tracks on LP: Egyptian Gardens / If The Night / Please / Keep Your Mind Open / Pulsating Dream / Oh Death / Why Try / I Found Out / Life Will Pass You By / Lie To Me / Petite Fleur / Banjo / Cuckoo / Nobody / Elevator Man / Hello Trouble
Record Label: Edsel Records XED 115
Producer: Various
Released: 1983
Purchased: 1983
Kaleidoscope | Bacon From Mars | Edsel | 1983 | THE FLOOD of psychedelic reissues continues unabated. After giving us The Action, The Merseybeats, and Screamln’ Jay Hawkins, Edsel join the party. Kaleidoscope are one of the few remaining legends of the ’60s.
Only one of their albums—apparently the worst— was ever released in this country, and according to the press note “several of their singles are rare almost to the point of non-existence”. More important, Kaleidoscope were always supposed to be different, a little further out, and It was never clear why. Until now, It looked rather as if the “gypsy caravan train on acid” would remain a myth.
The roots of Kaleidoscope’s originality lie way back in the bluegrass and folky “old time” movement of the very early ’60s. David Lindley‘s Mad Mountain Ramblers and Chris Darrow‘s Dry City Re-Organised Players merged somewhere around early ’63 Into The Dry City Scat Band, just as the more widespread folk revival was blossoming.
With the addition of Solomon Feldthouse (sic), they boasted three virtuosos who could alternate amongst a bizarre variety of instruments — fiddles, guitars, mandolins, banjos, dobros, autoharps. You name it, they had it.
Aside from possessing an absurd, grizzly baritone, Feldthouse was experimenting with Turkish Instruments like the Caz and the Oud; and when, in the summer of ’66, Lindley began putting the pieces of Kaleidoscope together— with John Vidican on drums—the loose ensemble was prepared to try almost any combination of sounds In its humorous pursuit of total eclecticism.
By now of course Dylan had gone electric and the folk revival was on the wane, so Darrow was roped back into advise on amps and p.a.’s. With the abundance of hallucinogenics, the only thing missing was one Charles Chester Grill, aka Fenrus Epp, Max Buddha, Templeton Parceley, on fiddle, harp and keyboards. The end product was ‘Side Trips’, from which this record’s first seven songs are taken.
Kaleidoscope | Bacon From Mars | Edsel | 1983
For the most part they don’t, in 1983, sound that extraordinary. The first, ‘Egyptian Gardens’, is the most startling, a whirling salad of cajun, bluegrass, flamenco and bouzouki with a nomadic/ Arabian wall of a vocal to boot. If this is a trip it spans the globe. ‘Please’ and ‘If The Night’ are simpler, more Byrdsy excursions, while ‘Keep Your Mind Open’ is like acoustic ‘Piper At The Gates’, sung in that precise anglo-acidic manner of the time. What engages the ear Is the criss-cross play of strings plucked and bowed, the way each instrument winds and picks out its own delicate track through the melody. The songs aren’t strong but the experiments are dazzling, sometimes beautiful. ‘Pulsating Dream”s fuzzy static suggests a less accomplished ‘Fifth Dimension’ or an over-exotic John Phillips; ‘Oh Death’ is Lee Hazlewood through the gruff cowpoke larynx of Feldthouse.
Despite continued Eastern and bluegrass frills, the second album ‘Beacon From Mars’ is more rock-oriented, as one of its two songs here, ‘I Found Out’, makes clear. Riding an organ, it’s a much straighter psychedelic sound. The neatly picked mandolins and McGuinnish harmonies of ‘Life Will Pass You By’ recall Byrds and even the Dead of ‘Friend Of The Devil’.
Third album ‘The Incredible Kaleidoscope’ is generally rated the most consistent and best-produced of the four, though ‘Lie To Me’ is ordinary hard electric R&B, ‘Petite Fleur’ is an irresistibly slow cajun two-step, with delirious fiddles feeding into a last-minute hillbilly jig, and ‘Banjo’ Is a multi-echoed shower of —amazing isn’t it— banjos that sound like the zithers of the Third Man theme.
Kaleidoscope | Bacon From Mars | Edsel | 1983
‘Cuckoo’ is rather duff Cream, sung In a folk-apocalyptic tone like that of Barry McGuire. The rare ‘Nobody’ features Larry Williams and Johnny Guitar Watson, with Lindley’s dobro played almost like a sitar. The hippy funkadelia of this song was deemed too weird by white and black stations alike. Finally, ‘Hello Trouble’ is an old country toon played safe ‘n’ sweet.
To be honest, ‘Bacon From Mars’ shows Kaleidoscope to have been not much more than inspired dilettantes, extremely skilled as musicians but rather weak as writers. No matter, they always claimed there was an underlying, implicit humour in everything they did, and the few group portraits we have of them makes them look more like The Bonzo Dog Band than anything else.
Their live shows were anarchic affairs featuring troupes of flamenco and belly dancers, and this absurd side was one of the things that led to an eventual split, as Chris Darrow couldn’t see what large breasts had to do with their music.
‘Bacon From Mars’ seldom touches the heights of psychedelic masterworks like ‘Electric Music For The Mind And Body’ but will remain an amusing diversion from the norms of druggy regurgitation. Sol Feldthouse is said to be residing currently In Santa Cruz with, yes, a belly dancer. NME, 17/09/83)
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