Monday, November 18, 2013

Beaker Street "Head" Bed



This is an update from a 2010 post about the famous trippy music bed used by Clyde Clifford (and his successors) underneath their raps on Beaker Street.  The URL links have changed, hence this update.

The music is from the 1970 album "Head" on Buddah Records, by the Los Angeles-based electronic musician known variously as Nic Raicevic, Nik Raicevic, or Nik Pascal.  Here is more information from Leonard Holyoke's excellent blogsite on 60's/70's psychedelic era music:

http://www.redtelephone66.com/2010/03/head-1970-buddah-lp/

And, here is another writeup from Hippy.com:

http://www.hippy.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=477

Finally, a bit of info on Raicevic:

http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2007/04/nik-raicevic-beyond-end.html


The bed is a crucial part of Beaker Street lore because the purpose was to mask the noise from the air circulation fans in the mighty 50,000 watt transmitter, located just a few feet from where Clyde was on-mic.  The bed is from the track 'Cannabis Sativa', which is 17:52 in length.  It sounds like Clyde took a segment of the track starting around 9:00 and looped a few minutes of it to create the spooky drone for Beaker Street. 

The LP is long out of print and a collector's item.  This is from a reel-to-reel dub of the album I made in the 1970's.  It's in Stereo so put on your headphones and enjoy all the synth droning, channel to channel spatial effects, and just plain weirdness!


(or download here)

Greg Barman

3 comments:

  1. Such sweet memories when I close my eyes and listen. Thanks for the trip.

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  2. Nic Raicevic has apparently departed from our dimension, but the guy who bought his equipment is still performing today -

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNqs9qa9pGM

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  3. Yea,it really does bring back good memories of beaker street I'd like find that
    album .It was great to hear that music again.

    ReplyDelete