Since the first Nuggets in 1972, the entire series
has been grounded in the gritty, dirty sound of garage rock, so much so
that Rhino's 2001 box set of British and foreign psychedelic nuggets
favored harder rock over the fruity, precious side of British psych.
Collectors treasured rare singles before Nuggets, but the series created
an aesthetic that emphasized the raw, trippy, wild, and woolly over the
soft, lush, harmony-laden psychedelicized sounds of AM pop radio. The
Rubble Collection, Mindrockers, The Trash Box
-- all of them were dedicated to freaky guitar rock, and that mindset
ruled until the latter half of the '90s, when the well had started to
run dry, as labels like Sundazed issued the complete recorded works of
obscure garage rockers who had released only one single during their
lifetimes.
Around this time, collectors -- including many
third-generation music fanatics raised in the era of CD reissues rather
than record fairs -- began to favor the soft sunshine pop of the late
'60s, when square vocal groups started to get hip and record trippy
music. Bands like the Millennium, the Association, and Yellow Balloon became hip currency, as did producers like Curt Boettcher and songwriters like Paul Williams.
This was close to anathema for the hardcore garage rock fiends because
this was not rock & roll, it was pop music whose commercial
aspirations failed. Nevertheless, most hardcore record geeks have a
fondness for this stuff, since it's not only melodic and well produced,
but it's terribly interesting to hear how underground ideas were
borrowed and assimilated into mainstream music; often, it's as strange
as it was in the underground, if not stranger. Fans of this breed of
psychedelic pop were insatiable, and there was a certain thrill to the
fact that it was hard to track down, since it was either issued in
Japan, buried as album tracks on reissues, or never made it to CD at
all. That's why Rhino Handmade's foray into the sound with Hallucinations: Psychedelic Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults and its companion release, Come to the Sunshine: Soft Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults,
is so welcome -- while they're only available as limited editions
(primarily sold via www.rhinohandmade.com), they're also the first
widely available American samplers of this style. That alone would make
them noteworthy, but what makes them essential (at least for hardcore
record collectors), is that they're expertly done.
Where previous installments of Nuggets concentrated on singles, Hallucinations
is a true excavation of the vaults, picking overlooked album tracks and
neglected singles from a cornucopia of WEA-owned labels, including
Warner Bros., Cotillion, Jubilee, Valiant, Reprise, and Atco. While the
focus is on acts that released a single or forgotten album, there are a
handful of recognizable names -- the Association, Kim Fowley, the Electric Prunes, the Bonniwell Music Machine, the Tokens, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band -- and in the Monkees'
"Porpoise Song," there's even a genuine hit. But that song is the
exception to the rule: most of these are quite obscure, and it's even
arguable that because they were released on major labels (or at the very
least, high-profile labels), the songs haven't been given the attention
or respect as psychedelia released on smaller, regional labels. That
argument is laid out in the introduction of the excellent liner notes,
and the music on Hallucinations
supports it strongly. Often, collections of rare heavy psychedelia and
garage rock can grow a little samey even when the musical quality is
high, since bands tended to emulate the same sounds and ideas, using the
same production techniques as their peers.
Hallucinations
is a much more interesting listen than the average psychedelic rarities
collection since these underground ideas are applied in bizarre,
unpredictable ways to professionally written, melodic songs that were
designed for mainstream radio. Where its companion collection, Come to the Sunshine, is heavy on lush surfaces and harmonies, Hallucinations
is overtly trippy and psychedelic, filled with fuzz guitars, echoes,
phased vocals, organs, studio effects, and minor-key drones. This brings
it closer to familiar Nuggets territory, but there's a much heavier
emphasis on studiocraft and production here than there is on anything on
the original double-vinyl Nuggets or Rhino's original box set; again,
the focus is on the record, not the song, even though there are some
excellent songs here. Nevertheless, the sound and effects of the
productions are the most memorable aspects, such as the way the vocals
and guitars swirl through the Next Exit's Tokens-produced
"Break Away" or how Jeff Thomas' "Straight Aero," quite likely the
trippiest square anthem ever recorded, has a weird undercurrent of
menace in its hiccupping bass and clanging piano
.
Hallucinations
is filled with moments as strong as this, and it makes a convincing
argument that psychedelic pop is at its best when it's pure, undiluted
ear candy like this. It's not just a good introduction to the charms of
psychedelic pop; it holds its own next to any collection of freaky,
guitar-fueled garage-psychedelic rarities.
This is a real great compilation and highly recommendable.
Have fun
Frank
Flac p1 &
Flac p2 -
mp3@320 p1 -
mp3@320 p2
No date of release is given in the liner notes of the CD reissue of We All Together's first album, which was reportedly issued in 1972 -- but since it has a cover of a song from Paul McCartney's 1973 Band on the Run ("Bluebird") and since their second album came out in 1974, we can assume this is probably from 1973 or 1974. The Beatles, and particularly McCartney, fixation is obvious; they also cover a couple of obscure numbers from Wings' Wildlife album ("Tomorrow" and "Some People Never Know"), and throw in Badfinger's
"Carry on Till Tomorrow" for good measure. Most of the album consists
of original material, though, which is quite accomplished, well
arranged, and melodic. What sets them apart from the leagues of other Beatles
wannabes is that their song structures are usually not obviously
derivative of well-known tunes by the real deal, and executed with a
pretty unforced, natural ease. McCartney isn't the only one subject to tribute; "Dear Sally" has an echoey Lennon-esque hard rock vocal right from his Phil Spector-produced era, while "Ozzy" has a mock-Harrison slide guitar part. No, it doesn't get high marks for originality. But if you like late-'60s Beatles, early-'70s Beatles solo albums, and Badfinger, you'd be a fool not to try this on for size.(allmusic.com)
Of these 18, only four were released at the time, a
startlingly low ratio that suggests the extent of how underground this
scene really was. Fry tried to place these singles at larger labels, getting few bites, and soon the resident producer torch passed from Dickinson to Terry Manning,
a pop guy who let other pop guys record late into the night in Ardent,
learning how to navigate the studio and creating the signature sound of
Memphis, where guitars rang and clanged in equal measure. This is a key
to how isolated this scene was, not just from the rest of Memphis but
the world at large; they were shut off in the studio, creating their own
sound, the precursor to indie kids holed away in the basement with a
guitar and four-track. This scene eventually wormed its way into such
solipsistic navel-gazing in the form of the endless unfinished sessions
for Big Star's 3rd -- its darkness brushed upon with the inclusion of an original mix of "Holocaust," but for the most part ignored as the Big Star-centric
second disc focuses in their brilliant, blinding pop, often present in
alternate mixes or demos, some of which are revelatory (Chilton's
spoken asides during the original version of "Mod Lang" are disarming),
all of which help their very familiar music seem fresh again.
