Artist: Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs
Title: Wooly Bully
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Domingo Samudio
Label: Rhino (original label: XL)
Year: 1964
Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs were pioneers of what has come to be called Tex-Mex, a style that can best described as straight ahead rock and roll seasoned with traditional Mexican forms such as salsa and ranchero. The Pharaohs were already a popular band in their native Texas when they recorded Wooly Bully for the regional XL label in 1964. The song proved so popular that it (and the band's contract) was bought outright by M-G-M Records, at the time one of the largest labels in the country. Wooly Bully was re-released nationally on M-G-M in 1965 and ended up among the top 10 records of the year.
Artist: Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title: Diddy Wah Diddy
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): McDaniel/Dixon
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1966
Don Van Vliet and Frank Zappa knew each other in high school in the Antelope Valley area of Los Angeles, but did not stay in close contact after graduation. While Zappa was developing an interest in early 20th century avant-garde classical music, Van Vliet established a reputation as one of the best white blues singers around. When the opportunity came to record a few tracks for A&M records in 1965, Van Vliet, who by then was calling himself Captain Beefheart, chose this Bo Diddly tune to showcase his vocal talents. A&M chose not to release the tracks, and Beefheart would finally make his vinyl debut in 1967, recording for the new Buddah label. Later he would again hook up with his old cohort Zappa and develop into one of rock's premier avant-garde composers.
Artist: Balloon Farm
Title: A Question Of Temperature
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Appel/Schnug/Henny
Label: Rhino (original label: Laurie)
Year: 1968
Few, if any, bands managed to successfully cross bubble gum and punk like the Balloon Farm with A Question Of Temperature, originally released on the Laurie label in 1967. Band member Mike Appel went on to have great success as Bruce Springsteen's first manager.
Artist: Del-Vetts
Title: Last Time Around
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dennis Dahlquist
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The Del-Vetts were from Chicago's affluent North Shore. Their gimmick was to show up at a high school dance by driving their matching corvettes onto the gymnasium dance floor. Musically, like most garage/punk bands, they were heavily influenced by the British invasion bands. Unlike most garage/punk bands, who favored the Rolling Stones, the Del-Vetts were more into the Jeff Beck era Yardbirds. They had a few regional hits from 1965-67, the biggest being this single issued on the Dunwich label, home of fellow Chicago suburbanites the Shadows of Knight. This may well be the very first death rock song.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
By all rights, the Byrds' Eight Miles High should have been a huge hit. Unfortunately, Bill Drake, the most influential man in the history of Top 40 radio, got it into his head that this was a drug song, despite the band's insistence that it was about a transatlantic plane trip. The band's version actually makes sense, as Gene Clark had just quit the group due to his fear of flying (he is listed as a co-writer of the song), and the subject was probably a hot topic of discussion among the remaining members.
Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: Daydream
Source: Mono LP: Daydream
Writer(s): John Sebastian
Label: Kama Sutra
Year: 1966
One of the most popular songs of 1966 was Daydream by the Lovin' Spoonful. Like many of the songs on the Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful album, Daydream is a departure from the style of the band's early singles such as Do You Believe In Magic. It's also one of the few songs with whistling in it to hit the number one spot on the charts.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Crown Of Creation
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: Crown Of Creation)
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1968
After the acid rock experimentalism of After Bathing At Baxter's, the Airplane returned to a more conventional format for 1968's Crown Of Creation album. The songs themselves, however, had a harder edge than those on the early Jefferson Airplane albums, as the band itself was becoming more socio-politically radical. The song Crown of Creation draws a definite line between the mainstream and the counter-culture.
Artist: Public Nuisance
Title: America
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on CD: Gotta Survive)
Writer(s): David Houston
Label: Rhino (original label: Frantic)
Year: Recorded 1968, released 2003
Looking and sounding a lot like the Ramones would in the late 70s, Public Nuisance found itself the victim of unusual circumstances that led to the cancellation of their only LP in 1968. Producer Terry Melcher, who had risen to fame as producer of Paul Revere and the Raiders, had made the mistake of rejecting tapes sent to him by a wannabe rock star named Charles Manson. When Manson achieved the fame and notoriety that had eluded him as a musician (by killing a bunch of people), Melcher felt it prudent to go into hiding, shelving the Public Nuisance project in the process. The album was finally released 35 years later on the independent Frantic label.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Boogie Music
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Living The Blues)
Writer(s): L.T.Tatman III
Label: United Artists (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
Canned Heat was formed in 1966 by a group of Bay Area blues purists. Although a favorite on the rock scene, the band continued to remain true to the blues throughout their existence. The band's most popular single was Going Up the Country from the album Living the Blues. An edited version of Boogie Music, also from Living the Blues, was issued as the B side of that single. This is the full-length version.
Artist: Fifty Foot Hose
Title: Red The Sign Post
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Cauldron)
Writer(s): Roswicky/Blossom
Label: Rhino (original label: Limelight)
Year: 1968
Although most of the more avant-garde bands of the psychedelic era were headquarted in New York, there were some exceptions, such as San Francisco's Fifty Foot Hose. The core members of the band were founder and bassist Louis "Cork" Marcheschi, guitarist David Blossom, and his wife, vocalist Nancy Blossom. The group used a lot of unusual instruments, such as theramin, Moog synthesizer and prepared guitar and piano. Probably their most commercial song was Red The Sign Post from the LP Cauldron. After that album the group called it quits, with most of the members joining the cast of Hair. In fact, Nancy Blossom played lead character Sheila in the San Francisco production of the musical.
Artist: Cream
Title: SWLABR
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
I distinctly remember this song getting played on the local jukebox just as much as the single's A side, Sunshine Of Your Love (maybe even more). Like most of Cream's more psychedelic material, SWLABR (the title being an anagram for She Walks Like A Bearded Rainbow) was written by the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. Brown had originally been brought in as a co-writer for Ginger Baker, but soon realized that he and Bruce had better songwriting chemistry.
Artist: Cream
Title: Spoonful
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released in UK only on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Cotillion (original label: Reaction)
Year: 1966
When the album Fresh Cream was released by Atco in the US it was missing one track that was on the original UK version of the album: the band's original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1970 soundtrack album for the movie Homer that the studio version was finally released in the US.
Artist: Cream
Title: Strange Brew
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Clapton/Pappalardi/Collins
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Strange Brew, the opening track from Cream's Disraeli Gears album, was also released as a single in Europe and the UK (but not in the US) in early 1967. The song has proven popular enough over the years to be included on pretty much every Cream anthology album ever compiled, and even inspired a Hollywood Movie of the same name.
Artist: Kinks
Title: A House In The Country
Source: Mono CD: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
Following the success of the singles A Well Respected Man and Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, the Kinks got to work on an entire album of material written by Ray Davies. Like the aforementioned singles, the songs on Face To Face reflected a change from the band's early hard-rocking material toward a mellower, yet more satirical sound. One of the tracks on Face To Face was released as a single by another British band, the Pretty Things, several months before Face To Face came out in October of 1966. The song was a minor UK hit, peaking in the #50 spot in July of that year.
Artist: Unrelated Segments
Title: Story Of My Life
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mackavich/Stults
Label: Rhino (original label: HBR)
Year: 1967
The Unrelated Segments were a Detroit band that had most of its success regionally. Their nearest brush with national fame came when Story Of My Life was picked up for national distribution by Hanna-Barbera, the record label associated with such well-known TV stars as Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and (later) Scooby-Doo. Hannah-Barbera not being known for its hit records, it's probably no surprise that the song did not climb too high on the charts.
Artist: Lollipop Shoppe (aka The Weeds)
Title: You Must Be A Witch
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Fred Cole
Label: BFD (original label: Uni)
Year: 1968
The Weeds were formed in Las Vegas in 1965 by vocalist Fred Cole, who at age 16 was already a recording studio veteran. They showed up at the Fillmore to open for the Yardbirds in 1966 only to find out that their manager had lied to them about being on the playbill (in fact Bill Graham had never even heard of them). Disenchanted with their management and fearing the Draft, the entire band decided to head for Canada, but ran out of gas in Portland, Oregon. They soon landed a regular gig at a club called the Folk Singer (where Cole met his future wife Toody) and after relocating to Southern California in 1968 attracted the attention of Seeds' manager Lord Tim, who got them a contract with MCA Records (now Universal). They recorded one album for MCA's Uni label (discovering after the fact that Lord Tim had changed their name to the Lollipop Shoppe) which included the single You Must Be A Witch. Fred Cole has since become an icon of indy rock, co-leading the band Dead Moon (with wife Toody) from 1987-2006.
Artist: Max Frost And The Troopers
Title: Shape Of Things To Come
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released on LP: Wild In The Streets soundtrack)
Writer(s): Mann/Weil
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1968
Max Frost was a politically savvy rock star who rode the youth movement all the way to the White House, first through getting the support of a hip young Senator, then getting the age requirements for holding high political office lowered to 21, and finally lowering the voting age to 14. Everyone over 30 was locked away in internment camps, similar to those used during WWII by various governments to hold those of questionable loyalty to the current regime. What? You don't remember any of that? You say it sounds like the plot of a cheapie late 60s teen exploitation flick? Right on all counts. "Wild in the Streets" starred Christopher Jones as the rock star, Hal Holbrook as the hip young senator, and a Poseidon Adventure-sized Shelly Winter as the rock star's interred mom. Richard Pryor, in his film debut, played the band's drummer/political activist Stanley X. Imagine that.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Blue Jay Way
Source: Stereo 45 RPM EP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s): George Harrison
Label: Parlophone
Year: 1967
The Beatles' psychedelic period hit its peak with the late 1967 release of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack. As originally conceived there were only six songs on the album, too few for a standard LP. The band's solution was to present Magical Mystery Tour as two Extended Play (EP) 45 RPM records in a gatefold sleeve with a 23 page booklet featuring lyrics and scenes from the telefilm of the same name (as well as the general storyline in prose form). As EPs were out of vogue in the US, Capitol Records, against the band's wishes, added five songs that had been issued as single A or B sides in 1967 to create a standard LP. The actual Magical Mystery Tour material made up side one of the LP, while the single sides were on side two. The lone George Harrison contribution to the project was Blue Jay Way, named for a street in the Hollywood Hills that Harrison had rented that summer. As all five of the extra tracks were credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team, this meant that each of the band's 1967 albums had only one Harrison composition on them. This became a point of contention within the band, and on the Beatles' next album (the white album), Harrison's share of the songwriting had doubled.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The First Edition and 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 was the official leader 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.
Artist: Pentangle
Title: Train Song
Source: LP: Basket Of Light
Writer(s): Jansch/Renbourne/Thompson/Cox/McShea
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
The folk-rock supergroup Pentangle continued to have major chart success in the UK in 1969 with their Basket Of Light LP, which peaked at the #5 spot on the British album charts. Train Song is just one of the many strong tracks (ugh, sorry) on the album.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: She May Call You Up Tonight
Source: LP: Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina
Writer(s): Brown/Martin
Label: Smash/Sundazed
Year: 1967
Unlike their first two singles, Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina, She May Call You Up Tonight failed to chart, possibly due to the release two months earlier of a song called Ivy Ivy, written by keyboardist Michael Brown and marketed as a Left Banke song. The song was in reality performed entirely by session musicians, including lead vocals by Bert Sommer, who would be one of the acoustic acts on the opening afternoon of the Woodstock festival a couple years later. The resulting fued between Brown and the rest of the band left a large number of radio stations gun shy when came to any record with the name Left Banke on the label, and She May Call You Up Tonight tanked, despite being a fine tune in its own right.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Tighten Up Your Wig
Source: CD: Steppenwolf The Second
Writer(s): John Kay
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
It was a tradition among early blues artists to lift rifts, melody lines and even lyrics from each other's songs, then record and copyright them under their own names. Steppenwolf, who had evolved out of Canadian blues band called Sparrow, kept the tradition alive in 1968 with Tighten Up Your Wig, which has a melody and chord structure nearly identical to the 1960 Junior Wells tune Messin' With The Kid.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Going To Mexico
Source: LP: Anthology (originally released on LP: Number 5)
Writer(s): Miller/Scaggs
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
Although Boz Scaggs had left the Steve Miller Band following their second album, Sailor, the song Going To Mexico, co-written by Miller and Scaggs, did not appear on an album until Number 5 was released in 1970. Miller himself referred to the song as a 1969 track on his Anthology album, however, leading me to believe the song may have been among the last tracks recorded while Scaggs was still with the band. The recording also features future star Lee Michaels on organ.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Museum
Source: Mono CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
Museum is a song from one of Donovan's early albums that he re-recorded for his Mellow Yellow LP in 1967. The new arrangement, like many of the tracks on Mellow Yellow, uses electric guitar, violin and hand percussion (bongos, etc.) to supplement Donovan's acoustic guitar.
Artist: Love
Title: Orange Skies
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer(s): Bryan MacLean
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Love, the most popular band on the Sunset Strip, was also among the most eclectic. Nowhere is this more evident than on their second LP, Da Capo. After starting off with the punkish Stephanie Knows Who, the tone abruptly shifts with Orange Skies, a soft almost lounge lizard-like tune written by Bryan MacLean (who later claimed it was the first song he ever wrote), but sung by Arthur Lee in a style that was at the time compared to Johnny Mathis.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Chess Game
Source: CD: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was driven by the dual creative talents of keyboardist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker. Although Walker went on to have the greatest success, it was Bruno's more jazz-influenced songwriting on songs like Chess Game that defined the band's sound.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Cream Puff War
Source: LP: The Grateful Dead
Writer(s): Jerry Garcia
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1967
The first Grateful Dead album was recorded in a matter of days, and was mostly made up of cover tunes that the band was currently performing. The two exceptions were The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion), which was credited to the entire band, and Cream Puff War, a song written by guitarist Jerry Garcia. The two tracks were paired up on the band's first single as well. Cream Puff War, as recorded, ran nearly three and a half minutes, but was edited down to 2:28 at the insistence of the corporate shirts at Warner Brothers Records.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Still Raining, Still Dreaming, from the third Jimi Hendrix Experience album Electric Ladyland, is the second half of a live studio recording featuring guest drummer Buddy Miles, who would later join Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Band Of Gypsys. The recording also features Mike Finnegan on organ, Freddie Smith on tenor sax and Larry Faucett on congas, as well as Experience member Noel Redding on bass.
Artist: King Crimson
Title: The Court Of The Crimson King
Source: LP: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer(s): McDonald/Sinfield
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1969
Perhaps the most influential progressive rock album of all time was King Crimson's debut LP, In The Court Of The Crimson King. The band, in its original incarnation, included Robert Fripp on guitar, Ian MacDonald on keyboards and woodwinds, Greg Lake on vocals and bass, David Giles on drums and Peter Sinfield as a dedicated lyricist. The title track, which takes up the second half of side two of the LP, features music composed by MacDonald, who would leave the group after their second album, later resurfacing as a founding member of Foreigner. The album's distinctive cover art (posted on the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era Facebook page) came from a painting by computer programmer Barry Godber, who died of a heart attack less than a year after the album was released. According to Fripp, the artwork on the inside is a portrait of the Crimson King, whose manic smile is in direct contrast to his sad eyes. The album, song and artwork were the inspiration for Stephen King's own Crimson King, the insane antagonist of his Dark Tower saga who is out to destroy all of reality, including our own.
Artist: Kim Fowley
Title: Bubblegum
Source: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released on LP: Outrageous)
Writer(s): Cert/Fowley
Label: Zonophone (original label: Imperial)
Year: 1968
Like a hip Hollywood Forrest Gump, Kim Fowley kept popping up in various capacities throughout the 60s and 70s on records like Alley Oop (co-producer), Nut Rocker (writer, arranger) and the first three Runaways albums (producer and guy who introduced the band members to each other), working with such diverse talents as Gene Vincent, Helen Reddy and Kiss. He has also managed to rack up an impressive catalog as a solo artist, with over two dozen albums to his credit. The most successful of these was his 1968 LP Outrageous, which includes the song Bubblegum (also called Bubble Gum). Despite the title, the track has nothing in common with bands like the 1910 Fruitgum Company. In fact, the song is sometimes cited as one of the first glam-rock recordings.
Artist: Kim Fowley
Title: The Trip
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Hardesty/Fowley/Geddes
Label: Rhino (original label: Corby)
Year: 1966
Kim Fowley was well-known among the movers and shakers of the L.A. music scene as an important promoter and record producer, as well as the guy who threw some of the best parties in town. To the general public, however, he remained largely unknown except as the guy who recorded possibly the first, and probably the only, psychedelic novelty record, The Trip, in 1966.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1247 (starts 11/22/12)
This week we start with an hour made up of somewhat longer than usual sets, followed by an hour with a higher than usual number of long songs. Thanksgiving is, after all, the time of year to get a long, right?
Artist: Romancers
Title: Love's The Thing
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Max and Bob Uballez
Label: Rhino (original label: Linda)
Year: 1965
Released three times on three labels under two different band names. Such was the studio scene in East L.A. in the mid-60s. Max Uballez, leader of the Romancers and East L.A.'s answer to Phil Spector (or maybe Brian Wilson), was the driving force behind Love's The Thing, a favorite on local radio in 1965.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Pushin' Too Hard
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: The Seeds and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1966
Pushin' Too Hard was originally released in spring of 1966 as the closing track on side one of the first Seeds album. After being released to the L.A. market as a single the song did well enough to go national in early 1967, hitting its peak in February of that year.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Bright Light Lovers
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Although keyboardist Bob Bruno's contributions as a songwriter to Circus Maximus tended to favor jazz arrangements, he shows here that he could rock out with the best of the garage bands when the mood hit.
Artist: Cream
Title: Passing The Time
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Baker/Taylor
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Although Jack Bruce is generally acknowledged as the member of Cream that provided the most psychedelic material that the band recorded, drummer Ginger Baker gave him a run for his money on the studio half of their third LP, Wheels Of Fire. Perhaps the best of these was Passing The Time, which alternates between a slow, dreamlike section notable for its use of a calliope and a fast section that rocks out as hard as anything the band performed live in concert.
Artist: Pentangle
Title: Mirage
Source: LP: Pentangle
Writer(s): Bert Jansch
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Pentangle could best be described as the first British folk/jazz/rock supergroup. Each of the five members was already well established, with two of them, guitarists John Renbourne and Bert Jansch, having previously released solo albums. Thus it is no surprise that every track on their debut album is outstanding. The tough part is choosing just one song to play on any particular show. This time around it's Mirage, a Jansch composition with lead vocals by Jacqui McShea that opens side two of the LP. Next time who knows?
Artist: Ace Of Cups
Title: Glue
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on CD: It's Bad For You But Buy It)
Writer(s): Denise Kaufman
Label: Rhino (original label: Ace/Big Beat)
Year: Recorded 1968, released 2003
The Ace Of Cups were a pioneering female rock band from San Francisco led by Denise Kaufman, immortalized by Ken Kesey as Mary Microgram in the book Electric Koolaid Acid Test. As one of the major Merry Pranksters, Kaufman's irreverent attitude is in full evidence on the track Glue, which features a bit of guerilla theater parodying the standard TV commercials of the time. Lead vocals are by Mary Gannon.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Evil Woman
Source: LP: Boogie With Canned Heat
Writer(s): Barry Weiss
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
After a 1967 debut album that was made up entirely of faithful renditions of vintage blues tunes, Canned Heat found their own sound on the follow-up. The opening track on Boogie With Canned Heat, Evil Woman, sounds like it may have been included as a possible single. Instead, the band and their label went with On The Road Again, a song that is much more representative of the band's sound.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Magic Carpet Ride
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf The Second)
Writer(s): Moreve/Kay
Label: Priority (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Steppenwolf's second top 10 single was Magic Carpet Ride, a song that combines feedback, prominent organ work by Goldy McJohn and an updated Bo Diddly beat with psychedelic lyrics. Along with Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride (co-written by vocalist John Kay and bassist Rushton Moreve) has become one of the defining songs of both Steppenwolf and the late 60s.
Artist: Love
Title: Colored Balls Falling
Source: Mono LP: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
The first Love album is rooted solidly in the garage rock genre. A solid example of this is Colored Balls Falling, written by Arthur Lee. To my knowledge, Colored Balls Falling has never been included on any anthology albums, making this mono mix of the song somewhat of a rarity.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Fancy
Source: Mono LP: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1966
One of the best albums in the Kinks library is Face To Face. Released in 1966, the album features such classics and Sunny Afternoon and Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, as well as some lesser-known (yet excellent) tracks such as Fancy.
Artist: Remains
Title: Don't Look Back
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Billy Vera
Label: Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
The Remains were a Boston area band that seemingly had everything going for them in 1966. They had just finished opening for the Beatles on their last US tour and had procured the rights to record a song written by Billy Vera, who would score a huge hit of his own 20 years later with At This Moment. Somehow, though, Don't Look Back didn't make the charts, despite its obvious potential. It was the last of a series of disappointments for a group that had been cutting records since 1964, and they soon packed up their instruments for the last time.
Artist: We The People
Title: Mirror Of Your Mind
Source: Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Thomas Talton
Label: Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year: 1966
We The People were formed when an Orlando, Florida newspaper reporter talked members of two local bands to combine into a garage/punk supergroup. The result was one of the most successful regional bands in Florida history. After their first recording got airplay on a local station, they were signed to record in Nashville for Challenge Records (a label actually based in Los Angeles) and cranked out several regional hits over the next few years. The first of these was Mirror Of Your Mind. Written by lead vocalist Tom Talton, the song is an in-your-face rocker that got played on a number of local stations and has been covered by several bands since.
Artist: Standells
Title: Why Pick On Me
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
Ed Cobb was, in many ways, the Ed Wood of the late 60s record industry. The bands who recorded under his guidance, such as LA.'s Standells, have become legends of garage rock. Wood wrote the first three singles released by the Standells, including their biggest hit, Dirty Water, and its follow-up, Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. Why Pick On Me, the title track of the band's second LP, was the third single released by the band, although it did not chart as well as its predecessors.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Uni)
Year: 1967
Incense and Peppermints is one of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era, yet when it was originally released to Los Angeles area radio stations it was intended to be the B side of The Birdman of Alkatrash. Somewhere along the line a DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) picked up the Strawberry Alarm Clock's contract and reissued the record nationally with Incense And Peppermints as the A side.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
According to principal songwriter John Lennon, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite was inspired by a turn of the century circus poster that the Beatles ran across while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Most of the lyrics refer to items on the poster itself, such as Henry the Horse and the Hendersons.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: In The Arena
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
In The Arena is the quintessential West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band song: an ambitious piece that uses spoken word sections and opposing Apollonian and Dionysian musical themes (the latter featuring some of Ron Morgan's best guitar work) to imply that the things we watch on the nightly television newscast serve the same function in our culture that gladiator fights and the like served in ancient Roman times. The track opens side one of the second West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album, appropriately called Volume II.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Hideaway
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Collector's Choice (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: Dino, Desi And Billy
Title: The Rebel Kind
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lee Hazlewood
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1965
Dino Martin, Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Billy Hinsche were high school classmates at Hollywood High. Dino's father Dean was one of the most successful artists on Reprise Records, owned by his friend (and fellow rat-packer) Frank Sinatra, making it a snap for the boys to get a contract with the label. The fact that Desi Arnaz, Jr. (the famous "little Ricky" of "I Love Lucy" fame) was already a household name didn't hurt either. The three of them scored big with I'm A Fool in 1965. Subsequent singles such as The Rebel Kind did not do so well, despite the fact that the song was written by Lee Hazlewood, himself a successful country artist. The group finally split up in 1970 when Desi joined the cast of his mother's TV show. Dino went on to have a successful career as an actor and professional tennis player, while Billy Hinsche stayed in the music business, providing backing vocals for such diverse artists as Joan Jett and Elton John and doing session work and touring with the Beach Boys.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: May I Light Your Cigarette
Source: Mono CD: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer(s): Ulaky/Wright
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
Consisting of nothing but spoken words over a background of single guitar notes played through an amplifier with built-in tremelo, May I Light Your Cigarette has to be one of the most unique recordings of any era. The writing credits went to vocalist John Lincoln Wright (who went on to become a country singer) and bassist Wayne Ulaky. Presumably Ulaky played the guitar on the track.
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: 1968
If I had to choose one single recording that encapsulates 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: Beacon Street Union
Title: Now I Taste The Tears
Source: Mono CD: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer(s): Clifford
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
The second LP from the Beacon Street Union, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens, was a departure from the sound of the band's first album. If anything, it featured an even more eclectic mix of songs than The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union, including the humorous King of the Jungle and a nearly 17 minute version of Baby, Please Don't Go. The band took an R&B turn with the closing track on side one of the LP, Now I Taste The Tears, which features a horn section led by band member Robert Rhodes.
