My inheritance

A few of the psychedelic records from the 60s to make it into my
growing record collection to date.  I only started collecting
vinyl March, 2016.

My father didn't leave me much when he departed this world - a well-worn first edition of Ernest Hemingway's  For Whom The Bell Tolls, a stack of worthless comics, and a deep love for the psychedelic music of the late 60s, and early 70s.  It's no wonder I love that music so.  Thanks to a chemical imbalance that wasn't diagnosed properly until well into
my adulthood, I hallucinate, and even though I'm on a healthy dose of anti psychotics these days, I still see things that aren't there - did you see that mockingbird fly down the hallway?  Or that dragonfly in the shower stall? No?  Well, there you have it.

On the one-year anniversary of my father's death I sat  down with my iTunes and started building a modest play list containing the best psych tunes and garage rock I could muster from my sprawling collection of 60s and early 70s rock 'n' roll, ranging from The Amboy Dukes ("Baby Please Don't Go," "Journey to the Center of the Mind") to The Zombies ("Time of the Season," "Tell Her No") and everything in between.  When it was done it contained 466 songs and said it would last 1.3 days.

Plenty of Strawberry Alarm Clock, a personal favorite, particularly the deep cuts off of the second album Wake Up... It's Tomorrow, made the grade.  Songs like "They Saw the Fat One Coming," "Curse of the Witches," "Nightmare of Percussion," "Sit with the Guru," "Pretty Song From Psych-Out," "Tomorrow," and "Sitting on a Star" were shoe-ins. Dad gave me "Incense and Peppermint," I discovered Wake Up... It's Tomorrow on my own.

Dad was good for that.  He'd dole out the hits and leave it up to me to root out the deep cuts for myself.  Sure, "Roadhouse Blues" rocks, it absolutely gets the blood pumping, but "Peace Frog" is my jam off that album.  In the case of Strawberry Alarm Clock, the title track "Incense and Peppermint" was the chart topper for that band, but a track that didn't even make the cut, a Japanese bonus track, is among my favorite songs the SAC has ever recorded - "Birdman of Alkatrash."  Yeah, I had to dig deep for that one.

When I was a pre-teen/early teen, and after dad had re-married, we lived in the country in a quiet little place pleasantly named Forest City in the  foothills of North Carolina.  In the summer time dad would put the radio on some oldies station out of South Carolina or maybe Charlotte in the evening, poor himself a big ole glass of sweet tea and go out and sit in a rocking chair on the front porch, listening to those oldies, and the occasional buzz and KA-zap of the bug zapper, while my brother Jason, our neighbor Dingo (yes, our neighbor was named after an Australian wild dog), and I rode our bikes around the yard.  We got an education in the era of garage rock and psychedelia.  "Good Vibrations," "Set Your Controls For the Heart of the Sun," "Silver Machine," "Eight Miles High," "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," "White Rabbit," "I Had To Much To Dream (Last Night)," "Are You Experienced?," "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)," "Supernatural Fairy Tale," "Sister Morphine," we're starting to get into the deep cuts now...

I remember one particular evening we were listening to a top 100 oldies countdown and I had glommed onto to the Raspberries minor hit "I Wanna Be With You" for some reason.  IT, I declared, would be the number one oldie.  Hell, IT was from 1972 and I don't know if IT even qualified as an oldie or not.  Dad humored me, "It's possible I guess, son."  If I recall correctly, "Hey Jude" was named number one at the end of that particular countdown.

At one point during said countdown a fox came rushing out of the overgrown Civil War gravesite that was fenced off in a field just beyond our yard.  It was strange.  The fox must have been bedded down in the overgrowth of blackberry vines and brambles that was thriving in the unkempt burial site and been spooked when dad turned up the volume for Paul Revere and the Raiders' hit "Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)."  The fox ran out into the middle of the gravel road leading to our landlord's home, looked at us for a few seconds, tongue lolling out in the summer night heat, then ran off into the nearby copse of trees across the road to never be seen again.  Nothing more than a memory I have with dad and that specific song - "Indian Reservation" - now.

