the of mirror eye

* The Incredible String Band: Perfumed Garden-Chinese White (5.5 mb) | Half Remarkable Question (5 mb) | Painting Box (4 mb)
From God’s Holiday Part 1 : Vol 1

So, I decided a couple of weeks ago that the phrase, “A pox on you” is not used nearly enough in our modern day society, (i.e. A pox on you if you don’t come out drinking with us!). This post is about a band that would most likely have used just such a phrase.

The Incredible String Band burst on the scene in the mid sixties as a fairly traditional folk trio. After some “experimentation” and listening to bands like Pink Floyd, they quickly expanded their horizons and started playing hallucinatory based acoustic folk music. My first exposure to them was with their second album, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion and I was blown away. The lysergically based lyrics really scared me and the non-traditional (or is that ultra-traditional?) instrumentation bored its way into my mind.

Though they disbanded in 1974, The Beatles, Led Zepplin and The Rolling Stones all claimed The Incredible String Band as major influences. They’ve had a minor resurgence and have been gigging regularly since 1999.

These songs come from a collection of rarities and live oddities put out by The Gimbris Group.

—–+—–

For some reason, the topic of old age has recently become a hot topic amongst me and my friends. For me, it’s a constant preoccupation since I not only deal with old folks almost every day, but I’ve been claiming to be an old fogey for a long time now. So, back in the day (well, 1999 to be exact) and suffering from the post-graduation blues, I concocted this delicious alcohol based lemonade beverage that I named Grandpa’s Lemonade and drank it that entire summer. I lived in this huge house and would spend entire evenings on the back porch, drinking this lemonade, chain smoking cigarettes and sweating my ass off. Well, when I moved to Chicago, I introduced this drink to my friends who promptly renamed it Uncle Grandpa’s Lemonade, and Uncle Grandpa quickly became that relative you love to hate and hate to love.