Julian Cope's N.M.E. article, December 3 -1983 'bout Garage and Psychedelia

I guess everyone knows who saint Julian is, right? Even if you're an admirer of his work or not (I am), Julian Cope is a person who has a deep knowledge for music (and i mean DEEP) and especially what many of us referred to as "psychedelic".  And we're not talking about hippy crap here sir. His webspace is known widely as "Head Heritage" and if you're not a regular already there, then you must start now (there's a link on the right pane of this blog, just click on it and you're going to have a bad trip assuredly!). 

Twenty seven Decembers back, Julian wrote a piece about garage punk and psychedelia on the N.M.E. paper. This piece turned over the years as an influential essay on what we called today "garage revival". Remember this, this article pre-dated all the Fuzztones and the Chesterfield Kings of this world. And it wasn't written by a Rudi Protrudi or a Greg Prevost but by the singer of the Teardrop Explodes! There was no internet and downloads. There was no plethora of bootlegged 45s in compilations and in the end, there was a huge blur of what was actually 'garage' and what wasn't. Many did the same mistakes as many now-days do again. Embroil psychedelia with the hippies. I wasn't able to read this by the time got out. I was just 5 years old, how could i besides? I found it re-printed in an old 'zine and that was it, my life changed! Then came Tim Warren and all things for me found its way. 

Now's time to do the same with the hope to attract as many new blokes as i can. And as Julian said, "Don't turn Hippy on me!"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Dog-star rages! Nay 'tis past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out." - Alexander Pope

WHEN I TELL YOU about psychedelia, you can forget all the Peace-Love-Dove shit. You can forget about all the hippies you ever hated. You can forget about the understanding and the answer. Cast your mind back to the question.

Cast you mind back 5-10-20 years to the first time you ever thought about sex. When a penis, a vagina, were new words in a book.

They fit together, you say? One gets hard and one gets soft? That's repulsive, I'm going to be sick. Never think about it. Do my parents do it? Why did they invent it? Will I ever do it? Why did they invent it? I hate everything.

Your first psychedelic experience. The ship goes down with all your sanity.

So here we are - Psychedelia, when the question gets bigger and bigger, and the answer fades out obsolete.

Forget Timothy Leary and forget about the Tom Wolfe stories. When LSD hit the world, the intellectuals thought about it and the rest freaked out.

It's the rest we're interested in.

It's the rest who made the music. Not The Grateful Dead, not Quicksilver Messenger Service, not the Moody Blues. The ones we should be interested in are the 17-year-old kids from Birmingham to Albuquerque who took acid and tried to play old Van Morrison/Stones riffs. Suddenly they were something very new. True they couldn't play very well and the singer didn't know the words, but we all mean it don't we? So we could be bigger than anyone.

"Look out, I'm gonna get my seven Cadillacs, And maybe I'll drive around the World" - The Silver Fleet

THE SINGER in every great psychedelic group was 5' 10". He stooped because his friends were small and he felt like a spaz. He sung about being himself, his ideal self, which was really Mick Jagger.

His real life was a dry-wank.

This is psychedelia.

Garage-music overproduced in four track studios. Musicians who wanted to be so famous. fuck, I'd sell out if I know how to! People who were too nihilistic to ever get it together.

Say yes to - Ed Cobb, Sky Saxon, Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, Eddie Phillips, Arthur Lee, Moulty, Mouse, Dave Aguilar, and all the others who never could.

In their hunchbacked Twilight Zone, they made the best, most formidable sound ever. Rock powered emotion in all kinds of music. Arthur Lee? you say. Wimp music! Sky Saxon? A spoilt rat-faced child!

Then fuck you I say. Fuck your lack of compassion, your world concern, and for forgetting the individual, the small want-to-be-big individual who tore out great handfuls of his soul for a promise of a no-meaning 15 minutes of fame.

