Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Embryonic Journey
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane
Writer(s): Jorma Kaukonen
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1967
Jorma Kaukonen originally considered Embryonic Journey to be little more than a practice exercise. Other members of Jefferson Airplane insisted he record it, however, and it has since come to be identified as a kind of signature song for the guitarist, who played the tune live when the band was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
Artist: Cream
Title: World Of Pain
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Pappalardi/Collins
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Whereas the first Cream LP was made up of mostly blues-oriented material, Disraeli Gears took a much more psychedelic turn, due in large part to the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. The Bruce/Brown team was not, however, the only source of material for the band. Both Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker made contributions, as did Cream's unofficial fourth member, keyboardist/producer Felix Pappalardi, who co-wrote World Of Pain with his wife Janet Collins. Pappalardi would later become a founding member of Mountain, playing bass parts on his keyboards.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Long Day's Flight
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Weakley/Yorty
Label: Collector's Choice (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Originally from the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California, the Electric Prunes were often mislabeled as a Pacific Northwest band, due to their popularity in the Seattle area. Interestingly enough, the band also enjoyed greater popularity in the UK than many of their L.A. contemporaries (such as the Doors). Long Day's Flight, an anthemic track from the band's second LP, was released as a single in the UK, but not in the US.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of The Original Mono Recordings
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
Some of the best rock and roll songs of 1966 were banned on a number of stations for being about either sex or drugs. Most artists that recorded those songs claimed they were about something else altogether. In the case of Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35, "stoned" refers to a rather unpleasant form of execution (at least according to Dylan). On the other hand, Dylan himself was reportedly quite stoned while recording the song, having passed a few numbers around before starting the tape rolling. Sometimes I think ambiguities like this are why English has become the dominant language of commerce on the planet.
Artist: Status Quo
Title: Pictures Of Matchstick Men
Source: Mono CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Francis Rossi
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Pye)
Year: 1967
If you have ever seen the film This Is Spinal Tap, the story of Britain's Status Quo might seem a bit familiar. Signed to Pye Records in 1967 the group scored a huge international hit with their first single, Pictures Of Matchstick Men, but were unable to duplicate that success with subsequent releases. In the early 1970s the band totally reinvented itself as a boogie band and began a run in the UK that resulted in them scoring more charted singles than any other band in history, including the Beatles and Rolling Stones. For all that, however, they never again charted in the US, where they are generally remembered as one-hit wonders. In addition to their UK success, Status Quo remains immensely popular in the Scandanavian countries, where they continue to play to sellout crowds on a regular basis.
Artist: People
Title: I Love You
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Chris White
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
By 1968 the major labels had signed just about every San Francisco band with any perceived potential. Capitol, having had some success with the Chocolate Watchband from San Jose on its Tower subsidiary, decided to sign another south bay band, People, to the parent label. The most successful single for the band was a new recording of an obscure Zombies B side. I Love You ended up hitting the top 20 nationally, despite the active efforts of two of the most powerful men in the music industry, who set out to squash the song as a way of punishing the record's producer for something having nothing to do with the song or the band itself.
Artist: Music Explosion
Title: Little Bit O' Soul
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Lewis/Carter
Label: Laurie
Year: 1967
Mansfield, Ohio, was home to the Music Explosion who made their mark as one-hit wonders in early 1967 with Little Bit O' Soul. The song was an early forerunner of the bubble-gum movement that would dominate the top 40 charts over a year later.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: Just Like Me
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dey/Brown
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1965
Just Like Me was the first top 10 single from Paul Revere And The Raiders, a band that deserves much more credit than they are generally given. The group started in the early part of the decade in Boise, Idaho, when Revere (his real name) hooked up with saxophonist Mark Lindsay. Like most bands at the time, the Raiders' repertoire consisted mostly of instrumentals, as PA systems were a luxury that required more space than was generally allotted to a small town band. It wasn't long before the Raiders relocated to Portland, Oregon, where they became a popular attraction at various clubs. After a hiatus caused by Revere's stint in the military, the band resumed its place as one of the founding bands of the Portland music scene. They soon made their first visit to a recording studio, recording Richard Berry's Louie Louie at around the same time as another popular Portland band, the Kingsmen. Due as much to superior promotion efforts from Wand Records as anything else, the Kingsmen's version ended up being a huge hit while the Raiders' version was virtually ignored. Undeterred, the band continued to grow in popularity, recording another single in 1964 (Like Long Hair) and going on tour. It was while playing in Hawaii that the band was noticed by none other than Dick Clark, who hired them to be the house band on his new afternoon TV show, Where The Action Is. He also got them a contract with Columbia Records, at the time the second-largest record company in the world. The Raiders were Columbia's first rock band, and they paired the band up with their hippest young producer, Terry Melcher. It was a partnership that would lead to a string of hits, starting with Steppin' Out in 1965. The next record, Just Like Me, was the first of a string of top 10 singles that would last until early 1967, when rapidly changing public tastes made the band seem antiquated compared to up and coming groups like Jefferson Airplane. Just Like Me, despite some rather cheesy lyrics, still holds up well after all these years. Much of the credit for that has to go to Drake Levin, whose innovative double-tracked guitar solo rocked out harder than anything else on top 40 radio at the time (with the possible exception of a couple of well-known Kinks songs).
Artist: Donovan
Title: Guinevere
Source: Mono LP: Sunshine Superman
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Epic/Sundazed
Year: 1966
Donovan's Sunshine Superman marked the beginning of a transition for the Scottish singer/songwriter from folk singer with a primarily British fan base to an international star at the forefront of the psychedelic era. One track on the album that shows a bit of both is Guinevere. The basic song is very much in the traditional British vein, with lyrics that deliberately hearken back to Arthurian times. Yet the entire track is colored by the presence of a sitar, a decidedly non-British instrument that was becoming popular among the psychedelic crowd in 1966.
Artist: Pentangle
Title: Bruton Town
Source: Pentangle
Writer(s): trad., arr. Cox/Jansch/McShee/Renbourne/Thompson
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Sometimes the same term can mean entirely different things, depending on where you are. For example, in the US folk music of the 1960s brings to mind images of beatniks in coffee houses or maybe a group of friends singing around a campfire. In the UK, however, the primary image associated with folk music was that of being forced to learn a bunch of songs in school that were old when your grandparents were born. As a result, there was a certain resistance to folk music in general among British youth that took a bit of doing to overcome. Scotland's Donovan Leitch managed to do it by following in the footsteps of Bob Dylan, ignoring traditional tunes in favor of writing his own more socially-conscious material. A few others performed a mix of traditional folk and modern jazz with rock overtones and were moderately successful at it. In 1968 five of these modern traditionalists got together to form a folk/jazz/rock supergroup. Somehow, despite the massive amount of talent that John Renbourne, Burt Jansch, Jacqui McShee, Terry Cox and Richard Thompson had between them, they managed to stay together for several years without letting their egos get in the way of the music. The result was a series of outstanding albums starting with their 1968 self-titled debut, which included their own arrangement of Bruton Town, a (you guessed it) traditional British folk tune.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Leave
Source: LP: Buffalo Springfield
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
Although Buffalo Springfield are generally acknowldeged to among the pioneers of a softer rock sound that would gain popularity in the 70s with bands like the Eagles, Poco and Crosby, Stills and Nash, they did occasionally rock out a bit harder on tracks like Leave. Of particular note is lead guitarist Neil Young doing blues licks on this Stephen Stills tune from the first Buffalo Springfield album, released in 1966.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Bold As Love
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
When working on the song Bold As Love for the second Jimi Hendrix Experience album in 1967, Jimi reportedly asked engineer Eddie Kramer if he could make a guitar sound like it was under water. Kramer's answer was to use a techique called phasing, which is what happens when two identical sound sources are played simultaneously, but slightly (as in microseconds) out of synch with each other. The technique, first used in 1958 but seldom tried in stereo, somewhat resembles the sound of a jet plane flying by. This is not to be confused with chorusing (sometimes called reverse phasing), a technique used often by the Beatles which splits a single signal into two identical signals then delays one to create the illusion of being seperate tracks.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Hoochie Coochie Man
Source: CD: Steppenwolf
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
A major driving force behind the renewed interest in the blues in the 1960s was the updating and re-recording of classic blues tunes by contempory rock musicians. This trend started in England, with bands like the Yardbirds and the Animals in the early part of the decade. By the end of the 60s a growing number of US bands were playing songs such as Hoochie Coochie Man, a tune originally recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954. Like Cream's Spoonful and Led Zeppelin's You Shook Me, Hoochie Coochie Man was written by Willie Dixon. The 1968 Steppenwolf version of the song slows the tempo down a touch from the original version and features exquisite sustained guitar work by Michael Monarch.
Artist: Al Kooper
Title: I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes
Source: CD: Blues Project Anthology (originally released on LP: What's Shakin')
Writer(s): Blind Willie Johnson
Label: Polydor (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
In early 1966 Elektra Records, then a New York based folk and blues label, decided to put together an album called What's Shakin'. The LP featured some of the top talent appearing in and around the city's Greenwich Village area, including the Lovin' Spoonful and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. In addition to already recorded material, the album included a handful of tracks recorded specifically for the collection, including one by Al Kooper of the Blues Project, who brought along drummer Roy Blumenfeld and bassist Andy Kuhlberg for the session. The song Kooper chose to record was I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, an old Blind Willie Johnson tune that was already in the Blues Project's repertoire but had not yet been recorded by the band. While the Blues Project version of the song recorded later that year for the Projections album is a classic piece of guitar-based blues-rock, the earlier version for What's Shakin' is built around Kooper's piano playing and has more of a Ramsey Lewis feel to it.
Artist: Chris And Craig
Title: Isha
Source: Mono import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Chris Ducey
Label: Zonophone UK (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
Before the Monkees, there were the Happeners...almost. In 1965, college student Chris Ducey and singer/songwriter Craig Smith were chosen to play a folk-rock duo on a TV show. Although the show itself never made it past pre-production, the two did record a single for Capitol Records, the Ducey-penned Isha, before going their separate ways. Craig Smith auditioned for yet another TV show the following year, but was not one of the four young men chosen to become the Monkees. He did, however, strike up a friendship with fellow applicant Michael Nesmith, who would end up recording one of Smith's songs, Salesman, and later produce Smith's new band, Penny Arkade. Ducey, meanwhile, became a bizarre early victim of identity theft. Folk singer Bobby Jameson, for reasons unknown, recorded an entire album using not only Ducey's name, but his song titles as well. The real Ducey hasn't been heard from since.
Artist: Who
Title: Someone's Coming
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): John Entwhistle
Label: Decca
Year: 1967
Some songs just get no respect. First released in 1967 in the UK as the B side of I Can See For Miles, John Alec Entwistle's Someone's Coming got left off the US release entirely. It wasn't until the release of the Magic Bus single (and subsequent LP) in 1968 that the tune appeared on US vinyl, and then, once again as a B side (the version used here). The Magic Bus album, however, was never issued on CD in the US, although it has been available as a Canadian import for several years. Finally, in 1995 the song found a home on a US CD as a bonus track on The Who Sell Out.
Artist: Who
Title: Amazing Journey
Source: Import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Tommy)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: Polydor UK (original US label: Decca)
Year: 1969
After achieving major success in their native England with a series of hit singles in 1965-67, the Who began to concentrate more on their albums from 1968 on. The first of these concept albums was The Who Sell Out, released in December of 1967. The Who Sell Out was a collection of songs connected by faux radio spots and actual jingles from England's last remaining pirate radio station, Radio London. After releasing a few more singles in 1968, the Who began work on their most ambitious project yet: the world's first rock opera. Tommy, released in 1969, was a double LP telling the story of a boy who, after being tramautized into becoming a blind deaf-mute, eventually emerges as a kind of messiah, only to have his followers ultimately abandon him. One of the early tracks on the album is Amazing Journey, describing Tommy's voyage into the recesses of his own mind in response to the traumatic event that results in his blind, deaf and dumb condition.
Artist: Who
Title: Magic Bus
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: Decca
Year: 1968
While working on their landmark Tommy album, the Who continued to crank out singles throughout 1968. One of the most popular was Magic Bus, a song that remained in the band's live repertoire for many years. Like most of the Who's pre-Tommy singles, the song was never mixed in true stereo, although a fake stereo mix was created for the US-only LP Magic Bus-The Who On Tour. The original mono version of the song heard here is also shorter than the LP version, clocking in at slightly over three minutes.
Artist: Five Americans
Title: Western Union
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Rabon/Ezell/Durrell
Label: Rhino (original label: Abnak)
Year: 1967
One of the biggest hits of 1967 came from a band formed at Southeastern State College in Durant Oklahoma, although they had their greatest success working out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Having already scored a minor hit with I See The Light the previous year, the Five Americans hit the #5 spot on the national charts with Western Union, featuring a distinctive opening organ riff designed to evoke the sound of a telegraph receiver picking up Morse code.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Party Line
Source: Mono LP: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray and Dave Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1966
The first Kinks album I ever bought was Face To Face. I saw it in the cutout bin at the Base Exchange in Ramstein Germany sometime in 1968 on sale for half a buck (or maybe even less) and remembered that I had liked the song Sunny Afternoon when it was being played on the radio in the fall of 1966, so I figured why not? At the time I was using a $10 portable Philips record player that I had gotten for my birthday that year (which in the US was sold under the Mercury name for twice that much), so I didn't even notice that the album was not in stereo. It didn't matter anyway, because the first song on the album, Party Line, made me a Kinks fan for life.
Artist: Human Expression
Title: Optical Sound
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Quarles/Foster
Label: Rhino (original label: Accent)
Year: 1967
One thing Los Angeles had become known for by the mid-1960s was its urban sprawl. Made possible by one of the world's most extensive regional freeway systems, the city had become surrounded by suburbs on all sides (except for the oceanfront). Many of these suburbs were (and are) in Orange County, home to Anaheim stadium, Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. The O.C. was also home to the Human Expression, a band that recorded a trio of well-regarded singles for the Accent label. The second of these was Optical Sound. True to its name, the song utilized the latest technology available to achieve a decidedly psychedelic sound.
Artist: Blue Cheer
Title: Parchman Farm
Source: Mono LP: Vincebus Eruptum
Writer(s): Mose Allison
Label: Philips
Year: 1968
If the release of the first Black Sabbath album in early 1970 marks the birth of heavy metal, then the release of the first Blue Cheer album in 1968 may be considered the point of conception for the form. Certainly, in terms of pure volume, Cheer was unequalled in their live performances (although the Grateful Dead's sound system had more wattage, Owsley Stanley used it judiciously to get the best sound quality as opposed to sheer quantity), and managed to preserve that sense of loudness in the studio. Like Black Sabbath, the members of Blue Cheer had more than a passing familiarity with the blues as well, as evidenced by their inclusion of an old Mose Allison tune, Parchman Farm, on their debut LP, Vincebus Eruptum (the album included a cover of B.B. King's Rock Me, Baby as well). Contrary to rumors, guitarist Leigh Stephens did not go deaf and kill himself (although he did leave Blue Cheer after the band's second LP, moving to England and releasing a somewhat distortion-free solo album in 1969).
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: Mono LP: Gimme Some Lovin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Steve Winwood
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The 1980s movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becomming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Most of them are now playing 80s oldies, by the way.
Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Things I Should Have Said
Source: CD: Temptation Eyes (originally released on LP: Let's Live For Today
Writer(s): Sloan/Barri
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
The story of the Grass Roots is fairly complicated. It started with songwriters PJ Sloan and Steve Barri, who were under contract to Lou Adler's Dunhill label to come up with songs to cash in on the folk-rock craze that was sweeping Southern California in the mid-1960s. They recorded a demo of a song called Where Were You When I Needed You by a fictitious group named the Grass Roots and began shopping it around. Response to the song was generally positive so they set about finding an actual band willing to change their name to the Grass Roots and record Sloan and Barri's songs. They found one in San Francisco called the Bedouins and brought them to L.A. to begin recording sessions. Oddly enough, the first official Grass Roots single was not a Sloan/Barri tune at all (although they did provide the B side). Instead, the group recorded a Bob Dylan song, Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man), which got a fair amount of airplay on some of the top stations in Southern Cal, such as KHJ and KSD. It wasn't long, however, before the band began demanding more freedom to record the bluesier material they had written during their Bedouins days. When Sloan and Barri refused, most of the band bolted back to San Francisco, and even played a few gigs as the Grass Roots before being served legal papers asserting that the name was the intellectual property of Barri and Sloan. After some experiment around with various lineups, including Sloan himself backed up by studio musicians, the pair came up with a plan: they would hire a local L.A. cover band to be the new Grass Roots for performance purposes, but would use studio musicians to back up vocalists Rob Brill and Creed Bratton on their records. The new system resulted in a series of hit singles, including Things I Should Have Said, a 1967 single from the Let's Live For Today album.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Punky's Dilemma
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Originally written specifically for the 1967 soundtrack of the movie The Graduate but rejected by the producers, Punky's Dilemma sat on the shelf until the following year, when it became the only track on side two of Simon And Garfunkel's Bookends LP that had not been previously released. The lyrics are about as psychedelic as Simon And Garfunkel ever got.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Pushin' Too Hard
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: The Seeds)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1966
Although the song was originally released in 1966, it wasn't until spring of 1967 that the Seed's classic Pushin' Too Hard took off nationally. The timing was perfect for me, as the new FM station I was listening to jumped right on it.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: I Haven't Got The Nerve
Source: LP: Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina
Writer(s): Cameron/Martin
Label: Smash/Sundazed
Year: 1967
The first thought I had when seeing the title of Left Banke's 1967 debut LP was "if they had to name the album after the band's two hit singles, the rest of the songs must really suck", so I never gave it another thought. It turns out I was totally wrong, as the album is actually filled with fine tracks such as I Haven't Got The Nerve, which only took me until 2012 to discover. I still think it's a stupid name for an album, though.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: I Need A Man To Love
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Joplin/Andrew
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Big Brother and the Holding Company recorded their first album at the Chicago studios of Mainstream records in 1967. Mainstream, however, was a jazz label and their engineers had no idea how to make a band like Big Brother sound good. When the band signed to Columbia the following year it was decided that the best way to record the band was onstage at the Fillmore West. As a result, when Cheap Thrills was released, four of the seven tracks were live recordings, including the Janis Joplin/Peter Albin collaboration I Need A Man To Love.
Artist: Parking Lot
Title: World Spinning Sadly
Source: Mono import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Paul Samwell-Smith
Label: Zonophone UK (original label: Parlophone)
Year: 1969
Virtually nothing is known about the band called the Parking Lot. In fact, it is not even known whether there actually was a band called the Parking Lot, as it could just as easily have been a group of studio musicians hired by the producer/songwriter of World Spinning Sadly, a one-off single from 1969. The producer himself, on the other hand, was definitely a real person. Paul Samwell-Smith was, in fact, the original bass player for the Yardbirds, who had left the group in 1966 (after playing on all of their major hits through Over Under Sideways Down) to pursue a career as a record producer. Although he was never a major figure in the music industry in that capacity, he did manage to remain active well past the demise of the Yardbirds themselves, which was probably his goal all along.
Artist: Fat
Title: Journey
Source: LP: Fat
Writer(s): Kaminsky/Newland
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1970
Urban legend has it that RCA Victor released only 400 copies of the Boston band Fat's only LP. Somehow, WEOS-FM in Geneva, NY, where Stuck in the Psychedelic Era is produced, has had one of those copies in its library since 1970. It ain't half bad, as a listen to the album's final track, Journey, shows.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1312 (starts 3/21/13)
Artist: Soft Machine
Title: Feelin', Reelin', Squealin'
Source: Mono import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Kevin Ayers
Label: Polydor UK
Year: 1967
The Soft Machine is best known for being at the forefront of the jazz-rock fusion movement of the 1970s. The bands roots were in the city of Canterbury, a sort of British equivalent of New York's Greenwich Village. Led by drummer Robert Wyatt, the band was first formed as the Wilde Flowers in 1963 with Kevin Ayers as lead vocalist. Heavily influenced by modern jazz, beat poetry and dadaist art, the Wilde Flowers were less a band than a group of friends getting together to make music from time to time. Things got more serious when Ayers and his Australian beatnik friend Daevid Allen made a trip to Ibiza, where they met Wes Brunson, an American who was heir to a fortune. Brunson provided financial backing for a new band called Mister Head, which included Ayers, Wyatt, Allen and Larry Nolan. By late 1966 the group had added Mike Rutledge and changed its name to Soft Machine (after Allen had secured permission to use the name from author William Burroughs), performing regularly at London's legendary UFO club. After the departure of Nolan, the band recorded its first single for Polydor in early 1967. Both sides were written by Ayers, who by then was playing bass and sharing the vocals with Wright. The B side of that single was Feelin', Reelin', Sqealin', a track that helped define British psychedelic music.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Session Man
Source: Mono import CD: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary UK (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
Nicky Hopkins was one of only a handful of studio musicians who managed to acquire some fame beyond the musicians' community itself. The keyboardist had actually been a member of a band at age 16, but was forced to quit when health issues made it impossible for him to perform live on a regular basis. Such was his level of talent, however, that he soon found work in various London studios, playing on dozens of albums by such well-known groups as the Who, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks.
The latter band, in particular, was so impressed with his work that their leader, Ray Davies, wrote a song about him, Session Man, and recorded it on their 1966 Face To Face album. Hopkins would eventually get even more exposure, performing with Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock and becoming, for a time, a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Sunny South Kensington
Source: Mono import CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch followed up his 1966 hit single Sunshine Superman with an album of the same name. He then repeated himself with the song and album Mellow Yellow. Although there were no other singles released from either album, the song Sunny South Kensington, which was done in much the same style as Superman, was a highlight of the Mellow Yellow album. Due to a contractual dispute in the UK between Donovan and Pye Records, neither LP was issued in its original form in Britain.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: All My Life
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single B side (originally released on LP: Demons And Wizards)
Writer(s): Byron/Box/Kerslake
Label: Mercury
Year: 1972
Uriah Heep is a hard band to define. Their roots were firmly in the psychedelic era, yet they are often identified with both progressive rock bands like Yes and early heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath. The band's best-known tune was Easy Livin', a single taken from their 1972 Demons And Wizards LP. Perhaps even more typical of the group's sound at that time was the song chosen for the single's B side, All My Life (also from Demons And Wizards).
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Section 43
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on EP: Rag Baby #2)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Rhino
Year: 1966
Rag Baby was an underground journal published by Country Joe McDonald in mid-60s Berkeley, California. In 1965 McDonald decided to do a "talking issue" of the paper with an extended play (EP) record containing two songs by McDonald's band, Country Joe and the Fish and two by singer Peter Krug. In 1966 McDonald published a second Rag Baby EP, this time featuring four songs by Country Joe and the Fish. Among those was the original version of Section 43, a psychedelic instrumental that would appear in a re-recorded (and slightly changed) stereo form on the band's first LP, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, in early 1967.
Artist: Santana
Title: Soul Sacrifice
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Santana)
Writer(s): Brown/Malone/Rolie/Santana
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
Of all the bands formed in the late 1960s, very few achieved any degree of popularity outside of their local community. Fewer still could be considered an influence on future stars. Most rare of all are those who managed to be both popular and influential while maintaining a degree of artistic integrity. One name that comes immediately to mind is Santana (both the band and the man). It might be surprising, then, to hear that the first Santana album, released in 1969, was savaged by the rock press, particularly the San Francisco based Rolling Stone magazine, who called it boring and repetitious. It wasn't until the band performed Soul Sacrifice (heard here in its original studio version) at Woodstock that Santana became major players on the rock scene.
Artist: Dave Clark Five
Title: Inside And Out
Source: LP: The Dave Clark Five (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Clark/Smith
Label: Epic
Year: 1967 (stereo mix released 1971)
The Dave Clark Five aren't exactly known for their psychedelic tunes. Still, in 1967 it seemed like everyone was trying to hop on the psychedelic bandwagon, and the DC5 were no exception, as this 1971 stereo remix of Inside And Out, a 1967 B side demonstrates.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Paper Sun
Source: CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
There were several notable differences between the US and UK versions of the first Traffic album. For one thing they had different titles. In the US the album was called Heaven Is In Your Mind when it was released in early 1968 in the hope that the single of the same name would be a hit. When it became evident that the song wasn't going anywhere on the US top 40 charts the album was quickly retitled Mr. Fantasy, matching the original 1967 UK album. There were differences in the tracks on the album as well. One of the most notable changes was the inclusion of Paper Sun, a non-LP single that had been a British hit in late 1967. The version on the US album, however, was slightly different from its UK counterpart in that the song fades out quite a bit earlier than on the original version, with the deleted portion showing up at the end of the album.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: May This Be Love
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The original UK version of Are You Experienced? featured May This Be Love as the opening track of side two of the album. In the US, the UK single The Wind Cries Mary was substituted for it, with May This Be Love buried deep on side one.
It's obvious that Hendrix thought more highly of the song than the people at Reprise who picked the track order for the US album.
