The Electric Prunes; Mass in F Minor
Author: Gerard Fannon | 
Reprise 1967
For their third release the Electric Prunes were partnered with hit producer David Axelrod to create one of the most bizarre pop concepts of the sixties- Mass in F Minor
In a way it is hard to imagine why this album exists. The Electric Prunes were a garage rock band adept at churning out quality singles with clever lyrics. They were young and vibrant and by no means heading in the direction of a concept album, especially one without any standout hits.
Conversely Axelrod himself had been polishing his own unique orchestral sound and compositional style at Capitol Records, scoring production credits with pop artists and soul singers such as Lou Rawls, Letta Mbulu and “Man from U.N.C.L.E” star David McCallum. However there was no indication that he was about to score an entire acid rock interpretation of the Tridentine Latin Mass.
However exist it does, and is in all fairness a brilliant acid rock record, albeit a slightly strange concept album. Mass in F Minor shows the beginnings of the ideas that would shape Axelrod’s later solo projects, namely the three classic albums he cut for Capitol Records towards the end of the decade: Songs of Innocence (68), Songs of Experience (69) and Earth Rot (70).
A Mass of Troubles: Mass in F Minor Not All Good
Mass in F Minor didn’t bring such good things for the Prunes. Lumbered with an album they didn’t write and a producer who didn’t seem to appreciate their own artistic vision, Mass in F Minor proved to be a disaster for them. The record certainly propelled Axelrod’s career as a solo artist forward, but it also put the final nail in the coffin of The Electric Prunes.
1967 had been a good year for the Electric Prunes. The Los Angeles band had scored chart success in ‘66 with “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night”, being one of the first psychedelic singles to make it in the charts. Their debut album of the same name was released in ‘67, as had the follow up Underground.
Album Review Pussy; Pussy Plays Author: Gerard Fannon |
1969 Morgan Blue Town Theremins to the fore on this British Rock album from 1969 The unfortunately named Pussy released one self-titled album on the small London label Morgan Blue Town in 1969. Morgan Blue Town had a habit of printing its albums in meagre quantities (and in the case of Chimera recording 20 tracks worth of material and then forgetting to release any of it) and as such much of the back catalogue has become very saught after. Due to its scarcity the original Pussy Plays LP can command large three figure sums from record dealers, being regarded by many as a lost classic of the UK psych scene. Thankfully it has been reissued by Arkama and can be picked up off Amazon for a fraction of the price. Fortes Mentum Pussy were previously known as Fortes Mentum, a band who released a string of fine psychedelic singles on Parlaophone. Apart from that, any more biographical information of the band is practically non-existent. On the record itself Danny Beckerman gets named as contributing the majority of the tracks on the LP. From the fact that the front cover bears a picture of an enormous orange cat and that both the album begins and ends with the sound of said cat screeching, one can ready tell that this is an album not to be taken too seriously. It smacks of the same whimsy that makes British psychedelia so appealing. Pussy Plays “We built the Sun” is a marvellous bit of wide-eyed hippy nonsense, with the vocalist proclaiming in hushed tones that “I am Mr Sun and Mr Snow” over the backing of a single repetitive guitar line and complimentary swells of organ. Sadly the naive chorus lets the track down, with the backing vocals tending to go a bit flat. “The Open Ground” is also apt to raise a smile, being as it is a spoken word piece on the destruction of the environment. Unfortunately any gravitas which the doom-laden poetry may have contained is lost in the vocalist’s middle-class diction. |