I love them. I love their misery. I see their parallels strewn out in front of me: Patti Smith, with baby, in some Midwest Hicksville, thinking she is at peace. Marc Almond hysterical and praying for fame with an on-off switch. John Cale's waking dream of one daytime radio play. Peter Hammill seeing his reflection in Mega-Bowie, Mega-Gabriel, Mega-Marillion. They are many. And I love them too.

So forget the Hippy.

We're talking of pre-Hippy, when even the quietest music had an intent that could not be ruffled.

A three chord riff, delicate voice and; "Oh, the snot has caked against my pants," - Arthur Lee 1967

THIS IS psychedelia. One album, almost alone, inspired new love and attitude to the music.

"I just hope you have as much fun letting it spin as I did putting it together." - Lenny Kaye, on 'Nuggets', 1972.

For the time being, I shall presume that everyone has a copy of 'Nuggets'. If you know nothing else about psychedelia, you should know this. If not, put the paper down and go and listen to all the basics: The first Pink Floyd, 'Revolver', Traffic, The 13th Floor Elevators, 'Sgt. Pepper', 'A Web of Sound', 'Forever Changes', etc.

'Nuggets' was and still is the basic introduction. It gave us groups that were then so obscure but now, to a mass of people, are favourite listening. It introduced us to The Seeds, Chocolate Watchband, Elevators, Remains, Standells, Electric Prunes and so many others who had classic but unknown songs released. By now we know that had also recorded classic LP's.

But during the '70's, these LP's were sold next to garbage like Strawberry Alarm Clock, Josephus, Blue Cheer, Bubble Puppy, anything on International Artists. You had to listen to all the I.A. catalogue to find out that the only things necessary were the 13th Floor Elevators LP's.

Psychedelia was being sold as hippy music by charlatans who thought any journey-thru-my-inner-mind-man nonsense was hip.

But the influence of 'Nuggets' was deep-rooted. This supposed 2nd Division music was the real psychedelia.

"Between thought and expression lies a lifetime" - Lou Reed

SO HERE we are in 1967. The Beatles have already previewed what's going to happen with 'Revolver'. The Rolling Stones are about to give psychedelia a bad name with a piece of 90% trash called 'Their Satanic Majesties Request'. The Yardbirds are featured in Blow-Up, a far-out forerunner of Zabriskie Point where Jeff Beck destroys his guitar during 'Train Kept A Rollin'.

In the US the vanguard was being led by Grace Slick, Jerry Garcia, John Cipollina and more mid-twenties graduates intent on rationalising the scene. The Doors had signed to Elektra, successfully promoting previous Elektra biggie Arthur Lee into Total Paranoiac.

And then came the group who drew the line between the hippies and the rest.

They were The Mothers of Invention. They had been signed as a blues band by an acid raving A&R man who committed suicide by self-immolation when the bill for their first masterpiece, 'Freak Out', came to over $20,000. The Mothers were unsafe and unsanitary; unhealthy leaders of the real underground.

Frank Zappa was shrewd enough (and old enough) to laugh at the very scene which bought his records. His songs were anything but the anthems-of-togetherness adored in Haight Ashbury. They were vile attacks on both straights and weirdos. Songs like 'Plastic People', 'Flower Punk' and 'Trouble Every Day' were vicious. Yes, you could laugh, but how did we know he wasn't laughing at you?

The Mothers sound even influenced the suburban punk groups. Teddy and His Patches, from San Jose, did a mind-blowing cover of 'Suzy Creamcheese', available on 'Pebbles III'. Psychedelia Piss-takes continued with 'I'm Allergic To Flowers' by Jefferson Handkerchief. The punks were becoming yippies, long haired peace-haters. It even swept to Britain with the Mothers-influenced Deviants.

In 1967, Frank Zappa produced 'Loose Lip Sync Ship', an instrumental 45 by The Hogs. The Hogs were really The Chocolate Watchband, a collage of musicians like by Ed Cobb, writer of 'Tainted Love' and producer of millions. Until 'Nuggets', The Chocolate Watchband were unrecognised. Now three LP's are re-released and there is even a new 'Best Of' compilation.

