Pioneering in modern music usually follows some chronological track that’s easy to follow. Blues, for example, can be traced down the Mississippi River to its southernmost deltas, where men in shacks laced together solemn guitar signatures and the lyrical laments of field workers. Most music, in fact, can similarly trace its origin to a specific source. Psychedelic rock, however, the music that soundtracked the ‘flower power’ movement, doesn’t have such a clear lineage. The daunting volume of bands that, between the years 1966 and 1969, were willing to share their standard rock setup (guitar-bass-drums-piano) with a more expansive collection of sitars, strings, brass, organs, and woodwinds would contrarily suggest a nebulous, spontaneous musical origin if any existed at all. Recording efforts put particular pressure on producers, who each tried to capture the sonic spirit of an expanding sociopolitical consciousness (particularly of Asian culture) that defied any existing convention. The swell of music produced under the Flower Power banner all seemed to adopt some form of wayward, blurred, day-glo, meter-hopping motif. And like all movements and fads, a certain deconvolution was necessary in order to discern genuine conviction from empty fashion.
The Blossom Toes’ 1967 LP We Are Ever So Clean will forever have a place in flower power while at the same time, existing somewhere on this continuum between creativity (“Mrs. Murphy’s Budgerigar” sounds like a template for The Zombies’ 1968 Odyssey and Oracle) and fashion (the LSD-placebo laden, “The Remarkable Saga of the Frozen Dog”). “Look at Me, I’m You” introduces the record with a driving two-chord guitar line. The song then shifts into bubbling vocal harmonies and abstract lyrical lines that swirl in and out of the speakers: “The air is filled with coal dust/ The rain is making me rust.” Then an orchestral coda ensues for a few measures before the song shifts back into the driving rock that frames the song. While such schizophrenia does well to characterize psychedelic rock music, it’s poorly executed here with its layers of awkward texture. Simply put, The Blossom Toes’ adherence to blues-rock rhythms create rigid song structures that don’t lend well to these time-signature bends and instrumental arrangements that turn on a dime. This contrasts, for example, with Love’s “You Set the Scene” that, with its loose jazz rhythm, can readily be crafted into varying textures and arrangements. In spite of its auspicious introduction, We Are Ever So Clean has plenty of rousing moments, the best of which happen when a more homogeneous approach is employed. “Love Is” is an elegant song that could very well be a root of chamber pop as we know it today. It’s a short, ruminative piece with the perfect amount of tempered ambition. “Mister Watchmaker” compels in the same sense. In a perfect world, “Late for Tea” would rival “Time of the Season” and “With a Little Help From My Friends” as psychedelic rock’s crowning anthem.
As a DeLorean writer, I’m often leery of reissue bonus tracks, but the strength of those included on this collection bare mentioning. The live versions of “Mister Watchmaker” and “Love Is” invite the listener into an even greater intimacy than their beautiful recorded counterparts. A confident and loyal cover of Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” serves to tie this collection into the context of the late 1960s pop. Included also is an instrumental version of “Look at Me, I’m You” that drives forth with genuine rock abandon. Clearly, its finished counterpart that found its way onto the record fell victim to an overzealous editing session. Its inclusion is telling: allowing us to glimpse the sketchpad of ideas stirring among the band and the unfortunate role that production had in diluting it. And it’s this notion that prevents We Are Ever So Clean from being a landmark psychedelic record. Ambition and zeal. Surely a sign of the times.
