Artist: Who
Title: Happy Jack (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: Meaty, Beaty, Big And Bouncy
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1967
Happy Jack was originally released as a single in the UK in late 1966. It did not hit the US airwaves, however, until the early months of 1967. (I heard it for the first time on KLZ-FM, a Denver station whose format was a forerunner of progressive rock. KLZ-FM didn't call themselves a rock station. They instead marketed themselves as playing the top 100, as opposed to the top 60 played on KIMN, the dominant AM station in the city.) Although the song was not intended to be on an album, Decca Records quickly rearranged the track order of the Who's second album, A Quick One, to make room for the song, changing the name of the album itself to Happy Jack in the process. This rechanneled stereo mix of the song (using a much more realistic process than Capitol used with the Beach Boys' records) came out on the LP Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy in the early 1970s, but when the album was reissued on CD the original mono master was used instead.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in early 1967. The record, initially released without much promotion on Reprise Records, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Mystic Mourning
Source: CD: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Ulaky/Weisberg/Rhodes
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
If I had to choose one single recording that represents the psychedelic era, my choice would be Mystic Mourning, from the album The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union. Everything about the tune screams psychedelic, starting with a short spacy intro of electric piano over cymbals, leading into a raga beat with a solo bass line that builds up to a repeating riff that ends up getting played at various times by guitar, bass, and/or piano. The lyrics are appropriately existential, and both guitar and piano get a chance to show their stuff over the course of the nearly six-minute track.
Artist: Donovan
Title: CD: Epistle To Dippy (alt. arrangement)
Source: CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
Following up on his successful Mellow Yellow album, Donovan released Epistle To Dippy in the spring of 1967. The song, utilizing the same kind of instrumentation as Mellow Yellow, was further proof that the Scottish singer was continuing to move beyond the restrictions of the "folk singer" label and was quickly becoming the model for what would come to be called "singer/songwriters" in the following decade. Due to an ongoing contractual dispute between the artist and his UK record label (Pye), Epistle To Dippy was only released in the US. This alternate arrangement of the song was recorded about 10 months after the single version and features a violin prominently, replacing the electric guitar used on the original.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Cool, Calm And Collected
Source: LP: Between The Buttons
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
The Rolling Stones were beginning to experiment with psychedelia on their first album of 1967, Between The Buttons. Cool, Calm and Collected, which closes side one of the LP, features pianist Nicky Hopkins prominently. Hopkins, one of the most respected British session players (and the inspiration for the Kinks song Session Man) would soon start showing up on albums by American artists, and even became a member of one of them (Quicksilver Messenger Service) for a time.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Blues From An Airplane
Source: LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s): Balin/Spence
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1966
Blues From An Airplane was the opening song on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Although never released as a single, it was picked by the group to open their first anthology album, The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane, as well.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Comin' Back To Me
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to this Marty Balin tune. Balin, in his 2003 liner notes to the remastered release of Surrealistic Pillow, claims that Comin' Back To Me was written in one sitting under the influence of some primo stuff given to him by Paul Butterfield. Other players on the recording include Paul Kantner and Balin himself on guitars, Jack Casady on bass and Grace Slick on recorder.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Come Up The Years
Source: LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s): Balin/Kantner
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1966
One of the most overused motifs in pop music is the "You're too young for me" song. This probably reflects, to a certain degree, a lifestyle that goes back to the beginnings of rock and roll (Chuck Berry did jail time for transporting a minor across state lines, Jerry Lee Lewis saw his career get derailed by his marraige to his 13-year-old cousin, etc.). The Marty Balin/Paul Kantner tune Come Up The Years takes a more sophisticated look at the subject, although it still comes to the same conclusion (I can't do this because you're jailbait). In fact, the only rock songwriter I know of that came to any other conclusion on the matter was Bob Markley, and that's what ultimately got him in trouble with the law.
Artist: Astronauts
Title: Razzamatazz
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Venet/Boyce/Allison
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1965
Landlocked Boulder, Colorado would seem an unlikely place for a surf music band. Nonetheless, the Astonauts were just that, and a pretty successful one at that. That success, however, came from an equally unlikely place. After being together for about three years and having only one charted single in the US (Baja, which spent one week on the chart in 1963, peaking in the #94 spot), the band discovered that their records were doing quite well in Japan, where the mostly-instrumental Astronauts were actually outselling the Beach Boys. The group soon began touring extensively in the Far East and when all was said and done had released nine albums and a dozen singles over a period of less than 10 years. Razzamatazz is the instrumental B side to the Astronauts' 1965 recording of Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, a tune that would appear the next year on the first Monkees album (and on their TV show). Razzamatazz itself is basically the instrumental track for Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day with some harmonica added.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Dandy
Source: CD: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
Ray Davies was well into his satirical phase when he wrote and recorded Dandy for the Kinks' 1966 album Face To Face. Later that year the song was covered by Herman's Hermits, becoming a hit on the US top 40 charts.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: I'm A Man
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Miller/Winwood
Label: United Artists
Year: 1967
The Spencer Davis Group, featuring Steve and Muff Winwood, was one of the UK's most successful white R&B bands of the sixties, cranking out a steady stream of hit singles. Two of them, the iconic Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man, were also major hits in the US, the latter being the last song to feature the Winwood brothers. Muff Winwood became a successful record producer. The group itself continued on for several years, but were never able to duplicate their earlier successes. As for Steve Winwood, he quickly faded off into obscurity, never to be heard from again. Except as the leader of Traffic. And a member of Blind Faith. And Traffic again. And some critically-acclaimed collaborations in the early 1980s with various Asian musicians. Oh yeah, and a few obscure solo hits (While You See A Chance, Roll With It, Higher Love, etc.) in the late 80s. Other than that, nothing.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Love Will Endure
Source: CD: Anthology (originally released on LP: Live At Town Hall with ambient live audience overdubs)
Writer: Patrick Sky
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: recorded: 1966; released: 1967
Steve Katz had more of a folk background than the other members of the Blues Project, as evidenced by this cover of Patrick Sky's Love Will Endure. The song was actually recorded between the first and second Blues Project albums, but was not released until the third album, Live At Town Hall, which was a mixture of actual live recordings and studio tracks with the sounds of a live audience overdubbed onto them to make them sound like live recordings. Why anyone would want to do that is beyond me, but it probably has something to do with the fact that by the time the album was released Al Kooper was no longer a member and the label wanted the album to include as much Kooper as possible.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Getting Better
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
Following their 1966 North American tour, the Beatles announced that they were giving up touring to concentrate on their songwriting and studio work. Freed of the responsibilities of the road (and under the influence of mind-expanding substances), the band members found themselves discovering new sonic possibilities as never before (or since), hitting a creative peak with their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, often cited as the greatest album ever recorded. The individual Beatles were about to move in separate musical directions, but as of Sgt. Pepper's were still functioning mostly as a single unit, as is heard on the chorus of Getting Better, in which Paul McCartney's opening line, "I have to admit it's getting better", is immediately answered by John Lennon's playfully cynical "can't get no worse". The members continued to experiment with new instrumental styles as well, such as George Harrison's use of sitar on the song's bridge, accompanied by Ringo Starr's bongos.
Artist: Leaves
Title: With None Shoes
Source: CD: All The Good That's Happening
Writer(s): unknown
Label: One Way (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
Following the national success of Hey Joe in 1966, popular L.A. club band the Leaves signed a deal with Capitol Records that resulted in the album All The Good That's Happening. Unfortunately, by 1967 the group was already beginning to fall apart and the album lacked a consistent sound, despite having some decent tunes such as With None Shoes, which opens the second side of the LP.
Artist: Blood, Sweat And Tears
Title: The Modern Adventures Of Diogenes And Freud
Source: LP: Child Is Father To The Man
Writer(s): Al Kooper
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
In the liner notes for the debut Blood, Sweat And Tears album, Child Is Father To The Man, bandleader Al Kooper describes The Modern Adventures Of Diogenes And Freud as being about "the professions of psychiatry and messiahtry." The song is somewhat unusual in that it features none of the standard rock instruments. The recording instead consists entirely of Kooper's vocals and strings arranged by producer John Simon.
Artist: The Band
Title: The Shape I'm In
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Robbie Robertson
Label: Capitol
Year: 1970
The Band's third LP, stage fright, is probably their best-known studio effort (The Last Waltz being a live album). The only single from the album was The Shape I'm In. The tune, written by Robbie Robertson, was a not-entirely-flattering portrayel of fellow band member Richard Manuel, whose voice is ironically the most prominent on the recording.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Bookends (side one)
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
After going through the entire year 1967 without releasing an official album (the Graduate being a movie soundtrack), Simon And Garfunkel returned to the studio to record 1968's Bookends. Side two of the album was made up of songs that had been released as singles and/or recorded for the Graduate soundtrack, but that had not actually appeared on any albums yet. Side one, on the other hand, was all new material, and is an early example of a concept album. The sequence of songs is meant to cover a lifetime, starting with a short Bookends theme that leads into Save The Life Of My Child, one of the first pop songs to feature a Moog synthesizer. This segues directly into America, a song that would be released as a single after the duo had split up. America is followed by Overs, a breakup song. Voices Of Old People features actual recordings of residents of a New York rest home (put together by Simon and Garfunkel in the studio), and leads into Old Friends, a piece that features strings arranged by producer John Simon. The side wraps up with an expanded version of the Bookends theme, this time with vocals.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Gypsy Eyes
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Electric Ladyland, the last album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was a double LP mixture of studio recordings and live jams in the studio with an array of guest musicians. Gypsy Eyes is a good example of Hendrix's prowess at the mixing board as well as on guitar.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Crosstown Traffic
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
By 1968 it didn't matter one bit whether the Jimi Hendrix Experience had any hit singles; their albums were guaranteed to be successful. Nonetheless the Electric Ladyland album had no less that three singles on it (although one was a new stereo mix of a 1967 single). The first single to be released concurrently with Electric Ladyland was Crosstown Traffic, a song that has been included on several anthologies over the years.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Little Miss Strange
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Noel Redding
Label: Legacy (original 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 second (and last) Redding tune the band would record (She's So Fine on Axis: Bold As Love being the first). After the Experience split up Redding formed Fat Mattress, but that band had little success.
Artist: Doors
Title: Light My Fire
Source: LP: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The first Doors album was the only one to be released in both mono and stereo versions. Due to an error in the mastering process the stereo version was slowed down by about 3.5%, or about half a step in musical terms. As the mono version was deleted from the Elektra catalog soon after the album's release, the error went unnoticed for many years until a college professor contacted engineer Bruce Botnick and told him of the discrepancy. Recently I came into possession of a (admittedly somewhat worn) copy of the original mono pressing and this week we get to hear, in their entirety, the full versions of both Light My Fire and The End at the speed and key in which they were originally recorded.
Artist: Doors
Title: Peace Frog
Source: CD: Morrison Hotel
Writer(s): Morrison/Kreiger
Label: Elektra
Year: 1970
After being slammed by critics and suffering a noticable drop in sales with their fourth album, the Soft Parade, the Doors shifted gears for Morrison Hotel (sometimes known as Hard Rock Cafe), dispensing with the horns and strings and concentrating on getting back to their roots. The band had a problem, though. Extensive touring had left them little time to write new songs, although Morrison had continued to write poetry whenever he had the chance. The solution was for the other members, such as guitarist Robbie Kreiger, to compose music specifically to accompany Morrison's poetry. The result was songs like Peace Frog, which serves as a buffer this week between our two mono recordings from the first Doors album.
Artist: Doors
Title: The End
Source: LP: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Prior to recording their first album the Doors' honed their craft at various Sunset Strip clubs, working up live versions of the songs they would soon record, including their show-stopper, The End. Originally written as a breakup song by singer/lyricist Jim Morrison, The End runs nearly twelve minutes and includes a controversial spoken "Oedipus section". My own take on the famous "blue bus" line is that Morrison, being a military brat, was probably familiar with the blue shuttle buses used on military bases for a variety of purposes, including taking kids to school, and simply incorporated his experiences with them into his lyrics. The End got its greatest exposure in 1979, when Oliver Stone used it in his film Apocalypse Now. The version heard on this week's show is from the original mono pressing of the LP, and is actually about 20 seconds shorter and about a half-step higher than the remixed stereo version used in the movie. The vocals on this version are noticably less prominent than in the movie as well.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: Ups And Downs
Source: CD: Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lindsay/Melcher
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
At the beginning of 1967 Paul Revere and the Raiders were still flying high, with singles that consistently hit the upper reaches of the charts and a solid promotional platform in the daily afternoon TV show Action. Their first hit of the year was Ups And Downs, a collaboration between lead vocalist Mark Lindsay and producer Terry Melcher. Things would soon turn sour for the band, however, as a volatile market soon turned against the group. In part it was because their revolutionary war costumes were becoming a bit camp. Also, Action left the airwaves in 1967, and its Saturday Morning replacement, Happening, was seen as more of a kid's show than a legitimate rock and roll venue. Most importantly, however, Melcher and the Raiders parted company, and the band realized too late just how important a role Melcher had played in the group's success.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1221 (starts 5/24/12)
Artist: Beatles
Title: Help!
