~Nippy Sweeties~#6: Kaleidoscope

As you may know by now, the whole point of our Nippy Sweeties section is to bring to the attention of younger (or less spoddish) readers, songs or artists from the 1960s who rather shamefully never achieved the kind of success some of their less talented contemporaries managed. In fact we really should have called this section 'Songs Our Parents Were Too Stupid To Buy'.
And never was this more so than with Kaleidoscope, an English Psychedelic band who released not only two of the greatest albums of the genre, but of all time...
Relax your eyes
For after all
We can but share these minutes.....

If you bought Record Collector magazine in the early to mid 80s, then you would know Kaleidoscope from the astronomical prices their two albums had acquired. You see both albums sold so poorly upon release that no second pressings were made. So, when word of mouth spread about how fantastic the two records were, they became VERY desirable and the prices shot through the roof.
Around 1986 reissue specialists Edsel Records re-released both albums to great acclaim, and now they can be purchased easily on CD or download, and word of mouth continues unabated. This really was a fantastic band, and these are two genuine classic albums.
Let's explore further....
Kaleidoscope started out as far back as 1965 but only settled upon their desired sound and of-it's-time name in January 1967. The band consisted of Peter Daltrey (vocals and lyrics), Eddy Pumer (guitar and music), Danny Bridgman (drums) and Steve Clark (bass).
Their debut single, 'Flight From Ashiya' set out their stall beautifully, a pounding psychedelic stormer with dreamy lyrics predicting a plane crash. The band's sound suited the multicoloured, acid drenched Summer Of Love perfectly and soon Kaleidoscope were sharing the bill with Pink Floyd, and had celebrity fans in Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend.


The band's debut album 'Tangerine Dream' (and yes, they had the title before the Krautrock legends) is simply one of the greatest albums of all time. That it failed to sell in any great quantities is baffling for, in my opinion, it is a better album than 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' or that ragbag of EP tracks and B-sides 'Magical Mystery Tour'.
With a sleeve that echoes 'Piper....', all Paisley shirts and serious expressions, 'Tangerine Dream' is more of a trip, in all senses of the word. It reflects suburban Swinging Britain through an acidic lens bathed in the lyrical images of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, A.A. Milne and C.S. Lewis, and feels like a journey from beginning to end. The greatest Pop Music creates it's own world and that's exactly what Kaleidoscope do here. Take the majestic 'Dive Into Yesterday' with its references to water pistols full of lemonade and Mardi Gras at midnight:


There's also stupendous second single 'A Dream For Julie' released before Pink Floyd's similarly titled 'Julia Dream', with its cute sotto vocce intro "The tangerine wizard turns purple for Julie".


And the album culminates in the full blown Psychedelic, brain melting, surprisingly touching 'The Sky Children' which really should be part of everybody's musical education.

Sales of the album were disappointing, but the band carried on regardless plunging almost immediately into the equally breathtaking 'Faintly Blowing'.
As with many purveyors of Psychedelic music, all of the acid sparkle of 1967 was replaced in 1968 with a more back-to-nature vibe. The music became more rustic, more pastoral, more whimsical and indeed more folksy....and Kaleidoscope were no exception.
'Faintly Blowing' has a more folkish feel, from it's Olde Faery Worlde sleeve inwards. The music is more acoustic, and the lyrics more like folk tales rather than the children's stories of the debut.
Many regard 'Faintly Blowing' as the superior of the two albums, but I'm afraid I don't concur. Whilst I still love the album, I find it a bit of a jarring listen at times. I think this is because it sounds like the lyrics were written away from the music, so we often find Peter desperately trying to make his lyrics scan to the music's odd time signatures. This leads to some very strange phrasing which is exacerbated when you read the lyrics they provided on the inner sleeve. A minor quibble of course, and I still think it's a wonderful album, but the debut still does it for me.
Stand out tracks for me are the title track with it's doomy atmosphere, ominous minor chords and weird phasing effects:


Another cracker is the jaunty 'Snapdragon' which although one of my favourites, is one that suffers most from the lyrical phrasing I mentioned earlier:


'Faintly Blowing' sold even more poorly than it's predecessor and pretty much was the final nail in the coffin of Kaleidoscope.
All four musicians regrouped in the early 70s as the slightly more successful Fairfield Parlour, seeking a more Prog Rock direction.
Peter Daltery himself has kept on releasing records right up to the the present day and often gets involved in the reissues of Kaleidoscope's music and of keeping their legacy alive.

If you want PURE English Psychedelic music then look no further than Kaleidoscope and in particular the 'Tangerine Dream' album, and if you're feeling up to it, I'll leave you with their greatest statement, 'The Sky Children'....


Pleasant dreams kiddiewinks!

Keep Your Mind Open!