Artist: Tim Buckley
Title: Once Upon A Time
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer(s): Buckley/Beckett
Label: Rhino
Year: recorded 1967, released 2009
Tim Buckley was one of those people whose style it is almost impossible to define. His first album, consisting of songs he and his friend Bob Beckett had written while still attending high school, was released in 1966 on Elektra Records, and was considered folk music. Before recording a follow-up, Buckley switched gears, recording Once Upon A Time in a deliberate effort to achieve commercial success. Elektra Records chose not to release the song, however, and Buckley soon eased into a more eclectic vein, writing songs that incorporated elements of several genres, including folk, rock and even jazz.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: My Love Is
Source: LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Wayne Ulaky
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
For a time in early 1968 my favorite album was The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union, which is in a sense kind of strange, since I didn't own a copy of the LP. I did, however, have access to my dad's Dual turntable and Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder, and used to fall asleep on the couch with the headphones on nearly every night (hey, it beat sharing a room with my 8-year-old brother). So when one of my bandmates invited the rest of us over to hear his new album by this new band from Boston I naturally asked to borrow it long enough to tape a copy for myself. As it turned out, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union is one of those albums best listened to with headphones on, with all kinds of cool (dare I say groovy?) stereo effects, like the organ and cymbals going back and forth from side to side following the spoken intro (by producer Tom Wilson, it turns out) on the album's first track, My Love Is. Years later I acquired a mono copy of the LP, but it just wasn't the same.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Fragmentary March Of Green
Source: LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
In early 1968 M-G-M Records, a major label that had failed to sign any San Francisco bands, attempted to make up for this oversight by hiring a bunch of bands from Boston and promoting them as part of the "boss-town sound", despite there being no one particular sound peculiar to the bean city (except the obvious). Then again, there really was no such thing as a San Francisco sound either, but that didn't stop Matthew Katz from marketing the bands he managed (Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and others) as such. Anyway, the one thing all these bands on M-G-M had in common is that their debut albums did better in the charts than their follow-up efforts. This could well be due to the fact that by the time those follow-ups hit the racks, the public was onto the phoniness of the whole promotion, but I think it might also be because the albums themselves didn't measure up to the earlier recordings. A prime example is Behold And See by Ultimate Spinach. The album itself is hard to review, since by the time you've finished listening to side two you've probably forgotten entirely what side one sounded like. In this case you would, however, have fresh in your mind the closing track of side two, the nearly seven-minute long Fragmentary March Of Green.
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 separate 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: Lyrics
Title: So What!!
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Chris Gaylord
Label: Rhino (original label: Era)
Year: 1965
In some ways the story of the Lyrics is fairly typical for the mid-1960s. The Carlsbad, California group had already established itself as a competent if somewhat bland cover band when in 1964 they recruited the local cool kid, Chris Gaylord (who was so cool that he had his own beat up old limo, plastered on the inside with Rolling Stones memorabilia, of course), to be their frontman. Gaylord provided the band with a healthy dose of attitude, as demonstrated by their 1965 single So What!! The song was written by Gaylord after he had a brief fling with a local rich girl. Gaylord's tenure lasted until mid-1966. Although the band continued without him, they never again saw the inside of a recording studio.
Artist: Love
Title: Emotions
Source: Mono LP: Love
Writer(s): Lee/Echols
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
Emotions, from the first Love album, is a bit of an anomaly. For one thing, it's an instrumental, something Love is not known for. Secondly, it carries the only known co-writing credit for guitarist Johnny Echols (aside from the 17-minute jam Revelation from their second LP, De Capo, which is credited to the entire band). It's no great leap to assume the two are related.
Artist: Velvet Illusions
Title: Acid Head
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Weed/Radford
Label: Rhino (original label: Metromedia, also released on Tell Records)
Year: 1967
Showing an obvious influence by the Electric Prunes (a surbaban L.A. band that was embraced by the Seattle scene as one of their own) the Illusions backtracked the Prunes steps, leaving their native Yakima and steady gigging for the supposedly greener pastures of the City of Angels. After a few months of frustration in which the band seldom found places to practice, let alone perform, they headed back to Seattle to cut this lone single before calling it quits.
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 his wife Toody) from 1987-2006.
Artist: Cream
Title: Politician
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Although the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown are best known for providing Cream with its more psychedelic songs such as White Room and Swlabr, they did occasionally come up with bluesier numbers such as Politician from the Wheels Of Fire album. The song quickly became a staple of Cream's live performances.
Artist: Doors
Title: Five To One
Source: CD: Waiting For The Sun
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1968
Despite the fact that it was the Doors' only album to hit the top of the charts, Waiting For The Sun was actually a disappointment for many of the band's fans, who felt that the material lacked the edginess of the first two Doors LPs. One notable exception was the album's closing track, Five To One, which features one of Jim Morrison's most famous lines: "No one here gets out alive".
Artist: Beatles
Title: Julia
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
John Lennon's songwriting continued to take a more personal turn with the 1968 release of The Beatles, also known as the White Album. Perhaps the best example of this is the song Julia. The song was written for Lennon's mother, who had been killed by a drunk driver in 1958, although it also has references to Lennon's future wife Yoko Ono (Yoko translates into English as Ocean Child). Julia is the only 100% solo John Lennon recording to appear on a Beatle album.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: Simulated stereo 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: Kenny And The Kasuals
Title: Journey To Tyme
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Smith/Lee
Label: Rhino (original labels: Mark Ltd. and United Artists)
Year: 1966
One of the most popular Dallas area bands in the mid-1960s was Kenny and the Kasuals. Formed in 1962, the band was best known for playing high school dances and such. They got their shot at stardom in 1966 when they recorded Journey To Tyme for Mark Ltd. Productions. The song was picked up later in the year for national distribution by United Artists and made it all the way to the # 1 spot in Buffalo, NY and Pittsburgh, Pa. Despite this success the band was unable to get a long-term contract with United Artists (thanks in part to problems with their own manager) and soon disbanded.
Artist: Penny Peeps
Title: Model Village
Source: Mono import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Alexander
Label: Zonophone (UK) (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
Although the British psychedelic era was considerably shorter (only about two years long) than its American counterpart, there are a surprisingly large number of British psych-pop singles that were never issued in the US. Among those was a somewhat forgettable song called Little Man With A Stick, released in 1967 by a band called the Penny Peeps. The band took its name from the risque coin-fed viewers at Brighton Beach (apparently London's version of Coney Island). Emulating his American counterparts, producer Les Reed (who wrote Little Man), allowed the band itself to come up with its own B side. The result was Model Village, a track that manages to convey a classic garage-rock energy while remaining uniquely British.
Artist: Shocking Blue
Title: Venus
Source: Simulated stereo 45 RPM single (1986 reissue)
Writer(s): Robbie Van Leeuwin
Label: 21 (original label: Colossus)
Year: 1969
One of only a handful of songs to top the charts by different artists in different decades, Venus was originally released in 1969 by Dutch group Shocking Blue and went to the #1 spot in several countries, including the US, in early 1970. In the mid-1980s the song was re-recorded by Bananarama and once again hit the top spot. By then Atlantic Records had acquired the rights to the original Shocking Blue recording (the Colossus label having gone out of business in 1971) and reissued it on its 21 Records subsidiary.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Is It Any Wonder
Source: Import CD: Happy Together
Writer: Sloan/Barri
Label: Magic (France)
Year: 1967
The Turtles started off as an L.A.-based surf band called the Crossfires. After signing to White Whale Records in 1965 the group jumped on the folk-rock bandwagon, scoring a national hit with their cover of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe. After a less than stellar 1966 the group regained their momentum with the release of Happy Together in 1967. At the same time they began to develop the skewed viewpoint that would characterize the work of the band's two co-leaders, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, in the 1970s when they became known as Flo and Eddie. Is It Any Wonder, the song heard here, is a bit of a mystery to me. It was included on the European release of the Happy Together CD as a bonus track (with liner notes in French), but I have not been able to find out where it first appeared (or indeed, whether or not it had ever been released at all). If you have any more information about the song, feel free to drop me a line through the contact button at www.hermitradio.com.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Mexico
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Early Flight)
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1970
The last Jefferson Airplane single to include founding member (and original leader) Marty Balin was Mexico, a scathing response by Grace Slick to President Richard Nixon's attempts to eradicate the marijuana trade between the US and Mexico. The song was slated to be included on the next Airplane album, Long John Silver, but Balin's departure necessitated a change in plans, and Mexico did not appear on an LP until Early Flight was released in 1974.
