“It’s love” / “Blue Law Sunday” (Reprise 0616) July 1967
The Misty Wizards | It’s Love | Reprise | 1967 | It’s classic double psych 45 sider time!!! The Misty Wizards were formed by Ted Lucas and Dick Keelan after their previous band The Spike Drivers disbanded. The latter also released a killer psychedelic 45 ’High Time’ / ’Baby Won’t You Let Me Tell You How I Lost My Mind’ on Om Records, then it got picked up by Reprise in 1966.
As you can see from the pic of The Spike Drivers the guys in the band were scared of razor blades, but don’t let those goaty beards put you off discovering their music cos it has the Expo seal of approval.
Back to The Misty Wizards -The song ’It’s Love’ is a classic flower psych tune with sitar (Ted Lucas got some coaching from Ravi Shankar on a visit to Los Angeles), finger symbols, clattering tambourine and just about anything else that made music in 1967 cool as fuck.
coloured sights and sounds
There is a line in the song ’Colored sights and sounds’ and it was that line that gave the world (or rather about 20 people from the garage punk forum my free CDR compilations ’Coloured Sights And Sounds’ that ran to 4 volumes.
The uncompiled ’Blue Law Sunday’ is also a personal favourite psychedelic raver. Surprisingly Fuzz, Acid and Flowers labelled this track dull??? What a bunch of losers because it is certainly not dull. It reminds me of perfect Sunset Strip garage psych music from 1967 with cool male/female vocals.
It’s got a magical guitar break over a one note bass line and primitive drums. It also contains a great lyric,
“Sometimes I think it’s better bustin’ rocks, At least you know where you stand.’
I guess Ted had some girl problems back then.
Reader comment:
great post, great write up. the spike drivers were/are amazing, remind me a little of Mimi & Richard Farina’s ”beat” numbers total pre-hippy psychedelic folk/beatnik feel. interestingly (but not surprisingly) the spike drivers were friendly with Jan & Lorraine and Mr. Keelan went on (an up) to Canada to found Canadian folk-psych commune-band the Perth County Conspiracy.
He’s still active in the music scene up here and still plays a dulcimer given to him by Jan & Lorraine.
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