SMiLE

SMiLE, the rock'n'roll worlds greatest unfinished masterpiece? the record that never was, the unreleased waxy genius of Brian Wilson was originally going to be unleashed to the public sometime in the early days of flower power but as most now know that was not the case, the whole project was shelved and left to molder in the forgotten annals of rocking history, the Beach Boys as an entity went downhill to the pop commercial dump, into the trash as fallen heroes of yesterday, striped surfing squares from the plastic city, not at all relevant in the modern 1967 world after Monterey Pop high-jacked popular thinking with 'lefty' social conscience for the young draft dodging college kids and the Beach Boys were definitely now 'out of time' in both senses of the phrase (ironically the Boys were all set to headline Saturday at the Monterey bash but pulled out due to unsound thinking, just another mess up in the strange saga of the Hotshots from Hawthorne C.A)...
Smiley Smile was released late '67 to a largely disinterested public with the actual SMiLE project all but forgotten as Brian collapsed somewhere near the outskirts of infinity, diving headlong into paranoiac LSD madness for the last time, this time it was as 'serious as a heart attack', Brian stood at the gates of Chaos Central without a floor plan, the layout of his mind warped and wobbled on an hourly basis, nothing was the same anymore, the changes just kept changing too fast in Brians nervous system...

Into the seventies and a few heads were starting to look back to the sixties and 'discover' the lesser known bands, the more demented, eccentric and esoteric artists of the preceding decade were being looked upon with fresh eyes and listened to with more open ears. This is where the SMiLE mystery returned to the thoughts of a few wondrous types who wished to hear this supposed treasure trove of lost grooves that could equal the Fab4s mid 60s output, Brians equivalent of the Revolver/Pepper discs...
Somewhere around 1973 Al Jardine spoke to European music press saying SMiLE was being readied for release as a double disc set with a twelve minute version of 'Heroes & Villians', though that was Al making the most of an interview and of course nothing happened...
Nick Kent wrote a long long piece on Brian and his tribulations in a two part story in the English music paper NME about 1975 and SMilE was at the core of the piece along with tales of sandboxes in the living room, Brians health food store the Radiant Radish and his reluctance to take of his dressing gown...

Into the late 80's and a few books on Brian and the Beach Boys were popping up in stores and further interest was being aroused in more and more cats who just wanted to hear the original album, not remakes of SMiLE tunes that had drifted onto the market over the years on various B.B albums, SMiLE as a stand alone entity just had to be heard, someone must have the tapes, if only it could be released...

The nineties arrived and with them the first fully fledged bootlegs of SMiLE, at last it was here for all who could find it to savour the mysteries of this ancient supposed masterpiece. By 1995 some thirteen different boots were available, all full of varying tunes/takes/works in progress that made up SMiLE...
With the advent of home computers turning everyone and his dog into 'rock'n'roll scientists' the making of different SMiLEs erupted all over the globe with cats taking SMiLE apart and rejigging the various components to give a different feel to the sound of SMiLing...

SMiLE was a very personal project that Brian felt strongly about and the drugged paranoia he was suffering decided him to abandon it for what now seems a myriad of differing reasons (the usual harping from fellow BBs about the songs being difficult / fires breaking out in the vicinity of the studios / Fab4 making easy headway with their own 'New Pop', the list can become endless as the rumour mongers are still spreading stories) but it has turned into a personal project for all who care to 'have a go' at SMiLing. On offer here are five different mixes for audio perusal, you pays your money and take your choice...

Elektra

So here's a fine look at Jac Holzmans Elektra Records during those turbulent times known as the Sixties, swinging or otherwise, from 1963 onto the end which in this case is 1973 (when the great unwashed haddock started their sixties, or what they thought that decade was about), from intellectual folk strumming beatniks to singer songwriters with personal concerns, plus a goodly dose of acid rock in between...
Five discs trawl the ten years picking up choice niceties by the likes of Judy Collins, Judy Henske, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton on the first disc mingling with lesser known names such as Phil Borof, Kathy & Carol and Oliver Smith all getting busy with some cool strumming and warbling...
Disc two is where the secretive Greenwich Village marijuana haze of the preceding disc is supplemented with chemical experimentation as the like of Love, The Doors and Clear Light gaze into the white light rush of STP induced punk pummel and the Incredible String Band bring their own form of intoxication to the folk strum...
Disc three continues the drug induced folkniking, some with a more 'arty' orchestration popping up to decorate the tunes, also tomorrows madness is on the prowl from Detroit as the Stooges and MC5 tear up the ballad book and kick up a ruckus of screaming, guitar blazing protest suitable for their city and the wider world in general...
The forth disc starts to calm down with introspection from Paul Siebel, Carly Simon and Harry Chapin along with David Ackles angst and Cyrus Faryars hippy spirit on board for the ride into the seventies ending with Queen who made their US debut on the label...
The last disc is like a bonus with a more left field look at some of the weirdos on the roster, not that any of these people could be considered right wing squares, but disc five is the resting ground for crazed hipsters Simon Stokes and David Peel, with not so well remembered artistes as Rainbow Band, Show of Hands and Aztec Two Step whose ode to Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassidy kept the original beats within sight and listening...
Other flipped out heads populating the set with something to say are Dave Ray/Fred Neil/Pat Kilroy/Tim Buckley/Holy Modal Rounders/David Stoughton, arty acid rock coming from Ars Nova and to a degree Earth Opera, pop rocking with Wackers and Crabby Appleton plus some rural rocking roots from Delaney and Bonnie and Lonnie Mack and last but surely and certainly not least, Jobraith working up some fine glam future rocking and that's only to mention some of these fine practitioners of authentic and stirring ditties and grooves...
All in all a great earfull of top grist with really no dud tracks in evidence, something of an achievement with monumental undertakings of this nature which in itself shows the strength of players concerned and for once the vision of record company execs. and employees who all contributed to the towering efforts of the once mighty 'when it mattered' Elektra...