Artist: John Fred And His Playboy Band
Title: Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)
Source: Mono LP: Agnes English
Writer(s): Fred/Bernard/Wessler
Label: Paula
Year: 1967
John Fred was 15 when he formed his first incarnation of the Playboys in 1956. The group would go through several personnel changes over the years, occasionally disbanding and reforming. They hit the charts in 1959 with a song called Shirley, which led to an appearance on Alan Freed's show. The band was invited to appear on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, but had to decline due to Fred's prior commitment to play in a college basketball game (he played both basketball and baseball for Southeastern Louisiana University and LSU). When Jewel Records was founded in 1963, the Playboys were among the first acts signed to the Shreveport label, recording as both the Playboys and as John Fred in order to increase their chance of getting played on the radio. When Jewel owner Stan Lewis started a second label, Paula (named for his wife), John Fred and the Playboys moved over to the new label, remaining there for the rest of their recording career. The band itself has been described as blue-eyed soul, swamp rock, and even old-time rock 'n' roll, all of which were accurate at one time or another. In 1967 the group, now called John Fred And His Playboy Band, released an album called Agnes English that included a throwaway novelty song called Judy In Disguise (With Glasses). The song was inspired by a trip to the beach in the summer of '67, where Fred noted how many young women were wearing huge sunglasses that made it impossible to tell what they really looked like. The title itself was a play on the Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which was getting lots of airplay at the time. Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) was released as a single in late 1967 and went to the top of the charts in January of 1968, ironically knocking another Beatle tune, Hello Goodbye, out of the #1 spot. John Fred And His Playboy Band continued to be a hot attraction in Louisiana clubs for many years, but were inaccurately typecast as a novelty act outside of their home state. Fred eventually became a popular local disc jockey until his death from cancer in 2005.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Honky Tonk Women
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1969
After revitalizing their career with Jumpin' Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man in 1968, the Stones delivered the coup-de-grace with one of the biggest hits by anyone ever: the classic Honky Tonk Women. The song was the first single without Brian Jones, who had been found dead in his swimming pool shortly after being kicked out of the band. Jones's replacement, Mick Taylor (fresh from a stint with blues legend John Mayall), plays slide guitar on the track.
Artist: Troggs
Title: Wild Thing
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From the Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Chip Taylor
Label: Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1966
I have a DVD copy of a music video (although back then they were called promotional films) for the Troggs' Wild Thing in which the members of the band are walking through what looks like a train station while being mobbed by girls at every turn. Every time I watch it I imagine singer Reg Presley saying giggity-giggity as he bobs his head.
Title: Feelin', Reelin', Squealin'
Source: Mono import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Kevin Ayers
Label: Polydor UK
Year: 1967
The Soft Machine is best known for being at the forefront of the jazz-rock fusion movement of the 1970s. The bands roots were in the city of Canterbury, a sort of British equivalent of New York's Greenwich Village. Led by drummer Robert Wyatt, the band was first formed as the Wilde Flowers in 1963 with Kevin Ayers as lead vocalist. Heavily influenced by modern jazz, beat poetry and dadaist art, the Wilde Flowers were less a band than a group of friends getting together to make music from time to time. Things got more serious when Ayers and his Australian beatnik friend Daevid Allen made a trip to Ibiza, where they met Wes Brunson, an American who was heir to a fortune. Brunson provided financial backing for a new band called Mister Head, which included Ayers, Wyatt, Allen and Larry Nolan. By late 1966 the group had added Mike Rutledge and changed its name to Soft Machine (after Allen had secured permission to use the name from author William Burroughs), performing regularly at London's legendary UFO club. After the departure of Nolan, the band recorded its first single for Polydor in early 1967. Both sides were written by Ayers, who by then was playing bass and sharing the vocals with Wright. The B side of that single was Feelin', Reelin', Sqealin', a track that helped define British psychedelic music.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Session Man
Source: Mono import CD: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary UK (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
Nicky Hopkins was one of only a handful of studio musicians who managed to acquire some fame beyond the musicians' community itself. The keyboardist had actually been a member of a band at age 16, but was forced to quit when health issues made it impossible for him to perform live on a regular basis. Such was his level of talent, however, that he soon found work in various London studios, playing on dozens of albums by such well-known groups as the Who, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks.
The latter band, in particular, was so impressed with his work that their leader, Ray Davies, wrote a song about him, Session Man, and recorded it on their 1966 Face To Face album. Hopkins would eventually get even more exposure, performing with Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock and becoming, for a time, a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Sunny South Kensington
Source: Mono import CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch followed up his 1966 hit single Sunshine Superman with an album of the same name. He then repeated himself with the song and album Mellow Yellow. Although there were no other singles released from either album, the song Sunny South Kensington, which was done in much the same style as Superman, was a highlight of the Mellow Yellow album. Due to a contractual dispute in the UK between Donovan and Pye Records, neither LP was issued in its original form in Britain.
Artist: Uriah Heep
Title: All My Life
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single B side (originally released on LP: Demons And Wizards)
Writer(s): Byron/Box/Kerslake
Label: Mercury
Year: 1972
Uriah Heep is a hard band to define. Their roots were firmly in the psychedelic era, yet they are often identified with both progressive rock bands like Yes and early heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath. The band's best-known tune was Easy Livin', a single taken from their 1972 Demons And Wizards LP. Perhaps even more typical of the group's sound at that time was the song chosen for the single's B side, All My Life (also from Demons And Wizards).
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Section 43
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on EP: Rag Baby #2)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Rhino
Year: 1966
Rag Baby was an underground journal published by Country Joe McDonald in mid-60s Berkeley, California. In 1965 McDonald decided to do a "talking issue" of the paper with an extended play (EP) record containing two songs by McDonald's band, Country Joe and the Fish and two by singer Peter Krug. In 1966 McDonald published a second Rag Baby EP, this time featuring four songs by Country Joe and the Fish. Among those was the original version of Section 43, a psychedelic instrumental that would appear in a re-recorded (and slightly changed) stereo form on the band's first LP, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, in early 1967.
Artist: Santana
Title: Soul Sacrifice
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Santana)
Writer(s): Brown/Malone/Rolie/Santana
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
Of all the bands formed in the late 1960s, very few achieved any degree of popularity outside of their local community. Fewer still could be considered an influence on future stars. Most rare of all are those who managed to be both popular and influential while maintaining a degree of artistic integrity. One name that comes immediately to mind is Santana (both the band and the man). It might be surprising, then, to hear that the first Santana album, released in 1969, was savaged by the rock press, particularly the San Francisco based Rolling Stone magazine, who called it boring and repetitious. It wasn't until the band performed Soul Sacrifice (heard here in its original studio version) at Woodstock that Santana became major players on the rock scene.
Artist: Dave Clark Five
Title: Inside And Out
Source: LP: The Dave Clark Five (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Clark/Smith
Label: Epic
Year: 1967 (stereo mix released 1971)
The Dave Clark Five aren't exactly known for their psychedelic tunes. Still, in 1967 it seemed like everyone was trying to hop on the psychedelic bandwagon, and the DC5 were no exception, as this 1971 stereo remix of Inside And Out, a 1967 B side demonstrates.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Paper Sun
Source: CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
There were several notable differences between the US and UK versions of the first Traffic album. For one thing they had different titles. In the US the album was called Heaven Is In Your Mind when it was released in early 1968 in the hope that the single of the same name would be a hit. When it became evident that the song wasn't going anywhere on the US top 40 charts the album was quickly retitled Mr. Fantasy, matching the original 1967 UK album. There were differences in the tracks on the album as well. One of the most notable changes was the inclusion of Paper Sun, a non-LP single that had been a British hit in late 1967. The version on the US album, however, was slightly different from its UK counterpart in that the song fades out quite a bit earlier than on the original version, with the deleted portion showing up at the end of the album.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: May This Be Love
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The original UK version of Are You Experienced? featured May This Be Love as the opening track of side two of the album. In the US, the UK single The Wind Cries Mary was substituted for it, with May This Be Love buried deep on side one.
It's obvious that Hendrix thought more highly of the song than the people at Reprise who picked the track order for the US album.
