#crispy zebra

Come with Crispy (don't worry, he'll hold your hand) on a visit to a haunted house, at midnight on a stormy winter's night. 

Some of the darkest, freakiest psychedelic and left field tracks, mixed with narration from Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price to name but a few.

Artists include Bauhaus, Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy, Iron Butterfly and Nine Inch Nails. What was that sound? Did you hear that? Better stay close to Crispy - it's really dark in here...

Crispy Zebra presents Seasons

I’d like to tell you about the seasons, as I experienced them as a child. Snowdrops and spring meant a shiny, new outside world to re-explore. It meant wellies, thick jumpers and big puddles, it meant travel and the rebirth of hope. With the daffodils came the inevitable onset of yet another warm, often damp summer.

In times of fair weather, summer meant sand dunes, crabs (the crustaceous kind, cheeky!) And as I got older, it meant cider, laughing – a lot, loud music and red squirrels. Every autumn arrived with conkers, Indian summers - which I adored - and kaleidoscopic tree lines. Every November, without fail, you slipped back into the big boots and secured your long, buttoned coat, a beast of a cold front just around the corner.

Today, in the 2020s, the start (or end) of seasons is becoming harder to differentiate. Questions such as ‘Do I have enough jumpers?’ or ‘When do I put the big coat on, again?’ seem quaint, and a very long time ago. Now, seasons can herald in blasts of intense cold, weather bombs, tornados, forest fires, blistering heat waves and so much more. Monsoon season is no longer a thing you can set your clock to, and a desolating famine or life-ending drought is never far away from many of those living on planet Earth today.

All of us, regardless of location, are now experiencing a ‘blurring’ of the seasons, as the earth starts to heat up exponentially. You’ll recall the theory of ‘non-habitable zones? That’s right, the ones so often ridiculed as crazy, left-wing propaganda by those in the seats of power? Well, sadly, this is now a reality of life for millions of people; those without the means to escape a weather-based hell on earth. I have stood, alone, in a shaded square in Sevilla in August at noon, where the thought of just two more minutes outside in such brutal heat made my wet skin shiver with fear. All I can remember was praying all day long from my air-conditioned room that an electricity outage didn’t take the city off-grid. Trust me, that would have been very, very bad.

But for now, let’s take out some time to celebrate spring, summer, autumn and winter – the way they were supposed to be. Artists include XTC, Small Faces, Sunbeam Sound Machine, The Killers & The Doors.

Take a trip in Crispy's Time Machine back to 1972!

The year 1972 was a year of deep concern for Planet Earth.

Pakistan had announced they were starting a nuclear weapons programme. The British Army had killed 14 unarmed nationalist civil rights protesters in Derry, Northern Ireland in what would come to be known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre, in turn lighting the touchpaper for the troubles to take hold. And in Burundi, more than half a million Hutus were murdered in a genocide that shocked the world to its core. Add to this the 1972 Olympic Games ‘Munich Massacre’ and the ongoing Vietnam war and the future looked pretty bleak for homo sapiens.

The optimism of the love and peace generation had been replaced by fear and cynicism and with rising oil and food prices, power cuts and a western world still embroiled in racial and sexual discrimination. But the revolutionary effects of the 1960s had left a legacy for many and the desire to protest had given people hope. 1972 saw the beginning of the gay rights movement, the standing up to authority by ethnic minorities and a growth in people expressing their rights to free speech in the most courageous of ways.

Musically, artists such as Lou Reed, Marc Bolan and David Bowie were pushing back against tired, xenophobic mindsets. Canadian Neil Young had gone his own way and was experiencing great success, and a new double-album-dominated scene called ‘Prog’ was taking up the hippy mantle with far-out, expressive freak outs.

A new breed of entertainer – the globe-trotting rock star – had entered the collective consciousness, with bands like Led Zeppelin, Wings, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple raking it in from world tours, all in the luxurious surroundings of their own private jets. And then there were the freaks, the outsiders who dug their own, leftfield furrow. Alice Cooper, Roxy Music, The Stooges and Can were pushing back – hard – against a world going slowly insane. They would be major influences on the punk generation to come, their musical longevity assured through the sheer quality of their collective work.

So, strap yourself into Crispy’s purple VW Beetle, breath in the choking exhaust fumes and take yourself back fifty years to a time when nothing really made much sense. This is 1972.

Artists include Pink Floyd, Aphrodite's Child, Lou Reed, T. Rex, Neil Young & Roxy Music.

Emotions – we all have them, mental states that can make us or break us.

Anger and confusion, happiness that can make your heart soar, depression that can envelop your very soul. It’s what makes us human – feelings and behaviours brought on by mood, temperament or one’s personal disposition. But ask yourself, would you really want to be without any of them? Frustration and restlessness often lead to positive action being taken. And surely one must experience the lows to truly appreciate life when the highs arrive?

John Lydon once sang that anger is an energy, an emotion so often suppressed, when perhaps the opposite is necessary. After all, the history of a nation usually begins with one form of revolt or another.

Joy and contentment can conversely lead to a comfortable apathy that leads to inactivity and a slowing down of progress. Sorrow and loss can bring about changes in a person that are so positive that future disappointments and strife can be looked upon more rationally and put into greater context. We’re complex creatures, of that there is no doubt, and emotions lie at the heart of how we deal with the most confusing of situations. Perhaps by embracing our colour palette of emotional states in a more accepting manner, the darker shades can be appreciated more for what they really are.