Source: CD: Help!
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1965
One of the best-known songs of all time, Help! was the theme of the second Beatles movie. The soundtrack album featured a combination of songs that were used in the film and new material, most of which was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The album cover itself shows the four Beatles holding their arms out in positions resembling those used by flagmen using semaphore. Supposedly they were spelling out the word "help", but those knowledgeable in semaphore say that the four letters they are signaling are entirely different, and actually make no sense. Regardless, the album represents the zenith of the early Beatles sound, with a few hints of the direction they would begin to take with their next LP, Rubber Soul.
Artist: Woolies
Title: Who Do You Love
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Elias McDaniel
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1966
Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love had become somewhat of a rock and roll dance standard by the mid-1960s, with several bands recording the tune. Probably the most overtly psychedelic version came from East Lansing, Michigan's Woolies. The group was discovered by Dunhill Records' Lou Adler and were flown out to L.A. to record the song, which was originally considered the B side of their debut single. When some radio stations started flipping the record over to play Who Do You Love, Dunhill was slow to promote the song, and it stalled out in the lower reaches of the charts. Disillusioned by the whole experience, all but one member of the Woolies returned to Michigan, recording a handful of regionally-distributed records on small local labels before finally disbanding.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Queen Noimphet
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
To say the motives of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's Bob Markley were questionable was an understatement. The man, by all accounts, was lacking in any kind of musical talent. What he did have, however, was a huge trust fund that he would get a quarterly check from. He used the money to set himself up in a big house in the Hollywood hills, throwing parties for all the local hipsters to attend. It was at one of these parties in 1966 that he was introduced to the Harris brothers, sons of a classical composer who had recently formed their own band but were in need of decent equipment. Markley's friend Kim Fowley (singer of the original Alley Oop and all-around Hollywood hustler) had booked the Yardbirds to play at the party, and Markley was so impressed by the band's ability to attract young ladies that he decided then and there to be a rock star. Fowley introduced the 30-year-old Markley to the teenaged Harris brothers and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was formed. As time went on it became apparent that the older Markley got, the younger his taste in women was becoming. Markley's lyrics for the song Queen Noimphet, from the album Volume II, are an indication of where his obsession with attracting young girls was taking him. Indeed, he was reportedly arrested in the 70s on sex charges, but was able to use his considerable financial resources to buy his way out of trouble.
Artist: Cream
Title: Tales Of Brave Ulysses
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Clapton/Sharp
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Cream was one of the first bands to break British tradition and release singles that were also available as album cuts. This tradition likely came about because 45 RPM records (both singles and extended play 45s) tended to stay in print indefinitely in the UK, unlike in the US, where a hit single usually had a shelf life of around 2-3 months then disappeared forever. When the Disraeli Gears album was released, however, the song Strange Brew, which leads off the LP, was released in Europe as a single. The B side of that single was Tales Of Brave Ulysses, which opens side two of the album.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: A Whiter Shade Of Pale (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: The Best Of Procol Harum
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
Often credited as the first progressive rock band, Procol Harum drew heavily from classical music sources, such as the Bach inspired theme used by organist Matthew Fisher as the signature rift for A Whiter Shade of Pale. The tracd itself hold the distinction of being the most-played recording on the British airwaves of the past 70 years.
Artist: Mike Proctor
Title: Mr. Commuter
Source: CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 PM single)
Writer(s): Roker/Littlewood
Label: EMI (original UK label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
In the US, the psychedelic era is generally considered to cover the years 1965 through 1969, more or less, and includes the garage/punk movement as well as early forms of hard rock, heavy metal and progressive rock. In the UK, on the other hand, the psychedelic era covers a much shorter time period, 1966-68, and is defined by two Beatle albums: Revolver at the beginning and the White album at the end. In between there were a variety of artists, many of whom made only one album (or even one single). Among these is classically-trained pianist Mike Proctor, whose Mr. Commuter was released in mid 1967 on EMI's Columbia label. Proctor hooked up with a couple bands after releasing the single, but never again recorded for a major label.
Artist: Love
Title: You I'll Be Following
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
When the Byrds decided to tour heavily to support their early hits Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, Arthur Lee's band Love was more than happy to fill the void left on the L.A. club scene. The group quickly established itself as the top band on the strip and caught the attention of Elektra Records, an album-oriented label that had previously specialized in blues and folk music but was looking to move into rock. Love was soon signed to a contract with Elektra and released their self-titled debut LP in 1966. That album featured songs that were primarily in a folk-rock vein, such as You I'll Be Following, although even then there were signs that bandleader Arthur Lee was capable of writing quality tunes that defied easy classification. Love would remain the top band on the strip for the next year and a half, recording two more albums in 1967. To maintain their status as local heroes, Love chose to stay close to home. The lack of time spent promoting their records ultimately led to them being supplanted as the star group for Elektra by the Doors, a band that had been recommended to the label by Lee himself.
Artist: Doors
Title: End Of The Night
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The Doors first big break came when they opened for Love at L.A.'s most famous club, the Whisky-A-Go-Go, and became friends with the members of the more established popular local band. Love was already recording for Elektra Records, and enthusiastically recommended that the label sign the Doors as well. Elektra did, and the Doors went on to become one of the most successful and influential bands in rock history. Although not as well-known as Light My Fire or The End, the dark and moody End Of The Night is a classic early Doors tune, from the opening bent chords from guitarist Robby Krieger to the spooky keyboard work of Ray Manzarek and of course Jim Morrison's distinctive vocals.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Two Trains Running
Source: LP: Special Disc Jockey Record (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer(s): McKinley Morganfield
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
My first two years as a student at the University of New Mexico were spent living off-campus in a large house shared by five other people (a varying number of which were also students). One day while rummaging through the basement I ran across a couple boxes full of reel-to-reel tapes. As I was the only person living there with a reel-to-reel machine and nobody seemed to know where the tapes had come from, I appropriated them for my own use. Unfortunately, many of the tapes were unlabeled, so all I could do was make a guess as to artists and titles of the music on them. One of those unknown tracks was this 1966 slowed way down version of Muddy Waters's Two Trains Running by the Blues Project. A few years later I ran across a nearly pristine cut-out copy of the album Projections at a thrift shop. As I had remembered being intrigued by the cover back when I couldn't afford albums I immediately snapped it up and took it home for a listen. I still have that copy of Projections, as well as a promo sampler I got from the WEOS archives in 2009 that I used for tonight's show.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Renaissance Fair
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Crosby/McGuinn
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Younger Than Yesterday was David Crosby's last official album with the Byrds (he was fired midway through the recording of The Notorious Byrd Brothers) and the last one containing any collaborations between Crosby and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn. Renaissance Fair is one of those collaborations.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: The Masked Marauder
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Perhaps more than any other band, Country Joe and the Fish capture the essence of the San Francisco scene in the late 60s. Their first two releases were floppy inserts included in Joe McDonald's self-published Rag Baby underground newspaper. In 1967 the band was signed to Vanguard Records, a primarily folk-oriented prestige label that also had Joan Baez on its roster. Their first LP, Electric Music For the Mind and Body had such classic cuts as Section 43, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, and the political parody Superbird on it, as well as the mostly-instrumental tune The Masked Marauder. Not for the unenlightened.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: 2000 Light Years From Home
Source: CD: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
Nowhere was the ripple effect of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band more noticeable than on the Rolling Stones fall 1967 release Their Satanic Majesties Request. The cover featured the band members in various sorcerous regalia in a seven-inch picture on the kind of holographic paper used for "magic rings" found in bubble-gum machines and pasted over regular album-cover stock, which was a simple pattern of faded white circles on a blue background (it kind of looked like dark wallpaper). Musically it was the most psychedelic Stones album ever released. Interesting enough, different songs were released as singles in different countries. In the US the single was She's A Rainbow, while in Germany 2,000 Light Years From Home (the US B side of She's A Rainbow) got significant airplay.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In) (originally released on LP: No Way Out and as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk
Writer(s): McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in truth the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, No Way Out, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooneil
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: After Bathing At Baxter's)
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1967
The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil (the title being a reference to Fred Neil) was never issued as a single. Nonetheless, the band decided to include it on their first anthology album, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane. This, in fact, was typical of the collection, which favored the songs the band considered their best over those that were considered the most commercial. Interestingly enough, the original plan for After Bathing At Baxter's (the album the song first appeared on) was to use a nine minute live version of Ballad, but that idea was scrapped in favor of dividing the album into five suites, the first of which opened with the studio version of the tune.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Get Me To The World On Time
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) and as 45 RPM single).
Writer(s): Tucker/Jones
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
With I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) climbing the charts in early 1967, the Electric Prunes' producer Dave Hassinger turned to songwriter Annette Tucker for two more tracks to include on the band's debut LP. One of those, Get Me To The World On Time (co-written by lyricist Jill Jones) was selected to be the follow up single to Dream. Although not as big a hit, the song still did respectably on the charts (and was actually the first Electric Prunes song I ever heard on FM radio).
Artist: Joe Cocker
Title: With A Little Help From My Friends
Source: CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm (originally released on Woodstock soundtrack album)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Rhino (original label: Cotillion)
Year: 1969
One of the most famous performances at Woodstock was instrumental in converting Joe Cocker from second tier British singer/bandleader to international superstar. This 2009 release of the live recording of With A Little Help From My Friends is virtually identical to what was originally included on the movie soundtrack album in the early 70s, the primary difference being that the background vocals (that had been re-recorded for the soundtrack album) are here restored to what the audience actually heard.
Artist: Chicago
Title: Beginnings
Source: LP: Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s): Robert Lamm
Label: Columbia
Year: 1969
The first album by Chicago shows a band that had spent several months on the road honing its craft. Many of the tracks on the double album were recorded in one take, with a minimum of overdubs. Beginnings, which finishes out side one of the album, was released as a single in 1969 but failed to chart. After the band became more well-known, Beginnings was re-released, this time becoming a moderate hit. The single version ran less than three minutes, essentially cutting out the entire second half of the song, but a later album edit running about six minutes has been used on most compilation albums. The original version heard here runs nearly eight minutes, including over two minutes of percussion and vocals at the end of the song.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
Source: LP: Gimme Some Lovin'
Writer(s): Jimmy Cox
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The Spencer Davis Group, featuring a teenage Steve Winwood on lead vocals and organ, came seemingly out of nowhere with their early 1967 hit, Gimme Some Lovin'. The reality was that the band had already racked up an impressive number of hits in their native England by the time Gimme Some Lovin' was released in late 1966. The band had also released several notable album tracks, including this 1966 cover of Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out, a song originally written and recorded by Jimmy Cox in the 1920s. Many of these tracks were collected for the band's first US album, Gimme Some Lovin', released in 1967.
Artist: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
Dirty Water has long since been adopted by the city of Boston, yet the band that originally recorded this Ed Cobb tune was purely an L.A. band, having started off playing cover tunes in the early 60s. Lead vocalist/drummer Dickie Dodd, incidentally, was a former Mouseketeer who had played on the surf-rock hit Mr. Moto as a member of the Bel-Airs.
