On July 1st, 1967, William Rees-Mogg, the editor of “The Times” wrote an article titled “Who Breaks A Butterfly On A Wheel”. The phrase came from a satirical poem by Alexander Pope and referred to the barbaric use of a Catherine Wheel to torture slaves and criminals. William Rees-Mogg’s article concerned the recent sentencing of Mick Jagger to three months’ imprisonment for possession of four over-the-counter pep pills he had purchased in Italy, and Keith Richards being sentenced to one year in prison for allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property. (On appeal, Keith Richards’ sentence was overturned and Mick Jagger’s was amended to a conditional discharge, although he spent one night in London’s Brixton Prison). At the time, the intervention of a traditional establishment figure in this case was considered surprising and it is generally considered that his article was influential, not just in this particular case but in the zeitgeist of the time.
However, 30 years later, William Rees Mogg wrote a book (with James Dale Davidson) called “The Sovereign Individual (Mastering The Transition To The Information Age)” which became highly influential on people on the left and the right. At the time, the internet was in its infancy and the book was uncannily prescient in its prophesies. Here are some examples. Remember, the book was written in 1997.
- “We are going to live in a world of persistent make believe”.
- “The news media cannot always be depended upon to tell you the truth”.
- “In the future, you’ll see any story you wish, true or false, unfold on your television or computer with greater verisimilitude than anything that NBC or the BBC can muster”.
- “This new technology is going to lead to an intense, even violent nationalist reaction centred on those who lose status, income and power when what they assume to be their ordinary lives are disrupted”.
- “People who will be most upset by this technology will be those in middle income brackets in developed countries whose whose inbuilt privileges have suddenly been undermined by the decentralised effect of the internet”.
- “Nation states will die and in their place will rise a few sovereign individuals”.
William Rees-Mogg’s son is Jacob Rees-Mogg who peddled lies and misinformation prior to BREXIT. He is believed to have profited by £7 million after Brexit due to betting on the falling value of the pound and his shares in Somerset Capital Management, which has lucrative deals with companies in China and Russia. Does this make him a prime example of a sovereign individual?
The co-writer of “The Sovereign Individual” was James Dale Davidson who was an early proponent of the theory that Bill and Hillary Clinton were the leaders of a cabal of satanic pedophiles. He suggested that Vince Foster, an attorney in Bill Clinton’s administration was murdered due to an investigation into financial impropriety which would embarrass the Clintons. Five separate investigations have concluded that he took his own life but there were inconsistencies in the different reports: James Dale Davidson claimed that these inconsistencies are proof of a cover-up.
The conspiracies surrounding the Clintons developed over many years to a point where the political movement, known as QAnon, suggested that there is a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children, headed by the Clintons, who operate a global child sex trafficking ring and which conspired against President Donald Trump during his term in office. For the QAnon community, Trump is seen as a visionary, a warrior for justice who has tried to take down the elite and the shadowy wrong-doers.
“Our politicians are less powerful than they try to make us believe.” “All the real power is in banking institutions, offshore accounts or opaque financial structures.” Are these the beliefs of some crazies or are they probably true? The satanic pedophile stuff is grafted on top and can make the claims appear ridiculous until it is recalled that people like Jeffrey Epstein and other sexual deviants are/were in positions of authority.
Donald Trump appeals to racists and bigots on the far right of the political spectrum but there are a significant number of people whose views could be categorised as “far-left” who also believe in the conspiracy theories. The traditional view of political beliefs being on a spectrum from left to right is beginning to fall apart. Many people of the far left don’t see themselves as on board with the liberal mainstream. The establishment, at the centre of politics is being attacked from the left and the right and the extremes are coalescing. The middle ground of the establishment go to extraordinary lengths to protect the status quo, utilising all the mainstream forces at their disposal, such as MI5, the FBI and the CIA. Again, is this crazy talk or is there a kernel of truth here?
The father of Jerry Parks, who knew the Clintons in Arkansas, was shot. Juanita Broaddrick claimed that Bill Clinton raped her. The FBI sat on these stories, journalists knew about the accusations, but nothing was made public until after the Clinton impeachment for unknown reasons. Cover-up or cock-up?
