Robert Stack's Paisley Underground Playroom© Dept.

You'll know Bob Stack from his tough-guy title role as NBC Radio's Tardigrade - T.V. Detective! But did you know he owns and runs the Paisley Underground Playroom™,  the notorious Spokane [WA - Ed.] niterie? Here's Bob, speaking to us yesterday via our Atomic Science Satellite:

"Sure, Farq! The Paisley Underground - half myth, half reality, half marketing - produced a small but exquisite body of work (and I'm not just talking about Susanna Hoffs here heh heh) which still sounds as good as its 'sixties inspiration. But True West never quite capitalized on their first ep, Hollywood Holiday, here extended to epic mini-album proportions. Noisy, banging, melodic. Gets regular spins at th' Playroom!"

"And hey - The Eyes Of Mind also debuted with a mini-album, Tales Of The Turquoise Umbrella, presented here in the rarely-seen extended album version, with a generous eleven tracks of whimsydelia that make Michael Quercio sound like Lemmy Out Of Motorhead!"

Thanks, Bob!

 

Play Some New Dept. - Garcia Peoples - Updated With Video!!!!

I'm late to these guys. They started doing what they do six years back. Over the last few days I've immersed myself in their albums, making up for lost time. Loth tho' I be to deprivate a living band from scraping moolah, the usual overload download is absent from this piece, just a sample, and I do encourage you to buy if you like and gots cabbage; or do what I did if you don't.

 

They're the first new band for a long while to have made the crucial synaptic connection. I wish this was, say, '74, and they'd just picked up a Warner Bros contract and were going into the studio with Ted Templeman. Casting that aside, what do they gots that we need? Guitars, mainly, and none of that strummed placeholder indie band approach. These peoples can play. Songs. Nothing immediately pop hit material, but real songs, sung well enough, with lyrics that don't strike me as dumb after a few hearings.

Television, the band, have been evoked as an influence, and the Dead, and you get sporadic references to both in the dual guitar arrangements and stop-start structure and dynamic build. No trace of the Undies malign influence, praise be. But what marks them out and rewards the listener is their ability to think as well as play - to listen to each other, to shift gear at the exact moment it's needed. And to draw you in with them. This stuff involves.

So yeah, Garcia Peoples get that rarest of accolades - the Isle O'Foam© Hygenic Home Listening Award™. They're at bandcamp, and the usual places. Like, digsville!

Great Classics Of Literature Out Th' Ass Dept. - Gandalf's Garden

Four Or Five Guy© Geriatrix did the world a favor when he posted the obscure U.K. underground hippie 'zine Gandalf's Garden. But it may have passed you by, because the link was buried in the comments (even I can't find it now).

It was the anti-Oz. Peaceful vibes, and the beautiful art of John Hurford (an Aubrey Beardsley for the 'sixties). Articles on meditation, organic food, Mu, all the stuff that got ironed out and sanded down into New Age consumerism. Don't confuse it with that - Muz Murray had a clear head and a vision: change the world from your back yard. It's never too late to start.

You can dismiss this, and the spirit that inspired it, as faintly risible hippie bullshit, or you can, if you're lucky, recognise the timelessness of the message. Having said that, remain wary of guys who get themselves gussied up as gurus.

Download contains the six magazines, the entire run. Om shanti, youse bums.

Danny Boy

Danny O'Keefe got a little publicity recently when music critics clawed over each other to point out the similarity between his Good Time Charlie Got The Blues and Springsteen's Hello Sunshine. Point is, none of these critics even heard of O'Keefe before one of their dads pointed it out to them, and now they've forgotten all about him. He's way more than just the inspiration for one of the Boss's tunes, and if you're unfamiliar with his œuvre [Fr. egg - Ed.] here's your opportunity to catch up and pretend you know all about him, just like the twenty-something internet scribes whose opinions are so vital to our wellbeing.

Of course, as a Four Or Five Guy© you probably do know how good the guy is, but maybe there's something in this package you ain't haz. It takes his discography right up to the end of the 'sixties - 1975 - and I'm unfamiliar with his career after this point, productive though it still be. Furthur Lissenin' always encouraged in the comments.

Although it includes his short-lived '68 foray into psychedelia as part of Calliope, there's a missing - danged if I can find his elusive first solo album from '66 - Introducing. Win A Nite Of Tropical Romance with Kreemé for frisbeeing it onto th' Isle O' Foam©!

Archangel Void Dept. - Paralyze Your Mind This Weekend

Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void was performed live at the Rhinecliff Hotel by Harmony Rockets - AKA Mercury Rev. It was recorded on a hand-held Arrivox-Tandberg 183 analog cassette recorder [you copied this from discogs - Ed.] (STFU - FT3). If you find the time - and let's not kid ourselves, it's easy to lose these days - you may well experience an out-of-body experience when the music finally lifts off toward the end of the forty minutes. You won't actually need an exotic pharmaceutical cocktail to get there - this is genuine trance music.

It gets an extraordinary four-and-a-half stars on the normally nose-picky Allmusic, where our pan-fried reviewer describes it as brain-searing and a shape-shifting aural world almost alien in its dementia.

It's all improvised, mostly instrumental. If you like free jazz, atonal sheets of sound, you may not like this. This is smarter than free jazz. It doesn't beat you up. It's focused with a laser-like intensity. It sounds like Gas Music From Jupiter. It would have made the perfect soundtrack for the third-act trip sequence of 2001 A Space Odyssey. I can think of no higher praise.

Because we go the extra mile here for you, Mr. Sketchy Random Internet Grifter, we include at no extra cost their later exercise in stretched-out improv, Inner Autumn Outer Space, at no extra cost. This is very different - chill-out music with some piano stylings. Pleasant, but it doesn't twist your brain into a Neon Sour Möbius strip like Paralyzed Mind.