High, Friends,

This page is for all the Flower Children of the world. It’s for you psychedelic music lovers, you Mods and you surfers on every beach. If you’ve arrived here, it’s for you. People always ask me who the girl in the lava lamp is on the cover of our first album, “Voyage through the Lava Lamp.” I hope this story will give you the sensations and vibrations that we felt while making this album (or at least an explanation).

I hope you enjoy it!

With Love,
Rob

There’s a bust of Eliot Gould in the drawing room and you’re trying to find your way inside the lava lamp. You have an intuition that this is a place one can visit. The voyage is within, yet it’s like molten lava cooling in a piece of sea. You glance across at glowing fish darting past, zig-zag in a coral reef. You feel a warm current. Now it changes to the cool upwelling of an arctic flow. And then, if you’re willing, imagine what it sounds like, –a gig, a love-in at a big Victorian house where the bean bag seats are gathered round. Love beads are gleaming in the afterglow of something that’s happened before you entered the room, –you’re not sure what.

The smell of patchouli drifts like a vagrant spirit in the air. Perhaps there are tie-dyed jeans and Beatle boots. And, like earlier tonight at the gig, –from another room comes the smooth Vox organ playing trance-like. The thin, grinding guitars are running backwards across your head. You notice, but you choose to follow a girl’s voice to the next floor while The Electric Marmalade is jamming in the kitchen. They’ve returned from a gig in their Love Bus.

You climb a staircase in this gingerbread house, anticipating your own arrival in the attic You’ve reached the height of the third story from what seems like miles below. You can still hear the embryonic rise and fall of the organ melting into one giant, paisley drop of sound, the jingle-jangle of the twelve-string Rickenbackers chirping with the tambourines. It’s the sound of The Electric Marmalade, all electric and plugged-in at the breakfast nook, boots stomping the rhythm on the wood floor.

You climb a ladder staircase. You can see a soft, red light through the hinged crack at the top. You lift the wooden hatch to find an empty loft. At the window in the center of the gable is a lacy curtain blowing in an open breeze, lifting parallel to the floor. But otherwise, all emptiness —except that here, on a box, in the middle of the wooden floor is a lava lamp glowing red. You can hear the sitar and tambura chanting in the strangest scale of melody.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, you look into the lamp and hear sweet dreams and moonbeams from the after-gig kitchen where The Electric Marmalade has gone into their raja rock set. But you are upstairs and now there’s a face inside the lava lamp. It’s the face of a girl calling out silently, much like Auntie Em calling for Dorothy, grainy like old film. This is a beautiful girl whose lips are quietly murmuring, maybe for you.

As you knew, this is a voyage within. You gaze into the warm water of the lamp. You think she’s closer now. You’ll never know what had happened in that room downstairs where the bust of Eliot Gould had been painted by hand and the people in the room seemed muted by the impact of something he had said. But you’re gone now, gazing at the glowing face of this beautiful girl.

Among dreams, you find a place where a clock strikes zero. But the motion of the warm lamp is drawing you inside. You feel closer to her now. You’re ready to follow her to places where the guitars play all night. After all, you can stand in the yellow sky together beneath the purple sun and she will lead you into warm bloodstreams –just so close you can almost hear her now.

Peace and Love Always,
Rob Reda