Artist: Tommy Boyce And Bobby Hart
Title: Words
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer(s): Boyce/Hart
Label: Rhino
Year: 1965
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were really hoping to be selected for the new band that Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures was putting together to star in a new weekly TV series. To that effect they produced and recorded several of their own songs, using some of L.A's top studio musicians. Most of those recordings ended up on the first two Monkees albums, with re-recorded vocals by the four young men that were officially in the band. This early demo of Words (a song that the Monkees re-recorded in 1967 and took into the top 40 as a B side), shows what the band may have sounded like if Boyce and Hart themselves had made the cut.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day
Source: LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s): Tommy Boyce
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Tommy Boyce actually had a songwriting career seperate from his many collaborations with Bobby Hart. One of his early songs was Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, which was first recorded as a single by the Colorado-based Astronauts (which gave producer Steve Venet co-writing credit) before getting included on the first Monkees album. Along the way the song got recorded by a handful of garage bands, including Chicago's Shadows Of Knight, whose version closely parallels the Astronauts' original.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: Action
Source: CD: The Legend Of Paul Revere (originally released on LP: Just Like Us)
Writer(s): Boyce/Venet
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
It was a common practice for record producers to add their name to the writing credits of a song for purely financial reasons. Such was probably the case with the theme from the hit TV show Where The Action Is, which featured Paul Revere And The Raiders as the house band. Freddy Cannon recorded a hit version of the song in 1965. This 1966 version by the Raiders was heard at the beginning of the show itself five days a week for a couple of years. Cha-ching.
Artist: Mothers Of Invention
Title: Who Are The Brain Police?
Source: LP: Freak Out!
Writer(s): Frank Zappa
Label: Verve
Year: 1966
In 1966, Los Angeles, with its variety of all-ages clubs along Sunset Strip, had one of the most active underground music scenes in rock history. One of the most underground of these bands was the Mothers of Invention, led by musical genius Frank Zappa. In 1966 Tom Wilson, who was already well known for producing Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Blues Project, brought the Mothers into the studio to record the landmark Freak Out album. To his credit he allowed the band total artistic freedom, jeopardizing his own job in the process (the album cost somewhere between $20,000-30,000 to produce). The second song the band recorded was Who Are The Brain Police, which reportedly prompted Wilson to get on the phone to M-G-M headquarters in New York, presumably to ask for more money.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Suite It Is
Source: CD: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Casady/Dryden/Kaukonen
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
The second side of After Bathing At Baxters starts off fairly conventionally (for the Airplane), with Paul Kantner's Watch Her Ride, the first third or so of something called How Suite It Is. This leads (without a break in the audio) into Spare Chaynge, one of the coolest studio jams ever recorded, featuring intricate interplay between Jack Casady's bass and Jorma Kaukonen's guitar, with Spencer Dryden using his drum kit as enhancement rather than as a beat-setter. In particular, Cassidy's virtuoso performance helped redefine what could be done with an electric bass.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Stray Cat Blues
Source: CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: ABKCO (original label: London)
Year: 1968
As a military dependent overseas I had access to the local Base Exchange. The downside of buying albums there was that they were always a month or two behind the official stateside release dates getting albums in stock. The upside is that the BX had a special of the month that was always a new release for sale at something like 40% off the regular album price. The December 1968 special was this classic-to-be from the Stones. Full-priced albums that month included new releases by the Beatles (white album), Hendrix (Electric Ladyland) and Cream (Wheels of Fire). By the end of the month I was broke.
Artist: Tim Rose
Title: Long Time Man
Source: LP: Tim Rose
Writer(s): Tim Rose
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Tim Rose undoubtably will always be best known as the guy who inspired Jimi Hendrix's slowed-down version of Hey Joe, after Hendrix reportedly saw Rose performing the song in a club in Greenwich Village sometime in 1966. A listen to some of the other tracks on Rose's 1967 debut LP shows that much of his material was just as dark as his most famous recording. One such song is Long Time Man, sung from the point of view of a man doing a life sentence for murdering his wife. No wimpy folk songs from this guy!
Artist: Wildflower
Title: Coffee Cup
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: A Pot Of Flowers)
Writer(s): Ehret/Ellis
Label: Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year: 1967
The Wildflower was somewhat typical of the San Francisco brand of folk-rock; less political in the lyrics and less jangly on the instrumental side. Although Coffee Cup was recorded in 1965, it did not get released until the summer of love two years later.
Artist: Romancers
Title: Love's The Thing
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Max and Bob Uballez
Label: Rhino (original label: Linda)
Year: 1965
Released three times on three labels under two different band names. Such was the studio scene in East L.A. in the mid-60s. Max Uballez, leader of the Romancers and East L.A.'s answer to Phil Spector (or maybe Brian Wilson), was the driving force behind Love's The Thing, a favorite on local radio in 1965.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Pushin' Too Hard
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: The Seeds and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1966
Pushin' Too Hard was originally released in spring of 1966 as the closing track on side one of the first Seeds album. After being released to the L.A. market as a single the song did well enough to go national in early 1967, hitting its peak in February of that year.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Bright Light Lovers
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Although keyboardist Bob Bruno's contributions as a songwriter to Circus Maximus tended to favor jazz arrangements, he shows here that he could rock out with the best of the garage bands when the mood hit.
Artist: Cream
Title: Passing The Time
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Baker/Taylor
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Although Jack Bruce is generally acknowledged as the member of Cream that provided the most psychedelic material that the band recorded, drummer Ginger Baker gave him a run for his money on the studio half of their third LP, Wheels Of Fire. Perhaps the best of these was Passing The Time, which alternates between a slow, dreamlike section notable for its use of a calliope and a fast section that rocks out as hard as anything the band performed live in concert.
Artist: Pentangle
Title: Mirage
Source: LP: Pentangle
Writer(s): Bert Jansch
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Pentangle could best be described as the first British folk/jazz/rock supergroup. Each of the five members was already well established, with two of them, guitarists John Renbourne and Bert Jansch, having previously released solo albums. Thus it is no surprise that every track on their debut album is outstanding. The tough part is choosing just one song to play on any particular show. This time around it's Mirage, a Jansch composition with lead vocals by Jacqui McShea that opens side two of the LP. Next time who knows?
Artist: Ace Of Cups
Title: Glue
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on CD: It's Bad For You But Buy It)
Writer(s): Denise Kaufman
Label: Rhino (original label: Ace/Big Beat)
Year: Recorded 1968, released 2003
The Ace Of Cups were a pioneering female rock band from San Francisco led by Denise Kaufman, immortalized by Ken Kesey as Mary Microgram in the book Electric Koolaid Acid Test. As one of the major Merry Pranksters, Kaufman's irreverent attitude is in full evidence on the track Glue, which features a bit of guerilla theater parodying the standard TV commercials of the time. Lead vocals are by Mary Gannon.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Evil Woman
Source: LP: Boogie With Canned Heat
Writer(s): Barry Weiss
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
After a 1967 debut album that was made up entirely of faithful renditions of vintage blues tunes, Canned Heat found their own sound on the follow-up. The opening track on Boogie With Canned Heat, Evil Woman, sounds like it may have been included as a possible single. Instead, the band and their label went with On The Road Again, a song that is much more representative of the band's sound.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Magic Carpet Ride
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf The Second)
Writer(s): Moreve/Kay
Label: Priority (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Steppenwolf's second top 10 single was Magic Carpet Ride, a song that combines feedback, prominent organ work by Goldy McJohn and an updated Bo Diddly beat with psychedelic lyrics. Along with Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride (co-written by vocalist John Kay and bassist Rushton Moreve) has become one of the defining songs of both Steppenwolf and the late 60s.
Artist: Love
Title: Colored Balls Falling
Source: Mono LP: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
The first Love album is rooted solidly in the garage rock genre. A solid example of this is Colored Balls Falling, written by Arthur Lee. To my knowledge, Colored Balls Falling has never been included on any anthology albums, making this mono mix of the song somewhat of a rarity.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Fancy
Source: Mono LP: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1966
One of the best albums in the Kinks library is Face To Face. Released in 1966, the album features such classics and Sunny Afternoon and Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, as well as some lesser-known (yet excellent) tracks such as Fancy.
Artist: Remains
Title: Don't Look Back
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Billy Vera
Label: Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
The Remains were a Boston area band that seemingly had everything going for them in 1966. They had just finished opening for the Beatles on their last US tour and had procured the rights to record a song written by Billy Vera, who would score a huge hit of his own 20 years later with At This Moment. Somehow, though, Don't Look Back didn't make the charts, despite its obvious potential. It was the last of a series of disappointments for a group that had been cutting records since 1964, and they soon packed up their instruments for the last time.
Artist: We The People
Title: Mirror Of Your Mind
Source: Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Thomas Talton
Label: Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year: 1966
We The People were formed when an Orlando, Florida newspaper reporter talked members of two local bands to combine into a garage/punk supergroup. The result was one of the most successful regional bands in Florida history. After their first recording got airplay on a local station, they were signed to record in Nashville for Challenge Records (a label actually based in Los Angeles) and cranked out several regional hits over the next few years. The first of these was Mirror Of Your Mind. Written by lead vocalist Tom Talton, the song is an in-your-face rocker that got played on a number of local stations and has been covered by several bands since.
Artist: Standells
Title: Why Pick On Me
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
Ed Cobb was, in many ways, the Ed Wood of the late 60s record industry. The bands who recorded under his guidance, such as LA.'s Standells, have become legends of garage rock. Wood wrote the first three singles released by the Standells, including their biggest hit, Dirty Water, and its follow-up, Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. Why Pick On Me, the title track of the band's second LP, was the third single released by the band, although it did not chart as well as its predecessors.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Uni)
Year: 1967
Incense and Peppermints is one of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era, yet when it was originally released to Los Angeles area radio stations it was intended to be the B side of The Birdman of Alkatrash. Somewhere along the line a DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) picked up the Strawberry Alarm Clock's contract and reissued the record nationally with Incense And Peppermints as the A side.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
According to principal songwriter John Lennon, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite was inspired by a turn of the century circus poster that the Beatles ran across while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Most of the lyrics refer to items on the poster itself, such as Henry the Horse and the Hendersons.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: In The Arena
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
In The Arena is the quintessential West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band song: an ambitious piece that uses spoken word sections and opposing Apollonian and Dionysian musical themes (the latter featuring some of Ron Morgan's best guitar work) to imply that the things we watch on the nightly television newscast serve the same function in our culture that gladiator fights and the like served in ancient Roman times. The track opens side one of the second West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album, appropriately called Volume II.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Hideaway
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Collector's Choice (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: Dino, Desi And Billy
Title: The Rebel Kind
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lee Hazlewood
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1965
Dino Martin, Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Billy Hinsche were high school classmates at Hollywood High. Dino's father Dean was one of the most successful artists on Reprise Records, owned by his friend (and fellow rat-packer) Frank Sinatra, making it a snap for the boys to get a contract with the label. The fact that Desi Arnaz, Jr. (the famous "little Ricky" of "I Love Lucy" fame) was already a household name didn't hurt either. The three of them scored big with I'm A Fool in 1965. Subsequent singles such as The Rebel Kind did not do so well, despite the fact that the song was written by Lee Hazlewood, himself a successful country artist. The group finally split up in 1970 when Desi joined the cast of his mother's TV show. Dino went on to have a successful career as an actor and professional tennis player, while Billy Hinsche stayed in the music business, providing backing vocals for such diverse artists as Joan Jett and Elton John and doing session work and touring with the Beach Boys.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: May I Light Your Cigarette
Source: Mono CD: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer(s): Ulaky/Wright
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
Consisting of nothing but spoken words over a background of single guitar notes played through an amplifier with built-in tremelo, May I Light Your Cigarette has to be one of the most unique recordings of any era. The writing credits went to vocalist John Lincoln Wright (who went on to become a country singer) and bassist Wayne Ulaky. Presumably Ulaky played the guitar on the track.
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: 1968
If I had to choose one single recording that encapsulates 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: Beacon Street Union
Title: Now I Taste The Tears
Source: Mono CD: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer(s): Clifford
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
The second LP from the Beacon Street Union, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens, was a departure from the sound of the band's first album. If anything, it featured an even more eclectic mix of songs than The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union, including the humorous King of the Jungle and a nearly 17 minute version of Baby, Please Don't Go. The band took an R&B turn with the closing track on side one of the LP, Now I Taste The Tears, which features a horn section led by band member Robert Rhodes.
