This is psychedelic scholarship at its finest: a lavishly illustrated booklet and vinyl album devoted to these acid-rock pioneers. Born in Ohio, Mad River emigrated to San Francisco's ballrooms in early 1967 and cut legendary wax, including the 1968 freakout Mad River. David Biasotti's account of the band's highs and trials (a disastrous mastering of that album, a crushing review in this magazine) is a lesson in busted hippie dreams, while the music here – the furious outtake "Jersey Sloo" and four '67 demos, among them the group's signature trip, "Windchimes" – proves Mad River had nirvana in their grasp.

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Everything in Its Right Place”

Thom Yorke hit rock bottom the moment he walked offstage after a 1997 concert in Birmingham, England, which initially left him unable to speak and later led him to write the eerie, discombobulated “Everything.” “Lots of people say that song is gibberish,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s not. It’s totally about that” – the mute paralysis that had swept over Yorke after the Birmingham show, which stayed with him through the simultaneous recording of Kid A and Amnesiac. Quoting the song’s repeated line, “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon,” Yorke twisted his face into a ferocious grimace, explaining, “That’s the face I had for three years.”