Artist: Limey And The Yanks
Title: Guaranteed Love
Source: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Reed/Paxton
Label: Rhino (original label: Star-Burst)
Year: 1966
Limey and the Yanks were an Orange County, California band that boasted an honest-to-dog British lead vocalist. Despite being kind of Zelig-like on the L.A. scene, they only recorded two singles. The first one, Guaranteed Love, was co-written by Gary Paxton, best known for his involvement in various novelty records, including the Hollywood Argyles' Alley Oop, which he co-wrote with Kim Fowley, and Bobby "Boris" Pickett's Monster Mash, which was released on Paxton's own Garpax label.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Hey Joe
Source: LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s): Billy Roberts
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Possibly the greatest garage-rock album of all is the second Shadows Of Knight LP, Back Door Men. Released in 1966, the album features virtually the same lineup as their debut LP, Gloria. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Shadows were capable of varying their style somewhat, going from their trademark Chicago blues-influenced punk to what can only be described as early hard rock with ease. Like many bands of the time, they recorded a fast version of Billy Roberts' Hey Joe (although they credited it to Chet Powers on the label). The Shadows version, however, is a bit longer than the rest, featuring an extended guitar break by Joe Kelley, who had switched from bass to lead guitar midway through the recording of the Gloria album, replacing Warren Rogers, when it was discovered that Kelley was by far the more talented guitarist (Rogers was moved over to bass). Incidentally, despite the album's title and the Shadows' penchant for recording classic blues tunes, the band did not record a version of Howlin' Wolf's Back Door Man. The Blues Project and the Doors, however, did.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label: Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year: 1966
Although San Jose, Ca. is a rather large city in its own right (the 10th-largest city in the US in fact), it has always had a kind of suburban status, thanks to being within the same media market as San Francisco. Nonetheless, San Jose had its own very active music scene in the mid-60s, and Count Five was, for a time in late 1966, at the top of the heap, thanks in large part to Psychotic Reaction tearing up the national charts.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: King Of The Jungle
Source: LP: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer(s): 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, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens 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 called King Of The Jungle. 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: Bubble Puppy
Title: Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bubble Puppy
Label: Priority (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1969
From Houston we have an oft-requested song from a band that was a couple years ahead of its time, displaying musical dexterity on a par with later groups such as Flash and Yes. Soon after recording Hot Smoke and Sassafras the Bubble Puppy would relocate to California and change their name to Demian, at least in part to disassociate themselves with the then-popular "bubble gum" style (but also because of problems with the International Artists label).
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Screaming Night Hog
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): John Kay
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1970
By 1970 Steppenwolf had settled in to a fairly consistent groove, cranking out solid, if unspectacular hits on a regular basis. One such hit was Screaming Night Hog, which hit the top 40 that year. By this point John Kay had cemented his role as dominant figure in Steppenwolf, with the rest of the group pretty much serving as his backup band.
Artist: Neil Young
Title: Old Man
Source: CD: Harvest
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
Neil Young's most successful solo album was Harvest. The 1972 album featured two major hits, Heart Of Gold (which hit the #1 spot) and Old Man, which until this week has never been played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era, even during the nearly 10 years it ran as a local non-syndicated show.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mickey Newbury
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle wrote most of the songs on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.
Title: Help!
Source: CD: Help!
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1965
One of the best-known songs of all time, Help! was the theme of the second Beatles movie. The soundtrack album featured a combination of songs that were used in the film and new material, most of which was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The album cover itself shows the four Beatles holding their arms out in positions resembling those used by flagmen using semaphore. Supposedly they were spelling out the word "help", but those knowledgeable in semaphore say that the four letters they are signaling are entirely different, and actually make no sense. Regardless, the album represents the zenith of the early Beatles sound, with a few hints of the direction they would begin to take with their next LP, Rubber Soul.
Artist: Woolies
Title: Who Do You Love
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Elias McDaniel
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1966
Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love had become somewhat of a rock and roll dance standard by the mid-1960s, with several bands recording the tune. Probably the most overtly psychedelic version came from East Lansing, Michigan's Woolies. The group was discovered by Dunhill Records' Lou Adler and were flown out to L.A. to record the song, which was originally considered the B side of their debut single. When some radio stations started flipping the record over to play Who Do You Love, Dunhill was slow to promote the song, and it stalled out in the lower reaches of the charts. Disillusioned by the whole experience, all but one member of the Woolies returned to Michigan, recording a handful of regionally-distributed records on small local labels before finally disbanding.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Queen Noimphet
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
To say the motives of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's Bob Markley were questionable was an understatement. The man, by all accounts, was lacking in any kind of musical talent. What he did have, however, was a huge trust fund that he would get a quarterly check from. He used the money to set himself up in a big house in the Hollywood hills, throwing parties for all the local hipsters to attend. It was at one of these parties in 1966 that he was introduced to the Harris brothers, sons of a classical composer who had recently formed their own band but were in need of decent equipment. Markley's friend Kim Fowley (singer of the original Alley Oop and all-around Hollywood hustler) had booked the Yardbirds to play at the party, and Markley was so impressed by the band's ability to attract young ladies that he decided then and there to be a rock star. Fowley introduced the 30-year-old Markley to the teenaged Harris brothers and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was formed. As time went on it became apparent that the older Markley got, the younger his taste in women was becoming. Markley's lyrics for the song Queen Noimphet, from the album Volume II, are an indication of where his obsession with attracting young girls was taking him. Indeed, he was reportedly arrested in the 70s on sex charges, but was able to use his considerable financial resources to buy his way out of trouble.
Artist: Cream
Title: Tales Of Brave Ulysses
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Clapton/Sharp
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Cream was one of the first bands to break British tradition and release singles that were also available as album cuts. This tradition likely came about because 45 RPM records (both singles and extended play 45s) tended to stay in print indefinitely in the UK, unlike in the US, where a hit single usually had a shelf life of around 2-3 months then disappeared forever. When the Disraeli Gears album was released, however, the song Strange Brew, which leads off the LP, was released in Europe as a single. The B side of that single was Tales Of Brave Ulysses, which opens side two of the album.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: A Whiter Shade Of Pale (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: The Best Of Procol Harum
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
Often credited as the first progressive rock band, Procol Harum drew heavily from classical music sources, such as the Bach inspired theme used by organist Matthew Fisher as the signature rift for A Whiter Shade of Pale. The tracd itself hold the distinction of being the most-played recording on the British airwaves of the past 70 years.
Artist: Mike Proctor
Title: Mr. Commuter
Source: CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 PM single)
Writer(s): Roker/Littlewood
Label: EMI (original UK label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
In the US, the psychedelic era is generally considered to cover the years 1965 through 1969, more or less, and includes the garage/punk movement as well as early forms of hard rock, heavy metal and progressive rock. In the UK, on the other hand, the psychedelic era covers a much shorter time period, 1966-68, and is defined by two Beatle albums: Revolver at the beginning and the White album at the end. In between there were a variety of artists, many of whom made only one album (or even one single). Among these is classically-trained pianist Mike Proctor, whose Mr. Commuter was released in mid 1967 on EMI's Columbia label. Proctor hooked up with a couple bands after releasing the single, but never again recorded for a major label.
Artist: Love
Title: You I'll Be Following
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
When the Byrds decided to tour heavily to support their early hits Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, Arthur Lee's band Love was more than happy to fill the void left on the L.A. club scene. The group quickly established itself as the top band on the strip and caught the attention of Elektra Records, an album-oriented label that had previously specialized in blues and folk music but was looking to move into rock. Love was soon signed to a contract with Elektra and released their self-titled debut LP in 1966. That album featured songs that were primarily in a folk-rock vein, such as You I'll Be Following, although even then there were signs that bandleader Arthur Lee was capable of writing quality tunes that defied easy classification. Love would remain the top band on the strip for the next year and a half, recording two more albums in 1967. To maintain their status as local heroes, Love chose to stay close to home. The lack of time spent promoting their records ultimately led to them being supplanted as the star group for Elektra by the Doors, a band that had been recommended to the label by Lee himself.
Artist: Doors
Title: End Of The Night
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The Doors first big break came when they opened for Love at L.A.'s most famous club, the Whisky-A-Go-Go, and became friends with the members of the more established popular local band. Love was already recording for Elektra Records, and enthusiastically recommended that the label sign the Doors as well. Elektra did, and the Doors went on to become one of the most successful and influential bands in rock history. Although not as well-known as Light My Fire or The End, the dark and moody End Of The Night is a classic early Doors tune, from the opening bent chords from guitarist Robby Krieger to the spooky keyboard work of Ray Manzarek and of course Jim Morrison's distinctive vocals.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Two Trains Running
Source: LP: Special Disc Jockey Record (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer(s): McKinley Morganfield
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
My first two years as a student at the University of New Mexico were spent living off-campus in a large house shared by five other people (a varying number of which were also students). One day while rummaging through the basement I ran across a couple boxes full of reel-to-reel tapes. As I was the only person living there with a reel-to-reel machine and nobody seemed to know where the tapes had come from, I appropriated them for my own use. Unfortunately, many of the tapes were unlabeled, so all I could do was make a guess as to artists and titles of the music on them. One of those unknown tracks was this 1966 slowed way down version of Muddy Waters's Two Trains Running by the Blues Project. A few years later I ran across a nearly pristine cut-out copy of the album Projections at a thrift shop. As I had remembered being intrigued by the cover back when I couldn't afford albums I immediately snapped it up and took it home for a listen. I still have that copy of Projections, as well as a promo sampler I got from the WEOS archives in 2009 that I used for tonight's show.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Renaissance Fair
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Crosby/McGuinn
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Younger Than Yesterday was David Crosby's last official album with the Byrds (he was fired midway through the recording of The Notorious Byrd Brothers) and the last one containing any collaborations between Crosby and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn. Renaissance Fair is one of those collaborations.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: The Masked Marauder
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Perhaps more than any other band, Country Joe and the Fish capture the essence of the San Francisco scene in the late 60s. Their first two releases were floppy inserts included in Joe McDonald's self-published Rag Baby underground newspaper. In 1967 the band was signed to Vanguard Records, a primarily folk-oriented prestige label that also had Joan Baez on its roster. Their first LP, Electric Music For the Mind and Body had such classic cuts as Section 43, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, and the political parody Superbird on it, as well as the mostly-instrumental tune The Masked Marauder. Not for the unenlightened.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: 2000 Light Years From Home
Source: CD: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
Nowhere was the ripple effect of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band more noticeable than on the Rolling Stones fall 1967 release Their Satanic Majesties Request. The cover featured the band members in various sorcerous regalia in a seven-inch picture on the kind of holographic paper used for "magic rings" found in bubble-gum machines and pasted over regular album-cover stock, which was a simple pattern of faded white circles on a blue background (it kind of looked like dark wallpaper). Musically it was the most psychedelic Stones album ever released. Interesting enough, different songs were released as singles in different countries. In the US the single was She's A Rainbow, while in Germany 2,000 Light Years From Home (the US B side of She's A Rainbow) got significant airplay.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In) (originally released on LP: No Way Out and as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk
Writer(s): McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in truth the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, No Way Out, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooneil
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: After Bathing At Baxter's)
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1967
The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil (the title being a reference to Fred Neil) was never issued as a single. Nonetheless, the band decided to include it on their first anthology album, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane. This, in fact, was typical of the collection, which favored the songs the band considered their best over those that were considered the most commercial. Interestingly enough, the original plan for After Bathing At Baxter's (the album the song first appeared on) was to use a nine minute live version of Ballad, but that idea was scrapped in favor of dividing the album into five suites, the first of which opened with the studio version of the tune.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Get Me To The World On Time
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) and as 45 RPM single).
Writer(s): Tucker/Jones
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
With I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) climbing the charts in early 1967, the Electric Prunes' producer Dave Hassinger turned to songwriter Annette Tucker for two more tracks to include on the band's debut LP. One of those, Get Me To The World On Time (co-written by lyricist Jill Jones) was selected to be the follow up single to Dream. Although not as big a hit, the song still did respectably on the charts (and was actually the first Electric Prunes song I ever heard on FM radio).
Artist: Joe Cocker
Title: With A Little Help From My Friends
Source: CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm (originally released on Woodstock soundtrack album)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Rhino (original label: Cotillion)
Year: 1969
One of the most famous performances at Woodstock was instrumental in converting Joe Cocker from second tier British singer/bandleader to international superstar. This 2009 release of the live recording of With A Little Help From My Friends is virtually identical to what was originally included on the movie soundtrack album in the early 70s, the primary difference being that the background vocals (that had been re-recorded for the soundtrack album) are here restored to what the audience actually heard.