Artist: Tommy Boyce And Bobby Hart
Title: Words
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer(s): Boyce/Hart
Label: Rhino
Year: 1965
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were really hoping to be selected for the new band that Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures was putting together to star in a new weekly TV series. To that effect they produced and recorded several of their own songs, using some of L.A's top studio musicians. Most of those recordings ended up on the first two Monkees albums, with re-recorded vocals by the four young men that were officially in the band. This early demo of Words (a song that the Monkees re-recorded in 1967 and took into the top 40 as a B side), shows what the band may have sounded like if Boyce and Hart themselves had made the cut.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day
Source: LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s): Tommy Boyce
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Tommy Boyce actually had a songwriting career seperate from his many collaborations with Bobby Hart. One of his early songs was Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, which was first recorded as a single by the Colorado-based Astronauts (which gave producer Steve Venet co-writing credit) before getting included on the first Monkees album. Along the way the song got recorded by a handful of garage bands, including Chicago's Shadows Of Knight, whose version closely parallels the Astronauts' original.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: Action
Source: CD: The Legend Of Paul Revere (originally released on LP: Just Like Us)
Writer(s): Boyce/Venet
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
It was a common practice for record producers to add their name to the writing credits of a song for purely financial reasons. Such was probably the case with the theme from the hit TV show Where The Action Is, which featured Paul Revere And The Raiders as the house band. Freddy Cannon recorded a hit version of the song in 1965. This 1966 version by the Raiders was heard at the beginning of the show itself five days a week for a couple of years. Cha-ching.
Artist: Mothers Of Invention
Title: Who Are The Brain Police?
Source: LP: Freak Out!
Writer(s): Frank Zappa
Label: Verve
Year: 1966
In 1966, Los Angeles, with its variety of all-ages clubs along Sunset Strip, had one of the most active underground music scenes in rock history. One of the most underground of these bands was the Mothers of Invention, led by musical genius Frank Zappa. In 1966 Tom Wilson, who was already well known for producing Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Blues Project, brought the Mothers into the studio to record the landmark Freak Out album. To his credit he allowed the band total artistic freedom, jeopardizing his own job in the process (the album cost somewhere between $20,000-30,000 to produce). The second song the band recorded was Who Are The Brain Police, which reportedly prompted Wilson to get on the phone to M-G-M headquarters in New York, presumably to ask for more money.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Suite It Is
Source: CD: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Casady/Dryden/Kaukonen
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
The second side of After Bathing At Baxters starts off fairly conventionally (for the Airplane), with Paul Kantner's Watch Her Ride, the first third or so of something called How Suite It Is. This leads (without a break in the audio) into Spare Chaynge, one of the coolest studio jams ever recorded, featuring intricate interplay between Jack Casady's bass and Jorma Kaukonen's guitar, with Spencer Dryden using his drum kit as enhancement rather than as a beat-setter. In particular, Cassidy's virtuoso performance helped redefine what could be done with an electric bass.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Stray Cat Blues
Source: CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: ABKCO (original label: London)
Year: 1968
As a military dependent overseas I had access to the local Base Exchange. The downside of buying albums there was that they were always a month or two behind the official stateside release dates getting albums in stock. The upside is that the BX had a special of the month that was always a new release for sale at something like 40% off the regular album price. The December 1968 special was this classic-to-be from the Stones. Full-priced albums that month included new releases by the Beatles (white album), Hendrix (Electric Ladyland) and Cream (Wheels of Fire). By the end of the month I was broke.
Artist: Tim Rose
Title: Long Time Man
Source: LP: Tim Rose
Writer(s): Tim Rose
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Tim Rose undoubtably will always be best known as the guy who inspired Jimi Hendrix's slowed-down version of Hey Joe, after Hendrix reportedly saw Rose performing the song in a club in Greenwich Village sometime in 1966. A listen to some of the other tracks on Rose's 1967 debut LP shows that much of his material was just as dark as his most famous recording. One such song is Long Time Man, sung from the point of view of a man doing a life sentence for murdering his wife. No wimpy folk songs from this guy!
Artist: Wildflower
Title: Coffee Cup
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: A Pot Of Flowers)
Writer(s): Ehret/Ellis
Label: Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year: 1967
The Wildflower was somewhat typical of the San Francisco brand of folk-rock; less political in the lyrics and less jangly on the instrumental side. Although Coffee Cup was recorded in 1965, it did not get released until the summer of love two years later.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1246 (starts 11/15/12)
Artist: Albert King
Title: Please Love Me
Source: LP: Live Wire/Blues Power
Writer(s): King/Taub
Label: Stax
Year: 1968
When the name Fillmore comes up in discussions of famous rock venues, most people are aware that there was a Fillmore East (in New York) and a Fillmore West (in San Francisco). What is often overlooked, however, is the fact that there was actually a third Fillmore Auditorium that predated the other two. Promoter Bill Graham's original Fillmore Auditorium was a relatively small place that was perfectly suited to the needs of the Bay Area music scene of 1966, which was at that time a strictly local affair. By 1968, however, several of the city's bands had become internationally famous and other venues such as the Carousel Ballroom (operated by a consortium of local musicians) were drawing larger crowds than the Fillmore could handle. Graham responded by taking over the Carousel in July of 1968 and renaming the place the Fillmore West, closing out his original auditorium at the corner of Fillmore Street and Geary Blvd. One of the last events at the original Fillmore was a blues concert headlined by a Albert King, who, despite having been active since the early 1950s, had only two LPs to his credit by 1968. The concert, featuring such crowd pleasers as Please Love Me (a B.B. King cover), was recorded and released later that year as King's first live LP.
Artist: Cream
Title: Those Were The Days
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Baker/Taylor
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Drummer Ginger Baker only contributed a handful of songs to the Cream repertoire, but each was, in its own way, quite memorable. Those Are The Days, with its sudden changes of time and key, presages the progressive rock that would flourish in the mid-1970s. As was often the case with Baker-penned songs, bassist Jack Bruce provides the vocals from this Wheels Of Fire track.
Artist: T.I.M.E.
Title: Tripping Into Sunshine
Source: CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released on LP: T.I.M.E. and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nicholas/Richardson/Byron/Rumph
Label: Zonophone (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
After the demise of the Canadian band Sparrow, bassist Nick St. Nicholas gravitated to San Francisco, where he met up with former members of the San Diego-based Hard Times to form T.I.M.E. (Trust In Men Everywhere). The band recorded two albums for Liberty, the first of which opens with the track Tripping Into Sunshine. After the group's demise St. Nicholas rejoined his former Sparrow bandmates in their new band Steppenwolf. He was eventually joined by guitarist Larry Byrom.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Visions Of Your Reality
Source: Mono LP: Behold And See
Writer: Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
The second Ultimate Spinach LP continued in the same musical vein as the Boston group's debut album. Much of this is due to the fact that all the material on both albums was written by keyboardist Ian Bruce-Douglas, who would leave the band after the release of Behold And See in 1968. A solid, if unspectacular, example of the band at that point is the track Visions Of Your Reality. The group would continue in name only after Bruce-Douglas's departure, and there is even a band somewhere in the Pacific Northwest today calling itself Ultimate Spinach, but none of these sound anything like the original group.
Artist: Sagittarius
Title: Keeper Of The Games (demo version)
Source: CD: Present Tense
Writer(s): Curt Boettcher
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1968
Curt Boettcher is one of the unsung geniuses of the psychedelic era. His first major success as a producer was the first Association album, including the song Along Comes Mary, which he reportedly co-wrote (although Tandyn Almer took sole credit for the song, causing a permanent rift between the two). It was around this time that he first came to the attention of Columbia Records staff producer Gary Usher and his friend, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. Both were impressed by the talent and creativity of Boettcher, so much so that Usher helped Boettcher get a job at Columbia the following year. By then, Boettcher was working on his own project, the Ballroom, for a company called Our Productions. One of the conditions that Our Productions set for Columbia to buy out Boettcher's contract was that the larger company would also buy all the Ballroom masters. As a result, some of those masters ended up as part of the debut Sagittarius album, Present Tense, which Boettcher co-produced with Usher.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Outside Was Night
Source: LP: Blues Image
Writer(s): Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
There are striking similarities between the Hour Glass of Los Angeles and Miami's Blues Image. Both were club bands that visiting musicians would go out of their way to catch when they were in town, often sticking around for a bit of after hours jamming. Both bands featured guitarists (Duane Allman and Mike Pinera) who would go on to greater fame with other bands. And both bands, for whatever reasons, were never able to generate the same kind of excitement in the studio that they did when they played live. Unlike the Hour Glass, however, Blues Image managed to at least play the same style of music in the studio as they did in their club sets; Outside Was Night, from their debut LP, is a good example of this.
Artist: Santana
Title: Incident At Neshabur
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer(s): Gianquito/Santana
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Incident At Neshabur is one of many instrumental tracks on the second Santana album, Abraxas. In fact, among rock's elite, Carlos Santana is unique in that nearly half of his entire recorded output is instrumentals. This is in large part because, with the exception of an occassional backup vocal, Santana never sings on his records. Then again, with as much talent as he has as a guitarist, he really doesn't need to.
Artist: Sound Barrier
Title: (My) Baby's Gone
Source: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Paul Hess
Label: BFD (original label: Zounds)
Year: 1967
A couple weeks after playing (My) Baby's Gone for the first time, I got an e-mail from Paul Hess, leader and lead vocalist of Salem, Ohio's Sound Barrier. Hess confirmed that he indeed was the writer of the song in question, as well as the record's B side (which I'm still waiting for him to send me a copy of).
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pons/Rinehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1965
The Leaves are a bit unusual in that in a city known for drawing wannabes from across the world, this local band's members were all native L.A.ins. Formed by members of a fraternity at Cal State Northridge, the Leaves had their greatest success when they took over as house band at Ciro's after the Byrds vacated the slot to go on tour. Like many bands of the time, they were given a song to record as a single by their producer (Love Minus Zero) and allowed to write their own B side. In this case that B side was Too Many People, written by bassist Jim Pons and guitarist Bill Rhinehart. The song ended up getting more airplay on local radio stations than Love Minus Zero, making it their first regional hit. The Leaves had their only national hit the following year with their third attempt at recording the fast version of Hey Joe, the success of which led to their first LP, which included a watered down version of Too Many People. The version heard here is the 1965 original. Eventually Pons would leave the Leaves, hooking up first with the Turtles, then Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Angel
Source: CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released on LP: The Cry Of Love)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1970
Shortly after the untimely death of Jimi Hendrix in September of 1970, Reprise released the first of many posthumous Hendrix albums, The Cry Of Love. Like millions of other Hendrix fans, I immediately went out and bought a copy. I have to say that there are very few songs that have ever brought tears to my eyes, and even fewer that did so on my very first time hearing them. Of these, Angel tops the list.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Until the release of Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience the emphasis in rock music (then called pop) was on the 45 RPM single, with albums seen as a luxury item that supplemented an artist's career rather than defined it. Are You Experience helped change all that. The album was not only highly influential, it was a major seller, despite getting virtually no airplay on top 40 radio. The grand finale of the LP was the title track, which features an array of studio effects, including backwards masking and tape loops. Interestingly enough, the album was originally issued only in a mono version in the UK, with European pressings using a simulated stereo mix. After Reprise bought the rights to release the LP in the US it hired its own engineers to create stereo mixes of the songs from the four-track master tapes.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Purple Haze
Source: CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Are You Experienced?)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Following up on the success of their first UK single, Hey Joe, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released Purple Haze in early 1967. The popularity of the two singles (released only in Europe) led to a deal with Reprise Records to start issuing the band's material in the US. By then, however, the Experience had already released Are You Experienced without either of the two hit singles on it. Reprise, hedging their bets, included both singles (but not their B sides), as well as a third UK single, The Wind Cries Mary, deleting several tracks from the original version of Are You Experienced to make room for them.
Artist: Savoy Brown
Title: Take It Easy
Source: Looking In
Writer(s): Simmonds/Peverett
Label: Deram (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1970
In mid-1970 lead vocalist Chris Youlden and the rest of Savoy Brown parted company, leaving Dave Peverett to double up as vocalist and guitarist for the band. The remaining four members (Peverett, bassist Tone Stevens, drummer Roger Earl and guitarist/founder Kim Simmonds) immediately went to work on what would be Savoy Brown's sixth LP. Looking In, when released, ended up being the most successful album in the band's entire run, and the only one to make the British charts (Savoy Brown had always done better with US audiences than in their native UK). Among the many listenable tunes on Looking In is Take It Easy, written by Peverett and Simmonds. Unfortunately, this particular Savoy Brown lineup was not to last, as Simmonds summarily dismissed the rest of the group shortly after Looking In was released, citing musical differences. Simmonds set about putting together a new lineup, while the other three erstwhile members formed their own band, Foghat, a band that would ironically have far more commercial success than Savoy Brown ever achieved.
Artist: Them
Title: Baby, Please Don't Go
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Backtrackin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Joe Williams
Label: London (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1965
Belfast, Northern Ireland was home to one of the first bands that could be legitimately described as punk rock. Led by Van Morrison, Them quickly got a reputation for being rude and obnoxious, particularly to members of the English press (although it was actually a fellow Irishman who labeled them as "boorish"). Their first single was what has come to be considered the definitive version of the 1923 Joe Williams tune Baby, Please Don't Go. Despite its UK success, the song did not appear on any of the band's original US albums. Finally, in 1974, London Records included Baby, Please Don't Go on a collection of UK singles and album tracks that had not been previously released in the US. Oddly enough, the song's B side ended up being the song most people associate with Them: the classic Gloria, which was released as Them's US debut single in 1965 but promptly found itself banned on most US radio stations due to suggestive lyrics. Them's recording of Baby, Please Don't Go enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s when it was used in the hit movie Good Morning Vietnam.