Artist: Tim Buckley
Title: Once Upon A Time
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer(s): Buckley/Beckett
Label: Rhino
Year: recorded 1967, released 2009
Tim Buckley was one of those people whose style it is almost impossible to define. His first album, consisting of songs he and his friend Bob Beckett had written while still attending high school, was released in 1966 on Elektra Records, and was considered folk music. Before recording a follow-up, Buckley switched gears, recording Once Upon A Time in a deliberate effort to achieve commercial success. Elektra Records chose not to release the song, however, and Buckley soon eased into a more eclectic vein, writing songs that incorporated elements of several genres, including folk, rock and even jazz.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: My Love Is
Source: LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Wayne Ulaky
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
For a time in early 1968 my favorite album was The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union, which is in a sense kind of strange, since I didn't own a copy of the LP. I did, however, have access to my dad's Dual turntable and Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder, and used to fall asleep on the couch with the headphones on nearly every night (hey, it beat sharing a room with my 8-year-old brother). So when one of my bandmates invited the rest of us over to hear his new album by this new band from Boston I naturally asked to borrow it long enough to tape a copy for myself. As it turned out, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union is one of those albums best listened to with headphones on, with all kinds of cool (dare I say groovy?) stereo effects, like the organ and cymbals going back and forth from side to side following the spoken intro (by producer Tom Wilson, it turns out) on the album's first track, My Love Is. Years later I acquired a mono copy of the LP, but it just wasn't the same.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Fragmentary March Of Green
Source: LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
In early 1968 M-G-M Records, a major label that had failed to sign any San Francisco bands, attempted to make up for this oversight by hiring a bunch of bands from Boston and promoting them as part of the "boss-town sound", despite there being no one particular sound peculiar to the bean city (except the obvious). Then again, there really was no such thing as a San Francisco sound either, but that didn't stop Matthew Katz from marketing the bands he managed (Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and others) as such. Anyway, the one thing all these bands on M-G-M had in common is that their debut albums did better in the charts than their follow-up efforts. This could well be due to the fact that by the time those follow-ups hit the racks, the public was onto the phoniness of the whole promotion, but I think it might also be because the albums themselves didn't measure up to the earlier recordings. A prime example is Behold And See by Ultimate Spinach. The album itself is hard to review, since by the time you've finished listening to side two you've probably forgotten entirely what side one sounded like. In this case you would, however, have fresh in your mind the closing track of side two, the nearly seven-minute long Fragmentary March Of Green.
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 separate 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: Lyrics
Title: So What!!
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Chris Gaylord
Label: Rhino (original label: Era)
Year: 1965
In some ways the story of the Lyrics is fairly typical for the mid-1960s. The Carlsbad, California group had already established itself as a competent if somewhat bland cover band when in 1964 they recruited the local cool kid, Chris Gaylord (who was so cool that he had his own beat up old limo, plastered on the inside with Rolling Stones memorabilia, of course), to be their frontman. Gaylord provided the band with a healthy dose of attitude, as demonstrated by their 1965 single So What!! The song was written by Gaylord after he had a brief fling with a local rich girl. Gaylord's tenure lasted until mid-1966. Although the band continued without him, they never again saw the inside of a recording studio.
Artist: Love
Title: Emotions
Source: Mono LP: Love
Writer(s): Lee/Echols
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
Emotions, from the first Love album, is a bit of an anomaly. For one thing, it's an instrumental, something Love is not known for. Secondly, it carries the only known co-writing credit for guitarist Johnny Echols (aside from the 17-minute jam Revelation from their second LP, De Capo, which is credited to the entire band). It's no great leap to assume the two are related.
Artist: Velvet Illusions
Title: Acid Head
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Weed/Radford
Label: Rhino (original label: Metromedia, also released on Tell Records)
Year: 1967
Showing an obvious influence by the Electric Prunes (a surbaban L.A. band that was embraced by the Seattle scene as one of their own) the Illusions backtracked the Prunes steps, leaving their native Yakima and steady gigging for the supposedly greener pastures of the City of Angels. After a few months of frustration in which the band seldom found places to practice, let alone perform, they headed back to Seattle to cut this lone single before calling it quits.
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 his wife Toody) from 1987-2006.
Artist: Cream
Title: Politician
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Although the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown are best known for providing Cream with its more psychedelic songs such as White Room and Swlabr, they did occasionally come up with bluesier numbers such as Politician from the Wheels Of Fire album. The song quickly became a staple of Cream's live performances.
Artist: Doors
Title: Five To One
Source: CD: Waiting For The Sun
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1968
Despite the fact that it was the Doors' only album to hit the top of the charts, Waiting For The Sun was actually a disappointment for many of the band's fans, who felt that the material lacked the edginess of the first two Doors LPs. One notable exception was the album's closing track, Five To One, which features one of Jim Morrison's most famous lines: "No one here gets out alive".
Artist: Beatles
Title: Julia
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
John Lennon's songwriting continued to take a more personal turn with the 1968 release of The Beatles, also known as the White Album. Perhaps the best example of this is the song Julia. The song was written for Lennon's mother, who had been killed by a drunk driver in 1958, although it also has references to Lennon's future wife Yoko Ono (Yoko translates into English as Ocean Child). Julia is the only 100% solo John Lennon recording to appear on a Beatle album.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Too Many People
Source: Simulated stereo 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: Kenny And The Kasuals
Title: Journey To Tyme
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Smith/Lee
Label: Rhino (original labels: Mark Ltd. and United Artists)
Year: 1966
One of the most popular Dallas area bands in the mid-1960s was Kenny and the Kasuals. Formed in 1962, the band was best known for playing high school dances and such. They got their shot at stardom in 1966 when they recorded Journey To Tyme for Mark Ltd. Productions. The song was picked up later in the year for national distribution by United Artists and made it all the way to the # 1 spot in Buffalo, NY and Pittsburgh, Pa. Despite this success the band was unable to get a long-term contract with United Artists (thanks in part to problems with their own manager) and soon disbanded.
Artist: Penny Peeps
Title: Model Village
Source: Mono import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Alexander
Label: Zonophone (UK) (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
Although the British psychedelic era was considerably shorter (only about two years long) than its American counterpart, there are a surprisingly large number of British psych-pop singles that were never issued in the US. Among those was a somewhat forgettable song called Little Man With A Stick, released in 1967 by a band called the Penny Peeps. The band took its name from the risque coin-fed viewers at Brighton Beach (apparently London's version of Coney Island). Emulating his American counterparts, producer Les Reed (who wrote Little Man), allowed the band itself to come up with its own B side. The result was Model Village, a track that manages to convey a classic garage-rock energy while remaining uniquely British.
Artist: Shocking Blue
Title: Venus
Source: Simulated stereo 45 RPM single (1986 reissue)
Writer(s): Robbie Van Leeuwin
Label: 21 (original label: Colossus)
Year: 1969
One of only a handful of songs to top the charts by different artists in different decades, Venus was originally released in 1969 by Dutch group Shocking Blue and went to the #1 spot in several countries, including the US, in early 1970. In the mid-1980s the song was re-recorded by Bananarama and once again hit the top spot. By then Atlantic Records had acquired the rights to the original Shocking Blue recording (the Colossus label having gone out of business in 1971) and reissued it on its 21 Records subsidiary.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Is It Any Wonder
Source: Import CD: Happy Together
Writer: Sloan/Barri
Label: Magic (France)
Year: 1967
The Turtles started off as an L.A.-based surf band called the Crossfires. After signing to White Whale Records in 1965 the group jumped on the folk-rock bandwagon, scoring a national hit with their cover of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe. After a less than stellar 1966 the group regained their momentum with the release of Happy Together in 1967. At the same time they began to develop the skewed viewpoint that would characterize the work of the band's two co-leaders, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, in the 1970s when they became known as Flo and Eddie. Is It Any Wonder, the song heard here, is a bit of a mystery to me. It was included on the European release of the Happy Together CD as a bonus track (with liner notes in French), but I have not been able to find out where it first appeared (or indeed, whether or not it had ever been released at all). If you have any more information about the song, feel free to drop me a line through the contact button at www.hermitradio.com.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Mexico
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Early Flight)
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1970
The last Jefferson Airplane single to include founding member (and original leader) Marty Balin was Mexico, a scathing response by Grace Slick to President Richard Nixon's attempts to eradicate the marijuana trade between the US and Mexico. The song was slated to be included on the next Airplane album, Long John Silver, but Balin's departure necessitated a change in plans, and Mexico did not appear on an LP until Early Flight was released in 1974.
