These days Spirit mostly is remembered for “Nature’s Way,” an FM radio classic. It’s a wistful midtempo plea for ecological sanity that appeared on the original band’s fourth and final album.

Two years before “Nature’s Way,” in 1968, a much heavier Spirit blasted its way onto the scene with another ecological warning, this one awash in psychedelic touches and heavy guitar.

The band sang:

Look beneath your lid some morning
See those things you didn’t quite consume
The world’s a can
for your fresh garbage

That serving of tight, light-heavy rock soon was followed by the dark psychedelic masterpiece “Mechanical World.”

As a one-two punch, these side 1 tracks from the album “Spirit” rank up there with any psychedelic concoctions served up in 1967 or 1968 by Hendrix, Cream or the San Francisco bands.

Spirit never settled for only one style, however, and its first album reflected the bandmembers’ backgrounds in jazz, blues, ethnic music, folk and hard rock. The distorted guitar and overlaid reverb of “Fresh Garbage,” for example, retreats for a midsong jazz piano break by John Locke, who’d played in a jazz combo with drummer Ed Cassidy.

You could make the argument that anything guitarist Randy California played sprung from a seed of psychedelia. For good reason.

At age 15, the guitarist hooked up with an undiscovered Jimi Hendrix.

“I paid a visit to Manny’s Music in Manhattan,” California wrote in the liner notes to the “Spirit” CD. “It was there, in the back of the store jamming on a white Stratocraster, I saw Jimi James. Our eyes met and time seemed to stop” (cue swelling music).

Young California joined Jimi James and the Blue Sparks, playing Cafe Wha in Greenwich Village for three months. When Hendrix left for England, the teenage guitarist’s mom said he couldn’t go.

How much of Hendrix came from California — and how much of California came from Hendrix — remains a mystery since neither had made solo recordings at this point. Someone who’d never heard the album “Spirit” probably could be convinced that Hendrix played guitar.

On the 5-plus-minute “Mechanical World,” California delivers two jaw-dropping solos, the first among his best. At one point his heavy-sustain guitar soars until it’s unbearable — then crashes to the ground to great dramatic effect.

In fact, everything “Mechanical World” is played for maximum drama. Jay Ferguson’s vocals sound as if they were summoned from the grave. The funeral drums send home the lyric: “Death falls so heavy on my soul/Death falls so heavy, makes me moan.”

The strings of arranger Marty Paich do a graveyard dance with California’s guitar, sometimes playing in unison. The song ends as if it were the soundtrack to a film, with elegiac strings ushering out the listener — until a final guitar/drums burst puts the nail in the coffin.

In spots, “Mechanical World” anticipates Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” of 1975, bringing us to the next song …

“Taurus,” written by California, is a lovely instrumental, built around fingerpicked guitar arpeggios. Heard fresh today, the number would be perceived as a loose “Stairway to Heaven” cover.

But Led Zeppelin recorded “Stairway” three years after “Taurus,” the classic power ballad arguably another in the long line of Zep’s “borrowed” songs.

California wrote in the “Spirit” liner notes that fans often asked about the similarity and he responded by saying the bands toured together in their early years and that Led Zeppelin covered “Fresh Garbage” as part of a hard-rock medley.

“Girl in Your Eye” makes precise use of the Indian sitar sound introduced to rock only a year before. Producer Lou Adler worked with the Mamas and Papas during this period and brought a tight aesthetic to many of these songs. Even the longer psychedelic numbers had snap.

“Uncle Jack,” a hard-rocker with a faint English accent, sounds like one of Noel Redding’s contributions to the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Redding would later play with California). It features a great double-tracked solo by California.

“Straight Arrow” was written about bassist Mark Andes’ actor father. “Topanga Windows” re-creates the band’s communal experience in the L.A.-area canyon. “The Great Canyon Fire in General” (more Topanga) features more heavy California licks set amidst a heady swirl of drums and piano.

The 11-minute instrumental “Elija” salutes free jazz and, perhaps, Frank Zappa. Its midsection brings to mind King Crimson. The Butterfield Blues Band’s “East-West” of 1966 almost surely provided inspiration.

Unreleased tracks on Epic’s 1996 reissue of the “Spirit” CD show more of the band’s jazz roots, with the prog rock blast “Verusaka” and the straight-ahead “Free Spirit.”

Jazz was just starting to appear in rock, with Spirit among the earliest purveyors of what came to be known as jazz rock, along with Donovan and Al Kooper’s Blood Sweat and Tears.

