Brown Acid: The 12th Trip
Various Artists
Ridingeasy Records
I can’t get enough of this old school psychedelia. The Riding Easy folks scour the internet and their own record collections to bring us exciting lost cuts by bands than not only didn’t make it big, they may have only released a single track. We open with a smoking “Mother Samwell” from The Waters. It’s “Incense and peppermints” all fuzzed up, and it’s a shame this band only left us two tracks, never mind albums. Next up it’s a Hamilton Ontario band: Village S.T.O.P., they have a smoother sound, but they did scrounge up an echo box and used to to good effect by amplifying their excellent guitar work. Next up is a twin track anthem from White Lighting titled “1930”. They are a Minneapolis band that put out an album with soaring vocals and a vague similarity to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Skipping ahead, we come to a cleverly named Ace Song Service and their track “Persuasion.” High-energy and soaring, there’s a breath of Jim Morrison here, and a top-notch guitar solo that drops into a seething pit of fuzz box. This could have been a hit with the right promotion. Then we meet The Moptops from Hawaii, of all places. No ukes or dancing girl, this is west coast teen angst and power chords with a smoking finish. I’ll wrap up with the closing track: It’s the Dickens belting out “Sho’ Need Love/Don’t Talk About Music.” This was demo on Scepter Records and consisted mainly of NRBQ’s road crew playing instruments that they were not exactly masters of. Its not as clean as other tracks on this collection, but it’s a chaotic sound they could have been any L.A. punk band in 1979. Check these guys out if you love the psychedelic sound of the late 1970’s. These tracks are all wonderful and not easy to find anywhere else.