A raw diverse R&B group, they were the true psychedelic incarnation of The Rolling Stones. Clattering Bo Diddley beats, zinging guitars, their singer Dave Agular genuinely believed that Mick Jagger was ripping him off. At a time when the right place at the right time counted for so much, The Chocolate Watchband were horrendously mistimed.

Their only hit, 'Let's Talk About Girls', was recorded in such a rush that Dave Agular was not even there to sing it. Don Bennett, a writer and a friend of Ed Cobb, was asked to sing and it started a long relationship. Bennett also wrote some Standells songs and created a precedent for Ed Cobb: the producer used The Chocolate Watchband as a pallet for weird ideas. On the first and second albums the group playing is often utterly different from the supposed line-up. 'Gone And Passes By', the very best song they ever recorded, is a subterranean Stones, played like Brian Jones was actually getting his own way for once. Zing, electric sitar over zombie bone dance, cavernous recording and voodoo-Dr John, 'Walk On Gilded Splinters' into Beefheart's 'Kandykorn'.

Yes they hit low, but when they were up, they left everyone else wanking.

Richard Marsh was an image weasel, sucking on lemons and waiting for fame. In early 1966 as Sky Saxon, 'Pushing Too Hard' made his group The Seeds massive. On front covers of teen mags all over the US, Sky Saxon and his three suede cohorts stared out, eyes wrinkled and blinking, anxious to get back to their nocturnal two-chord world. The follow-up to 'Pushing Too Hard' was 'No Escape'. In all ways, it was the same song. Sky Saxon felt his one emotion very intensely.

You can make a commercial success of almost anybody. Lassie was massive and even Noele Gordon had her day. But in Sky Saxon, we have to draw the line. His ideas imploded and whole albums were devoted to the worship of the E and D chords. The other Seeds were his wanton disciples. Organist Daryl Hooper used the same solo in at least 10 songs. In one uncharacteristically different song, 'Nobody Spoil My Fun', the group has to shift completely during Hooper's solo, so intent is he on playing his regular part.

For the Seeds , success was an uncomfortable bonus. How could Sky Saxon maintain his role as the world's whipping post when they sold records? Titles like 'You Can't Be Trusted', 'It's A Hard Life', 'Can't Seem To Make You Mine'. 'Two Fingers Pointing At You', all sung by a 10-year-old hysterical brat, were to have limited appeal. Their LPs became primeval classics and Saxon held the banner for all punk singers. After three studio and one brilliantly fake live album, his focus became hazier and hazier. A change of style for a terrible blues LP and later a change of name to Sky Sunlight. The backyard and the world became one place. A bit like Roky Erickson.

The 13th Floor Elevators were the Texas group. On International Artists of Austin/Dallas/Houston, they had a massive hit with Erickson's 'You're Gonna Miss Me'. This had already been a local hit for Roky's early group, The Spades, in 1965. By 1967 he was eating peyote, the psychedelic desert drug, and turning on all the local groups who spent the previous months lamenting Texas' lack of surf.

There is now a brilliant six LP set called 'Flashbacks' available which includes covers of such Elevators classics as 'Splash 1' and 'Reverberation'. Tom Verlaine talked wildly of Televisions debt to the Elevators and songs like 'See No Evil' from 'Marquee Moon' are inspiring proof. Television even opened with a cover of 'Fire Engine' from the 'Psychedelic Sound of...' album and their live 'Arrow' LP includes a brilliant version.

Groups like Rising Storm and Mystic Tide took the brutal sound for themselves and even Iggy Pop was enmeshed for a while. 'Flashbacks III' includes an unsafe and magnificent 'I Can Only Give You Everything' by the Iguanas. With a young Jimmy Osterberg on drums and singing, the song nightmares along over cattle crossings and iron bridges. With a familiar Elevators screech-siren sound, the whole song begins and ends in the tunnel.

