Nu vi er igang og det er muligt at der er gode argumenter for hvorfor det ikke er tilfældet - men er det ikke helt blæst hvor meget bedre den svenske hippiescene var end den danske? Bevares, der er da mange gode dk-ting, men det meste kræver et nådigt/nostalgisk blik. De svenske er jo bare straight up radikale og på niveau med det bedste der blev lavet i verden. International Harvester, Träd, Gräs och Stenar, Älgarnas Trädgård, Arbete och Fritid osv. Mange af de samme folk, bevares, men Dissing, Burning Ivanhoe og Furekåben skal man alligevel være i højt klaphathumør for ag mene er lige så godt.
Der blev svaret på det, men det fik mig alligevel (og om ikke andet så i anledning af genudgivelsen af Vandreudtillings-pladen som jeg håber nogen vil sige nogle ord om) til at ønske mig en tråd om hippiemusik. Jeg starter med en gammel klassiker.
Skousen & Ingemann: Herfra Hvor Vi står
Jeg elsker det her nummer. Den dér jammede og næsten totale stilstand der lugter af sommer, hash, middelmådige Dylan-tekster og doven revolution. Det er af min yndlings hippie-skole, den slasket-kosmiske. Uheldigvis for S&I kan man sige (hvis vi skal blive lidt i konkurrencemodus) at netop det slasket-kosmiske er dét gear som Träd, Gräs och Stenar også befinder sig allerbedst i:
Sommarlåten især er måske mit yndlings skandinaviske nummer nogensinde. Det findes selvfølgelig også i en lidt mere fokuseret men mindre (omend stadig meget) kosmisk udgave fra da bandet hed International Harvester:
Helt, helt urørligt konge.
En storslået sejr for den anæmiske intellektualisme
Jeg synes, at Hans Vinding personificerede hippiemusikken i Danmark, og jeg bliver ved med at vende tilbage til både Furekåben og det lidt mere familievenlige Hyldemor.
Det er en hyggelig og meget dansk tidslomme at hoppe i, men nok uden det helt internationale potentiale, som flere af de svenske impro-flagskibe. Det er sikkert også det undertippede, kombineret med en eller anden nationalfølelse der gør, at jeg lytter mere til de danske hippie-koryfæer end de svenske skov-trolde.
Alrune Rod er en anden dansk favorit, som i momenter er helt på højde med de bedste svenske ting:
Ellers er både Culpepers Orchard med deres hippie-prog og Burnin' Red Ivanhoe kvali-klassikere:
Man kunne jo bare gå helt amok med vestkystpsych fra nu og til verdens ende, eller man kan bare høre den her ultra kogeren sag:
Christian Yoga Church - Turn on!!
Oplagt anbefaling til folk som synes Furekåben ikke lige er helt udknaldet nok. Jeg ved ikke så meget om udgivelsen, andet end den er omgivet af en masse lallet mystik. Jeg har aldrig hørt det hele ud i en smøre tror jeg, for det er ærligt talt en omgang bonget lsd-impro. Men den er alligevel et ret godt billede af, hvor super langt ude man kunne slippe afsted med at være i Nevada anno 1967.
Mutant Sounds har skrevet et fint indlæg om den:
Virginia City, Nevada, Summer 1965. You know what's going on here. Inside the Red Dog Saloon a sharp-looking young band of acidheads from the Bay Area called the Charlatans are playing weird folkrock for an equally stoned audience. Some consider this the birth of psychedelic rock music, or whatever. You've heard the story before.
So why not just once skip past the Red Dog, and continue down the main street, and up above a hill into a secluded area? There you'll find an odd-looking monastery inhabited by the Christian Yoga Church, adherents of Kriya Yoga, one of many Eastern disciplines crouched away in the valleys and glens of Western America long before the rise of hippie-dom and New Age. Kriya Yoga was an old-school, non-cheesy way of life for honest, hard-working sadhaks looking for something else. Contemplating their teachings I find little out of the ordinary for the Himalayan headtrip scene, and they were apparently serious enough to survive into the 2000s.
In other words, I was unable to come up with anything that could explain the extraordinary LP that was released in the Christian Yoga Church's name in 1967. In fact, I long doubted its origins, because each piece in the puzzle is so unusual that it seemed impossible to connect into something that made sense. But enough clues survive to tell you that this is all for real, although I'm still not able to present a coherent image of its meaning.
Looking at the album title and front cover artwork, you might mistake this for some flower power exploitation album released by Crown, Mark, or other fine repackagers of studio hack music to fit whatever trend was going on that week. "Christian" AND "Yoga" in the same sentence? Whew, that's pretty shrewd. Except that this Church does exist, as evident from our trek into the Nevada hills. Over on the back cover one "Father Christos" tells us that this is music for "going within", while a John Doe explains in detail how the recording session was set up, after which "Father Hilarion" sums it up by pointing out that this is not an amalgamation of the East and West, but a rediscovery that East and West speak the same truth in different ways. This appears to be the core development of their Kriya Yoga studies, and is certainly a notion that has fuelled many an acid trip project -- remember "Easter Everywhere"?
Then there is a reference to that same Himalayan Academy up in Nevada, side by side to a street address in San Francisco, both of which are apparently able to provide instructions on how to listen to the LP if you write them. Geographical and synchretistic confusion expands with a reference to a PO Box at the L.A airport (!) and a thank-you to the engineer, for whom "Allah be praised". A convoluted production credit is given to Bob Keene, who may or may not be the Del-Fi label honcho that watched Richie Valens and Bobby Fuller become stars & subsequently croak.