In dad's feeble, infirm years I often found myself taking him to the doctor.  I would reset my play lists on my iPhone the night before each appointment, ensuring I had plenty of good old fashioned psych and garage rock loaded so we'd have something good we both could enjoy listening to while on the road.  (I'm a metal head by nature, and he is decidedly not.  But I have plenty of fond memories of growing up psych.)  It was on one of those outings that the tune "Time of the Season" by the Zombies came on.  A smile crept across dad's face.  "That was your mom and I's song," he said, as the song drew to an end.  "I enjoyed that.  Let's have that one again."  I'm so glad he shared that with me.  I love being able to listen to that song now and know there was a time, of the season if you will, that it gave my mom and dad some pleasure and comfort in their lives, even if my mom says she doesn't remember.

Dad didn't get into the more esoteric of the psychedelic bands such as Pink Floyd, the Pink Fairies, or Hawkwind so it was left to me to discover those groups on my own.  As one would expect, the first of those bands I came across was Pink Floyd.  I first encountered Pink Floyd's The Wall while in grade school still.  Granted, this was later day psychedelic, created in 1979, but most definitely a psych experience.  It was during a marijuana trip and I thought we were under attack by giant hammers. Yeah, I guess you could say it was a bad trip.   Dingo didn't help matters.  He pissed himself and sat in the corner with his hands around his knees gently rocking back and forth and crying about how he was going to get his ass beat for doing his dad's pot.  Like I gave a rat's ass, I was too busy dealing with Hitler's hammer's.  German's invading our sovereign nation took precedence over Dingo's hide.

Floyd and The Wall led me to Hawkwind which led me to the German band Amon Duul II, which led me to mind-expanding group Brainticket.

As I write this I dip back into that stream of consciousness that is the psychedelic iTunes play list I made with dad in mind. What does it have for me... "Kicks," "Tomorrow Never Knows," "19th Nervous Breakdown," "Hurry On Sundown," "We Could Be So Good Together," "Dogs," "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," "The House of the Rising Sun," "Pass Time With the SAC," "California Dreamin'," "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)"...

I miss my dad.  Where was I?

Dad, in the eternal Stones vs. Beatles argument, he was a Beatles man.  In high school he was in a band.  They played a lot of the Beatles' early stuff, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "Love Me Do," "Ticket To Ride," stuff like that.  I would have loved for there to have been pictures to have survived, but to date nothing has turned up.  And recordings, but that's a pipe dream.  We are talking about the 60s here.  Personal recording devices were uncommon, hell down right rare back then.

Let's dip back into the stream one more time before I go... "Southern Cross," "L.S.D." "Tales of Brave Ulysses," "Horse Latitudes," "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," "Earschplittenloudenboomer," "Interstellar Overdrive," "Hey Jude," "Sympathy For the Devil,"  "My Sweet Lord" "Time"...

That's a good one to go out on...

"Every year is getting shorter never seems to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over
Thought I'd something more to say."

12 Records that Changed My Life

1. The Doors
This is the first album I ever received when I asked for a cassette player for my birthday.  I had expressed an interest in Jim Morrison and the song Light My Fire.  I fell in love with that album, Soul Kitchen, Alabama Song, Take It As It Comes, I Looked At You, and of course the stand out tracks, The Crystal Ship, Break On Through (To the Other Side) and The End.  I became a life-long Doors fan, even wrote my senior paper in high school on Jim Morrison, the poet in Mr. Watkins' English class.  Got an A+, and dropped the F-bomb multiple times.

2. Queen Greatest Hits
I was introduced to Queen via the single Another Bites the Dust off The Game album, and also when I saw the incredible Flash Gordon movie.  HBO and MTV often played Queen videos.  When my mom noticed my brother and I singing along to all the Queen songs she got us each a copy of Queen's Greatest Hits on cassette.  Ironically, this lead me to my next artist, David Bowie.

3. David Bowie Low
I came to David Bowie through Queen via the Greatest Hits cassette that in our region contained the duet Under Pressure.  I sought out further music by Mr. Bowie.  The first album I happened upon was this bright orange deal, with the simple title Low.  When the tape got to side two I was mesmerized.  These ambient sounds were all new to me.  I didn't know what to make of this.  I was fascinated.  Of course, at the time I didn't know the word "ambient."  In later life I would attempt to collect all of Bowie's studio albums on vinyl.

4. Stevie Nicks Bella Donna
I arrived at Stevie Nicks via an HBO recording of her Bella Donna tour.  I just happened to catch that one afternoon and was spellbound.  This witchy woman had her hooks in me BAD!  Her spell had been cast and I was hers for life.  I grabbed up the HBO guide for the month and made note of each subsequent airing of the concert during the summer and made it a point not to miss a single viewing.  I asked mom for the album, and received it, and learned of her band Fleetwood Mac and albums Rumors and the self-titled album.  Yes indeed, Stevie had a fan for life.

5. Iron Maiden Piece of Mind
I was in a hotel room in Washington, D.C. when my friend Robbie Lyrle first blasted the opening wail of The Trooper over his boom box one Saturday morning while everyone was getting ready to go down and eat breakfast.  'What the hell is that?" I exclaimed, excited, thrilled, blown away, all at once.  "That's Iron Maiden!" he coolly replied.  He rewound the song and started it again.  Wow!  This was what I needed in my life!  Heavy Metal!

6.  Van Halen 1984
The second Heavy Metal band I was exposed to in earnest was Van Halen.  The first time I heard the song I'll Wait, and it was I'll Wait, not Jump or Panama or Hot For Teacher, that I first heard over the radio, I was amazed by the combination of heavy metal guitar and synthesizer.  I had never heard that before.  Surely this was some new discovery I had made and nobody else was privy to this band yet.  Nope!  Been around since 1978.  Still, even though I was late to the party, I was hole-hog on board the heavy metal train now.  Until...

7. Prince Purple Rain
Everybody, even some of the die-hard heavy metal crowd, had to give Prince props.  I mean that guitar in Let's Go Crazy was smoking hot.  Purple Rain was the summer hit of 1984, both musically and theatrically, and I ate it up.  Of course, when my step-mother caught wind of the lyrics to Darling Nikki I was so grounded.  And my tape collection met with a cleansing when I was in North Carolina with my dad and her.  Mom was more lax, thank god.

8. Cinderella Long Cold Winter
I had already bit down on the band Cinderella with the release of Night Songs, but when Long Cold Winter dropped and the band showed off its blues and southern rock roots, all bets were off.  I had to see this band live in concert immediately, no matter who I had to kill.  I saw the band live on that tour three times, once as an opener for AC/DC and twice as headliners with Winger and the Bulletboys.  Still one of my all-time favorite live acts.

9. Extreme Pornograffitti
This album is aptly named.  The four ballads on this record ensured that I got laid in 1990.  That's really all I can say about this record. That, and if you don't like what you see here, get the funk out!

10.  Motorhead 1916
I had first been exposed to Motorhead in the 80s when the song Killed By Death was released.  I was a fan.  But I had never actually spent money on the band.  I heard Going to Brazil and purchased 1916.  Then I heard the title track and wept like a baby.  How moving?  That has to be the most stirring song about WWI I've ever heard and it came from Lemmy.  Motorhead would go on to become my favorite band until Lemmy's death in 2015.

11. Pantera Cowboys From Hell
I was driving home from work one afternoon when the DJ announced, "Here's the latest from Pantera, Cemetery Gates."  And he played the long version, the album version of the song.  Oh my god!  I had to have that album post haste.  I drove to my girlfriend's house, picked her up and we went immediately to the record store another hour's drive away just so I could purchase that album that night.  I played the HELL out of that album, as well as the next one from Pantera.  I wept like a little child with a burst balloon when Darrell was murdered.

12. Monster Magnet Dopes to Infinity
The final entry came purely by accident.  I was in a tape store in Morristown browsing and bumbled across a cool looking album cover with an interesting sounding band name and title.  Well, I judged a book by its cover and plunked down my $10 and went out to my car and popped in a stoner rock masterpiece.  With Lemmy passed and Motorhead no more, Monster Magnet has assumed the mantle as my favorite band.  I'm working diligently to collect every piece of vinyl they have ever released.

Hollywood - Memory Lane!

Hollywood back in the day!

Fear of Going in Las Vegas

(an affectionate work of parody)

My expansive collection of Hunter S. Thompson literature.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the laxatives began to take hold.  I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit like I'm going to shit my pants, maybe you should drive..."  And suddenly there was terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge toilets, all flushing and splashing around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.  And a voice was screaming, "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn things?"

