Episode 647 is CAPTAIN BEYOND, a B-list supergroup from the mid-70s (with former Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly and Johnny Winter members). It’s a weird mix of heavy, prog rock, space and yacht rock, and thus a lesser-known archetype of the period. Their first of three albums has the heaviest sound, and thus the best.
Favorite album: Captain Beyond
Favorite song Mesmerization Eclipse
Compared to expectations: same
Recommendation: Probably only relevant for 1970s rock completists
(April 2025) Episode 646 is the VIOLET MINDFIELD, a contemporary Southern California-based retro-psychedelic band. While their stated intention is to recreate 60s psychedelic and garage band sounds, what I hear is a call back to acts of previous retro generations, such as Olivia Tremor Control and Oh Sees. There’s a fine line between reverent homage and derivative mimicry, which they straddle. Their most recent album, California Burning, appears to be original songs based on classic 60s riffs (not unlike what the Rutles did).
Favorite album: The Forgotten Streetlamps of Time
Favorite song: Autonomous Overdrive
Compared to expectations: same
Recommendation: It’s an interesting listen if you like 60s psychedelic and garage music.
(March 2025) Episode 639 is PETER AND GORDON. Very like Chad & Jeremy from a couple episodes ago: a UK duo featuring Everly-ish vocals in the early British Invasion. What Peter and Gordon had going for them is proximity to the Beatles, socially and musically; Paul wrote their early hits and dated Peter’s sister Jane Asher. They offered fine, middle-of-the-road 60s pop, but struggled to keep up with trends. Peter and Gordon didn’t go as far as Chad & Jeremy’s full-bore attempt at tudor psychedelia, just venturing into baroque pop. Both duos were done by decade’s end. Peter became a long-time producer.
Favourite album: In London for Tea
Favourite song: A World Without Love
Compared to expectations: same
Recommendation: The Ultimate Peter & Gordon (compilation)
(March 2025) Episode 636 is UFO. There’s a category of rock bands that start out with interesting/innovative stuff in the late 60s/early 70s but then descend to decades of boring, rote hard rock. Think Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Status Quo … and UFO. Their first two albums were consummate space rock, followed by two good albums of heavy 70s rock, which was their commercial peak. But then their output flattened out into album after album of the most banal hard rock. I assume this is evidence such pablum sells, but not to me. That part was a slog (I listen so you don’t have to). However, UFO is cited as paving the way for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which is why I did this episode. The only song I recognized from classic rock radio was “Too Hot to Handle,” a cock rock gem.
Favourite album: UFO 2: Flying
Favourite song: Flying
Compared to expectations: same
Recommendation: The first four albums, especially the first two space rock ones.
(February 2025) Episode 635 is CHAD & JEREMY. Coincident with the first wave of the British Invasion, Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde offered light-pop/folk rock songs. “Yesterday’s Gone” puts them in the Merseybeat mode, while their most famous piece, “A Summer Song,” is in the vein of Simon and Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. This approach characterized their 1963-66 recordings, which is fine, but put them out of step with the emergent R&B bands. Chad & Jeremy regrouped with 2 ½ psychedelic albums, a sound that I personally favor, although not it’s representative of what they were known for.
Favourite album: The Ark
Favourite song: A Summer Song
Compared to expectations: same
Recommendation: Albums: A best-of is fine. But those who dig 60s psychedelia should check out their baroque-pop stylings on Of Cabbages and Kings and The Ark.
(February 2025) Episode 634 is PARQUET COURTS. Take equal parts 80s college rock, 90s indie/alt, 00s angular rock, add a pinch of 60s Velvet Underground, and you have Parquet Courts. They were a very welcome find, running counter to my general disappointment/lack of interest in 21st century ‘rock’ bands. Their music is creatively quirky, with clever or snarky lyrics. Their 2018 album Wide Awake! is their most accessible, but that signaled an incorporation of electronic beats that dominated 2021’s disappointing Sympathy for Life. I prefer the off-kilter simplicity of earlier albums.