Artist: John Fred And His Playboy Band
Title: Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)
Source: Mono LP: Agnes English
Writer(s): Fred/Bernard/Wessler
Label: Paula
Year: 1967
John Fred was 15 when he formed his first incarnation of the Playboys in 1956. The group would go through several personnel changes over the years, occasionally disbanding and reforming. They hit the charts in 1959 with a song called Shirley, which led to an appearance on Alan Freed's show. The band was invited to appear on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, but had to decline due to Fred's prior commitment to play in a college basketball game (he played both basketball and baseball for Southeastern Louisiana University and LSU). When Jewel Records was founded in 1963, the Playboys were among the first acts signed to the Shreveport label, recording as both the Playboys and as John Fred in order to increase their chance of getting played on the radio. When Jewel owner Stan Lewis started a second label, Paula (named for his wife), John Fred and the Playboys moved over to the new label, remaining there for the rest of their recording career. The band itself has been described as blue-eyed soul, swamp rock, and even old-time rock 'n' roll, all of which were accurate at one time or another. In 1967 the group, now called John Fred And His Playboy Band, released an album called Agnes English that included a throwaway novelty song called Judy In Disguise (With Glasses). The song was inspired by a trip to the beach in the summer of '67, where Fred noted how many young women were wearing huge sunglasses that made it impossible to tell what they really looked like. The title itself was a play on the Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which was getting lots of airplay at the time. Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) was released as a single in late 1967 and went to the top of the charts in January of 1968, ironically knocking another Beatle tune, Hello Goodbye, out of the #1 spot. John Fred And His Playboy Band continued to be a hot attraction in Louisiana clubs for many years, but were inaccurately typecast as a novelty act outside of their home state. Fred eventually became a popular local disc jockey until his death from cancer in 2005.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Honky Tonk Women
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1969
After revitalizing their career with Jumpin' Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man in 1968, the Stones delivered the coup-de-grace with one of the biggest hits by anyone ever: the classic Honky Tonk Women. The song was the first single without Brian Jones, who had been found dead in his swimming pool shortly after being kicked out of the band. Jones's replacement, Mick Taylor (fresh from a stint with blues legend John Mayall), plays slide guitar on the track.
Artist: Troggs
Title: Wild Thing
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From the Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Chip Taylor
Label: Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1966
I have a DVD copy of a music video (although back then they were called promotional films) for the Troggs' Wild Thing in which the members of the band are walking through what looks like a train station while being mobbed by girls at every turn. Every time I watch it I imagine singer Reg Presley saying giggity-giggity as he bobs his head.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1311 (starts 3/14/13)
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: Short-Haired Fathers
Source: CD: Circus Maximus
Writer: Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed in Greenwich Village by guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in 1967. The group originally wanted to call itself the Lost Sea Dreamers, but changed it after Vanguard Records expressed reservations about signing a group with the initials LSD. Of the eleven tracks on the band's debut LP, only four were written by Walker, and those were in more of a folk-rock vein. Bruno's seven tracks, on the other hand, are true gems of psychedelia, ranging from the jazz-influenced Wind to the proto-punk rocker Short-Haired Fathers. The group fell apart after only two albums, mostly due to the growing musical differences between Walker and Bruno. Walker, of course, went on to become one of the most successful songwriters of the country-rock genre. As for Bruno, he's still in New York City, concentrating more on the visual arts in recent years.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Born To Be Wild
Source: CD: Easy Rider Soundtrack (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf)
Writer(s): Mars Bonfire
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Born To Be Wild's status as a counter-cultural anthem was cemented when it was chosen for the soundtrack of the movie Easy Rider. The popularity of both the song and the movie resulted in Steppenwolf becoming the all-time favorite band of bikers all over the world.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Volunteers
Source: LP: Volunteers
Writer: Balin/Kantner
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1969
By 1969 Jefferson Airplane's music was a staple of progressive FM stations but had all but disappeared from the top 40 charts. Still, the band continued to release singles from their albums, including the title track to their fifth (and final with the classic JA lineup) LP, Volunteers.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: I Don't Live Today
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
I remember a black light poster that choked me up the first time I saw it. It was a shot of Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar with the caption I Don't Live Today. I don't believe Hendrix was being deliberately prophetic when he wrote and recorded this classic track for the Are You Experienced album, but it still spooks me a bit to hear it, even now.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Stone Free
Source: CD: Are You Experienced? (bonus track originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Track)
Year: 1966
Whether or not Stone Free was the first song ever written by Jimi Hendrix, there is no doubt it was the first original composition to be recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In fact, it is the only song written by Hendrix to be released in 1966 (as the B side to Hey Joe). The song was later included on the Smash Hits anthology album. A newer version was recorded in 1969 under the title Stone Free Again.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: The Wind Cries Mary
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The US version of Are You Experienced was significantly different than its UK counterpart. For one thing, the original UK album was only available in mono. For the US version, engineers at Reprise Records, working from the original multi-track masters, created all new stereo mixes of about two-thirds of the album, along with all three of the singles that the Jimi Hendrix Experience had released in the UK. The third of these singles was The Wind Cries Mary, which had hit the British charts in February of 1967.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: Time Has Come Today (single version one)
Source: Mono CD: The Time Has Come (bonus track)
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
Sometimes called the soundtrack song for the summer of love, the Chambers Brothers' Time Has Come Today was eleven minutes of pure psychedelia, closing out their 1967 LP The Time Has Come. The track was edited down twice for single release in 1968, with the later five-minute edit eventually becoming the most played version of the tune. What many people are not aware of, however, is the fact that there was an even earlier version of the song recorded in 1966 and released as a single in the fall of that year. At less than three minutes in length, this early version only hints at the extended space jam that propelled the Chambers Brothers into cult hero status the following year.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Here Comes The Sun
Source: CD: Abbey Road
Writer: George Harrison
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1969
In a way, George Harrison's career as a songwriter parallels the Beatles' recording career as a band. His first song to get any attention was If I Needed Someone on the Rubber Soul album, the LP that marked the beginning of the group's transition from performers to studio artists. As the Beatles' skills in the studio increased, so did Harrison's writing skills, reaching a peak with the Abbey Road album. As usual, Harrison wrote two songs for the LP, but this time one of them (Something) became the first single released from the album and the first Harrison song to hit the #1 spot on the charts. The other Harrison composition on Abbey Road was Here Comes The Sun. Although never released as a single, the song has gone on to become Harrison's most enduring masterpiece.
Artist: Ten Years After
Title: Speed Kills
Source: CD: Stonedhenge
Writer(s): Alvin Lee
Label: Deram
Year: 1969
Although they were generally considered part of the British blues scene of the late 1960s, Ten Years After traced their own roots as much to late 50s rock and roll artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard as to the traditional blues figures such as Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. As such, many of their songs had a touch of rockabilly that was absent from most of their contemporaries. A strong example of this rockabilly streak can be found in Speed Kills, the closing track of their 1969 Stonedhenge album.
Artist: Leigh Stephens
Title: Red Weather
Source: LP: Red Weather
Writer(s): Leigh Stephens
Label: Mercury
Year: 1969
After two moderately successful albums with perhaps the loudest band in the world at that time, Blue Cheer. guitarist Leigh Stephens decided to leave the heavy feedback in San Francisco and relocate to the UK, where he recorded his solo LP, Red Weather, with a group of London studio musicians. The result was a collection of somewhat meandering jams that nonetheless showcase Stephens's skills far beyond what was heard on either of his Blue Cheer LPs. Stephens also sang on some tracks, including the title track Red Weather, although those vocals were somewhat buried in the final mix.
Artist: Animals
Title: House Of The Rising Sun
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): trad., arr. Price
Label: Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1964
Sometimes, to use a baseball analogy, you hit a home run your first time out of the box. Such was the case with the Animals recording of the traditional folk song House Of The Rising Sun. The record, released in 1964, went to the top of the charts virtually all over the planet and the song itself has long since come to be identified specifically with the Animals, despite its 19th century (some say even earlier) origins. In fact, Bob Dylan, who recorded the song years before the Animals, removed the song from his own repertoire when he was accused of stealing it from the latter band. Dave Van Ronk, who taught the song to Dylan in the first place, has claimed that the Animals were actually using his arrangement of the song. Regardless, the fact remains that if you were going to play guitar in a rock and roll band in the mid-60s you had to know how to play the Animals version of House Of The Rising Sun. It helped if you had the stamina in your chord hand to still be playing it six verses later.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Milk Cow Blues
Source: Mono LP: The Kink Kontroversy
Writer(s): Kokomo Arnold
Label: Reprise
Year: 1965
The strength of Ray Davies's songwriting skills was such that the Kink Kontroversy album, released in 1965, contained only two cover songs at a time when even the Beatles were including three or four covers per LP (and the Rolling Stones' albums of the time actually had more covers than Jagger/Richards compositions on them). Nonetheless, one of those two covers, Kokomo Arnold's Milk Cow Blues, was chosen to open the album. As it turns out, Milk Cow Blues is one of the more outstanding tracks on the LP.
