Gale Garnett was a pop star, actor and author who embraced psychedelia with in the late 1960s with her band The Gentle Reign.

I’ve never heard of Grammy-winning Gale Garnett before. Born in New Zealand and raised in Canada, she was an actress who initially sang as a hobby.

In 1964 she had a huge hit single with a self-penned folk-lite song called We’ll Sing In The Sunshine, a singalong number that won her a Grammy. 

But after her moment in the pop spotlight Gale embraced the counterculture, recording two psychedelic albums with a band called The Gentle Reign in the late ’60s. 

They’re a bit hit-and-miss but they have great hippie-era titles – An Audience With The King Of Wands and Sausalito Heliport – and even better song titles like My Mind’s Own Morning, Trip Note Song and (my favourite) Peace Comes Slowly To The Thrashing Fish.

Plus this mini-masterpiece of psych, Water Your Mind, that could only have come from the late ’60s; opening lines: “There is a flower and it’s growing in your head / All you’ve got to do is water it.”

In the ’70s Garnett returned to acting, in an off-off-Broadway musical for which she wrote the songs, and in the ’80s she turned her hand to journalism, writing essays, columns and book reviews.

Her first novel was published in 1999, followed by several more, and she also wrote and performed two one-person theatre shows, Gale Garnett & Company and the provocatively named Life After Latex.

In 2002 she played a part in the hit film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. And, at the time of writing, she is still alive at the age of 83.