My Top 1000 Songs #366: Fly

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

One of the joys of an obsession with obscure 60s psychedelia is culling through all the badly-dated, entertaining but not necessarily enduring ephemera of the era in search of the rare gem that truly stands out and encapsulates the whole vibe you're searching for.

One such track is "Fly," off the sole album from J.K. & Co., 1968's Suddenly One Summer. As I noted in talking about the LP previously, it was apparently the work of a 15-year-old kid and some studio musicians, lost to history until a reissue a few decades later. That "Fly" emerged from this strange happenstance is pretty remarkable, as the song is a stellar and surprisingly accomplished little number. Obviously influenced by the Beatles' "A Day In The Life" and, presumably, a headful of acid, it hits a lot of psychedelic touchstones. Strange, backwards-looped effects; trippy, headphone-friendly stereo landscapes; slow, lysergic, pastoral lope. The song pretty perfectly captures what one might imagine is the epitome of the 1968 psychedelic single--while also almost uncannily predicting Radiohead's sound with a few decades' head start (as others have pointed out). 

Anyway, turn down the lights, grab some headphones and your favorite herbal enhancement, and drift away with me...

Plenty of YouTubers have used the track to back their own video collages, i.e.:

Cover version by an artist called Consterdine gives it a more contemporary, new age-y spin: