:Bonus Playlist: Summer Sell-Out

* Not on Spotify:
Great Society Mind Destroyers - Divinorium

Description

As long-time listeners to this show know, I very rarely play "the hits", i.e. songs by psychedelic or psychedelic-leaning bands that get mainstream radio airplay (e.g. Zep, Sabbath). But it isn't that I don't like or listen to that stuff. It's just that I don't want to use up any of my precious airtime on music you could hear nearly anywhere else when I could be playing field recordings of repetitive, ritual chanting, say. However, just this once (though it might become a periodic feature, like my all-vinyl shows - which this also is, by the way) I'm breaking from the norm, and giving you jerks a set full of "melody" and "hooks" and the like.

A few notes:

Black Sabbath - Hole in the Sky: I've made the comment before, regarding the Brown Acid series, that it documents what happened to Nuggets-era bands in the 70s, when they replaced whimsy with sleaze. You can see this phenomenon in other 60s-era bands, too, including Sabbath, who slowly shed their initial pagan, ritualistic dark magic affectations and replaced them with references to drugged-out, disco-era hedonism (starting around Vol. 4 - see "Snowblind" for a particularly overt example). By Sabotage (their last great album), Ozzy was on the cusp of his "snort a line of ants" phase of drug use, and the band had locked into the fuzzed-out, heavy-lidded groove that would come to define the phrase "stoner metal." And while the highlight of the albums is probably the decade-before-its-time ripper "Symptom of the Universe," my personal favorite is "Hole in the Sky," which just oozes Me Decade decadence. I can almost taste a Harvey Wallbanger and feel shag carpeting beneath my feet while listening to it.

David Crosby - Cowboy Movie: Despite appearing on dozens of albums during the 60s and 70s, David Crosby only released one solo record during that period, 1971's If I Could Only Remember My Name (which he wouldn't follow up until 1989). It's a fascinating album, full of nearly Eno-ian sound sketches (including the haunting closer, I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here, an a capella number that prefigures Grouper, Lichens, and other vocal-centric avant-garde acts) and intimate, delicately-textured folk elegies. Probably the only proper rock tune to be found is Cowboy Movie, the best Neil Young song not written by Neil Young (who appears elsewhere on the album).

Graham Central Station - Earthquake: Graham Central Station are known mostly for their slap-bass heavy (Larry Graham being a pioneer of the style) dancefloor-ready funk, so I have no idea what inspired this feedback-drenched psychedelic monster. Perhaps it was meant by Graham as a shot across the bow of contemporaries George Clinton and Bootsy Collins, to remind them that, as a former member of Sly & The Family Stone (whose There's A Riot Going On is one of the druggiest albums of the era), he would take a backseat to no one, when it came to spaced-out burners.