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NEW!
SPECIAL PSYCH FREAK OUT MIX!
A special one hour mix of sixties psychedelic pop - featuring rare and unreleased tracks by PINK FLOYD and RASPBERRY PARADE - was featured on Shane Quentin's CRMK radio show:
THE PSYCHEDELIC GARDEN
The show was broadcast live on Friday 14th December 2007, but the mix is still available from the Garden website and the link above.
BUY RASPBERRY PARADE TRACKS!
Finally, forty years after it was recorded, Raspberry Parade's music is legally on sale!
The first of the newly restored tracks can be dowloaded as high quality mp3's from TUNE TRIBE
English psychedelic band Raspberry Parade only existed for two years - from 1965 until the end of 1966. Despite recording an extraordinary collection of songs, none of their records have ever been legally released. But even after forty years of near-obscurity the band still has a strong cult following - in England there is even a tribute band - 'Raspberry Charade'.
Raspberry Parade bootlegs have been circulating within the music industry ever since 1966, and the band's influence can be heard in many well-known records from the sixties:- Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Small Faces, The Doors, and even The Beatles are said to have been influenced by the music of Raspberry Parade.
Prince is rumoured to own a rare original acetate.
UK musician Steve Marshall has spent the last year trying to piece together Raspberry Parade's 'lost' 1966 album 'Time is Honey' from the few surviving tapes and acetates that still exist. The project is nearing completion but there is still work to be done. As well as the tracks that were to make up 'Time is Honey' Steve has managed to obtain a number of live tracks and other recordings - including an un-released single 'Christmas on the Moon' produced by the legendary Joe Meek. A double CD release is planned for 2008.
The Raspberry Parade story is tinged with tragedy: bass player Sean Barraclough was found dead in mysterious circumstances just before Christmas 1966 and Brian Heddon, the band's leader and writer, vanished in 1972. For a fuller account of the band's history, go to the Raspberry Parade Website.
NOTES ON THE TRACKS
1) When the Universe Explodes
None of the surviving members of Raspberry Parade can recollect ever recording this song, though they agree that it sounds like their playing.
2) Over the Sky
Brian wrote this song early in 1965 after his first dabblings with LSD, and it led him to change musical direction and form Raspberry Parade. He was convinced that the song would be a huge hit, but it was never released. A bootleg version was widely circulated around London though, and was later played regularly at the UFO club. The recording was made in a studio in Hull using home-made but quite innovative equipment. This included one of the first variable-speed tape recorders - powered by a valve oscillator the size of a fridge! Whilst playing around with this studio toy, a new effect was discovered: Brian's name for it was 'skying' but it later became known widely known as 'flanging'.
3) Spacing Out
This song first appeared in 1965 as a very simple guitar instrumental in the 'surf music' vein. It soon became a regular feature of Raspberry Parade's live act, and got gradually longer and weirder over the next year. On the band's Californian tour in late '66 they would play it for over an hour at a time, with Heddon performing ritualistic dances around his Theremin and encouraging girls from the audience to get naked and join him.
Several recorded versions of the song exist, some of them live, and all are quite different. This one dates from 1966 and was recorded in Hull, with overdubs in San Francisco. It features some extraordinary guitar work from a close friend of the band - 'Oslo Van Ketchup' (possibly not his real name?) who worked as a poster designer. He uses his own invention 'The Plectrum of Infinity' - actually an electric drill with a rotating plectrum in the chuck; and the drill's motor can be heard quite clearly in places.
There is another earlier version of this track: 'Space Bus' features a commentary throughout by a Yorkshire tour bus courier, on a trip through the Solar System. The tour starts at the Outer Planets and zooms past the Earth - continuing on into the Sun.
4) Bubbles for the Snow Queen
The title was given to Brian Heddon by a girl from Liverpool. When her grandmother bathed her as a child, she would say 'Let's make bubbles for the Snow Queen'. Brian also had a habit of lying in the bath for hours, in the dark - sometimes all day...
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