专辑简介

The Lemon Drops专辑介绍：by Stewart MasonProving once and for all that there is no group so obscure that they don't have people interested in hearing their "rarities," From the Lemon Drops to the Vibrations of Sequence in Order collects an hour's worth of previously unreleased tracks from the end of the career of these Chicago psych-poppers, who released only one regional single on a tiny label during their entire history. According to the liner notes, these songs were recorded in San Francisco by the quartet of lead guitarist Eddie Weiss; his drummer, brother Gary Weiss; mono-named keyboardist Raphael; and bassist Gary Lewandowski. (The group apparently called themselves Watermelon at the time, not the Lemon Drops.) Interestingly, none of these songs have vocals, but it's unclear which were meant to be instrumentals and which simply hadn't had lyrics written yet, although a couple of tunes, like the dramatic stop-and-start acid rocker "Blown Away," have crescendos followed by quiet passages that are obviously meant to have lyrics over them. Since the vast majority of lyrics in this type of music are quasi-profound claptrap that's not quite as heavy as the band intended, the lack of vocals is actually most refreshing, and allows the group's strengths -- most notably Raphael's killer Hammond B-3 work, which sounds as if he knows his Traffic and early Deep Purple albums well -- to shine. This is absolutely and emphatically only for die-hard collectors of '60s ephemera and unreleased tapes, and will be of little interest to anyone who doesn't own at least a couple of white-label bootlegs, but as rarities go, From the Lemon Drops to the Vibrations of Sequence in Order is really pretty good. Apples in Stereo leader Robert Schneider is probably kicking himself that the album title is taken, though.