(This review written in the foothills of Topanga Canyon. All references to Spirit indicate the original classic lineup, although Randy California and his stepfather, Cassidy, continued to use the name for their bands.)

A collision of psychedelic rock and classical music, the number features the band’s most dramatic player, the violinist Jerry Goodman. At five minutes long, it’s an intricate and ultimately aggressive piece of music held together by the flowing guitar work of bandleader Fred Glickstein.

“Introduction” goes from a whisper to a scream, with passages both conventional and savage. The hard rock comes into play only at the end, as the seven-member Flock emerges only to play one crushing final chord.

Like their hometown contemporaries Chicago Transit Authority, the Flock relied heavily on electric guitar and horns. But the sound took a wicked quantum leap thanks to Goodman, a conservatory-trained violinist who had been the band’s guitar tech. (Perhaps the apt comparison here is with Al Kooper’s first version of Blood, Sweat and Tears, another ambitious brass band fond of psychedelic-influenced experimentation.)

What made the Flock interesting — radical dynamics, flirtations with audio anarchy, oddball lyrics and high-pitched vocals — also seemed to doom any hopes of rock stardom. Theirs was head music, influenced as much by “Bitches Brew” as “Revolver.” (CTA, meanwhile, became the hugely successful Chicago after ditching any hippie influences.)

“The Flock” (1969) released by Columbia, contains only six songs, thanks to the inclusion of a 15-minute blues workout.

Bluesmaster John Mayall wrote the album liner notes after catching the band at Aaron Russo’s Kinetic Playground in Chicago (think Fillmore Midwest).

“I got close to going berserk over their prodigious and varied musical talent,” Mayall said. “(It’s) an exciting new direction in contemporary music, a subtle fusion of sounds drawn from the bedrock of blues, jazz, gospel, rock, country and many other sources.” (Mayall later used a violinist in his jazz-rock fusion band.)

Back to the album. “Introduction” runs directly into “Clown,” another of the band’s best songs sung by Glickstein.

At almost 8 minutes, “Clown” plays like a Chicago Transit Authority-style rocker until just past the 2-minute mark, when Goodman cranks through a violin solo, embossed by Jerry Smith’s insistent bass work. After that, we’re in for an extended some psychedelic/prog variations with a wisp of raga. The band sounds lost at some point, like they’re tuning up on acid. A sax solo helicopters in from afar. With a minute to spare, the band returns to the safety of rock. The label didn’t hear a single.

Distant ethereal vocals announce the arrival of “I Am the Tall Tree.” Pastoral violin and perhaps flute.

The lyrics paint curious images:

Brown sugar lips through the naked eye
Blimp floating high on an aqua sky
Ride the slide narrow to wide
As deep as creation’s infinity

Indeed. There’s still time for one of those Flock 180s, as singers cry in alarm, “The rushes are coming, the rushes are coming.” Zappa meets Gilbert & Sullivan.

The next two numbers feature fine vocals and guitar work from Fred Glickstein. After some startling scratching by Goodman, we’re into fuzz guitar and a rousing cover of the Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting on You.”

“Store Bought Store Thought” — a fan favorite — charges in as another straight-up rock song, albeit with twinkly King Crimson-like interlude. The lyrics go sci-fi:

Robot, robot, arms and legs
Teeth, bones, hair, it’s all there
Robot, robot, arms and legs
Battery’s dead, head’s dead.
(Mechanical man, mechanical man!)

“Truth” seems a typical ’60s white boy blues, until we hear the violin take the lead in place of electric guitar. Terrific for a while. Lengthy blues jams were common enough in those days; this one provides one of the band’s rare nods to hipster conventions.

The debut album proved to be the Flock’s finest hour, by far. Followup “Dinosaur Swamps” (1970) had its moments, but the band collapsed in its wake.

“The Flock” appears to be out of print, after a CD release in 1996. “The Flock” album was combined with “Dinosaur Swamps” on a bargain CD. There exists a best of the Flock album with decent sound.

Jerry Goodman moved on to John McLaughlin’s fiery Mahavishnu Orchestra and toured with the rock-jazz fusionists Dixie Dreggs, both all-instrumental bands. He released a trio of solo albums in the 1980s and continued to work into the new century.

Over the years, Glickstein gathered the Flock in a couple of forms, touring and squeezing out one lightly regarded studio album in 1975. Note: The Flock discussed in this review is technically the second edition of the band, the first releasing some pop singles from 1966-68.

