Psychedelia / Prog / Kraut / Space / Psychedelic Folk (60s-70s)

http://prognotfrog.blogspot.gr/2007/02/opo-opo-i-opo-ii-netherlands-75-77-folk.html wrote:
schizoid said...
Opo only made two albums: "Fallen Asleep Just Like Papa" & "Opo 2".

The first Opo album on Legendary Stoof Label. AA folk album of a very high quality and of great importance. Fantastic Female voice by Lenneke de Vries and supported with multi-talented artists, using a widespread traditional instruments. Opo has a wonderful TUDOR LODGE like chorus and sound. A folk killer! As this Dutch folk is recently becoming rarer and rarer.

https://psychspaniolos.blogspot.gr/2009/02/snow-snow-1968.html wrote:From Cleveland, Ohio, this band were originally known as the Muther's Oats. The awful folk-ballad 'A' side can be ignored here. The flip however is an incredibly strange slab of psych-pop which is somewhere between The Beatles' I Am The Walrus and Sweetwater's My Crystal Spider. Truly a relic of the era. Both 45 cuts also appear on their eponymous album, of which Catapillar and Song Of The Sirens are the standout tracks. The band's female singer was recruited by the record producers to change their sound.
On the album, the first three tracks are pretty bland multi-voiced folk-rock, although the short guitar incisions are promising. What follows on Side One is strangely melodic acid-rock with oblique harmonies on the brilliant Engelbert, and a kind of twisted Peanut Butter Conspiracy influence, with a sharp tempo change and toytown psych on You Let Me Know. Side two is even better, starting with the piercing guitar on Song Of The Sirens, another track reminiscent of PBC. A coiled waltz similar to Aorta, The Flying Miraldos follows suit, whilst Sweet Dreams and Bab's Song are pompous but cultivated baroque harmony pop with lush arrangements. The venom is in the tail where the tour de force Caterpillar pulls all stops and ushers the listener through more effects and key changes in three minutes and sounds as boldly experimental today as anything from this period.
Will Ryan later recorded as Willio And Phillio in the seventies and eighties.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_george_edwards_group wrote:Until recent years at least, The George-Edwards Group were probably the most undergroundest group in America, making music in total, TOTAL obscurity, in their home studios, just for their own pleasure. In their many decades together, they’d only ever pressed up 100 copies of their one and only 1977 album, only to find that over thirty years later, to their complete surprise, it had been “discovered” by a crate digger and given new life (the story unfolds below).

Late last month, Drag City/Galactic Zoo Disk released Chapter III, the third transmission from the private musical universe of Edward Balian and Ray George. The duo’s home-recorded rock from the 70s and 80s sometimes sounds like Big Star meets the Silver Apples—lush/jangly (and very catchy) guitar sounds surrounded by synthesizers and other electronic audio equipment bent far beyond what it was supposed to do. At other times they sound like Moody Blues or one of Greg Lake’s numbers in ELP. Some of it reminds me of The Zombies. Some sounds like 80s synthpop. It’s really eclectic, that’s for sure, but it’s not eccentric in an “outsider music” sort of way. They just have no one fixed style, although anthemic/magisterial guitars are a mainstay of their sound, along with electronic embellishments and synthetic “strings.” Previously Drag City and Galactic Zoo Disk re-released their self-pressed 38:38 album from 1977 and a second set culled from their Archives.

http://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/fairfield-ski/ wrote:Fairfield Ski were formed in the early 1970’s, the Band members Nigel Wright, Guitar and lead vocals, Matt Bridger, Bass guitar and vocals, Bill Bonham, Keyboards and vocals and Dave Hynds, Percussion and vocals, they formed a competent song writing team producing their own distinctive original melodies coupled with inventive musical arrangements.

It was the latter part of 1971 when the band were approached by a man called Nigel Law Husselby who after watching the Band perform at a gig, made them a contractual offer and Fairfield Ski were born ! The Band were then put to work in a Birmingham Studio solely to rehearse and write original songs for recording and publishing .

Things progressed and Fairfield Ski found themselves elevated to the premier league recording their original songs in the top studios of London ! Namely, Abbey Road , Air London , Apple and Trident it was a very inspirational time for the band and it was in these London Studios that Fairfield Ski recorded the album, resulting in a commercial product to be proud of.

