“Lost Souls Volume 3 – Arkansas Garage Psychedelic Rock 1963-1971"

(www.psychofthesouth.com) There are more regional psyche series than you would think, and too often the definition of psyche is just any 45 or demo from the 60s by a teen, cover, or party band that hasn’t been comped yet. And while 10,000 Norton-unearthed acetates may indicate otherwise, most of these suck! Which is why this CD is a triple treat. First of all, nothing sucks, all of these American Legion Hall-rocking unknowns had something special. Second – these tracks are more than 50% psyche adjacent, which is a high percentage for this kinda thing – even the covers are of Love and Hendrix! They even get kinda psyche when they ain’t getting psyche, thanks to gear acquisitions. Notably there’s one super faithful, twang-heavy version of “White Lightning” that could be (and certainly was) played for a honky-tonk full of good old boys…but then the guitar solo is played through a fuzz box from Venus! It’s followed by a fairly traditional rockabilly-ish take on “Bony Maronie” that at one point has the guitarist hit a pedal that turns his instrument into a functional Star Trek weapon! But the third thing that makes this comp great is that the regional is legitimately regional. Jamie Holmes’ version of “Gloria” breaks down into a spoken rap where they are just trading jokes and boasts with natural drawls, making it sound like teenage Homer & Jethro’s garage band. The highlight on here is actually about a regional incident, and even if it’s far from the best track, the Fouke Monsters win this battle of the bands. There song (called “Fouke Monster”) is a weird, spooky romp, with Zappa freakouts meets Shel Silverstien goofs…but the key is that even though Fouke, AR (where a bigfoot was sighted) is not pronounced “Fuck,” they knew what a “Fouke” record label looked like! The fact that the reproduced label (on “Monster” records) has a scribble drawing of hippy bigfoot, and is printed on the CD face, puts this over the top. Plus, now we know how Bill Clinton got that nickname…