tune), and from there, Procol Harum’s output was pretty hit or miss.

Interestingly, Esoteric Record’s latest wave of expanded Procol reissues focuses only on the hits—at least as far as the seventies are concerned. Grand Hotel and Exotic Birds and Fruit are by far the band’s best two post-Home albums, the former displaying the group at their appropriately grandest and the latter at their most soulful. While neither hits the heights of those first four albums, songs such as “As Strong As Samson”, “The Idol”, “For Licorice John”, and “Grand Hotel” can stand side by side with “A Whiter Shade of Pale” or “A Salty Dog”. 

Perhaps in an effort to bury a low point among two high ones, 1991’s The Prodigal Stranger is also tossed into the latest campaign. From that first super-gated drum fill, you’ll suss that this is not the Procol Harum you’re looking for. The soulless soul choirs and synthetic production that was already dated in the year we were all smelling Teen Spirit has not deepened with age, and the BIG pop choruses are no better. This one is only for those who are terminally addicted to Gary Brooker’s voice, which remains in gorgeous form.

Since I only received MP3s for review purposes, I cannot give a full assessment of the sound, but after running them through Audacity, I can report that the files are brickwalled, though Exotic Birds and Fruit is not as extreme as Repertoire’s edition from 2000.

There’s a lot of variation in terms of the bonus tracks. Grand Hotel receives five while The Prodigal Stranger gets only three. Exotic Birds and Fruit, however, swells to three discs, making it the most appealing collection in terms of the quality of the original album and its supplements. Aside from the good B-side “Drunk Again” and an off-putting remix of “As Strong as Samson” that lowers the key for no sensible reason, the triple-disc Exotic Birds includes very professional live sets recorded for the BBC’s In Concert series and Texas Radio. As well as pricking up your ears for versions of such peak-period classics as “Homburg”, “Whaling Stories”, Long Gone Geek”, “Cerdes”, and “Mabel”, be sure to listen for the weird yelping of some goofball in the audience at the BBC show.

Grand Hotel’s more austere selection of bonuses includes a version of the title track without its signature sumptuous strings and alternate versions of “Bringing Home the Bacon”, “Toujours L’amour”, “Fires (Which Burn Brightly)”, and “Robert’s Box”, none of which are radically different from the familiar recordings. The rougher sound of the two demos appended to The Prodigal Stranger should provide a respite from the main attraction’s slickness, but weak songwriting, poorly recorded drums, and overuse of synthesizers remain issues. A live version of “Holding On” recorded for German radio in 2003 is probably the best thing on the entire disc by default, though we can finally hear the mileage on Brooker’s pipes and the song still stinks... but let’s not end on a sour note when the other two albums are so terrific, Grand Hotel and Exotic Birds and Fruit remain essential albums by one of British Rock’s most essential groups.

Review: Procol Harum's 'Still There'll Be More: An Anthology 1967-2017'

When it was released in 1992, the Jefferson Airplane Loves You box set included a little card with the write-in question to the effect of “What other band deserves a box set?” I wrote in “Procol Harum” and mailed it off to RCA/BMG Records even though Procol Harum was on A&M. But that’s just how hungry I was for a box set of Britain’s greatest soul/goth/prog combo. A few years later, A&M did, indeed, deliver a Procol Harum set, but it was essentially a repackaging of their first four albums with an extra disc of singles, a couple of outtakes and a few alternate takes. That ultimate Procol Harum-box set itch wasn’t quite scratched yet.

In recent years, the popularity of deluxe editions of individual albums has largely displaced the career-spanning box set, and Procol Harum has certainly gotten its due in that realm with Esoteric Recording’s expanded versions of the group’s first four albums, which seemingly have swept up every unreleased track and alternate mix from the group’s most fruitful years. So I’m not sure if I believe an old-fashioned career-spanning box set is as necessary as I did in 1992, but it’s still nice that one is finally arriving.