Due to the high costs involved in the production of the album financial difficulties occurred leaving Fairfield Ski with a completed album remaining unpublished. It was at this difficult financial time that the Band had an offer of Management from a leading worldwide record company, however nothing transpired due to complications. Soon after Fairfield Ski were made an offer to move to the United States. Nigel Wright and Bill Bonham did go, however Matt Bridger and David Hynds opted to stay in the UK.

Nigel Wright after a time returned to the UK whereas Bill Bonham remained in the US and made his home in California. The Four members stayed in touch and remained good friends . It was early 2013 and forty years on that completely out of the blue an email arrived addressed to drummer Dave Hynds, it was from Alex Carretero who said he was from a Spanish record company called Guerrsen Records who specialised in reissues of 60’s 70’s music , he said that he had acquired an Acetate of the Fairfield Ski Album and wanted to re-issue the Album on the Guerrsen label in Vinyl and CD . Alex informed Dave Hynds that he had been trying to track down the band for many years without success. He went on to explain that the album had been “bootlegged ” in 1996 and had apparently sold well!

OR Records had released the album under the name of “Fairfield Sky “, which had probably been done for copyright reasons . By all accounts there had originally been three Acetates which had all disappeared following the bankruptcy of the management company, one copy of the Acetate is rumoured to be somewhere in Japan a second in Finland and of course the third Acetate is in the United States which was used to ” Bootleg ” the OR Records release!

However without the release of the “bootleg album ” Fairfield Ski would have remained unknown and unpublished . Fairfield Ski are now signed to Guerrsen Records and are currently reunited working on a 2nd Album busy selecting previous recorded tracks, I wish Fairfield Ski the very best and thank them for their music and look forward with great anticipation to hearing the next album .

http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-apryl-fool-mw0000739046 wrote:

The Apryl Fool was a very accomplished late-'60s band from Japan whose lone, self-titled album is a great mixture of hard psych and blues-rock. Their best-known track is probably "The Lost Mother Land, Pt. 1," which was featured on the Japanese volume of QDK's Love, Peace and Poetry series, certainly one of the most crazed, over the top productions and performances in the entire series, with its massively phased and treated vocals and general menace. But that tune is really the anomaly on the album, despite the prevalence of monstrous fuzz guitar on a number of tracks. At their heart, the Apryl Fool seem to be a blues-rock band, although one that was clearly experimenting with the burgeoning psychedelic scene. Tracks like "Another Time," "Honky Tonk Jam," and Bob Dylan's "Pledging My Time" are pretty straight blues-rock, and "April Blues" just adds some fuzz guitar to a boogie-woogie piano bit. The other tracks up the psych quotient considerably, like on "Tomorrow's Child," with its Farfisa and wicked fuzz leads, or the aforementioned "The Lost Mother Land, Pt. 1." There are additional crazy tape effects on "The Lost Mother Land, Pt. 2." About half the tunes are in English and half in Japanese, but it's all good stuff. Historical footnote: years later, bass player Haruomi Hosono would become a member of one of Japan's most popular music groups ever, Yellow Magic Orchestra.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-animated-egg-mn0001530857/biography wrote:The Animated Egg were a studio-only group that issued a self-titled album of psychedelic instrumentals in the late '60s. It's now known that the chief instigator behind the Animated Egg was renowned Los Angeles session guitarist Jerry Cole, whose fuzzy leads (with some electric 12-string, surf, and Latin lines as well) dominate the arrangements. Cole also wrote the material, and though he was unsure of the other personnel when asked about the LP many years later, possible accompanists include Edgar Lamar and Don Dexter on drums; Tommy Lee and Glenn Cass on bass; Billy Joe Hastings and Norm Cass on guitar; and Billy Preston on organ. The Animated Egg, despite the high instrumental talent involved, sounds rather like it was thrown together in the studio to capitalize on the fad for psychedelic sounds, Cole playing on several other similar "psychsploitation" LPs in the same era credited to different groups. Everything from The Animated Egg, plus numerous bonus tracks from some of those other LPs with a similar approach, can be heard on the Animated Egg CD compilation Guitar Freakout.

http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=7898 wrote:US act WhiteWing was formed in 1968, and originally consisted of Mike Drew (vocals, organ), Rod Schroeder (vocals, guitars), Mike Coates (guitars), Gary Cass (bass) and Norm Curtis (drums). In 1975 they landed a record deal with Minneapolis label ASI, who released their self-titled debut album as well as a single, Hansa, who did fairly well in the Billboard singles charts.