"I am from Mars," claimed Roky Erickson in an interview. The journalist wondered, had he any proof?

"I call my mother Ma," he replied.

After the first LP Erikson went into an asylum. The second album was written mainly by the other , more coherent members of the group. The only other weirdo was John St. Powell who changed his name to Powell St. John. Erikson repaired, came out of the asylum to record 'Easter Everywhere', the new album. After that he freaked out again and went back to the asylum.

There were no real weirdos in The Electric Prunes. They formed one maniac intent on destruction. All their early recordings are so raw, they are almost unplayable. On 'You've Never Had It Better', from the 'Everywhere Chainsaw' compilation, they are singing from purgatory to a world with no ears. Their manager, a TV personality called Ben Willow, was intent on making them huge. A deal with Reprise and a tab of acid for the in-house writers.

In Hey Presto time, Nancy Tucker and Mary Mantz gave them 'I Had Too Much Too Dream Last Night' plus a follow-up 'Get Me To The World On Time'. Both singles were classically produced psychedelic punk, fake far-eastern organ and ratty vocals. The songs were hits but the LP was a real bore. They didn't seem to have much control and it was mainly wimpish slush.

'Underground was their second LP and is still available. It was their classic. More in control, they start with the brilliant 45 'Great Banana Hoax', Bo Diddley rhythm and squealing Farfisa. The whole LP was massive with its scythe guitar sound and Pete De Freitas clatter. On 'Hideaway', the drums go crazy and the guitar shrieks. On 'Children Of Rain' the organ phases in a familiar funfair avalanche. On 'Antique Doll' the bass is treacherous, the voices sweeter than need. It's their only consistently great moment. After this they gave over power to a writer/arranger called Dave Axelrod. He is guilty of producing two of the weakest ever albums; 'Mass In F Minor' and 'Kyrie Eylson'. These are bogies up the nose of a great group. Amen.

THE BASICS of British psychedelia are far better known. We've all heard 'See Emily Play', 'All You Need Is Love', 'Paper Sun', 'Hole In My Shoe', but it's hard to separate the good from the shit. Psychedelia here became as style. Every group had a rainbow-abstract-world-in-my-head sleeve. Even Vince Hill and Noel Harrison had 'weird' hits. If they were noticing it, it must be selling.

But what about the others? What about the failures?

The biggest losers were The Creation. They were so close to making it. Pete Townshend asked their guitarist, Eddie Phillips, to join The Who. He wouldn't so Townshend joined The Creation fan club.

Because of their lack of success, Creation fans tend to over-rate them now, so intent on telling us what should have been. True their songs are pretty great. 'Painter Man' and 'Life Is Just Beginning' are so like nursery rhymes, so hummable. When Boney M had a hit with 'Painter Man', it was no shock.

Onstage The Creation were pop-art; Kenny Pickett would stop singing and spray-paint a canvas behind him. Eddie Phillips used a violin bow before anyone, and on all their records, his guitar is so barely controlled that it often feeds back during verses. Edsel have released 'How Does It Feel To Feel'. It's a put together LP and it's great.

But even more manic were The Misunderstood. Like some blues version of the Pop Group, plundering both The Yardbirds and Bo Diddley, and ending up like Captain Beefheart; all crescendos and screeching steel guitar.

Until last year their recordings were rare, rare. Then Cherry Red put out the 'Before The Dream Faded' LP. Get it, it's good. I used to hate 'Who Do You Love', but their version made me rethink, it's like a different song, even delicate in parts. Of course they weren't successful, but they did leave California and live on chips for a year while they tried to make it.

For most of the American groups the major influence was obviously The Rolling Stones. But look further and you'll see the other main groups were The Pretty Things and Van Morrison's early group. Them.

Listen to any US compilation and Them feature everywhere in both songs and attitude. Versions of 'Gloria', 'I Can Only Give You Everything' and 'Baby Please Don't Go' are found throughout. Other songs such as 'Mystic Eyes' were a perfect blue-print for the plundering US garage groups. Listen to The Rising Storm, the Mystic Tide duo, and The Moonrakers.

