Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #20

I'll be honest and say I'm not exactly a fan of psychedelic music - I'm pretty much the antithesis of a hippie and its culture (I'm far too cynical to think "All You Need is Love" is the solution to the world's problems, and I'm probably more apt to think the world's problems can't be ameliorated at all...to me, imperfect humans = imperfect world); however, there are some places where I enjoy a bit of the fantastical element of some psychedelica. I quite like the idea of hedgehogs singing, people riding white swans, and statues leaving their pedestals and heading to the beach. To this day, I like imagining tiny Marc Bolan riding a giant white swan through the forests like a king of the pixies. My daydream world can be a colourful place to live. I can also hear those links between psychedelic bands and the later twee genre of which I'm a big fan. Because my knowledge and/or collection of psychedelic music is a bit spotty, I'm going to round out this mix with music which is more generally in a fantasy vein, so once again, there will be many notable absences, including Cream, The Byrds, The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. After all, this mix is of the songs I like and/or listen to.

Out of all the characters in the genre, I still find Syd Barrett to be particularly fascinating. He has all those myth-making features: huge creative talent, incredible physical attractiveness, unfulfilled potential, and the fact he went completely bonkers. Arnold Layne, which is included in this mix, is a brilliant off-the-wall story of a transvestite who steals women's clothing, and ranks up there with the storytelling of See Emily Play - both of which are my favourite Pink Floyd tracks. I, myself, can't be bothered with the prog rock of post-Barrett Pink Floyd, but the sheer craziness of Barrett's psychedelic vision put The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in my record collection. When Barrett passed away a couple of years ago, many people praised his short-lived career, albeit his death had that way of solidifying his talent all over again, a talent which wouldn't likely have been mentioned all that much while he still lived in his mother's house painting abstracts. It took his death to make the cover of the NME.

A close second for psychedelic heroes is Arthur Brown and his legendary fire helmet - anyone who deliberately sets his/her head on fire and dances around scaring the crap out of Health and Safety people is a hero to me. He's not allowed into the sacred Marc Bolan pixie forest, mind.

Aside from songs from Syd Barrett in both Pink Floyd and as a solo artist, and Fire by Mr. Brown, the god of hell-fire, I've included several other fantastical tracks. Among them are tracks from Captain Beefheart (a Mighty Boosh favourite), Ariel Pink (lo-fi surrealism), Donovan (famous Scottish psychedelic folk), Devendra Banhart (I want to be a little seahorse, too), The Beatles (as indifferent as I generally am towards the Fab Four, Penny Lane captured my imagination ever since my dad first gave it to me on a cassette tape when I was young - it's a piece of nostalgia, if you will), and even an earlier track from Queen (who needs Bohemian Rhapsody when you have a song called The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke?). To finish the whole thing off, is a little piece of self-indulgent nostalgia (of course, what is a blog, if not self-indulgent): the theme song for one of my favourite films The Princess Bride, A Storybook Love, sung by Willy DeVille of Mink DeVille fame. I restrained myself from adding a track from the Labyrinth soundtrack, but believe me, I'll find a way of working one in on another week. And you were all also in danger of Limahl's Neverending Story, but I judiciously refrained. I'm going to call this mix Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk. Go ahead. Lose your mind.

Fire - Arthur Brown

Run-Away - Super Furry Animals

Higher and Higher - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

Underwater Moonlight - The Soft Boys

Lichtenstein Painting - Television Personalities

The Village Green Preservation Society - The Kinks

Penny Lane - The Beatles

Arnold Layne - Pink Floyd

Ride a White Swan - Tyrannosaurus Rex

Sunshine Superman - Donovan

Zig Zag Wanderer - Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band

You're Gonna Miss Me - 13th Floor Elevators

The Hedgehog Song - The Incredible String Band

The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke - Queen

Baby Lemonade - Syd Barrett

Seahorse - Devendra Banhart

Loch Na Fooey - Fern Knight

Storybook Love - Willy DeVille

Black Umbrella: Shelter Against the Uninspired

I'm always attracted to bands who have a strong vision and a passion to make music that actually means something. In many cases, I love a band with a manifesto. So when the Los Angeles-based band, Black Umbrella, requested to be added as a friend via MySpace last year, I accepted. Headed by songwriter, Derek James, Black Umbrella asserts that they are "deconstructing 60's mod/psychedelia, 70's glam/post punk, 80's new wave/synth pop & 90's britpop/shoegaze to bring the grey world a kaleidoscopic future pop pastiche that revels in the love of lost eras/outsider movements and is great for bedroom dancing." I love grand declarations, especially ones that encompass so much with so many and/or slashes. I was also attracted to James's eloquent rants about the lack of perfect albums anymore - albums that are fantastic from beginning to end (James cited The Smiths' The Queen is Dead, Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible, and The Associates' Sulk) and have the potential to change your life. And he very clearly lays out a manifesto in the MySpace blog entry "Entry 1." He also once said he promised to be added to my "Men in Skirts" gallery one day, a fabulous promise if I ever heard one, and one that will immediately endear a band to me.

Black Umbrella are: Derek James (vocals, guitar), Daniel Soltyka (guitar), Shamus Dudley (drums), Franz Amaya (bass), and Amanda G (tambourine). If you like psychedelic pop like early Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett at the helm or the latest from Of Montreal, or glam rock a la David Bowie and Jobriath, or synthpop akin to The Cure at their sunniest, or a hybrid of C86 bands and early American alternative college rock, or a mixture of all of these, then you'll love Black Umbrella. James's vocals remind me of a cross between Billy Corgan and Kevin Barnes with a melancholy pout and flourishes of glam panache. The lyrics are a wonderful blend of deep sadness and fanciful imagery often with an underlying current of frustration with traditional religion. Examples: in Fool You Can't Escape, "you are just waiting on tidal waves and earthquakes/the love you feel you can't understand/it's just a tear in God's afghan/the way you sneer at temptations of the flesh/you know you can't be so wet behind the ears about love" and in Donna's Major, "we came from grass skirts/we came from catholic flirts/rosary beads and melancholy t-shirts/we came from demon seeds/we came from killer bees/daddylonglegs, beetlebugs and centipedes."

Late last year, Black Umbrella created the six-song Slumber Party EP, and they are currently in Buffalo, New York, recording their debut album, All God's Creatures Deserve Better Than This, which will feature all of the songs that were on the Slumber Party EP (with the full band and further production this time) and four additional songs (Amanda Lynn, Honeysuckle, Believers Never Lie, and 21st Century). I eagerly await the album proper. And Black Umbrella is also playing some dates in Buffalo in the near future, so if you can, I recommend seeing them. Hopefully, I will get a chance to catch them live sometime soon.

Black Umbrella's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/kindredact


Love Dare Not Veil - Black Umbrella

Donna's Major - Black Umbrella

Amanda Lynn - Black Umbrella