"Making The Moodies Look Like Motorhead" Dept. - UK Kaleidoscope

The difference between US and UK psychedelic music is nowhere more glaring than a face-off between the two Kaleidoscopes. From English Whimsydelia™ to West Coast wig-outs, these two bands occupied different pots of Acapulco Gold at each end of the lysergic rainbow. The US version has long been resident on th' IoF©, so it's time to dose up from Mr. Dodgson's Patent Drink Me bottle (probably laudanum).

Their first album, Tangerine Dream (whence the Teutonic synth boffins got their name), was a kind of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn lite. So light as to be almost weightless. It gets a lot of love, because it set the Gold Standard for Whimsydelia™. It's very much a period piece, like Nirvana's Simon Simopath of the same year, without the charm. Or the hits. Still, it shifted enough copies to garner them a second album from Fontana.

 

 

Faintly Blowing  [above - Ed.] is worth it for the epic title track, which floats like dandelion seeds on a hot summer day. It shimmers and buzzes with an air of faerie magic, and nothing else on the album comes close to its sleepy pastoral beauty. This really does out-pastoral the Floyd at their pastoraliest. The Three O'Clock must have been influenced by it when they recorded the lovely As Real As Real. It sold less than the first - '69 was a strange year, and Faintly Blowing was left blowing faintly in the wind.

When these guys are good, they're very good indeed, and it was just tough breaks that prevented the Fairfield Parlour album from being a breakthrough hit in 1970.  They'd renamed themselves, anxious to burn the kaftans, but threw away what slender following they'd built without winning a new one. Fairfield Parlour was perhaps too close to Fairport Convention, and too far from memorable. And a little old lady (LOL) cover is never going to fly off the rock/pop shelves. Damn shame, as it's their strongest release, full of great tunes, emotive singing, and superb production. Touches of psychedelia remain, but this a dawn of the 'seventies album through and through, and it should have fed off the huge Moody Blues audience.

White Faced Lady was shelved for decades due to label incompetence. It's a double concept album, with the visually impaired Peter Daltrey apparently embracing a woman's corpse on the cover, and I've yet to get into it because it's a double concept album, with Peter Daltrey apparently embracing a woman's corpse on the cover. Let me know how you get on.

 

 

At no extra cost to you, Mr. and Mrs. Musiclover of Yourtown USA,  we offer this swell long-playing bonus LP record of radio sessions Absolutely Free!

This post autoclaved by Andy's Autoclave, Perineum, CO.