Biography
The Magic Mushrooms issued “It’s-A-Happening” on A&M Records in late 1966, one of the standout examples of early psychedelic garage mania. The track opened with fiercely screeching, heavily distorted guitars whose rave-up verses seemed ready to fly apart like an overwound cuckoo clock in its final spins. These passages were abruptly interrupted by biting fuzz-guitar licks and scrapes, after which a narrator delivered spoken fragments of lysergic insight, among them the line “spray the weed, a zephyr breeze, a mushroom hangs above the ground.” Whether the performance represented authentic, mind-warped psychedelia or a deliberate send-up remains ambiguous. Its studio craft, particularly the guitar textures, stood well ahead of most contemporaneous efforts and carried the single to #93 on the charts.
Because surviving members of 1960s garage outfits are routinely tracked down by zealous fanzine researchers, the scarcity of concrete details about the Magic Mushrooms is striking, all the more so given that “It’s-A-Happening” appeared on the landmark Nuggets anthology. Liner notes accompanying the Nuggets box set state that the single was cut in New York and identify writer/producer Sonny Casella as a Philadelphia resident. Lenny Kaye’s original notes add that the group also issued singles on East Coast and Philips, while Mike Stax’s annotations to the box set credit the band with two full-length albums. Additional tracks have surfaced on lesser-known garage-psych anthologies, including the hard-charging, rapid blues-based “Never Let Go,” featured on You Gotta Have Moxie Vol. 2, and the comparatively ordinary “I’m Gone.”
Because surviving members of 1960s garage outfits are routinely tracked down by zealous fanzine researchers, the scarcity of concrete details about the Magic Mushrooms is striking, all the more so given that “It’s-A-Happening” appeared on the landmark Nuggets anthology. Liner notes accompanying the Nuggets box set state that the single was cut in New York and identify writer/producer Sonny Casella as a Philadelphia resident. Lenny Kaye’s original notes add that the group also issued singles on East Coast and Philips, while Mike Stax’s annotations to the box set credit the band with two full-length albums. Additional tracks have surfaced on lesser-known garage-psych anthologies, including the hard-charging, rapid blues-based “Never Let Go,” featured on You Gotta Have Moxie Vol. 2, and the comparatively ordinary “I’m Gone.”
Albums