Show # 1114 Playlist (week of 4/8/11)

All kinds of set themes this week, and a lot of tracks played from their original vinyl sources (including the entire last segment of the show). Let's get to it.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Little Miss Strange
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Noel Redding
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
When Chas Chandler brought Jimi Hendrix to England in 1966 he introduced him to several local musicians, including drummer Mitch Mitchell and guitarist Noel Redding. Hendrix talked Redding into switching to bass, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience was born. Redding, however, still had aspirations of being a front man and wrote this tune in 1968. As it turned out, Little Miss Strange would be the only Redding tune the band would record. After the Experience split up Redding formed Fat Mattress, but that band had little success.

Artist: Ginger Baker's Air Force
Title: Man Of Constant Sorrow
Source: LP: Ginger Baker's Air Force
Writer: Denny Laine
Label: Atco
Year: 1970
After Cream split up, drummer Ginger Baker formed what could be best described as an all-star performance band. Ginger Baker's Air Force was never known for their studio recordings or original material. What made the Air Force notable was the variety of big name talent that would show up for gigs. Among those was the original lead vocalist for the Moody Blues, Denny Laine. After leaving the Moodys, Laine embarked on a short solo career before hooking up with Paul McCartney to become a founding (and core) member of Wings.

Artist: Kinks
Title: Don't Ever Change
Source: LP: Kinda Kinks
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1965
Some songs hold up pretty well over the years. Others, not so much. The basic concept of this song (you're perfect as you are, so don't change) may have been acceptable in 1965, but by today's standards sounds more like something a stalker would say. More than a bit creepy.

Artist: Doors
Title: Take It As It Comes
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer: The Doors
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
Starting off a pair of tunes from 1967 we have a rare mono mix of a song from the first Doors album. Elektra got into rock music around the same time as stereo was becoming more than just a rich man's toy and thus put most of its energy into stereo versions of its releases. Take It As It Comes is somewhat typical of how the Doors sounded when they were still playing clubs on the Sunset Strip.

Artist: Traffic
Title: No Face, No Name, No Number
Source: CD: Mr. Fantasy
Writer: Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Island (original US label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
When the first Best of Traffic album was issued in 1969 (after the group first disbanded) it included No Face, No Name, No Number, a non-hit album track. Later Traffic anthologies tended to focus on the group's post-reformation material and the song was out of print for many years until the first Traffic album was reissued on CD. The song itself is a good example of Winwood's softer material.

Artist: Canned Heat
Title: I'm Her Man
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Bob Hite
Label: Liberty
Year: 1970
As I mentioned on the show, a flooded garage a few years back resulted in several of my old 45s getting soaked. Unfortunately I didn't discover this until a couple years after the damage was done, and by then mold had set in. I was able to clean up the records themselves, but some of the ink on the labels had smeared or become stuck to adjacent labels in the box, damaging both in the process of separating them. The worst case was this 1971 Canned Heat single, due to the predominately black label smearing out all the silver print. I knew just from listening to the record that the A side was Let's Work Together but could not read the label for the B side at all. Luckily we have the internet these days and I was able to determine the identity (and original source) of the song. Singer Bob Hite did not write many songs, and I'm Her Man originally was credited to a fictional pseudonym, first appearing on the 1970 album Hallelujah.

Artist: Santana
Title: Mother's Daughter
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer: Gregg Rolie
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Carlos Santana once said that his original lineup was the best of the many bands named Santana. With talented songwriters such as keyboardist Gregg Rolie in the band, it's hard to argue with that assessment. Rolie, of course, would go on to co-found Journey.

Artist: Seeds
Title: You Can't Be Trusted
Source: LP: The Seeds
Writer: Sky Saxon
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
After a pair of tracks from 1967 and a pair from 1970 we have three garage/punk classics from 1966. Our first one is from the L.A. band that virtually invented the term Flower Power. Like many of Sky Saxon's songs, this one displays a somewhat cynical view of relationships.

Artist: Del-Vetts
Title: Last Time Around
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Dahlquist
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The Del-Vetts were from Chicago's affluent North Shore. Their gimmick was to show up at a high school dance by driving their matching corvettes onto the gymnasium dance floor. Musically, like most garage/punk bands, they were heavily influenced by the British invasion bands. Unlike most garage/punk bands, who favored the Rolling Stones, the Del-Vetts were more into the Jeff Beck era Yardbirds. They had a few regional hits from 1965-67, the biggest being this single issued on the Dunwich label, home of fellow Chicago suburbanites the Shadows of Knight. This may well be the very first death rock song.