Artist: Chicago
Title: Beginnings
Source: LP: Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s): Robert Lamm
Label: Columbia
Year: 1969
The first album by Chicago shows a band that had spent several months on the road honing its craft. Many of the tracks on the double album were recorded in one take, with a minimum of overdubs. Beginnings, which finishes out side one of the album, was released as a single in 1969 but failed to chart. After the band became more well-known, Beginnings was re-released, this time becoming a moderate hit. The single version ran less than three minutes, essentially cutting out the entire second half of the song, but a later album edit running about six minutes has been used on most compilation albums. The original version heard here runs nearly eight minutes, including over two minutes of percussion and vocals at the end of the song.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
Source: LP: Gimme Some Lovin'
Writer(s): Jimmy Cox
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The Spencer Davis Group, featuring a teenage Steve Winwood on lead vocals and organ, came seemingly out of nowhere with their early 1967 hit, Gimme Some Lovin'. The reality was that the band had already racked up an impressive number of hits in their native England by the time Gimme Some Lovin' was released in late 1966. The band had also released several notable album tracks, including this 1966 cover of Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out, a song originally written and recorded by Jimmy Cox in the 1920s. Many of these tracks were collected for the band's first US album, Gimme Some Lovin', released in 1967.
Artist: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
Dirty Water has long since been adopted by the city of Boston, yet the band that originally recorded this Ed Cobb tune was purely an L.A. band, having started off playing cover tunes in the early 60s. Lead vocalist/drummer Dickie Dodd, incidentally, was a former Mouseketeer who had played on the surf-rock hit Mr. Moto as a member of the Bel-Airs.
Artist: Limey And The Yanks
Title: Guaranteed Love
Source: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Reed/Paxton
Label: Rhino (original label: Star-Burst)
Year: 1966
Limey and the Yanks were an Orange County, California band that boasted an honest-to-dog British lead vocalist. Despite being kind of Zelig-like on the L.A. scene, they only recorded two singles. The first one, Guaranteed Love, was co-written by Gary Paxton, best known for his involvement in various novelty records, including the Hollywood Argyles' Alley Oop, which he co-wrote with Kim Fowley, and Bobby "Boris" Pickett's Monster Mash, which was released on Paxton's own Garpax label.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Hey Joe
Source: LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s): Billy Roberts
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Possibly the greatest garage-rock album of all is the second Shadows Of Knight LP, Back Door Men. Released in 1966, the album features virtually the same lineup as their debut LP, Gloria. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Shadows were capable of varying their style somewhat, going from their trademark Chicago blues-influenced punk to what can only be described as early hard rock with ease. Like many bands of the time, they recorded a fast version of Billy Roberts' Hey Joe (although they credited it to Chet Powers on the label). The Shadows version, however, is a bit longer than the rest, featuring an extended guitar break by Joe Kelley, who had switched from bass to lead guitar midway through the recording of the Gloria album, replacing Warren Rogers, when it was discovered that Kelley was by far the more talented guitarist (Rogers was moved over to bass). Incidentally, despite the album's title and the Shadows' penchant for recording classic blues tunes, the band did not record a version of Howlin' Wolf's Back Door Man. The Blues Project and the Doors, however, did.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label: Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year: 1966
Although San Jose, Ca. is a rather large city in its own right (the 10th-largest city in the US in fact), it has always had a kind of suburban status, thanks to being within the same media market as San Francisco. Nonetheless, San Jose had its own very active music scene in the mid-60s, and Count Five was, for a time in late 1966, at the top of the heap, thanks in large part to Psychotic Reaction tearing up the national charts.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: King Of The Jungle
Source: LP: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer(s): 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, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens 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 called King Of The Jungle. 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: Bubble Puppy
Title: Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bubble Puppy
Label: Priority (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1969
From Houston we have an oft-requested song from a band that was a couple years ahead of its time, displaying musical dexterity on a par with later groups such as Flash and Yes. Soon after recording Hot Smoke and Sassafras the Bubble Puppy would relocate to California and change their name to Demian, at least in part to disassociate themselves with the then-popular "bubble gum" style (but also because of problems with the International Artists label).
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Screaming Night Hog
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): John Kay
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1970
By 1970 Steppenwolf had settled in to a fairly consistent groove, cranking out solid, if unspectacular hits on a regular basis. One such hit was Screaming Night Hog, which hit the top 40 that year. By this point John Kay had cemented his role as dominant figure in Steppenwolf, with the rest of the group pretty much serving as his backup band.
Artist: Neil Young
Title: Old Man
Source: CD: Harvest
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1972
Neil Young's most successful solo album was Harvest. The 1972 album featured two major hits, Heart Of Gold (which hit the #1 spot) and Old Man, which until this week has never been played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era, even during the nearly 10 years it ran as a local non-syndicated show.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mickey Newbury
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle wrote most of the songs on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1220 (starts 5/17/12)
Artist: Blues Project
Title: No Time Like The Right Time
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Al Kooper
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1967
The Blues Project were ahead of their time. They were the first jam band. They virtually created the college circuit for touring rock bands. Unfortunately, they also existed at a time when having a hit single was the considered a necessity. The closest the Blues Project ever got to a hit single was No Time Like The Right Time, which peaked at # 97 and stayed on the charts for all of two weeks. Personally, I rate it among the top 5 best songs ever.
Artist: Electric Flag
Title: Joint Passing
Source: LP: The Trip (movie soundtrack)
Writer(s): Michael Bloomfield
Label: Sidewalk
Year: 1967
The first Electric Flag LP was A Long Time Comin', released on Columbia Records in 1968. The group had actually made their recording debut the previous year on Mike Curb's Sidewalk label with the soundtrack for a Peter Fonda movie called The Trip. Unlike the Columbia releases, the movie soundtrack was essentially a Mike Bloomfield solo project, with the other members of the bad relegated to a purely supporting role. Most of the tracks on side one, in particular, are short instrumental pieces, such as Joint Passing, which runs almost exactly one minute.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Oops I Can Dance
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Jerry Jeff Walker
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Right from the start, the band Circus Maximus was being pulled in two musical directions by its co-founders, Bob Bruno and Jerry Jeff Walker. Although it was Bruno's song Wind that got the most airplay in 1967, it was Walker who went on to have a successful career as a singer/songwriter with songs like Mr. Bojangles. One of Walker's earliest songs was Oops I Can Dance from the first Circus Maximus album.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Tin Soldier Man
Source: CD: Something Else
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Ray Davies's songwriting continued to move in new and unexpected directions on the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks. A good example is Tin Soldier Man, a tune that has an almost ragtime feel to it, yet is unmistakably a rock song.
Artist: Seeds
Title: The Wind Blows Her Hair
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1967
The Wind Blows Her Hair is actually one of the Seeds' better tracks. Unfortunately, by the time it was released the whole concept of Flower Power (which the Seeds were intimately tied to) had become yesterday's news (at least in the L.A. area) and the single went nowhere.
Artist: Cream
Title: N.S.U.
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1966
Although most of Jack Bruce's Cream songs were co-written with lyricist Pete Brown, there were some exceptions. One of the most notable of these is N.S.U. from Cream's debut LP. The song has proven popular enough to be included in the band's repertoire when they reunited for a three-day stint at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Hideaway
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Underground)
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
After the moderately successful first Electric Prunes album, producer David Hassinger loosened the reigns a bit for the followup, Underground. Among the original tunes on Underground was Hideaway, a song that probably would have been a better choice as a single than what actually got released: a novelty tune called Dr. Feelgood written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, who had also written the band's first hit, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night).
Artist: Traffic
Title: Pearly Queen
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1968
The second Traffic LP was less overtly psychedelic than the Mr. Fantasy album, with songs like Pearly Queen taking the band in a more funky direction. When the band reformed in 1970 without Dave Mason (who had provided the most psychedelic elements) the songwriting team of Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi, who had written Pearly Queen, continued the trend.
Artist: Hollies
Title: Here I Go Again
Source: LP: The Very Best Of The Hollies
Writer(s): Shuman/Westlake
Label: United Artists (original label: Imperial)
Year: 1964
Most US listeners first heard about the Hollies in 1966, when they took Bus Stop and Stop Stop Stop into the top 10. The group had actually been making hit records since 1963 in their native UK, where they were one of the most visible bands on TV dance programs. One of their earliest hits was 1964's Here I Go Again, a song that was co-written by Mort Shuman and Clive Westlake.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Alligator/Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)
Source: CD: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s): Lesh/McKernan/Hunter/Garcia/Kreutzmann/Weir
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1968
After a debut album that took about a week to record (and that the band was unanimously unhappy with) the Grateful Dead took their time on their second effort, Anthem Of The Sun. After spending a considerable amount of time in three different studios on two coasts and not getting the sound they wanted (and shedding their original producer along the way) the Dead came to the conclusion that the only way to make an album that sounded anywhere near what the band sounded like onstage was to use actual recordings of their performances and combine them with the studio tracks they had been working on. Side two of the album, which includes the classic Alligator and the more experimental Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks), is basically an enhanced live performance, with new vocal tracks added in the studio. Alligator itself is notable as the first Grateful Dead composition to feature the lyrics of Robert Hunter, who would become Jerry Garcia's main collaborator for many many years.
Artist: Billy Preston
Title: I Wrote A Simple Song
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Preston/Greene
Label: A&M
Year: 1972
Journeyman R&B keyboardist Billy Preston first came to international prominence when he joined the Beatles for their famous rooftop performance of Get Back in 1969, a performance that was included in the Let It Be movie. Preston scored a solo hit a couple years later when he recorded a song of his own, That's The Way God Planned It, after performing the tune as part of George Harrison's Concert For Bangla Desh. Preston's biggest hit came in 1972, when Outa-Space became one of the top-selling instrumental singles of all time. The B side of Outa-Space was a song Preston wrote with Joe Greene called I Wrote A Simple Song.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Half Moon (mono single mix)
Source: CD: The Pearl Sessions (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Hall/Hall
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1971
A few weeks ago I gave away copies of the new Pearl Sessions CD by Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band. One of the conditions for entry was to tell me your favorite song from the original Pearl album. One of the more popular choices was the original B side of Me And Bobby McGee, the high-energy Half Moon. I realized at the time that I had never actually played Half Moon on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. I figured this was as good a time as any to change that.
Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: Alley Oop
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Dallas Frazier
Label: Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year: 1965/2011
The Lovin' Spoonful didn't actually release their version of the old Hollywood Argyles song Alley Oop as a single in 1965. In fact, they didn't release the song at all, even though it was recorded during the same sessions that became their debut LP that year. In 2011 the people at Sundazed decided to create a "single that never was", pairing Alley Oop with the full-length version of Night Owl Blues, a song that had been included on the 1965 debut in edited form. The Spoonful version of Alley Oop has an almost garage-band feel about it, and is perhaps the best indication on vinyl of what the band actually sounded like in their early days as a local fixture on the Greenwich Village scene.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: The Black Plague
Source: CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.
Artist: Who
Title: Rael 2/Top Gear Spot
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out (bonus track)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
This odd little piece was apparently intended as a coda to the final track of The Who Sell Out, but was not included on the album (although the label itself reads "Rael 1&2"). Rael 2, as well as the Top Gear commercial it segues into, is among the many bonus tracks added to the 1993 CD version of the album.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Jumpin' Jack Flash
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1968
After the commercial disappointment of their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request in late 1967, the Stones replaced longtime producer Andrew Loog Oldham with Jimmy Miller, who had made a name for himself working with Steve Winwood on recordings by both the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. The collaboration resulted in a back-to-basics approach that produced the classic single Jumpin' Jack Flash, followed by the Beggar's Banquet album.
Artist: Nazz
Title: Open My Eyes
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Nazz)
Writer(s): Todd Rundgren
Label: Rhino (original label: SGC)
Year: 1968
The Nazz was a band from Philadelphia who were basically the victims of their own bad timing. 1968 was the year that progressive FM radio began to get recognition as a viable format while top 40 radio was being dominated by bubble gum pop bands such as the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. The Nazz, on the other hand, sounded more like British bands such as the Move and Brian Augur's Trinity that were performing well on the UK charts but were unable to buy a hit in the US. The band had plenty of talent, most notably guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Todd Rundgren, who would go on to establish a successful career, both as an artist (he played all the instruments on his Something/Anything LP and led the band Utopia) and a producer (Grand Funk's We're An American Band, among others). Open My Eyes was originally issued as the A side of a single, but ended up being eclipsed in popularity by its flip side, a song called Hello It's Me, that ended up getting airplay in Boston and other cities, eventually hitting the Canadian charts (a new version would become a solo hit for Rundgren five years later).