~Gordon~

You can download the albums below:

Tangerine Dream

Faintly Blowing

(please note: these are not my links so I have no control over them if they fail to download. If anyone connected with Kaleidoscope objects to these downloads, please contact us and we will happily remove them).

Griff says; In the Realms of the Unreal

Brooklyn based indie-rockers Vivian Girls have announced details of their new album, ‘Share The Joy’ to be released on 12th April. This is the band's third album, and their first with new drummer Fiona Campbell; former drummer Ali Koehler having left to join Best Coast. To hear how the new line-up is sounding have a listen, below, to excellent new single 'I Heard You Say', available as a free MP3 download at Polyvinyl and at RCRD LBL.


Vivian Girls - I Heard You Say by flogase

While I'm writing about Vivian Girls, it seems like an ideal opportunity to mention reclusive writer, outsider artist and inspiration for the band name; Henry Darger. The story of Darger's life and art is truly fascinating, and if you get the chance try to catch Jessica Yu's 2004 documentary 'In the Realms of the Unreal' for more fulsome details than I can include in this short blog piece.
Darger was a reclusive eccentric who led an extraordinary secret life. For over 40 years he lived a solitary existence in a rented room in Chicago, Illinois, completing page after page of densely written manuscripts and self-produced, supplementary, illustrative artwork. These remarkable artworks only came to light posthumously. His most famous work is the 15,145-page, religious-themed, fantasy manuscript 'The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion'. This massive fictional work and the accompanying drawings and watercolour paintings was the product of six decades of obsessional endeavour.


The story itself concerns the adventures of the Vivian girls, seven sisters who are princesses of the Christian nation of Abbieannia and who assist a daring rebellion against the evil Glandelinian regime of child slavery. Darger's illustrations were rendered largely by tracing, collage, or photo enlargement from popular magazines and children's books. The sometimes disturbing, but visually brilliant, images often depict wholesome, partially-clothed, children placed in situations of peril, such as battle scenes. This aspect of his art can make Darger's work 'difficult' for modern viewers but Darger's own tragic life and the all-encompassing nature of his devotion to his art should be reason enough for looking beyond the surface strangeness.


His life and art certainly seem to resonate with indie musicians. As well as the Vivian Girls obvious homage, indie-folk experimentalist Sufjan Stevens has released a song entitled 'The Vivian Girls Are Visited in the Night by Saint Dargarius and His Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies' on his 2006 compilation album The Avalanche: Outtakes and Extras from the Illinois Album.

Griff
xx

Faster Pussycat Gone! Gone!

A Tribute To Tura Satana (July 10, 1938 – February 4, 2011)
Almost 22 years ago to the day, Griff, Jill and I went to the Glasgow Film Theatre to see a double bill that would change our whole cinematic lives around, and set the tone for what would become one of the greatest years of our lives.
In late January 1989 we went to a double feature that comprised 'Blue Velvet', a film by David Lynch from a couple of years before that we had heard about but didn't know an awful lot about as it wasn't given much of a release in Scotland; and 'Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!', a cult exploitation movie from the 1960s that we definitely hadn't seen as it was(at the time) banned on TV and video, but could be shown in approved theatres.
More than three and a half hours later we stumbled puchdrunk out into the cold Glasgow air, kicked senseless by two extraordinary performances; Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth in 'Blue Velvet', and Tura Satana as Varla in 'Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!'.
'Blue Velvet' has been discussed and dissected to death, so lets look at 'FPKK' and Tura Satana who tragically passed away on the 4th of February.
One of the most important books I ever bought in my lifetime I purchased on Christmas Eve 1983. It was 'The Golden Turkey Awards' by Harry and Michael Medved. The book is a kind of alternative Oscars, giving awards to the worst and most inept movies in cinema history. Why I consider it so important is that it showed me that there was more to cinema than all that Hollywood churns out. It taught me about independent cinema and exploitation cinema, and I was hooked from the get go. You have to remember that back in those days it was nigh on impossible to get ANYTHING other than Hollywood fare on video, and so it would be a long time before I would ever get a chance to see all these weird movies I read about so passionately. As the years went on, my library on alternative cinema grew ever more expansive but actual chances to view the films seemed forever distant.
That's why as Griff, Jill and I made our way to the GFT, I was far more excited in seeing the silly old exploitation move than I was in seeing some surreal murder mystery by the guy who made 'The Elephant Man' and 'Dune'!! I was FINALLY getting to see a Russ Meyer movie, and on the big screen to boot!
After 75 minutes I sat there thunderstruck. I had finally seen the other side.
The constant bombardment of voluptuous, buxom women kicking seven bells out of macho he-men was all too much. I sat there drained. Even the brilliance of Lynch's masterpiece couldn't cloud the fact that I'd seen something that had turned my perspective of cinema upside down.
As we sat on the train going back home, we tried to talk about both movies, but all I could talk about was 'FPKK' and Varla, played by the stunning Tura Satana. To say I was smitten was like saying I like the occasional Smiths tune. I was in love with this black-leather-clad goddess.
Within a fortnight I owned the first of my numerous 'FPKK' tee-shirts which I wore non-stop that year (and beyond) and spoke over-enthusiastically about the film to everyone I met, even though I knew they might never get a chance to see the film.