Before the last Presidential election, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were circulated and although no evidence of sexual deviancy was found (as had been claimed online), it was shown that he had used his father’s name to court favour with wealthy individuals which resulted in him making a significant sum of money. It wasn’t clear whether Joe Biden was aware of his son’s activities. The contents of the laptop came to light three weeks before the 2020 election but the mainstream media wasn’t interested in this story. The only paper that published the story was The Washington Post, a right-wing tabloid. The FBI alerted the media to an imminent dump of Russian disinformation. Whenever a reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop appeared on social media, it was removed. Attempts to re-post the story were blocked. The source of the material was Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump’s strategist (for seven months), Steve Bannon and the mainstream media were suspicious. A number of former CIA directors wrote a letter which stated that the story was Russian disinformation. Do these stories give credence to the belief that the forces of the state were being utilised by the establishment to hide the truth or are they the wild fantasies of zealots attempting to become sovereign individuals?.
The concept of “The Matrix” is that you can either take the blue pill and remain in your brain-washed non-reality dream-state or take the red pill and see reality as it really is. Followers of QAnon believe that they have taken the red pill while the rest of us have sleepily and lazily taken the blue pill to persist with our meaningless and futile existence.
Rewind to William Rees-Mogg. He defended the drug-taking long haired anti-establishment members of The Rolling Stones by quoting Alexander Pope, whose poem, “Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot” describes how the poet responded to his physician’s word of caution about making making satirical attacks on powerful people. Was this phrase carefully chosen as an indication that, although he was editor of The Times, he truly believed that the citadel of the establishment could or should be stormed?
At the time of the Stones’ drug bust, according to Barry Miles, “The U.K. Underground was a catch-all sobriquet for a community of like-minded anti-establishment, anti-war, pro-rock’n’roll individuals, most of whom had a common interest in recreational drugs. They saw peace, exploring a widened area of consciousness, love and sexual experimentation as more worthy of their attention than entering the rat race.” Red pill or blue pill? What are the comparisons between the counterculture of the Sixties and the seemingly wild conspiracy theories of the late 2020’s? Thunderclap Newman’s “Something In The Air” summed it up like this: “Call out the instigators because there’s something in the air. We’ve got to get together sooner or later because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right.” Could this apply equally well in 1968 or 2020?
In the US, the counterculture of the Sixties was, in some ways, a reaction to the heavy-handed law enforcement that was in evidence at tragedies such as in the Columbia University protests of 1968 in New York City, the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, the arrest and imprisonment of John Sinclair in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Kent State shootings at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.
August 1968: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin announced that they were sending “super-hot” hippie girls to seduce the delegates of the Democratic Convention and give them LSD. They were going to put LSD into the water supply of the International Amphitheatre and were sending well-endowed hippie “studs” to seduce the wives and daughters of the delegates. “We are dirty, smelly, grimy and foul…we will piss and shit and fuck in public…we will be constantly stoned or tripping on every drug known to man”. Mayor Daley took all of this seriously, and much of the excessive security was due to his belief that the Yippies were going to disrupt the Convention in the manner that they had proclaimed they would. Over 650 protesters were arrested during the convention. The total number of injured protesters is unknown but over 100 were treated at area hospitals. It was reported that 192 police officers were injured and 49 required medical treatment.
January 6, 2021. Two thousand followers of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, protesting that the election had been rigged. Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes. Many people were injured, including 138 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.
The protests in the Sixties were justified, reasonable and were a genuine attempt to shake up the establishment which, for too long, perpetuated the myth that their way was the right way, the only way. The activities of QAnon and the storming of the Capitol Building were unjustified and a dangerous attempt to undermine civilisation as we know it.
Any hypocrisy here? Is the distinction between a peaceful protest (in the 60s) and a violent one (in 2021) enough to make the comparison absurd?
There are 58 astonishing tracks on Deviation Street, celebrating the music that came out of Ladbroke Grove in the seven years between 1968 and 1975. The bands were unified by a common commitment to the revolution in attitudes that they hoped would result from the forward views of the counterculture. The generation gap had never been wider and the hope was that the world would be a better place after a shift in attitudes saw “the man” get his comeuppance. Only the most cynical person in North West London at the time would suggest that 50 years later their admirable aspirations would be replicated by a group of people who felt that violence was the only answer. What’s so funny about peace love and understanding? In the Sixties, nothing. 50 years later these concepts were ridiculous and worthy only of scorn and hatred.