The Shadows of Knight hit big with their version of 'Gloria' and took Them's style for 'Oh Yeah' and 'Light Bulb Blues'.

Ironically, early Them singles featured session men backing Van Morrison. Decca, in their usual three-piece suit attitude, had no faith in the group.

Eventually, Them split from Morrison and went to Texas, the place which had always loved them so much. They recorded some of their best songs there, such as 'Dirty Old Man' on the 'Moxie' no. 2 EP.

'NUGGETS' INSTIGATED a whole new genre: The Psychedelic Compilation. In 1979, two sets of these albums appeared called 'Pebbles' and 'Boulders'. Both were influenced by Lenny Kaye's 'Nuggets' idea but on a far more wanton and amateur scale. Tracks were often so obscure that no tapes were available and the original scratchy single had to be used as the master.

For a while, these two were essential. They gave a glimpse of previously unknown groups. They have also built into hefty sets. 'Pebbles' now has twelve LPs and 'Boulders' nine.

I've never been a fan of the 'Boulders' series. The sound quality is poor and the tracks are available on many of the newer compilations. But 'Pebbles' still has many essential volumes in Numbers 1,2,3 and 5.

Volume 3 is pure garbled garage psychedelia. Some of it is just plain terrifying.

On 'Spider And The Fly' by The Monocles, the singer is a ten-year-old whose body is turning into a spider. He cries "Help me, help me" as he devours his mother, thinking she's a fly.

Of 'Flight Reaction' by The Calico Wall, it is impossible to print a description. If you don't have this album then buy it. Is it essential? Is the moon made of cheese? Songs with titles like 'Horror Asparagus Stories', 'The Reality Of (Air) Fried Borsk' and 'Suicidal Flowers' are essential to any collection.

The volume you have to have is No. 5, the Punk Masterpiece. Every song has the same theme:

singer meets girl, girl bogs off

singer loves girl, girl screws singer's arch rival

singer loves girl, girl is unaware of singer's existence

On 'No Good Woman' by The Tree, the singer berates his girlfriend, "You're ugly and you're fat, and you've got no teeth". Why does he stay? He sings the whole song with his finger pointed at her throat. "I bought you two Mustangs, and a Cadillac".

The album treats women as though they were a tank regiment, to be beaten down into submission.

Unfortunately the latest compilations now make 'Pebbles' and 'Boulders' seem pale in comparison. While these two have wandered into boring areas, the new US and British albums are getting rawer and more far out than ever.

THE HEIR to the 'Pebbles' throne must be the 'Psychedelic Unknowns' LPs. At first just a two EP set, five albums have now been issued. These include real classics: most obviously 'In The Past' by We The People. 'In The Past' also covered by The Chocolate Watchband, is one of the most beautiful psychedelic songs ever, with a high balalaika guitar sound and raga rhythm. At the time, We The People were complete unknowns but the Eva label, from Paris, has issued their 'Declaration Of Independence' album which is raw and beautiful.

The Calico Wall, refugees from 'Pebbles', turn up with a death wail called 'I'm A Living Sickness', a kind of walking pace Doors. Other names from 'Pebbles' included The Squires and The Split Ends, and there's a double speed cover of Love's 'My Flash On You' by The Sixpence.

I've talked about the 'Texas Flashback' series before. They really are necessary but are now very hard to get. Easier to find is the 'Mindrocker' series, again on Eva. You may find you have doubles of certain songs but it's justified because they are all so good. Volume 4 is easily the best. Based on an old bootleg called 'Acid Visions', Eva has added four Moving Sidewalks tracks and created a new LP. The sound is better than the earlier album and cheaper, but you don't get the wonderful one-off sleeve.

I won't spend vast amounts of time on each compilation, but there are certain vital ones and 'Back From The Grave' is a biggie. The guy who has released its two volumes is a maniac. Into the music at 12, he is now 25 and spends his time driving a hired car the mid-west of America in search of gems. These albums are worth it for the sleeve notes alone.

