Art Nouveaux - Extra Terrestrial Visitations/ The Way To Play It

 

New Christy Minstrels chap scans the skies for flying saucers

Label: Fontana

Year of Release: 1967

You know what, dear readers, the mid-summer months are always a tough time for this blog. Most eBay sellers are on holiday, and the ones who aren't don't want to risk putting their precious things up for auction at a point when fewer people are around to bid on them. Second hand record stores, meanwhile, seem to hang on to their old tat right until the end of August before putting fresh stock out. 

Records released in 1967 which I've never heard in my damn life before with titles like "Extra Terrestrial Visitations" are therefore catnip to me during this period. What? You expect me to walk past?

This one starts off promisingly enough, with squeaks, beeps and bloops indicating a distinctly 1967 idea of the kinds of sounds a sophisticated spacecraft might make. The song then progresses into a kind of Donovan-esque chugging strum-along down Delusion Lane. "Are you just hallucinations?" the singer asks of the spacecraft. "Altogether just too many sightings/ and a number of informative writings", they continue, proving that Art Nouveaux were doubtless keen visitors to the "Occult" section of the local library, or had been keenly munching on some special tablets, or perhaps both.

The main man behind this track was Art Podell, a folkie with an extraordinarily long history, serving as one of the cast of thousands in the New Christy Minstrels with Randy Sparks. Besides spending time with those leviathans of US folk, he also snuck out a number of recordings of his own, some as part of the duo Art & Paul (Potash). It looks as if this one is an Art & Paul 45 in all but name, with Potash getting a co-writing credit, and the Art Nouveaux name being used to give the impression of a happening group behind the record's grooves.

Podell keeps an absurdly detailed website, containing among other things a crystal clear digital version of the A-side. It can be grabbed here (it's labelled as the 1970 version, but frankly I can hear little difference) and you can also hear a quantity of other Podell magic besides. 

The jokey flipside "The Way To Play It", on the other hand, seems not to have had an airing in recent years, so please see below for my slightly scuffed up copy. It's not where the true magic lies, but it's a shame to leave it to gather dust.