I read about Dino Valente in The Best Music You’ve Never Heard, the excellent collection of musical essays covering a whole host of forgotten and neglected classics waiting for rediscovery.
Author of 60s peace anthem Get Together and an erstwhile member of the Quicksilver Messenger Service, his self-titled solo album released in 1968 has remained as a much vaunted, but seldom heard classic of abstract, folky psychedelia. According to some sources he was the single most difficult person to deal with in music history!
Be that as it may, the album is getting a long overdue, first ever vinyl reissue on the Tompkins Square label and has prompted none other than James Jackson Toth (aka Wooden Wand) to say “This reissue is a public service to loners, stoners and dreamers everywhere. Buy two copies; you will wear the first one out.”
That is good enough for us! Have a listen to the glorious Something New, seven minutes of vague sexual innuendo, hippie imagery (“You can’t stay there girl, those cats are square babe!“) and philosophical meanderings. Wonderful stuff.
“Anyway I know more about you
Baby then they do
And honey I don’t even know your name
But I know guys like that can never ever know you
Not while they’re still locked in playing games”
The Mad Mackerel 