The Head Trip

A four-hour, 90-track overview of the Los Angeles music scene between 1965 and 1968
Featuring a dazzling combination of major league LA players, enduring cult acts and ultra-rare garage punk 45s Housed in a stylish clamshell box, ‘Heroes and Villains’ is a fascinating four-hour trip into the heart of the late ‘60s LA music goldmine. After The Beatles captivated a generation with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Los Angeles music scene moved beyond the previously-dominant surf, hot-rod and girl group discs to fashion a spirited response to the British Invasion.

Three years after the enervated Here’s Tom with the Weather, Shack return with only their fifth album in an 18-year career. (And that doesn’t even count leader Mick Head’s former band, the Pale Fountains.) The title may name-check Gil Evans and Miles Davis, whose collaborations were the pinnacle of 1950s cool jazz, but On the Corner of Miles and Gil is no more jazz-influenced than any of Head’s previous albums. This is to say, the occasional stray muted trumpet figure or Wes Montgomery-style guitar line floats through these songs, but overall, the late Arthur Lee is a much bigger influence. Love’s trademark commingling of ominous, slightly paranoid lyrics and deceptively pretty melodies has always been Head’s primary starting point, but this album is Shack’s most vital and musically impassioned album in at least a decade.