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Psychotropic Shellfish Coalition - The Giant's Ring

from Oh No! Ulster's Hidden Reverse by Various

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Psychotropic Shellfish Coalition was a psychedelic folk band formed by four university students living in Belfast during the early years of the Troubles. Dismayed by the escalating political strife around them, they attempted to ‘turn on’ the people of Northern Ireland to the free love spirit of San Francisco during the same era. The band’s sitar player Cat Gaskill was a chemistry student at QUB and would often secretly obtain synthetic drugs from the university laboratory which the band would experiment with at rehearsals. They played a series of poorly attended gigs at student unions in NI which were actually improvised jam sessions, but eventually recognisable tracks began to emerge from this musical melee such as ‘LondonStrokeDerry’, ‘Constable Young’s Eggplant Truncheon’, ‘Found Face Down In A Puddle Of Kool-Aid’ and ‘Persian Pickle Soup’. A common theme was the end of civil conflict through mind expansion, and poetry student Marvin McKeever would later describe his lyrics as an attempt to ‘break down the barriers of sectarianism with surrealism’.

The band splintered after Daisy’s boyfriend Arthur Garfield discovered her engaged in a mushroom-fuelled ménage-a-trois with the other two members. Enraged, he walked out on the band and was later said to have joined the IRA, while McKeever was soon after expelled from Queens after an attempt to climb the main building to consult the gargoyles.

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from Oh No! Ulster's Hidden Reverse, track released May 9, 1969

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Various Belfast, UK

Following extensive research over the past year, Oscillations and Factotum have unearthed a variety of documents, recordings, posters, and merchandise from bands such as Quinbus Flestrin Quartet, Parliamentary Procedures and The Anginas. Through these audio-visual artifacts this exhibition reveals the secret history of Northern Ireland's esoteric underground. ... more

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