Various Artists - 1989 - Ugly Things (Down Under Dreamtime) #4 FLAC

  James Taylor Move - And I Heard The Fire Sing/Wright Of Waye - Sun God/Inside Looking Out - Long Live Sivananda/The Easybeats - Peculiar Hole In The Sky/Wild Cherries - Krome Plated Yabby/Jeff St. John & The Id - Eastern Dream/House Of Nimrod - Slightly Delic/The Vegetable Garden - Hypnotic Suggestion/The Bucket - I Can't Help Thinking Of You/Hi-Revving Tongues - Tropic Of Capricorn/The Master's Apprentices - Living In A Child's Dream/Procession - Listen/Larry's Rebels - Halloween/Vyt & The World - Tiny Timothy/Simple Image - Spinning, Spinning, Spinning/The Twilights - Time & Motion Study Man/The Love Machine - The Lonely Hearts Club Christmas Party/The Questions - And Things Unsaid/Terry Britten - Bargain Day/The Dave Miller Set - Mr. Guy Fawkes

 

 

 More than ten years ago, in the liner notes to the double Festival album So You WannaBe A  Rock'n'Roll Star Vol. 2, I observed that, in Australia, "Mind-expansion failed because of the poor quality of raw material it had to work upon". What I was trying to say was that psychedelia was very much an alien concept in a frontier nation where brawling at a Saturday night suburban dance was closer to the prevailing community spirit than sniffing flowers or pondering eastern philosophies.

From 1967 to 1970, Australian rock, along with its creators, was swept along by the tide of history, with only a peripheral understanding of the forces at play. Pop music moved out of Melbourne's steamy discotheques into Sydney's thriving dances and finally onto open acreage. We intently observed
Monterey and Woodstock and then, following a long tradition of apeing the rest of the world, tried rock festivals ourselves.

Off we trooped to Ourimbah, with painted faces and lank locks, professing undying love for fellow man. However, it took only a few years of sitting in muddy fields dodging beer cans, watching stoned, hirsute guitarists gaping at their sandalled feet during twenty minute solos, for us to give the whole thing up as a bad joke and retreat to the more comforting strains of relentless pub boogie.

Given the stifling conservatism of radio and the recording industry in those years, it is hardly surprising that few remnants of Australia's psych years have survived. Many legendary entities, such as The Haze, The Trip, The Knack, The Square Circle, The Revolution, Nutwood Rug Band, Knomes Of Obelia,
The Optronic Eye, Sons Of A Vegetal Mother, Luke's Walnut, Compulsion, Plastic Tears and Molten Hue, did not make it to vinyl at all. Yet, as a few years of diligent detective work has revealed, there was considerably more to Australasian cosmic consciousness and feedback frenzy than we all might have supposed. This album, first thought to be an EP if it was lucky, filled rapidly with worthy inclusions. So much so, that a second volume might well be possible.

We begin with the plainly Hendrix-inspired And I Heard The Fire Sing, the A-side of a single flipped over to reveal the eventual local hit, Magic Eyes, Adelaide quartet The James Taylor Move was assembled by a sharp disco owner to cash in on the rising popularity of Hendrix and Cream. Leader Robert Taylor was joined by Trevor Spencer and, freshly returned from England, former Johnny Broome & The Handels members Alan Tarney and Kevin Peek (the latter a founding Twilights member). With Twilight Terry Britten (represented here with one side of his 1969 solo single -Bargain Day) in place of Taylor, the outfit later recorded in London as Quartet During his days in the Glenn Shorrock-led Twilights, Britten had been responsible for some fine pyschedelic moments, such as Comin' On Down, Patemosta Row and, included here, Time & Motion Study Man.

Tarney, now Cliff Richard's creative mainstay (and former producer of Bow Wow Wow and Leo Sayer), was also the producer of a fascinating one-off single by The Bucket, a band of impeccable pedigree. There was Ian Nancarrow (guitar) and Geoff Gurr (bass) from The Others, Albert Sawyer (drums) from Blues Syndicate, and Andy Wilkinson (vocals/harmonica) from Blues Rags & Hollers. I Can't Help Thinking Of You was written by the great Mick Bower of the Masters' Apprentices, who of course also penned that group's third national hit, Living In A Child's Dream (which in turn inspired the now-legendary Child's Dream Ball at Sydney University).

Certainly Adelaide (also base of Inside Looking Out) is well represented on this collection, but not quite as strongly as Sydney, Australia's undisputed psychedelic centre. It was in the harbour city that The Questions, gruff Doug Parkinson's second recording band (after The A-Sound) tossed aside
rudimentary r&b and pop and went in search of heightened awareness with the brooding And Things Unsaid, a real curio. Meanwhile over at the dank Here Disco in North Sydney, the blues-besotted Jeff St. John & The Id (soon to become the ultra-cosmic Varna) were delving into an Eastern Dream, to
the detriment of their mortal souls.