DISC ONE: Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate
1 NOTTING HILL GATE (single version) – Quintessence
In the Sixties, rents in Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill and Holland Park were half of what they were in other parts of London. A mixture of Irish immigrants and Windrush-generation West Indians meant that the area was dismissed the area as a slum. The area became the base for the British countercultural movement after the London Free School was established in Powis Terrace by John Hopkins, Rhauna Laslett and Michael X. They soon founded the Notting Hill Carnival, the “International Times” magazine, the UFO club and the drugs campaign group, Release.
Although the middle-class stoned white boys who subsequently moved into the area seemed to have very little in common with the working class migrant community that already existed, they united in their common enemy: the establishment or “the man”. The police were the representatives of everything that this community was against. Users of the “red pill” were scathing in their denouncement of “the straights”.
All this is beautifully summed up in Quintessence’s “Notting Hill Gate”.
“Things look great in Notting Hill Gate, they really move with the change in times but only you can know the reason why why they hide behind their own third eye.
Things look cool in Notting school, they never go about playing no rules but only you can know the reason why they fly in the sky so high.
Getting it straight in Notting Hill Gate, we all sit around and meditate but only you can know the reason why we fly in the sky so high.“
2 HURRY ON SUNDOWN – Hawkwind Zoo (1969)
Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell’s version of “Hurry Down Sunshine (See What Tomorrow Brings)”, written by Mary Fix and Will Shade in 1934, contains the lines, “Hurry down sunshine and see what tomorrow brings. It may bring lots of sorrow and it may bring lots of rain. I love my baby but she don’t love me. “
The first verse of Hawkwind Zoo’s song “Hurry On Sundown” is “Well, hurry on sundown. See what tomorrow brings. Well it may bring war or any old thing. Well, look into your mind’s eye. See what you can see. There’s hundreds of people like you and me“. The song was credited to Dave Brock, who is still the lead singer of Hawkwind. He cleverly took a blues song about lost love and turned it into an anthem for the progressive underground movement, wishing for a better, more enlightened world which could come about soon (at sundown), once the young generation rise up (by looking into their mind’s eye).
3 BLIND TO YOUR LIGHT – Carol Grimes & Delivery (1970)
In August 1976, Eric Clapton gave support to Enoch Powell, during a gig in Birmingham. In response, “Rock Against Racism” was formed which aimed to promote non-racist views by protesting against The National Front. Carol Grimes helped to found the Rock Against Racism movement and she played at the first gig in November 1976.
4 HALLUCINATIONS – Tomorrow (1968)
Tomorrow were recruited to appear in the film “Blow Up”, a film whose explicit sexual content was in direct defiance of Hollywood’s Production Code. The critical and box-office success of the film influenced the abandonment of the code in 1968. Steve Howe of Tomorrow recalled “We went on the set and started preparing for a guitar-smashing scene in the club. They even went as far as making up a bunch of Gibson 175 replicas and then we got dropped for The Yardbirds who were a bigger name. That’s why you see Jeff Beck smashing my guitar rather than his!“
5 BLACK LEATHER GLOVES – Bodast (1969)
The members of Bodast were Steve Howe (who used to be in Tomorrow and would go on to be a long time member of Yes), Bobby Clarke (who used to be in The Playboys, Vince Taylor’s backing band), Dave Curtiss and Clive Maldoon (sometimes known as Clive Skinner). The latter two went on to form a folk music duo called Curtiss Maldoon and one of the songs they wrote for their first, eponymous, album, released in 1971 was called “Sepheryn”. 25 years later, Curtiss Maldoon’s niece, Christine Leach, recorded her version of the song. At the time, she was collaborating with William Orbit, who, at the time, was also working with Madonna. When she heard the song, she developed it into a song that she called “Ray Of Light” which was a Top 20 hit in 18 countries. Dave Curtiss was not aware of the fact that Madonna had recorded “Sepheryn” as “Ray of Light” and heard it for the first time being played on the radio. He “couldn’t believe it” and was very annoyed until he learned that he would receive 15% of the royalties. “The Man” (or The Madonna) was ripping him off, but when he learned of his financial windfall, it didn’t seem to hurt quite so much. Clive Maldoon died in 1978, due to complications with prescription medications but his estate also received 15% of the royalties from the song.