Here’s an outstanding, high-quality video of Goodman and Glickstein playing “Introduction”:

Not that the CD can be found on any old record store shelf. Decades of lawsuits and hostility have combined to send this FM staple underground, with prices for “It’s a Beautiful Day” currently topping out at about $100 on online retail sites.

A curious fate for an album so ubiquitous in the dimming of the hippie era, soaring on the wings of its famous opener, “White Bird.”

The singer/violinist Laflamme, in fact, has said he doesn’t even like playing “White Bird.” But he dislikes Matthew Katz a whole lot more.

Katz was the San Francisco music manager behind Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and Laflamme’s group, It’s a Beautiful Day. Decades of litigation followed Katz’s hippie era machinations, with the careers of Moby Grape and Beautiful Day basically destroyed by the resulting nastiness. There’s lots to be read online about these epic legal bummers … but we hear the music calling.

“It’s a Beautiful Day” plays rough here and there, but for the most part it’s psychedelic lite, a 4 a.m. chill. The forward-looking touches of world music ring true enough these days. The LP’s influence no doubt extended as far as Dead Can Dance (and its demon spawn). Yet the overwrought singing, awkward classical musical interludes and hippy-dippy lyrics betray the work’s 1960s roots. In any case, the album has been going in and out of style over the past 40 years.

The band It’s a Beautiful Day was a late bloomer out of the psychedelic boomtown that was San Francisco. Laflamme was there at the beginning of West Coast psychedelia, a fixture on the hippy scene. The former symphony orchestra violinist played with all of the heavy Bay area bands. He helped form Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, bringing echoes of the great Stéphane Grappelli to the acoustic band’s mix of gypsy jazz, swing and roots music.

Laflamme’s own band was formed in San Francisco in the summer of love, but got its start in Seattle, playing a residency at the Encore Ballroom, at Katz’s insistence. The song “White Bird” came out of these days, when the band had little but a place to stay — the attic of an old Victorian mansion.

“We were like caged birds in that attic,” Laflamme says. “We had no money, no transportation, the weather was miserable.”

The “White Bird” line “the leaves blow across the long black road to the darkened sky and its rage” came from the view Laflamme and his (first) wife Linda had looking out the window.

After returning to SF, the band got its break opening for Cream on its Farewell tour. The year later, Laflamme and co. etched their music onto vinyl.

The debut album “It’s a Beautiful Day” was released on Columbia in 1969. While neither the album nor the single, “White Bird,” were smash hits, the records performed respectably and their popularity grew over the decade. “White Bird,” sung by Laflamme and Pattie Santos, became an FM radio staple (and cliche).

“White Bird” and “Hot Summer Day” open the album with a mid-tempo groove that holds up beautifully for the most part, but the songs do suffer from some dated passages. Sonically, both songs offer mystery and revelation.

It’s hard to hear “White Bird” with new ears, but notice how Laflamme keeps his powder dry, introducing his bowed violin only at the 1:35 mark. The Spanish/Django guitar gives the song a sophistication rare for the time.

“Hot Summer Day” features lovely call-and-response vocals, with Santos and Laflamme both evoking the vocals of Martin Balin. Linda’s B-3 organ provides the undercurrent. An understated bit of wah-wah reminds us we’re in psychedelic waters.

Alas, “Wasted Union Blues” and “Girl With No Eyes” kill the buzz — the former a crappy heavy rocker and the latter a baroque piddle with harpsichord. With better songs here, “It’s a Beautiful Day” could have been a masterpiece.

The heart of the matter can be found on side 2, in the “Eastern” trilogy.

The wordless “Bombay Calling” proves exotic and rhythmically sophisticated. Seemingly effortless, it’s a Lear Jet flyby of a foreign land. (This was the song copped by Deep Purple.)

If “Bombay” evokes the bustle and spirit of India, then the song into which it fades, “Bulgaria,” brings us to the darker places. Laflamme and Santos finally find their own way as a vocal team on this ghostly track, singing as if in trances — setting aside the Jefferson Airplane template.

Then we’re galloping off to “Time Is,” a 10-minute freakout and showcase for the band that recalls Zappa and, well, “Time Has Come Today.” Unfortunately there’s a ’60s drum solo and a line about “even flowers must die” but the song gets back on track before wrapping this outstanding trilogy in a heart-stopping flash.

The big bald Raphael learned there and then that he was the reincarnation of Ramesses II — not merely a central-heating contractor. The ancient pharaoh ordered the unlikely medium to spread the secrets of the universe to the rest of mankind, using music as his vehicle.

Psychedelic music, as it turned out.

First, there were some strange singles in the late Sixties. Then “Space Hymns,” the first complete work, emerged in 1971, in the dimming of the original psychedelic era.