The it was quiet again.  My attorney had taken off his shirt and was pouring castor oil on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process.  "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses.  "Never mind," I said.  "It's your turn to drive."  I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway.  No point mentioning those toilets, I thought.  The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go.  They would be tough miles.  Very soon, I knew our intestines would be completely twisted.  But there was no going back and there was no time to shit or get off the pot, as they say.  We would have to ride it out.  Press registration for the fabulous Mint 400 was already underway, and we had to get there by four to claim our two-bathroom suite.  A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had taken care of the reservations, along with this huge red Chevy convertible we'd just rented off the Sunset Strip... and I was, after all, a professional journalist; so I had an obligation to cover the story, for good or ill.

The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs.  The trunk of the car looked like a mobile hospital purgatives lab.  We had two colostomy bags, 75 tablets of Exlax, 2-ply sheets of Cottonelle, a salt shaker half full of cholestramine, a whole galaxy of multicolored purgatives, aperients, laxatives, insoluble fiber, also a quart of paregoric, a quart of castor oil, a case of Correctal, a pint of raw prune juice and two dozen enemas.

All this had been rounded up the night before in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Las Angeles County - from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on.  Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious purgatives collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the prune juice.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of a prune juice binge.

How deep are the philosophical waters when it comes to Motörhead's "Metropolis?"

Is there much to be made philosophically from the Motörhead tune “Metropolis?”  Well perhaps not if you take the song writer’s word for it.

“I went to the movies one night and saw Metropolis, the old Fritz Lang movie, and went home and wrote that complete nonsense lyric,” explained Lemmy.  “‘Metroplolis is something new / Ain’t nobody got their eye on you / I don’t care.’ What the fuck does that mean?  But it’s a great song.” Lemmy told Freddy Villano in his final interview for Bass Player.

“This track is a complete mystery,” Lemmy wrote for the linear notes to No Remorse.  “I wrote (the lyric) in approximately two minutes after seeing the film of the same name in Portobello Electric Cinema.  Eddie wrote the riff 9/10.”  That’s the story of “Metropolis,” the song, but there’s more to it than meets the eye, surely.

Let’s look at the Fritz Lang film, then return to Lemmy’s complete lyric and see what we can’t find.  

The film Metropolis was shot in 1926, so in just 10 years we’ll be able to see just how closely the future measures up to Fritz Lang’s dystopian images.  In the movie society has been divided into two rigid groups, one of city planners (thinkers) and the other of underground workers, bringing to mind a situation much like the one in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine with the Eloi and the Morlocks, but I digress.

The city leader is Johnann “Jon” Fredersen, played by Aldred Abel.  Maria, played by the evangelic appearing Brigette Helm, champions the cause of the workers.  Though the workers are desperate for action to gain relief from their all-work no play situation, Maria advises them to wait until the appearance of a mediator, someone who will act as liason between the workers and the city dwellers and unite the two halves of the society.

New on the scene is the son of Jon Fredersen, Freder played by Gustav Frohlich.  There are a couple of things happening with his charachter.  First off, he quickly becomes infatuated with Maria and follows her down into the city’s underworld, where he becomes furious upon seeing the living conditions and the working conditions to which the under-dwellers are subjected.  He is witness to an explosion at the “M-Machine.”  New workers are brought in to attend the machine, even before the dead and injured are cleared.  Freder is infuriated.  Of course, he joins Maria’s cause.  Maria has prophesied the coming of one who can unite the workers and the those living in the city above and he believes he can be that man.

Meanwhile, the city father, who happens to be Freder’s father as well, pays a secret visit to the scientist Rotwag (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), both an old companion AND rival.  It turns out there were secret plans and speeches that Maria had given among papers found on the bodies of the workers killed and injured by the blast at the “M-Machine.”  This sets an evil plan in motion.  They wish to discredit Maria.

Rotwag has constructed a gynoid robot.  They will give the robot Maria's likeness and they then kidnap Maria and replace her with the gynoid, who sets to ruin her reputation, driving men to dissent and even murder among the workers.  Freder, meanwhile, has fallen into a delerium, and there are intercut scenes of hallucinations.  He recovers and returns to discover the false Maria directing the workers to rise up and destroy the machines.  He accuses her of being false.  The workers ignore his plea, leave thier children behind, and go forth and destroy the Heart Machine, flooding the underworld in the process.

