THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,228) Perry Leopold — “The 35th of May”
This “gorgeous” (Stanton Swihart, https://www.allmusic.com/album/experiment-in-metaphysics-mw0000722983) song has a “zen-like beauty perhaps equalled only by Nick Drake. [Was Perry Leopold (see #293) a] homeless troubadour or the true soul of american music?” (JamesAnderson-cj1mi, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QpMNoq1slbE&pp=ygUdUGVycnkgbGVvcG9sZCB0aGUgMzV0aCBvZiBtYXk%3D) Both? If the U.S. Patent Office issued patents for rock sub-genres, he would likely have one for acid folk.
Patrick Lundborg writes that:
Experiment in Metaphysics is the original downer folk masterpiece, and remains a yardstick against which recent finds are measured, and usually found lacking. Recorded in an altered state of mind . . . Leopold succeeds in creating a truly psychedelic, profound experience using just acoustic guitar and his voice, like a Tim Hardin [see #457] from the underworld. The moods shift from world-weary vagabond testimonies to heavy hallucinogen visions, and even the instrumental tracks are more psychedelic than five layers of Sgt. Pepper tape loops. . . . [The LP] is one of the few records to actually live up to the term [acid folk] — indeed Leopold even used it on the original record label . . . and should rightly be credited as inventor of the genre.
The Acid Archives (2nd ed.)
Patrick The Lama notes that: “A person in attendance remembers it as “. . . one incredible evening of altered and accentuated creativity . . . Perry Leopold sounds as big a star as Tim Buckley. He was inventing a genre, and he may even have known it.” (https://dyingforbadmusic.tumblr.com/post/119469150153/perry-leopold-the-absurd-paranoid-i-really)
Stanton Swihart gives the backstory:
At a time when the antiwar movement and the LSD-based drug culture were inseparable and indistinguishable from the counterculture, Leopold was entirely invested in the culture, living on the streets of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, crashing in the apartments and barns of a wide-ranging net of friends, playing on street corners by day and small coffeehouses at night. In June 1970, he recorded the Experiments in Metaphysics LP, which was printed in a single run of 300 copies. . . . [It was] an accomplished and unique piece of progressive folk with political overtones. [M]ost of the . . . albums . . . were given away on a Philadelphia street corner in one afternoon in August . . . . [It was r]ecorded live during a five-hour session in the basement of a shoe-repair shop . . . . [T]he music is gorgeous, first-rate progressive folk. . . . Leopold creates a proto-gothic ambience full of dark and brooding imagery that is much less cartoonish than most of what passes as “acid,” while maintaining that music’s visceral punch. . . . exquisitely intelligent and forward-looking. Leopold’s mood is much more pious than most music that came out of the psychedelic era . . . there is something aged and wise about Leopold’s music. . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/perry-leopold-mn0000262816#biography
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Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 
Wow surprised he isn’t more well known. Very reminiscent of Fahey and Renbourne, both of whom I like a fair bit.
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Beautiful! I’ve heard about him over the years but this my first time hearing his music.
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