The Night Shadows - The Legendary Night Shadows Vol 3: The Psychedelic Years 1967-1969 (2002)

Psychedelic Rock with Soul influence CD that includes many tracks off the group's 1968 collector LP that sells for $1500 in mint condition.

The long awaited collector CD of The Night Shadows' psychedelic period has finally been released. Volume 3 features many of the selections found on The Square Root of Two LP, their 1968 acid-rock classic that recently sold at auction for $1500 in mint condition. Production effort on this release actually began in 1986 as a two-disc vinyl album project but took 15 years to complete as a three-volume trilogy on compact disc. The crash of a light airplane in 1987 destroyed most of the original artwork, photographs, and negatives that were being air freighted to an album production facility. Finding quality copies of photos, the changeover to compact discs, and many other legal, financial, personal and technical issues delayed this volume until now. Luckily, some great, unreleased psychedelic tracks were discovered during this long delay and are included on this CD.

Track 1, The Prologue features a 3-minute, one sentence soliloquy by Electric Bob on the cause and effects of LSD mind expansion juxtaposed over a wild psychedelic performance that ends with the mantra that "acidity-unity is such a good thing." So Much is a later version of their Top 40 hit that was updated for the psychedelic market in 1967. A mandatory ingredient of psychedelic shows and concerts in the late 1960s was the long instrumental jam that allowed acidheads to mind-trip. I Can't Believe begins with an angst-laden Little Phil vocal on an ill-fated love affair and transcends into a long improvisational psychedelic jam that delighted acid-trippers. The jam's mind-blowing melodic ups and downs were accented visually with erotically pulsating liquid lights. Recorded long before Santana burst onto the music scene, Plenty of Trouble demonstrates the Night Shadows ability to blend Latin American rhythms with the intensity and power of acid rock. In the Air is the psych version of the B-side of 60 Second Swinger, a pic-sleeve single originally on Gaye Records. This tune is also a good example of the folk-rock influence of the mid 1960s that featured jangling 12 string electric guitars, but is played differently with a melodic "circular rhythm feel" characteristic of Hendrix compositions.

Anything But Lies (aka Time After Time) is a truly unique psych recording that utilizes a guitar amplifier tremolo and a spinning microphone to create the trippy background vocals that counterpoint the lead vocal. Followed up by a psychedelic satire on the rising divorce rate of the late 1960s, the tune Gimme, Gimme also includes some primitive synthesized sounds using tape loops of organ notes blended with a theramin, the electronic device used for weird sound effects in 1950s sci-fi films. Don't Hold Your Breath is political satire presented in a Zappa-like tune that ends abruptly like most political ads on radio and television. The abrupt ending was a mind-blower for acid-tripping hippies that left them "floating." The track Listen To My Heart offers the listener a rare slice of Night Shadow band life in 1969 by recording some of their creative chatter at a recording session where this new song is being arranged and played for the first time.

Previously unreleased track Fly High is a tune that encourages all those under stress to drop acid and fly high to escape their problems. The tune was structured around two backward, out-of-sync guitar tracks that seem to float in and out of the stereo spectrum to create a musical mind-warp especially through earphones.

Tracks 11 & 12 are off The Square Root of Two LP. The industrial-mechanical psych sounds between these tunes are actually bedsprings and moans of a hippy love-in that were amplified and speeded up. As the tape speed slows down, a listener with a good ear can hear the final moan clearly at the beginning of Psychedelic Illusion. Track 13 demonstrates how Little Phil & The Night Shadows handled complaints from security guards and police about under-age drinking and wild, screaming fans at their shows with tongue in cheek humor. This segues into the long lost live version of Anything But Lies with a great vocal performance by Little Phil that includes the only known "gastronomical" ending of a psychedelic tune ever recorded. Turned On is a satire of psychedelic lyrics performed in a music style reminiscent of the 1920s with an outrageous solo featuring five kazoos in place of the standard fuzz guitar with wah-wah.

The Hot Dog Man, one of the group's signature party songs was first released in 1962. The tune was rerecorded during a studio "freak-out party" with the zany Electric Bob and ample supplies of alcohol, amphetamines, opiates and hallucinogens to create psychedelic mayhem on tape. Listen to it through earphones while tripping out on acid. The last track from 1967-1969 period is The Epilogue, a Little Phil reprise of Fly High that ends the CD trilogy with his great vocal and first instrumental improvisation on harmonica. It also features unusual guitar effects, a Night Shadow trademark.

Tracks 18 & 19 of The Bonus Track Section are excerpts from an hour-long panel discussion and radio retrospective of Little Phil and The Night Shadows that was broadcast in 1979 ten years after the group broke up. After a brief story about some of the antics of Little Phil by one of the panel, the commentator plays The Garbage Man, a blues-rock party song recorded in 1961. It was considered very risqué more than 40 years ago.