In the meantime, Maria has been able to escape, and with the aide of Freder, has rescued the children from the flood.  The foreman Grot unleashes fury upon the workers for what they have done.  Believing their children dead, they seize the false Maria and burn her at the stake.

A horrified Freder looks on, not comprehending until the flames finally reveal the robot.  Rotwag chases the real Maria to a rooftop, pursued by Freder, where the scientist eventually falls to his death.  Freder, joins the hands of his father and foreman Grot, fulfilling his role as mediator.  The End.

Now, Lemmy's lyrics.

Metropolis, the worlds collide,
Ain't nobody could be on your side,
I don't care, I don't care,

Metropolis is something new,
Aint nobody got thier eye on you,
I don't care, I don't care,

Metropolis, the worlds collide,
Ain't nobody on the other side,
I don't care, I'm not there.

The song is a mystery, but a quick study is easy.  Indeed we have two world's colliding, one of leisure and one of toil.  "Ain't nobody could be on your side" isn't too difficult to puzzle out.  I think Lemmy took an every man for himself, or every worker for him or herself mentality to this film.  Much is known about Lemmy's philosophy in life and what a lot of it boiled down to was kind of a lassie faire attitide towards everyone else, live and let live.  So no, nobody could be on your side.  And no, Lemmy probably didn't care one iota.

Metropolis was something new.  When Fritz Lang first saw the skyscrapers of New York he knew he had to create a cinematic work featuring towering spryres such as these, saying "The buildings seemed to be a vertical veil, very light and scintillating, a luxirious backdrop suspended from the gray sky to dazzle, distract and hypnotize.  At night the city gave only the impression of living; it lived as illusions do.  I knew I must make a film of all these impressions."

The next line I think means neither side knows what is going on in the class struggle in the film.  The lower class is oblivious to the plot to discredit Maria and certainly the upper class, while they may know that Maria intends to attempt to unite the workers with those living in the city, they are not sure just what violence the workers are truly capable of executing.  And still, Lemmy doesn't care.

Verse three the worlds do collide and by the film's conclusion there is no longer a need for "sides," and still Lemmy doesn't care, and he isn't there.  I get the impression Lemmy wasn't overtly moved by this film.  Perhaps going in he knew it was this important piece of German cinema and we all know he had thought the Germans had an eye for a lot of things stylitically, but maybe he wasn't as moved as much as he had hoped he would be, but still felt that it deserved a tune.

Hell, that's my excuse anyway.  The film Metropolis is an important piece of cinema and the song "Metropolis" kicks ass.  I at least want the song to have some thought put into it, even if its only on the listeners' back end.  My two cents.

The Genius of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma

When you get into a discussion with Pink Floyd fans about the band's best album(s), inevitably Dark Side of the Moon and/or The Wall are going to get the bulk of the votes.  Sure, Wish You Were Here is going to get some honorable mention respect it deserves and rightfully so, but from there  you're going to have fringe voters, sticking up for albums dear to their hearts, albums they consider their pets.  But I'm guessing the album that is actually the best of their career won't be getting much love.  That album is the half live, half studio effort Ummagumma.  That's  correct, Ummagumma!

It's near perfection.  The only thing that would make the album better would have been the inclusion of a live version of "Interstellar Overdrive."  The song was recorded with the intent of inclusion upon the album, so perhaps some day we'll get a release with a bonus track version, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  The brand new 2016 reissues didn't feature the track.  But I digress.

What is it that makes Ummagumma a perfect album you ask, or, at least, you should be asking if you're not.   One, there's the symmetry.  Each band member was required to submit half an LP side worth of material for the studio portion of the album.  David Gilmour famously remarked his contribution to the album, "The Narrow Way (Parts 1-3)," were little more than fits of "desperation," just him "waffling about, tracking bits and pieces together" while in the recording studio.

I think my 11-year-old daughter would agree with that assessment, having remarked something to the effect "it's just a bunch of parts strung together that don't belong."  Even she could hear the mismatched textures and structures.

But, I can hear you saying, "doesn't that detract from that album?   Doesn't that make Ummagumma less of an album?"  Well, no, because, even though David Gilmour was uncertain of himself while constructing his part for the record, and because of that an 11 year old can tell the piece of music is disjointed, it is precisely disjointed, it communicates a theme of Pink Floyd's, forever present in their music - alienation.

