Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 143

Aguaturbia: Psychedelic Drugstore (1970)

Taking another trip back into the psychedelic backwaters of my collection, here's a little obscurity from an unlikely Chilean band. They were a little on the harder-rocking blues end of the garage band milieu, but with plenty of trippy psychedelic explorations as well. From what I've read, the band was fronted by guitarist Carlos Corales and his wife Denise Corales, who rocked a definite Grace Slick (albeit heavily accented) wail.

The album (a compilation of a couple Chile releases) is highlighte...

Nicky Hopkins: The Tin Man Was A Dreamer (1973)

Today's the birthday of the late great Nicky Hopkins, one of the most legendary of all session musicians. (How many people could say they played on records for the Beatles, Stones, Who & Kinks? Not to mention Bowie, Jerry Garcia, Matthew Sweet, the Jayhawks, and on and on.)

I decided to pull up an album I rarely play, yet is such a joy when I do. Hopkins only released a few albums of his own during his sadly brief lifetime (1944-1994), yet 1973's Tin Man is surprisingly solid. His vocals are warm...

Olivia Tremor Control: Black Foliage Animation Music (1999)

Neo-psychedelic band Olivia Tremor Control's second (and final) full-lengther tends to get overlooked, stuck in the shadows of its breathtaking predecessor. 1996's Dusk at Cubist Castle was a mid-fi studio extravaganza, a reimaging of the universe of Magical Mystery Tour and the Beach Boys' Smile , psychedelic acid trap made real with ridiculously catchy tunes to boot. Black Foliage: Animation Music doesn't depart from that formula, just enriches it, slathering another batch of wonderful psyche-p...

Sweet Top 10

I've got another Top 10 over at Toppermost. This time around it's Sweet, a guilty pleasure to be sure, but a perfectly fun run of bubblegum-glam singles in the 70s that can't be denied. Bonus points for being the first album I ever bought, back when I was first getting into pop music in 1975.

The Saddest Song in All The World

I've published a new personal essay over on Medium. As that site limits how many stories you can access before hitting a paywall, I'm reprinting it below as well.

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Anyone who shares my deep connection with music understands the emotional grip certain songs can have over us. Maybe it’s the song we first heard in college that always transports us back to our freshman dorm room, on the cusp of adulthood, reliving that emerging sense of escape and independence; or the song our ...

Squire: The Singles Album (1983)

Squire were a great little power pop/mod revival outfit from the late 70s/early 80s, and while I try to focus on actual albums in this space rather than hits collections, they're definitely a band best served by checking out the singles. (I think they only had one proper long-player, 1983's Get Smart, which is terrific.)

The English band is most obviously compared to the Jam (at least that band's most straightforwardly pop-oriented tracks), with elements ranging from skinny-tied new wavers like t...

The Lovetones: Dimensions (2009)

The Lovetones are a wonderful little Australian psychedelic pop band that have been quietly kicking around for the past two decades, releasing a number of records in the oughts, and then returning last year with their first album in a decade. Their music is lovely, melodic, and often haunting. Think late 60s UK psychedelia (Zombies, pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd, Kaleidoscope), with plenty of Byrdsy jangle and a Paisley Underground updating. (See also Green Pajamas.)

Dimensions is a personal favorite,...

The Dream Syndicate: Medicine Show (1984)

One of my myriad time-wasting activities during the pandemic shut-down has been updating my library of home-made CD mixes. I like to reduce a lot of my favorite artists down to a one- or two-CD highlights compilation (sometimes 3 or 4 discs for the longer-running acts), which is what I'll keep with me in the car or on my iPod. And while I listen to music digitally these days, I still like to make these as CDs, even though as soon as the CD is complete I'll rip it to my hard drive. I find the exe...

Echo & The Bunnymen: Flowers (2001)

Contemporaries of mine who grew up on the early 80s incarnation of Echo & The Bunnymen can be excused for missing out on their latter-day revival; the music's been pretty much ignored (at least here in the US)--hell, I didn't even realize they'd reunited (or at least singer Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant) until well into their second run. Indeed, their initial tenure (particularly the singles captured on the definitive '84 compilation Songs to Learn and Sing) was perfectly self-contai...

Honeybus: Story (1970)

Honeybus were a short-lived and criminally-overlooked second-generation British Invasion band. Issuing a series of late-60s singles, culminating in 1970's full-length Story (by which time they'd already dissolved), Honeybus had the pop touchstones of the Beatles and the Hollies, while balancing the more sunshiny, twee aspects of the early Bee Gees with some mild touches of post- Sgt. Pepper psychedelia. So, if you like any of that music, you're almost certain to like Honeybus.

Their songs were unu...