Spontaneous music has as many problems as inherent positive aspects. It's difficult to figure on a record to record basis how this dichotomy is actually played out, but usually, there aren't any total winners. Generally a few flawless moments are accompanied by enough dreck to just make a wash of the preceedings. Not always, but you know, nothing's a hundred percent.

Much in the same way nothing is wholly good or bad, there often can't be any definite explication of musical genres' birthing. For psychedelic musics some maintain that '66 is as good a year as any to demarcate this genre. I might be more apt to go with 66 BCE. Current intrepid travelers have no idea what music was loosed on this world prior to the 1860 recordings of some Debussy composition that now count as the first moments of recorded sound. But even within this discussion, is the problematic definition of psychedelic.

Regardless of what that answer is, the fact that people have been making music for as long as there have been folks to hear, brings about the notion of the voice being the oldest and most utilized instrument in history. In the rockist circles, the most famous current proponent of voice as instrument - after Bobby McFerrin, of course - is Mike Patton. His growling is the vocal equivalent to a violent and all too burning attack of diarrhea. But people love him, so what do I know?

But since Patton's only been pseudo famous for the last twenty years or so, he hardly counts as some mythical source of growling as art. And some folks, who have sought to define that as well as where psychedelic music starts cite Alan Watts as the source.

Watts is perhaps better known as a student of philosophy who worked to incorporate eastern notions of thought into a western perspective. But in studying esoterica in a broad cultural sense, Watts came across various musical, shamanistic and spiritual ideas that spurred him into recording. His catalog is slim to say the least, but This Is It is frequently looked to as a watershed event in the development of tripped out sounds.

Locust Music, the Chicago purveyor of over intellectualized and improvised nonsense, released the Watts disc a few years back. And I honestly don't recall hearing about or seeing it anywhere. But after tracking it down and not really knowing what to expect. I was surprised.

Slinging around the term psychedelic is a dangerous and all too common thing. Even when a disc is described as a vocal outing, that might not be ample preparation to take in This Is It. Watts' effort won't be unlistenable to everyone. But most folks with a cerebellum will refuse to sit through the disc's six tracks. Surely, some over-read, intellectual will embrace this as an enormously important disc. But considering that the music on here, spontaneous as it may be, wasn't intended for release initially points to some sort of cogent thought on the part of the participants.

Yes, it's difficult music. No, it didn't directly inform anything that you might think is psych rock, but probably it was the soundtrack to some gnarly acid trips in '66.