THE MAGIC MUSHROOMS
The Magic Mushrooms were an American psychedelic garage rock band in the 1960’s. The Magic Mushrooms were originally composed of five students from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. They were: Joe LaCavera (Drums), Stu Freeman (Vocals and Guitar), Ted Cahill (Lead Guitar and Autoharp), Dick Richardson (Keyboards), and Charles Ingersol (Bass). (More from Wikipedia)
Reading between the lines, many of the songs on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 were apparently chosen by what had hit the Top 100 at some point during that time period; that would explain the presence of the strangest of the songs, the closing track “It’s-a-Happening” by the Magic Mushrooms, which remarkably made it to something like #94 for a week. Even more intriguing to me were the songs that hadn’t hit the Top 100 at all. One immediate fave was “A Public Execution” by a Texas band called Mouse and the Traps (the song was officially issued under the name Mouse), doing something that I didn’t think would ever happen: someone else creating music along the lines of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and Highway 61 Revisited.
(January 2011)