Favorite album: Light Up Gold
Favorite song: Stoned and Starving
Compared to expectations: ↑
Recommendation: Albums: Light Up Gold, Sunbathing Animal, Human Peformance and Wide Awake!
(January 2025) Episode 629 is THE MOPS. I recall my parents telling me when they went to Japan in the mid-1960s they heard a bunch of bands singing Beatles songs, aptly reproducing the words even though they likely didn’t know the meaning. I thought of that when I heard The Mops’ first album, Psychedelic Sounds in Japan, which includes a number of covers of classic mid-60s songs. They are known as the “first psychedelic band in Japan,” although it’s more garage rock than hippy. I first heard them via their contribution to the Nuggets II collection, the quirky “I Am Just A Mops.” They recorded through the early 1970s with a similar heavy and fuzzy sound to rock music coming out of the US and UK at the time. They deliver with a manic energy, but overall, the most interesting thing is that they were making this music in Japan and singing mostly in Japanese. On their own the covers are meh and the originals are just OK.
Favorite album: Psychedelic Sounds in Japan
Favorite song: Iijanaika
Compared to expectations: ↓
Recommendation: The compilation album The Mops: 1969-1973 isn’t bad.
(December 2024) Episode 623 is STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK. The ubiquity of their Summer of Love anthem “Incense and Peppermints” might lead you to think they were a one-hit wonder. But they were a real (albeit dysfunctional) band with three good albums of psychedelic-flavored LA-style sunshine pop. There’s a manufactured intentionality to the psychedelia (I mean, look at the album covers) but it’s still a good hippy trip. The fourth album goes into forgettable proto-boogie rock and there was a reunion album decades later.
Favorite album: Incense and Peppermints
Favorite song: Incense and Peppermints
Compared to expectations: same
Recommendation: Any of the first three albums are a fun trip back to the Summer of Love
(December 2024) Episode 622 is LOS SHAKERS, the Beatles of Latin America. Yes I know that tag is extremely over-used and usually erroneous. But not with Los Shakers; they were the real deal. These were two brothers in Uruguay who saw A Hard Day’s Night and immediate created a band to mimic that sound. And they did it better than almost any group I’ve heard, even in the Anglophone world. It’s not just covers (there were a few); their original compositions are expertly crafted songs in the 64/65 Beatles mode. And they adapted along the way, with fuzzy guitars and backwards effects for a psychedelic sound. Their apex was the creative album La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar, called their Sgt. Peppers’ (or Pet Sounds, Village Green or Tommy). While the song titles were in Spanish, most vocals are in accented English.
Favorite album: La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar
Favorite song: Rompan Todo (Break It All)
Compared to expectations: ↑
Recommendation: Their recordings are hard to find, but Serie de Oro: Grandes Exitos is available and a decent compilation of their early singles.
(November 2024) Episode 614 is GERRY RAFFERTY and his bands HUMBLEBUMS and STEALERS WHEEL. This episode exists because of my endless fascination with “Baker Street,” simultaneously a quintessential song of the 70s and one so unique it deserves to exist in a genre of its own. The next song on the City to City album, “Right Down the Line,” was also a deserved hit. A third notable song was “Stuck in the Middle,” recorded with Stealers Wheel in the early 1970s, a Dylan-homage subsequently homaged by Sheryl Crow and made indelible in Reservoir Dogs. He got his start in the late 1960s in a folk-rock duo called Humblebums with future comedian Billy Connolly. In between those two groups came his first solo recording, Can I Have My Money Back?, which best displays his McCartney-esque songwriting talents. Rafferty kept issuing albums through the 80s-90s-00s stocked with not unpleasant but not memorable songs; he had run out of creativity.
Favourite album: City to City
Favourite song: Baker Street
Compared to expectations: same
Recommendation: Try Can I Have My Money Back? with songs that quickly become enjoyable earworms.
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