Even nicer is that it is probably very different from the kind of set that would have been released 26 years ago when they tended to consist of three or four audio discs. Still There'll Be More: An Anthology 1967-2017 is much more massive than that, and it sets its sites beyond mere audio. The first three discs are fairly typical, picking a few singles and a few songs from each of the band’s thirteen albums right up to last year’s Novum. I’m sure that diehards who’d buy an eight-disc box will likely already have these thirteen albums, so Discs One through Three are mostly valuable for sparking the kind of debate that compilations spark, so prepare to exclaim things like, “Where’s ‘In the Wee Small Hours of Sixpence’? Is ‘Barnyard Story’ really one of the four best cuts on Home? Why only three tracks from Shine on Brightly but four from the inferior Procol’s Ninth? Are all those bland post-Procol’s Ninth tracks really necessary (though the two cuts from Novum are pretty good)?” Etcetera, etcetera.

 More important are the superb live sets on Discs Four and Five, which capture the band’s two sides beautifully. Disc Four portrays Procol at their grandest. It is essentially an expansion of their great 1972 live album, once again capturing the band with an orchestra, though this time it’s the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Roger Wagner Chorale instead of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. It’s a great recording with such recent songs such as “Grand Hotel” and “Fires (Which Burnt Brightly)” as well as older numbers like “A Christmas Camel” and “Simple Sister” that weren’t part of the Edmonton set. The band’s more stripped down, soulful side is caught on a set at Bournemouth’s Winter Gardens in 1976.

Discs Five through Seven provide the coolest segment of Still There'll Be More as they collect television performances ranging from a BBC TV lip sync of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in late 1967 (starring a shockingly youthful, pre-mustache Gary Brooker and Matthew Fisher resplendent in Goth monk cloak) to a Sight & Sound in Concert appearance from 1977. In between is a wealth of other performances mostly recorded for German TV. Though eleven tracks from Germany’s Beat Club Workshop were already released on DVD as Procol Harum Live in 2005, the footage did not look as clear as it does here, perhaps because this new version eliminates the distracting and ugly chroma key nonsense, leaving a neutral blue backdrop. The performance also starts earlier than the 2005 DVD, allowing a glimpse of the band’s warm up on The Beatles’ “Something”, and ends later with half of “In Held T’was in I”. 

The old DVD also included two bonus cuts (“Drunk Again” and “Grand Hotel”) from Procol’s 1973 appearance on Musikladen, and Disc Seven of the new box set builds on them with seven additional choice performances of songs mostly culled from  Grand Hotel, as well as the box’s only video performances of the essential epic “Whaling Stories”, the stormy “Kaleidoscope”, and the underrated “Too Much Between Us” (though the decision to add lumbering drums to this most ethereal song was a rare lapse in taste from the usually irreproachable B.J. Wilson).  Considering that Procol Harum was a group that let their highly visual music take center stage while they basically stood stock still to play their instruments, all of this footage is surprisingly great fun and very valuable indeed. An interlude in the Musikladen performance in which Gary Brooker accuses one of his band mates of farting is unquestionably worth the cost of the entire box set.  

Disc Eight’s Sight & Sound in Concert spotlight on the dodgy Something Magic is less valuable. This disc does provide the box’s only completely live video performances of “Nothing but the Truth” and “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, though we sadly get less than two minutes of the latter as it plays out over the closing credits. It’s also too bad there wasn’t any available live footage from the classic Fisher/Robin Trower era, but only the saltiest dog would waste an excess of time complaining about the footage that is included on this long, long awaited box set...after all, DVDs didn’t even exist back in 1992!

And Now for No Other Reason Than They're Awesome, Here Are Psychobabble's 50 Favorite Album Covers of the Sixties!

Review: 'Let’s Go Down and Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967'

The psychedelic scene of the sixties has been well covered over innumerable compilations. Most deal in fairly broad strokes, perhaps covering a particular region (usually the UK or U.S.) or strain (maybe the garage rock of Nuggets or twee pop of Ripples Vol. III) in the general zone of 1966 through 1969. As its title blares, Cherry Red’s Let’s Go Down and Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967 gets more specific.

