I thought I'd share my, and Jon Savage's, ultimate psychedelic comps.

This Jon Savage list is what got me into psych music in the summer of 2004. I have all the tracks on both of his lists and a lot of it was indeed quite hard to come by and expensive, but it certainly was a lot of fun to put together.

One question about Big Boy Pete's "Cold Turkey": The version I have is off a compilation called Electric Sugarcube Flashbacks and sounds pretty awful (actually, it sounds like someone just needle-dropped an old scratchy record). Does anyone know of a better-sounding copy of this being available anywhere?

 

Nope. Mine's off of a comp called Chocolate Soup for Diabetics (can't remember if its Vol. 1 or 2). It's a no lable pirate comp, and of a similar source. A shame as their are some great sounding Big Boy Pete cds, but none with that track that I've run across.

 

That's cool - I actually did the exact same thing back in the late '90's when the "I Want To Take You Higher" book came out with that list and I was determined to track down the whole Top 100. It took awhile and some bucks but it was worth it in the end. The strange thing was that there were a few compilation CDs that I found (Psychedelic Visions, Psychedelic Perceptions, and Psychedelic Frequencies) that seemed to match his list exactly and they saved me a lot of time tracking down some of the rarer "live" and "alternate" versions.

 

Exactly! I had to track down Mojo's Acid Drops... boxed set before I could finish the list myself. That was probably the biggest bunch of songs I acquired all in one place.

There was also this CD called Psychedelia released in 1994 by some label called Alex that had like 14 tracks or so and 10 or 12 were on the Savage list and pretty hard to find otherwise. I never got that CD though; aside from AllMusic.com, it seemed like no one had ever even heard of it.

 

Ahem, you won't show us that fantastic list of yours and let us stand in the rain with the mouth watered, will you?

 

I didn't get that set until AFTER I finished the compilation, so I basically used it to upgrade a few tracks. Jon Savage did the liner notes for "Acid Drops" so he might have had a hand in the song selection.

There were two other CDs from the Polygram/Debutante label that came out in the late '90's that were also very helpful - "Midsummer Night Dreams" and "San Franciscan Daze."

The toughest part about finding some of these tracks was that Savage listed a lot of "alternate" versions which were only available on specific CDs or box sets (and some tracks were not available on CD at all at the time). It would seem that those "psychedelic series" CDs from Temple/BMG that I mentioned in my previous post were created with this list in mind as many of the tracks are the alternate versions that Savage describes. The "Psychedelic Perceptions" CD is the only place I know of to find that particular live version of Big Brother's "Ball And Chain" that is mentioned in Savage's list.

And I agree that "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay" has got to be one of the strangest inclusions for a psychedelic Top 100 list that I've ever seen...

 

I don't think I noticed the Ball and Chain version Savage was recommending when I was compiling this list, though I agree, with one proviso. Big Brother played two sets at Monterey, as the first went over so well, they wanted to capture them for the film The version Savage is talking about was the second performance, which could easily have been ripped from the VHS and appears on the Italian Evil 5 cd set (from the 1987 radio show). HOWEVER, the Rhino Monterey Box, for what ever reason, used the performance from the first set, which is good, but not as chill inducing as the other.

 

I'm grasping at straws here, but could it be because Otis Redding was inspired to write this song by listening to the Sgt. Pepper album over and over again? That's the only reasoning I could think of.

 

No, Otis was inspired to write it after playing Montery Pop with all the San Francisco groups. The seagull sounds were actually effects from Cropper's guitar, which is cool, but I'm still not convinced that makes it psychedelic.

 

Just was reading the latest issue of Goldmine, and am going to have to alter one of my song selections. It seems Harvey Mandel is an American, not a Brit. Surprised I wasn't called on that. I thought "You Can't Tell Me" sounded American when I recorded it.

 

It's on the Savage comp.

 

Here is some proof for my original assertion, from his official website, otisredding.com:

I've also read this account in other publications. Of course, the entire Monterey Pop experience had an influence on Redding's subsequent songs--also, his admiration for Dylan. But I had read that Sgt. Pepper was specifically what he was listening to at the time he wrote this particular classic.

 

I ended up replacing it with Al Stewart/Turn Into Earth placed into Dear Eloise and Dear Mr. Fantasy.

I'll let this die now.