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Winwood/Winwood/Davis
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becomming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Most of them are now playing 80s oldies, by the way.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
When it came time for Sean Bonniwell's band, the Music Machine, to go into the studio, the group decided to go for the best sound possible. This meant signing with tiny Original Sound Records, despite having offers from bigger labels, due to Original Sound having their own state-of-the-art eight-track studios. Unfortunately for the band, they soon discovered that having great equipment did not mean Original Sound made great decisions. One of the first, in fact, was to include a handful of cover songs on the Music Machine's first LP that were recorded for use on a local TV show. Bonniwell was livid when he found out, as he had envisioned an album made up entirely of his own compositions (although he reportedly did plan to use a slowed-down version of Hey Joe that he and Tim Rose had worked up together). From that point on it was only a matter of time until the Music Machine and Original Sound parted company, but not until after they scored a big national hit with Talk Talk in 1966.
Artist: Love
Title: Gazing
Source: LP: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
L.A's Sunset Strip blossomed as a hangout for teenaged baby boomers in the mid-1960s, with clubs like Ciro's and the Whisky-A-Go-Go pulling in capacity crowds on a regular basis. These clubs had learned early on that the best way to draw a crowd was to hire a live band, which gave rise to a thriving local music scene. Among the many bands playing the strip, perhaps the most popular was Love, the house band at the Whisky-A-Go-Go. Led by Arthur Lee and boasting not one, but two songwriters (Lee and guitarist Bryan MacLean), Love made history in 1966 by being the first rock band signed to Elektra Records. Lee, a recent convert to the then-popular folk-rock style popularized by the Byrds (for whom MacLean had been a roadie) had come from an R&B background and counted a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix among his musician friends. Songs like Gazing, from Love's debut LP, gave an early indication that Lee, even while writing in the folk-rock idiom, had a powerful musical vision that was all his own.
Artist: Guess Who
Title: No Time
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bachman/Cummings
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1970
The Guess Who hit their creative and commercial peak with their 1970 album American Woman. The first of three hit singles from the album was No Time, which was already climbing the charts when the LP was released. After American Woman the band's two main songwriters, guitarist Randy Bachman and vocalist Burton Cummings, would move in increasingly divergent directions, with Bachman eventually leaving the band to form the hard-rocking Bachman-Turner Overdrive, while Cummings continued to helm an increasingly light pop flavored Guess Who.
Artist: Flock
Title: Store Bought-Store Thought
Source: CD: The Flock
Writer(s): The Flock
Label: BGO (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
The Flock's 1969 debut album featured liner notes by British blues guru John Mayall, who called them the best band in America. Despite this stellar recommendation, the Flock (one of two bands with horn sections from the city of Chicago making their recording debut on Columbia Records in 1969) was unable to attract a large audience and disbanded after only two LPs. Most of the tracks on the album, including the seven minute Store Bought-Store Thought, were early examples of the progressive rock that was becoming popular on FM stations across the country at the time. Violinist Jerry Goodman would go on to be a founding member of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Love Story
Source: CD: This Was (bonus track-originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Living In The Past)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original UK label: Island; original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Love Story was the last studio recording by the original Jethro Tull lineup of Ian Anderson, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker and Glenn Cornish. The song was released as a single following the band's debut LP, This Was. Shortly after it's release Abrahams left the group, citing differences with Anderson over the band's musical direction. The song spent eight weeks on the UK singles chart, reaching the #29 spot. In the U.S., "Love Story" was released in March 1969, with A Song for Jeffrey (an album track from This Was) on the B-side, but did not chart. Like most Jethro Tull songs released as singles in the UK, Love Story did not appear on an album until several years later; in this case on the 1973 anthology album Living In The Past.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Comin' Back To Me
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to this Marty Balin tune. Balin, in his 2003 liner notes to the remastered release of Surrealistic Pillow, claims that Comin' Back To Me was written in one sitting under the influence of some primo stuff given to him by Paul Butterfield. Other players on the recording include Paul Kantner and Balin himself on guitars, Jack Casady on bass and Grace Slick on recorder.
Artist: Mothers Of Invention
Title: Help, I'm A Rock/It Can't Happen Here
Source: CD: Freak Out!
Writer(s): Frank Zappa
Label: Ryko (original label: Verve)
Year: 1966
Help, I'm A Rock and its follow up track It Can't Happen Here are among the best-known Frank Zappa compositions on the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out! The phrase Help I'm A Rock itself comes across as a kind of mantra, with various verbal bits (including Zappa's own take on the 1966 Sunset Strip riot) going on around a repeating bass/drum/guitar riff. The song eventually leads into It Can't Happen Here, an avant-garde piece composed almost entirely of vocal tracks. The title is a play on a popular misconception in many American cities that the various kinds of civil unrest (and occasional violence) going on could only happen in someone else's town.
Title: No Time Like The Right Time
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Al Kooper
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1967
The Blues Project were ahead of their time. They were the first jam band. They virtually created the college circuit for touring rock bands. Unfortunately, they also existed at a time when having a hit single was the considered a necessity. The closest the Blues Project ever got to a hit single was No Time Like The Right Time, which peaked at # 97 and stayed on the charts for all of two weeks. Personally, I rate it among the top 5 best songs ever.
Artist: Electric Flag
Title: Joint Passing
Source: LP: The Trip (movie soundtrack)
Writer(s): Michael Bloomfield
Label: Sidewalk
Year: 1967
The first Electric Flag LP was A Long Time Comin', released on Columbia Records in 1968. The group had actually made their recording debut the previous year on Mike Curb's Sidewalk label with the soundtrack for a Peter Fonda movie called The Trip. Unlike the Columbia releases, the movie soundtrack was essentially a Mike Bloomfield solo project, with the other members of the bad relegated to a purely supporting role. Most of the tracks on side one, in particular, are short instrumental pieces, such as Joint Passing, which runs almost exactly one minute.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Oops I Can Dance
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Jerry Jeff Walker
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Right from the start, the band Circus Maximus was being pulled in two musical directions by its co-founders, Bob Bruno and Jerry Jeff Walker. Although it was Bruno's song Wind that got the most airplay in 1967, it was Walker who went on to have a successful career as a singer/songwriter with songs like Mr. Bojangles. One of Walker's earliest songs was Oops I Can Dance from the first Circus Maximus album.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Tin Soldier Man
Source: CD: Something Else
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Ray Davies's songwriting continued to move in new and unexpected directions on the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks. A good example is Tin Soldier Man, a tune that has an almost ragtime feel to it, yet is unmistakably a rock song.
Artist: Seeds
Title: The Wind Blows Her Hair
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1967
The Wind Blows Her Hair is actually one of the Seeds' better tracks. Unfortunately, by the time it was released the whole concept of Flower Power (which the Seeds were intimately tied to) had become yesterday's news (at least in the L.A. area) and the single went nowhere.
Artist: Cream
Title: N.S.U.
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1966
Although most of Jack Bruce's Cream songs were co-written with lyricist Pete Brown, there were some exceptions. One of the most notable of these is N.S.U. from Cream's debut LP. The song has proven popular enough to be included in the band's repertoire when they reunited for a three-day stint at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Hideaway
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Underground)
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
After the moderately successful first Electric Prunes album, producer David Hassinger loosened the reigns a bit for the followup, Underground. Among the original tunes on Underground was Hideaway, a song that probably would have been a better choice as a single than what actually got released: a novelty tune called Dr. Feelgood written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, who had also written the band's first hit, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night).
Artist: Traffic
Title: Pearly Queen
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1968
The second Traffic LP was less overtly psychedelic than the Mr. Fantasy album, with songs like Pearly Queen taking the band in a more funky direction. When the band reformed in 1970 without Dave Mason (who had provided the most psychedelic elements) the songwriting team of Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi, who had written Pearly Queen, continued the trend.
Artist: Hollies
Title: Here I Go Again
Source: LP: The Very Best Of The Hollies
Writer(s): Shuman/Westlake
Label: United Artists (original label: Imperial)
Year: 1964
Most US listeners first heard about the Hollies in 1966, when they took Bus Stop and Stop Stop Stop into the top 10. The group had actually been making hit records since 1963 in their native UK, where they were one of the most visible bands on TV dance programs. One of their earliest hits was 1964's Here I Go Again, a song that was co-written by Mort Shuman and Clive Westlake.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Alligator/Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)
Source: CD: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s): Lesh/McKernan/Hunter/Garcia/Kreutzmann/Weir
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1968
After a debut album that took about a week to record (and that the band was unanimously unhappy with) the Grateful Dead took their time on their second effort, Anthem Of The Sun. After spending a considerable amount of time in three different studios on two coasts and not getting the sound they wanted (and shedding their original producer along the way) the Dead came to the conclusion that the only way to make an album that sounded anywhere near what the band sounded like onstage was to use actual recordings of their performances and combine them with the studio tracks they had been working on. Side two of the album, which includes the classic Alligator and the more experimental Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks), is basically an enhanced live performance, with new vocal tracks added in the studio. Alligator itself is notable as the first Grateful Dead composition to feature the lyrics of Robert Hunter, who would become Jerry Garcia's main collaborator for many many years.
Artist: Billy Preston
Title: I Wrote A Simple Song
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Preston/Greene
Label: A&M
Year: 1972
Journeyman R&B keyboardist Billy Preston first came to international prominence when he joined the Beatles for their famous rooftop performance of Get Back in 1969, a performance that was included in the Let It Be movie. Preston scored a solo hit a couple years later when he recorded a song of his own, That's The Way God Planned It, after performing the tune as part of George Harrison's Concert For Bangla Desh. Preston's biggest hit came in 1972, when Outa-Space became one of the top-selling instrumental singles of all time. The B side of Outa-Space was a song Preston wrote with Joe Greene called I Wrote A Simple Song.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Half Moon (mono single mix)
Source: CD: The Pearl Sessions (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Hall/Hall
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1971
A few weeks ago I gave away copies of the new Pearl Sessions CD by Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band. One of the conditions for entry was to tell me your favorite song from the original Pearl album. One of the more popular choices was the original B side of Me And Bobby McGee, the high-energy Half Moon. I realized at the time that I had never actually played Half Moon on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. I figured this was as good a time as any to change that.
Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: Alley Oop
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Dallas Frazier
Label: Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year: 1965/2011
The Lovin' Spoonful didn't actually release their version of the old Hollywood Argyles song Alley Oop as a single in 1965. In fact, they didn't release the song at all, even though it was recorded during the same sessions that became their debut LP that year. In 2011 the people at Sundazed decided to create a "single that never was", pairing Alley Oop with the full-length version of Night Owl Blues, a song that had been included on the 1965 debut in edited form. The Spoonful version of Alley Oop has an almost garage-band feel about it, and is perhaps the best indication on vinyl of what the band actually sounded like in their early days as a local fixture on the Greenwich Village scene.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: The Black Plague
Source: CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.
Artist: Who
Title: Rael 2/Top Gear Spot
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out (bonus track)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
This odd little piece was apparently intended as a coda to the final track of The Who Sell Out, but was not included on the album (although the label itself reads "Rael 1&2"). Rael 2, as well as the Top Gear commercial it segues into, is among the many bonus tracks added to the 1993 CD version of the album.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Jumpin' Jack Flash
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1968
After the commercial disappointment of their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request in late 1967, the Stones replaced longtime producer Andrew Loog Oldham with Jimmy Miller, who had made a name for himself working with Steve Winwood on recordings by both the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. The collaboration resulted in a back-to-basics approach that produced the classic single Jumpin' Jack Flash, followed by the Beggar's Banquet album.
Artist: Nazz
Title: Open My Eyes
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Nazz)
Writer(s): Todd Rundgren
Label: Rhino (original label: SGC)
Year: 1968
The Nazz was a band from Philadelphia who were basically the victims of their own bad timing. 1968 was the year that progressive FM radio began to get recognition as a viable format while top 40 radio was being dominated by bubble gum pop bands such as the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. The Nazz, on the other hand, sounded more like British bands such as the Move and Brian Augur's Trinity that were performing well on the UK charts but were unable to buy a hit in the US. The band had plenty of talent, most notably guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Todd Rundgren, who would go on to establish a successful career, both as an artist (he played all the instruments on his Something/Anything LP and led the band Utopia) and a producer (Grand Funk's We're An American Band, among others). Open My Eyes was originally issued as the A side of a single, but ended up being eclipsed in popularity by its flip side, a song called Hello It's Me, that ended up getting airplay in Boston and other cities, eventually hitting the Canadian charts (a new version would become a solo hit for Rundgren five years later).