The groups on these albums are true danger. Long hair? No Faggot Way!! The Malibus, The Brigands, Ralph Neilson & The Chancellors. You'd never get names like that in a psychedelic revival. And at the top of the pile is The Nova's version of 'The Crusher'. Sung by a 200lb. redneck, it devours the Bananmen version.

The same attitude reigns for 'What A Way To Die', a new US compilation and probably the best so far. Subtitled "Forgotten Losers From The Mid-60's", it is incredible, so violent and fucked-up.

From Chicago, and probably with Lou Reed writing, are The Beechnuts with 'My Iconoclastic Life'. As the sleeve says, it is one of the scariest records ever.

"My life is nil, I just take pills

sit for hours just watching the flowers".

Richard And The Young Lions are another one-off classic with the amassed guitars and tubular bells on the start of 'You Can Make It'. They're featured on the sleeve and look like members of five different groups. Other big features are the Human Beinz before they wimped-out and the first ever Standells recording. Whoopee!

Others to look out for are 'Psychedelic Sixties' volumes and the two 'Off The Wall' albums. These are very much garage psychedelia.

For out and out wierdos, look for 'Mindblowers'. The sleeve is a bit cosmic in orange and yellow swirls but the music is faultless, with an early 13th Floor Elevators recording of 'Tried To Hide'.

But the true find is 'Go Insane' by The Doors. It's one of three acetates left and is a blues-rant of song later to become 'Celebration Of The Lizard'. I love it. Morrison sounds so young, unformed voice and no chest beating. For Doors freaks , it's on White Rabbit Records.

The final US essential is 'Psychedelic Moose And The Soul Searchers', an album of magnum opuses ranging from Mouse and The Traps wail of Jeremiah's 'No Sense Nonsense' to The Blue Things 'Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind', a kind of Yardbirds thing, Actually, The Blue Things appear on about seven different compilations and each track is incredible. And there we leave America.

THE BRITISH COMPILATION scene is very restrained compared with its US partner. Albums like 'Not Just Beat Music' have been around for a while but the brain damage was only really started with 'Chocolate Soup For Diabetics'. Now running at three volumes, 'Chocolate Soup' is out-and-out classic.

Volume 1 opens with 'Train To Disaster' by The Voice. Like waiting for a late night tube, it comes screaming out of a tunnel and pummels you in the head. Typical end-of-the-world lyrics and snotty, sneering vocals. It ends in a pandemonium of guitars and treads your face into the ground.

The Misunderstood are featured but even they are upstaged by the mania of The Craigs' 'I Must Be Mad'. It's 'I Can See For Miles' at breakout speed, a commando raid of guitars, the drummer frantically over-playing to make up for his lack of time-keeping.

On The Tickle's 'Smokey Pokey World', the melodies are bright and the acid-guitar line is so pure and simple. One real weird-out is a group called One In A Million. Both of their featured songs are The Jam if they hadn't "Souled-Out". Gruff Weller voice, identical Foxton harmonies, how I wished they'd gone in this direction.

Chocolate Soup has a companion album of psychotic R&B called 'The Demention Of Sound'. Far more raw, it features The Bow Street Runners and The Sorrows, both raw and unmanageable. If you like Cherry Red's Misunderstood LP then you'll love this. Syn, who are on 'Chocolate Soup', are featured here as their blues incarnation, The Syndicates. 'Crawdaddy Simone' is a blues 'European Son', surging across the Russian Steppes.

The man behind Chocolate Soup is Sean Gregory. I've no idea who he is but I love him for his records and for his sleevenotes.