You have to respect an album where the cover alone provides enough oddball visions and ideas to carry you through a full work-week, but the Christian Yoga Church trip doesn't reveal its full glory until you drop the needle on the lead-in deadwax and enjoy the cosy, familiar ambience of a cheap pressing. And then the music begins. Now, as pointed out by Will Louviere in his excellent presentation of this album, there are literally hundreds of religious commune albums from the good old daze, although few of them are as early as 1967, and NONE of them hits this particular spot. Think Velvet Underground rehearsing on cough syrup in mid-1966. Think Alan Watts rounding up his pals from "This Is IT" for a late-night session full of weirdness and introspection. Think Beat Of The Earth, unplugged.
"Turn On" consists of one continous 50-minute track, recorded live as it happened and without edits. You can hear players coughing and occasionally making mistakes. It goes through many changes as various church members -- credited as "classical yoga students" on the label -- enter to do their musical thing for a few minutes. A spooky reed organ is present throughout, droning through a sequence of modal chords that perfectly carries the East/West theme. On top of this all sorts of instruments enter and leave, mainly percussion -- tablas and gongs, bells, chimes, castanets, kazoos, a tuba and a french horn, high-pitched flutes -- and things that don't sound like instruments at all but people spinning coins on a wooden floor, clinking glasses or banging on tables. Inside this droning maelstrom sanskrit mantras come and go, done with American accents in a fairly mundane manner and occasionally interspersed with meditative "ommmm" chants.
It could have been a mess, but is instead an intense tranced out organic exploration into the Absolute Now, with a human-spiritual atmosphere as thick as anything I've ever heard. In line with its background one might be inclined to take "Turn On!" as one of those "trip music by accident" artefacts we sometimes stumble across, but as the liner notes show, the lysergic nature of the beast was deliberate:
"... that Memorare recordings is releasing a most decidedly Psychedelic Music album on an Ecumenical series might be a surprise to some, but not to those who firmly believe that we 'go through all things to God'..."
Ah, this is as true psychedelia as you ever can find -- about halfway through side 1 the music subsides and we are treated to the sound of running water, not from some lame sound effects library but there and as it happened, although I have no idea how it was achieved -- because you can tell that it is a LOT of water running. The intensity builds and dissolves, builds and dissolves, a gigantic gong chimes when you least expect it, and the spooky Twilight Zone Search Party reed organ is always sneaking around in the background. It's impossible to review this music in a structured way -- like "the plastic flute player is good, but the guy knocking on a table sounds unrehearsed" -- but trying to gauge the acid flow of the 50 minutes, I would say that some of the most impressive vibes of all can be found at the beginning of side 1, opening an easy-access door into "Turn On!" for anyone looking for esoteric kicks on a world-class level.
- review by Patrick the Lama
Vandreudstilling ville ende meget højt på min DK-liste. Det jeg godt kan lide er at den er så naiv, fortabt og alt er ved at falde fra hinanden hele tiden - den smulrer, halter og slæber og vælter sig afsted i sådan en fortabt drømmetilstand. Tænker ikke at det objektive niveau (hvis man da overhovedet kan tale om sådan noget) er af international klasse. Jeg ved heller ikke helt hvad den skulle være beslægtet med, måske The Incredible Stringband ville måske være en ok reference.
Ud over dem Morten nævner, er jeg ligesom mange andre på boardet glad for Janus & Venners Med Udsigt Til Regn . Janus og hans homies er dog noget pænere i lyd og produktion og mere stringent og poppet i sangskrivningen, men synes nu stadig det er en hippieplade.
Der er jo også Tømrerclaus’ egen plade. Ved sgu ikke helt. Nogle gange er den meget fed, andre gange er den alt for galarinficeret.
Siger vel lidt om sangenes kvalitet at det - med afstand! - bedste nummer er Cellokarma, som er den danske salmebogs absolutte højdepunkt Se nu stiger solen af havets skød.
Ragnarök er et oversat band i den svenske/skandinaviske hippiekanon. De spiller instrumental prog i en slags Canterbury-stil på sådan en afdæmpet og hyperkompetent facon, der virker meget svensk. Det giver mening, at de ikke er skøre nok til NWW-listen; til gengæld kan det undre, at Julian Cope aldrig har givet dem en overstadig anmeldelse. Her er højdepunktet fra deres første album, der lige er blevet genudgivet:
Et andet nummer hedder "Nybakat bröd", hvilket er sigende for stemningen på albummet som helhed. Ragnarök er egentlig et misvisende navn til et band, der tydeligvis foretrækker at have det så stille og roligt som overhovedet muligt.
Man kunne jo bare gå helt amok med vestkystpsych...
vi må have trådstarter på banen, for hvis vi ikke behøver holde os til skandinavien, så...
Trådstarter er lidt i tvivl her - på den ene side er det meget sjovt at det bare er skandinaviske ting, men på den anden ville man gerne beholde muligheden for fx at udvide til Tyskland, Frankrig og UK og snakke Catherine Ribeiro og Dr. Strangely Strange og den slags. Det bliver til gengæld lidt kedeligt hvis det ender i ren psych og mere straight folkrock.
En storslået sejr for den anæmiske intellektualisme
