Every so often I like to take a chance and try some of them new rock-related magazines that are still peppering up the pasture even in this day and age when for all practical purposes the entire concept of rock in print shoulda been extinct. Some of them are good, some are feh but one thing can be said and that hardly any of 'em can stand up to the BIG GUNS in what's left of rockscreed publishing these days...y'know, mags like UGLY THINGS, VULCHER and various other efforts that might be uppa-date and contemporary and all but still have their minds in 1956/1966/1976, or at least the good portions of them years which probably seemed like the best/worst of times for more'n a few jams kickers out there.
IT'S PSYCHEDELIC BABY ain't anything like UGLY THINGS or VULCHER. Think of it more or less as an update of such seventies English forays into sixties psychedelia as COMSTOCK LODE and those long-forgotten if essential fanzines that were still firmly rooted in the haze of San Francisco but knew enough that there was big new world out thar. And that's why I like it slick cover, bar code and typset print...the pages, like the ones of the aforementioned fanzines, ooze a fine appreciation for the darker and grittier side of what used to pass for psychedelia, the weird British dark folk scene that seemed to spring forth from the pores of the Incredible String Band and go deep into areas that might have seemed a little to spooky for your typical ironed hair fair maiden to tread. I'm talkin' acts like Comus, Fresh Maggots, Magna Carta and even more who might not have been lucky enough to make it into the Jem import catalog but if you got hold of one of their platters then bully for you! (Well, dunno about Fresh Maggots or Magna Carta...)
Frankly, although I find the articles grand in their own unique way it ain't like I'm gonna wanna empty out my wallet to get hold of most of these records. Sure Comus were a rather dark aggregation whose two platters have been reviewed on this blog and favorably at that while I still find the early Fairport Convention (and later Fairport for that matter) rather refreshing in a West Coast garage band sorta way, but I just can't get myself revved up over acts with names like Sunforest or Oberon. Maybe I can Spirogyra (no, not that jazzy fusion atrocity from Ithica NY), this acoustic outward-dank-looking aggregation who were called (by progressive oriented fans mind you ) "the first punk band" which has been said about too many acts o'er the years but sheesh...I gotta find a good reason to get my hooks into something and this just might be it! These guys might be the subject of a review in a future BLOG TO COMM and given how starved I am for exciting music (or at least the promise of it) let's just say that it ain't a case of me being proud or not, but a case of me trying to find them aural thrills any way I can!
Nice project here that I hopes grows beyond being just another flash where did it go? publication (even with a bar code on the cover). Definitely worth the effort to find and read even if ya ain't exactly a gloomy English gnome living under a toadstool in a Tolkien landscape or something like that...
3 comments:
Re: Old fanzines. I was just looking through some of my pile and found a Reader's Poll #3 1/2 of Why Music Sucks. The usually-blank back page is filled with a letter to you from Kozik about early CLE boots and offering to trade tapes. I forget where I got it.
One thing he mentions is the '69 Terry Hartman/Laughner stuff. I have the cd boot TH put out years ago, but FK mentions an LP. This was really an LP?
I know NOTHING about that letter or that issue for that matter. Must have been lost in transit only to be (re)discovered by you. As for the Laughner/Hartman CD, that was an acetate of only which ten or so were made. Another one is rumored.
It was Kogan, not Kozik.
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