How to Blow Your Mind and Have a Freakout Party: Instructions from Unfolding

It’s really easy to get excited about an album part of the way through it only to be completely let down by its conclusion. Of course, the stuff that’s so engaging at the onset, after the duration of the entire ordeal seems to lose its shimmering quality as well.

The word shimmering comes into play here more than just a few times while taking a listen to Unfolding’s How to Blow Your Mind and Have a Freakout Party. From the title alone, it should be clear that the band has a (third) eye towards fistfuls of acid. But even with that predilection made so clear, there’re some pop songs included on the group’s only disc.

Referred to as exploito-psych by some, How to Blow Your Mind doesn’t come off as contrived as the Deep or some other lesser cash-in discs of the period. Of course, the fact that there seems to be less info here about the group – although there is a drummer named Gary – might point to the fact that the disc was constructed to take in a few bucks from the youth market. But really who can be blamed for taking money from dumb hippies?

Whatever the answer to that is, the cover employed by Unfolding for its lone release suggests that whoever was behind this effort was at least adept at replicating a vibe. The pasted together cover, replete with praying monkey and a dude wearing a beard and smiling, does the job at distilling the lame culture that sprung up around LSD during the sixties. And if you ever happen to catch the Dragnet episode where the coppers crash a dance party, it would seem that folks with the same talents as the designer of the album’s cover were employed in Hollywood as well.

How to Blow Your Mind arrives split in two halves. Anyone can attempt to figure a deeper meaning for that, but it probably comes down to the fact that whoever comprised the band ran out of songs. The entire second side of the album is littered with throw aways – a Hare Krishna chant, a parable and assortment of other hippie ephemera. That notwithstanding, the first side of the disc is tops.

The good stuff only clocks in at about eighteen minutes or so, but it’s as solid a clutch of work as any other psych side released during ’67, the year of the album’s release (and yes, I’m familiar with the 13^th Floor Elevators).

“I’ve Got a Zebra (She Can Fly)” is purposefully difficult in name and construction. It’s all guitar wankery and looped playback ran the wrong way. But in its dated approach to rock stuffs is the song’s charm. It can even stand repeated listens. Really.

The next three songs are all short in comparison with nothing pushing past the three-minute mark by too much. There’s a pleasant uniformity that listeners can ride out until arriving at the side’s closer, entitled “Love Supreme Deal Meditations.”

Side one’s ender might lead some to believe that the entire ordeal was a studio construction. And it might well have been, but it all arrives as some tripped out fair. And since How to Blow Your Mind’s been reissued via Gear Fab, you know it’s gotta be boss.