Psychic Olestra

The Mandrakes’ first album cover featured a pic of them doing the Indian Rope Trick, inset to a shot of them in a circle holding their hands at such an angle to suggest you would be their next hempen conquest. Utterly appropriate somehow. (It was engineered by Val Valentin, who also mixed the 3rd Velvet Underground album, which I’d much rather listen to/be seduced by. And so would you, if you’ve ever heard either.) I’m told they were “the best live band in Philadelphia at the time,” which begs the question of what the criteria for a live show were from a band like this, back in them thar daze. Let’s just say these guys had fast songs and slow songs, but nothing was especially kinetic. Maybe it was more a matter of how sensually the bass player managed to rattle the cushions everybody would have been sprawled out on? Or maybe they were the first band to do away with the “bring your own” policy for Mr. Bubble and lilac petals? Did their light show have the reddest reds, the greenest greens, the purplest purples? Forfeited to the vasty mysts of tyme, such questions are. (Thank ghod!) As with the early Doors, their live show and the first album were essentially the same; the album has a “live” sound to it, an aural documentation with a minimum of overdubs. Listen to it through an echo-box, and you’ll be there. Even if you never were.

[Time out: All we're lacking is a lyric sheet; though I guess it’s OK since the way the albums were mixed you couldn't miss a vocal if you wanted to. I’ll leave most of the thrill of discovery to you, but who could resist a verse like: “Strange/When you find the world isn’t/A story-book place”??? Every so often you encounter a lyric so gauche it defies you to comment. Rather than give it the satisfaction I’ll move on.]

The next, Medium, a bit more baroque-rococo in its instrumentation and in the general diddling to be heard throughout, also featured an unfortunate hamburger motif on the cover. Which at least was less obvious than the swami portrait one would have expected, given such a title. The back cover featured a drawing of a vacuum tube floating in midair, implying that the boys had upgraded their technology somewhat--the power of their combined will was now capable of levitating electronic components in addition to mere hard rope and silken twine. An alternate explanation, given the album’s title, was that the tube was there as a subtle reminder that in later life Thomas Edison had been working on a telephone/radio that would allow him to communicate with the dead. (You could look it up.) Nice gatefold sleeve, too, and a deluxe label (Poppy Records! Imagine that.); these were the sort of things that usually indicate a band had clout with their record company. Indeed, downright snazzy packaging for a band that wasn’t selling any records. (It was co-produced by another great Italian, Mr. Tony Bongiovi, who would go on to midwife Talking Heads ’77 even if he didn’t have a clue. You see what great name-dropping potential this band carries?)

I spend so much time on the album cover because the record kinda sucked. The twittering keyboards of the first album had been reigned in somewhat: when the electric harpsichord makes its first Grand Entrance, it manages to get in all of two bars before you can practically see the producer dropping his cigar and lunging for the mixing board to stuff the genie back in the bottle. (“Yeeeesh! Goose the high end, dammit! Enough already! For th’ luvva God, is that kid awful! Doesn't he ever shut up??? Kroykah!!!!”) It was good to hear the band stretching out, daubing day-glo into all the places where previously they’d only had time to render a charcoal sketch. But all they had to show for it in the end was a somewhat more cluttered variation on their first album.

The third, Puzzle (and it is a puzzle why they switched keyboardists and added an orchestra, but it’s the only one I still listen to much) featured an Escheresque (or perhaps it was M.C.) painting of a circular parade of gigantic chrome-plated maggots endlessly slithering up the down staircase. I swear I don’t make these up. If I’d come up with an idea like that, don’t you think I’d save it for my own album cover? And can’t you just imagine what sort of reviews a thing like that would earn nowadays?

*Misterogers, to the neighbors:*Now isn’t that a special picture? Sure. I knew you’d think so too! (*Misterogers, to himself:*...Yeah, sure, c’mon--let’s see that happy purple wraparound-teeth giggles-when-he-cums Barney bastard sing a happy little song about that!!!...)

Wouldn’t you know it? This is the one I own only on tape. Visuals aside, it’s a surprisingly good album, far more minimalist in some ways than one would have expected, with the added orchestration and keyboards used in a droning, hypnotic, repetitious manner that suggested that somebody might have been hip to 20th-century avant-garde, in addition to the 18th-century stylings they had been dealing in previously. In among the trance-out suites there were also a few simpler, sparer tunes that recalled those on their first album. And without that synthetic harpsichord trilling in your ear like a sewing-machine contracting rabies it was possible, finally, to hear them.

But this was a musical departure that never caught fire with the listening public, who had heard all they would ever care to of the MM on their first album or two. How to describe that sound? Like Phluph they had a vocalist, guitarist, bass, drums and keyboard, but that’s about the only resemblance. These guys were everything critics of the genre love to hate about it--incredibly solemn and self-conscious, and they had no boogie-woogie in their souls. So what? Unlike some latterday progressive acts, they neither aspired nor pretended to, so why dump on them for that? There was a certain haunting quality to them that was rather unique: an excellent listening choice for the day after a heavy trip, as you’re trying to reintegrate yourself with everyday reality...or if you’re a truly hardcore alchemist, trying to integrate everyday reality with where you’ve just been. Which is a far more useful attitude to take if you’re gonna bother to make the journey at all. But I digress.

Randy Monaco, their vocalist, had only one trick up his sleeve, yet it was devastating: a lysergic croon that’s been described as “mellow, pleasing” yet sounded as if parts of him had lived several successive 500-year lifetimes of navel-gazing and were more than capable of sucking you into a similar karma. (He eventually mutated into a Philly-soul producer and died of a heart attack in the late 80s, but that really kills the romance so forget I said it.)

Their keyboardist, Michael (“Hey you! In the glasses!”) Kac, had a cheepo electric harpsichord and a cheepissimo electric pianosorta. He’d cornhole J. S. Bach on the former, then (on the particularly mellow, pleasing tunes) noodle absentmindedly on the latter. He was a distraction as annoying as he was fascinating.

Their lead guitarist, Craig Anderton, was as good as these second-string guys get...damn good, in fact. The only one in this band to truly get a life once the 60s ended, Craig got into computers and electronic music in a big way, eventually becoming something of a MIDI guru, writing a text on the subject that was more than a little helpful one time when I had to do a term paper. So he can do no wrong in my book. He made a New Age LP in the late 80s, which I’d gladly buy if I could ever find it in the bargain bin, but it never is.

The percussionist, J. Kevin Lally (mygod, just from the names of these people you know they can’t boogie-woogie! You can’t dance a gavotte. Leave ’em alone.), had a couple more doohickeys in his drumkit than a lot of other people did, but he’d bash everything indiscriminately. He was the animal of the bunch, so don’t let him be misunderstood.

Put these four guys together, and you get a sound that’s...well...every time I hear the first album in particular, there’s this haunting vibe...I mean literally, to the point where I refuse to put it on because I don’t want those tunes bouncing around my head for the next week or two. There’s just something about them--for all their good intentions there is some vibe they put out that (far more than anything so obvious as an Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson) feels fundamentally un-healthy. Or perhaps there’s an alien subtext that goes through your psychic gullet like a gram of Olestra, with similar etheric effects? No matter. The very essence of psychedelia is that it be capable of taking your head somewhere...other. If that’s the yardstick, then perhaps these guys aren’t second-stringers at all. Here and there, CDs may be purchased. If any of this makes you even slightly curious where they’ll take you, then go right ahead. You’ve been warned; hear them now, forget them never.