6 SUBWAY (SMOKEY POKEY WORLD) – The Tickle (1967)
In 2004, American feminist critic Camille Paglia identified the lyrics of “Space Oddity” by David Bowie as representing the counterculture of the 1960s, stating, “As his psychedelic astronaut, Major Tom, floats helplessly into outer space, we sense that the ’60s counterculture has transmuted into a hopelessness about political reform.” The lead guitar on “Space Oddity” was played by Mick Wayne who had briefly been a member of The Hullabaloos before forming The Bunch Of Fives. Tony Visconti (who went on to produce 13 David Bowie albums) was assigned to produce the band but deemed their name was unsuitable for a band in The Summer Of Love, so he changed their name to The Tickle. After Tickle folded, having only released one single, Mick Wayne formed Junior’s Eyes who recorded an album called “Battersea Power Station”. The album is about “Numerology, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, layers of conscience and consciousness starting with total war and with total peace“, recalled Mick Wayne, shortly before he died in a fire in 1994.
7 LONG TIME COMING – Village (1969)
Village consisted of Peter Bardens, Bruce Thomas and and John Wilson. “All three of us were on different drugs; a thousand dramas culminating in a getting-it- together period in a country cottage, which turned into nothing more than a vast acid loon. It had obviously reached a point of no return“.
8 PAINTED LADY – Cochise (1970)
The fantastic electric guitar solo on “Painted Lady” is by Mick Grabham. His previous band was Plastic Penny, who had appeared at the first Isle of Wight Festival on August 31st, 1968, which was attended by around 10,000 people. The Festival was conceived as a counterculture event. The original Cochise was leader of an Apache band, who resisted invasions by Mexicans and Americans during the 19th century.
9 COLD EMBRACE – Sam Gopal (1969)
“International Times” (IT), a British underground newspaper, was launched on 15 October 1966 at The Roundhouse at an all-night rave which featured Pink Floyd and Soft Machine. The launch was described by Soft Machine’s guitarist, Daevid Allen, as “one of the two most revolutionary events in the history of English alternative music and thinking. The IT event was important because it marked the first recognition of a rapidly spreading socio-cultural revolution that had its parallel in the States.” From April 1967, and for some while later, the police raided the offices of International Times to try, it was alleged, to force the paper out of business. A benefit event labelled “The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream” took place at Alexandra Palace on 29 April 1967 and amongst the bands that performed were Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, The Move, and Sam Gopal Dream. Published fortnightly, IT became the leading British underground paper, its circulation peaking at around 40,000 copies in late 1968/early 1969, before another police raid led to declining sales and a financial crisis. Sam Gopal Dream transformed into Sam Gopal, a band named after their percussionist and they released one album, before their vocalist and lead guitarist, Ian Willis, left to join Hawkwind and Motorhead, where he was known as Lemmy.
10 I’M A STRANGER – The Action (1968)
When members of The Action moved in to a house in Ladbroke Grove, money was so tight that they stole electricity from members of Family, who lived next door. Their roadie was called Mouse and the band often went to his mother’s house. Rhauna Laslett had been instrumental in setting up the London Free School which organised the first two Notting Hill Gate Festivals and formed the “Notting Hill Neighbourhood Service”, which offered drug and legal advice and was subsequently rebranded as “Release”. Members of The Action went on to form Mighty Baby, most of whom became Muslims, adherents of the Sufi order. When Richard Thompson discussed their beliefs with them, he too converted.
11 LIVING IN SIN – Skin Alley (1970)
In 1971 the Glastonbury Festival moved to the time of the Summer Solstice and was known as the “Glastonbury Fair”. The organisers felt that all other festivals at the time were over commercialised and was paid for by the few who supported the ideal so the entrance was free and followed a medieval tradition of music, dance, poetry, theatre, lights and spontaneous entertainment. Around 12,000 people attended to enjoy David Bowie, Mighty Baby, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Gong, Hawkwind, Pink Fairies, Melanie and Skin Alley. Guitarist Bob James explained that the band’s reputation as a dedicated free festival band was because nobody would pay them. Max Taylor, the other guitarist in Skin Alley later became chairman of Lloyd’s insurance brokers. (Can this really be true?)
