LISTEN TO AND ORDER

For the most of it, the songs of PSYCHEDELIC SWEDEN are in English but a few written in Swedish have also been included partly to show you exactly what went down in those days but also for their high quality. Here follows a brief survey by Peter to tell you what the lyrics were about and other details surrounding the tracks, running them through in order:

TAKE A TRIP ON My FERRY is the only exception on the album, having been recorded as late as 1998 or 99. However, the song itself  was actually written back in the heyday of the psychedelic sixties with only the bridge added later plus some minor changes in the verses. The word "trip" does not refer to lysergic acid in any way since I had not even heard of that substance back in `68. It´s just a ride on a ferry across the bight between Denmark and Sweden.

JOAN: My main inspiration for these lyrics was Lewis Carrol´s "Alice in wonderland". Hampus Ekholm played the accompanying electric guitar while some of my instruments involved cornet, recorders, (a pitched down) melodeon, guitars, bass as well as doing vocals both upfront and multi layered choirs in the background.

SYRRAN is Swedish for "siss" or sister. This is version number 2, the first one recorded the year before. I used an old Kawai electric guitar which sounded so poorly that I had to improve it somehow, trying to brighten it up as I overdubbed it layer after layer.  The verses are about a girl picking flowers and mushrooms in the deep forest and the magical feeling of being there in the midst of it all with nature and wildlife all around.

MARY MERCURY was never finished in this version and yet another attempt at creating magic with the old Kawai guitar overdubbing it in thick layers, some of which were made more crisp and resonant by using high speed.  The song is something I wrote way back in 1968 inspired by some fantasies around an android girl friend, a sort of science fiction theme I was working on back then.

SO ALONE is my moodier side from those early days. It´s strange to hear me sing about time being "your life time burden" when I was merely in my earliest twenties. But that´s what I was feeling at the time and so that´s how it came out. This recording was made, like several others, using two Revox machines to get some sort of stereo image about it. The main instrument was acoustic guitar and occasionally melodeon pitched down to mimic the bass notes of a church organ.

TÄBY SÅNG is a long and dark piece with even darker Swedish lyrics about a love affair  that has just ended.  I wrote the lyrics to this  based on some scrap notes I made in the wake of a bad trip and the breaking up of a relationship with a girl I once knew. Some days later I added the tune and recorded it on my Revox. In the nineties I partly rewrote this song together with a friend of mine calling it  "San- ningens natt", which in English would be "Night of truth".

MAMMA, PAPPA OCH BARNVISAN means "Song for mammies, daddies and kids". These fun loving  Swedish lyrics were partly inspired by the theme behind  "Little boxes", that  famous protest song which was written by Malvina Reynolds and performed by Pete Seeger in the early sixties. Among the flutes in the woodwind section I used a South American one called "quena". Several of the instruments were recorded placing the mike at the far end of a large room in the house where the family was living at the time, this to create a special ambience for this track. The rustling sound at the beginning is me beating on the strings of a detuned guitar and the percussion heard at times is a copper kettle facing upside down.

LONELY I´LL WAIT is the oldest recording of the album dating from 1970. The text sums up my first experience with a broken heart, something everyone has to face sooner or later. The sound of this take is perhaps a bit distorted but then again, that is how I recorded it, not worrying too much about the meters of my tape machine hitting the ceiling. SO NOW YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE was mainly performed by my brother Niklas with me joining in onviola da gamba, baroque travers flute and vocals. Niklas’s instrumentation comprises everything from organ via guitars to drums and an alto recorder. I think at the time we were quite heavily ins- pired by Pink floyd and the Moody blues, this rubbing off a bit on both arrangement and lyrics. PASTOR GRAN is a song in Swedish about a fictive priest called (in English) "reverend Pine". The lyrics are a bit like the Beatles "Eleanor Rigby", playing on the feeling of alienation surrounding our beloved  clergy men. For this cut which was made in `72 I used a cheap semi acoustic guitar recording it straight off with my Sennheiser microphone and then coloring it like I often did with the aid of that oscillating old tape recorder. The flute is a tenor made of bamboo and constructed by my father back in the fifties. The holes are so wide apart that you would almost need a gorilla to play it!

LISTEN TO AND ORDER

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