Yes - There is actually is a Psychedelic
Folk Songs Radio Program ... (We were surprised too!) by Gerald Van Waes,
Belgium.
Brian Gladstone : Psychedelic Pholk Psongs (Can,2001)
Now this is a difficult one. First of all the cd starts
with a humoristic insane naïve stupid long hair hippie cowboy song. The
finger picking is, as well as on the second track very fast and
well crafted, reminding the banjo. With "Flashing before my
eyes" I think : "if Clive Palmer was a cowboy it might have
sounded like this". Ragtime like humour can be find on "I like
me", with fast blues chords, fingerpicking and some kazoo.
Most of the tracks first to be followed are beautiful psychedelic folk
songs (male/female duo, acoustic guitar, some flute,..) and they sound
exactly like we, collectors of psychedelic folk would like to hear. It
was confusing to hear these differences at first hearing but after
repeated listens I had much less difficulties with these contradictory
inspirations. Brian plays the guitar very well and he has good ideas. On
the few solo guitar tracks his style seems to be a combination of folk
fingerpicking / blues and ragtime.
The second half of the cd combines often the style of the
psychedelic folk with a more lively stoned way of singing country folk
songs as lullabies for stoned hippies or nursery rhymes for the mentally
insane. Luckily most of this is still drenched with spacecakehumour.
I once heard another so called psychedelic ssw so called
collector item influenced by country : Peter Grudzien with
"Unicorn". That one contains incredibly bad ssw and singing,
so bad that it becomes almost unique and very enjoyable, but then for me
still within the category of humour. Country is often used as genre to
express by so many mediocre artists.
Brian Gladstone however who definably has some country
influences at a few more tracks succeeds to be enjoyable even
there. That means that the second cowboy song "Cowboy of the
West" and the blues song (I mostly hate blues too) I am able to
accept after a few hearings within this concept. Only the long track
"The highway man" is somewhat boring. Some of it need a bit
more time to get into, another part is easily appreciated.
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