Artist: We The People
Title: Mirror Of Your Mind (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets
Writer: Tom Talton
Label: Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year: 1966
We The People were formed when an Orlando, Florida newspaper reporter talked members of two local bands to combine into a garage/punk supergroup. The result was one of the most successful regional bands in Florida history. After their first recording got airplay on a local station, they were signed to Nashville label Challenge Records and cranked out several regional hits over the next few years. The first of these was Mirror Of Your Mind. Written by lead vocalist Tom Talton, the song is an in-your-face rocker that got played on a number of local stations and has been covered by several bands since.

Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Yellow Rose
Source: CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Basic Blues Magoos)
Writer: Gilbert/Theilhelm
Label: Mercury
Year: 1968
Our group spotlight tonight shines on the Blues Magoos, probably the most successful East Coast psychedelic band. Unfortunately, that isn't saying much, as most successful psychedelic bands came from either California or Texas in the US, or from the UK. Still, the Magoos had a fair share of decent recordings. The band had their greatest artistic freedom with the album Basic Blues Magoos, much of which was recorded at their own home studios. As a result, Yellow Rose does not sound anything like the other two tracks in the set, both of which come from the band's period of greatest commercial success.

Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer: Gilbert/Scala/Esposito
Label: Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year: 1966
Speaking of commercial success, (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet is, of course, the song the Blues Magoos are best known for. Although the album Psychedelic Lollipop was released in 1966, I always associate it with a radio station I heard on my old Sony transistor radio in early summer of 1967 while sitting in the terminal overnight at MacGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey with my mother and brother, waiting for a flight in a Military Air Transport plane (essentially a cargo plane fitted with uncomfortable bus seats and having no windows to speak of) to Germany. The brand new AM station was still in testing phase, using special experimental call letters, and was on all night playing commercial-free rock. I sometimes wonder how things worked out for that station.

Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Life Is Just A Cher O'Bowlies
Source: CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book)
Writer: Gilbert/Scala/Theilhelm
Label: Mercury
Year: 1967
Wrapping up the set we have a track from the Blues Magoos' second album, Electric Comic Book. Life Is Just A Cher O'Bowlies is a good example of the band's tendency not to take itself too seriously, a good thing for a group of guys who would occassionally show up at a gig wearing electric suits and setting off smoke bombs onstage (check out their performance of Tobacco Road on the Bob Hope show on youtube sometime).

Artist: Status Quo
Title: Pictures Of Matchstick Men
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop
Writer: Francis Rossi
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah
Year: 1968
The band with the most charted singles in the UK is not the Beatles or even the Rolling Stones. It is, in fact, Status Quo, quite possibly the nearest thing to a real life version of Spinal Tap. Except for Pictures of Matchstick Men, the group has never had a hit in the US. On the other hand, they remain popular in Scandanavia, playing to sellout crowds on a regular basis (yes, they are still together).

Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Magic Carpet Ride
Source: CD: Best of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Steppenwolf the Second)
Writer: Kay/Moreve
Label: Priority (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Occassionally I play something so well-known that I find myself with nothing to say about it. Such is the case with Magic Carpet Ride, the second best known song from the most successful L.A. band ever to come from Canada.

Artist: Grand Funk
Title: We're An American Band
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Don Brewer
Label: Capitol
Year: 1973
I thought it might be fun to finish out the hour with something completely unexpected. In 1972 I was the bass player/vocalist in a power trio that played a lot of Grand Funk Railroad, Black Sabbath and the like. Shortly after that band split up I started taking broadcasting classes from Tim Daniels, an Air Force Sergeant who had previously worked for the Armed Forces Vietnam Network (the same station that Adrian Cronauer worked at, although at that time nobody outside the military had ever heard of him). That led to my first regular airshift on the "Voice of Holloman" a closed-circuit station that was piped into the gym and bowling alley and some of the barracks at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. One of the hot new records that the station got promo copies of was We're An American Band, pressed on bright yellow translucent vinyl with the stereo version on one side and the mono mix on the other. I snagged one of the extra copies Capitol sent and have somehow managed to hang onto it over the years.

Artist: Gentrys
Title: Don't Send Me No Flowers
Source: LP: special disc jockey record (originally released on LP: Keep On Dancin')
Writer: Weiss
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1965
The Gentrys were a Memphis band that are best known for their 1965 hit Keep On Dancin'. A pair of LPs followed, but the Gentrys were not able to duplicate the success of that first major hit (although a couple of singles did hit the lower regions of the charts).