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Winwood/Winwood/Davis
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becomming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Most of them are now playing 80s oldies, by the way.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
When it came time for Sean Bonniwell's band, the Music Machine, to go into the studio, the group decided to go for the best sound possible. This meant signing with tiny Original Sound Records, despite having offers from bigger labels, due to Original Sound having their own state-of-the-art eight-track studios. Unfortunately for the band, they soon discovered that having great equipment did not mean Original Sound made great decisions. One of the first, in fact, was to include a handful of cover songs on the Music Machine's first LP that were recorded for use on a local TV show. Bonniwell was livid when he found out, as he had envisioned an album made up entirely of his own compositions (although he reportedly did plan to use a slowed-down version of Hey Joe that he and Tim Rose had worked up together). From that point on it was only a matter of time until the Music Machine and Original Sound parted company, but not until after they scored a big national hit with Talk Talk in 1966.
Artist: Love
Title: Gazing
Source: LP: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
L.A's Sunset Strip blossomed as a hangout for teenaged baby boomers in the mid-1960s, with clubs like Ciro's and the Whisky-A-Go-Go pulling in capacity crowds on a regular basis. These clubs had learned early on that the best way to draw a crowd was to hire a live band, which gave rise to a thriving local music scene. Among the many bands playing the strip, perhaps the most popular was Love, the house band at the Whisky-A-Go-Go. Led by Arthur Lee and boasting not one, but two songwriters (Lee and guitarist Bryan MacLean), Love made history in 1966 by being the first rock band signed to Elektra Records. Lee, a recent convert to the then-popular folk-rock style popularized by the Byrds (for whom MacLean had been a roadie) had come from an R&B background and counted a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix among his musician friends. Songs like Gazing, from Love's debut LP, gave an early indication that Lee, even while writing in the folk-rock idiom, had a powerful musical vision that was all his own.
Artist: Guess Who
Title: No Time
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bachman/Cummings
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1970
The Guess Who hit their creative and commercial peak with their 1970 album American Woman. The first of three hit singles from the album was No Time, which was already climbing the charts when the LP was released. After American Woman the band's two main songwriters, guitarist Randy Bachman and vocalist Burton Cummings, would move in increasingly divergent directions, with Bachman eventually leaving the band to form the hard-rocking Bachman-Turner Overdrive, while Cummings continued to helm an increasingly light pop flavored Guess Who.
Artist: Flock
Title: Store Bought-Store Thought
Source: CD: The Flock
Writer(s): The Flock
Label: BGO (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
The Flock's 1969 debut album featured liner notes by British blues guru John Mayall, who called them the best band in America. Despite this stellar recommendation, the Flock (one of two bands with horn sections from the city of Chicago making their recording debut on Columbia Records in 1969) was unable to attract a large audience and disbanded after only two LPs. Most of the tracks on the album, including the seven minute Store Bought-Store Thought, were early examples of the progressive rock that was becoming popular on FM stations across the country at the time. Violinist Jerry Goodman would go on to be a founding member of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Love Story
Source: CD: This Was (bonus track-originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Living In The Past)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original UK label: Island; original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Love Story was the last studio recording by the original Jethro Tull lineup of Ian Anderson, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker and Glenn Cornish. The song was released as a single following the band's debut LP, This Was. Shortly after it's release Abrahams left the group, citing differences with Anderson over the band's musical direction. The song spent eight weeks on the UK singles chart, reaching the #29 spot. In the U.S., "Love Story" was released in March 1969, with A Song for Jeffrey (an album track from This Was) on the B-side, but did not chart. Like most Jethro Tull songs released as singles in the UK, Love Story did not appear on an album until several years later; in this case on the 1973 anthology album Living In The Past.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Comin' Back To Me
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to this Marty Balin tune. Balin, in his 2003 liner notes to the remastered release of Surrealistic Pillow, claims that Comin' Back To Me was written in one sitting under the influence of some primo stuff given to him by Paul Butterfield. Other players on the recording include Paul Kantner and Balin himself on guitars, Jack Casady on bass and Grace Slick on recorder.
Artist: Mothers Of Invention
Title: Help, I'm A Rock/It Can't Happen Here
Source: CD: Freak Out!
Writer(s): Frank Zappa
Label: Ryko (original label: Verve)
Year: 1966
Help, I'm A Rock and its follow up track It Can't Happen Here are among the best-known Frank Zappa compositions on the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out! The phrase Help I'm A Rock itself comes across as a kind of mantra, with various verbal bits (including Zappa's own take on the 1966 Sunset Strip riot) going on around a repeating bass/drum/guitar riff. The song eventually leads into It Can't Happen Here, an avant-garde piece composed almost entirely of vocal tracks. The title is a play on a popular misconception in many American cities that the various kinds of civil unrest (and occasional violence) going on could only happen in someone else's town.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1219 (starts 5/10/12)
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
When reviewing the blog for previous comments on the opening track of side two of Surrealistic Pillow I discovered that every time I've played 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era it's been part of a Jefferson Airplane artist's set. This time is no exception, as the tune is indeed starting an Airplane set (as well as this week's show). Marty Balin says he came up with the song title by combining a couple of random phrases from the sports section of a newspaper. 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds works out to 216 MPH, by the way.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: The War Is Over
Source: LP: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
The songs on the third Jefferson Airplane album, After Bathing At Baxter's, are grouped into suites of two or three songs apiece. Most of the suites mix songs by different songwriters; the sole exception is The War Is Over, which is made up of two Paul Kantner tunes, Martha and Wild Thyme. The War Is Over is also the shortest of the five suites on After Bathing At Baxter's, clocking in at about six and a half minutes.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: D.C.B.A.-25
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
D.C.B.A.-25 was named for the chords used in the song. As for the "25" part...it was early 1967. In San Francisco. Paul Kantner wrote it. Figure it out.
Artist: Jesse Lee Kincaid
Title: She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jesse Lee Kincaid
Label: Rhino (original label: Kelly/Capitol)
Year: 1966
Jesse Lee Kincaid was the only songwriting member of the Rising Sons, a band that also included future stars Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. At one point in 1966 they were the hottest band on the Sunset Strip and were soon signed to a contract with Columbia Records, at the time the second-largest record label in the world. While the band was working in the studio with staff producer Terry Melcher (Columbia's only rock producer at the time), Kincaid got the attention of another local record producer, Dan Dalton. When it became clear that Columbia was not going to release the Rising Son's recordings anytime soon, Dalton booked studio time for a couple of Kincaid solo sides, including She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune, which Kincaid says was inspired by his ex-wife.
Artist: Teddy And His Patches
Title: Suzy Creamcheese
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dave Conway
Label: Rhino (original label: Chance)
Year: 1967
Teddy And His Patches were a group of high school students who heard the phrase "Suzy Creamcheese, what's got into you" from a fellow San Jose, California resident and decided to make a song out of it. Reportedly none of the band members had ever heard the Mothers Of Invention album Freak Out, where the phrase had originated. Nonetheless, they managed to turn out a piece of inspired madness worthy of Frank Zappa himself.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Street Fighting Man
Source: LP: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1968
The Rolling Stones were at a low point in their career following their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, which came out in late 1967. As a response to charges in the rock press that they were no longer relevant the Stones released Jumpin' Jack Flash as a single in early 1968, following it up with the Beggar's Banquet album later in the year. The new album included the band's follow-up single, Street Fighting Man, a song that was almost as anthemic as Jumpin' Jack Flash itself and went a long ways toward insuring that the Rolling Stones would be making music on their own terms for as long as they chose to.
Artist: Cream
Title: Doing That Scrapyard Thing
Source: LP: Goodbye Cream
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
In its original form, the album Goodbye Cream had three new studio tracks on it, one for each member of the band. Jack Bruce's contribution was this tune, co-written (as were the majority of Bruce's compositions) by Pete Brown. Lyrics don't get much more psychedelic than this.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Don't You Fret
Source: LP: Kinkdom (originally released in UK on EP: Kwyet Kinks)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise (original UK label: Pye)
Year: 1965
The British record market was considerably different than its American counterpart in the mid-1966s. Unlike in the US, where artists were expected to prove themselves with at least two hit singles before being allowed to record an LP, British acts often found themselves recording four or five song EPs as a transition between single and album. Furthermore, British singles were generally not included on British albums. When those albums were released in the US, the American labels often deleted songs from the original LP in favor of hit singles, which were considered necessary to generate album sales. This led to a surplus of songs that would appear on US-only LPs made up of material that had been previously released only in the UK. Such is the case with Kinkdom, a collection of singles, B sides, album tracks and the entire Kwyet Kinks EP from 1965. Kwyet Kinks itself was a significant release in that it was the first indication of a change in direction from the early hard-rocking Kinks hits such as You Really Got Me toward a more mellow style that the group would come to favor toward the end of the decade. Songs such as Don't You Fret can be considered a direct precursor to later songs such as A Well Respected Man and Sunny Afternoon.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Act Naturally
Source: LP: Yesterday…And Today
Writer(s): Russell/Morrison
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
Act Naturally, featuring Ringo Starr on lead vocals, was a country hit for Buck Owens. It is also one of the songs left off the US version of the Help! album and included on Yesterday and Today instead.
Artist: Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders
Title: Game Of Love
Source: CD: Reelin' And Rockin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Clint Ballard, Jr.
Label: Happy Days (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1965
The Mindbenders were formed in 1963 to backup British pop singer Wayne Fontana. The group scored their biggest hit in 1965 with Game Of Love, a song that went to the top of the US charts. Later that year Fontana parted company with the band, which continued on without him for several years, scoring another major hit, Groovy Kind Of Love, in 1966.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Castles Made Of Sand
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
When I was a junior in high school I used to fall asleep on the living room couch with the headphones on, usually listening to pre-recorded tapes of either the Beatles' Revolver album or one of the first two albums by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. One song in particular from the second Hendrix album, Axis: Bold As Love, always gave me a chill when I heard it: Castles Made Of Sand. The song serves as a warning not to put too much faith in your dreams, and stands in direct contrast to the usual goal-oriented American attitude.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Goin' Down (alternate mix)
Source: CD: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD. (original version released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Hilderbrand/Tork/Nesmith/Dolenz/Jones
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1967
The Monkees released two singles in 1967 that were not included on any albums released that year. The second of these, Daydream Believer, became one of the biggest hits of the year. The B side of that song was a mostly improvisational number called Goin' Down, with Mickey Dolenz providing the vocals. A longer, alternate mix was later issued as a bonus track on the CD version of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.
Artist: Love
Title: And More
Source: CD: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
Artist: Love
Although the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was already recording for Elektra, the first genuine rock band to be signed to the label was L.A.'s Love. The band had originally planned to call itself the Grass Roots, but soon discovered that the songwriting team of Steve Barri and P.F. Sloan had already locked up the name. Jan Holzman, owner of Elektra, was so high on Love that he created a whole new numbering series for their first album (the same series that later included the first few Doors LPs). Most of Love's songs were written by multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Arthur Lee, with a handful of tunes provided by rhythm guitarist/vocalist Bryan MacLean. The two seldom collaborated, despite sharing a house in the Hollywood hills that had once belonged to Bela Lugosi. One of the few songs they did work together on was And More, a tune from the first album that shows the two songwriters' interest in folk-rock as popularized by fellow L.A. band the Byrds.
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single. Stereo version released on LP: Da Capo)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
Artist: Love
The word "seven" does not appear anywhere in the song 7&7 Is. In fact, I have no idea where Arthur Lee got that title from. Nonetheless, the song is among the most intense tracks to ever make the top 40. 7&7 Is starts off with power chords played over a constant drum roll (possibly played by Lee himself), with cymbals crashing over equally manic semi-spoken lyrics. The song builds up to an explosive climax: an atomic bomb blast followed by a slow post-apocalyptic instrumental that quickly fades away.
Title: A House Is Not A Motel
Source: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Forever Changes)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
Arthur Lee was a bit of a recluse, despite leading the most popular band on Sunset Strip in 1966-67. When the band was not playing at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go Lee was most likely to be found at his home up in the Hollywood Hills, often in the company of fellow band member Bryan McLean. The other members of the band, however, were known to hang out in the most popular clubs, chasing women and doing all kinds of substances. Sometimes they would show up at Lee's house unbidden. Sometimes they would crash there. Sometimes Lee would get annoyed, and probably used the phrase which became the title of the second track on Love's classic Forever Changes album, A House Is Not A Motel.