Despite the album cover by famed fantasy artist Roger Dean (Yes), few ever heard the musical word of Ramases — as Raphael took to calling himself. Most of those who did found the album remarkable.

Looking back, "Space Hymns" serves as one bridge between the folk-tinged psychedelia of the 1960s and the space rock/prog rock of the 1970s. Maybe a cross between the Incredible String Band and Hawkwind. It anticipates the late-century mash-ups of Arabic music and rock, as well as the neo-psychedelic folk movement of the new century.

10cc fans know the album as an early group effort from Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, all of whom backed Ramases. Background vocals came from Ramases’ wife, now known as Selket.

(One rumor has Stewart singing the songs attributed to Ramases. This at a time when the future 10cc lads recorded at Strawberry Studios (in Stockport) under numerous fanciful names. Could Ramases be a cosmic goof? It’s a meaningless question.)

Gouldman remembers the sessions: “It was a really fine album to make. We would sit down on the floor with acoustic guitars, that kind of vibe, very hippy and mystical.”

The album’s first track, “Life Child,” opens with silence. Then a faint eerie sound out of “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Acoustic guitars morph electric. A disembodied voice emerges, in character as an alien returned to Earth. “I see your sun is going down; I see your wreckage on the ground. … Your seas are full of poisoned water.”

The Moroccan-flavored “Oh Mister” and the straightforward acoustic number “And the Whole World” follow. Then it’s back to spaceland:

“Quasar One” wanders across almost seven minutes, with production that’ll feel familiar to 10cc fans. Chants and drums leap back and forth from the speakers. The singer fades into a sonic black hole before returning to finish his cosmic love song, the proceedings increasingly dissonant and disorienting.

“You’re the Only One” tests listeners with its one-line lyric taken from “Midnight Cowboy”: “You’re the only one, Joe.” Over and over, with acceleration. Music to freak out by.

In “Earth-People,” our alien speaks of traveling the deserts of Zeus and witnessing the birth of a planet. But he cannot navigate human communication. Nick Drake on acid. The angels in “Wings of Desire.”

“Molecular Delusions” brings more chanting, with an Arabic music influence.

“Balloon,” the catchy repetitive single, cautions Earthlings not to foul their air: “Don’t burst your bubble/or you’re in trouble.” Things that go swish and zoom race from speaker to speaker before the apocalyptic finale. “Jesus Come Back,” a similar folkie ballad, advises “no fears for the future.”

“Journey to the Inside” closes out “Space Hymns” with more 10cc phase shifting, Beatle-esque dingo balls and dark sci-fi effects. “Oh, what are you going to do with me,” Ramases asks. Psychedelic cocktail party chatter brings us to stop.

The story goes that Ramases killed himself in the late 1970s. Survivors include this fine curious rock record and one other, “Glass Top Coffin.”

The “Space Hymns” import (Repertoire label) is available via Barnes & Noble; it tends to go in and out of stock. (Update: The follow-up record, "Glass Top Coffin," finally was made available on CD in March 2010 via Esoteric Uk/Zoom.)

Read more about Martin Raphael and Ramases at Brian Currin’s fan site. Also, John Bowers has a lovely piece on his blog titled “Ramases in Felixstowe.”

Judging the album by the cover, the first Mothers of Invention record is right in tune with the chemically charged zeitgeist. “Freak Out!” the cover screamed, atop a solarized and colorized picture of the band, which looks suitably hairy and dazed.

On the back cover, Suzy Creamcheese, a band muse of some sort, warns listeners that “these Mothers is crazy. … One guy wears beads and they all smell bad.” Hello, Frank Zappa.

Fledgling hippies expecting the new psychedelic sounds out of California were instead greeted with a bunch of greasy pop songs and doo-wop.

Psychedelic? Meh. Strange? Definitely.

Bandleader Zappa uses the liner notes to abuse his listeners, pearls before consumer swine: “None of you are perceptive enough. Why are you reading this?

“If your children ever find out how lame you are, they’ll murder you in your sleep.”

Speaking of lame, “Freak Out!” wastes most of its running time on crap. Boldly bad novelty numbers, with kazoo. Spoofs of radio music from the 1950s, wasted on the youth of the mid-60s. “Louie Louie” ripoffs. (Zappa fans have a fondness for these numbers, which at least have nostalgia going for them these days. Kids like “Wowie Zowie.”)

The lyrics are borderline demented. Zappa’s targets are easy: dumb teenagers, squares, cops and racist haters. (Zappa would get around to the hippies soon enough, two albums later, in the satirical masterpiece “We’re Only in It for the Money.)