Time, and the small screen. have not been kind to 'FPKK', I'm afraid. When I finally saw the film on video about 6 years later, it just didn't look the same. It had lost it's edge. On the small screen the film falls incredibly flat after the exhilarating opening 15 minutes and becomes, and it really kills me to say this, quite boring in places. Also, without the sense of a once-in-a-lifetime experience, which it felt like back in 1989, it just becomes another exploitation movie. And once you finally watch all those exploitation movies you only ever read about, the mystique is shattered and the movies all merge into one cheaply shot, badly acted blur.
However, I made it a point to try and collect all of Tura Satana's work over the years, which proved surprisingly easy as she only appeared in a couple of other movies, namely 'The Doll Squad' and 'The Astro-Zombies', both made by Ted V Mikels.
As far back as 1994, just after he released 'Reservoir Dogs', Quentin Tarantino claimed that Tura was top of his list of actresses he wanted to work with, something that Tura herself reminded every interviewer who tracked her down in later years. Sadly, the call never came, even though Tarantino has been linked with a remake of 'FPKK'!!
Like Bettie Page before her, Tura would go on to influence pop culture long after she stopped contributing to it. The Cramps would prove to be huge fans (hardly a surprise), but sadly the two bands who could claim biggest influence were the execrable hair-metal atrocity Faster Pussycat, and the turgid alt-metal rubbish that called themselves Tura Satana....how dare you, you blackguards!!!

Tura's passing this week has raised barely a ripple in the entertainment media; British news services completely failed 100% to mention it, and according to the IMDB she's still alive!
The very least I can hope for is that the self-righteous buffoons who run the Oscars honour her within their 'In Memoriam' section at the Academy Awards.


Goodnight sweet Varla, R.I.P xxx

Keep running fast and free
Child of the night

~Gordon~

Griff says; Holiday in the sun

You'll hopefully remember, providing you don't have some sort of memory impairment brought on by over exposure to loud indie-pop, last week when I wrote about Soda Shop, featuring Drew Driver, one half of Horse Shoes. The other half of Horse Shoes is, of course, Jacob Graham, sometime guitarist with The Drums and part founder of tonight's blog topic; Holiday Friends Recording Company.


Holiday was formed in the Spring of 2009 by four old friends: Justin Jolley, Joanna Tillman, Jacob and Caleb Graham. I first came across them in 2010 via the music of sublime Russian indie-surfpop band Palms On Fire (more of whom in a future blog). At that time Holiday were a fledgling online record label who, to my joy, were intent on giving away a free mp3 release every Friday. I started with the Palms On Fire EP and soon came back for more. The old free singles club releases can still be found at the original Holiday records website 'here' and it's well worth a visit. Since then Holiday have realised their dream of becoming 'a real record label' and this month sees the release of 'Keep Dreaming Baby', the debut EP from Margate's Two Wounded Birds (pictured).


The C.D. is available right now on the new Holiday website, and if you live in the U.K. and don't like buying things online it is available in all Rough Trade stores. Rather like The Drums, Two Wounded Birds sound has a heavy surf-pop influence but they give the classic 60s pop template a twist by adding an individual, darker, sometimes almost sinister, edge. My favourite track on the EP is the poignant and evocative 'My Lonesome', which at times sounds like a young Morrissey backed by The Tornadoes. Have a listen:



Fantastic, I think youll agree. Now here are two more tracks from the EP; the upbeat 'Summer Dream' and the eerie 'Night Patrol'.







Not content with giving us the best in contemporary surf-pop, Holiday are also simultaneously releasing the latest offering from their free singles club.


Holiday 0068 is 'Plans For My Future Life In Vermont' by Victory VIII. Victory VIII is yet another of Jacob Graham's musical projects (does this man never sleep?) and can be described as lo-fi, down-tempo, indietronica. The two songs featured on the single are 'Vermont' and 'I Thought I Loved You'. Holiday describe them as;

"Two songs that were meant to be pleasant but ended up as tragic and pathetic as usual."

As a lover, and onetime purveyor, of lo-fi melancholia, I would say that that's a recommendation I just couldn't resist. 'Plans For My Future Life In Vermont' can be downloaded 'here'. In the meantime here's a video of one of Victory VIII's previous Holiday releases; Lonesome Places. Enjoy!



Griff
xx