Some claim the 1963 hit single Sally Go Round The Roses by The Jaynetts is the first recorded psychedelic pop tune. While this may or may not be true, it’s certainly a beautifully hypnotic, circular number with mysterious and whimsical lyrical imagery. It’s also, I’ve discovered, one of the most covered songs ever so I’ve decided to line up most of the versions I’ve found. Play ‘em one after the other or mix and match to make your own trance-inducing rose parade. Let’s begin with the original. I have no proof, but it’s claimed that the drummer on this session was Buddy Miles, later of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies.

 
Many more roses after the jump…

 
Many of The Rolling Stones’ pre-1966 hits were never released in stereo. For example Satisfaction, although originally recorded in stereo, was released only in monophonic sound.

In the mid-80s a true stereo version of Satisfaction appeared on Japanese and German editions of Hot Rocks 1964-67, which are long out of print. They’re available from collectors, but expensive.
 
In this true stereo version of Satisfaction, you can hear instruments that were mostly inaudible on the mono version. Brian Jones acoustic guitar (left channel) and Jack Nitzsche’s piano are now much more present, particularly Brian’s guitar.

We’re so accustomed to hearing the mono mix, that at first, the stereo mix seems too airy, the stereo spread too wide, the result slightly flabby and lacking punch. We miss the stripped down, punky, intense edge of the mono version. But, after repeated listening, the stereo version yields its own charms, a different but satisfying (pun intended), experience.

If for no other reason than to hear Brian’s guitar with such clarity, the true stereo version of Satisfaction is a great discovery.
 

 
The Fabulous Echoes (also know as The Fab Echoes) were Hong Kong garage rockers who, in the early 60s, had a string of regional hits on Diamond Records. They were a big touring act in Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Though based in Hong Kong, none of the members of the group were Chinese - four were Filipino, the drummer was from Scotland, and lead singer Cliff Foenander was from India.

In this clip, Fab Echoes’ member Bert Sagum (a proto Lux Interior) does a totally insane version of It Won’t Be Long. Man, could these cats rock!
 

 
In this brilliant remake of Alica Keys and Jay-Z’s ode to New York City, Empire State of Mind,  rapper Alex Warren and singer Terema Wainwrite celebrate the Welsh city of Newport. Ymerodraeth is Welsh for empire.

The video’s director Morgan-Jane Delaney says she…

...wanted to make something people from Newport would be proud of and we have had some really positive feedback.

“I hope Jay-Z and Alicia get to see the video as long as their publishing people don’t force us to take it offline. It’s only tongue in cheek.”

What make’s this different, and quite special, is the Welsh spin, the accents. And Terema Wainwrite is quite a belter.The whole thing reminds me of Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl.

 
I’m so flabbergasted that I found this fan-made video on the you-know-what for a song by a band I helmed as a teen in the 80’s, Steaming Coils, that I decided to share it here. Steaming Coils was essentially myself making the music and my good friend and lyrical genius David Chrisman singing. Over the years many other cool people did time in the band as well and we put out three LPs , a handful of cassettes and recorded hundreds more songs. ALL of which are available for free download at Mutant Sounds. I’m still really proud of what we did in Steaming Coils. As a rule, we over-extended our musical reach. We were listening to and worshipping really complex progressive and experimental music and wanted to play like our heroes but our skills were more at the budding punk-rock level and I think that’s what makes it interesting to hear now. The song in the video (which is pretty damn odd, but huge thanks to whomever created it !) is one of the last and best things we ever did, from our Breaded LP. Hope you enjoy it !

 
Steaming Coils - Never Creak LP (1986)
Steaming Coils - The Tarkington Table LP (1987)
Steaming Coils - Breaded LP (1989)
Steaming Coils - Archive (1983-1990)

 
By the time Montreal-born filmmaker Arthur Lipsett made his nine-and-a-half-minute long dystopian short 21-87 in 1963, he was well-aware of the power of abstract collage film. His short from two years earlier, Very Nice, Very Nice was a dizzying flood of black & white images accompanied by bits of audio he’d collected from the trash cans of the National Film Board while he was working there. And wildly enough, it got nominated for a Best Short Subject Oscar in 1962.

But with 21-87, the then-27-year-old Lipsett was not only using moving images, he was also refining his use of sound. And it got the attention of the young USC film student George Lucas, who’d fallen in love with abstract film while going to Canyon Cinema events in the San Francisco Bay area. 21-87’s random and unsettling visions of humans in a mechanistic society accompanied by bits of strangely therapeutic or metaphysical dialogue, freaky old-time music, and weird sound effects, affected Lucas profoundly, according to Steve Silberman in Wired magazine:

’When George saw 21-87, a lightbulb went off,’ says Walter Murch, who created the densely layered soundscapes in [Lucas’s 1967 student short] THX 1138 and collaborated with Lucas on American Graffiti. ‘One of the things we clearly wanted to do in THX-1138 was to make a film where the sound and the pictures were free-floating. Occasionally, they would link up in a literal way, but there would also be long sections where the two of them would wander off, and it would stretch the audience’s mind to try to figure out the connection.’

Famously, Lucas would later use 21-87 as the number Princess Leia’s cell in Star Wars. But although his success allowed him freedom at the NFB, Lipsett’s psychological problems would lead him to commit suicide in 1986, two weeks before he turned 50.
 

 
After the jump, compare with Lucas’s equally bewildering short Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB!
 

 
Internet superstar Mark Gormley’s new video is absolutely epic! In additon to amazing production values, stunning choreography and mindbending mysticism, it has all the visual and erotic magic we have come to expect from Mark . Director Phil Thomas Katt, the Gerard Damiano of rock videos, has simply outdone himself. He may entering his Kubrick phase.

Be prepared to have your breath taken away. I suggest eating some mescaline for a totally enthralling experience. The song is called All You Need and it is all you need.

Mark, now more than ever!
 

 
Beck Hansen’s Record Club is an informal gathering of musicians who, without rehearsing, cover a record album in one day. It’s a hit or miss affair that occasionally produces something really special. Here’s St. Vincent (Annie Clark) covering the INXS tune Never Tear Us Apart. I think it’s lovely.

 

 

 
Not so much a Freudian slip, more a Fleudian srip, probably.
 
(Link) Via Neil Hambuger’s Twitter, HT Chris Campion

 
Seefeel was the first act signed to pioneering electronic dance label Warp to feature guitars but you’d hardly know it from listening, so transformed and synthesized were those steel strings. They also sported floaty, ethereal female vocals, thus ensuring much love from the dream-pop set as well. They burned out around 1996 after a few releases and much touring but are now back, revitalized by a few new band members (including drummer E-da, formerly of The Boredoms), with a new EP and a one-off live show in London, both happening this September. Have a listen to this groovy new tune and an oldie, remixed by Aphex (not Apex!) Twin.
 

Seefeel - Faults by Warp Records
 

 
Seefeel: Return with first new material for almost 14 years + announce one-off London headline show
 
Thanks Hot Wookie !