Zappa would later claim that “each tune had a function within an overall satirical concept.”

So why does this nonsense make our list of the Top Psychedelic Albums?

“Hungry Freaks, Daddy” and “Who Are the Brain Police” are the oddly colored appetizers on Side 1, but Zappa and company finally get down to business as the mindfuck begins deep into the double-album.

“Trouble Coming Every Day” finds Zappa playing it straight, railing in a Dylan-esque stream against the madness of the Watts Riots — the song was written as they were occurring, “the fire in the street.” A fuzzed-up guitar dances over hypnotic drumming. At the break, Zappa finally shows off his significant guitar chops, riffing off “Eight Miles High.” The ending features a freak out, finally, as the song collapses on top of itself.

Then it’s on to the psychedelic wonders of the 9-minute “Help I’m a Rock”/”It Can’t Happen Here.” Zappa took no drugs, but this is the headphone masterpiece that launched zillions of acid trips.

Zappa’s multitracking lays on screams, duck calls, alien-like beeps and chatter, a female orgasm, all in the service of the drone “Help I’m a Rock.”

Then this: “Who can imagine, that they would freak out in Kansas …” prefaces a Sun Ra-inspired detour into free jazz. (“Note the interesting formal structure,” Zappa deadpans in the liner notes.)

It ends with a parting shot from Suzy Creamcheese, apparently not into Mother fucking.

“The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet” clocks in at 12 minutes. “This is what freaks sound like when turned loose in a recording studio with $500 worth of percussion eqiupment,” Zappa says in trying to explain the resulting clamor. Freak out, indeed.

Zappa would go on to refine all of his moves on this album, both as an important avant garde composer and as a novelty song satirist. “Freak Out!” eventually was included on the Grammy Hall of Fame album list and Zappa would later release an “audio documentary” CD set about its making.

Zappa immediately set about making much better albums, but this record’s final 20 minutes remains prime psychedelia, with a twist.

“AWATS” came a year after Rundgren’s 1972 masterpiece “Something/Anything?” a double album that came brimming with great pop songs such as “I Saw the Light,” “Couldn’t I Just Tell You” and the artist’s biggest hit, “Hello It’s Me.”

Pop fans who followed the artist to “A Wizard, a True Star” found themselves confronted with a 12-title song cycle that was full of noise, synthesizers, hard rock and pure psychedelia. This dose of sonic madness took up the first side of the album, while a more traditional rock and soul approach filled out side 2.

The album cover should have been a tip-off. Artist Arthur Wood’s brightly colored psychedelic portrait of Rundgren — inspired, perhaps, by the song “Dada Dali” — came in a die-cut pattern, unheard of at the time. Jungian stars, cubes, mandalas, pyramids and bubbles framed the Picasso-like image of the artist, who appears to sport at least three ears.

Rolling Stone didn’t get it. The reviewer noted side 1 would be better employed as a cartoon soundtrack and went on to complain thusly:

The fealty of Todd’s most devoted fans will be challenged by the form and content of side one of “A Wizard, A True Star.” It is his most experimental, and annoying, effort to date. … Throughout the performance, more a jarring pastiche than a carefully woven tapestry, it sounds like Todd is daring his listeners to keep up with his new direction, which is both ludicrously grandiose and something of a put-on. Here we have an artist who … has run amok.

“Most people couldn’t get through it,” Rundgren says today. “I went off on a weird tangent and the rest is history.”

The new-breed Todd Is God crowd went with the flow. “AWATS” became a classic in the proficient artist’s canon, second perhaps only to “Something/Anything?” The psychedelic album’s status is such that Rundgren was persuaded to perform it live, in its entirety, in a series of well received fall 2009 “A Wizard, a True Star” concerts.

The album’s psychedelic cycle kicks off with “International Feel,” a throbbing, sonically dense number that speaks directly to the artist’s faithful:

“Here we are again, the start of the end,
But there’s more
I only want to see if you’ll give up on me
But there’s always more”

That blast segues into “Never Never Land,” a psychedelic rendering of the “Peter Pan” Broadway number. Rundgren sings tenderly against a swell of Vangelis-like synthesizers. The song attached itself to Rundgren for decades.