Artist: Amboy Dukes
Title: Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind)
Writer(s): Nugent/Farmer
Label: Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year: 1968
The title track of the second Amboy Dukes album, Journey To The Center Of The Mind, is by far their best known recording, going all the way to the #16 spot on the top 40 in 1968. The song features the lead guitar work of Ted Nugent, who co-wrote the song with guitarist/vocalist Steve Farmer. Journey To The Center Of The Mind would be the last album to feature lead vocalist John Drake, who left the band for creative reasons shortly after the album's release.
Artist: Who
Title: Melancholia
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1968
One of the most psychedelic pieces ever recorded by the Who remained in the vaults until the early 1990s, when it was included in the box set 30 Years Of Maximum R&B. Melancholia, recorded in 1968, was also included as a bonus track on the CD version of The Who Sell Out, despite the fact that it was recorded three months after the original album's release in December of 1967. This version includes one of the Who's many radio commercials intended for use on the original LP but left off when it was decided that side two of the album, unlike side one, would be nearly commercial free. This particular one, for Coca-Cola, could conceivably been recorded as a real commercial by the band (such as their spot for roto-sound strings on side one), but at this point it's difficult to know exactly what the band's intentions were.
Artist: Rationals
Title: I Need You
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Rhino (original label: A Squared)
Year: 1968
The Rationals were formed in 1965 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They soon got the attention of local label A2 (A Squared), and had a series of regional hits in the same Detroit soul-rock style favored by such notables as Mitch Ryder and Bob Seger. One of the best of these was a cover of a Kinks B side, I Need You, which the Rationals released in 1968.
Artist: Turtles
Title: She's My Girl
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bonner/Gordon
Label: Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1967
After a moderate amount of success in 1965 with a series of singles starting with a cover of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles found themselves running out of steam by the end of 1966. Rather than throw in the towel, they enlisted the services of the Bonner/Gordon songwriting team and recorded their most successful single, Happy Together, in 1967. They dipped into the same well for another major hit, She's My Girl, later the same year.
Artist: Small Faces
Title: Itchycoo Park
Source: CD: Ogden's Nut Gone Flake
Writer(s): Marriott/Lane
Label: Charly (original label: Immediate)
Year: 1967
Although it seemed for a while in the mid-60s that anything recorded in Britain was a guaranteed hit in the US, a surprising number of top British bands found little or no success on the other side of the Atlantic. Among those was the Small Faces, who had a dozen charted singles in the UK from 1965-1969, including seven top 10 singles. Despite this obvious commercial potential, the band was only able to chart one top 40 hit in the US, Itchycoo Park, which topped out at #16 in the summer of 1967 (it went to #3 in the UK). After the band split up, three of the members hooked up with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood of the Jeff Beck Band to form a new Faces (without the Small), and had considerable success on both sides of the water in the early 1970s.
Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Title: You Keep Me Hangin' On
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Holland/Dozier/Holland
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
The Vanilla Fudge version of You Keep Me Hangin' On was originally recorded and released in 1967, not too long after the Supremes version of the song finished its own run on the charts. It wasn't until the following year, however, the the Vanilla Fudge recording caught on with radio listeners, turning it into the band's only top 40 hit. Although progressive FM stations often played the longer LP version, it was the mono single edit heard here that was most familiar to listeners of top 40 radio.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: A Whiter Shade Of Pale (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: Procol Harum
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Salvo (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 song itself holds the distinction of being the most-played song on the British airwaves of the past 70 years. A Whiter Shade Of Pale was first released in both the UK and the US as a single. As was the custom at the time, the band's UK debut album did not include the song. For a variety of reasons, the album's release ended up being delayed by several months. Meanwhile, Deram Records issued an American version of the LP that included A Whiter Shade Of Pale. This may be the only known case of a British band's first album being released earlier in the US than in their own country.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: Desiree
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brown/Feher
Label: Rhino (original label: Smash)
Year: 1967
For a while it looked as if the Left Banke would emerge as one of the most important bands of the late 60s. They certainly got off to a good start, with back-to-back top 10 singles Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina. But then bandleader Michael Brown and Smash Records made a serious misstep, issuing a Brown solo effort called Ivy Ivy utilizing studio musicians and trying to pass it off as a Left Banke record. The other band members refused to go along with the charade and sent out letters to their fan club membership denouncing the single. The outraged fans, in turn, threatened to boycott any radio stations that played Ivy Ivy. Brown and the rest of the band, meanwhile, managed to patch things up enough to record a new single, Desiree, and released the song in late 1967. By then, however, radio stations were leary of playing anything with the words Left Banke on the label, and the song failed to chart, despite being an outstanding record. Brown left the Left Banke soon after.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Don't Let Me Down
Source: CD: Past Masters-vol. 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1969
One can get a good feel for the Beatles story simply by looking at the films they made. Their first, A Hard Day's Night, was a black and white movie that captured the group at a time that they had the world eating out of their collective hands. Their next film, Help!, was a bit more sophisticated, being both in color and in possession of an actual plot, albeit it a rather silly one. After some short promotional films that were a bit more experimental in nature (Strawberry Fields Forever, for example), they made a telefilm called Magical Mystery Tour in 1967. It was the band's first commercial failure. Their final project was another feature-length movie, but rather than a romp through fictional settings it was meant to be a documentary about the band's recording process. The film ended up documenting something else entirely: a band on the verge of a rather acrimonious breakup. Despite the internal conflicts, the group managed to record some strong tracks such as Don't Let Me Down, which was released as the B side of their first single of 1969, Get Back (both of which included Billy Preston on keyboards). Alternate versions of both songs were included on the final official Beatle album, Let It Be, the following year.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Street Fighting Man
Source: LP: Through The Past, Darkly (originally released on 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: Otis Redding
Title: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Source: Historic Performances Recorded At The Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Otis Redding, who set out in 1964 to fill the shoes of the late Sam Cooke, was just beginning to get noticed by mainstream audiences when he made a show-stopping appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. With a band that featured the famous Memphis Group of Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Al Jackson, Jr., along with Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love of the Bar-Kays, Redding closed out the second night of the festival to an enthusiastic crowd, despite a steady rain. The set was cut short by a pre-arranged curfew, but not before Redding knocked 'em dead with tunes like Respect, Try A Little Tenderness and his high-energy rendition of the Rolling Stones' classic Satisfaction.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: She Has Funny Cars
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Kaukonen/Balin
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
The opening track on the second Jefferson Airplane was She Has Funny Cars, written by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and vocalist/bandleader Marty Balin. The title (which is nowhere to be found in the lyrics), refers to the unusual collecting habits of drummer Spencer Dryden's girlfriend.
Artist: Doors
Title: The End
Source: CD: 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.
Title: Please Love Me
Source: LP: Live Wire/Blues Power
Writer(s): King/Taub
Label: Stax
Year: 1968
When the name Fillmore comes up in discussions of famous rock venues, most people are aware that there was a Fillmore East (in New York) and a Fillmore West (in San Francisco). What is often overlooked, however, is the fact that there was actually a third Fillmore Auditorium that predated the other two. Promoter Bill Graham's original Fillmore Auditorium was a relatively small place that was perfectly suited to the needs of the Bay Area music scene of 1966, which was at that time a strictly local affair. By 1968, however, several of the city's bands had become internationally famous and other venues such as the Carousel Ballroom (operated by a consortium of local musicians) were drawing larger crowds than the Fillmore could handle. Graham responded by taking over the Carousel in July of 1968 and renaming the place the Fillmore West, closing out his original auditorium at the corner of Fillmore Street and Geary Blvd. One of the last events at the original Fillmore was a blues concert headlined by a Albert King, who, despite having been active since the early 1950s, had only two LPs to his credit by 1968. The concert, featuring such crowd pleasers as Please Love Me (a B.B. King cover), was recorded and released later that year as King's first live LP.
Artist: Cream
Title: Those Were The Days
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Baker/Taylor
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Drummer Ginger Baker only contributed a handful of songs to the Cream repertoire, but each was, in its own way, quite memorable. Those Are The Days, with its sudden changes of time and key, presages the progressive rock that would flourish in the mid-1970s. As was often the case with Baker-penned songs, bassist Jack Bruce provides the vocals from this Wheels Of Fire track.
Artist: T.I.M.E.
Title: Tripping Into Sunshine
Source: CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released on LP: T.I.M.E. and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nicholas/Richardson/Byron/Rumph
Label: Zonophone (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
After the demise of the Canadian band Sparrow, bassist Nick St. Nicholas gravitated to San Francisco, where he met up with former members of the San Diego-based Hard Times to form T.I.M.E. (Trust In Men Everywhere). The band recorded two albums for Liberty, the first of which opens with the track Tripping Into Sunshine. After the group's demise St. Nicholas rejoined his former Sparrow bandmates in their new band Steppenwolf. He was eventually joined by guitarist Larry Byrom.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Visions Of Your Reality
Source: Mono LP: Behold And See
Writer: Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
The second Ultimate Spinach LP continued in the same musical vein as the Boston group's debut album. Much of this is due to the fact that all the material on both albums was written by keyboardist Ian Bruce-Douglas, who would leave the band after the release of Behold And See in 1968. A solid, if unspectacular, example of the band at that point is the track Visions Of Your Reality. The group would continue in name only after Bruce-Douglas's departure, and there is even a band somewhere in the Pacific Northwest today calling itself Ultimate Spinach, but none of these sound anything like the original group.
Artist: Sagittarius
Title: Keeper Of The Games (demo version)
Source: CD: Present Tense
Writer(s): Curt Boettcher
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1968
Curt Boettcher is one of the unsung geniuses of the psychedelic era. His first major success as a producer was the first Association album, including the song Along Comes Mary, which he reportedly co-wrote (although Tandyn Almer took sole credit for the song, causing a permanent rift between the two). It was around this time that he first came to the attention of Columbia Records staff producer Gary Usher and his friend, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. Both were impressed by the talent and creativity of Boettcher, so much so that Usher helped Boettcher get a job at Columbia the following year. By then, Boettcher was working on his own project, the Ballroom, for a company called Our Productions. One of the conditions that Our Productions set for Columbia to buy out Boettcher's contract was that the larger company would also buy all the Ballroom masters. As a result, some of those masters ended up as part of the debut Sagittarius album, Present Tense, which Boettcher co-produced with Usher.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Outside Was Night
Source: LP: Blues Image
Writer(s): Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
There are striking similarities between the Hour Glass of Los Angeles and Miami's Blues Image. Both were club bands that visiting musicians would go out of their way to catch when they were in town, often sticking around for a bit of after hours jamming. Both bands featured guitarists (Duane Allman and Mike Pinera) who would go on to greater fame with other bands. And both bands, for whatever reasons, were never able to generate the same kind of excitement in the studio that they did when they played live. Unlike the Hour Glass, however, Blues Image managed to at least play the same style of music in the studio as they did in their club sets; Outside Was Night, from their debut LP, is a good example of this.
Artist: Santana
Title: Incident At Neshabur
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer(s): Gianquito/Santana
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Incident At Neshabur is one of many instrumental tracks on the second Santana album, Abraxas. In fact, among rock's elite, Carlos Santana is unique in that nearly half of his entire recorded output is instrumentals. This is in large part because, with the exception of an occassional backup vocal, Santana never sings on his records. Then again, with as much talent as he has as a guitarist, he really doesn't need to.
Artist: Sound Barrier
Title: (My) Baby's Gone
Source: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Paul Hess
Label: BFD (original label: Zounds)
Year: 1967
A couple weeks after playing (My) Baby's Gone for the first time, I got an e-mail from Paul Hess, leader and lead vocalist of Salem, Ohio's Sound Barrier. Hess confirmed that he indeed was the writer of the song in question, as well as the record's B side (which I'm still waiting for him to send me a copy of).