Chocolate Soup also has a two-volume brother in 'Electric Sugar Cube Flashback'. Pressed in the US it features many of the Chocolate Soup bands plus other oddities such as 'Jabberwocky' by Boeing Duveen & the Beautiful Soup and 'Scene Through The Eye Of A Lens', an early Family song when Roger Chapman still sounded like Fergal Sharkey. Best track is 'Gong With The Luminous Nose' by the ubiquitous Fleur De Lys. They have tracks on many compilations, each one a Who/Yardbirds dream of a song.

"Nine times the colour red

Explodes like heated blood" - The Zodiac

That colourful piece of doggerel is included to warn you. There may be many great new LPs around but some of the compilers are obviously intent on flooding a brilliant market with Hippy crap.

For example, if you buy 'Perfume Garden I' you get a brilliant shot of charged punk psychedelia. You get The Eyes, The Birds, and a whole load of riches. But beware if you buy Volume II, you get a whole bunch of hippy and pre-heavy metal with a couple of classics thrown in. I read a 4_ star review in Sounds and smelled an incense burner reviewing it.

The Psycho label which releases 'Perfumed Garden' is a weird conglomerate of classic and bad. Similarly, 'Endless Journey I' on Psycho is dirty and brilliantly fucked up whilst 'Volume II' is failed Mellotron groups who would have killed for a Roger Dean sleeve.

Anyway, enough slagging good intentions. The final album deserving of a mention should really go in a "miscellaneous" category. It's 'Ugly Things', a compilation of Australian psychedelia. I included it here because of its British sound; very Yardbirds, very Pretty Things. They promised Volume II about three years ago. But while that has never surfaced, the rest just keep coming.

IF ANYONE is wondering "where's the Byrds section?" and "what about Buffalo Springfield?" forget it. Yes, they were great too, but everybody knows about them. Everybody should know about these groups, too. I hope in 1996, there are articles about Aztec Camera, Flipper, The Undertones, Alan Vega, Pere Ubu. Everyone remembers them now. But everyone should remember them always.

If anyone is wondering where to buy these albums, them you'll just have to look. The best shops are Vinyl Solution in London, Midnight and Venus Records in New York and maybe G.I. Records in Edinburgh. You can find them everywhere if you try.

I hate revivals of any kind so I hope the Psychedelic Revival has finally died down. But one group that has to be mentioned is The Chesterfield Kinds. Their LP could be from 1967, so close is it to the original. They only record the most obscure classics and are pure Chocolate Watchband.

I hope loads of people can be moved by this music but I have one savage plea:

Don't Turn Hippy On Me.

DISCOGRAPHY (Some have no record label)

Nuggets (Elektra)
Chocolate Soup For Diabetics, Vols. 1, 2, 3. (Relics Records)
Pebbles Vols. 1-12 (BFD)
Boulders 1-9 (Moxie)
Electric Sugar Cube Flashbacks 1 & 2 (A.I.P.)
Back From The Grave 1 & 2 (Crypt)
What A Way To Die (Satan)
Mindblowers (White Rabbit)
Psychotic Moose & The Soul Searchers (P. Moose)
Texas Flashbacks 1-6 (Flashback)
Ugly Things (Raven)
Off The Wall 1 & 2 (Wreckord Wrack)
Psychedelic Sixties 1 & 2 (Cicadelic)
Acid Dreams
A Gathering of the Tribes (and Son of...) (Bona Fide)
Mindrocker 1-8 (Line)
Demention of Sound (Feedback)
Perfumed Garden I (Psycho)
Endless Journey I (Psycho)
Glimpses 1 & 2 (Wellington)
The Chosen Few (A Go Go)
Psychedelic Unknowns 105 (Calico)
Magic Cube (10")
New England Teen Scene (Moulty)
Everywhere Chainsaw
Relics (dB)
Oil Stains (dB)
Burghers
Texas Punk Groups (Eva)
Sound of the Sixties (Eva)
High in the Mid-Sixties
Hipsville 29 B.C.

BEWARE OF...

Perfumed Garden II
Endless Journey II
Glimpses III
Pennsylvania Unknowns
Houston Hallucinations
Echoes In Time

Julian's piece copied from here