Apart from Epp’s revelation and what can be gleaned from the brief words on the sleeve of the first album, John Vidican’s pre-Kaleidoscope days must remain a mystery, because he is not involved with the re-formed group, and none of the others really knew all that much about him – and if Solomon had anything to do with it, his past would also remain obscure. When I first asked him about his origins, he asked me what I already knew, and I meekly listed the following “facts” which I had assembled from various sources:

1. Born of a gypsy family in Ismit, Turkey

2. Born of a jewish family in Wyoming.

3. Served in the U.S. Navy.

4. Was previously in a flamenco dancing troupe.

5. Lived in Idaho and Florida.

“There might be a grain of truth in there somewhere – but no more than that” he said, obviously having not the slightest intention of divulging where the truth, if any, lay.

Fortunately, Darrow was more helpful: “Solomon is still enigmatic to me in a lot of ways, but he was certainly the first beatnik I ever knew”. (None of the band was a hippie in the real sense of the word, even though the band’s arrival was roughly concurrent with the rise of hippie-ism Southern California). “When I first joined the group, Sol was living in a Volkswagen bus, then he lived in a 5-car garage behind his mother-in-law’s house in Temple City. He used to stay up all night, playing his caz to TV programmes – then he wouldn’t get up until about 2 the next afternoon”.

“It was like seeing a phoenix rise from the ashes to see him get out of his bed”, Fenrus recalls, “….. he had this cardboard coloured skin and no eyes when he first woke up”.

According to the sleeve of ‘Side Trips’, Sol was “formerly a photographer” and his influences are people. I have never heard of: Osmon Gokche, Emin Gunduz and George Pappas. “The most exciting experience of his career” is noted as “playing with Carmen Amaya”, and his hobbies are listed as “women and music”. That’s funny – they’re the same as mine.

Darrow: “Sol is a guy that I grew to appreciate and miss more and more after I left Kaleidoscope; his interest in traditional music, including American, was so intense – and his voice is certainly unique. Fenrus and I were more aligned in the rock’n’roll sense, but Solomon didn’t like it much….. in fact, he hated it and had to resign himself to playing it. His preference was playing long middle-eastern things, which as a bass player, kind of bored me….. but we were all pretty gentlemanly and democratic about things. There was a lot of respect within that band – in the early days particularly”.

I must say that the music on the first album, ‘SIDE TRIPS’ (Epic BN 26304), released in June, 1967, is both brilliant and without precedent. Despite my comic dismissal of Kaleidoscope’s recorded work earlier in this article (inserted merely to stimulate some pene reaction), I feel that their first two albums are great.

I shall now pause to eat, drink and re-consider ‘SIDE TRIPS’ in the light of recent repeated playing, following my return to semi-civilisation.

Sitting here crouched over this miserable Phillips fan heater (when only days ago I was lying half naked and smashed in Pete Thomas’ back garden in Santa Monica), gulping great draughts of red biddy from a bottle I popped into my bag at a recent Ronnie Scott’s reception, toying with some Marks and Sparks Fisherman’s Pie, and paying precious little attention to Mr. Frank Bough (features alert with interest, as ever) discussing ultra-sonic child-birth scanners on Nationwide. “Mr. Bough”, I think to myself, “you are living in another world; a world characterized by trivial tales of dormice living in car upholstery, stories of villagers impelled to improvise during local runner-bean droughts, reports from personable reporters seeking anything which will hold the proles’ attention as he gawps at the telly between mouthfuls of beefburgers (or Fisherman’s Pie, even).”

“Has Bough ever even heard of Kaleidoscope” I muse. “Is ‘A Beacon from Mars’ a constant visitor to his turntable?” “Is all this inconsequential rubbish doomed to be edited out by a swift slash from Frame’s blue pencil?” (Ed: no – but bloody well get on with it.)

‘SIDE TRIPS’ has ten tracks totaling only 26 minutes and 6 seconds, making it one of the Great Short Records of Our Time…….. rivaling The International Submarine Band, clocking in at 25:40, and Tim Hardin 2, at 22:38. Still 26 minutes of vintage Kaleidoscope is infinitely preferable to the entire Pye ‘Golden Hour’ catalogue.

I’d better list the tracks, due to the album’s rarity – so you’ll know what we’re talking about. (Though you must see the end of this series for the Mac Garry plan to make the album available to Zigzag readers!).

