Well, this three CD set on Cherry Red to be released on 21st March, 2025 really is a mixed bag. It starts very well with Family’s ‘Good Friend of Mine’, Soft Machine’s 7-minute plus ‘I Should Have Known’; and Blossom Toe’s ‘Telegram Tuesday’ from their notable 1967 album “We are Ever So Clean”. Of the rest, Fairport Convention’s ‘Time Will Tell The Wiser’ (by Emmitt Rhodes), Brian Auger’s Trinity with Julie Driscoll ‘s ‘Am I Glad to See You’ (even if not vintage), Piccadilly Line’s ‘How Could you Say (You’re Leaving Me)’, The Action’s ‘Climbing up the Wall’ from “Rolled Gold”, Eyes of Blues’ ‘Prodigal Son’ and the appearance of The Graham Bond Organization, if only because of the eccentric stereo separated, reverb laden organ, and charged atmospheric, are certainly worthy of any compilation. My biggest problem is with how disconnected it all sounded; The Third Ear Band’s ‘Raga #1’ and The Riot Squad featuring David Bowie’s unconventional version of ‘Waiting on the Man’ seeming very much out of place. It does end triumphantly though with The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s superb ‘Canyons of Your Mind’.
CD two again starts off well with The Incredible String Band’s ‘Way Back in the 1960s’ and Traffic’s ‘Feelin’ Alright’, followed by an uncharacteristic C&W inflected Ten Years After ditty entitled ‘Portable People’ (sounds out of place again) There’s also a nice reminder of the heavy psychedelic phenomenon that was The Electric Prunes (‘Long Day’s Flight’). That’s followed by a real obscurity: Dr K’s Blues Band with a 12-bar blues that goes on for 6 minutes (!?) The Yardbirds’ ‘Drinkin’ Muddy Water,’ although equally derivative is better, although I doubt it qualifies as one of the group’s better moments. There’s a wonderful trilogy of tracks: Captain Beefheart’s ‘Yellow Brick Road’, Spooky Tooth’s ‘Sunshine Help Me’ and Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Black Magic Woman’; more blues from Champion Jack Dupree and a Bo Diddley beat on The Deviants’ ‘Garbage’; some Tim Rose and Tim Buckley and a credit for including a 7-minute piece by the Chris McGregor Septet, ‘Up to Earth’.
What binds this altogether is of course The Electric Garden which became Middle Earth which attracted the likes of The Byrds and Jefferson Airplane, whose ‘Artificial Energy’ and ‘Crown of Creation’ appear on CD three. Well-known songs like Canned Heat’s ‘On the Road Again’ and The Who’s ‘Magic Bus’ are mixed in with some real obscurities like John James’ ‘Maybelle Rag’ and there is also some early Yes (‘Sweetness’), and you can’t really go wrong with Pete Brown and his Battered Ornaments – can you? The authenticity of such a collection is derived from the involvement of Jeff Dexter, the house DJ at Middle Earth and for those lucky enough to have been there and collectors and completist this may well be a useful addition to their collection. As for the suggested halcyon days– well yes and no, for in the final analysis quite a bit of the music is…well…not always that psychedelic, and some of it sounds positively dated. Nor is it live, not that I was expecting it to be.
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