Next up in the Grapefruit psychedelia collection and due for release January 31st is ‘A Slight Disturbance In My Mind – The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds of 1966’!
This 3CD collection features 84 tracks examining the ‘experimental pop’ element of the British music scene during that epochal year with a dazzling mix of nascent psychedelia, introspective pop & freakbeat!
Housed in a clamshell box containing a 52-page booklet crammed with biographical information and priceless period photos and memorabilia.
While the likes of “Rubber Soul”, ‘See My Friends’ and ‘Still I’m Sad’ had served notice in 1965 of British pop’s heightened level of ambition, 1966 would prove to be an even more tumultuous twelve-month period as experimentation and innovation grew to new levels.
• The release that August of “Revolver” – whose cataclysmic closing track ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ landed amongst the record-buying public like an impenetrable missile from outer space – brought the concept of psychedelic music out of the margins and into the mainstream.
• However, psychedelia – condemned by national newspaper The Sun as “the new and dangerous sound in pop music” – had been percolating throughout the year. The word was already in subterranean use in America, adapted by the likes of The 13th Floor Elevators and Hollywood hustler Kim Fowley, who in late 1965 had become the first person to promote a record with the term “psychedelic”.
• Arriving in London in March 1966, Fowley became a proselytising influence for the new sound, instructing bemused young British bands to “act psychedelically”. His sojourn coincided with the relocation of Californian band The Misunderstood, whose incendiary sound and stage act was a major influence on a new generation of British acts.
• Meanwhile, serial pioneers The Yardbirds were making increasingly audacious music, their new manager Simon Napier-Bell instructed the young John’s Children to become “the first psychedelic group”, while mod band The Creation developed an intriguing pop-art approach.
• Featuring 84 tracks, A Slight Disturbance In My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds Of 1966 examines the “experimental pop” element of the British music scene during that epochal twelve-month period with a dizzying, dazzling mix of nascent psychedelia, introspective pop and what’s been retrospectively labelled freakbeat.
• We feature vital contributions from some of the era’s biggest names (The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Hollies, The Animals etc), a bunch of highly collectable cult classics, a huge stash of unissued-at-the-time nuggets and early outings for such future legends as Bowie, Bolan, Slade and The Bee Gees.
• Housed in a clamshell box containing a 52-page booklet crammed with biographical information and priceless period photos and memorabilia, A Slight Disturbance In My Mind is a glorious snapshot of British pop storming the gates of a new, strange and wonderful dawn.
The Fat Angel Sings 