Kaleidoscope
Incredible!

Kaleidoscope (USA) – Incredible! (Epic, 1969).

Crossing the heart of the mystery is, in this case, asking why, within the Summer of Love, such a marvelous and exemplary music, so well played, as that of Kaleidoscope (USA), could have remained almost without recognition and legitimation. Yet. So imaginative, so cultured and popular at the same time, so “maximalist” and capable of entering and exiting the throes of time! “Incredible!”, the 1969 album, their third work, represented their greatest commercial success, crystallizing their inclination to dramatize the sound of four continents, in the not so flattering 139th position on Billboard. Meanwhile, without enhancing their prestige, Jimmy Page called them “My favorite band of all time, my ideal band.” Right @[IlConte]?

The Kaleidoscope, formed in 1966 in Berkeley, were talented multi-instrumentalists, full of inventiveness and imagination. Eccentric. Without clichés. One of the most singular groups of the 60s and certainly the most eclectic of the psychedelic era.

They blended Folk, Blues, and Middle Eastern ethnic music founding a distinctly autonomous language, with no intertwining with the lysergic psychedelia of the Grateful Dead, with the vibrant Acid Rock of Quicksilver Messenger Service, with the acid Folk Pop of Jefferson Airplane or the lyricism of Love, with the Garage Rock of 13th Floor Elevators and Seeds, with the libertarian noise of Red Krayola, with the protest of Country Joe And The Fish against the warlike, racist and reactionary establishment. And I’ll stop here, to highlight their originality in a horizon of unrepeatable beauty.

The Kaleidoscope contaminated American Folk with exotism in a haphazard, oblique and irregular way, but not randomly, nor spurious. Thus, they were considered among the pioneers of the union between Rock and World Music. Their style, with its opulence and cohesion, would remain, over the years, without followers.

Alongside guitar, bass, and drums, they included Country instruments like banjo, mandolin, violin and exotic instruments, especially string ones, like dobro, bozouki, saz, dulcimer, psaltery, but also percussion instruments like darabouka and tabla (the latter would be picked up by Third Ear Band).

They were: David Lindley, guitar and violin (later sessionman for Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, and Bruce Springsteen), habituated to the Bluegrass and Jug scene. Solomon Feldhouse, with a very original baritone voice, expert in Turkish ethnic instruments, with a past as an accompanist for belly dancers. Chris Darrow, bass, excellent composer. Chester Crill, keyboards, harmonica and violin, lover of pseudonyms, he would go by Fenrus Epp, Maxwell Buddha, Max Buda, and Templeton Parcely. John Vidican, drummer.

Side Trips, from 1967 was a great debut amidst Folk Rock and Acid Beat tinged with oriental melodies and psychedelia (e.g., “Egyptian Gardens,” “Pulsating Dream,” and “Oh Death”).

A Beacon From Mars, the 1968 masterpiece, brought the metamorphosis of Country and Western into Raga Folk and Rock Blues of vast lunar imagery, in an increasingly pushed eclecticism. It proposed two extraordinary “Jazz-Rock” jams: Taxim (divagations on a Turkish popular theme) and A Beacon From Mars (a blues expanded towards the noise and the most divergent spontaneity). It was immortalized live without studio overdubs!

And here we are at “Incredible!”, another work of great depth and exceeding delicacy. The defections of Darrow and Vidican lead to new additions: Stuart Brotmann on bass and Paul Lagos, a highly skilled percussionist.

Our guys drown us -and grace us- with electro-acoustic sounds in tracks decidedly devoted to Folk. Two covers: “Killing Floor” by Howlin’ Wolf rendered funky and the traditional “Cookoo”, dominated by Lagos's percussion and Feldhouse's powerful singing. Then there's the long suite of nearly 12 intoxicating minutes of Raga-Rock “Seven Ate-Sweet”: less improvised than the two predecessors (i.e., the Martian overrun), in Bulgarian 7/8 rhythm, it tremendously develops a Turkish wedding theme. Even simply following the bass line leads to a dazzling, definitive enchantment. So is it for the multidirectional, spasmodic escapes of the violins. Or the impetus of Lindley's electric guitar, sweeping the track like a hot wind. But here, through every instrument, you reach the exaltation of the expressive potential of detail and time. So it is for the singing, which crosses five macro-phases that I would exemplify in this way: phase “silence,” phase “muezzin,” phase “Japanese cartoon,” phase “Balkan,” indefinite “closure.”

Then there’s Benjo, with Lindley distilling notes at increasing speed in a Raga-Country not devoid of "American primitivism" fantasies of Sandy Bull. Still odd times, 3/4, in the tumultuous “Petite Fleur”, sung in French, and, finally, the splendid and captivating “Lie To Me”, with a sharp rhythm section and slippery string instruments. An unusual Pop appeal for the inherent “barbarism” of our guys. For me (between parentheses) the collage of Beck “Mellow Gold” and “Odelay” memorized it, but that's my problem…

Thus, in “Incredible!” we find the attention to the “South of the world” and the physicality of sound, in music that is presented as rich, but never burdensome, quick and flowing, always ready to enchant, through variations and never sterile virtuosity of the musicians.

Of course, it sold nothing and with the total flop of “Berenice” (a valid electric Country Blues, capable of the esoteric and illuminating “To Know Is Not To Be”) came the premature end of the group's story, except for some sporadic and makeshift reunions (in 1976 with “When Scopes Collide” and in 1990 with “Greetings From Kartoonistan,” but here only Imasoulman @[imasoulman] arrived). What history doesn’t say, the legend recounts. An impudent generation that didn’t love them enough!

I stand with Kaleidoscope. Unorthodox and marginal. Charming, with their eclecticism without possibility of followers. Executors of Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” and spokespeople of a clear enchantment from a knowing and conscious interstice of the psychedelic era.