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pons/Rinehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1965
The Leaves are a bit unusual in that in a city known for drawing wannabes from across the world, this local band's members were all native L.A.ins. Formed by members of a fraternity at Cal State Northridge, the Leaves had their greatest success when they took over as house band at Ciro's after the Byrds vacated the slot to go on tour. Like many bands of the time, they were given a song to record as a single by their producer (Love Minus Zero) and allowed to write their own B side. In this case that B side was Too Many People, written by bassist Jim Pons and guitarist Bill Rhinehart. The song ended up getting more airplay on local radio stations than Love Minus Zero, making it their first regional hit. The Leaves had their only national hit the following year with their third attempt at recording the fast version of Hey Joe, the success of which led to their first LP, which included a watered down version of Too Many People. The version heard here is the 1965 original. Eventually Pons would leave the Leaves, hooking up first with the Turtles, then Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Angel
Source: CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released on LP: The Cry Of Love)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1970
Shortly after the untimely death of Jimi Hendrix in September of 1970, Reprise released the first of many posthumous Hendrix albums, The Cry Of Love. Like millions of other Hendrix fans, I immediately went out and bought a copy. I have to say that there are very few songs that have ever brought tears to my eyes, and even fewer that did so on my very first time hearing them. Of these, Angel tops the list.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Until the release of Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience the emphasis in rock music (then called pop) was on the 45 RPM single, with albums seen as a luxury item that supplemented an artist's career rather than defined it. Are You Experience helped change all that. The album was not only highly influential, it was a major seller, despite getting virtually no airplay on top 40 radio. The grand finale of the LP was the title track, which features an array of studio effects, including backwards masking and tape loops. Interestingly enough, the album was originally issued only in a mono version in the UK, with European pressings using a simulated stereo mix. After Reprise bought the rights to release the LP in the US it hired its own engineers to create stereo mixes of the songs from the four-track master tapes.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Purple Haze
Source: CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Are You Experienced?)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Following up on the success of their first UK single, Hey Joe, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released Purple Haze in early 1967. The popularity of the two singles (released only in Europe) led to a deal with Reprise Records to start issuing the band's material in the US. By then, however, the Experience had already released Are You Experienced without either of the two hit singles on it. Reprise, hedging their bets, included both singles (but not their B sides), as well as a third UK single, The Wind Cries Mary, deleting several tracks from the original version of Are You Experienced to make room for them.
Artist: Savoy Brown
Title: Take It Easy
Source: Looking In
Writer(s): Simmonds/Peverett
Label: Deram (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1970
In mid-1970 lead vocalist Chris Youlden and the rest of Savoy Brown parted company, leaving Dave Peverett to double up as vocalist and guitarist for the band. The remaining four members (Peverett, bassist Tone Stevens, drummer Roger Earl and guitarist/founder Kim Simmonds) immediately went to work on what would be Savoy Brown's sixth LP. Looking In, when released, ended up being the most successful album in the band's entire run, and the only one to make the British charts (Savoy Brown had always done better with US audiences than in their native UK). Among the many listenable tunes on Looking In is Take It Easy, written by Peverett and Simmonds. Unfortunately, this particular Savoy Brown lineup was not to last, as Simmonds summarily dismissed the rest of the group shortly after Looking In was released, citing musical differences. Simmonds set about putting together a new lineup, while the other three erstwhile members formed their own band, Foghat, a band that would ironically have far more commercial success than Savoy Brown ever achieved.
Artist: Them
Title: Baby, Please Don't Go
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Backtrackin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Joe Williams
Label: London (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1965
Belfast, Northern Ireland was home to one of the first bands that could be legitimately described as punk rock. Led by Van Morrison, Them quickly got a reputation for being rude and obnoxious, particularly to members of the English press (although it was actually a fellow Irishman who labeled them as "boorish"). Their first single was what has come to be considered the definitive version of the 1923 Joe Williams tune Baby, Please Don't Go. Despite its UK success, the song did not appear on any of the band's original US albums. Finally, in 1974, London Records included Baby, Please Don't Go on a collection of UK singles and album tracks that had not been previously released in the US. Oddly enough, the song's B side ended up being the song most people associate with Them: the classic Gloria, which was released as Them's US debut single in 1965 but promptly found itself banned on most US radio stations due to suggestive lyrics. Them's recording of Baby, Please Don't Go enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s when it was used in the hit movie Good Morning Vietnam.
Artist: Amboy Dukes
Title: Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind)
Writer(s): Nugent/Farmer
Label: Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year: 1968
The title track of the second Amboy Dukes album, Journey To The Center Of The Mind, is by far their best known recording, going all the way to the #16 spot on the top 40 in 1968. The song features the lead guitar work of Ted Nugent, who co-wrote the song with guitarist/vocalist Steve Farmer. Journey To The Center Of The Mind would be the last album to feature lead vocalist John Drake, who left the band for creative reasons shortly after the album's release.
Artist: Who
Title: Melancholia
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1968
One of the most psychedelic pieces ever recorded by the Who remained in the vaults until the early 1990s, when it was included in the box set 30 Years Of Maximum R&B. Melancholia, recorded in 1968, was also included as a bonus track on the CD version of The Who Sell Out, despite the fact that it was recorded three months after the original album's release in December of 1967. This version includes one of the Who's many radio commercials intended for use on the original LP but left off when it was decided that side two of the album, unlike side one, would be nearly commercial free. This particular one, for Coca-Cola, could conceivably been recorded as a real commercial by the band (such as their spot for roto-sound strings on side one), but at this point it's difficult to know exactly what the band's intentions were.
Artist: Rationals
Title: I Need You
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Rhino (original label: A Squared)
Year: 1968
The Rationals were formed in 1965 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They soon got the attention of local label A2 (A Squared), and had a series of regional hits in the same Detroit soul-rock style favored by such notables as Mitch Ryder and Bob Seger. One of the best of these was a cover of a Kinks B side, I Need You, which the Rationals released in 1968.
Artist: Turtles
Title: She's My Girl
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bonner/Gordon
Label: Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1967
After a moderate amount of success in 1965 with a series of singles starting with a cover of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles found themselves running out of steam by the end of 1966. Rather than throw in the towel, they enlisted the services of the Bonner/Gordon songwriting team and recorded their most successful single, Happy Together, in 1967. They dipped into the same well for another major hit, She's My Girl, later the same year.
Artist: Small Faces
Title: Itchycoo Park
Source: CD: Ogden's Nut Gone Flake
Writer(s): Marriott/Lane
Label: Charly (original label: Immediate)
Year: 1967
Although it seemed for a while in the mid-60s that anything recorded in Britain was a guaranteed hit in the US, a surprising number of top British bands found little or no success on the other side of the Atlantic. Among those was the Small Faces, who had a dozen charted singles in the UK from 1965-1969, including seven top 10 singles. Despite this obvious commercial potential, the band was only able to chart one top 40 hit in the US, Itchycoo Park, which topped out at #16 in the summer of 1967 (it went to #3 in the UK). After the band split up, three of the members hooked up with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood of the Jeff Beck Band to form a new Faces (without the Small), and had considerable success on both sides of the water in the early 1970s.
Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Title: You Keep Me Hangin' On
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Holland/Dozier/Holland
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
The Vanilla Fudge version of You Keep Me Hangin' On was originally recorded and released in 1967, not too long after the Supremes version of the song finished its own run on the charts. It wasn't until the following year, however, the the Vanilla Fudge recording caught on with radio listeners, turning it into the band's only top 40 hit. Although progressive FM stations often played the longer LP version, it was the mono single edit heard here that was most familiar to listeners of top 40 radio.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: A Whiter Shade Of Pale (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: Procol Harum
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Salvo (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 song itself holds the distinction of being the most-played song on the British airwaves of the past 70 years. A Whiter Shade Of Pale was first released in both the UK and the US as a single. As was the custom at the time, the band's UK debut album did not include the song. For a variety of reasons, the album's release ended up being delayed by several months. Meanwhile, Deram Records issued an American version of the LP that included A Whiter Shade Of Pale. This may be the only known case of a British band's first album being released earlier in the US than in their own country.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: Desiree
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brown/Feher
Label: Rhino (original label: Smash)
Year: 1967
For a while it looked as if the Left Banke would emerge as one of the most important bands of the late 60s. They certainly got off to a good start, with back-to-back top 10 singles Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina. But then bandleader Michael Brown and Smash Records made a serious misstep, issuing a Brown solo effort called Ivy Ivy utilizing studio musicians and trying to pass it off as a Left Banke record. The other band members refused to go along with the charade and sent out letters to their fan club membership denouncing the single. The outraged fans, in turn, threatened to boycott any radio stations that played Ivy Ivy. Brown and the rest of the band, meanwhile, managed to patch things up enough to record a new single, Desiree, and released the song in late 1967. By then, however, radio stations were leary of playing anything with the words Left Banke on the label, and the song failed to chart, despite being an outstanding record. Brown left the Left Banke soon after.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Don't Let Me Down
Source: CD: Past Masters-vol. 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1969
One can get a good feel for the Beatles story simply by looking at the films they made. Their first, A Hard Day's Night, was a black and white movie that captured the group at a time that they had the world eating out of their collective hands. Their next film, Help!, was a bit more sophisticated, being both in color and in possession of an actual plot, albeit it a rather silly one. After some short promotional films that were a bit more experimental in nature (Strawberry Fields Forever, for example), they made a telefilm called Magical Mystery Tour in 1967. It was the band's first commercial failure. Their final project was another feature-length movie, but rather than a romp through fictional settings it was meant to be a documentary about the band's recording process. The film ended up documenting something else entirely: a band on the verge of a rather acrimonious breakup. Despite the internal conflicts, the group managed to record some strong tracks such as Don't Let Me Down, which was released as the B side of their first single of 1969, Get Back (both of which included Billy Preston on keyboards). Alternate versions of both songs were included on the final official Beatle album, Let It Be, the following year.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Street Fighting Man
Source: LP: Through The Past, Darkly (originally released on 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: Otis Redding
Title: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Source: Historic Performances Recorded At The Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Otis Redding, who set out in 1964 to fill the shoes of the late Sam Cooke, was just beginning to get noticed by mainstream audiences when he made a show-stopping appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. With a band that featured the famous Memphis Group of Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Al Jackson, Jr., along with Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love of the Bar-Kays, Redding closed out the second night of the festival to an enthusiastic crowd, despite a steady rain. The set was cut short by a pre-arranged curfew, but not before Redding knocked 'em dead with tunes like Respect, Try A Little Tenderness and his high-energy rendition of the Rolling Stones' classic Satisfaction.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: She Has Funny Cars
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Kaukonen/Balin
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
The opening track on the second Jefferson Airplane was She Has Funny Cars, written by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and vocalist/bandleader Marty Balin. The title (which is nowhere to be found in the lyrics), refers to the unusual collecting habits of drummer Spencer Dryden's girlfriend.
Artist: Doors
Title: The End
Source: CD: 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.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1245 (starts 11/8/12)
There have always been sets of songs on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era that I refer to as "progressions through the years." Generally there are three or four of these types of sets each week, mixed with other types of sets such as artist sets or groups of songs from a particular year. This week, however, every single set is a progression through the years.
Artist: Castaways
Title: Liar Liar
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Donna/Craswell
Label: Rhino (original label: Soma)
Year: 1965
The Castaways were a popular local band in the Minneapolis area led by keyboardist James Donna, who, for less than two minutes at a time, dominated the national airwaves with their song Liar Liar for a couple months before fading off into obscurity.
Artist: Mouse And The Traps
Title: Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Henderson/Weiss
Label: Rhino (original label: Fraternity)
Year: 1966
Mouse (Ronnie Weiss) was, for a time, the most popular guy in Tyler, Texas, at least among the local youth. His band, Mouse and the traps, had a series of regional hits that garnered airplay at stations all across the state (and a rather large state at that). Although Mouse's first big hit, A Public Execution, had a strong Dylan feel to it, subsequent releases, such as the 1966 single Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice, were pure garage-rock.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Foxy Lady
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The first track on the original UK release of Are You Experienced was Foxy Lady. The British custom of the time was to not include any songs on albums that had been previously released as singles. When Reprise Records got the rights to release the album in the US, it was decided to include three songs that had all been top 40 hits in the UK. One of those songs, Purple Haze, took over the opening spot on the album, and Foxy Lady was moved to the middle of side 2.
Artist: Bob Seger System
Title: 2+2=?
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Seger
Label: Capitol
Year: 1968
Bob Seger had a series of regional hits in his native Detroit in the mid-1960s, leading to a deal with Capitol Records in 1968. The first single for Capitol was 2+2=?, a powerful anti-Vietnam War tune that was later included on his first LP for the label. The mono single version of the song heard here has a guitar chord near the end of the track that was not on the original recording (on which the song simply stops cold for a second). It was inserted because, according to Seger, radio stations were "afraid of dead air".
