The Peanut Butter Conspiracy is Spreading

Band: Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Album: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy is Spreading
Year: 1967
Songs of Note: It's a Happening Thing, Dark on You Now, Then Came Love

Psychedelia is a genre that was never fully defined for me. Some would put Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service in that category, but for me when I think psychedelic music, I think Pink Floyd's "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn". Psychedelic music should be totally unhinged. I should be taken on an aural voyage into the dark places of the solar system or medieval fantasy. Peanut Butter Conspiracy, or PBC as they are referred to on the liner notes, is a psychedelic band, but I feel it falls more into the psychedelia of west coast sixties music. This means a band needs to dress a certain way (like hippies), talk a certain way (like hippies), and do drugs (like hippies). It's almost formulaic. I don't get the impression that this group was at the forefront of the movement either. From reading the liner notes, the target audience seems to be people who are "underground", know about bandmember Lance's famous hat, and "get" what the group is trying to say about love.

Most of the songs on the album are about love, but not in the deeper sense of marital vows or life partnerships. No, the love our garishly garmented gadabouts sing is a feeling that never elevates beyond the simplistic "I need you", "this is the first time I felt this way sentiment". They just sound like lame lines somebody would use to get someone in the sack.

That being said, the songs can be catchy at times. The album opener is "It's a Happening Thing" moves along and bounces and sets the tone for the music to follow. This is followed by "Then Came Love" which features some orchestral arrangements, which I don't believe was all that common in 1967 for rock music. "Second Hand Man" had a country vibe to it. The only song that was truly terrible was "The Marketplace". The Beatles experimented with Indian instruments in a number of their songs quite well. PBC tries that with "The Marketplace" and it is an utter disaster. Musically and lyrically it sounded like a sacred cow drowning in the Ganges. Both album side closers "Why Did I Get so High" and "You Took too Much" sound drug related based on the titles but are once again about love.

PBC sounds like a decent psychedelic band who were playing the right sound at the right time. Just like Seattle grunge acts in the early 90's, PBC got signed because they had the look and fans wanted more of that particular music. This record works well for folks who want to hear what psychedelic music was in 1967 but it does not hold up very well to contemporary ears.