Peace, Love & Poetry: Worldly Psychedelic Rock

Thanks to my good friends at the Hump Day Dance Party, I’ve gotten a hold of a few volumes of the amazing Love, Peace & Poetry compilations. They are so excellent in fact, I could not keep them all to myself and wanted to share their psychedelic amazingness with you wonderful readers. Just in case you are not familiar with the series, the Love, Peace & Poetry comps choose a particular geographical location and digs up the cream of their psychedelic rock crop typically from the late 60s and early 70s. Culled by Stan Denski, they have been periodically released since 1998 on QDK Media and Normal Records in colorful record covers featuring Cherly Shrode, a Go-Go Dancer and Playboy Bunny, in a number of sexy poses (they do not pertain to the particular location though, but are no less welcome for your eyes to study thoroughly). To date, there have been 9 volumes covering America, Latin America, Asia, Japan, Britain, Brazil, Mexico, Africa and Turkey. I am going to highlight three of the later installations in this particular post, and hopefully will get a chance to write about at least three more on a later date. I also have no liner notes, so I apologize for the absence of year on the tracks.




O Bando - E Assim Falava Mefistofeles

Volume 6: Brazilian Psychedelic Music (2002)

Personally, whenever I think of Brazilian psychedelic music my mind goes straight to the unparalleled creativity of the Tropicalia scene in 1969. But as this comp is quick to point out, there were many other acts utilizing the same influences but not presenting it in quite as strongly a political manner. This absolutely should not take anything away from the quality of the music though and instead presents you with a new side of the same sound. Fuzzed out guitars, deep buoyant bass lines, sporadic organ outbursts, it’s all hear and arranged in that wonderfully off-center manner that is present in all Brazilian music (off-center solely to my America-bred ears of course). My research has not been as fruitful as it was for the following two comps band-wise so I have minimal background on the artists involved. But as compared to Tropicalia, these tunes are a bit darker, a bit crunchier and a much stronger rock influence than traditional Brazilian folk. I wish I could divulge whether this was a precursor or a product of the Tropicalia scene because that would certainly reveal a lot, but alas background or no background, this is great music.




Freedom's Children - 1999
(I question this song title because the song that follows on the comp says "1999" quite a lot, though every tracklisting I could find said this was the name of the song)

Volume 8: African Psychedelic Music (2004)

The most striking characteristic of the African volume is how unAfrican it sounds. These cuts taken from 1969 to 1975 embody psychedelic rock to the fullest in the context that no African polyrhythms or traditional instrumentation seem to be utilized. One may be disappointed, but I am even more intrigued because all of my previous exposures to this era and geographical location always sound more of a mesh rather than something all their own. Probably the most notable reason for this is that the majority of these songs were taken from South African acts, mainly The Otis Waygood Blues Band (whose name is meant to sound like a black American bluesman but is actually a collection of Rhodesian college kids with a love for primal rock’n’roll and dark psychedelia), Abstract Truth (a mainstay in the vibrant Durban underground club scene) and Freedom’s Choice (who set out to emulate Pink Floyd and King Crimson but ended up with a sound all their own). For the most part, South Africa was cut off from most of the indigenous African people and really had a culture and music scene all their own. There are some non-South African selections here as well, but again they don’t really reflect the African rock sound I expected. Maybe these are just tiny niches of the vast multi-cultural continent that is Africa or perhaps I’ve just not explored that area as thoroughly as I obviously need to, but either way, this is excellent music.




Mogallar - Halicte Gunesin Batisi

Volume 9: Turkish Psychedelic Music (2005)

In the 1960s, as Turkey open it’s doors to the Western world, a flood of outside influence came rushing into the country. The result was a cultural synthesis especially noticeable in the arts. As Western rock music was introduced to the youth of Turkey, a strong musical movement emerged combining the psychedelic sounds of modern rock, including American, European and Asian, with traditional scales, instrumentation and language. Some of it wasn’t straight pairing the two together though, instead the Normal Records website describes the process as analogous to the updating of Delta blues songs with electric instruments by musicians like Clapton and the Stones. Some of the Turkish artists simply applied their newfound instruments and energetic compositions to the traditional music while others approached from the opposite direction, adding their cultural touches to straight Western rock. Included in the mix is the wonderful Selda (a political poet who took the updating traditional Turkish folk method who also has an excellent re-released full-length on Finders Keepers), Mogollar (also known as the “Turkish Pink Floyd” and the premier musician in the Anatolian rock scene, a distinctively Turkish fusion of rock and local folk) and Bulent Octacgil (a singer/songwriter who was unique with his absence of Eastern influence). The music of this disc is wonderfully exotic and completely unique.