Focus Three- 10,000 Years Behind My Mind

On about a dozen British psych comps; mine is Psychedelia at Abbey Road 1965-1969. Found among a gaggle of tracks trafficking in the near-fetishization of childhood: some brightening the corners, some darkening the mirrors. Focus Three belongs on the crepuscular end of the spectrum; really, it’s psychedelic soul of the highest order. Nasty asperous vox over a slow creep of aligned piano & drums, with staccato horn spray. And then the chorus! A wailing wall of sound helps this ragged bunch of studio musicians convert a done-wrong song into something more existential, and far more troubling.

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Lee Hazlewood- Won’t You Tell Your Dreams

It’s a major pain to track down used Hazlewood discs without using the interweb; I just got this last week at Austin’s Waterloo Records. Reissues didn’t come until ‘99, and the second half of Hazlewood’s career couldn’t even score American release. This track is from his warm, wistful kiss-off disc Requiem for an Almost Lady, recorded for the Viking label in 1971. Every song starts with a spoken intro; as sketchy as that read on paper, Lee’s an affable host. The lyric is a slow catalog of all the day-to-day tasks Hazlewood has made into an armor against his ex’s memory. Sunsets are built for songs like this.

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Calvin Nelson- Look at Me

Imagine the implications of a movement touting “the black Jandek” - alternately, let’s say the “soul music Jandek”. Can this hypothetical rhythm-and-bluesman” exist? Isn’t soul capable of the most naked emotional truth, but is bound up in the universality it provides? Rock gets a freer pass; we often see it as more creatively malleable, more willing to wend about its author’s own neuroses and idiosyncrasies, for better or worse. But then I hear “Look at Me” from LA-based Calvin Nelson, and I can’t make the right call. Is it good? Ontologically, why not? It’s got all the hallmarks of an updated Gary Wilson: amateur electric piano, preset Casio rhythm and click-track bass. Over all this glossy mess, Mr. Nelson keylessly coos, cajoles, and generally loses his composure before the song pulls itself back into the clouds. By virtue of having a management company and an e-mail address, he’s already disqualified himself from nascent-arena-rock-god Jandek’s throne, but his material is so bizarre, so professionally sabotaged, that outsider music must find a place for him. Is “Look at Me” bad? My yes, it’s dreadful. Is “Look at Me” good? Of course it is. It’s amazing.