Customer Reviews

Serpent Power

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Two elements are at work on Serpent Power's only album from 1967. The first is being different than your contemporaries was the same of the game in the competitive 60s underground. The second is, during the very early days of psychedelia, no one quite knew what psychedelia was supposed to sound like.

Serpent Power were unique in that they used a electric banjo. And though its true their label Vanguard had a yen for folk and very unprocessed psych--listen to either Circus Maximus or Country Joe and the Fish, Electric Music for the Mind and Body and the ideas may be progressive, but the recordings are raw-Serpent Power is no country, folk or bluegrass album.

Most of the tracks on Serpent Power are open jams, and some shimmering psychedelia like the elegant "Gently Gently." This and a lot of other tracks used instruments in a way rock had not before--the open field of that was then called "the new music" when there was not even a rock FM station in New York yet.

"Endless Tunnel" was an infant progressive radio airwave favorate once the mics opened--one of those early mainstays that seemed never to have existed after December 31, 1969. This is a long poem--set to an almost Coltranian mode--featuring a great banjo solo.

So, the narrator of "Endless Tunnel" buys a "ticket" and gets on the train for a "trip" and starts to talk to "Mr. Conductor." After ten minutes of poetry he asks the conductor were the boxcars were heading and the conductor says "I don't know. I'm just following the tracks.

It was early 1967. Spe(L)l thi(S) out for you? I (D)on't think I have to.

The Serpent Power, The Serpent Power - Another excellent example of the fertile creative ground in SF during the sixties, beat poet David Meltzer assembled his wife and a few musician buddies and released this overlooked gem under the moniker The Serpent Power. Absorbing influences ranging from The Great Society to The Grateful Dead, the band does a remarkable job of setting Meltzer's words to a groovy, psychedelic vibe. Highlights include the trenchant "Nobody Blues", the poppish "Up and Down" (their lone 45,) the Jerry Garcia-fied "Open House" and the Eastern-flavored closer, "Endless Tunnel", where Meltzer's stream-of-consciousness upstages Jim Morrison's soliloquy on "The End."
[...]

The Serpent Power's sole album is worth hearing and buying- at a reasonable price- but it isn't a classic. Completists for this era and style of music will want to pick it up but there are dozens (if not hundreds) of albums to hear first.

One of the rarest psychadelic albums ever made, it was hard to get a copy of it back in 1967!