Artist: Byrds
Title: I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better (originally released on LP: Mr. Tambourine Man and as 45 RPM single B side)
Source: LP: Greatest Hits
Writer(s): Gene Clark
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Even though the title of the B side of the Byrds' second single is I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better, the actual sung line is "I'll *probably* feel a whole lot better when you're gone." The addition of that one extra word adds a whole new dimension to what is already a good song, turning it into a great one. Despite being a B side, the song received heavy promotion from the people at Columbia Records, and almost outperformed the A side, It Won't Be Wrong.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: A Whiter Shade Of Pale
Source: LP: Procol Harum (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Deram
Year: 1967
The US version of the first Procol Harum included one song, A Whiter Shade Of Pale, that was recorded by a different lineup than the rest of the album. In July of 1967, about three months after the single was released, guitarist Ray Royer and Bobby Harrison left the band, to be replaced by Robin Trower and Barrie Wilson respectively. It was the new lineup that went to work on the album, which was released in August in the US and January in the UK. The song itself has been covered numerous times, and holds the record for being played on the British airwaves more than any other song in history.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in early 1967. The record, initially released without much promotion from the record label, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Mystic Mourning
Source: LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Ulaky/Weisberg/Rhodes
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
If I had to choose one single recording that captures the essence of the psychedelic era, my choice would be Mystic Mourning, from the album The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union. Everything about the tune screams psychedelic, starting with a short spacy intro of electric piano over cymbals, leading into a raga beat with a solo bass line that builds up to a repeating riff that ends up getting played at various times by guitar, bass, and/or piano. The lyrics are appropriately existential, and both guitar and piano get a chance to show their stuff over the course of the nearly six-minute track.
Artist: Doors
Title: Take It As It Comes
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Rhino (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
L.A.'s Whisky-A-Go-Go was the place to be in 1966. Not only were some of the city's most popular bands playing there, but for a while the house band was none other than the Doors, playing songs like Take It As It Comes. One evening Jac Holtzman of Elektra Records was among those attending the club, having been invited there to hear the Doors by Arthur Lee (who with his band Love was already recording for Elektra). After hearing two sets Holtzman signed the group to a contract with the label, making the Doors only the second rock band to record for Elektra (after Love itself).
Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Title: Where Is My Mind
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Mark Stein
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Following the belated success of their cover of the Supremes' 1967 hit You Keep Me Hangin' On, Vanilla Fudge was primed to release a follow-up single. The group had already released a second LP, a concept album based around the Sonny & Cher song The Beat Goes On, but none of the tracks on that LP were considered single material. The first LP had been around for over a year at that point, and the band felt it would be better to record something new rather than release another of that album's cover tunes. The result was Where Is My Mind, one of the first original tunes to be recorded by the band. The song was not a major hit, but it was a preview of what their next LP, Renaissance (their first to be made up primarily of original material) would sound like.
Artist: B. B. King
Title: Having My Say
Source: CD: Blues On Top Of Blues
Writer(s): B.B. King
Label: BGO (original label: Bluesway)
Year: 1968
Although not the best-known of B.B. King's many albums, 1968's Blues On Top Of Blues is one of the most polished, featuring, in addition to the traditional guitar, bass and drums, a horn section and an organist. The result is a surprisingly fresh sounding album, even well over forty years later. All the songs on the album, including Having My Say were written by King.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Eighteen Is Over The Hill
Source: CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Markley/Morgan
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
The contributions of guitarist Ron Morgan to the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band are often overlooked, possibly due to the fact that Morgan himself often tried to distance himself from the band. Nonetheless, he did write some of the group's most memorable tunes, including their best-known song, Smell Of Incense (covered by the Texas band Southwest F.O.B.) and the opening track of what is generally considered their best album, A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. Unfortunately, the somewhat senseless lyrics added by Bob Markley detract from what is actually a very tasty piece of music.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: I'm A Man
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Elias McDaniel
Label: Epic
Year: 1965
For many, the Yardbirds version of I'm a Man is the definitive version of this Bo Diddley classic. Oddly enough, the song was released as a single only in the US, where it made it into the top 10 in 1965.
Artist: Mamas And The Papas
Title: Dancing Bear
Source: CD: The Mamas And The Papas
Writer(s): John Phillips
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1966
The second Mamas And The Papas album was marked by internal strife that came about when it was discovered that mama Michelle and papa Denny were having an affair, despite Michelle's being married to papa John. Mama Michelle was fired shortly before work on the album commenced and a new mama, Jill, was brought in to replace her. Midway through the album the group realized the inherent unfairness of firing Michelle but not Denny and invited her back to the band, letting Jill go in the process. As a result, nobody is sure just which vocals on the album are Michelle's and which are Jill's. One thing that is not in question is that Dancing Bear (which predates Simon & Garfunkel's similarly-themed El Condor Pasa by several years) is one of the most memorable songs on the album.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: I Just Wasn't Made For These Times
Source: CD: Good Vibrations-Twenty Years Of The Beach Boys (originally released on LP: Pet Sounds)
Writer(s): Wilson/Asher
Label: Capitol
Year: 1966
Early on Brian Wilson recognized that his greatest strength was in writing music, as opposed to performing or even writing lyrics. Being the leader and producer of the most successful recording artists in southern California, Wilson was able to take his pick of the best lyricists available, including Mike Love, Van Dyke Parks, and, on the Pet Sounds album, Tony Asher, whose introspective lyrics complemented Wilson's maturing musical themes perfectly. I Just Wasn't Made For These Times is an excellent example of how well the two worked together to capture a specific mood and theme.
Artist: Hollies
Title: I Can't Let Go
Source: CD: The Best Of The Hollies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Taylor/Gorgoni
Label: Cema (original label: Imperial)
Year: 1966
Of all the early Hollies hits, it is the 1966 hit I Can't Let Go that most showcases the voice of Graham Nash, singing a high counterpoint that Paul McCartney reportedly mistook for a trumpet part the first time he heard the song.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband (recording as The Hogs)
Title: Blues Theme
Source: CD: One Step Beyond (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Curb/Allen
Label: Sundazed (original label: HBR)
Year: 1966
The Chocolate Watchband's first experience in a recording studio came in October of 1966. The band had set up and was getting their sound levels checked when a friend of the producer burst into the studio with the news that the latest "hot thing" was a new movie called the Wild Ones. Davie Allen and the Arrows had cut something called Blues Theme for the soundtrack, and the word was that there were no plans to release the song as a single. Sensing an opportunity, the producer asked the band if they could record their own version of Blues Theme. The Watchband, even at that early point, had a knack for doing convincing covers on a moment's notice, and by the time the session was over they had cut a credible version of Blues Theme. The record was quickly released on the Hanna Barbera (yes, the cartoon people) label, but as by the Hogs rather than the Chocolate Watchband. Although I don't know why this was done, I do have a couple theories. It's entirely possible that the band signed their contract with Tower Records before Blues Theme was released, in which case Tower would naturally forbid the use of the name Chocolate Watchband by another label. Or it could simply be that the unknown producers at HBR felt that a name like the Hogs was more appropriate for a song used in a biker flick. We may never know for sure.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Some of the best rock and roll songs of 1966 were banned on a number of stations for being about either sex or drugs. Most artists that recorded those songs claimed they were about something else altogether. In the case of Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35, "stoned" refers to a rather unpleasant form of execution (at least according to Dylan). On the other hand, Dylan himself was reportedly quite stoned while recording the song, having passed a few doobies around before starting the tape rolling. Sometimes I think ambiguities like this are why English has become the dominant language of commerce on the planet.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: Rainbow Demon
Source: LP: Demons And Wizards
Writer(s): Ken Hensley
Label: Mercury
Year: 1972
The last time I played something from Uriah Heep's Demons And Wizards album it was All Hallow's Eve and I naturally chose The Wizard. This time around I figured it was time to give the devil his due and play Rainbow Demon. The album itself was a major turning point for Uriah Heep, who up to that point had been considered a second-tier British metal band. With Demons And Wizards, however, the band took on an identity of its own, with fantasy imagery becoming the focus of the music. Demons And Wizards also saw keyboardist Ken Hensley take a more dominant role in the songwriting, having a hand in every track on the album.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: 17
Source: CD: Stand Up (bonus track)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol
Year: 1969
Jethro Tull was one of the last groups to continue to British practice of not including songs that had been released on 45 RPM vinyl on their albums. As a result, songs such as 17, which were not released in any form in the US, were generally not heard by American audiences. Even when many of the band's UK-only singles were included on the 1973 LP Living In The Past, 17 was not part of the package. As a result, this may well be the first time you've heard this 1969 B side.
Title: 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
When reviewing the blog for previous comments on the opening track of side two of Surrealistic Pillow I discovered that every time I've played 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era it's been part of a Jefferson Airplane artist's set. This time is no exception, as the tune is indeed starting an Airplane set (as well as this week's show). Marty Balin says he came up with the song title by combining a couple of random phrases from the sports section of a newspaper. 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds works out to 216 MPH, by the way.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: The War Is Over
Source: LP: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
The songs on the third Jefferson Airplane album, After Bathing At Baxter's, are grouped into suites of two or three songs apiece. Most of the suites mix songs by different songwriters; the sole exception is The War Is Over, which is made up of two Paul Kantner tunes, Martha and Wild Thyme. The War Is Over is also the shortest of the five suites on After Bathing At Baxter's, clocking in at about six and a half minutes.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: D.C.B.A.-25
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
D.C.B.A.-25 was named for the chords used in the song. As for the "25" part...it was early 1967. In San Francisco. Paul Kantner wrote it. Figure it out.
Artist: Jesse Lee Kincaid
Title: She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jesse Lee Kincaid
Label: Rhino (original label: Kelly/Capitol)
Year: 1966
Jesse Lee Kincaid was the only songwriting member of the Rising Sons, a band that also included future stars Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. At one point in 1966 they were the hottest band on the Sunset Strip and were soon signed to a contract with Columbia Records, at the time the second-largest record label in the world. While the band was working in the studio with staff producer Terry Melcher (Columbia's only rock producer at the time), Kincaid got the attention of another local record producer, Dan Dalton. When it became clear that Columbia was not going to release the Rising Son's recordings anytime soon, Dalton booked studio time for a couple of Kincaid solo sides, including She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune, which Kincaid says was inspired by his ex-wife.
Artist: Teddy And His Patches
Title: Suzy Creamcheese
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dave Conway
Label: Rhino (original label: Chance)
Year: 1967
Teddy And His Patches were a group of high school students who heard the phrase "Suzy Creamcheese, what's got into you" from a fellow San Jose, California resident and decided to make a song out of it. Reportedly none of the band members had ever heard the Mothers Of Invention album Freak Out, where the phrase had originated. Nonetheless, they managed to turn out a piece of inspired madness worthy of Frank Zappa himself.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Street Fighting Man
Source: LP: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1968
The Rolling Stones were at a low point in their career following their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, which came out in late 1967. As a response to charges in the rock press that they were no longer relevant the Stones released Jumpin' Jack Flash as a single in early 1968, following it up with the Beggar's Banquet album later in the year. The new album included the band's follow-up single, Street Fighting Man, a song that was almost as anthemic as Jumpin' Jack Flash itself and went a long ways toward insuring that the Rolling Stones would be making music on their own terms for as long as they chose to.
Artist: Cream
Title: Doing That Scrapyard Thing
Source: LP: Goodbye Cream
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
In its original form, the album Goodbye Cream had three new studio tracks on it, one for each member of the band. Jack Bruce's contribution was this tune, co-written (as were the majority of Bruce's compositions) by Pete Brown. Lyrics don't get much more psychedelic than this.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Don't You Fret
Source: LP: Kinkdom (originally released in UK on EP: Kwyet Kinks)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise (original UK label: Pye)
Year: 1965
The British record market was considerably different than its American counterpart in the mid-1966s. Unlike in the US, where artists were expected to prove themselves with at least two hit singles before being allowed to record an LP, British acts often found themselves recording four or five song EPs as a transition between single and album. Furthermore, British singles were generally not included on British albums. When those albums were released in the US, the American labels often deleted songs from the original LP in favor of hit singles, which were considered necessary to generate album sales. This led to a surplus of songs that would appear on US-only LPs made up of material that had been previously released only in the UK. Such is the case with Kinkdom, a collection of singles, B sides, album tracks and the entire Kwyet Kinks EP from 1965. Kwyet Kinks itself was a significant release in that it was the first indication of a change in direction from the early hard-rocking Kinks hits such as You Really Got Me toward a more mellow style that the group would come to favor toward the end of the decade. Songs such as Don't You Fret can be considered a direct precursor to later songs such as A Well Respected Man and Sunny Afternoon.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Act Naturally
Source: LP: Yesterday…And Today
Writer(s): Russell/Morrison
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
Act Naturally, featuring Ringo Starr on lead vocals, was a country hit for Buck Owens. It is also one of the songs left off the US version of the Help! album and included on Yesterday and Today instead.