They are you. They are me. And we are all the more beautiful for them.

Artists include Public Image Limited, The Prodigy, UNKLE, The Black Keys and The Happy Bullets.

Join Crispy on a trip back to the 1960s, a time when everything was new and nothing was impossible.

This Deep Dive will visit what will be, to many, familiar subject matter.

You may ask yourself, ‘What’s so left-field about this lot? Almost every track was a chart hit after all.’

And yes, you would be correct, but when seen in the context of what came before, it represents something akin to an earthquake – the literal birth of a cultural medium still with us to this day.

Before the arrival of bands such as Cream, The Small Faces, The Who, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, there was very, very little. Take away a couple of exceptions (Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Link Wray cases in point) and the world’s radios were awash with parent-friendly crooners and novelty comedy singles. With the arrival of bands like The Byrds, The Zombies and Love, the charts became suddenly vital and vibrant in equal measure.

Colour – trippy, psychedelic colour for that matter – had arrived. TV sets began transmitting in yellow, blue, red, and green and this incredible music, perhaps more than anything else, summed up the spirit of the age best.

There was virtually full employment; rationing and austerity were dead. Youth culture had arrived, and with its newfound consumerism came the opportunity for savvy record labels to prise this disposable income from baby boomers’ pockets. By the decade’s end, the pop charts had become a way of life, and with such wonderful music on offer, the 3-minute single had, in a very short space of time, become a perfected art form.

It could never last – nothing ever stays the same – and by the mid-1970s the album had begun to take the single’s place as the punter’s preferred medium; but for a golden, ever-so-brief chunk of time and space, the psychedelic single ruled. Come and join Crispy on a trip back to a time when it all had to be said in four minutes or less.

Artists include The Beatles, The Who, Love, The Byrds, Small Faces, Cream & The Rolling Stones.

Come back in time with Crispy to 70s Germany and a music movement that still inspires today.

The German influence on psychedelia and leftfield music has been immense; no more so than during the early 1970s Krautrock movement. By embracing new developments (mostly American) in electronic music technology, bands such as Can, Faust, Neu! and Kraftwerk paved the way for genres as diverse as Dance, Hip-Hop, Electronica, Ambient and Punk. Yes, it really was that important.

Perhaps two of the genre’s biggest flag bearers, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop, had the biggest impact on the marketing of this new movement, the pair moving to Berlin for a period to embrace the culture of a nation still reeling from its virtual destruction some three decades previous. Known in Germany as kosmiche musik (literally ‘cosmic music’) it was the broadest form of experimental rock music around in the 1970s and attracted followers sick to death of the tired blues rock/verse-chorus-verse recipe suffocating the pop charts. It was time to move away from the radio-friendly cash cow and experiment. And boy, did they experiment.

Synthesisers and tape loops replaced Marshall stacks and heavy riffs; a repetitive 4/4 beat and pulsating groove replaced the extended guitar and drum solos of corporate America, electronic inspiration taking its influence from minimalist artists such as Miles Davis and the ‘musique concrete’ of Stockhausen. That’s not to say that there weren’t popular influences in Krautrock – they are myriad, from Hendrix to Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa to The Velvet Underground. However, at its heart beats a desire for difference. With the constricting rule of the 7” single and obligatory Top of The Pops performance removed, Krautrock artists grooved to the beat of their own drum machine.

Pushing the envelope? There is no envelope.

Artists include Kraftwerk, CAN, NEU! Faust, White Hills & Julian Cope.

Join Crispy on a tour around the world's capital city of freak!

The influence of the Californian city of San Francisco on psychedelia cannot be overstated. Amidst a sea of monochrome, Lyndon B Johnson, the Vietnam war and racial segregation, a new sound – no, new movement – emerged from out of its city, one that embraced freedom of thought as well as speech. It advocated the use of hallucinogenic drugs and spoke to a new generation of kids – the baby boomers – in a way never seen before. And the epicentre for this seismic change was the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana and Big Brother and the Holding Company pioneered a new consciousness, a new kind of journey – the journey within.

Their influence was immense (no Haight-Ashbury, then no Sgt Pepper, no Pet Sounds, no Electric Lady land – it really is that simple). And for the shortest of periods, kids around the world, dreamed of (many of them actually flocking) to the city by the bay, to turn on, tune in and drop out. It was a time of colour, of self-expression, of hope and unity; one that created the hippy movement and all the limitless possibilities that existed therein.

It could never last (in truth the Haight-Ashbury scene was so fleeting as to almost be over before it started), but what was left behind was a world changed, a cultural shift of possibility that questioned the rigid structure of the existing societal control.

Things would never be the same again.

This Deep Dive takes us for a trip into the music – past and present – that continues to define San Francisco as the spark behind the counter-cultural explosion that encouraged the west’s youth to rebel against their parents, to speak their own minds and openly fight back against The Man. We’re only going to skim the surface – there is so much quality music to choose from when it comes to San Francisco – but we hope it will give you flavour from which to start your own journey of discovery into the planet’s capital city of freak.

Artists include Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Flipper and Faith No More.