In which Cream, one of the key inventors of HEAVY, prove they can do dreamy acoustic every bit as well. “I always just assumed this was Donovan song, until one day I finally sat down and listened to all of Wheels of Fire, and what do you know? It’s Jack Bruce. A definitive 1960s artifact either way, sounding damned important, revelatory even. Not that I’ve ever actually cracked what it’s about. Change, I guess, seen through psychedelic shades. And you’ve gotta love that cello.” (Philip Random)
Spirit never did all the great things that were expected of them in the beginning. Emerging from from the haze of southern Californian at the moment when EVERYTHING was coming in psychedelic colours, with a teenage guitar player named Randy California who was so hot Jimi Hendrix made no secret that he wanted him in The Experience – how could they not someday rule the world? Probably something to do with drugs and the general excesses of the time. Fresh Garbage, which comes from their first album, speaks of environmental concerns and suggests all kinds of groovy, pop smart possibilities. Led Zeppelin covered it before all those other problems.
The Collectors came from Chilliwack (the town) and would eventually become Chilliwack (the band). But first they had some heavy psychedelic work to do. Listen to side A of their debut album and you hear a band doing a nice job of pulling off a Mamas + Papas vibe. But put on Side B and things get way more serious with an epic eruption of non-stop quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUD musings and rantings on love’s many colours, some of them quite disturbing indeed.
Way back when in 1968, T-Rex was still known as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Mark Bolan was pretty much a complete unknown prone to spilling his cosmic hippie soul (and related poetry) all over the place, which made for some great records even if, sadly, Debora probably wasn’t even listening.
If you considered yourself hip to what was cool in Britain 1968, Jethro Tull were the real deal – heavy duty underground stuff that couldn’t be messed with, even if the main guy did play flute. Beggars Farm goes back to their first album when they were still mostly a blues outfit, though the cover suggested something deeper was going on, the band all got up as old men. Like they knew something we didn’t – that all the flower power youth stuff was just a passing fad.
Original San Francisco hippies Quicksilver Messenger Service lay it all out for us with the lead off track from their debut album, a cover of a folk tune written by a guy named Hamilton Camp which sees fit to condemn us all to perdition, or worse. For it is written in The Book.
Randophonic 
