"Up Up and Away" Rajput & The Sepoy Mutiny (1968)

 

 

In the late 1960s, to bolster your hippie credentials, one needed an album of South Asian sitar music.

But alas, Ravi Shankar records (as well as good pot) were hard to find in Heartland America. So leave it to Design Records, a subsidiary of the budget record label giant Pickwick Records and the biggest purveyor of pure cheese this side of Kraft Foods in the 1960s to fill that niche.

Often played by Fred Norris of The Howard Stern Show when discussing or introducing a guest of South Asian heritage, this track has also appeared on the out of print Incredibly Strange Music Vol. 1 compilation CD.

Like most of Design's product, it had no musician credits, liner notes or session information.

The back cover was a typical stock back cover for most Design albums, extolling the virtues of Design's catalog, with the helpful mention "The record you hold in your hands, made to standards as critical as any set in the industry, consists of pure vinyl."

"Let the rules go hang" never really made it into the hippie vernacular.