Golden State Psychedelia

Some of the earliest releases in Big Beat's Nuggets From The Golden State series were based around the output of top San Francisco recording facility, Golden State Recorders. The latest instalment in the series, Golden State Psychedelia, continues to celebrate the studio's legacy, restoring material from deleted volumes as well as exhuming more psychedelic gems from the GSR vault. Aside from rare singles by the Tow-Away Zone and Seventh Dawn, Golden State Psychedelia is comprised wholly of material that went unreleased, though not for reasons of musical quality. As studio boss and producer Leo Kulka said, the sheer volume of acts in the San Francisco of the era meant pitching material to labels became increasingly difficult. Nevertheless, Kulka gave bands a professional home in which to record, and the contents of Golden State Psychedelia, all recorded between 1966 and 1970, reflect the freaky, experimental flavour of the times. Highlights include the commercial pop-psych stylings of the Bristol Boxkite, Carnival and Ticket Agents, the punkadelic Goody Box and Immediate Family, and some truly outrageous studio experiments by Magician and the Gants. The package comes with the usual copious notes one expects of the Nuggets series, and will delight any aficionado of late 60s arcane West Coast psychedelia.

1 Blow Up - The Goody Box
2 Meditorium - The Carnival
3 Shab'd - The Towaway Zone
4 Sunless Night - The Bristol Boxkite
5 Rubiyat - The Immediate Family
6 Black Diamonds - The Ticket Agents
7 Highway Highway - The Short Yellow
8 Speed - Celestial Hysteria
9 Fuck For Peace - Bob Golden & Magician
10 Infinitation - The Carnival
11 Mad Rush World - The Bristol Boxkite
12 Don't Worry Me - The Seventh Dawn
13 My Kind Of People - Just Slightly Richer
14 Daddy's Zoo Song - The Towaway Zone
15 Handful - The Short Yellow
16 Ah Gee - The Goody Box
17 Wet Chant - The Immediate Family
18 Chasing Rainbows - The Bristol Boxkite
19 New Song - Celestial Hysteria
20 Years Have Passed Away - The Carnival
21 Who Are We - The Bristol Boxkite
22 Start Seeing - The Short Yellow
23 Love Is The Greatest Thing - The Royal Family
24 Sunday At The Lotus Parlor - The Gants