But what should have been a good start as recording artists for the band sadly fell by the wayside. Their album wasn't always available in the towns where they played to promote it, and it didn't help the band that their label had sold them in as a US equivalent to The Moody Blues when the sound they explored was, in fact, one rather more harder edged. The end result was that their label dropped the band rather than releasing their second album, while the main songwriter was advised to ditch the band's rhythm section and start cooperating with a vocalist of the record labels choice. The end result of which was that WhiteWing disbanded in 1976 with a sole album to their name.

http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=2571 wrote:In 1967, Marc Blanc and Patrick Fontaine were introduced to Daevid Allen after his departure from Soft machine. They both played in its Bananamoon band in Spain during summer '68 and in the south of France at the beginning of '69. They formed Ame son in June '69 with François Garrel on flute and Bernard Lavialle on guitar. The "Catalyse" album has been released in 1970. Ame son played in all the greatest festivals like Amougies, Les halles, Biot, Le Bourget and had a lot of success from both the audience and critics. The music was strongly influenced by early Gong with long psychedelic jam- sessions leaded by flute and guitar. They split in June'71 for the first time. They start again with a different formation in 1973 and are still playing together from time to time.


Why this artist must be listed in www.progarchives.com :
Despite being an amateurish band, Ame son illustrates the late 60's/early 70's french prog scene through his unique "Catalyse" album, offering a primitive psychedelic jam progrock inspired by early Gong fantasia.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-blues-project-mn0000041899 wrote:One of the first album-oriented, "underground" groups in the United States, the Blues Project offered an electric brew of rock, blues, folk, pop, and even some jazz, classical, and psychedelia during their brief heyday in the mid-'60s. It's not quite accurate to categorize them as a blues-rock group, although they did plenty of that kind of material; they were more like a Jewish-American equivalent to British bands like the Yardbirds, who used a blues and R&B base to explore any music that interested them. Erratic songwriting talent and a lack of a truly outstanding vocalist prevented them from rising to the front line of '60s bands, but they recorded plenty of interesting material over the course of their first three albums, before the departure of their most creative members took its toll.

https://thinkpink50th.bandcamp.com/album/think-pink-mono-1969-decca-nova-mix wrote:John Charles Edward Alder (born Nov 29th 1944), better known as Twink, is an English drummer, singer and songwriter who was a central figure in the English psychedelic movement - playing in groups such as Tomorrow, Pretty Things, Pink Fairies & Stars w/ Syd Barrett. The recently discovered & significantly different MONO mix of his legendary solo album THINK PINK is now on vinyl for the first time

https://www.allmusic.com/album/jp-sunshine-mw0001244929 wrote:Taped in a London apartment on a two-track machine in 1968, and released on cassette in 1985 and on vinyl in 1996, J.P. Sunshine's solitary album is an overlooked treasure trove of British pop-psychedelia. The band formed at the height of the flower-power era in 1967, featuring Rod Goodway (guitar, vocals); Andy Rickell (guitar); Adrian Shaw (bass); and percussionists Pete Biles, Pat Morphin, and George Duffell (also the lyricist). Their primary inspiration came from American West Coast artists like Jefferson Airplane, Love, and Tim Buckley. Written and performed under such influences -- and under the influence of various substances -- J.P. Sunshine is a fascinating document of some rather far-out times. With their Spanish-style guitar and galloping rhythms, numbers like "This Side Up" (about the challenges posed by sexual activity while tripping on LSD) and "Hey Girl" suggest a lo-fi reimagining of Love's Da Capo. There's also a more bluesy orientation, running from the sublime (the spacy, xylophone-adorned "Love Scene") to the gleefully ridiculous (a comically throaty "Dirt Blues"). American influences notwithstanding, J.P. Sunshine's psychedelia has distinctly English elements: the stoned Renaissance folk nuances of "Dark Star," the trippy pastoral idyll of "Hand in Hand," and the underwater whimsy of the standout "Octopus." This celebration of the "mystical monster marine" and its "deadly erotic embrace" is the sort of quirky psychedelic pop song that could have been a huge hit single. Pink Floyd's management was impressed by a tape of this album and suggested it be rerecorded with proper drums. However, tensions within the band and a drug bust put an end to J.P. Sunshine in late 1968, and the record went unreleased. (Shaw, Goodway, and Rickell subsequently played in numerous British cult bands, including the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Magic Muscle, Hawkwind, and the Bevis Frond.)