Gilmour told BBC radio he just "bullshitted through the piece."  At that point in Pink Floyd's career they were using the music, not the lyrics, to communicate alienation, so this disjointed four part movement from the guitarist is perfect, you see.

According to Theodor Adorno, social theorist and musicoloist, popular music inspires "relaxation which does not involve the effort of concentration at all."  This is a BAD thing, you understand, and Ummagumma inspires precisely the opposite of this.

While a relaxed mood may be produced by listening to Ummagumma, particularly if any mood enhancing pharmaceuticals have been ingested prior to the enjoyment of the album, it is not because Ummagumma does not involve the listener's concentration, contrary to that actually.  The album DEMANDS the listener's attention.  Otherwise, you're in for shocks or surprises, sometimes unpleasant.

Having never been exposed to the vicissitude of "Careful With that Axe Eugene" during the first 42 years of my life, I literally pissed myself the first time I heard Roger Waters scream 3:09 into the song.

The band reaches an ominous crescendo just as Waters whispers "Careful with that axe Eugene," seconds before he lets loose the barbaric yawlp that is the primordial scream that curdles blood and still to this day catches first-time listeners off-guard.  This is not a tune that invites its listeners to comfort, not at all.  Does it alienate listeners, perhaps?  It certainly challenges them and that is what makes Ummagumma such a great work.  Start to finish, it is a challenge to listeners, not comfort food, but music for the soul to grow with, chew upon, roll around in the brain pan for a while.

"Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun," originally appearing on the sophomore Floyd album A Saucerful of Secrets but a definitive live version later appears upon Ummagumma, offers another challenge, about two thirds of the way through the tune the bottom drops out with a simulated rocket blast-off when Gilmour's guitar reeks havoc over Nick Mason's tribal drumming  around the 4:45 mark.  Hearkening to mind images of  2001: a Space Odyssey Roger Water's bass line and the keyboards of Rick Wright beep in with tonal sounds before the song begins to reconstruct itself and steer us toward conclusion.  This is the point of maximum alienation, writes Edward Macan in his chapter of Pink Floyd and Philosophy - titled Psychedelics of Alienation.

Of course, we are also presented with a live version of the "A Saucerful of Secrets" title track on Ummagumma, perhaps the most challenging of the instrumentals early Pink Floyd offered listeners.  Macan refers to it, as well as "Interstellar Overdrive," as "radical" and "utterly original musical statement(s)."

He points out that once Pink Floyd moved past its psychedelic period, post-Meddle, never again would we see the band offer its fans such complex musical structures as those found on Ummagumma, and the later side two of Meddle, "Echoes."

Waters, the group's main writer, moved toward lyrical expressions of alienation and departed from allowing the song structures to communicate this important message.  Perhaps this is why Waters himself grew increasingly frustrated with his band's fan base,  Macan writes, "Waters' ever-growing contempt for Pink Floyd's enormous post-Meddle fan base is well known.  As the 1970s wore on, he became increasingly frustrated with what he perceived as the audience's indifference to the sophisticated analysis of alienation and the critiques of contemporary society he undertook on Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and Animals."

Simply put, Waters fucked up.  If he wanted the fans to continue to "get it," meaning comprehend what he was trying to communicate lyrically, maybe he needed to concentrate more stylistically on keeping the complicated structures Floyd had utilized in its early days.  Instead, the group hired produced Bob Ezrin, composed songs with more and more commercial appeal structure wise, focused on how to write singles, and sold more and more records.

Had they not made those moves and stayed true to their psychedelic roots, maybe Waters would have been more fulfilled philosophically, albeit at the likely expense of the vast amounts of wealth and fame that came with success,  The fan base may not have swelled to the enormity that Pink Floyd enjoys today, or during its heyday, but the fans in the know would truly be in the know.

Incense & Peppermints: Pass Time With the Strawberry Alarmclock

There are a few songs from the 60s and 70s that REALLY stuck with me from my childhood.  Songs that I associate with my father heavily in some sense or another, because of a random memory here or there, or something.

