Guitar Girls

It’s true–my parents have terrible taste in music. It’s something I suffered through as a child. I found myself listening to either the oldies stations (i.e. the same 20 songs over and over), my dad’s classical stuff (boring!), or Mom’s…*shudder*…Julio Iglesias. There were no classic gems in their record collection–just a bunch of watered-down crap. And if it hadn’t been for the guidance my brother provide me, who knows what might have become of me.
Even if they had been hip to good music, there’s little chance my parents would have been into the Pacific Northwest’s folkstress Linda Perhacs. Her only LP, Paralellograms (1970), was recently rediscovered after being buried in obscurity through a few reissues, starting with a bootleg CD of the original vinyl released in 2003. An expanded edition, with demos and such (five previously unreleased tracks), was more recently remastered and reissued by Brooklyn’s The Wild Places label in 2005. Her gentle, flowers-in-the-hair folk is liberally enriched with psychedelia. There is a somewhat ominous/sinister tone to some of the songs, and except in cases of the few upbeat numbers like “Paper Mountain Man,” calling her material “trippy” is neither an exaggeration nor a cop-out. It’s beautiful, strange and manages not to verge too close on hippy-dippy.

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June 1, 2006 | Filed Under Music | 1 Comment