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Emmeretta
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Purple Passages (originally released on LP: Deep Purple)
Writer(s): Lord/Blackmore/Evans
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1969
The original Deep Purple lineup, which included vocalist Rod Evans, recorded three albums that were released in the US on the Tetragrammaton label. Unfortunately, the label went out of business within days of the last of these three, and album entitled simply Deep Purple. After the band hit the big time in the early 70s with a new vocalist their new label, Warner Brothers, decided to issue a compilation of their earlier material with Evans. Included on the double LP Purple Passages was nearly the entire Deep Purple album, including Emmeretta, a song that shows a heavy Jimi Hendrix influence.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pons/Rinehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1965
The Leaves scored their first Los Angeles regional hit with the song Too Many People, released on the Mira label in 1965. When a later single, Hey Joe, became a national hit, the band re-recorded Too Many People for their debut album, released in 1966. Although the newer recording is cleaner (and in stereo), it lacks the raw garage-rock energy of the original
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: In The Morning
Source: LP: Early Flight
Writer(s): Jorma Kaukonen
Label: Grunt
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1974
One of the earliest and best collections of previously released material from a major rock band was the Jefferson Airplane's Early Flight LP, released in 1974. Among the rarities on the LP is In The Morning, and blues jam with Jorma Kaukonen on vocals and lead guitar that runs over six minutes long. The length itself precluded the track being included on the band's debut LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, despite the obvious quality of the performance. The song has since been included as a bonus track on the CD version of JATO.
Artist: Love
Title: Old Man
Source: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Forever Changes)
Writer(s): Bryan MacLean
Label: Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
An often overlooked fact about the L.A. band Love is that they had not one, but two quality singer/songwriters in the group. Although Arthur Lee wrote the bulk of the band's material, it was Bryan McLean who wrote and sang one of the group's best-known songs, the haunting Alone Again Or, which opens their classic Forever Changes album. A second McLean song, Old Man, was actually one of the first tracks recorded for Forever Changes. At the time, the band's rhythm section was more into sex and drugs than rock and roll, and McLean and Lee arranged to have studio musicians play on Old Man, as well as on one of Lee's songs. The rest of the group was so stunned by this development that they were able to temporarily get their act together long enough to complete the album. Nonetheless, the two tunes with studio musicians were left as is, although reportedly Ken Forssi did step in to show Carol Kaye how the bass part should be played (ironic, since Kaye is estimated to have played on over 10,000 recordings in her long career as a studio musician).
Artist: Seeds
Title: Rollin' Machine
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
Is there anyone out there that really thinks this is a song about a car? I thought not.
Artist: Charlatans
Title: Alabama Bound
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70
Writer: trad., arr. The Charlatans
Label: Rhino (original label: Ace/Big Beat)
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1996
Despite being one of the most important bands on the San Francisco scene, the Charlatans did not have much luck in the recording studio. Their first sessions were aborted, the planned LP for Kama Sutra was shelved by the label itself, and the band was overruled in their choice of songs to be released on their first (and only) single issued from the Kama Sutra sessions. In 1967, however, they did manage to get some decent tracks recorded. Unfortunately, those tracks were not released until 1996, and then only in the UK. The centerpiece of the 1967 sessions was this six-and-a-half minute recording of a traditional tune that is considered by many to be the Charlatans' signature song: Alabama Bound.
Artist: Fraternity Of Man
Title: Don't Bogart Me
Source: CD: Easy Rider Soundtrack (originally released on LP: Fraternity Of Man)
Writer(s): Fraternity Of Man
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
In the late 60s there was a certain disconnect between rock musicians and their audience on the subject of country music. Whereas the youth culture of the time associated it with rednecks and conservative attitudes, their musical heroes often held the country music tradition in high regard. One of the first songs to bridge the gap was Don't Bogart Me from the Fraternity Of Man. The band itself was made up of former members of the Factory, a popular L.A. club band led by Lowell George, and the Mothers of Invention, led by Frank Zappa. Although the band's 1968 LP remains somewhat obscure, Don't Bogart Me itself was made famous by its inclusion in the 1969 movie Easy Rider.
Artist: Doors
Title: Easy Ride
Source: CD: The Soft Parade
Writer(s): Jim Morrison
Label: Elektra
Year: 1969
Speaking of Easy Rides, we have this unusual tune from the fourth Doors album, The Soft Parade. The album was a bit of a departure for the Doors for several reasons, not the least of which was that for the first time individual members rather than the group were given songwriting credit. The album was more experimental in nature than any other Doors album as well, as Jim Morrison's Easy Ride amply demonstrates.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Richard Cory
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
My ultra-cool 9th-grade English teacher brought in a copy of Simon And Garfunkel's Sounds Of Silence album one day. As a class, we deconstructed the lyrics of two of the songs on that album: A Most Peculiar Man and Richard Cory. Both songs deal with suicide, but under vastly different circumstances. Whereas A Most Peculiar Man is about a lonely man who lives an isolated existence as an anonymouse resident of a boarding house, Richard Cory deals with a character who is at the center of society, known and envied by many. Too bad most high school English classes weren't that interesting.
Artist: Richie Havens
Title: Adam
Source: LP: Mixed Bag
Writer(s): Richie Havens
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1967
Richie Havens is probably best known as the man who heroically took the stage for nearly three hours to get the Woodstock Performing Arts Festival underway when circumstances threatened to delay the festival's opening. Havens' career, however, was much longer and more significant than just that one appearance. Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children. At age 20 he moved to Greenwich Village and became part of the beatnik movement, reading poetry in the various coffee houses. He also drew portraits and stayed up late listening to folk artists perform, eventually taking up the guitar himself. After a couple records on the independent Douglas label, Havens landed a contract with Verve Forecast and released his first LP, Mixed Bag, featuring songs like Adam, which Havens himself wrote. More LPs followed, and eventually Havens formed his own label, Stormy Forest. More recently Havens was awarded the American Eagle Award by the National Music Council for his achievements, including his role as an environmental educator/activist.
Artist: Them
Title: Black Widow Spider
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
After Van Morrison left Them for a solo career, the band headed back to Belfast, where they recruited vocalist Kenny McDowell. Them soon relocated permanently to the US west coast, where they landed a contract with Tower Records. After a first album that featured songs from a variety of sources, they hooked up with Sharon Pulley and Tom Lane, who wrote an album's worth of material for the band. That album was Time Out! Time In! For Them, an album that has stayed under the radar for over 40 years. I hope through this show to give this album the recognition it deserves as an undiscovered classic of the psychedelic era.
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title: Commotion
Source: CD: Chronicles (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Green River)
Writer(s): John Fogerty
Label: Fantasy
Year: 1969
Yes, I know Creedence Clearwater Revival is not what you would call a psychedelic band. Nonetheless, they made some of the best rock records of 1969, including Commotion, which was released as the B side to Green River. Personally I think it sounds pretty psychedelic. So there.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: All I Really Need Is You
Source: Mono LP: Midnight Ride
Writer(s): Lindsay/Revere
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Paul Revere And The Raiders have gotten a bad rap over the years, mostly for dressing funny. During the mid-60s, however, with the British Invasion in full swing, an American band needed every gimmick it could think of, and the Raiders simply took advantage of their band leader's birth name and did the obvious. What's often overlooked, however, is the fact that Paul Revere And The Raiders, co-led by Revere and vocalist/saxophonist Mark Lindsay, were one of the best bands of their time, and the first band from the Pacific Northwest to achieve continuous national chart success. The band members were prolific songwriters as well. In fact, of the twelve songs on their 1966 album Midnight Ride, ten were originals, including All I Really Need Is You, which leads off side two of the LP.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Smiling Phases
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released in UK as 45 RPM B side and in US on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind, aka Mr. Fantasy)
Writer(s): Capaldi/Wood/Winwood
Label: Island (original US label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
The standard practice in the UK during the 60s was to not include songs that had been released as singles on LPs. This left several songs, such as the 1967 B side Smiling Phases, only available on 45 RPM vinyl until the group's first greatest hits anthology was released. In the US the song was more widely circulated, having been included on the American version of Traffic's debut LP. Smiling Phases has since come to be recognized as one of Traffic's most iconic tunes, and has been covered by such bands as Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Artist: Nilsson
Title: Sister Marie
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): D. Morrow
Label: Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1968
Well-known as John Lennon's 1970s drinking buddy, singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson first came to prominence in 1969 with the song Everybody's Talking from the movie Midnight Cowboy (the film that brought stardom to actor Dustin Hoffman as well). Although Nilsson is best known as a songwriter (Lennon once called him America's greatest), the B side of his first single, Sister Marie, actually came from an outside source.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Source: CD: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Do I really need to say anything about Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? I didn't think so.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dreaming
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1966
Although Cream recorded several songs that bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce co-wrote with various lyricists (notably poet Pete Brown), there were relatively few that Bruce himself wrote words for. One of these is Dreaming, a song from the band's first LP that features both Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton on lead vocals.
Artist: Move
Title: (Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Roy Wood
Label: A&M
Year: 1967
The most successful British band of the psychedelic era not to have a US hit was the Move, a band that featured Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, among other notables. The band was already well established in the UK by 1967, when their single Flowers In The Rain was picked to be the first record played on the new BBC Radio One. The B side of that record was the equally-catchy (Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree. Both songs were written by Wood, although he only sang lead vocals on the B side.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Porpoise Song
Source: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic.
Artist: London Phogg
Title: The Times To Come
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Colley/Henderson
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1969
In a way it was a typical 60s dream come true. Local group (in this case the locality being Las Vegas) wins a battle of the bands, the prize being a trip to L.A. to record for a major record label (in this case Herb Alpert's A&M Records). Soon, though, the dream becomes a nightmare, as the band is not allowed to do much of anything on their one shot at fame. Studio musicians are brought in to play on a song written by professional songwriters and the record of course is a flop. The band returns home to Las Vegas, never to be heard from again. After this week you can be assured that this track won't be heard again on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era either.
Artist: Allman Brothers Band
Title: Don't Keep Me Wonderin'
Source: CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: Idlewild South)
Writer(s): Gregg Allman
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1970
It's hard to believe now, but it took a while for the Allman Brothers band to become popular outside of the southern US. It wasn't until their second LP, Idlewild South, that rock radio began to take notice of the band, which was at the time based in Macon, Georgia. The album title itself came from an inside joke that the band's house was so busy it was like Idlewild airport (the original name of what is now Kennedy International). Don't Keep Me Wonderin' is probably the most R&B sounding track the band ever recorded, and in a sense harkens back to Gregg Allman's previous band, the Hour Glass.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as EP)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Rhino (original label: Rag Baby)
Year: 1965
Joe McDonald was already making a name for himself in Berkeley in 1965 as the publisher of an early underground arts and politics-oriented newspaper/magazine known as Rag Baby. As a way of boosting circulation he came up with the idea of a musical insert. The first of these included a song that would later become one of the best-known antiwar tunes ever penned: the I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag. The actual makeup of the band called Country Joe And The Fish on this recording is not quite clear, other than the fact that both McDonald and Barry Melton played on it. An early video made of the group performing the song shows several people I don't recognize alternating on the vocals.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (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
The Music Machine was one of the most sophisticated bands to appear on the L.A. club scene in 1966, yet their only major hit, Talk Talk, was deceptively simple and straightforward punk-rock, and still holds up as two of the most intense minutes of rock music ever to crack the top 40 charts.
Artist: Velvet Underground
Title: There She Goes Again
Source: CD: The Velvet Underground And Nico
Writer(s): Lou Reed
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve)
Year: 1967
When the Velvet Underground first appeared, their fame was pretty much limited to the New York art crowd, of which their sponsor and primary financial backer Andy Warhol was a superstar in his own right. With talent like Lou Reed and John Cale in the band, however, the VU eventually attained legendary punk status of their own, albeit long after the band ceased to exist. One of the best tracks on the group's debut LP was There She Goes Again, a song that starts off sounding like the Rolling Stones' cover of Marvin Gaye's Hitch Hike, but soon moves into unexplored territory, especially in its subject matter (prostitution as a lifestyle choice).
Artist: Castaways
Title: Liar Liar
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Donna/Craswell
Label: Rhino (original label: Soma)
Year: 1965
The Castaways were a popular local band in the Minneapolis area led by keyboardist James Donna, who, for less than two minutes at a time, dominated the national airwaves with their song Liar Liar for a couple months before fading off into obscurity.
Artist: Mouse And The Traps
Title: Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Henderson/Weiss
Label: Rhino (original label: Fraternity)
Year: 1966
Mouse (Ronnie Weiss) was, for a time, the most popular guy in Tyler, Texas, at least among the local youth. His band, Mouse and the traps, had a series of regional hits that garnered airplay at stations all across the state (and a rather large state at that). Although Mouse's first big hit, A Public Execution, had a strong Dylan feel to it, subsequent releases, such as the 1966 single Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice, were pure garage-rock.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Foxy Lady
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The first track on the original UK release of Are You Experienced was Foxy Lady. The British custom of the time was to not include any songs on albums that had been previously released as singles. When Reprise Records got the rights to release the album in the US, it was decided to include three songs that had all been top 40 hits in the UK. One of those songs, Purple Haze, took over the opening spot on the album, and Foxy Lady was moved to the middle of side 2.
