257) Kaleidoscope — “Please”
No, Ashiya, not that Kaleidoscope. This is a ‘67 single from an American band founded by multi-instrumental super-session player (and future leader of El Rayo-X) David Lindley.
Lindsay Planer says in All Music Guide that:
[Kaleidoscope] synthesized rock & roll with roots and world music, first yielding Side Trips [on which today’s song appeared] arguably the most diverse effort of 1967. . . . . The mid-tempo ballad “Please” was picked as the single . . .
Arnold Shaw’s liner notes describe the album as:
It’s inventive, imaginative, intense and an amalgam of many divergent influences — sounds that range from old-time ragtime blues to exotic, drone-and-bells, minor-keyed music of Greece and Turkey, and even incorporate a Cab Calloway-Eddie South imitation of Minnie the Moocher. It’s music that is off-beat, far-out, and as unbuttoned as their comments about themselves.
According to Discogs, Lindley plays the acoustic and electric guitar, upright and electric bass guitar, banjo, lap steel guitar, mandolin, hardingfele, bouzouki, cittern, bağlama, gumbus, charango, cümbüş, oud, weissenborn, and zither, among other instruments. Lindley indicates on Side Trips’s liner notes that he dislikes: “cool girls, unenthusiastic-about-anything phonies, bigots, hypocrisy, death/war, drugs, self-centered masses, what greed makes people do.” Did he think he was giving Playboy a centerfold quote?
“Searching”’s lyrics should be required reading in any “How to Be a Good Friend” class. They obviously come from a very personal place.
Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations 