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About This EP
The Fog Electric — Rooms Behind the Sun is a 1967-style San Francisco garage psych EP from RetroForge Records, built around fuzz guitar, dirty Vox Continental organ, Farfisa stabs, tambourine, raw drums, gritty bass, smoky vocals and primitive mono tape atmosphere.
Across four tracks, the EP imagines a lost basement session somewhere near the edge of Haight-Ashbury, where garage rock starts to bend toward early psychedelia without drifting into polished flower-power. The sound is rough, hypnotic and street-level: cheap amps, smoky rooms, bad wiring, painted doors, black tambourines and walls beginning to hum.
The release moves from the stalking mid-tempo fuzz of "Neon Rattlesnake" into the ritual garage stomp of "Black Tambourine Sunday," then sinks further into the haunted acid-garage of "The House at the End of Fillmore" before closing with the alley-lit swagger of "Velvet Alley." It is psychedelic, but still grounded in boots, bass, organ grit and garage-band pulse.
Within the RetroForge Records archive, Rooms Behind the Sun sits as a compact psych-garage transmission: not a clean nostalgia postcard, but a fictional artifact from a parallel 1967 where the basement tape survived, the sleeve yellowed, and the organ still sounds slightly dangerous.
Archive year: 1967 · Published:
Tracklist
- 1Neon Rattlesnake2:07
- 2Black Tambourine Sunday4:44
- 3The House at the End of Fillmore4:18
- 4Velvet Alley4:28
Archive Notes
The sleeve surfaced like something pulled from a shop crate that had not been opened since the wrong summer. Its corners are worn, its colors slightly off-register, its alleyway too fogged to map with certainty.
The imagined session behind Rooms Behind the Sun belongs to the rougher side of 1967 San Francisco: not festival fields or polished studio bloom, but basement rooms, narrow streets, neon signs and overheated amplifiers. The songs carry that moment where garage rock had started to notice the walls moving, but had not yet traded its stomp for incense completely.
The Fog Electric exists here as a RetroForge archive entry from an alternate timeline: a four-track EP that feels pressed in small numbers, passed hand to hand, then forgotten under dust until the organ starts up again.
Lyrics & Subtitles
Neon rattlesnake Neon rattlesnake Under the floor Behind the paint Neon rattlesnake Neon rattlesnake Don't move too fast Don't make it wait She lives upstairs from the laundry fire With black boots on and a copper wire Says she hears the city hiss Through a little red radio kiss She keeps moons in a paper sack Paints her name on a mirror crack When she smiles the streetlights blink When she laughs the stairways sink Neon rattlesnake Under my bed Neon rattlesnake Inside my head Neon rattlesnake Counting my bones Neon rattlesnake Won't leave me alone There's blue chalk on the kitchen floor There's no lock on the second door There's a flower in a coffee tin There's a room where the walls begin She says, boy, don't follow me Past the corner by the pharmacy There are people with silver eyes Selling pieces of the sky Neon rattlesnake Under my bed Neon rattlesnake Inside my head Neon rattlesnake Counting my bones Neon rattlesnake Won't leave me alone No peace sign No white dove Just streetlight fever And a bad kind of love No front door No last name Just a little green fire In a picture frame Now the windows hum at night Now the hallway bends to the right Now my shadow won't behave Now my sleep has learned to wave If you hear that radio cry Don't look low and don't look high Just turn around and count to ten But the snake will call again Neon rattlesnake Under my bed Neon rattlesnake Inside my head Neon rattlesnake Counting my bones Neon rattlesnake Won't leave me alone Who's got the bite? Neon Who's got the night? Neon Who's got the fever? Neon Who's gonna leave her? No one No one No one
Black tambourine Black tambourine Shake it once Shake it twice Black tambourine On a Sunday night I saw Lucy by the market With a suitcase full of string She said Sunday lost its halo Now the church bells never ring She had red dust on her jacket She had rain inside her shoes She said everybody's dancing But nobody gets to choose And the boys in the alley Were painting their eyes And the girls on the corner Were selling blue skies And the man with the trumpet Had swallowed the sun And the black tambourine said Run, run, run Black tambourine Sunday Shake my bones awake Black tambourine Sunday How much light can you take? Black tambourine Sunday Beat that crooked time Black tambourine Sunday Your shadow looks like mine There was thunder in the basement There was sugar in the street There were saints behind the jukebox With no sandals on their feet Someone passed around a flower Someone passed around a lie Someone wrote my name in silver On a little paper sky And the room started leaning To the left of the moon And the organ kept crying Like a ghost in June And the drummer hit the ceiling And the singer lost his tongue And the black tambourine said Young, young, young Black tambourine Sunday Shake my bones awake Black tambourine Sunday How much light can you take? Black tambourine Sunday Beat that crooked time Black tambourine Sunday Your shadow looks like mine Black Black Tambourine Black Black Tambourine Shake Shake Tambourine Break Break Everything I went down to the corner Where the sidewalk turned soft I saw a preacher in a purple coat With both his hands held aloft He said, son, don't trust the morning It only borrows the light Then he laughed into the gutter And vanished out of sight So shake it for the lost ones Shake it for the found Shake it for the people Who sleep beneath the sound Shake it for the city Shake it for the sea Shake it for the Sunday That swallowed you and me Black tambourine Sunday Shake my bones awake Black tambourine Sunday How much light can you take? Black tambourine Sunday Beat that crooked time Black tambourine Sunday Your shadow looks like mine Shake it black Shake it blue Shake it till the sky falls through Shake it red Shake it green Shake it for the tambourine Black tambourine Black tambourine Sunday comes But not for me Black tambourine Black tambourine Sunday comes But not for me
At the end of Fillmore Past the last clean window There is a house with no number Everybody knows it Nobody goes there twice I saw candles in the curtains Though the rooms were dark and bare I heard laughter in the hallway But there wasn't no one there There were coats without their shoulders There were shoes without their feet There were names carved in the ceiling There were flowers in the heat Don't knock Don't wait The house knows When you're late Don't speak Don't run The door opens For everyone There was a girl beside the staircase With a ribbon round her eyes She said, I used to live in morning Now I sleep beneath July She gave me tea that tasted silver She gave me bread that tasted blue Then she pointed through the wallpaper And said, that room belongs to you The floor began to breathe The lamps began to bend The walls were full of weather The clock forgot to end Someone sang my birthday In a language made of smoke Someone wore my old face Someone laughed each time I spoke Don't knock Don't wait The house knows When you're late Don't speak Don't run The door opens For everyone In the kitchen stood a mirror In the mirror stood the sea In the sea there was a doorway And the doorway looked like me I could hear the city fading I could hear the traffic drown I could hear the flowers talking As the stairs went further down At the end of Fillmore At the end of Fillmore At the end of Fillmore We go down At the end of Fillmore At the end of Fillmore At the end of Fillmore No way out The room is turning The roof is red The flowers are sleeping Under the bed At the end of Fillmore At the end of Fillmore At the end of Fillmore We go down
Down on Velvet Alley The lights don't shine A black cat laughs At a broken sign Jenny wore bells on a second-hand coat Kept bad news in a paper boat She said, don't look west when the sun goes red There's a little green man living under your bed I had dust on my collar Smoke in my shoes Three bent nickels And nothing to lose The boys were chewing flowers The girls were counting rain Somebody hit the organ And the wall shook again Velvet Alley Pull me down Velvet Alley Spin me round Velvet Alley Don't let go Where the strange ones Go, go, go There's a shop with no windows and a painted door Selling old dreams for a dollar-four A man in stripes with a purple cane Said, son, you'll never be clean again He had rings on his fingers Ink on his tongue Sang one note And the whole room swung Velvet Alley Pull me down Velvet Alley Spin me round Velvet Alley Don't let go Where the strange ones Go, go, go By the payphone near the liquor store I heard my own voice from the night before It said, turn back now, but I turned instead To the girl with the bells and the ribbon-red She said, keep walking Don't ask why Some doors open When the moon gets high No white light No golden road Just a fuzz box screaming And a heavy load No soft dream No holy sign Just a cracked-up city On borrowed time Velvet Alley Pull me down Velvet Alley Spin me round Velvet Alley Don't let go Where the strange ones Go, go, go Velvet Alley Shake my name Velvet Alley Feed the flame Velvet Alley Now I know Where the strange ones Go, go, go Down by the alley Down by the sound Everybody's laughing But nobody's found Kick that drum Make that organ cry Velvet Alley Till the morning dies
Explore This Album
Recommended If You Like
- 1960s San Francisco garage psych
- Fuzz guitar and dirty Vox Continental organ
- Farfisa-driven psychedelic garage rock
- Raw mono tape atmosphere
- Haight-Ashbury basement-club energy
- Nuggets-style garage rock with a darker edge
- Strange alleyway lyrics and street-level psychedelia
- Lost analog archive entries
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