My Top 1000 Songs #655: The Bird

[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.] 

I've often proclaimed my love for obscure late 60s psychedelia--and, hoo-boy, it doesn't get much more obscure than this. "The Bird" was a one-off 1969 single, released exclusively in France, by a band called Nimrod--which was an alter-ego of an only slightly-less obscure UK psychedelic band known as The State Of Micky & Tommy. (Why change their name to Nimrod? Why release it only in France? Dunno. I only work here.)

BTW, the Micky in that duet was one Micky Jones, who later--as Mick Jones--formed a band called Foreigner which, as you might have heard, sold a shit-ton of records. Sadly, songs like "Hot Blooded" and "Double Vision" and especially "I Want To Know What Love Is" (penned by Jones) are all songs I never ever ever ever want to hear again.

Unlike "The Bird," which is frickin' great! It's the sort of thing that shows up on seemingly every compilation of 60s psychedelia, but never got its due, which is crazy, as it's pretty much the template for late 60s psych-pop. A simple but absolutely dynamite 3-chord guitar hook, sung entirely in harmony, with some frenetic jamming. It's like someone threw the Pretty Things and Tommy James and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band into a blender and came up with a perfect psych-pop single which... they inexplicably recorded under a fake name and sold only in France.

Hey, it was the 60s. Drugs!