The Oxford Watchband - Diagnosis (One Way Empty & Down)/ Welcome To The World

Disorientating and dramatic psychedelic soul

Label: Hand

Year of Release: 1969

I'm an absolute sucker for psychedelic singles which appear to be pulling in six different directions at once, and this one has been high on my "wants" list for years. It's delirious, dramatic and almost hysterical soul music set to lysergic shifts and changes, a rambling warning about nothing remotely coherent - similar to a nightmare you've woken up from at 3am with no conscious recollection of any meaningful thread which would help you to understand why you're drenched in cold sweat.

The song starts with urgent soulful singing about a bad medical diagnosis, then references an almighty downpour, before the music fades out and an ambient thunderstorm begins, combined with crashes, bangs, screams, shouts, arguments and mayhem. Then, naturally, the song returns and reaches its conclusion with one guitar whining alone in the distance. I'm none the wiser, but it's a bewitching three minutes which has more ideas on one 7" single than some bands manage on one side of an album. Over the years I've come to think of it as being a snippet from a film shorn of all context, three minutes razored out from the most dramatic moment.

 The Oxford Watchband were formed in Rochester, New York by brothers Brad and Jeff Wheat after they left the group The Heard, who issued the single "Laugh With The Wind" on Audition in 1966. Adding Jim Gilbert, Franke Previte and Jai Mate to their line-up, this was, to the best of my knowledge, the only single on their own Hand Records and while it benefited from a distribution deal with Capitol, clearly stuff like this wasn't going to sell by the shipload and it only registered on a cultish level in the local area. 

Previte went on to bigger things with the hard rock group BullAngus, and eventually wrote the smash hit "I've Had The Time Of My Life" for the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack, which is obviously epic in a completely different and more coherent way. The movements of the rest are not clear, but please do fill in the blanks below if you can.

Apologies for the pops and crackles on my rather worn copy of this record, particularly the B-side, but YouTube is your friend with a clearer version of the top side here. Sadly, nobody has uploaded a cleaner version of the flip yet, so until that day, the heavily crackly version below is the best you're going to do.

If the previews below aren't working properly, please go right to the source.