VA - Acid And Flowers (1996)

Brilliant compilation of rare '60s US psych and punk much of it previously uncompiled. 22 tracks including the tripped out World Column's "Lantern Gospel", The Crystal Chandelier's "The Setting Of Despair" Rainy Daze's "In My Mind Lives A Forest" and a bunch of other gems. From the same label that brought you "Slowly Growing Insane".
The good news about Acid and Flowers is that it contains a lot of interesting music, most of which is not available on other CD compilations, the sound quality is good and the artwork is definitely cool. The bad news, however, is that this compilation includes no information about the groups or recordings included on it. The track list on the back cover is just about worthless (is it artist-song title or song title-artist? Which one is track 13?) The track list in the booklet isn't much better, as it doesn't list the track numbers. Anyway, it appears that most of the tracks on this compilation are late-1960s psych, with the garage element kept to a minimum. The compilers of Acid and Flowers clearly favored strong melodies and complex vocal harmonies, and they preferred swirling organ to fuzz guitar. While these recordings clearly came after the heyday of garage punk, the music on Acid and Flowers does not venture into prog rock territory, and most of the tracks on this compilation are consistently good. If you don't mind context-free psych then this is definitely your compilation, but for those of us who want to know something about where this music came from, Acid and Flowers is not as good as it could have been