Beyond the Calico Wall. USA

The gimmick of this compilation is to find the weirdest and wackiest psychedelic sounds of the mid to late 1960s. Some are rare 45's, others are taken from albums, and there's even a modern cut by a band lead by the compiler.

And Erik Lindgren succeeded at doing just that! Which doesn't necessarily mean it's a great comp throughout, but you're almost guaranteed to find a few nuggets depending on your filters. I suppose some folks will just be turned off in general, but one would question why they are listening to such a comp in the first place.

For my tastes, I'm going to be looking for some compositions within the madness. With that, there are two brilliant pieces, one each from Spontaneous Generation and Duffy. In the merely great column, I would add Park Avenue Playground, Afterglow (whose sole album isn't nearly this good or radical as this track would indicate), The Pebble Episode, Bhagavad Gita, and Raik's Progress. Otherwise the tracks range from very good to average to disappointing (least favorite: The Waterproof Tinkertoy).

A keeper for sure, but its consistency is only in the inherent weirdness among the tracks.

Ownership: CD: 1993 Voxx. Jewel case release with liners about each track. Recent online acquisition (2018).

1/11/19 (new entry)