Willie Simpson

Tag: psychedelic pop

  • Pink Floyd, Cymbaline

    So, despite their love for the man, Syd was barred from entering Abbey Road studios when Pink Floyd was recording.  Syd went on to do a few slapped together solo records, with Roger and Dave actually helping with the production, and then Syd entered oblivion, thus propelling his cult like status to mythic proportions.  In…

  • Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd, Jugband Blues

    Welcome to the unassuming beginning of Pink Floyd Week here at williesimpson.com.  My good friend Andrew Lee turned me on to this fantastic early Pink Floyd video of Syd Barrett’s last major contribution to the bands creative identity, “Jugband Blues,” from 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets.  It makes sense that Barrett, now driving head first…

  • Jimi Hendrix, Johnny B. Goode

    And here it is, the ultimate rock and roll guitar song played by the ultimate guitar rock god.  We have Jimi Hendrix, taking the Chuck Berry classic “Johnny B. Goode,” to a place no one thought imaginable.  His guitar sounds like a galloping steed from Hell, riding headlong into a firestorm, conquering everything in its…

  • Jimi Hendrix, Hear My Train A Comin'

    You’d suspect on a site like mine, there would be no shortage of Jimi Hendrix material to peruse through, but alas, this is the first one I’ve got.  It’s not for lack of love for the man, as in fact, I possess great quantities of the emotion for the guy.  I sit firmly in the…

  • The Doors, Kids in the Hall, Waiting for the Sun

    The Kids in the Hall were a sketch comedy team formed in the 1980s by a group of talented and semi-demented Canadian geniuses.   SNL guru, and fellow Canadian Lorne Michaels gave them a show that pushed the limits of comedy to frightening new edges of hilarity.  Playing out like an uncensored SNL, the Kids…

  • The Byrds, Turn, Turn, Turn

    It’s one of those famous songs where nobody can remember the full title.  Officially its, “Turn, Turn, Turn (to Everything There is a Season.)”  Written by Pete Seeger in the 50s, and cribbed  almost entirely from a Bible verse, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” was one of the Byrds earlier hits coming out in 1965 along with…

  • John Lennon, #9 Dream

    I was sneaking under a bus parked over a snowy muddy pit.  I jostled a hinge holding the front of the truck to the freight, and it began to collapse on me.  As it caved in on me, I genuinely thought I was going to die.  This was the phrase that went through my mind,…

  • Beulah, Gene Autry, Emma Blowgun's Last Stand, Ballad of the Lonely Agronaut

    Beulah was formed in a mail room in San Fransisco when Miles Kurosky and Bill Swan decided they both liked the same music, well mostly.  This is the kind of story yours truly can get behind due to own desire to hatch great ideas when I worked in a mail room.  Robert Schneider of the…

  • The Olivia Tremor Control, Love Athena, Memories of Jacqueline 1906, Black Foliage (Itself)

    The oddly named Olivia Tremor Control hail from Ruston, Louisiana, and are probably the most beautiful thing ever to come out of that place.  Along with Robert Schneider’s Apples in Stereo, the OTC were founding members of the Elephant 6 Collective, the group of like-minded psychedelic  enthusiasts who sought to re-inject the world with the…

  • The Apples in Stereo, I Told You Once

    When I was 17 years old, I first heard Her Wallpaper Reverie, a sort of mini Apples in Stereo LP, and I was blown away.  It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone from the Elephant 6 Collective, and they were making the exact sort of music I was missing in the world.  In…