''One Nation Underground'' is the debut album by American

psychedelic folk Psychedelic folk (sometimes acid folk or freak folk) is a loosely defined form of psychedelic music, psychedelia that originated in the 1960s. It retains the largely acoustic instrumentation of contemporary folk music, folk, but adds musical el ...

group

Pearls Before Swine A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle (mollusc), mantle) of a living animal shell, shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pea ...

. It was released on the

ESP-Disk ESP-Disk is a New York-based record company and label founded in 1963 by lawyer Bernard Stollman. History Though it originally existed to release Esperanto-based music, beginning with its second release (Albert Ayler's ''Spiritual Unity''), ESP ...

label in July 1967.

Overview

It was recorded at Impact Sound in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, between May 6–9, 1967, by the Florida-based group, which at that point comprised main songwriter and singer

Tom Rapp Thomas Dale Rapp (March 8, 1947 – February 11, 2018) was an American singer and songwriter who led Pearls Before Swine, an influential psychedelic folk rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Described as having "a slight lisp, gentle v ...

, Wayne Harley, Lane Lederer, and Roger Crissinger. Percussion was by session musician Warren Smith. The album presents a mixture of styles - ''"psychedelic folk reminiscent of

Donovan Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter, and record producer. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelic rock and world mus ...

collides with Farfisa-driven punk and hard-to-categorize repetitive minimalism, all thrown together with the undisciplined, creative exuberance of youth"''.Tom Rapp by Mark Brend
/ref> "Another Time" is an acoustic song, the first that Rapp ever wrote, based on his experience in a car crash where he walked away unscathed, and, with "Morning Song", represents the most characteristic example of Rapp's later writing style. In contrast, "Drop Out!" and "Uncle John" are youthful protest songs. "(Oh Dear) Miss Morse" spells out in

Morse code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...

the word F-U-C-K, accompanied by banjo and organ. The album became the most successful ESP release ever, estimated to have sold between 100,000 and 250,000 copies. Early vinyl copies came with a small poster of the Hell panel from

Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...

's ''

The Garden of Earthly Delights ''The Garden of Earthly Delights'' is the modern title given to a triptych oil painting on oak panel painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch, between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was between 40 and 60 years old. It has bee ...

'', a detail of which was used on the front of the album sleeve. The album went through a number of cover variations. The original, first edition was brown monochrome with a white border along two sides of the cover. The second edition had a black and white cover with the group name in white along the top. The third edition was the white background and color section of the painting (see right). The album has been reissued numerous times on LP and CD, with various stereo mix variations. On October 20, 2017, Drag City - with the cooperation and participation of Tom Rapp and original engineer/producer Richard Alderson - released a "Fiftieth Anniversary Mono Restoration & Remastering" on CD and LP.

Track listing

# "Another Time" - 3:03 (

) # "Playmate" - 2:19 (

Saxie Dowell Horace Kirby Dowell (May 24, 1904 – July 22, 1974), known professionally as Saxie Dowell, was an American jazz saxophonist. Biography Dowell was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended the University of North Carolina, where he met Ha ...

) # "Ballad to an Amber Lady" - 5:14 (Roger Crissinger, Rapp) # "(Oh Dear) Miss Morse" - 1:54 (Rapp) # "Drop Out!" - 4:04 (Rapp) # "Morning Song" - 4:06 (Rapp) # "Regions of May" - 3:27 (Rapp) # "Uncle John" - 2:54 (Rapp) # "I Shall Not Care" - 5:20 (

Sara Teasdale Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884January 29, 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger after her marriage in 1914. In 1918 she won a Pulitzer Prize for he ...

, Roman Tombs, Rapp) # "The Surrealist Waltz" - 3:29 (Lane Lederer, Crissinger)

Musicians

: Vocals, Guitar :Wayne Harley: Autoharp, Banjo, Mandolin, Vibraphone, Audio Oscillator, Harmony :Lane Lederer: Bass, Guitar, English Horn, Swinehorn,

Sarangi The sārangī is a bowed, short-necked string instrument played in traditional music from South Asia – Punjabi folk music, Rajasthani folk music, and Boro folk music (there known as the ''serja'') – in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. It is ...

Celesta The celesta or celeste , also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano (four- or five-octave), albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box ( ...

, Finger Cymbals, Vocals (on "Surrealist Waltz") :Roger Crissinger: Organ,

Harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...

Clavioline The clavioline is an electronic keyboard instrument, a forerunner to the analog synthesizer. It was invented by French engineer Constant Martin in 1947 in Versailles. The instrument consists of a keyboard and a separate amplifier and speaker ...

: Warren Smith: Drums, Percussion

References

External links

Lyrics to One Nation Underground
* AMG reviewbr> Official site for Tom Rapp and Pearls Before Swine Fan site on MySpace
{{Authority control Pearls Before Swine (band) albums 1967 debut albums ESP-Disk albums Fontana Records albums Drag City (record label) albums