50 Foot Hose

Wheeze and whirl, clank and bang with oodles of brain popping doodles spreading itself over some pretty nifty west coast acid folk rocking, psyched hippies and electrical boffins spraying outta-space vibes from their mind liquefying paisley attachments.
Cork Marcheschi was/is the head honcho of the combo and back in the early 60s he was playing the rock'n'roll /R&B noise in North Beach, San Francisco plus at the same time discovering older hipsters like Edgar Varese and began setting about joining together these seemingly different strands of music whilst also digging poetic ideas that had first been put forth by the Dadaist movement two generations and a continent away.
After playing gigs at the Fillmore Auditorium during the nascent flower power days the 50 Footers managed to sign with Mercury Records subsidiary Limelight and recorded Cauldron, only to have it released just before years end of 1967 enabling the record to promptly disappear from view and journey into the 'netherworld of strange wax' where it remained for 30 years until it was released again in the mid nineties.
The easiest way for the uninitiated to get a handle on this first LP is to imagine a heavier more tripped out version of the 'United States of America' album, plenty of electrification FX over beaty acid rock blare with female vocals wailing the songs, still sounding fresh today thanks to the nouveaux hippy 'noise/folk/weird' practioners making this sort of bleat more acceptable /accessable in the post modern hyper real age of todays listening habits.
The other album up for consideration is 'Sing Like Scaffold', a nineties disc with a 'reformed' band which by all laws of rock'n'roll should have been 'not too hot' as is usually the way with reformation of old hippy combos, but no, its a mighty fine and worthy blast of 'kosmichemusik' style madness, Euro-avant grooves hooking up with 50s B-movie soundtrack blabber and smoke.
Both albums add up to more than a wonderful time spent idling away in the smoked up spaces of a sunny afternoon with nary a care for the outside 'square dadz of normality'.

Banana / Bauer / Kane

...Issued on the Youngbloods Racoon imprint (via those 'hip capitalists' at Warner Bros), Crab Tunes/Noggins was not ever likely to set the woods on fire with its weird 'out-of-time' rural jazzbo grooves, its playful avant slant on rustic mystic wobbliness ain't going to settle on too many hippies record decks for long, it's just going to derail the vibe and the reason is the sheer apparent repetitiveness going down. ...Basically what Banana/Joe Bauer/Michael Kane are doing is getting busy with a couple of tunes (crab and noggin) and just having a blast trying to get the right groove on the move. A few takes and attempts to get them the way they want, the listener is eaves dropping on an afternoon spent in a marijuana fog at the Youngbloods backwoods studio as the tunes evolve/devolve in frothy muggament, the fragments appearing and reappearing dislodging the time continuum whilst the unsuspecting stoned listener imagines the record is scratched and ponders the thoughts of offloading offending disc at the 'second hand store', but its cool, its only some hippy prank with pretensions to Thelonious Monk at Big Pink jamming with Zimmy. ...As with all Youngbloods related endeavours there's a cheery good nature floating around woozily on a pot cloud of optimistic nicety, to live life in the Youngblood universe is to be savoured and valued for it don't get much cooler than time spent at Point Reyes on a sunny afternoon. ...This surely is a most worthy piece of 'left field' grist thats strangely addictive and if this had been made by three unknown stoners it would be going for a heavy amount of change on the collector circuit and thats a fact. Well worth an earful and watch out for that pesky cyclist...

Santana

...From the belly of San Francisco, deep within the 'New Society' where everyone is 'equal' came the percussion heavy Santana band filling the air with conga-riffic jams of sky reaching intensity, keyboards slamming out monumental Hammond vibes with the guitar sending mystic strings to capture the hippies in a psychedelic boogaloon...the early Santana noise was a melting down of Latin musics into one acid washed frying pan of blues wailing funk, high stepping in the back room of mainstream culture where only the initiated will find themselves.
...To be digging this band in the late 60s Ameikkkan environment was to be standing in the ancient future, where time opens out into infinity, there is no longer any feelings of 'then or when' for 'everything is everything' in the ever present NOW, an ongoing Afreekadelia of the mind.
...The percussionation continuously sends barbs of organic electricity into the marijuana haze of the Fillmore auditorium to zap the draft dodging hippies and bay area greasers with the secrets of fried neck bones and freedom, the freedom to lay in the funk and soak up the cosmic slop to invigorate the soul.
...And so it was back in December 1968 when this show was taped with ideas of it supplying tunes their first long playing release, surely a good thinking move to have the band recorded live, in the flux of the action but it was vetoed in favour of some other recordings not yet known...