MIJ: yodeling astrologer JACKPOT 12″ LP 33 RPM Sealed PSYCH

MIJ: yodeling astrologer JACKPOT 12″ LP 33 RPM Sealed PSYCH

MIJ: yodeling astrologer JACKPOT 12″ LP 33 RPM Sealed

REMASTERED JIM HOLMBERG DOES PSYCHEDELIC FOLKS SONGS

LIMITED

he year 1969 was the year of freakery with more experimental artists per capita finding their way into the recording studio than in any time in history prior and set many trends that would find many new niches in the 70s and beyond. One of the year’s anomalies comes from the one shot album COLOR BY THE NUMBER (later released as “Yodeling Astrologer”) by the freak folk artist MIJ (born Jim Holmberg, in fact MIJ is simply Jim spelled backwards). This album was somewhat a circumstance of many, many unexpected events. Holmberg’s unique stamp on freak folk was derived from an auto accident that fractured his skull and allowed him to perceive everything different as his senses were forever altered. One day as he was strumming his guitar accompanied by his rambling cosmic liturgies, the owners of the small table ESP caught wind as he was playing in New York City’s Washington Square Park.

MIJ was invited into their studios and recorded the entire album in three hours with an impromptu performance that added an authentic purity of the times. Despite the renaming of the album to “Yodeling Astrologer,” the album contains no true yodeling nor prophetic visions of clairvoyance through the ancient art of astrology but rather is more like a rather aimless cosmic folk venture into the hippie philosophy of the day accompanied by psychedelic reverberations, gentle echoes and subtle production embellishments. Not unlike what Linda Perhacs would conjure up on her famous “Parallelograms” only without Linda’s angelic vocal abilities and a little more energetic with more cues taken from Bob Dylan’s guitar strumming and Donovan’s psychedelic approach to 60s pop music.

For 1969 this must have been stoner’s paradise as the gently strummed acoustic guitar brings the best of the era to mind with mild melodies unfolding as nebulous anti-war concepts and cosmic wonder imbue the metaphysical lyrical content. With track names like “Door Keys” and “Planet Of A Flower,” it’s apparent that the Summer of Love’s utopian visions had not yet subsided as the flower power years were quickly transmogrifying into more nihilistic nightmares that followed. MIJ’s one contribution to the 60s freak folk world will hardly go down in history as one of the most accomplished, most memorable or even most satisfying. While hardly the best of the best, there is still an innocence and naivety that is quite interesting to experience many decades into the future as this is completely unscripted and unpolished save a few psychedelic embellishments and obviously from the heart.