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(In Veins - a bit more going on in Bordeaux than wine)

Something new tonight. Another MySpace band discovery. I first stumbled across this band a few years ago and really liked them. A French band, In Veins tips its hat to the best of Psychedelia, Shoegaze, Trance, Indie, Progressive, Alternative - all those superlatives you would use to describe a band you really liked, who wasn't mainstream or pop.

And if I didn't tell you they were all from Bordeaux you would never know. They do sing in English, but it's more background to the wall of instrumental sound they create.

This track, Just Vision is a new one. They have a new album (I think their first) coming out pretty soon and their ep's (which they have 2) are available via iTunes. They're performing around, but nothing here in the States.

Check them out of it you get the chance, and if you like them, please support them. We need all the good music we can get.

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(The Hollow Men - footnotes to history or at least a lot of questions)

I would imagine the people (at least in the U.S.) who have heard of The Hollow Men might fit on the fingers of one, maybe two hands.

Together from 1985-1991, they were actually part of the Manchester, or Madchester scene that gave birth to bands like The Charlatans, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and many others. They released several singles, but only one official album, Cresta which was issued in the U.S. on Arista, but you'd never really know it. This track This Dark City, comes from the posthumous album "Twisted" issued in 1994 on the indie label November Records and only released in the states, after the band had been broken up for three years. It consisted mostly of unissued tracks, left off the first album, demos and some live material. But even with that hodgepodge of material, there are some undisputed gems and IMHO, this is one of them.

As is so often the case, some bands make it and some don't - you can never really put your finger on the reasons. And some things are just a mystery.

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(The Ganjas - Mind Melting, new Millennium style)

Santiago Chile - doesn't ring any bells as a hotbed of psychedelia, does it? Just goes to show - what you think you know and what you know you know are two different things.

The Ganjas have been around since 2001, blazing their own particular trail of ear-piercing psych, becoming one of the most popular bands in Chile, at least from an underground standpoint.

This track, Sonic Redemption, is from an EP they put out in 2007.

Nice to know the Freak Flags are still waving.

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(The Transpersonals - would you buy a used mind from these lads?)

Another MySpace discovery. The Transpersonals. This time a bit of psych from Bristol England, a place where a lot (aside from Skins) seems to be happening. I think this track, Look At The Sun is off an ep they issued last year, but I'm not 100% certain of that.

You know the drill - check out their MySpace page, check out their gig list, check out what's new. They can use your support as I don't see them getting any mainstream radio airplay any lifetime soon.

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(The Telescopes - Psych, Shoe-gazing, Space-rock, Noise-rock - just about covers all the bases)

One of the frustrating things about the Indie movement in the 90s was how quickly things were released and vanished. It was worse if you were a UK band and your discs were imported into the States. Unless you saw something and bought it right away, chances were you'd never see it again in your lifetime.

That was my experience with The Telescopes. Forming in the late 80s and disbanding, morphing, re-grouping, changing labels -it was hard, not only to pin them down style-wise, it was hard to pin down their releases. What little I heard of them I liked - they were, for me an extension of the Psychedelic stuff I'd been listening to since I was a teenager and they hit a distinctive chord with me from the get-go. The problem was, getting their stuff before they sold out.

Throughout their careers they've released a lot of material on a lot of different labels. A very small percentage of it I managed to get.

But I did get an ep that has been a favorite ever since. "Celeste" came out in 1991 during their stay with Creation Records and the track "All A Dreams" (not a typo) was glued to my headphones for several years after first hearing it.

Come to think of it, it still is.

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(RO-D-YS - I know, how can you know about a band when you can't even pronounce their name?)

Contrary to public opinion, not all Psychedelia originated in either England or the U.S. - no, the whole world embraced it rather well, and it came in a bunch of different languages.

A lot of psych, and later prog-rock came out of Holland from the mid-sixties onward. One of those bands had the unlikely name RO-D-YS - which, as near as anyone can guess is pronounced Rowdy's, since there were at least two other bands calling themselves The Rowdy's milling around Holland. So rather than change their name, they just changed the spelling. Fair enough.

Nothing they recorded was ever released in the States, or even the UK, even though the band recorded quite a bit and had several singles on the Dutch charts.

This particular track "Sleep,Sleep, Sleep" was released in 1968, and I believe it was their third or fourth single release.

RO-D-YS lasted from 1966-1969, with various members wandering in and out of other Dutch bands. They weren't destined to become a household name, but they were part of an interesting and active movement that also included some innovators for the next decade. Stay tuned.

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(Grapefruit - all the right moves - all the right sounds - but . . .)

Even when you come with a name by Lennon, liner notes by Derek Taylor, publishing by Apple and production by Terry Melcher you can still fail to click with the record buying public. Such was the case with Grapefruit, a band with all the earmarks of a screaming success which, sadly came to very little.

Together for less than two years, Grapefruit formed in 1967 and recorded two albums (one released in 1968 and the second "Deep Water" released in 1969), and released a score of singles before packing it in and going their separate ways.

What they did leave is an awful lot of potential and some very good music.

Their first album "Around Grapefruit", issued in the U.S. on ABC-Dunhill, was laced with all the psychedelic hooks and twists needed to make each track memorable on its own. Great expectations were attached to it, but it failed to chart. And by the time their second album came out, issued on RCA, things had cooled considerably in the expectation department and its release went virtually unnoticed.

After splitting up, George Alexander, bass guitar, whose real name was Alexander Young, teamed up with his brother George and Harry Vanda who had just left The Easybeats to do sessions under the name Marcus Hook Roll Band. Vanda and Young, you will remember eventually morphed into AC/DC. So all was not lost.

Back to Grapefruit. This track, "Yesterday's Sunshine" is a blend of pop and psych with more emphasis on psych and it's typical of all the work on this album.

Another addition to the bulging "should've been" file. It doesn't deserve being ignored.

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(Junior's Eyes - The best known unknown band of the 60's)

Most people have probably never heard of Junior's Eyes. It's not a name that comes rolling off the tongue or conjures up some instant recognition. But if I told you they were David Bowie's backup back and played on Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold The World, then you'd at least have some idea. They never toured the U.S. and only had one album (their first) issued by A&M in 1969. No hit singles, no airplay to speak of and not given over to rave reviews with the press when it first came out. It's that curious mixture of psych, progressive and hard rock - not really settling in on any one thing that led to nonplussed assessments.

Some bands don't age well. Junior's Eyes isn't one of them. In retrospect they had a lot more to offer than they were given credit for and this track, "Playtime" gives ample evidence.