BABY GRANDMOTHERS

The album starts out with the two songs that made up the single. 'Somebody Keeps Calling My Name'. The single cut only lasted 7 minutes, but this album version is over 9 minutes. This is one of their rare songs that included vocals, and when you hear the vocals, you understand why. It's the psychedelic jams that this band was locally famous for and for what gave them the sudden delayed popularity some 40 years later. The recording is not the best, but it is what you would expect from the time that it was recorded (1968) for a live and probably soundboard recording. As is the case with much of their recorded material, the music starts with a slow jam and then about halfway through, it speeds up, becoming noisy and chaotic at the end. Even though the line up is pretty basic, the music packs a wallop, a noisy psychedelic, space jam of the style that Sweden made famous. 'Being is More than Life' is the flip side of the single. This one is more pensive and slow and over its 6 minutes, it becomes heavy with feedback and loudness with a solid bass line.

The next three tracks are the 'meat' of this album. They come from a performance at their regular concert venue, Klubb Filips in Stockholm in late October of 1967. This is where you get to really experience their heavy jamming power, starting with 'Bergakungen' (over 16 minutes), followed by a repeat of 'Being is More than Life', this time extending it out beyond 19 minutes. This was not a strange thing for this band as they were known to jam on for hours. These mind melting psych trips are excellent examples of the movement that was going on back then, and demonstrate where this sound that is so popular today came from. These people were the innovators, the pioneers of the psychedelic jams. The third track from this venue is a 7 minute jam called 'St. George's Dragon', a not-so-interesting and minimal sounding jam.

In order to prove that these were not just one off jams, there are two short tracks that provide snippets from another show in Finland in 1968.

After touring with Hendrix, the band dissolved into 'Mecki Mark Men' who would become the first Swedish rock band to tour the U.S. Hakansson would later be influential in creating the Swedish folk-psych sound. After the emergence of this album in 2007, Baby Grandmothers would put out a surprise album in 2018 called 'Merkurius', their one and only studio album. I highly recommend that album over this one mostly because of the better sound and production. However, the band would have forever gone unnoticed outside of their own home country, where they became one of the most influential groups to give us the psychedelic sound of Sweden that is so popular today. It's a shame that all we have now is this not so great sounding album to document their music from back in the day, but at least we have this recording and the band was willing to come together to do a more recent album. It's not perfect, but it is a better idea of how their music sounds in studio. This album, however, is a bit hard to listen to because of the sound quality, and the long jams can be a bit tiring. The album is valuable more as a historical context than anything else, but for enjoyment value, only hardcore psych fans or collectors will be interested.

'Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out' is the EP that was released in 2007. The title is named after the phrase made famous by Timothy Leary. The only way that this EP was available was that it was attached to the book 'The Encyclopedia of Swedish Progressive Music 1967 ' 1969. The recording is a jam recorded in a live setting at Filips Caf' in Stockholm in September of 1967. It is a 3 part jam that lasts just over 30 minutes and is divided up into 3 tracks: 'Opus 1: Ascending', 'Opus 2: Floating' and 'Opus 3: Descending'.

The recording is okay, though it sounds somewhat dated. The jam is quite guitar heavy as Kenny explores every avenue and sound with his guitar. 'Ascending' quickly grows in tempo until it reaches its plateau, barreling along like a train. After 10 minutes, things slow down a bit and keep chugging along until 12:49. From there, it moves into the 'Floating' section. The music continues on very minimally for about a minute before the bass comes up to establish a soft jazz-style rhythm with brushed percussion and minimal guitar. Squeaky flutes stay far in the background as the guitar plays softly around the bass and drum foundation. This continues for over 8 minutes before the rhythm drops off and it moves into the third part 'Descending'. Percussion comes back in and pushes the rhythm faster and faster as the guitar and bass play a repeating pattern. Once the tempo is reached, the bass and guitar mess around a bit. Then the guitar picks up a new quasi-melody to improvise off of. It eventually builds into a nice rock jam. This section continues for over 10 minutes.

