Tunesday: Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies – Sub-Sylvian Litanies
A sample of some obscure – and maybe not obscure – tunes from my strange and off-the-wall collection.
Today’s selection: Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies – “Sub-Sylvian Litanies” 1969
Today’s selection takes up roughly ½ of the first side of “The American Metaphysical Circus“
Described as “an entire acid trip in 11 minutes“, this “psychedelic” album was one of the first compositions utilizing synthesizers. It has been compared to some of the earlier experimental works of Pink Floyd (also among my favorites).
I ended up with two copies of this LP. One I bought at a record/head shop; the other I obtained from the local “underground” FM station when it went under.
A far different world …
Well that was 10 minutes and 36 seconds of something different. Not unpleasant, but it won’t be on my daily rotation.
Starts off kinda freaky, def a late 60’s vibe, but then after a few it planes out when the female starts larking. About 3/4 of the way through it sort of slows down and then just glides off the far end of the stage.
Sounds more experimental than anything else.
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Back in 97 or 98 when I first heard about eBay I found all kinds of things that I didn’t know were available and bought stuff left and right. One of the things was a big Roland synthesizer that I won the auction at $1900 and change. That was a BIG spend for me. But our son was heavily into keyboards and I wanted to give him a boost up. The seller was a dood named Trent Reznor and the deal was that (he lived in Miami at the time) he would deliver the unit and give a 1 hour block of instruction on how it worked.
He shows up and we set the thing up but in the process he discovered he forgot to bring the stereo midi cables to connect it to amp(s). We didn’t have any and there was no music store close by. So he told us what he could and even gave us a demo tape that he made while using the unit that, in part, ended up being a HUGE record (The Fragile).
The next day I got some cables and for the next several hours we experimented with the stuff this machine could produce. Tapping keys while rolling wheels, pressing pedals, twisting knobs, sliding sliders, etc. Get a basic groove going then start molding it all over the place. Plenty of times we laughed our asses off at the sounds this thing made. It was a wild machine-animal that had to be harnessed. Anyway, the front part of this toon made me think of that.
My son still has that Roland and half a dozen others.
“Sounds more experimental than anything else.”
Definitely. More where that came from. I did say: “strange and off-the-wall”.