Artist: Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders
Title: Game Of Love
Source: CD: Reelin' And Rockin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Clint Ballard, Jr.
Label: Happy Days (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1965
The Mindbenders were formed in 1963 to backup British pop singer Wayne Fontana. The group scored their biggest hit in 1965 with Game Of Love, a song that went to the top of the US charts. Later that year Fontana parted company with the band, which continued on without him for several years, scoring another major hit, Groovy Kind Of Love, in 1966.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Castles Made Of Sand
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
When I was a junior in high school I used to fall asleep on the living room couch with the headphones on, usually listening to pre-recorded tapes of either the Beatles' Revolver album or one of the first two albums by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. One song in particular from the second Hendrix album, Axis: Bold As Love, always gave me a chill when I heard it: Castles Made Of Sand. The song serves as a warning not to put too much faith in your dreams, and stands in direct contrast to the usual goal-oriented American attitude.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Goin' Down (alternate mix)
Source: CD: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD. (original version released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Hilderbrand/Tork/Nesmith/Dolenz/Jones
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1967
The Monkees released two singles in 1967 that were not included on any albums released that year. The second of these, Daydream Believer, became one of the biggest hits of the year. The B side of that song was a mostly improvisational number called Goin' Down, with Mickey Dolenz providing the vocals. A longer, alternate mix was later issued as a bonus track on the CD version of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.
Artist: Love
Title: And More
Source: CD: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
Artist: Love
Although the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was already recording for Elektra, the first genuine rock band to be signed to the label was L.A.'s Love. The band had originally planned to call itself the Grass Roots, but soon discovered that the songwriting team of Steve Barri and P.F. Sloan had already locked up the name. Jan Holzman, owner of Elektra, was so high on Love that he created a whole new numbering series for their first album (the same series that later included the first few Doors LPs). Most of Love's songs were written by multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Arthur Lee, with a handful of tunes provided by rhythm guitarist/vocalist Bryan MacLean. The two seldom collaborated, despite sharing a house in the Hollywood hills that had once belonged to Bela Lugosi. One of the few songs they did work together on was And More, a tune from the first album that shows the two songwriters' interest in folk-rock as popularized by fellow L.A. band the Byrds.
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single. Stereo version released on LP: Da Capo)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
Artist: Love
The word "seven" does not appear anywhere in the song 7&7 Is. In fact, I have no idea where Arthur Lee got that title from. Nonetheless, the song is among the most intense tracks to ever make the top 40. 7&7 Is starts off with power chords played over a constant drum roll (possibly played by Lee himself), with cymbals crashing over equally manic semi-spoken lyrics. The song builds up to an explosive climax: an atomic bomb blast followed by a slow post-apocalyptic instrumental that quickly fades away.
Title: A House Is Not A Motel
Source: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Forever Changes)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
Arthur Lee was a bit of a recluse, despite leading the most popular band on Sunset Strip in 1966-67. When the band was not playing at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go Lee was most likely to be found at his home up in the Hollywood Hills, often in the company of fellow band member Bryan McLean. The other members of the band, however, were known to hang out in the most popular clubs, chasing women and doing all kinds of substances. Sometimes they would show up at Lee's house unbidden. Sometimes they would crash there. Sometimes Lee would get annoyed, and probably used the phrase which became the title of the second track on Love's classic Forever Changes album, A House Is Not A Motel.
Artist: Byrds
Title: I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better (originally released on LP: Mr. Tambourine Man and as 45 RPM single B side)
Source: LP: Greatest Hits
Writer(s): Gene Clark
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Even though the title of the B side of the Byrds' second single is I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better, the actual sung line is "I'll *probably* feel a whole lot better when you're gone." The addition of that one extra word adds a whole new dimension to what is already a good song, turning it into a great one. Despite being a B side, the song received heavy promotion from the people at Columbia Records, and almost outperformed the A side, It Won't Be Wrong.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: A Whiter Shade Of Pale
Source: LP: Procol Harum (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Deram
Year: 1967
The US version of the first Procol Harum included one song, A Whiter Shade Of Pale, that was recorded by a different lineup than the rest of the album. In July of 1967, about three months after the single was released, guitarist Ray Royer and Bobby Harrison left the band, to be replaced by Robin Trower and Barrie Wilson respectively. It was the new lineup that went to work on the album, which was released in August in the US and January in the UK. The song itself has been covered numerous times, and holds the record for being played on the British airwaves more than any other song in history.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in early 1967. The record, initially released without much promotion from the record label, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Mystic Mourning
Source: LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Ulaky/Weisberg/Rhodes
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
If I had to choose one single recording that captures the essence of the psychedelic era, my choice would be Mystic Mourning, from the album The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union. Everything about the tune screams psychedelic, starting with a short spacy intro of electric piano over cymbals, leading into a raga beat with a solo bass line that builds up to a repeating riff that ends up getting played at various times by guitar, bass, and/or piano. The lyrics are appropriately existential, and both guitar and piano get a chance to show their stuff over the course of the nearly six-minute track.
Artist: Doors
Title: Take It As It Comes
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Rhino (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
L.A.'s Whisky-A-Go-Go was the place to be in 1966. Not only were some of the city's most popular bands playing there, but for a while the house band was none other than the Doors, playing songs like Take It As It Comes. One evening Jac Holtzman of Elektra Records was among those attending the club, having been invited there to hear the Doors by Arthur Lee (who with his band Love was already recording for Elektra). After hearing two sets Holtzman signed the group to a contract with the label, making the Doors only the second rock band to record for Elektra (after Love itself).
Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Title: Where Is My Mind
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Mark Stein
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Following the belated success of their cover of the Supremes' 1967 hit You Keep Me Hangin' On, Vanilla Fudge was primed to release a follow-up single. The group had already released a second LP, a concept album based around the Sonny & Cher song The Beat Goes On, but none of the tracks on that LP were considered single material. The first LP had been around for over a year at that point, and the band felt it would be better to record something new rather than release another of that album's cover tunes. The result was Where Is My Mind, one of the first original tunes to be recorded by the band. The song was not a major hit, but it was a preview of what their next LP, Renaissance (their first to be made up primarily of original material) would sound like.
Artist: B. B. King
Title: Having My Say
Source: CD: Blues On Top Of Blues
Writer(s): B.B. King
Label: BGO (original label: Bluesway)
Year: 1968
Although not the best-known of B.B. King's many albums, 1968's Blues On Top Of Blues is one of the most polished, featuring, in addition to the traditional guitar, bass and drums, a horn section and an organist. The result is a surprisingly fresh sounding album, even well over forty years later. All the songs on the album, including Having My Say were written by King.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Eighteen Is Over The Hill
Source: CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Markley/Morgan
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
The contributions of guitarist Ron Morgan to the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band are often overlooked, possibly due to the fact that Morgan himself often tried to distance himself from the band. Nonetheless, he did write some of the group's most memorable tunes, including their best-known song, Smell Of Incense (covered by the Texas band Southwest F.O.B.) and the opening track of what is generally considered their best album, A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. Unfortunately, the somewhat senseless lyrics added by Bob Markley detract from what is actually a very tasty piece of music.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: I'm A Man
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Elias McDaniel
Label: Epic
Year: 1965
For many, the Yardbirds version of I'm a Man is the definitive version of this Bo Diddley classic. Oddly enough, the song was released as a single only in the US, where it made it into the top 10 in 1965.
Artist: Mamas And The Papas
Title: Dancing Bear
Source: CD: The Mamas And The Papas
Writer(s): John Phillips
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1966
The second Mamas And The Papas album was marked by internal strife that came about when it was discovered that mama Michelle and papa Denny were having an affair, despite Michelle's being married to papa John. Mama Michelle was fired shortly before work on the album commenced and a new mama, Jill, was brought in to replace her. Midway through the album the group realized the inherent unfairness of firing Michelle but not Denny and invited her back to the band, letting Jill go in the process. As a result, nobody is sure just which vocals on the album are Michelle's and which are Jill's. One thing that is not in question is that Dancing Bear (which predates Simon & Garfunkel's similarly-themed El Condor Pasa by several years) is one of the most memorable songs on the album.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: I Just Wasn't Made For These Times
Source: CD: Good Vibrations-Twenty Years Of The Beach Boys (originally released on LP: Pet Sounds)
Writer(s): Wilson/Asher
Label: Capitol
Year: 1966
Early on Brian Wilson recognized that his greatest strength was in writing music, as opposed to performing or even writing lyrics. Being the leader and producer of the most successful recording artists in southern California, Wilson was able to take his pick of the best lyricists available, including Mike Love, Van Dyke Parks, and, on the Pet Sounds album, Tony Asher, whose introspective lyrics complemented Wilson's maturing musical themes perfectly. I Just Wasn't Made For These Times is an excellent example of how well the two worked together to capture a specific mood and theme.
Artist: Hollies
Title: I Can't Let Go
Source: CD: The Best Of The Hollies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Taylor/Gorgoni
Label: Cema (original label: Imperial)
Year: 1966
Of all the early Hollies hits, it is the 1966 hit I Can't Let Go that most showcases the voice of Graham Nash, singing a high counterpoint that Paul McCartney reportedly mistook for a trumpet part the first time he heard the song.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband (recording as The Hogs)
Title: Blues Theme
Source: CD: One Step Beyond (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Curb/Allen
Label: Sundazed (original label: HBR)
Year: 1966
The Chocolate Watchband's first experience in a recording studio came in October of 1966. The band had set up and was getting their sound levels checked when a friend of the producer burst into the studio with the news that the latest "hot thing" was a new movie called the Wild Ones. Davie Allen and the Arrows had cut something called Blues Theme for the soundtrack, and the word was that there were no plans to release the song as a single. Sensing an opportunity, the producer asked the band if they could record their own version of Blues Theme. The Watchband, even at that early point, had a knack for doing convincing covers on a moment's notice, and by the time the session was over they had cut a credible version of Blues Theme. The record was quickly released on the Hanna Barbera (yes, the cartoon people) label, but as by the Hogs rather than the Chocolate Watchband. Although I don't know why this was done, I do have a couple theories. It's entirely possible that the band signed their contract with Tower Records before Blues Theme was released, in which case Tower would naturally forbid the use of the name Chocolate Watchband by another label. Or it could simply be that the unknown producers at HBR felt that a name like the Hogs was more appropriate for a song used in a biker flick. We may never know for sure.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Some of the best rock and roll songs of 1966 were banned on a number of stations for being about either sex or drugs. Most artists that recorded those songs claimed they were about something else altogether. In the case of Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35, "stoned" refers to a rather unpleasant form of execution (at least according to Dylan). On the other hand, Dylan himself was reportedly quite stoned while recording the song, having passed a few doobies around before starting the tape rolling. Sometimes I think ambiguities like this are why English has become the dominant language of commerce on the planet.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: Rainbow Demon
Source: LP: Demons And Wizards
Writer(s): Ken Hensley
Label: Mercury
Year: 1972
The last time I played something from Uriah Heep's Demons And Wizards album it was All Hallow's Eve and I naturally chose The Wizard. This time around I figured it was time to give the devil his due and play Rainbow Demon. The album itself was a major turning point for Uriah Heep, who up to that point had been considered a second-tier British metal band. With Demons And Wizards, however, the band took on an identity of its own, with fantasy imagery becoming the focus of the music. Demons And Wizards also saw keyboardist Ken Hensley take a more dominant role in the songwriting, having a hand in every track on the album.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: 17
Source: CD: Stand Up (bonus track)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol
Year: 1969
Jethro Tull was one of the last groups to continue to British practice of not including songs that had been released on 45 RPM vinyl on their albums. As a result, songs such as 17, which were not released in any form in the US, were generally not heard by American audiences. Even when many of the band's UK-only singles were included on the 1973 LP Living In The Past, 17 was not part of the package. As a result, this may well be the first time you've heard this 1969 B side.
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