A Beacon From Mars (1968) have the same killer combination of acid rock and fearless eclecticism. Do not confuse them with the British psych-pop band of the same name – as record shops often do
Further reading: Very little exists except the booklets that accompany the CD reissues.
Download: Not currently legally available
Jimmy Page once described the American band called Kaleidoscope as ‘my favourite band of all time, my ideal band. Absolutely brilliant’; the influential critic Robert Shelton, who crucially boosted Dylan’s early career, enthusiastically called them ‘super-eclectic’; and pioneering FM disc jockey Tom Donahue hailed them as ‘one of the best groups in the country’. And much good did such acclaim do the band, for Incredible, like the other three albums they released during their original career (they reformed in the late ’70s), sold negligibly. And yet in their adventurousness and their eclecticism, Kaleidoscope were an archetypal ’60s band, creators of cutting-edge acid rock and trailblazers of world and fusion musics, who by rights should now be regarded as legends.
‘We wanted to experiment with a music which could combine various other musical areas with rock … to see if we could come up with something new and interesting,’ asserts guitarist David Lindley.
And Incredible, their third album, triumphantly demonstrates how they achieved their ambition, for the music sweeps up rock, blues, country, folk, Cajun and Near and Middle Eastern musics, all linked by an unmistakeably psychedelic consciousness. Timid souls should however be warned that this is not the whimsical, cutesy psychedelia of the ‘Let’s all go and blow our minds down in Toytown’ variety. Much of the album is possessed by an unnerving strangeness. Cuckoo, for example, the band’s reinvention of a traditional folk song, is permeated with a sense of evil, singer Feldthouse chillingly snarling the line, ‘Let’s make love now,’ an invitation that never sounded less enticing. Or consider Petite Fleur, which ends with a sinister cackle. Or the near 12-minute Seven-Ate Sweet, where the cymbals sound like knives being sharpened, assorted exotic instruments solo eerily, and suddenly, after more than five intense minutes, Feldthouse starts wailing in tongues.
‘He’s singing Turkish obscenities,’ explains Lindley, more prosaically. ‘We didn’t want to be a conventional band.’
Jeff Beck
Beck-Ola
Career high point for mercurial guitar genius.
Record label: Columbia
Produced: Mickie Most
Recorded: De Lane Lea; November 1, 1968–April 19, 1969; Kingsway Recorders, London; May 1969
Released: June 1969
Chart peaks: 39 (UK) 15 (US)
Personnel: Jeff Beck (g, b); Rod Stewart (v); Ron Wood (b, g); Tony Newman (d); Nicky Hopkins (k, p); Martin Birch (e)
Track listing: All Shook Up; Spanish Boots; Girl From Mill Valley; Jailhouse Rock; Plynth (Water Down The Drain) (S/withdrawn); Hangman’s Knee; Rice Pudding
Running time: 30.29
Current CD: EMI 5787502 adds: Sweet Little Angel; Thow Down A Line; All Shook Up (Early Version); Jailhouse Rock (Early Version)
Further listening: Truth (1968), the band’s sparkling debut; Blow By Blow (1975), an all-instrumental effort where Beck teamed up with Beatles producer George Martin; Beckology 3-CD boxed set
Further reading: www.jeffbeck.com
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
In retrospect, Beck-Ola is clearly the soundtrack of a band in the midst of disintegration. By 1969, The Jeff Beck Group was barely intact. The seeds of discontent had been sown after the release of Truth, when other band members complained that their credits were too small. To ensure his visibility this time, vocalist Rod Stewart insisted that the credits for Beck-Ola read: ‘Rod Stewart, vocalist extraordinaire’.
On Beck-Ola, Beck’s guitar is more combative and flinty than the sinuous sounds of Truth, but that is perhaps because the band members were constantly at odds. Prior to the band’s second tour of America in February 1969, Beck had fired and rehired Ron Wood twice and, having shown drummer Mickey Waller the door, replaced him with Sounds Incorporated stickman Tony Newman. Only Rod Stewart seemed beyond Beck’s compulsive changes. During the band’s second US tour, Beck collapsed after a concert in Minneapolis and cancelled the rest of the dates, hastening home to make another record.
‘The world was ready for The Jeff Beck Group in a way much bigger than I had imagined,’ he says. ‘I suddenly realised I had to go home and do something about it. So in four days, we nailed together Beck-Ola. The whole damn album was pretty much dreamt up on the spot. It was made in desperation to get a product out. We just got vicious on it, because we were all in bad moods, and it came out quite wild.’
In the brief liner notes, Beck became an apologist for the material: ‘Today, with all the hard competition in the music business, it’s almost impossible to come up with anything totally original. So we haven’t. However, this album was made with the accent on heavy music.’
To drive the point home, the former art student chose a Magritte print of an oversized green apple for the album cover. ‘The painting had something heavy and weighty about it. Ron Wood and I were looking through this book of Magritte, and I said, “Let’s just open the book at random and see what happens”.’
Beck sees Beck-Ola today as ‘a good reference point for where serious metal started. It may not be up to scratch sound-wise, but the riffs, the notes, the whole attitude was vicious.’
Fairport Convention
Unhalfbricking
The record that sowed the seeds of British folk rock.
Record label: Island
Produced: Joe Boyd and Simon Nicol
Recorded: Olympic Studios, London; January–April 1969
Released: July 1969
Chart peaks: 12 (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Dave Swarbrick (fiddle, mandolin, v); Sandy Denny (v, g); Richard Thompson (v, g); Marc Ellington (v); Ashley Hutchings (b, v); Trevor Lucas (g, pc, triangle, v); Simon Nicol (v, g); Martin Lamble (d, vn); Ian Matthews (v); Marc Wellington (v); John Wood (e)
Track listing: Genesis Hall; Si Tu Dois Partir (S); Autopsy; A Sailor’s Life; Cajun Woman; Who Knows Where The Time Goes?; Percy’s Song; Million Dollar Bash
Running time: 35.42
Current CD: Island IMCD61 adds: Dear Landlord; The Ballad Of Easy Rider
Further listening: What We Did On Our Holidays (1968); Liege & Lief (1969); Sandy Denny – The North Star Grassman And The Ravens (1970). Hear an alternative take of A Sailor’s Life on Watching The Dark, a 3-CD retrospective of Richard Thompson. Other favoured Fairport albums are Full House (1970) and Rising For The Moon (1975)
Further reading: Meet On The Ledge: Fairport Convention, The Classic Years (Patrick Humphries, 1997); www.fairportconvention.com
Download: HMV Digital; iTunes
In its long, chequered history, Top Of The Pops has screened many bizarre TV moments. Few, perhaps, quite as mad as the sight in 1969 of Fairport Convention performing the Bob Dylan song If You