The Peter Pan persona was easy enough to conjure up in concert, with Rundgren typically performing with multicolored hair, heavy makeup, feathers and psychedelic duds. Later in the album, in “Is it My Name?” he addresses the less-than-studly vibe:

“My voice goes so high
You would think I was gay
But I play my guitar
In such a man-cock way”

“Never Never Land” gives way to a dizzy quintet of 1-minute songs, ranging from prog-rock blasts to Zappa-esque nonsense. The instrumental “Flamingo” gives Rundgren a chance to show off his synethsizer skills in a circus soundscape.

“Zen Archer,” perhaps the best and strangest number in the cycle, calls up the ghosts of Weil and Brecht with a portrait of a karmic killer. It’s electronic German cabaret — that is, if the cabaret spiked its beer with LSD. “The pretty bird is dying … ”

Rundgren’s lyrics veer from the nonsensical to surreal: His offbeat humor is apparent throughout the album, in songs like “Just Another Onion Heat,” “Dogfight Giggle” and “You Don’t Have to Camp Around.”

“Le Feel Internacionale” closes the dizzy-dozen psychedelic side, its reprise bringing the mind-blown listener full cycle.

The album does have its lush and linear moments, notably the the soul hits medley that brightened side 2 and the anthem “Just One Victory,” which closes many Rundgren concerts.

“AWATS” contained yet another nod to fans: “Wait another year/and Utopia is here.”

Truth in advertising.

More Todd: Read about Rundgren’s ownership of the psychedelic “Fool” guitar that Eric Clapton played in Cream. Aka the Psychedelic SG, it was Rundgren’s main ax throughout the 1970s and can be heard on “A Wizard, a True Star.”

The U.K. trio the Crazy World of Arthur Brown ranks as a one-hit wonder these days — “Fire” gets steady play on classic oldies stations, and there was no follow-up of note. But the psychedelic cognoscenti revere Brown and his bandmates for the dark matter found on the first side of the debut album, “The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.”

“Fire” was the centerpiece of a side-long, five-track rock operetta once called “Tales From the Neurotic Nights of Hieronymous Anonymous.” Now, it’s mostly known as “The Fire Suite.” The rock opera king, Peter Townshend, associate-produced the “Crazy World” album and plays on one song.

“Nightmare: Prelude” opens the album (and song cycle) with a melodramatic horror-movie vibe, complete with funereal organ and what sounds like a psycho’s heavy breathing. (The title perhaps a nod to Bernard Hermann and “Vertigo.”) Sinister mood established, the rock trio bursts to life driven by the Hammond organ of Vincent Crane.

The story appears to concern young Hieronymous and the gods who visit him in his nightmares. The subject is hell, sin and a search for salvation.

“Why is it so cold out here? Let me in!” singer Arthur Brown pleads in a falsetto. “The price of your entry is sin,” a wicked god intones. And so the fun begins.

“Fanfare: Fire Poem” finds our hero begging to be released from some fresh new hell. Brown raps over a groove-intensive Mose Allison-style riff, flashing back to when he was lying in the grass by a river that suddenly turned into an inferno. (Note similarities to War’s “Spill That Wine” of two years later.)

The horrified hero sees “all these shapes being sucked into the flames, writhing and trying to escape.” A giant being invites him to “come on home” before plunging him into hell.

“I am the god of Hellfire and I bring you fire!” opens the famous hit, in which the vengeful satanic creature belittles the life of man — “fire — to destroy all you’ve done … to end all you’ve become.”

The sinister bounce of “Come and Buy” offers various temptations before reprising the “The price of your entry is sin” bit. “Time-Confusion” concludes our story with spooky-soulful playing by Crane that recalls both the nursery and funeral parlor. Then it’s back to “Fire.” The hero, alas, appears left in the devil’s hands, burning for eternity.

Brown performed much of this music wearing a flaming headdress and robes. (One writer said of Brown’s shtick: It was “the greatest single spectacle since the Rape of the Sabines.”)

Arthur Brown later said of his satanic stage persona, “For a while, I didn’t necessarily believe I was the devil, but felt as if I was supposed to lay things open for people to see. Thank goodness that side of myself disappeared. After a while you think: ‘God, how could I believe this?’ ” He also performed as the pope and later was crucified nightly as part of another act. The fire-hat act was captured on film for an unreleased movie, below. (Story continued)

Brown’s two-man band, organist Crane and drummer Drachen Theaker (replaced later nu Carl Palmer) furiously pumped out the sounds. Crane was every bit as essential to the group’s success as Brown, exhibiting serious chops in soul, stride piano, jazz and classical.

There was no guitar. On “The Crazy World of Arthur Brown,” however, there were horns and strings, added by producer Kit Lambert. The producer apparently hated the playing of Brown’s drummer and used the excuse to go orchestral. Theaker, on tour, quit the band upon hearing the tarted-up album.

Crane has said there “probably three versions of every single song on that album, done in every single studio in London” with different players.

In the end, Theaker’s drumming remained on all but two tracks. He has told interviewers there exists a straightforward mix of the album, without strings and all, and with interstitial links between the Fire Suite tracks.

The extra instrumentation did nothing to stop “Crazy World” from becoming a top 10 album, while “Fire” blazed the top of the charts. Hearing an A-B comparison of the mixes would be great, but most fans would agree the horns and strings are far from sonic vandalism.

Side 2 of “The Crazy World of Arthur Brown” leans on the soulful side of Brown (the tall handsome singer had been pressured to go the Tom Jones route). The side’s highlight is a creepy and wonderful take on Screamin Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” with Brown no doubt envisioning the American R&B singer’s famous stage entrances from inside a coffin. “We did psychedelic soul music,” Theaker has said. “A lot of people used to think (Brown) was colored.”

The album has come in and out of print in the decades since, marked by stretches in which it was a highly sought after collector’s item. In fact, a Japanese import of “The Crazy World of Arthur Brown” currently sells online for $128, reflecting the need for a high-quality release in the West. The album is not available on iTunes.

Update! “The Crazy World of Arthur Brown” returned in a double-CD edition in February 2010.

Brown initially tried to keep “The Crazy World” going, but moved on to the band Kingdom Come and a long solo career. He performs occasionally, still heavy on the operatic voice and strange theatrics. Vincent Crane, who went on to found Atomic Rooster, died in 1989 after decades of manic depression.

More reading: “The God of Hellfire: Alternative Biography.”

A harpsichord dances with guitar in the lovely prelude. A deep-throated sax breaks in. In the break, all of the song’s instruments collide and veer off in different directions. The resulting passage is more in tune with free jazz than psychedelic music — although this is unmistakably a hard rock song.

“Da Capo” was Arthur Lee and Love’s second album, out of three made with the his core group of L.A. musicians. The album was followed and overshadowed by the rock masterpiece “Forever Changes,” but the songs here are streaked with brilliance and innovation. Many musicians’ minds were blown by its collage of sounds and crazyquilt of influences, the material clearly ahead of its time.

“Da Capo” is, in a sense, a more adventurous album than “Forever Changes.” In any case, these tracks are among the finest recordings of Love as musicians. (Much of “Forever Changes” was played by hired hands.)

The band had expanded to seven players, upgraded its drummer, added woodwinds and, of all things, integrated a harpsicord. The first side of “Da Capo” is a lovely experiment in fusing sounds from rock, Latin rhythms, jazz and classical. Lee and company succeed at this without pandering, producing some of their best songs. The second side of “Da Capo,” alas, is dedicated entirely to the notorious jam “Revelation,” which has done great damage to the otherwise brilliant album’s rep.

“Seven & Seven Is” could be the most explosive 2 1/2 minutes in ’60s rock. When rocks fans think of Love, they usually conjure up “Forever Changes,” “My Little Red Book” and this frantic yet somehow cohesive piece. The rage of drums, bass and guitar gives way to the sound of an atomic bomb explosion, accompanied by a jazzy soft guitar. The a-bomb apparently had nothing to do with the song’s content, a visit to Lee’s family living room. The song anticipates punk rock and sonic anarchy. A work that’s forever cool. “Seven & Seven Is” was covered by the Ramones and Alice Cooper among many others.

Legend has it that Lee and the band’s original percussionist, Snoopy Pfisterer, alternated playing the difficult and exhausting drum part, with no one sure whose work appears on the album. Some versions of the album have a version of the song preceded by 50 seconds of studio patter that captures Lee’s frustration with “take 77.” (Pfisterer, classically trained, moved to harpsichord and organ for this album.)

“Orange Skies,” from the band’s terrific second songwriter Bryan MacLean, brings us the delightfully trippy lyric “Orange skies, carnivals and cotton candy and you.” Touches of samba with Tijay Cantrelli’s flute as the lead instrument. “Que Vida!” continues the theme, with a B3 organ streaming below the surface.

“The Castle” shows off the chops of new drummer Michael Stewart and features a jangly take on Spanish fingerpicked guitar. Listen for the quick detour into dissonance.

“She Comes in Colors” is Love’s version of a power ballad. A flute drifts over the love song, sung with precision by Lee. About 20 seconds in, the song shifts from an easy tempo to barely restrained rock. The harpsichord returns midway though. “My love she comes in colors,” Lee sings over and over. “You can tell her from the clothes she wears.” The care and precision in the production foreshadow “Forever Changes.” Keith Richards said “She Comes in Colors” inspired the Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow.”

The 19-minute “Revelation,” a bluesy/R&B jam that by most accounts Lee and the band came to regret using on the album. It’s all pretty much downhill from the harpsichord intro. There are some good moments about six minutes in, with some Eastern-sounding guitar chops most likely influenced by the Butterfield Blues Band’s “East/West.” (The post-Lee version of Love, with guitarist Johnny Echols, played a stripped-down version of “Revelation” in concert in the summer of 2011.)

At times, the jam brings to mind the Stones or Love’s labelmates the Doors, who debuted that year and were big fans of Arthur Lee’s band. (“Stephanie Knows Who” certainly influenced the Doors’ later “Touch Me,” although that might be producer Paul Rothchild repeating himself.) Yes, there’s a drum solo in “Revelation,” but it’s mercifully brief. Since the core version of Love made only three albums, the loss of a side to filler stings. (Though the laziness probably routed several great songs to “Forever Changes.”)

The album was rereleased several years ago, as a Rhino/WEA import. It offers mono and stereo versions of “Da Capo.” There’s also a collectors “Da Capo” vinyl album put out by Sundazed.

Rhino’s “Love Story: 1966-1972″ provides a good overview of the original band’s recordings.

People who already fans of this groundbreaking band should check out the fine biography Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love

On DVD, there’s “Love Story,”a documentary about the band made in Lee’s final years. He participated fully with the filmmakers.

The Fabs’ embrace of flower power and trippy-dopey imagery was in full bloom in the summer of 1967, when the multicolored “Sgt. Pepper” tumbled onto the world stage.

This was not, however, the Fabs’ first visit to the land of psychedelia: “Tomorrow Never Knows” from “Revolver” startled fans the summer before, with its frenzied pace and sea of tape loops. Lennon’s slithery acid-tinged “Strawberry Fields Forever” arrived as a single more than three months before, sharing the vinyl with the gentle psychedelia of “Penny Lane.”

For the Summer of Love, the gods of pop had delivered a soundtrack. “Sgt. Pepper” would change the lives of a generation or two, expanding minds young and old across the universe.

But does “Sgt. Pepper” deserve its medals as a landmark psychedelic album? Yes, certainly, but its trippy credentials do wither a bit under examination.

Of course, hallucinatory drugs heavily affected the Beatles who had been taking LSD for a year or two. The liberal use of sound effects, backward tapes and nonsensical sonics gave a veneer of strangeness to even the most conventional songs, such as “Lovely Rita.”

The idea of a rock concept album — with songs fading into each other and presenting some sort of narrative whole — was highly innovative and challenging to listeners of the day, but it was not unique, not even in Britain.

The English music-hall influence is as strong if not stronger than the pull of psychedelia. As pop artists and marketing geniuses, The Beatles knew better than to blow their constituency’s collective minds, as Lennon had in mind with “Revolution No. 9.”

A cosmos-minded mix-tape that stretches from “Revolver” to “Magical Mystery Tour” would indeed reveal the Beatles as the greatest psychedelic band of them all. Still, “Sgt. Pepper’s” rep as the nexus for these adventures remains overblown.

Here are the songs that clearly qualify for anyone’s psychedelic hall of fame:

• Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds (Lennon)
• Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (Lennon)
• Within You and Without You (Harrison, playing with Indian musicians)
• A Day in the Life (Lennon and McCartney

That’s four out of 13 songs, leaving nine tracks revolving at various distances from the psychedelic orbit.

So why, then, does “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” qualify for top 5 placement on our list of the greatest psychedelic music albums?

The album remains a marvelous immersive experience, a journey through a sonic soundscape that welcomes and inspires all but the smallest of minds. As with works of painted art, sometimes the frame matters as much as the images on canvas when it comes to the aesthetic experience.

And, of course, “Lucy in the Sky” and “A Day in the Life” are as good as it ever got in psychedelic songwriting and production. (Imagine the album with “Strawberry Fields,” the original plan.)

To hear the final massive E chords of “A Day in the Life” decaying but seemingly going on forever takes us backward and forward in the same instant. No other recorded moment in rock history matches this one for drama.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” will be among those remastered and rereleased in fall 2009. For now, alas, the CD has not changed since the mid-1980s, when the first and only digital version of the psychedelic classic hit stores. As in, the release dates back to 20 years ago today (more or less). That bit of absurdity will blow anyone’s mind.