Off Their Trolley

The Peppermint Trolley Company album is a jewel-like treasure of sunshine pop-psych, released in '68 on Acta, the unconvincing label set up by Dot to cash in on that hippie music fad. A year earlier, it might have done something, on a label which had some suits who didn't have their heads up their asses. When it failed to perform, the label took the band's Peter Max© duds back to the costume hire store and went into the telephone sanitizing business.

(This version of th' Trolley's album has a whole slew of great extry trx.)

The band, or at least the creative core of the Brothers Faragher plus the drummer, went on to form Bones, whose second album Waitin' Here we generously add to today's offering of Psychedelic Psumptuousness. It ain't that great. The stripped-down post-pop production reveals the drummer, Casey Cunningham, is a pat-a-cake plodder. It's his last recording. And the vocals have an unfortunate tendency to, uh, rawk out, a style that hasn't dated well. The gentler songs work better, and the harmonies are beautiful. Overall, though .... *pfffft*.