No. 57: ‘Another Country’

As it turned out, the Electric Flag wasn’t all that psychedelic.

“The band sort of fell into the bag of a soul band,” said founder and guitarist Mike Bloomfield. “Because of (singer-drummer Buddy Miles’) dominant personality.”

Quite a u-turn from where things began. With “The Trip,” a soundtrack for an LSD exploitation flick featuring the first recordings of the San Francisco band.

Featuring titles like “Joint Passing,” “Psyche Soap,” and “Flash, Bam, Pow,” all of the 1967 soundtrack’s compositions were credited to the Electric Flag, an American Music Band. The tracks were largely improvised and recorded in not much more than a week.

The track “Peter’s Trip” was named for Peter Fonda, the counterculture actor who put the film together with pal Jack Nicholson (under the aegis of American International Pictures). Fonda recruited Bloomfield for the project after Gram Parsons seemed too trad for the gig. (“Flash, Bam, Pow” would get a second life in Fonda’s “Easy Rider.”)

Bloomfield’s eclectic soundtrack proved more artistically successful than the ham-handed film. The score’s highlights were its brief but seriously spaced-out tracks.

Bloomfield had an affinity for “long head pieces” — as evidenced on his modal classic “East-West,” recorded with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band — but his heart wasn’t in the San Francisco underground sound. The Electric Flag had horns and a way with hard blues and R&B. Still, some of “The Trip’s” trip made its way onto the band’s debut album of March 1968, “A Long Time Comin.’ “

The album was a pleasant but uneven mix of Stax-influenced R&B, a bit of what we now call Americana and mostly guitar-driven blues. Those seeking the mind-expanding experience suggested by the album’s purple-haze cover had to wait until the end, with “Another Country,” a nearly 9-minute sonic adventure.

Composed and sung by bandmember Nick Gravenites, the track mixed the psychedelic with the existential. At its bleeding heart was a solo for the ages from guitar ace Bloomfield.

The song kicks off with a blue-eyed soul groove powered by brass, the sort of thing that would propel the second Blood, Sweat & Tears to stardom in a few years. The singer has more on his mind than good lovin’ and good times, however:

Sounding like the antihero out of a Michelangelo Antonioni film, our narrator shares his world-weary POV — one decidedly out of touch with the Summer of Love and the groovy vibes found elsewhere on the album:

This whole year
Has been a blunder
Yes I’ve lost my sense of wonder
And there are no sweet warm love birds to turn to
I have no one to call brother”

The worm hole opens at the 2:25 mark, immediately after this dire passage: “Get the safest room you can find / And lock the door / Find yourself another country”

Funk turns funkadelic within a savage audio collage put together by (Chess Records producer) Norman Dayron, composed of distorted vocals, mysterious clanging and a brew of sonic gunk. It’s more PCP than LSD, an exercise in paranoia not dissimilar to the Yardbirds’ startling recent single “Happening Ten Years Time Ago.”

Bad trip, man. A harrowing minute and a half. Then it’s Bloomfield’s turn.

The master’s solo begins low-key, a soft and jazzy variation on his “East-West” vamps — a balm to the madness that just went before. A bit Joe Pass; a bit Grant Green. Part 2 of the solo accelerates into hard rock, in retrospect bringing to mind the Latin-influenced playing of his Marin County pal Carlos Santana. Who influenced whom? Hard to say, but Bloomfield’s Les Paul squall undoubtedly serves as a preview of the Santana sound that would sweep the Woodstock nation in the summer of ’69.

After three minutes, the song reprises the narrator’s tale of woe before a woozy brass fadeout.

“Another Country” feels a bit like a three-headed Frankenstein, its distinct bits joined at suspiciously precise ticks of the clock. Disorienting and a bit jarring in transitions.

Yet the track remains true to its title, taking the listener on an epic journey. Ponder the fate of our haunted narrator: This is one trip best experienced vicariously.

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Liner notes: Ron Polte, local scenester and manager of Quicksilver Messenger Service, was credited with writing “Another Country” and two other songs on “A Long Time Comin.’ ” They appear to be compositions by Nick Gravenites, the move probably designed to skirt some long-forgotten contractual issue. They were childhood friends from Chicago. (The Electric Flag was manged by Albert Grossman, but Polte was involved with Bloomfield’s project from early on, even credited with inspiring the Electric Flag name.)

Another one of those mysterious songs was the semi-hit “Groovin’ Is Easy,” a midtempo charmer that appears early on side 1.