Side One:

‘Egyptian Gardens’ (Feldthouse)

‘If the night’ (Darrow)

‘Hesitation Blues’ (Charlie Poole)

‘Please’ (Fedman/Feldthouse)

‘Keep your mind open’ (Darrow)

Side Two

‘Pulsating Dream’ (Darrow)

‘Oh Death’ (J. Reedy)

‘Come on in’ (Lindley)

‘Why Try’ (Lindley)

‘Minnie the Moocher’ (Calloway/Milk/Gaskell)

Even in the opening bars, one hears “all that Persian bullshit” as John Landau called it – and, much as it appeals to me – I must say that I prefer their non-Persian stuff. The Musical Hall/Jugbandy stuff too tends to become a trifle tiresome after 146 playings (though I do like the singer’s exhortations to the soloist in the middle of ‘Hesitation Blues’, and the superbly scratchy fiddle and introduction to “Shake it fort Cab” near the end of ‘Minnie the Moocher”). My favourites are the straighter, Californian efforts, like ‘If the Night’, ‘Oh Death’, ‘Pulsating Dream’ and the classic Kaleidoscope track, as far as I’m concerned: ‘Please’, which carried their hopes when Epic put it out as a single.

Darrow: “It got mentioned, and reviewed well – but it went nowhere. The lyrics were by Mark Feedman, who’d been in the Rodents with David, and was still hanging out with him now and then, and Sol provided the melody – but the song didn’t click…. Not for us, nor for Hearts and Flowers, who also recorded it”. (2)

The b-side of ‘Please’, ‘Elevator Man’, which was never on an album, was another song by Sol – a real rock’n’roller, with one of Lindley’s best ever guitar parts and one of Darrow’s best bass lines…. A really inventive track.

The second single – another chart dud – was a remix of ‘Why Try’ (off the album) with double-tracked harmonies added in a vain attempt to make it a commercial hit, backed with a very different version of ‘Little Orphan Annie’ from that which appeared on the ‘Bernice’ album some years later. Darrow reckons the A-side re-mix didn’t really come off, but he loves the b-side, which I have never heard. Darrow: “Fenrus and I wrote that between us. I had worked out this melody in a kind of funny time, and he melody in a kind of funny time, and he wrote the words – about Carol Doda [ed – a noted exotic dancer of the time], and Basil Rathbone. David did the vocals on that”.

To return to the album, let us take a peek at its producer – one Barry Friedman…. Later to disappear and re-emerge under the nomme-de-plume (or should I say nomme-de-studio) of Frazier Mohawk. Lindley: “He wasn’t an Epic staff producer – he was an independent guy – always nosing around and coming up with ideas…. Like he put the Buffalo Springfield together, (3) and he essentially discovered the Kaleidoscope. He was one of those guys who was able to see things in their raw state and, through his imagination, project how they could become in say 3 or 4 year’s time”.

“I love Barry very much” says Darrow, pouring out his heart, “but I think it’s fair tot say that he floated out of the picture because it was felt that he was over producing us; he wanted to do so much as a producer, and we wanted to do so much as a band…. And our creative ideas weren’t working parallel….. the liaison wasn’t always there”.

“He was a great guy though; had some really good pioneering ideas. He was responsible for that ranch/recording studio that Elektra built – Rhinoceros used to record there, and Jackson (Browne) cut his first tracks there…… it was an interesting idea but, for some reason, nothing much came out of there except a Holy Modal Rounders album and a few other things”.

“Denny Bruce was a good friend of his; Denny used to live with Neil Young, and the Springfield thing had started out almost as a family situation”.

“Barry and Michael Goldberg (who ended up being our manager) took care of the record deal with Epic – but I’m hazy about the details because I came in after it had been finalized. I didn’t see any of the negotiation stages; the deal had already been cemented.”

Fenrus: “Yeah, Barry was a really good guy – super nice. Actually, he was a professional clown; he could eat fire, swallow swords and all that stuff. I saw him eating fire on the Jonathan Winters show one night. But Barry was able to take the rawness of the group and project it on the first album, which I think is an excellent record”.

Even glancing at the titles of his compositions would give one the impression that Darrow was EXPERIMENTING WITH DRUGS TO EXPAND THE MIND.”My songs do seem to be psychotropically oriented” he says, “but in fact I was probably the least involved with drugs in the band. An interesting thing about one of those songs, ‘Pulsating Dream’, is that it originally had a whole other set of lyrics – but, though I’m still credited as sole composer, David and Solomon decided to transpose it into psychedelic terms to make it more acceptable and accessible to the modern market. The words of the recorded song are the product of an afternoon’s concerted effort to make it the most “psychedelic” track on the album”.

“As it happens” says Darrow – a hint of rancour creeping below his smile, “I think their words are a load of shit….. absolute shit – but they were perfect for the time, so I can live with them now…. And I love the backing track”.

“I’m much more proud of ‘Keep your mind open’. I love the backing track on that one too, and I’m very pleased with the way the voice sounds…. I like that song a lot; I thought it said a lot without really saying a lot, if you see what I mean. It was Jackson Browne’s favourite song that we did, as well”.

(2) So did Eclection – twice. When Dorris Henderson replaced Kerrilee Male, she overdubbed a new vocal, and the single was re-released. (Does anyone have a copy, please?)

(3) Hence his name in big letters on the sleeve of ‘Buffalo Springfield Again’.

Next: “You could call the sleeve design ‘rudimentary psychedelic.’”