Pink And Green Fluid

Pink And Green Fluid
'You Are Going To Be My Chick' c/w Chili Con Carne Shuffle’ Released April 30th 1967. Snipe Records SNIP0034

Berkeley Urquhart (vocals), Aladdin Gore (spinet, tambourine), Roger Equerry (bass), Emma Pickles (drums, action painting)

'I've got looks that make you sick

And I sure get on your wick

But whether you like it or not little baby
You are going to be my chick'

This sumptuous slice of psych-determinism was recorded in April 1967, nine months after Pink & Green Fluid had called it a day. Singer Berkeley Urquhart (real name Berkley Urquhart) recalls: "We were all so out of it in those days, that we'd completely forgotten that we'd split up and all joined other bands. Considering that we hadnae played together for over a year, it was amazing how the session gelled ".

Enter Andrew 'Lip' Vaughn, the head of Snipe Records in Kensington, who heard an acetate and was immediately impressed by the interplay between spinet and action painting

"Each crashing chord on the spinet was accompanied by a brutal splat of paint onto canvas", says Vaughn today. "I was convinced that listeners to the record - the kids on the street - would be able to actually see the painting that Emma had created. I was horribly wrong. I must have been out of my mind. It sounds like someone intermittently vomiting into a cardboard box".

Despite these production glitches, 'You Are Going To Be My Chick' is a masterpiece of psychedelic mayhem. Urquhart insisted on recording his vocals without listening to the backing track and actually starts singing the first verse somewhere in the middle of the second chorus.

He was hopelessly out of tune, time and space, but the moment that the instrumental backing stops and Urquhart finishes the song on his own qualifies as a brilliant mistake, especially on the fade when we can hear him mutter "What the fuck is going on here?"

The painting was never finished.

Aladdin Gore later joined Toad Of Toad Hell.