The Zombies' Time of the Season is one such song.  I know it was my mom and dad's "special" song.  It's a trippy tune and I dig it,  Another is House of the Rising Sun by the Animals and there's I Saw Her Standing There.  Most people think immediately of the Beatles, but for me the Pink Fairies' take on the song comes to mind instead. There is one song I really have a strong memory of, and its just me, dad, his old car, and a very cool song driving somewhere down the Florida coast.  Since Father's day is just past and yesterday, June 21st, 2016, marked the one-year anniversary of the last day I saw my father alive, I thought I'd share that memory and the song.

Its actually one of the earliest songs I can recall ever hearing come on over the radio in my dad's old Dodge Charger and digging and it belongs to the psychedelic then sextet band Strawberry Alarm Clock and its off their 1967 album of the same name, Incense and Peppermints.  Of course, by this time, 1976ish, the group had broken up long before in the year of my birth (1971) and the song was already slipping into "oldie" status, but it was new to me.

In recent days I've added the LP to my record collection, as well as the group's sophomore effort Wake Up... It's Tomorrow.  While I love the debut album and have a special attachment to the title track, Wake Up... It's Tomorrow is the better album in spite of the fact it did not produce a follow up hit single nor did it match the sales of the debut 12".

Incense and Peppermints leads off with the excellent eight and half minute epic The World's On Fire, but the remainder of side one, while solid, does not stand out.  Side Two opens with the killer psychedelic romp Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow, a bonafide classic.  That's followed with a couple tunes that feel like filler bits - Paxton's Back Street Carnival and Hummin' Happy - before the album reaches its crescendo with its three outstanding closing tracks Pass Time With The SAC, Incense and Peppermints and Unwind With the Clock.  The biggest lament here is Japanese bonus track Birdman of Alkatrash is left off the main album because it also is a great track.

Wake Up jumps right in with an avant garde number, Nightmare of Percussion, one of my favorites on the album, with drummer Randy Seol taking a turn up front on vocals and at the fore with some killer percussion.  Soft Skies, No Lies is a lighthearted romp that gets us to the meat of side one.  Tomorrow, with Randy's drumming and Mark Weitz' keys featured really pops, then... oh my, we have the most amazing track this band ever produced - They Saw The Fat One Coming!  This song is too surreal to describe.  It must be heard to be appreciated.  Ed King, Lee Freeman and Group provide the haunting vocals.  The bongos are great, the guitar solo chilling, the brush strokes with the drums by Randy are awesome, the sitar perfect.  "They gathered at the church on Sunday and turned the House of God into a place of violence."  That line will always stick with me, and then, it bleeds into the next killer, chilling, haunting song, Curse of the Witches.  Delivered in a stilted vocal style, it still works, and this songs sends chills down my spine, and there's a xylophone.

Then you flip the record over.  And the damn thing is just as good, almost.  It leads off with Sit With the Guru, a psychedelic classic.  Go Back (You're Going the Wrong Way) is a fun group vocal tune.  Pretty Song From Psych-Out, a tune that originally appeared in the Dick Clark Produced, American International motion picture "Psych-Out" the year prior to the album's release, is up next. followed by a low point, Sitting on a Star.

The record closes with the Black Butter trilogy - Black Butter, Past, Black Butter, Present, Black Butter, Future - primarily a concoction of guitarist, sitarist, vocalist Lee Freeman.  In all, the three pieces combined last around six minutes and close out the record nicely.

The third Strawberry Alarmclock record isn't one that interested me much.  While five of the original six members were still playing in the group, with Gary Lovetro having left after the debut, the record label had handcuffed the group to an extent and refused to let them write all their own material after the did not produce a hit with their second album.  (To me this is a stunner because at least four of the songs should have been huge hits, especially They Saw the Fat One Coming.)  The group had only been allowed to contribute one original song to side one, Lee Freeman and Ed King's A Million Smiles Away.  The remainder of the groups original material was relegated to side two.

The rhythm section, Randy Seol and George Bunnell, departed before the group's fourth album,   Ed King moved to bass, Jimmy Pittman was brought in to sing and play guitar and Gene Gunnels joined on drums.

In 2010 Lee Freeman passed away.

In 2012 most of the original group, including original band leader Mark Weitz, drummer Randy Seol and bassist George Bunnell, along with Gene Gunnels, and newcomer (since 1986) Howie Anderson on guitar reunited and recorded and released a new album, titled Wake Up Where You Are.

The Strawberry Alarmclock's Officical Website can be found here.