Her neon mouth with the blinking soft smile ..

Psychedelia at its prime.

1967 ...

San Francisco...

How great if one could go back there for a few weeks...

If I could I would seriously consider staying..

And I would form a band called... the XXIst Century Travelers..



Plastic Fantastic Lover

Her neon mouth with the blinking soft smile
Is nothing but an electric sign
You could say she has an individual style
She's part of a colorful time

Super-sealed lady, chrome-color clothes
You wear 'cause you have no other
But I suppose no one knows
You're my plastic fantastic lover

Your rattlin' cough never shuts off
Is nothin' but a used machine
Your aluminum finish, slightly diminished
Is the best I ever have seen

Cosmetic baby plugged into me
And never ever find another
And I realize no one's wise
To my plastic fantastic lover

The electrical dust is starting to rust
Her trapezoid thermometer taste
All the red tape is mechanical rape
Of the TV program waste

Data control and IBM
Science is mankind's brother
But all I see is drainin' me
On my plastic fantastic lover

It doesn't really matter what chords I play ...

What words I say or time of day it is
As it's only a Northern song ..

I still remember when my mother bought us the film Yellow Submarine..

I was around 10 years old..

That exposure to such artistic film, with all that psychedelic meanings, the colors and the naivety...

I think that made me understand the world in a particular way..

Where only art is worth enough any effort..





Only a Northern Song

If you're listening to this song
You may think the chords are going wrong
But they're not, we just wrote them like that

When you're listening late at night
You mayo thing the band are not quite right
But they are, they just play it like that

It doesn't really matter what chords I play
What words I say or time of day it is
As it's only a Northern song

It doesn't really matter what clothes I wear
Or how I fare or if my hair is brown
When it's only a Northern song

If you think the harmony
Is a little dark and out of key
You're correct, there's nobody there
And I told you there's no one there

They’re locking them up today ...

Forever Changes... who hasn't heard about this legendary album ?

There are so many good songs in it ..

I particularly love the Red Telephone...

The best example of psychedelia,

and the prediction it carried...

They’re locking them up today
They’re throwing away the key
I wonder who it’ll be tomorrow, you or me?
We’re all normal and we want our freedom
Freedom...
freedom...
freedom...
freedom

Arthur Lee would end up for some time with his bones in the jail and through several bad mental times...

That's the thing with records that exceed the creators expectations...

no one remembers your name...

This is the song that started all ...

I find it hard to believe you don't know...

The beauty that you are..

As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset ....

I have the greatest admiration for the most "British" band from the 60's...

I can't remember when I first heard You really Got Me ...

it's public domain, everybody knows it...

I still like it..

but they have so many great tunes Autumn Almanac, Lola, Set me Free, See My Friends, Death of a Clown, etc, etc...

But Waterloo Sunset, has this melancholy in it, this homesickness...

I feel inclined to blow my mind ...

What ever happened to the Small Faces ?

There they were... along with Pink Floyd to take the crown off from the Beatles..

They even made a masterpiece with Ogden's Nut Gone Flake..

And then ?

I don't know.. but it's all too beautiful

...Will the wind ever remember ?

The names it has blown in the past?

I read the news today, oh boy ...

About a lucky man who made the grade...

She comes in colors everywhere ...

If the whole 60's had to be defined in one song.. this one could be a real potential choice..

It brings the naivety and joy of that magical decade and particularly the year of 1967.. when the summer of love happened..

I can imagine how they got inspired.. watching the girls dressed on that psychedelic fashion, colorful clothes, flowers on their hair.. hippie stuff..

I love the "non-blues-based" Stones songs, as Ruby Tuesday, Dandelion, The Lantern or She's a Rainbow.

Yeah, I heard a funny thing..

I discovered Love's Forever Changes not so long ago..

Read their history on Michael Stuart's book.

I had never seen how such talented guys threw their career away this way..

the book is worth reading as a What-not-to-Do list...

Regarding the psychotic excesses, they did the same as any other 60's band.

Regarding the project, they just did a minor effort for keep it alive..

How come Bryan McLean wrote Alone Again Or, and then he vanishes ?
Why Arthur Lee needed 30 years to get back in the road?
What about the guitar work of Johnny Echols , where is he hidden ?

Such a pity because Forever Changes had become after 40 years a must in any All-Times-Best-Albums list you can check...