Beautiful Freaks

Waving Our Flag High, Wave On, Wave On: Music From The Original Counter Culture

TaD Frying tonight: alternative “cosmic mash-up”.

From the firm behind Running The Voodoo Down comes a 60s counterculture compilation that swerves psych’s rock-and-pop warhorses to collage “a journey into sound” using spoken word, bongo ragas, acid-rock, field recordings and period curios; contextualised by compiler Tony Harlow’s notes emphasising the era’s LSD domination and uncanny forerunning of punk.

After Allen Ginsberg ‘s Footnote To Howl, the Grateful Dead exhale That’s It For The Other One, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band unfurl the unsettling Music For The Head Ballet and Third Ear Band’s Earth invokes a Druid barn-dance. Obscure weirdness by jazz-psych folkie Brigitte Fontaine presages a spaced stretch of prime teapot Gong, acid-jamming Hapshash and the Coloured Coat (with Guy Stevens), Hawkwind’s hippietwee Be Yourself, Yoko Ono’s earlacerating Why and zonked Aussies Captain Matchbox and the Whoopee Band.

This feast of joyfully fried celebration fittingly closes with Timothy Leary pontificating before the Fugs exorcise the Pentagon in October ‘67. Forget airbrushed boxsets, this was how the 60s counterculture actually sounded and felt. ■■■■■■■■■■