My Top Ten Favorite Psychedelic Folk Songs
by Genesis Breyer P-OrridgePublished in Arthur No. 13 (Nov., 2004), available from The Arthur Store
I was invited to create a list of my personal FAVORITE music and so I did, for an English newspaper The Independent. I was happy to illustrate how different my taste is to the endless dark mediocrity of current so-called Industrial Music that people seem to assume I would like when I NEVER have!
A note about the number of Incredible String Band songs in the following list: In 1969, I was a member of The Exploding Galaxy kinetic performance troupe in London. Some members left to form Stone Monkey, who danced with the ISB for a while. I had been listening to the Incredible String Band since school. The surrealism and FREEDOM of the lyrics is what continually engages me: the subject matter of absurdity and spirituality combined. I feel the ISB are probably the lyrical geniuses of the ’60s and onwards, far more than the Beatles or Dylan, who become predictable and never really extended the form of the song as an open system in the same way. Once one gets the ISB all the other musics fall into place. These are the true troubadours of the last two centuries. They explore divinity and magick from a lyrical chivalric dimension. Combine this with the interdimensionality and you have works beyond compare. SUBLIME!
Go and explore, there are more stories in the drug mine of British folk than man hath dreamed of and Lewis Carroll hath penned to his own particular blend of paper.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
New York City, April 2004=
1. “Meet Me on the Ledge” by Fairport Convention
(from What We Did On Our Holidays, 1968)
When I was at Hull University this song was on the student-picked juke box. The in-joke amongst we flower children/soon-to-be-drop-outs was that when we wanted to score hash from the University dealer we’d put this record on as a buying signal and meet outside by the “hedge.”2. “When I Get Home” by Pentangle
(from Light Flight compilation double CD, 1971)
This is amazing! Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Richard Thompson and the crew evoke the most immersive sense of melancholy. I saw all the guitarists individually in the Hall of Residence cafeteria so this always makes me smell gravy and roast potatoes instead of think of alcoholism. A whiskydelic song as Lady Jaye would say.3. “A Very Cellular Song” by the Incredible String Band
(from The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, 1968)
Probably my equal favorite song of all time. Full of whimsy, weirdness, surreal lyrics that insist they are profound when you know they are more likely just found. When it gets to a sequence which describes the feelings of an amoeba you know that you are, after all, in the presence of genius!
Read and comment. From arthurmag.com."
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