I'm not necessarily fond of long jams, but being divided up like this make them a little easier to take. The recording is not the best, but it isn't too bad either. It is a good enough EP, but not as great as the latest album, which has a lot more variety. The addition of a jazz foundation in the 2nd part also improve the overall experience. The recording itself is not easy to find, so if you are curious about the band, you would be better off to find one of the other recordings, preferably Merkurius.

Now, in 2018, 50 years after being formed, they have released an album of original psychedelic music. 'Merkurius' is the new album from these Swedish psychedelia originators. The band members are the original members Guitarist Kenny Hakkanson, Bengt Linnarson on bass, and Pelle Ekman on drums. Seven tracks that span over 35 minutes is what the album is comprised of, so there is nothing quite as long and expansive as in their previous album, the shortest track being about 2:30 and the longest at 7:30.

'Peloton' starts off the album with a fast moving track, and is also the shortest of the tracks. It is a heavy rocker, almost surf- rock-like, but definitely in the stoner rock forum. But throughout its short run time, it definitely has a great psychedelic flavor. It also is recorded to sound like it was performed in the decade that the genre came from.

'Adhd' has some nice sounding, swirling keyboards that establish a smooth groove, around which Kenny plays an improvised solo. A quick beat and bass line round everything out nicely. The track sounds quite current, but the organ gives the psychedelic flavor that is needed. After the 2:30 mark, the beat slows down quite a bit and the guitar plays an almost ballad-like melody. Wordless vocals come in at 4:00 when the beat gets faster and more solid. Things tend to get more progressive as a complex beat comes in and some atmospheric keyboard effects accompany the guitar now as things get near to a space-rock vibe but with that complexity still there.

'Intervall' establishes itself with a driving bass line and a melodic guitar that improvises over a simple theme. This also has a nice driving beat that suddenly changes to a gypsy-like gigue. I wasn't expecting that at all, but it's a nice surprise. Soon, it returns to the original beat again and then ventures into a krautrock jam before it goes back to the gigue that picks up speed until the end which comes too early.

'Elefant' starts with cymbal crashes and a quickly ascending bass line. Distortion and effects come in giving an eerie atmosphere. As it establishes itself, you will notice a darker and heavier feel to this track. Psychedelia is heavy in this track with a lot of feedback and dissonance, but no real melody is apparent here as there was in the previous tracks. Improvised guitar plays over an established background as in Krautrock, but the background has got its own interesting things going on.

'Dojjan' is based off a fast guitar riff, again somewhat similar to heavy stoner rock. Percussion is fast all the way through as the guitar pushes the drums to interact with it in some places. This one is also over too quickly.

'Kraftverk' starts with an echoing and rapidly repeating staccato guitar note before keys come in behind it. The repeating guitar note almost becomes drone like. Chant-like vocals come and go for short bursts. Percussion finally comes in after 2 minutes that echoes the fast repeat of the guitar with its accompanying effect. As it continues, it ventures into space-rock territory and builds in intensity. Then things slowly fade with the guitar echoing in feedback.

The final track comes upon you much too quickly. It is also the title track 'Merkurius'. This one is quite pensive at first with more wordless vocals which create a nice melody and a lot of reverb in the guitar creating sustained notes. A medium-slow beat is established by the drums just before the 2 minute mark. After a minute, the drums become more intense as things pick up. Then a nice dissonance in the guitar creates tension. The guitar gets heavier as things push forward and the music crescendos to a climax.

This is a very enjoyable album with a surprising amount of variety and excellent musicianship. There is only one glaring problem. It is way too short. I think this was done to make it more accessible, but for 3 of the tracks, it gives them an unfinished or underdeveloped feeling. I would have been happy if this album went on for another 30 minutes. But even so, I was pleasantly surprised by the scope of the music here and how it actually stretches the boundaries of the genre to make things seem more current. It is a shame that we don't have more of a discography from these guys for as long as they have been around, but I am excited for the prospect of more and glad that at least their music has been finally released to share with the world. The only thing really keeping this from being a 5 star psychedelic album is the short length of some of the songs that could have been developed better. But don't let that keep you from finding this one. Excellent!

