The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
all the verbal dexterity of a caveman. He told Bushy he’d been writing a new song. Bushy could not make out the words, so he wrote them down phonetically: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Only later did he learn that Ingle had been mumbling, ‘In the Garden of Eden’.
Of course there is more to the song than its weird title. A classically trained keyboardist, Ingle needed constant reminders not to play bass with his left hand. Bass player Lee Dorman took one of those superfluous lines and simplified it to make what is arguably the most primal riff in all of rock. Though the other (surprisingly poppy) tunes on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida were recorded in Hollywood, the famed 17-minute opus was recorded on Long Island, while the band took a break from touring with Jefferson Airplane.
When they turned up at Ultra-Sonic Studios, producer Jim Hilton had not yet driven out from New York City. To save time, studio owner Bones Howe asked if there was a song they could play to set volume levels. ‘We said, “We have this really long song that we want to record and throughout it we have solos where each instrument is featured,”’ says Dorman. Perfect. Off they went with what the band assumed was a sound check. For some reason, the engineers rolled tape, and they got virtually the entire song in one take. Though Atlantic first balked at releasing the heavy epic (it had to be edited down to 2.52 for radio play), the label finally gave in and must be glad they did. The album sold 4 million copies in the US alone; until Led Zeppelin came along it was Atlantic’s top seller.
Ill Wind
Flashes
Boston hippy intellectuals make one-off psychedelic classic.
Record label: ABC
Produced: Tom Wilson
Recorded: Mayfair Studios, New York; February 1968
Released: 1968
Chart Peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Connie Devanney (v); Ken Frankel (g, banjo); Richard Griggs (g, v); Carey Mann (b, v); David Kinsman (d)
Track listing: Walkin’ And Singin’; People Of The Night; Little Man; Dark World; L.A.P.D.; High Flying Bird; Hung Up Chick; Sleep; Full Cycle
Further listening: The Boston Sound (1968) contextualises Ill Wind’s sound
Further reading: www.zvonar.com
Download: Not currently legally available
For every mediocre hippie band that sold a million records, another excellent one barely registered. Ill Wind had a sound of their own, irreproachable chops, excellent tunes and a major label record deal – but were scuppered by the catalogue of blunders that peppered their album’s path to the few shops it ever appeared in.
The seeds of Ill Wind lay at MIT, the extremely competitive university in Boston where four of the band studied and threw themselves headlong into the counter-culture. ‘We were into unusual music and unorthodox behaviour, and actively sought out marijuana and LSD,’ recalls Richard Griggs, their rhythm guitarist. Renaming themselves Ill Wind in late 1966, they were joined by the icy-voiced Connie Devanney, wife of one of their professors, and gigged solidly throughout the new year, supporting Fleetwood Mac, Moby Grape, Van Morrison, The Who and others.
By summer 1967 things were happening in earnest. Demos were cut at Capitol, but an untimely LSD bust put paid to that. Enter Tom Wilson, legendary producer of Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel and The Velvet Underground, who promptly signed them to his fledgling production company. Having signed away their recording and publishing rights, they delightedly started work on an album – but were soon to be disappointed. For all his promises, Wilson made little effort in the studio. ‘We got to record an album’, remembers Griggs, ‘but weren’t at all happy with the recording process or the finished result’.
Despite this, Flashes contains some of the finest psychedelia conceivable. People Of The Night, for instance, centres on an epic five-minute Eastern-tinged guitar solo that never stops gathering momentum over an ever more frantic rhythm section. The song also shows Devanney to have had one of the great female rock voices of the late ’60s, cold yet surprisingly emotive. But the album’s masterpiece is Dark World, one of the most personal and beautiful of all psychedelic recordings and graced with an unusual, sombre fuzz bass solo.
Recording complete, the band were unprepared for the volley of blows awaiting them. The album’s tacky front cover, complete with incorrect song information and poorly reproduced photos on the rear, was injury enough. But adding insult was a pressing fault that necessitated the recall of the initial pressing. By the time it had been corrected, momentum was lost. No interviews were organised, so no airplay was arranged, so no reviews appeared. A promotional tour was cancelled and, trapped in a contract they resented, Ill Wind blew itself out at the end of 1968.
Os Mutantes
Os Mutantes
Eccentric Brazilian trio invent South American psych.
Record label: Polydor
Produced: Manuel Barenbeim
Recorded: Philips Studios, Brazil; 1967–1968
Released: June 1968
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Rita Lee (v, pc, flute); Arnaldo Baptista (b, v); Sergio Dias Baptista (g); Rogério Duprat (ar)
Track listing: Panis Et Circencis; A Minha Menina; O Relogio; Adeus Maria Fulo; Baby; Senhor F; Bat Macumba; Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour; Trem Fantasma; Tempo No Tempo; Ave Genghis Khan
Running time: 36.01
Current CD: Polydor 8294982
Further listening: Mutantes (1969); A Divina Comedia Ou Ando Meio Desligado (1970); Technicolor (1970), a recently released collection of highlights re-recorded in English, never issued at the time; Jardim Eléctrico (1971); Arnaldo Baptista’s solo album tribute to his lost love, Rita (1974); Everything Is Possible: The Best Of Os Mutantes (1999)
Further reading: www.luakabop.com/os_mutantes/cmp/main.html
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
The explosion of invention in mid-’60s pop was startling enough to anyone listening on the Anglo-American axis. Imagine how it must have sounded in a place where music followed rigid traditional guidelines and ‘pop’ was the province of fife and drum bands. When a particularly insane Brazilian rock trio called Os Mutantes (The Mutants) unveiled a mischievous, wayward hybrid of Pepper Beatles, Piper Floyd and Disraeli Cream having a bossa-nova jam at a popular Brazilian music festival in September 1967, no one was too surprised when the crowd started booing and throwing things, or when the use of electric guitars was subsequently banned at the festival.
Originally from São Paolo, Os Mutantes became the adopted rock band of the Tropicalia movement, a group of artists from Bahia state who brought together music, pop art and concrete poetry to good-humouredly undermine conservative tradition and irritate the ruling military regime, taking pleasure in sending up Brazilian sacred cows or appearing on TV in plastic trousers for a dada freak-out. Eccentric singer and percussionist Rita Lee, her loopy husband Arnaldo Baptista and his brother Sergio, all still in their teens, were guaranteed to delight or offend as required. A third Baptista brother remained off-stage building guitars for Sergio and creating fearsome musical devices out of electric sewing machines. There were also contributions from Tropicalia’s pet orchestrator, the gifted Rogério Duprat.
This, the team’s debut album, was a lovely antic party in Portuguese, featuring wild versions of their contemporaries’ songs. Tropicalia colleagues Caetano