Promotional Photo

Love

California '66 Revue
With The Blues Magoos, The Electric Prunes and Love.
Thu., Aug. 6 at 8 p.m. $66; benefit for WPKN.
Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield University, Fairfield.

One of the great music heroes of the '60s and beyond died June 25. The subject of much speculation about his unconventional lifestyle and religious choices, his unexpected passing stunned his fans and led to a flood of heartfelt tributes.

Yes, Sky Saxon's death gave poignant meaning to his group's classic, "Pushin' Too Hard."

Saxon's passing, which was outshone by the same-day death of a certain singer from the Jackson 5, left dozens of concert promoters in the lurch. His band, The Seeds were poised for a national tour with fellow West Coast garage psychedelicians Love (whose own dynamic leader, Arthur Lee, passed away in 2006, though this line-up includes key players from throughout the forever-changing band's storied history). This was a particular setback for the Fairfield stop on the tour, which is a benefit for Bridgeport-based, boomer-friendly community radio station WPKN (89.5 FM).

But the ever-resourceful PKN quickly regrouped by resetting its geographic boundaries and pulling personal favors to arrange an ultra-rare reunion of The Blues Magoos. The Bronx-based band not only shared the record charts and touring circuits with Love 40 years ago but was immortalized alongside The Seeds on Lenny Kaye's seminal psychedelic compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, an epoch-making double-album released in 1972.

"We've been asleep for 42 years," explains Blues Magoos leader Peppy Castro, who says the band has reunited just three times before this: for the respected Cavestomp garage festival nine years ago, for a show last year with The Zombies, "and one thing for ourselves." But don't think they're out of practice. "We actually went in the studio last summer, recut a lot of the old stuff. Now we're adamant about having new stuff."

That trajectory matches the revitalization of The Electric Prunes, whose lead vocalist James Lowe reconvened the band with several original members in 2001 and since then have released both live albums and new material. It's not a vibe you can easily lose, Lowe relates in a recent e-mail interview: "We always could only play it one way. None of us had been in other bands so we kept this internal kind of quirkiness. When you are playing around you start to play the same licks over and over across all the bands you have been in."

But when you talk about bands of the psychedelic genre reuniting in their dotage, you also have to consider other kinds of chemistry — namely how strongly youthful indiscretions like drugs and other temptations of the 1960s inspired and affected how the music was created and performed. Lowe recollects that "we had two guys that were 17 years old in the band, so we each did our own thing. We never got high and recorded or played live as a group. I think individuals took care of their own needs, but with minors around we had to be cool. Pot, hash, mushrooms, LSD, who knew? Someone would just hand you something and you took it. Pretty stupid, really. I would say our music was fueled by rehearsals more than drugs."

Though the Prunes recently backed out of the overall California '66 tour, they have graciously chosen to honor the Fairfield date. Another distinction of the Quick Center show, again arranged by the atmospheric perfectionists at PKN, is the addition of a genuine 1960s light show by one of that art form's most prominent practitioners. Mark Rubinstein was just 14 when he first rigged a light show to accompany a live rock band, and when he was 17 he joined the staff of Bill Graham's Fillmore East rock club in New York.

Rubinstein — who went on to teach lighting design and also now has his own band, The Gray Lions — still grates at the misunderstandings people have concerning what makes a true rock light show. "The number of times I've corrected people who call stage lighting a light show! Modern, motorized lighting is cool, but people rely on the technology too much."

Rubinstein appreciates some technological advancements, however. His Aug. 6 light show will be videotaped in his Maine studio, then mixed on a laptop, which means he won't have to lug several different film projectors to Connecticut as he would have had to in the old days.

For Peppy Castro, who describes The Blues Magoos as "probably the first group to become underground-to-overground successful in that genre" thanks to the top-five hit "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet," the magic is still there, and his band's occasional reunions are strictly for the love of the music. He's also been able to reunite his other successful band of yore, Barnaby Bye in recent years and thanks to a successful career creating commercial jingles, is "one of the lucky ones — a musician with a pension."

The bands on the Fairfield bill didn't cross paths all that often. Regarding the long-lived esoteric Love (now led by guitarist Johnny Echols), whose only real competition at the forefront of the L.A. scene was The Doors, the Prunes' Lowe recalls, "we would go down and see them at Bido Lido's in Hollywood on the weekends. All the bands knew each other because you would end up on the local LA TV shows together. We gave those TV people hell."

Memories like that will fuel many of the mysterious otherworldly and underground sounds emanating from fuzzy guitars and reverberating keyboards Thursday night at the Quick Center. For hardcore psychedelic garage dwellers and nugget collectors, this show is a dream come true.

Which reminds us of that extravagant garage symphony by the Electric Prunes. Hey, James Lowe, have you had too much to dream lately?

"Yes. All the time. Ever go out with a girl and you come home and you can still smell her perfume on your pillow? That gives me way too much to dream."