12 CHANGES – Mataya (1971)
David Wells sleevenotes to this compilation explains how Mataya came to be recorded. “By 1970, repeated police raids of the Mangrove – a Caribbean eatery in All Saints Road – had led to so much racial tension in the area that the Carnival committee decided to postpone the annual August festivities to the following Easter in order to avoid inflaming the situation. Other local elements, however, decided to push ahead. Mick Farren and The Pink Fairies performed at a Trafalgar Square demonstration in solidarity with ‘East End squatters, Notting Hill blacks and Piccadilly freaks’ ahead of the following weekend’s Notting Hill People’s Carnival, as it was renamed that year. A procession that started and finished in Powis Square was led by Ginger Johnson’s African Drummers and a witchdoctor, the event concluding with a rock festival that featured ‘various local musicians’. These included Mataya, a five-piece band led by Mataya Clifford Chewaluza, a Zimbabwe-born musician, singer and songwriter who had moved to London in 1967. Shortly after a support slot to Hawkwind in December 1970, Mataya attracted the attention of Mike Weston, an accountant who looked after the financial affairs of Chris Blackwell and Jimmy Miller. He invited Mataya to record a demo session” but “Changes” has remained unreleased until this week.
13 SICKLE CLOWNS – The Pretty Things (1970)
The Pretty Things often made the headlines for their wild antics, which were due in no small part to their drummer Viv Prince. Often inebriated or high on amphetamines, he would leave his drum stool to roam around the stage, and generally cause havoc wherever he went. A young Keith Moon attended several Pretty Things concerts to study Viv Prince’s style. The mayhem culminated in a tour of New Zealand in August 1965, during which he paraded around in a leopard-skin pillbox hat, carrying around a dead crayfish on a string, plotting pranks and setting fires onstage, which resulted in big amount of bad publicity. Following an altercation with the crew, he was thrown off the plane that was taking the band home after the tour and had to make his own way back to England. He was replaced in the band soon after. Viv Prince thought he was being revolutionary but it may be that he was just a twat.
14 SONG FOR LOTS – Family (1970)
When members of Family moved into a house in Lots Road (next door to members of The Action), their life became more entertaining when Jenny Fabian moved in with them. Her experiences with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll at their house were sensationalised in her book “Groupie”. Luckily, she changed the names to protect the guilty and nobody would have guessed the true identity of the band she called “Relation”. In June 2006, “The Observer” nominated Groupie as one of “the 50 greatest music books ever.”
15 GALACTIC ZOO – Kingdom Come (1971)
Kingdom Come’s album “Galactic Zoo Dossier” was conceived by Arthur Brown as being about “the confrontation of all the hippie ideals with the actualities of political and police power. It was looking at a spiritual quest in the context of earning money, assassination, wrongful arrests, and it was posed in terms of us all being prisoners in a Galactic Zoo.” The review in the “New Musical Express” included the opinion that “there seems little to recommend an album that consists of a series of contrasting noises strung together by any number of tortured, even frenzied screams.”
16 POWIS SQUARE CHILD – Roger Bunn (1970)
After a musical career that saw him cross musical paths with Joe Brown, The Beatles and David Bowie, Roger Burn became the original guitarist in Roxy Music (being replaced by Phil Manzanera). He later became immersed in politics and was especially concerned with issues of national and corporate malfeasance and greed. He was heavily involved in the anti-apartheid movement and was banned from performing in South Africa by F W de Klerk. He went on to join the board of the Performing Artists’ Media Rights Association, the main body which distributes royalties to artistes, and used this position to campaign for better pay and recognition for unknown musicians. He spoke out against the laxity of the performing rights legislation, for instance the fact that up to 1996 there was no complete register of which musicians played on what records, making royalties very hard to distribute fairly. Roger Bunn founded the Music Industry Human Rights Association in 1994 to use music to fight human rights abuses. On the international stage, he claimed his campaigning helped destroy the Indonesian golf championship, achieved a full complement of African nations at the Atlanta Olympics and helped convince FIFA to disqualify Burma from entering the World Cup.