Artist: Bob Seger System
Title: 2+2=?
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Seger
Label: Capitol
Year: 1968
Bob Seger had a series of regional hits in his native Detroit in the mid-1960s, leading to a deal with Capitol Records in 1968. The first single for Capitol was 2+2=?, a powerful anti-Vietnam War tune that was later included on his first LP for the label. The mono single version of the song heard here has a guitar chord near the end of the track that was not on the original recording (on which the song simply stops cold for a second). It was inserted because, according to Seger, radio stations were "afraid of dead air".
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Emmeretta
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Purple Passages (originally released on LP: Deep Purple)
Writer(s): Lord/Blackmore/Evans
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1969
The original Deep Purple lineup, which included vocalist Rod Evans, recorded three albums that were released in the US on the Tetragrammaton label. Unfortunately, the label went out of business within days of the last of these three, and album entitled simply Deep Purple. After the band hit the big time in the early 70s with a new vocalist their new label, Warner Brothers, decided to issue a compilation of their earlier material with Evans. Included on the double LP Purple Passages was nearly the entire Deep Purple album, including Emmeretta, a song that shows a heavy Jimi Hendrix influence.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pons/Rinehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1965
The Leaves scored their first Los Angeles regional hit with the song Too Many People, released on the Mira label in 1965. When a later single, Hey Joe, became a national hit, the band re-recorded Too Many People for their debut album, released in 1966. Although the newer recording is cleaner (and in stereo), it lacks the raw garage-rock energy of the original
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: In The Morning
Source: LP: Early Flight
Writer(s): Jorma Kaukonen
Label: Grunt
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1974
One of the earliest and best collections of previously released material from a major rock band was the Jefferson Airplane's Early Flight LP, released in 1974. Among the rarities on the LP is In The Morning, and blues jam with Jorma Kaukonen on vocals and lead guitar that runs over six minutes long. The length itself precluded the track being included on the band's debut LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, despite the obvious quality of the performance. The song has since been included as a bonus track on the CD version of JATO.
Artist: Love
Title: Old Man
Source: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Forever Changes)
Writer(s): Bryan MacLean
Label: Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
An often overlooked fact about the L.A. band Love is that they had not one, but two quality singer/songwriters in the group. Although Arthur Lee wrote the bulk of the band's material, it was Bryan McLean who wrote and sang one of the group's best-known songs, the haunting Alone Again Or, which opens their classic Forever Changes album. A second McLean song, Old Man, was actually one of the first tracks recorded for Forever Changes. At the time, the band's rhythm section was more into sex and drugs than rock and roll, and McLean and Lee arranged to have studio musicians play on Old Man, as well as on one of Lee's songs. The rest of the group was so stunned by this development that they were able to temporarily get their act together long enough to complete the album. Nonetheless, the two tunes with studio musicians were left as is, although reportedly Ken Forssi did step in to show Carol Kaye how the bass part should be played (ironic, since Kaye is estimated to have played on over 10,000 recordings in her long career as a studio musician).
Artist: Seeds
Title: Rollin' Machine
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
Is there anyone out there that really thinks this is a song about a car? I thought not.
Artist: Charlatans
Title: Alabama Bound
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70
Writer: trad., arr. The Charlatans
Label: Rhino (original label: Ace/Big Beat)
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1996
Despite being one of the most important bands on the San Francisco scene, the Charlatans did not have much luck in the recording studio. Their first sessions were aborted, the planned LP for Kama Sutra was shelved by the label itself, and the band was overruled in their choice of songs to be released on their first (and only) single issued from the Kama Sutra sessions. In 1967, however, they did manage to get some decent tracks recorded. Unfortunately, those tracks were not released until 1996, and then only in the UK. The centerpiece of the 1967 sessions was this six-and-a-half minute recording of a traditional tune that is considered by many to be the Charlatans' signature song: Alabama Bound.
Artist: Fraternity Of Man
Title: Don't Bogart Me
Source: CD: Easy Rider Soundtrack (originally released on LP: Fraternity Of Man)
Writer(s): Fraternity Of Man
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
In the late 60s there was a certain disconnect between rock musicians and their audience on the subject of country music. Whereas the youth culture of the time associated it with rednecks and conservative attitudes, their musical heroes often held the country music tradition in high regard. One of the first songs to bridge the gap was Don't Bogart Me from the Fraternity Of Man. The band itself was made up of former members of the Factory, a popular L.A. club band led by Lowell George, and the Mothers of Invention, led by Frank Zappa. Although the band's 1968 LP remains somewhat obscure, Don't Bogart Me itself was made famous by its inclusion in the 1969 movie Easy Rider.
Artist: Doors
Title: Easy Ride
Source: CD: The Soft Parade
Writer(s): Jim Morrison
Label: Elektra
Year: 1969
Speaking of Easy Rides, we have this unusual tune from the fourth Doors album, The Soft Parade. The album was a bit of a departure for the Doors for several reasons, not the least of which was that for the first time individual members rather than the group were given songwriting credit. The album was more experimental in nature than any other Doors album as well, as Jim Morrison's Easy Ride amply demonstrates.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Richard Cory
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
My ultra-cool 9th-grade English teacher brought in a copy of Simon And Garfunkel's Sounds Of Silence album one day. As a class, we deconstructed the lyrics of two of the songs on that album: A Most Peculiar Man and Richard Cory. Both songs deal with suicide, but under vastly different circumstances. Whereas A Most Peculiar Man is about a lonely man who lives an isolated existence as an anonymouse resident of a boarding house, Richard Cory deals with a character who is at the center of society, known and envied by many. Too bad most high school English classes weren't that interesting.
Artist: Richie Havens
Title: Adam
Source: LP: Mixed Bag
Writer(s): Richie Havens
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1967
Richie Havens is probably best known as the man who heroically took the stage for nearly three hours to get the Woodstock Performing Arts Festival underway when circumstances threatened to delay the festival's opening. Havens' career, however, was much longer and more significant than just that one appearance. Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children. At age 20 he moved to Greenwich Village and became part of the beatnik movement, reading poetry in the various coffee houses. He also drew portraits and stayed up late listening to folk artists perform, eventually taking up the guitar himself. After a couple records on the independent Douglas label, Havens landed a contract with Verve Forecast and released his first LP, Mixed Bag, featuring songs like Adam, which Havens himself wrote. More LPs followed, and eventually Havens formed his own label, Stormy Forest. More recently Havens was awarded the American Eagle Award by the National Music Council for his achievements, including his role as an environmental educator/activist.
Artist: Them
Title: Black Widow Spider
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
After Van Morrison left Them for a solo career, the band headed back to Belfast, where they recruited vocalist Kenny McDowell. Them soon relocated permanently to the US west coast, where they landed a contract with Tower Records. After a first album that featured songs from a variety of sources, they hooked up with Sharon Pulley and Tom Lane, who wrote an album's worth of material for the band. That album was Time Out! Time In! For Them, an album that has stayed under the radar for over 40 years. I hope through this show to give this album the recognition it deserves as an undiscovered classic of the psychedelic era.
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title: Commotion
Source: CD: Chronicles (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Green River)
Writer(s): John Fogerty
Label: Fantasy
Year: 1969
Yes, I know Creedence Clearwater Revival is not what you would call a psychedelic band. Nonetheless, they made some of the best rock records of 1969, including Commotion, which was released as the B side to Green River. Personally I think it sounds pretty psychedelic. So there.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: All I Really Need Is You
Source: Mono LP: Midnight Ride
Writer(s): Lindsay/Revere
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Paul Revere And The Raiders have gotten a bad rap over the years, mostly for dressing funny. During the mid-60s, however, with the British Invasion in full swing, an American band needed every gimmick it could think of, and the Raiders simply took advantage of their band leader's birth name and did the obvious. What's often overlooked, however, is the fact that Paul Revere And The Raiders, co-led by Revere and vocalist/saxophonist Mark Lindsay, were one of the best bands of their time, and the first band from the Pacific Northwest to achieve continuous national chart success. The band members were prolific songwriters as well. In fact, of the twelve songs on their 1966 album Midnight Ride, ten were originals, including All I Really Need Is You, which leads off side two of the LP.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Smiling Phases
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released in UK as 45 RPM B side and in US on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind, aka Mr. Fantasy)
Writer(s): Capaldi/Wood/Winwood
Label: Island (original US label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
The standard practice in the UK during the 60s was to not include songs that had been released as singles on LPs. This left several songs, such as the 1967 B side Smiling Phases, only available on 45 RPM vinyl until the group's first greatest hits anthology was released. In the US the song was more widely circulated, having been included on the American version of Traffic's debut LP. Smiling Phases has since come to be recognized as one of Traffic's most iconic tunes, and has been covered by such bands as Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Artist: Nilsson
Title: Sister Marie
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): D. Morrow
Label: Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1968
Well-known as John Lennon's 1970s drinking buddy, singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson first came to prominence in 1969 with the song Everybody's Talking from the movie Midnight Cowboy (the film that brought stardom to actor Dustin Hoffman as well). Although Nilsson is best known as a songwriter (Lennon once called him America's greatest), the B side of his first single, Sister Marie, actually came from an outside source.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Source: CD: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Do I really need to say anything about Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? I didn't think so.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dreaming
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1966
Although Cream recorded several songs that bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce co-wrote with various lyricists (notably poet Pete Brown), there were relatively few that Bruce himself wrote words for. One of these is Dreaming, a song from the band's first LP that features both Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton on lead vocals.
Artist: Move
Title: (Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Roy Wood
Label: A&M
Year: 1967
The most successful British band of the psychedelic era not to have a US hit was the Move, a band that featured Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, among other notables. The band was already well established in the UK by 1967, when their single Flowers In The Rain was picked to be the first record played on the new BBC Radio One. The B side of that record was the equally-catchy (Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree. Both songs were written by Wood, although he only sang lead vocals on the B side.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Porpoise Song
Source: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic.
Artist: London Phogg
Title: The Times To Come
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Colley/Henderson
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1969
In a way it was a typical 60s dream come true. Local group (in this case the locality being Las Vegas) wins a battle of the bands, the prize being a trip to L.A. to record for a major record label (in this case Herb Alpert's A&M Records). Soon, though, the dream becomes a nightmare, as the band is not allowed to do much of anything on their one shot at fame. Studio musicians are brought in to play on a song written by professional songwriters and the record of course is a flop. The band returns home to Las Vegas, never to be heard from again. After this week you can be assured that this track won't be heard again on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era either.
Artist: Allman Brothers Band
Title: Don't Keep Me Wonderin'
Source: CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: Idlewild South)
Writer(s): Gregg Allman
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1970
It's hard to believe now, but it took a while for the Allman Brothers band to become popular outside of the southern US. It wasn't until their second LP, Idlewild South, that rock radio began to take notice of the band, which was at the time based in Macon, Georgia. The album title itself came from an inside joke that the band's house was so busy it was like Idlewild airport (the original name of what is now Kennedy International). Don't Keep Me Wonderin' is probably the most R&B sounding track the band ever recorded, and in a sense harkens back to Gregg Allman's previous band, the Hour Glass.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as EP)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Rhino (original label: Rag Baby)
Year: 1965
Joe McDonald was already making a name for himself in Berkeley in 1965 as the publisher of an early underground arts and politics-oriented newspaper/magazine known as Rag Baby. As a way of boosting circulation he came up with the idea of a musical insert. The first of these included a song that would later become one of the best-known antiwar tunes ever penned: the I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag. The actual makeup of the band called Country Joe And The Fish on this recording is not quite clear, other than the fact that both McDonald and Barry Melton played on it. An early video made of the group performing the song shows several people I don't recognize alternating on the vocals.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (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
The Music Machine was one of the most sophisticated bands to appear on the L.A. club scene in 1966, yet their only major hit, Talk Talk, was deceptively simple and straightforward punk-rock, and still holds up as two of the most intense minutes of rock music ever to crack the top 40 charts.
Artist: Velvet Underground
Title: There She Goes Again
Source: CD: The Velvet Underground And Nico
Writer(s): Lou Reed
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve)
Year: 1967
When the Velvet Underground first appeared, their fame was pretty much limited to the New York art crowd, of which their sponsor and primary financial backer Andy Warhol was a superstar in his own right. With talent like Lou Reed and John Cale in the band, however, the VU eventually attained legendary punk status of their own, albeit long after the band ceased to exist. One of the best tracks on the group's debut LP was There She Goes Again, a song that starts off sounding like the Rolling Stones' cover of Marvin Gaye's Hitch Hike, but soon moves into unexplored territory, especially in its subject matter (prostitution as a lifestyle choice).
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