Psychedelia Frae Bonnie Pscotland!

Scots hippie escaping to U.K. 1986. Photo: FMF© Art Department Dept.

Scotland is a mist-shrouded wilderness broken by reeking slums somewhere between Iceland and Greenland, where the raw wind blows icy rain up the men's skirts, and a greasy bag of rock-hard sheep's intestines is considered a delicacy. Small wonder that the Peace n' Love© thing never found its way up there. But decades later, a few brave souls ventured south into civilisation and cut these swell albums.

The Shamen clearly took drugs. Perhaps the wrong drugs - their later success as banging techno ravers ruined their music and reputation for the handful of psych fans who loved Drop (geddit?) and the attendant singles. Melodic, shimmering with Electric Prunes reverb, and propelled by unlikely surf-inflected drumming, this is one of the very few post-sixties [1987 - Ed.] albums to get this type of thing absolutely right

The cosmos turned. Generations came and went before Art Of The Memory Palace crawled across the border, blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight. In 2015, reviewers hadn't been born when the Paisley Undergound briefly shimmered the airwaves and had no reference points, the poor dears. "Psychedelia" was by then, and is now, a meaningless tag in a *cough* music scene *cough* consisting entirely of labels and sub-genres and references. But This Life Is But A Passing Dream is the real thing hidden in the crates of Pepsidelia. Where Drop shows its garage roots, TLIBAPD is swimmy, dreamy, slightly melancholic, and sounds as much 2015 as 1969, for better or worse. Sample song title: Sun-Blinded Capsule Memory Haze, which is exactly what it is.

Both these albums are authentic, as you'll recognise after a few seconds in. They're not camp recreations, hommages or pastiches. They don't use psychedelic cliché as  branding devices. That they were made (mostly) by skirt-wearing caber-tossing haggis-eaters is a small miracle.

THIS JUST IN: Th' Isle O' Foam© is pleased to announce this piece has garnered the prestigious Scottish Tourist Board Award for Services to National Heritage!

Peter Parker's Pub Rock Pick Dept.

Bad artist's impression of what Lee Brilleaux would look like with Spiderman sitting on his head

You'll know youthful Peter Parker from his role as web-slinging superhero Spiderman, but did you know the troubled teen is also an ardent fan of England's Pub Rock scene? That's right, subscribers! Let's hear it from the Geiger counter-busting radiation victim himself! Pete granted this interview yesterday on the latest rotary dial phones with big handsets and curly cables:

FT3 Hey Petey! How's it going?

PP That's Mister Parker to you, asswipe. Not so good. It's tough being perhaps the best comic book ever created and growing up into the sucking cultural void of "graphic novels" - I'm doing finger quotes here, make sure Ed puts them in - and then helping Stan Lee bring the movie business to its fucking knees in an unending series of stupid and boring rubber-head movies that don't even please the fanboys that absolutely nobody should be giving a fuck about anyway.

Th' IoF© - home of harsh, unfeeling humor!

FT3 Phew! But hey - Pub Rock, right?

PP I know fuck nothing about it. You just brought me into this deal because my name is alliteratively convenient. Not that I'm bitching. I have nothing else to do right now. Me and Sandman are locked down in an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. What you want me to say?

FT3 Uh - how about, the first Dr. Feelgood album is a timeless classic that transcends the genre?

PP Wait. Sandman just sprinkled some grit on my foot. Hey - that the best you got, fella? Where were we?

FT3 It's okay, webhead! Your work here is done! Have a swell New Year!

Quelque Chose Pour Dimanche - Une Tomate Chaude

Carla Bruni is Sarko's main squeeze - Sarko being by way of a cheap grifter and bum what finagled his way to bein' President of France on account he wanted to impress th' dames. He impressed th' willowy, husky-voiced shantoozie n'  *cough* fashion model into bein' his legal wife, such was th' size of his savoir faire.

Whether your Sunday be spent fixing the leaf blower, picking out drapes at The Pottery Barn©, or pretending to be a Japanese schoolgirl on a lively internet forum, this Best Of [Fr. best of - Ed.] will ensure it goes with a Gallic swing! So wear yesterday's underwear, light up a stinking Disque Bleu, and bend over for the Boche! Putain!

Sex Siren To Soccer Mom - The Gayle McCormick Story

Gayle McCormick was the dame what sang with Smith, the group what came close to fame with their version of The Weight on the Easy Rider soundtrack, on account ABC couldn't license The Band's original. Hoo-hah. Their name - Smith, pay some attention here - don't even appear on the front cover of the album, such wus the lowness of esteem in what dey wus held.

McCormick had a swell set of pipes, and when Smith broke up (to shockwaves of nationwide grief) Dunhill kept her on contract. Unfortunately for the skeevy sector of her audience, she morphed from willowy blonde hippie goddess [below, Ed.] to soccer mom in the process. And married and moved to Hawaii and all that dismal M.O.R. shit. Oh well.

The point of all this is that her career - and many others - depended on covering material that had already been hits for others. You'll know maybe half the songs on this album, and you'll understand why anyone who could sing would want to sing them. It was a huge and lucrative market, nurtured by radio play, TV appearances and gigging, that's totally disappeared. The rise of the singer-songwriter - Gayle was never going to get in the way of Joni - is partly to blame, but nothing lasts forever. It's impossible to imagine today's singers (don't ask me, pal, I ain't heard any) choosing from an extensive catalog of contemporary hits by professional songwriters. And making a good living out of singing them. Laughable, ain't it?

Included in today's serving of Music Biz Meatloaf is this here solo album, which is swell, incidentally, and those there Smith albums. You need none of this, but scarf 'em up to be on the safe side.

THIS JUST IN: Dr D helpfully points us to a couple of later Gayle albums in the comments, showing just what a cheap shot the clickbait title of this piece was. Thanks, DR D!

Daniel Charles - Unlikely Godfather Of Southern Rock

Daniel Charles (center) with the original "Charlie Daniels Band", Cape Cod, 1959

Boston's famed Charles River was named after Cabot Brigham Charles, an early settler in the region, and Daniel Charles' great-great-great grandfather. The Charles family made a fortune from their patented "Coolie-Proof™" Railroad Tie. Daniel's great-grandfather was a generous benefactor of Harvard University, where a lecture theater is named after him. Daniel, a pampered child, grew up in the luxury of the family mansion on Beacon Hill, where Jascha Heifetz gave him private violin lessons. As a sensitive, bookish young man, he spent summers on Cape Cod, where he mingled with the Antebellums, an artistic and bohemian crowd who affected the ways of the Old South.

Inverting his name to Charlie Daniels ("too amusing!"), the suave Daniel formed a musical band to play at debutante balls, playing "hillbilly arrangements of études by Debussy and Fauré". His impersonation of a good old boy convinced a passing Tom Dowd (then a struggling root beer salesman) to offer him studio time in Nashville. The rest is history.

Charlie Daniels - his first solo album from '71 featured Jerry Corbitt, ex-Youngbloods, with whom (grammar) he also recorded a couple of live albums for the infamous Tiger Lily label, run by shite-hawk Morris Levy as a tax scam.You need these albums if you are to earn the respect of the freeloading bums down at Waltie's World Famous Pool n' Pierogies you like to think are your confreres.

[Corbitt has been FoamFeatured™ antecedently, and you may care to test the search facility provided for your convenience over there in the sidebar - Ed.]