POST NO. 27: NOT QUITE WHAT PAUL SIMON HAD IN MIND ON "GRACELAND"

Today's post is a quickie as our tour of the Love, Peace and Poetry psychedelic rock series continues with the African volume. Easily the series' weakest link -- most likely because the continent offers a smaller sample size of garage rock -- the African volume is bizarre, and truly stretches the definition of "garage rock" past its boundary. Most of the music on this volume -- including today's offering -- comes from South Africa. And a good deal of the South African contributions are by white-skinned British musicians. Or, in the case of Freedoms Children, Scottish musicians.

Freedoms Children were considered to be the best of South Africa's psych rock bands. The following is from their 1969 album Battle Hymn of the Broken-Hearted Horde. (Just listen to the song; it's even weirder than the title of the album.) To quote a nice blurb I found on the world wide web: "[Battle Hymn...] has all the wonderful excesses of early progressive rock; the deep 'meaningful' poetry, spoken words, majestic organ-playing, sound effects, choirs, long guitar solos, etc."

Freedoms Children - "Kafkasque"

For more than you could ever hope to know about these guys -- including more mp3s -- click here.