Their approach and movement are also very surprising - that can remind me not only 60s psychedelic scene such as CREAM, but also The Grateful Dead, the representative of "psychedelic stage" around 1970. Their masterpiece "Live Dead" - this material was just contemporary with BABY GRANDMOTHERS' sole single - with Gerry Garcia's drone guitar (I call him "Guitar Trailer" :-P) and Pigpen, Mickey and Bill's wet and lyrical drums and percussion, should twitter to me with the same message I always feel. Of course dunno if each band could much influence on the other one, but I'm sure the mainstream of psychedelic rock music (whether progressive or not) around 1970 should be such as their styles. That is, on the stickily persistent bass-line and percussion rhythm, they might play drone and eccentrically amplified sounds with the audience and...some medication?

Hailing this wonderful psychedelia, let me emphasize all of their songs be terrific, especially the third track Bergakungen as a reminder of Dead's trailing and rumbling guitar initiative in St. Stephan. First listening to this did let me assume that this song should be recorded as a live or studio-live one (and that's absolutely right!), and they might not play so lively without any audience otherwise I imagine? This song should be one of the most informative ones of all I consider. Also indeed fantastic are the first and second tracks Somebody Keeps Calling My Name and Being Is More Than Life in their only single, but sadly their sounds off the stage were collected smaller I feel - they should be an 'outside' outfit and should be a textbook of psychedelic progressive rock scene like The Grateful Dead.

Thanks Grandma.

When compared for example to Träd, Gräs och Stenar, the approach is less Dadaist and not so minimalistic, and end results of jammings are in my opinion more concrete than the inventions of fine group referred. This band reaches also over 16 and nearly 20 minutes long aggressive bluesy stoner improvisations at the middle part of the album, and this kind of psychedelic imagination cannot get much better. The live treatments captured to the record culminates everything which is important and beautiful for me in the original psychedelic acid rock, breaking the gates of tamed produced rock music and causality yearning questions of logic mind; It is beautiful, strong, impulsive, contact, sincere, innovative, healing, human, and true. The improvisations are not pointless and boring, but constructive and full of powerful musical ideas and feelings. The sounds are quite raw, but I like the analogue tape recordings, and the sound of the trio is well balanced, guitar being slightly more forward than the bass, which can be heard well as it does not understandably play same notes as the lead guitar on an arena of instrumental trio jammings.

Recommended highly for all fans of raw psychedelic, reactive improvisational imaginative rock music, and also for those interested of original 1960's Swedish "Progg" scene. For me this discovery and listening it was a "religious experience", and resides among my all time favorite records.

You will find a rare but unspectacular vocal contribution by Kenny Håkansson first and then the band is letting the music flow in the vein of Cream's live jams from the Wheels Of Fire album. But this is all spiked with spaced out portions where you can't believe that this is from 1968. It must have been very courageous in this period to present two jamming tunes coupled with some weirdness as the band's debut. Hence you may not find significant differences to the live recordings which are completing this release.

They are (with one exception) recorded at the legendary 'Filips' club in Stockholm, a breeding ground for new experimental bands. The following two long tracks are probably from the same gig because of some stylistical similiarities. Bergakungen is mostly provided with a repetitive hypnotic bass and a straight drum work where Kenny Håkansson is able to shine with his guitar skills and uncounted variations of the main theme - references to the Jimi Hendrix style included. The live version of Being Is More Than Life is extended as one can expect and sees a more virtuoso bass playing. St. George's Dragon starts with a weird guitar appearance and tribal drums later gliding into a furious finale.

60 minutes lasting psych jams ahead of time. But to enjoy this you really must be a die-hard fan. I pull off my hat though to their experimental approach. However - listening to BABY GRANDMOTHERS's music for one hour continously is a little bit too much and straining for me. Additionally the sound quality is not top-notch which is not unusual for live recordings from the 60s of course. All in all a good album recommended to collectors of early psychedelic music with a gusto for extended jams.