Artist: Dino Valenti
Title: Let's Get Together
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (first released on CD: Someone To Love-The Early San Francisco Sounds)
Writer: Chet Powers
Label: Rhino (original label: Big Beat)
Year: Recorded 1964, first released 1996 (UK only)
At first glance this may look like a cover tune. In reality, though, Dino Valenti was one of several aliases used by the guy who was born Chester Powers. Perhaps this was brought on by his several encounters with the law, most of which led to jail time. By all accounts, Valenti was one of the more bombastic characters on the San Francisco scene, making this an appropriate track to start off a San Francisco set. The song was first commercially recorded by Jefferson Airplane in 1966, but it wasn't until 1969, when the Youngbloods shortened the title to Get Together, that the song became a major hit.

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: It's No Secret
Source: LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer: Marty Balin
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1966
The first Jefferson Airplane song to get played on the radio was not Somebody To Love. Rather, it was It's No Secret, from the first Airplane album, that got extensive airplay, albeit only in the San Francisco Bay area. Still, the song was featured on a 1966 Bell Telephone Hour special on Haight Ashbury that introduced a national TV audience to what was happening out on the coast and may have just touched off the exodus to San Francisco the following year.

Artist: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title: Piece Of My Heart
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer: Ragovoy/Burns
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
By 1968 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with their charismatic vocalist from Texas, Janis Joplin, had become as popular as fellow San Francisco bands Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Somehow, though, they were still without a major label record deal. That all changed with the release of Cheap Thrills, with cover art by the legendary underground comix artist R. Crumb. The album itself was a curious mixture of live performances and studio tracks, the latter being led by the band's powerful cover of the 1966 Barbara Lynn tune Piece Of My Heart. The song propelled the band, and Joplin, to stardom. That stardom would be short-lived for most of the band members, however, as well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed advice-givers convinced Joplin that Big Brother was holding her back. The reality was that the band was uniquely suited to support her better than anyone she would ever work with again.

Artist: Rising Sons
Title: Let The Good Times Roll
Source: CD: The Rising Sons
Writer: Goodman/Lee
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1996
Columbia Records did not have a clue what to do with the Rising Sons. Part of the problem was that they were playing the same clubs on Sunset Strip as bands like Love, the Leaves, and the Seeds, yet did not play anywhere near the same type of music as those psychedelic underground garage/punk flower power type bands. Instead, the Rising Sons were big fans of the blues and of 50s R&B artists such as Bobby Blue Bland and Shirley and Lee, with many of the songs in their repertoire being originally recorded by those artists. One example of this is Let The Good Times Roll. The Rising Sons version of the tune follows Shirley and Lee's version closely. Another thing that ultimately led to Columbia's decision not to release the Rising Sons recordings is that fact that the band itself was multi-racial (featuring future stars Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder), and in 1966 nobody but Jan Holtzman's Elektra Records had any idea how to market a multi-racial band (Elektra had both the Butterfield Blues Band and Love on the label). Rather than ask a competitor how to do something (especially an upstart label like Elektra), the decidedly old-school Columbia executives decided to shelve the whole thing until a new generation of executives came along to release the recordings 30 years later.

Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: I Won't Hurt You
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Part One)
Writer: Harris/Lloyd/Markley
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Unlike the other two bands in this L.A. set, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was not a Sunset Strip club band. In fact, the WCPAEB really didn't play that many live performances in their career, although those they did play tended to be at high profile venues such as the Hollywood Bowl. The band was formed when the Harris brothers, sons of an accomplished classical musician, decided to record their own album and release it on a small local label. Only a few copies of that album, Volume One, were made and finding one now is next to impossible. That might have been the end of the story except for the fact that they were acquaintances of Kim Fowley, record producer and all-around Hollywood hustler. Fowley invited them to a party where the Yardbirds were playing; a party also attended by one Bob Markley. Markley, who was nearly ten years older than the Harris brothers, was a former TV show host from the midwest who had moved out to the coast to try his luck. Impressed by the flock of young girls surrounding the Yardbirds, Markley expressed to Fowley his desire to be a rock and roll star and have the girls flock around him, too. Fowley, ever the deal-maker, responded by introducing Markley to the Harris Brothers and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was born. With the addition of guitarist Michael Lloyd and the influence of Markley's not-inconsiderable family money, the group soon landed a contract with Reprise Records, where they proceeded to record the album Part One, which was essentially a re-recording of the album Volume One with most of the songs updated to include input from Markley and Harris. I Won't Hurt You is unusual in that it uses an actual recording of a human heart as its rhythmic backbone.