Psychobabble’s 50 Favorite Holiday Season Songs

Oh, I’m quite sure you’ve been bombarded with various versions of “Jingle Bells”, “Jingle Bell Rock”, and “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” since well before Halloween. Don’t let that put you off holiday season songs, though. The ones you probably haven’t been hearing a dozen times a day will turn around the “Bah Humbug” attitude that fucking “Christmas Shoes” song induces. Clean that sleet out of your stocking to make room for these 50 festive and freaky holiday season favorites delivered down your chimney with Psychobabble’s Christmas seal of approval!

50. “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade

With its glitzy lights, gaudy decorations, and multi-layered garb, Christmas is the glammest holiday. Wolverhampton glammers Slade recognized this and cut one of the all-time seasonal classics with an anthem made for stomping through slush in platform boots.

49. “Christmas Everyday” by The Miracles

If you’re more inclined to go for a slow, romantic stroll in fresh, clean snow, “Christmas Everyday” will be more your speed. Smokey’s love is such a perennial gift that she could turn any day into December 25. That would be a welcome prospect if every holiday song sounded like this one.

48. “Christmas Is My Time of Year” by The Christmas Spirit (AKA: The Turtles)

Review: Reissues of Procol Harum's 'A Salty Dog' and 'Home'

After their debut black mass and the more colorfully proggy Shine on Brightly, Procol Harum once again shifted sails for an album that was both more stripped down and more elaborately adorned than their first two. With its simple folk and blues songs and more ambitious orchestral mini-epics, A Salty Dog was Procol operating at full maturity. The democratization of vocal duties further set it apart from the two records before it.  Needless to say, Matthew Fisher and Robin Trower couldn’t beat Gary Brooker’s magnificent voice, but they both add variety to the proceedings (Fisher’s reedy though earnest voice is particularly pleasing), and Brooker gets what may be his most stunning vocal spotlights with the title track and “All This and More”. A Salty Dog is a masterful album, both Procol’s finest, and as far as I’m concerned, the finest by any artist in a year that included Led Zeppelin, Let It Bleed, Abbey Road, Tommy, and The Band.

Then Fisher departed and the band changed more significantly than ever. Without Fisher’s signature organ parts, Trower stepped in to fill the gap, and the band made its most guitar-heavy record with Home. Keith Reid’s death-obsessed lyrics are pretty heavy too, often crossing into outright horror. Brooker didn’t allow the lyrics’ thematic consistency to beat his music into a sort of Gothic monotony. He danced all over the place with Hammer horror doom and gloom (“The Dead Man’s Dream”), rollicking pop (making the ridiculously violent “Still There’ll Be More” all the more ridiculous), folk balladry (“Nothing That I Didn’t Know”), pub sing-along (“Your Own Choice”), and outright prog (“Whaling Stories”). With Trower, he co-wrote “Whiskey Train”, the hardest rocking thing in Procol’s valise. Without Fisher’s voice and organ flourishes to add extra color, or the sweeping orchestrations of A Salty Dog, Home isn’t as grand as the previous record, but it is another excellent record and the capper for the band’s most satisfying period.

Since Esoteric Records has not announced remasters of Broken Barricades or Live with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra as of this writing, A Salty Dog and Home may also be the cappers of the label’s current remaster series. That would be a shame, since all of these discs re-mastered from the original tapes sound fabulous. As I wrote in my review of the first two remasters, Salvo was the last label to reissue Procol’s catalogue, and its versions of the first two albums both contained tracks running at the wrong speeds. That label’s issues of Salty Dog and Home suffered no such issues, but Esoteric’s still sound markedly superior to Salvo’s relatively thin and bright masters. This is never clearer than on Esoteric’s remaster of A Salty Dog, which really allows its roomy acoustics and eclectic instrumentation to live and breathe. The improvement in the resonance and depth of B.J. Wilson’s drums is striking on both discs.

Once again, I received single-disc versions of Esoteric’s reissues to review, each containing just one bonus track. There’s the mighty B-side “Long Gone Geek” on A Salty Dog and the radio edit of “Whiskey Train” on Home. Both CDs are available in two-disc editions with about a dozen bonus tracks each: mostly BBC sessions and live cuts on Salty Dog and backing tracks and alternate takes on Home. Obviously, I can’t comment on those, but I’m still confident that Esoteric’s Procol Harum reissues will rank among this year’s best reissues for sound alone.