From Burning Incense To Burning Kaftans

When groups got hip to the fact that psychedelic music was not so hip no more, they ditched the effects that had made everything so much fun like they were infected. The rattle of love beads and headbands being fed into garbage disposal units was heard the length of the Left Coast. Windchimes were savagely torn down. Discarded finger-cymbals littered the streets. Kaftans and Afghan coats were cremated in secret backyard ceremonies. Frustratingly, incense could not be burned, but fishermen in the San Francisco bay were injured in the storm of sticks hurled from the bridge. A similar ethnic cleansing occurred in the studio; phasers and wah-wah pedals got kicked into the closet. Sitars and tablas were shipped to Goodwill stores in numbers too great to cope with.

The Great Psychedelic Purge of Psixty-Nine© heralded a back-to-basics movement that saw the momentarily Beautiful People struggling into Amish work-clothes like there was no tomorrow. The Beatles were as usual quick to spot the trend - never the originators they are claimed to be, they acted as a cultural weathervane for those at street level - and the dreary (well, it is) White Album is a bellwether of sorts, although its desperate lack of direction influenced no-one (well, it didn't).

Other bands accomplished the transition with a clarity of purpose the Fab Four had lost, taking Bob as their guide. Dylan was about as lysergic as a square dance, but in retrospect Nashville Skyline represents the sea-change as well as anything.

One of the many minor-league acts making the transition with grace and creativity was Bo Grumpus. Kudos if you've heard of them. Their Before The War from '68 is one of the treasures psychonauts bring from their expeditions into the dark, fetid hinterlands of old vinyl stores. It's a genuinely great album, and I'm not going to qualify that with the usual patronizing critical prefix of "little". It has a swimmy, almost-but-not-quite melancholia to it, a dreamy consistency that encapsulates the highs of the times and hints at the lows. Sales could not have been helped by a combination of shit name and shit cover, though. I mean ... bleeeuuugh.

Realizing they'd made a grievous marketing mistake, they cannily changed their old, shit, name to a new shit name (Jolliver Arkansaw - that banging sound you hear is my head on the desk) and got a new shit album cover for their second album from the following year, Home. It's every bit as good, but with no lingering aftertaste of psychedelia, and thus nicely represents the theme of this piece, visually - check out their threads - as well as musically. The superfine, excellent, blisteringly good rhythm section is heard to advantage without the effects, and as on the first album, Felix Pappalardi's skills are an asset. Leslie West delivers a fat solo, too. [No, he doesn't - you're getting confused with another Pappalardi helmed project, Bangor Flying Circus, linked in the comments to Give The Drummer Some More - Ed.]

More on this subject later - including the Blossom Toes' unexpected embrace of heavy metal and other delights.