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Permanently Stated is an interesting and successful period piece of pop psychedelia. The album seems to be a logical progression of the satire of "Judy in Disguise," the band's number one parody of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." Though it doesn't totally shun the group's R&B base (e.g., "Hey Hey Bunny" and especially "Little Dum Dum"), most of the album explores late-'60s psychedelia. "We Played Games," the great opening cut, seems almost innocent in its lyrical and musical content. By the third number, however, optimistic lyrics give way to the spoken ending, "Send my message to the sky as I begin to die." Musically, "Permanently Stated" is quite adventurous, with various complex horn and string arrangements and vocal choruses. The record is at its most Beatles-esque with "Before the Change," which features string arrangements and distortions that sound straight out of the "I Am the Walrus" sessions. It's difficult to ascertain if the band is trying to be serious in all its musical and lyrical diversity, or is just having fun exploring the music of its day. Either way, the album is enjoyable from start to finish.

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1969's A Lovely Sight, Pisces' only attempt at an LP, never made wax; but the fuzz guitar phrases and tambourine shuffle of "Dear One" instantly illustrate the band's woozy realm. Deeper inside, bass scales borrowed from Sgt. Pepper give way to Who moves wrecked by bad fidelity and harsh intrusions of found sounds. Jefferson Airplane's swirled, lysergic Haight Street utopia melds with the urban narcosis of the Velvet Underground's East Village.
But Pisces hailed from another ghost town altogether: Rockford, Illinois, where rusted, endless plains bear close resemblance to a bummer acid trip or a junkie's rock bottom. In 1969, the industrial Midwest was hurting for the hard stuff, but what it got was plenty of the White Album - enough to have Jim Krein, Paul DiVenti, and Linda Bruner recording through a glass onion all their own. The unsettling balance of their unissued LP combines homespun psychedelic vision and secondhand studio trickery with naive readings of the rock sound of the day, resulting in a diverse, haunted rock headspace few coastal bands ever flew through, let alone over.

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Pisces - Dear One

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The second track is more conventional, but not bad.

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didn't know you had revived this thread

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Hocus Pocus - Focus (I assume I haven't already put this in the thread

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I don't think it qualifies anyway, even under my lax standards

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Pushin' Too Hard - The Seeds

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The MC5 -- "Kick Out The Jams"

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