So you’re wondering why Norman Petty, producer extraordinaire and champion of rockabilly music in the 1950s has his name on a “psychedelic” compilation? The simple answer is that although Petty's main interest and focus was on music that may have been a little tamer, he still had a hand in just about every genre possible. If you were lucky enough to take the trek to Petty’s Clovis, New Mexico studio, Norman would make you sound… GREAT! He took his incredible production, arranging and editing skills and transferred them with amazing precision into the psychedelic realm.
With bands like the Frantics, Hooterville Trolley, Group Axis, Butter Rebellion, Intricate Blend, Apple-Glass Cyndrom and The Cords, how can you go wrong? Get Ready To Fly isn’t just a cameo collection of psychedelic tunes with Petty’s production as the common thread. And although the term “pop-psych” spans a pretty wide realm, this particular collection features a mind-boggling selection of 26 phenomenally-crafted songs with a bit of a hard-edged fuzz appeal. Get Ready To Fly truly doesn’t have a bad cut on it, and the overall quality of the selections is well… unbelievable!
Alec Palao has done it again, culling master tapes from another darkened vault and turning them into a highly polished audio eargasm, equipped with the requisite fuzz guitars, sitars, backwards tracking and haunting vocals required for a 73 minute flight like this. With full access to Petty's archives, the candidate list for this volume was immense, the net result being that about two thirds of the entire collection has never appeared on any compilation before. And about half of those were NEVER even released, just collecting dust in the Petty vaults for almost 40 years.
Get Ready To Fly has something for every lover of late 1960s psychedelic music, whether you're a grizzled collector or a novice, so don’t hesitate for a second to pick this one up. It’s been a long time since a collection this solid has been released.
By Ben Chaput
(Ben is founder of the U–SPACES psychedelic discussion group:
http://members.aol.com/VelvetFogg/HTML/U-SPACE2.html)
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UK only, import, 26 songs. "Get Ready To Fly" is Big Beat's second volume of rarely-heard 1960s masters from the vaults of the legendary Norman Petty studios. This time the focus is on the mindbending rock and pop sounds the producer recorded during the late 1960s. Petty was the first to admit he had little taste for psychedelia, but his exceptional abilities as an engineer allowed the producer to sonically indulge the young bands who visited the studios to the fullest. The results were some of the spaciest sounds to emanate from an American studio in that era, a fascinating potpourri of raging fuzztone, swirling organ and Anglophile harmonies.
Several of the items on "Get Ready To Fly" are acknowledged pop-psych classics, such as the Apple-Glass Cyndrum's `Someday', `To Give Your Lovin'' by the Happy Return and the Hooterville Trolley's `No Silver Bird', but extensive research into the Petty archives has resulted in a tremendous programme of obscure classics and never-before-heard gems. The artists represented journeyed from such disparate locales as Utah, Montana, Mississippi, Texas, Colorado, Missouri and Canada to record with Petty in Clovis, New Mexico. With unprecedented access to the original master tapes, the sound quality on "Get Ready To Fly" is second to none, and the accompanying booklet is packed with information on this little-documented episode in Norman Petty's career, with the full participation of many of the former band members.
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