Biography
A lone 45 released by Island in Britain toward the end of 1966 under the name the Freaks of Nature paired “People Let’s Freak Out” with “The Shadow Chasers,” a coupling destined to baffle collectors and discographers indefinitely. In reality the Freaks of Nature were the Belfast Gypsies, themselves an offshoot of Them whose tangled backstory only added to the muddle. The same two recordings subsequently appeared on an American single correctly credited to the Belfast Gypsies and, shortly afterward, on the group’s only album, Them Belfast Gypsies. Someone outside the lineup—by then already dissolved in late 1966—apparently decided a more flamboyantly psychedelic moniker would attract greater notice. Neither the musicians nor their producer Kim Fowley were consulted about the switch; Fowley later stated that a mere hundred copies of the British pressing bearing the Freaks of Nature name ever left the plant.
Further complications surround the record itself. Its B-side, “The Shadow Chasers,” turned out to be nothing more than a Belfast Gypsies track already issued, under the alternate title “Secret Police,” as the flip of the band’s debut single. Meanwhile the version of “People Let’s Freak Out” found on the Freaks of Nature 45 diverged from the familiar take later included on the Belfast Gypsies LP: the former carried extraneous, jarring psychedelic and electronic overdubs. Long prized as the scarcer artifact, that doctored cut eventually surfaced on the 2003 anthology Impossible But True: The Kim Fowley Story.
Musically, “People Let’s Freak Out” offered a brisk Bo Diddley-derived specimen of mid-1960s British R&B-rock enlivened by psychedelic slogans in the lyric. “The Shadow Chasers,” also known as “Secret Police,” followed a comparable template yet leaned toward a more anxious, faintly more psychedelic atmosphere. Both performances reward listening, though they sit more comfortably within the context of the Belfast Gypsies’ album than on the deceptively titled single.
Further complications surround the record itself. Its B-side, “The Shadow Chasers,” turned out to be nothing more than a Belfast Gypsies track already issued, under the alternate title “Secret Police,” as the flip of the band’s debut single. Meanwhile the version of “People Let’s Freak Out” found on the Freaks of Nature 45 diverged from the familiar take later included on the Belfast Gypsies LP: the former carried extraneous, jarring psychedelic and electronic overdubs. Long prized as the scarcer artifact, that doctored cut eventually surfaced on the 2003 anthology Impossible But True: The Kim Fowley Story.
Musically, “People Let’s Freak Out” offered a brisk Bo Diddley-derived specimen of mid-1960s British R&B-rock enlivened by psychedelic slogans in the lyric. “The Shadow Chasers,” also known as “Secret Police,” followed a comparable template yet leaned toward a more anxious, faintly more psychedelic atmosphere. Both performances reward listening, though they sit more comfortably within the context of the Belfast Gypsies’ album than on the deceptively titled single.
Albums
