Astrology is having a not-entirely-welcome moment right now, although I do have a bit of an affection for it because of Homestuck. This album, however, is a very welcome pslice of psixties psychedelia, complete with acid rock guitars and moogs and sitars and all that hippie shit. And the narration is by the guy who produced The Firesign Theater's best albums! Groovy.
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Okay, so. This one was a journey. Buckle up, and maybe don't play this one for your plants.
What this is is a semi-musical radio play (like The United States of America, Vol. 1: The Early Years), with the gimmick being that this is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz set in the hippie era--so Dorothy is a dropout from middle-America square society searching for some kind of transcendent truth or reality. And for the first half of this album, well... I could not believe how much of a "fellow kids" album this was. Like, there's a line about Ferlinghetti and then another one about Warhol and I'm just like oh my god, this kind of blatant pandering, "headsploitation" if you will, is unbelievable and also so suspect.
But then you get to side B, and you're greeted with seven minutes of terrifying, chaotic noise, followed by one of the most beautiful pop ballads you'll ever hear about how searching for "reality" by rejecting social norms will get you nowhere, followed by... well I'm not going to spoil it, but this has one of the most shocking, unpleasant endings you'll ever hear. The real parallel to this, among the albums I've listened to lately, is actually Lie: The Love and Terror Cult.
Now, if The Firesign Theatre had done this it would have been more subtle and artful, and if the Doopees had done this it wouldn't have been quite as much of a downer, but you really need to listen to this--the dark side of the summer of love is a narrative vein that has in many ways been done to death, but this might be the definitive take on it.
Also, hey, did you know that you can sync this up to The Wizard of Oz and it totally works???
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