15 FLASHBACKS to THE GOLDEN AGE OF BRITISH PSYCH
SOFT MACHINE, THE PRETTY THINGS, BLOSSOM TOES & more
ACCORDINGTO JOE BOYD IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY White Bicycles, he and Hoppy Hopkins started the UFO Club “because we were both broke”. The happenings in a Tottenham Court Road basement, however, turned out to be far from pragmatic money-makers. Between Christmas 1966 and summer 1967, the UFO Club was the crucible of psychedelic London, a testing ground for new musical and cultural configurations; a place where the avantgarde world would meet street-hardened beat groups, united by LSD and the prospect of expanding frontiers.
While The Pink Floyd were the club’s first house band, succeeded by Soft Machine, surprisingly few musical acts actually figured among the dance troupes, art movies and “spot the Fuzz” contests. But the sonic possibilities UFO encouraged – fearlessness, disorientation, acid-warped English whimsy, a wholehearted embrace of the weird – reverberated outwards to inspire many more bands. Hence
Point Me At The Sky,
MOJO’s 15-track document of a scene transformed… A little bit of Shangri-La, manifested wherever you might be at the time.
1 SOFT MACHINE
FEELIN’ REELIN’ SQUEELIN’
From the peak of the UFO era, a convention-busting freakout courtesy of Soft Machine. This B-side of their February 1967 debut, Love Makes Sweet Music, amps up the weirdness: Robert Wyatt is blue-eyed soul incarnate on the chorus; Kevin Ayers the twisted MC on the verse. “This is a feeling from the ceiling of my dreams!”
Written by Kevin Ayers. Published by Warner Chappell Music Ltd. 1967 Soft Machine. Licensed courtesy of Cherry Red Records Ltd. ISRC GBBLY2404171
2 RUST
YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD IT MADE