Vinny Peculiar’s How I Learned to Love the Freaks is a clever concept classic psych-rock album that resurrects a hard groovy sound that will certainly appeal to fans of (the brilliant!) Bevis Frond. But there’s always more: Vinny (aka Alan Wilkes) has written a musical documentary (which is what Ray Davies called the Kinks’ Arthur) that probes the perspectives, as countless mirrors bounce reflections of various people, perhaps sympathetically trapped, in the hazy smoke of late-’60s youth counter-culture.
Now, there’s only one Ray Davies (or brother Dave, for that matter!) because he’s “not like everybody else,” but this album plays in the wake of the Kinks’ masterpiece, as they both chronicle the thoughts of people who are content within the finite calendar of their lives. Heck, anti-hero Arthur loves the loss of “lavatories in the backyard.” And, considering the January in my Wisconsin weather, I don’t blame him on that one! So, in the end, the Kinks do love their Arthur, even though, someone from his circle probably “bought a hat like Princess Marina.” Sarcasm and pathos dance in the album’s lyrics.
Vinny Peculiar’s heartfelt counter-culture-loving vocals do recall Ray Davies’ own sensitive tone used in such beloved Kinks songs like “Celluloid Heroes,” “Lost and Found” and the misplaced Percy tune, “God’s Children.”
That said, Peculiar’s opening salvo on How I Learned to Love the Freaks, “Death of the Counter Culture” serves as an acid-drenched adios to the Revolution that name checks iconic folk singing people like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, and quotes “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “kick out the jams,” “stick it to the man,” and (of course!) “ban the bomb.” The song, which serves as an overture to the album concept, grooves with a nice and appropriate Eastern vibe.
“Going to San Francisco” rocks with drug addled lyrics like “there were voices crawling in everybody’s head.” And there’s a mention of “rainbow in my eyes,” a reference to a “poncho David Crosby style,” and a call home, during which “my father wouldn’t speak to me.” Then, as with pipe dreams, “It all got out of hand.” Yeah, but the song pumps with a Canned Heat “Going Up the Country” harmonica vibe. Nice.
The concept continues on How I Learned to Love the Freaks: “Peace and Love” is a pleasant hitchhiked tune that sounds like a nice idea, but of course, the maxim “We can change the world” just ends with a broken heart. Then, there’s a visit to the communal “Headshop” — those were the days! The song evokes the memory of paraphernalia incense in the dark “magical energy” air and an even better memory of a lot of really cool record albums. The delightful melody matches the thought of “the girl who worked there” who was “pretty.” Perhaps, this song is yet another tune worthy to be included in the eternal Songs of Innocence. Thank you, William Blake.
“Ashram Curtains” explodes with even more dramatic psych lava lamp rock music. But the lyrics chronicle the complex love of a husband who accepts the liberation of his wife, who has found release in Eastern philosophy on “a tour bus in India.” Oh my, these are lyrics laced with deep pathos. The wife returns, only to retrieve her “photos of the kids and favorite earrings.” And the husband can only, with kind hope, say: “If you change your mind, I’ll be right here.” These words are a photographed eclipse of the loving human heart, which sadly, sometimes, breaks the wishbone soul.
Vinny Peculiar’s big romp of “Hippy Kids,” besides finding a groove that discovers that 1,001st dance in the land of a thousand huge riffs, voices the adult critique of the kids without “discipline,” “school,” “boundaries” and “rules.” These kids “put a sunflower in the barrel of a gun.” But the ambiguity of the final words, “hippie kids we need you now,” gives the same perceptive depth (and perhaps, affection) as the Kinks’ song, “She Wore a Hat Like Princess Marina.” As Aldous Huxley says in his Brave New World introduction, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”
The title song, “How I Learned to Love the Freaks,” oozes with a slow-paced confessional sympathy toward a few “long haired freaks” who carried “record bags” and “didn’t play football” who were beaten “with kicking and screaming” by the speaker and his neighborhood “hard lads.” The psychological insight in the lyrics, once again, chronicles the thoughts of people, who are content (or perhaps, trapped) within the finite calendar of their lives. It’s an amazing song.
After that, the infectious “Peter and the Rainbow” burns with the “have to get love,” communal soul that once again ends with tough reality as the inspirational quasi-religious camp poet Peter leaves, and is now “Living in LA with a Playboy bunny.” As (the great!) Kurt Vonnegut once said, “So it goes.”
“All Property Theft” is a trip into a melodic (and quite literary) psych modern English labyrinth with a wondrous vibe that’s a utopian roller-coaster ride with an immense oxygen-fueled merry-go-round rock ‘n’ roll memoir that (somehow) ends up, while reading Blake and Albert Camus, having an affair with “a yoga teacher” and spending “three months in the scrubs.” But oh, this music carves deep harmonic grooves that “rain” like a brilliant Beatles’ song. Amazing!
The brief final song, “Flower Power,” pleads the Fifth, (sort of) loves the memory of the Revolution, and then predicts the happy thought of a hippie resurrection. It’s a really nice bookend to a Vinny Peculiar album that, with the title How I Learned to Love the Freaks, is a musical mirror that projects into all those other reflected memories – all of which somehow manage (for what it’s worth!) to still sing an optimistic song.
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