Vyt & The World, powered by songwriter/guitarist Chris Eggleton were responsible for the unashamed hippie cash-in Flower Children. The gentle, nursery room-whimsical Tiny Timothy is a rarer later single for the band who crashed through a mighty version of the Remains Why Do I Cry? on Ugly
Things #2. The Love Machine are best known to us as The Black Diamonds, whose I Want, Need, Love You was the undisputed highlight of Ugly Things #1. They later became Tymepiece and were then renamed Love Machine by producer Pat Aulton for the recording of the timely hit The Lion Sleeps
Tonight (to co-incide with the 1968 opening of the Warragamba Uon Park). The Blue Mountains band hung onto their new moniker long enough to record an album and an EP, which carried the phased (everyone wanted their own ltchycoo Park) Lonely Hearts Club Christmas Party.

The heavily publicised Wright Of Waye was led by Missing Unks member John Jones (recently responsible for the screenplay of Amityville Horror 3) and renowned for frenzied stage performances. They cut two singles -one for the independent Natec label and one for Philips (Sun God). Unfortunately, good press couldn't keep them together and they disbanded without the fame they so richly deserved. The Dave Miller Set came together in New Zealand as The Byrds and crossed the Tasman around 1966. By 1969 the unit's strength lay in musical centrepiece John Robinson, a fearsomely inventive and impressive guitarist who had previously played with blues outfit Monday's
Children and was, by this stage, besotted by Jimmy Page. The overpowering Mr Guy Fawkes -an absolute highwater mark in pop production of the era was put down on a humble 4 track machine at Festival by the ever-clever Pat Aulton, having previously been recorded (with far less grandeur) by obscure British band Eire Apparent.

The more rock'n'roll orientated Melbourne came over to the psychedelic cause with a little less enthusiasm than Sydney, although it can claim the most commercially successful pop-psych single of all in Russell Morris' The Real Thing/Part Three Into Paper Walls. The city's only inclusion here is Listen by the magnificent Procession, an ambitious band which evolved from New Zealand's Librettos and Normie Rowe's 'new' Playboys. Fronted by later Manfred Mann Earth Band vocalist Mick Rogers and creatively powered by superb songwriter Brian Peacock, Procession made history by debuting with
an a capella single and a live album and eventually recorded in England under producer Mike Hugg. Listen was the group's second single.

Perth's Vegetable Garden were not quite so substantial. In fact they were non-existant In the wake of the number one success of The Real Thing, Clarion Records boss Martin Clarke instructed Times (later Strangers) leader Terry Walker to whip into the studio with a bunch of local musos and come up with a cash-in. Not only did Hypnotic Suggestion not work in Perth, it was not even released nationally via Clarion's arrangement with Festival Records (and is thus unimaginably rare!)

And so to the Shaky Isles. So many New Zealand sixties bands seemed determined to be louder, wilder, harsher and more extreme than any outfits from Dublin to Dallas (to wit Chants R&B). There seems to be no end to the surprises contained on Kiwi 60s vinyl. We can't find anyone who knows anything much about House Of Nimrod, except that they recorded for Festival NZ and, apart from the engaging Slightly Delic, are known for another psych killer called (we think) Psychothartic, Simple Image were a
little more prominent, to the extent of having a number one national hit with the Howard Gable-produced Spinning, Spinning, Spinning, yet another phasing phun phest The outfit later recorded under Peter Dawkins (Ulla) and provided a springboard to solo jazz and rock success for leader Barry Leaf.

Auckland's Hi Revving Tongues are best known in Australia as early 70s Sydney based band The Tongues, who stirred a little action with their cover of Aphrodite's Child's European hit Rain And Tears on the Chart label. However, Tropic Of Capricorn takes us back to the perfumed garden of 1967 and
stands as one of the better antipodean 'period pieces'. The bass player on this track, John Walmsley, found his way to America, where he became a member of major chart act The Lemon Pipers (whose Green Tambourine is quite a pysch classic in its own right).

The prolific Larry's Rebels, the subject of one of Raven Records' finest but least recognised anthology albums, were adept at more styles of rock than any Australian band of the era. From snarling garage punk to sacred Christmas hymns to very classy psychedelic pop/rock, the band performed
confidently and imaginatively over a period of five years. Halloween, from the pens of vocalist Larry Morris and guitarist John Williams was the tenth of 15 commercially released singles.

And that, all things considered, is that GLENN A BAKER

Album compiled by Glenn A Baker, Pete Shillito and Kevin Mueller. Released by exclusive arrangement with Festival, EMI, CBS, Polygram Records, and Albert. Martin Clarke and Benny Levin Productions. All tracks recorded in Australia or New Zealand 1966-69. Front cover design by Cody Anderson. Back cover art by ADCO. Special thanks to Dean Mittlehauser, Chris Eggleton, ian Nancarrow, Martin Clarke, Vera Rizzo, Steve Fahey, Peter Dawkins. Album mastered by Warren Barnett.