Psychedelic Shack
Released 50 years ago today: The Temptations, Psychedelic Shack. 1970 is fairly late in the game to be calling anything ‘psychedelic’, that kite flew in ’68 at the latest, Maybe it was a record company thing.
I’m not entirely sure what this has to do with psychedelia. The only track that goes out there a bit is Take a Stroll Through Your Mind but, noticeably, it celebrates a righteous toke, not an acid trip, and I’m not convinced that it isn’t written to order. For black psychedelia you really need to seek out Rotary Connection as well as Jimi Hendrix and, to some degree, the Chambers Brothers.
According to Wikipedia (accessed today):
Psychedelic Shack … represents the Temptations’ full-blown submergence into “Psychedelic music”. Completely written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong and produced by Whitfield, Psychedelic Shack almost completely abandoned the “Motown Sound” formula for this LP; hard rock guitars, synthesizer sound effects, multitracked drums, and stereo-shifting vocals giving most of the album’s songs a harder, less traditional feel than the Temptations’ previous work.
That is complete bollocks; the album is recogniseably out of a Motown/soul/doo-wop background. Sure, it represents a shift from the 60s Motown sound to 70’s funk and soul, but that was happening anyway with the shift from Detroit to LA.
All that being said, this is a fun album and worth a listen. As I’ve found so often in this project, a key factor in anything I’ve liked is the bass playing, and I’d like to know who is on this. Unfortunately, the musicians are credited collectively as The Funk Brothers, the in-house Motown session players, and there was a good pool of them from whom to choose.
Its on Spotify and available as at least one YouTube playlist:
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