from the LP Yellow Sunshine, Gamble Records, 1973Thanks to guys like Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, and crews like Funkadelic, there was a brief period of time in the late ‘60s & ’70s when African Americans were culturally "allowed" to experiment with psychedelic drugs---shit, even the once squeaky-clean Temptations grew out their ‘fros and turned on; previous to that, and again now in the present day, substances like LSD or mushrooms are often considered to be expressly “white” drugs. In 1973 however, the acid was still raining down upon the masses like a torrential downpour, and this particular bunch of guys from the Philly area enjoyed what they were seeing enough to name their band, album, and a track on said album after a particularly strong batch of Owsley’s magic; the lyrics leave little to the imagination, “…oh it’s the yellow sunshine, now I can see, oh it’s the yellow sunshine, makes me feel free, free to groo-oo-oo-oove with the colors...the pretty colors, baby, got to bring you right on around…if you open your eyes, you’ll realize, that the yellow sunshine is good for your mind…” While most of this album could be classified as flat-out acid rock (how fucking awesome is the fuzzed out, double guitar attack?!), the players who comprised this band went in vastly different musical directions after the group split up: Roland & Karl Chabers went on to join disco legends MFSB while Dexter Wansel, who I’ve posted on already, became a noted jazz-funk musician and producer, leaving us this, their only LP, to fuel our wonderment of how much farther out they could have taken this trip…