Artist: Love
Title: Revelation (conclusion)
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer: Lee/MacLean/Echols/Forsi
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The undisputed kings of the Sunset Strip were Love. Led by Arthur Lee, the band held down the position of house band at the Strip's most famous club, the Whiskey A-Go-Go, throughout 1966 and much of 1967, even as the club scene itself was starting to die off. Love liked being the top dog in L.A., so much so that they decided to forego touring to promote their records in favor of maintaining their presence at the Whiskey. In the long run this cost them, as many of their contemporaries (including one band that Love itself had discovered and introduced to Elektra producer Paul Rothchild: the Doors) went on to greater fame while Love remained a cult band throughout their existence. One of the highlights of their stage performances was a 19-minute jam called Revelation, a piece originally called John Hooker that served to give each band member a chance to show off with a solo. Although the band had been playing Revelation throughout 1966 (inspiring the Rolling Stones to do a similar number on one of their own albums), they did not get around to recording a studio version of Revelation until 1967. By that point they had added two new members, Tjay Cantrelli (sax) and Michael Stuart (drums), whose solos take up the last six minutes or so of the recorded version of the tune. The Harpsichord solo at the end of Revelation is played by "Snoopy" Pfisterer, who had switched from drums to keyboards when Stuart joined the group.

Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Wind
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer: Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Tonight's final half hour is played entirely from vinyl sources. It starts off with a set of requests that also serves as this week's only progression through the years. We start this progression in New York City, circa 1967. Circus Maximus was formed in Greenwich Village by Bob Bruno, who played lead guitar and keyboards, and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker. Both co-founders wrote songs for the band. While Walker's material tended to have a folk-rock sound, Bruno's had more of a psychedelic jazz flavor. The song that got the most airplay was the eight-minute Wind, featuring Bruno on lead vocals.

Artist: Blood, Sweat and Tears
Title: House In The Country
Source: LP: Child Is Father To The Man
Writer: Al Kooper
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Our second request also comes from New York City. Al Kooper was, by 1968, one of the most respected musicians in the city, having played organ on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album and then becoming a member of the seminal jam band the Blues Project. After being offered a job as staff producer for Columbia Records New York division he came up with the surprise hit album of 1968: the classic Super Session album with Michael Bloomfield and Stephen Stills. On the Super Session album he had overdubbed horns over the basic jams and later that same year he decided to form a new group with a horn section as an integral part of the band. The band, which also featured former Blues Project member Steve Katz on guitar, was called Blood, Sweat and Tears. Kooper left after only one album, but that album, Child Is Father To The Man, remains one of the classics of its time.

Artist: Ten Years After
Title: Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
Source: LP: Ssssh.
Writer: Sonny Boy Williamson
Label: Deram
Year: 1969
Our final request of the set was for "something from Ten Years After". One of the band's best-known pre-woodstock tracks was their rocked out version of Good Morning Little Schoolgirl from the album Ssssh. The first power trio I played bass in (as a Junior in high school) covered this tune. Dave the guitarist always looked right at his girlfriend Jeannie as he sang the line " I wanna baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal you" over and over. Ah, the memories of youth.

Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Ripple
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Garcia/Hunter
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1971
Our final set of the night starts off with an edited mono single version of the Grateful Dead tune Ripple from the American Beauty album. Usually, B sides were presented in their full-length album versions, leading me to think that maybe the band intended this, rather than Truckin' (heard on last week's show), as the side to get airplay on AM radio.

Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: King Of The Jungle
Source: LP: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer: Wright/Tarachney/Weisberg
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
The Beacon Street Union's second album was quite a bit different from their first one, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union. Whereas Eyes consisted of all-original material, Clown included a pair of cover tunes (Blue Suede Shoes and a 17-minute version of Baby, Please Don't Go), an orchestral piece (The Clown's Overture), and this bit of strangeness. All this leads me to believe that the band itself gave up on the project halfway through, leaving producer Wes Farrell (he of Partridge Family fame) to scrounge through the outtakes and rejected tracks to fill out the album. Just my opinion, of course.

Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
"Everybody must get stoned." 'Nuff said.