17 THE ANSWER – Peter Bardens
“He who speaks does not know. So said a wise man long ago. He who knows does not speak. The answer. Mistaking words for love we don’t know but talk a lot. Most of us question.“
18 LOOKING FOR TIME – Bond and Brown
On 8 May 1974, Graham Bond died under the wheels of a Piccadilly line train at Finsbury Park station, aged 36. Most sources list the death as a suicide. Friends agree that he was off drugs, although becoming increasingly obsessed with the occult (he believed he was Aleister Crowley’s son)
19 WHICH DREAMED IT – Boeing Duveen & The Beautiful Soup
Sam Hutt’s first writing credit was on a single by Sarah Miles 1965 called “Where Am I”. His own first recording was as Boeing Duveen & The Beautiful Soup. The writing credits are shared between Sam Hutt and Lewis Carroll. During the NUM miners strike in 1984/85, performing as Hank Wangford, he was attacked on stage by a group of right-wing skinheads.
20 OUT DEMONS OUT – Edgar Broughton Band
“Out Demons Out” is an adaptation of “Exorcising The Demons Out Of The Pentagon”, a song by the American band, The Fugs. On October 21, 1967, around 70,000 people protested against the Vietnam War by taking part in a protest “March On The Pentagon.” About 650 people, including novelist Norman Mailer, were arrested for civil disobedience on the steps of the Pentagon. A number of people (including Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman) attempted to levitate The Pentagon and “exorcise the evil within.” “Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon Oct. 21, 1967” is a song from The Fugs’ 1968 album, “Tenderness Junction”, and consists a recording of this attempt, which sadly failed. A large crowd formed in front of the Pentagon and repeatedly chanted, “Out, demons, out!”
https://www.terrascope.co.uk/Features/LadbrokeGrove.htm
There are two further discs on this wonderful album
DISC TWO Breezing Down Portobello Road
1 ALL IN YOUR MIND (single version) – Stray
2 BLANKMAN CRIES AGAIN – High Tide
3 TURN AROUND – Steamhammer
4 AFTA – Davey Graham & Holly
5 SLIPSTREAMS – Mighty Baby
6 SUN MUSIC – Skin Alley
7 GLAD I CAME AROUND – Quiver
8 A MIND BLOWN IS A MIND SHOWN – Hapshash and the Coloured Coat
9 WE TOOK THE WRONG STEP YEARS AGO – Hawkwind
10 SLUM LORD – The Deviants
11 NOTTING HILL EVICTION BLUES – Ram John Holder
12 CONCRETE LINE UP – Ron Geesin
13 SAD SONG FOR WINTER – Chimera
14 VELVET TO ATONE – Trader Horne
15 APRIL AFFAIR – G. F. Fitzgerald
16 RINGS OF FORTUNE – Tyrannosaurus Rex
17 MY MIND – The Misunderstood
18 IF* – Rosemary
19 UNCLE HARRY’S LAST FREAK-OUT – Pink Fairies
DISC THREE Way Down In The Grove
1 CIRCUS DAYS (single version) – Junior’s Eyes
2 NOTHING SPECIAL – Trees
3 10,000 WORDS IN A CARDBOARD BOX – The Aquarian Age
4 COSMIC SURFER – Quintessence
5 THE SYSTEM – Noir
6 VERY FINE…FAR AWAY – Third Ear Band
7 STILL YAWNING, STILL-BORN – Shagrat
8 2HB (demo version) – Roxy Music
9 ONE HAND CLAPPING* – Rosemary
10 OLD HAT – Uncle Dog
11 SUMMERTIME BLUES – Mick Farren
12 THE RIGHT STUFF – Robert Calvert
13 KINGS OF SPEED – Michael Moorcock & Deep Fix
14 LOST JOHNNY – Motörhead
15 SILENT TELEPHONE – The 101’ers
16 I’M A FREE MAN – Mataya
17 LADBROKE GROVE BLUES – Ram John Holder
18 WITCHDOCTOR – Ginger Johnson & His African Messengers
19 DEVIATION STREET – The Deviants
It may be completely false to draw comparisons between the far right QAnon movement in the USA of the 2020’s and the British counterculture movement of the Sixties. Certainly, a humourous attempt to levitate the Pentagon isn’t quite the same as a deadly attack on the seat of government. Nevertheless, both sets of believers attempted to challenge the seemingly unbreakable power that controls our lives. On the other hand, the progressive, undergound music that evolved from Britain between 1967 and 1975 is thrilling, inventive, exciting, intelligent and thought-provoking. Out demons out.
Add Some Music To Your Day 