Artist: Kenny And The Kasuals
Title: Journey To Tyme
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Smith/Lee
Label: Rhino (original labels: Mark Ltd. and United Artists)
Year: 1966
One of the most popular Dallas area bands in the mid-1960s was Kenny and the Kasuals. Formed in 1962, the band was best known for playing high school dances and such. They got their shot at stardom in 1966 when they recorded Journey To Tyme for Mark Ltd. Productions. The song was picked up later in the year for national distribution by United Artists and made it all the way to the # 1 spot in Buffalo, NY and Pittsburgh, Pa. Despite this success the band was unable to get a long-term contract with United Artists (thanks in part to problems with their own manager) and soon disbanded.
Artist: Doors
Title: Strange Days
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
One of the first rock albums to not picture the band members on the front cover was the Doors' second LP, Strange Days. Instead, the cover featured several circus performers doing various tricks on a city street, with the band's logo appearing on a poster on the wall of a building. The album itself contains some of the Doors' most memorable tracks, including the title song, which also appears on their greatest hits album despite never being released as a single.
Artist: Donovan/Lulu
Title: What A Beautiful Creature You Are
Source: CD: The Hurdy Gurdy Man (bonus track)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI
Year: 1968
While working on his 1968 album The Hurdy Gurdy Man, Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch took time out to record What A Beautiful Creature You Are with one of Britain's most popular singers, Lulu, who had scored a huge hit that year with the song To Sir With Love (from the film of the same name). Although the recording was not released (until being included as a bonus track on the 2005 CD reissue of The Hurdy Gurdy Man), Lulu did perform the Donovan-penned song as a duet with Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees on a British television show.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?
Source: LP: Through The Past, Darkly (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Flowers)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1966
By mid-1966 there was a population explosion of teenage rock bands popping up in garages and basements all across the US, the majority of which were doing their best to emulate the grungy sound of their heroes, the Rolling Stones. The Stones themselves responded by ramping up the grunge factor to a previously unheard of degree with their last single of the year, Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow? It was the most feedback-laden record ever to make the top 40 at that point in time, and it inspired America's garage bands to buy even more powerful amps and crank up the volume (driving their parents to drink in the process).
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: The Warmth Of The Sun
Source: Mono CD: Good Vibrations-Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys (originally released on LP: Shut Down, Volume 2)
Writer(s): Wilson/Love
Label: Capitol
Year: 1964
Along with Don't Worry Baby, The Warmth Of The Sun represents the beginning of the evolution of Brian Wilson's music away from the relatively lightweight surf and hot rod songs of the Beach Boys' early years toward the more sophisticated sounds that would characterize the Pet Sounds album (and subsequent Smile sessions) a couple of years later. The Warmth Of The Sun was written the night that JFK died and the melody and chord structure reflect the melancholy everyone was feeling at the time. Mike Love had recently gone through a personal disappointment with a girl and channeled his feelings into what became one of the best post-breakup songs ever written. The song first appeared on the Shut Down, Volume 2 album (Volume 1 was a multi-artist hot rod collection put out by Capitol Records) and was also issued as a 1964 B side.
Artist: Astronauts
Title: Razzamatazz
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Venet/Boyce/Allison
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1965
Landlocked Boulder, Colorado would seem an unlikely place for a surf music band. Nonetheless, the Astonauts were just that, and a pretty successful one at that. That success, however, came from an equally unlikely place. After being together for about three years and having only one charted single in the US (Baja, which spent one week on the chart in 1963, peaking in the #94 spot), the band discovered that their records were doing quite well in Japan, where the mostly-instrumental Astronauts were actually outselling the Beach Boys. The group soon began touring extensively in the Far East and when all was said and done had released nine albums and a dozen singles over a period of less than 10 years. Razzamatazz is the instrumental B side to the Astronauts' 1965 recording of Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, a tune that would appear the next year on the first Monkees album (and on their TV show). Razzamatazz itself is basically the instrumental track for Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day with some harmonica added.
Artist: Young Rascals
Title: Good Lovin'
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Resnick/Clark
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1966
Garfield, New Jersey was the point of origin for the band that came to define the term "blue-eyed soul". Led by Eddie Brigati and Felix Cavaliere, the Rascals (adding the name Young to avert a lawsuit from a group called the Harmonica Rascals) racked up an impressive number of top 40 hits over a period of about three years. After scoring a pair of relatively minor hits with You Better Run and I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore, the group hit the big time with Good Lovin', taking the tune into the top 5 in 1966.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Love Story
Source: LP: Living In The Past (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1968 (UK), 1969 (US)
Love Story was the last studio recording by the original Jethro Tull lineup of Ian Anderson, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker and Glenn Cornish. The song was released as a single in December of 1968, following the band's debut LP, This Was. Shortly after its release Abrahams left the group, citing differences with Anderson over the band's musical direction. The song spent eight weeks on the UK singles chart, reaching the #29 spot. In the U.S., Love Story was released in March 1969, with A Song for Jeffrey (an album track from This Was) on the B-side, but did not chart. Like most songs released as singles in the UK, Love Story did not appear on an album until several years later; in this case on the 1973 anthology album Living In The Past. It has most recently been included as a bonus track on the expanded CD version of This Was.
Artist: Cream
Title: White Room
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Although Cream was conceived as a British blues super-group (as in cream of the crop), it was psychedelic rock tunes like White Room, written by bassist Jack Bruce and his frequent collaborator Pete Brown, that gave them their greatest commercial successes.
Artist: Peter, Paul And Mary
Title: Puff
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Yarrow/Lipton
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1963
If Peter, Paul and Mary's Puff doesn't put you in touch with your inner child, chances are nothing will. The 1963 classic about a childhood friend (who happens to be a magic dragon) has long been considered one of the most memorable tunes to come out the folk music movement of the late 50s-early 60s and helped to cement the trio of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers' reputation as one of those rare acts whose appeal transcends the generational gap.
Artist: Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title: Steppin' Out
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Greatest Hits
Writer(s): Revere/Lindsay
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
1965 was the year that Paul Revere and the Raiders hit the big time. The Portland, Oregon band had already been performing together for several years, and had been the first rock band to record Louie Louie in the spring of 1963, getting airplay on the West Coast and Hawaii but losing out nationally to another Portland band, the Kingsmen, whose version was recorded the same month as the Raiders'. While playing in Hawaii the band came to the attention of Dick Clark, who was looking for a band to appear on his new afternoon TV program, Where The Action Is. Clark introduced the band to Terry Melcher, a successful producer at Columbia Records, which led to the Raiders being the first true rock band signed by the label. Appearing on Action turned out to be a major turning point for the band, who soon became the show's defacto hosts as well as house band. The Raiders' first national hit in their new role was Steppin' Out, a song written by Revere and vocalist Mark Lindsay about a guy returning from military service (as Revere himself had done in the early 60s, reforming the band upon his return) and finding out his girl had been unfaithful. Working with Melcher, the Raiders enjoyed a run of hits from 1965-67 unequalled by any other Amercian rock band of the time.
Artist: Jo Jo Gunne
Title: Run Run Run
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single (promo copy)
Writer: Ferguson/Andes
Label: Asylum
Year: 1972
After Spirit called it quits following the disappointing sales of the Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, lead vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes hooked up with Andes's brother Matt and William "Curly" Smith to form Jo Jo Gunne. Their best known song was Run Run Run, which hit the British top 10 and the US top 30 in 1972, receiving considerable amount of airplay on progressive rock stations as well.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Cosmic Charlie
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
After spending several months working on their 1969 album, Aoxomoxoa, experimenting with state-of-the-art 16-track equipment and coming in waaaaay over budget in the process, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh returned to the studio in 1971 to remix the entire album. Garcia felt that the band had "tended to put too much on everything...A lot of the music was just lost in the mix, a lot of what was really there" when doing the original mix, and the newer mix has been the only one in print ever since. Because the remix was done relatively soon after the original release, copies of the earlier mix are now considered quite rare and have become collectors items. Rarer still are the mono mixes of two tracks from the album that were issued as a 45 RPM single in 1969. The B side of that single was Cosmic Charlie. Feel free to compare it to your newer copy of the album (you know you have one, admit it).
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Boogie Music
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Living The Blues and as 45 RPM single B side)
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 a stereo mix of that version, featured on a United Artists anthology album released in 1969.
Artist: Spirit
Title: Prelude-Nothing To Hide
Source: LP: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus
Writer(s): Randy California
Label: Epic
Year: 1970
Spirit's first few albums had generated good reviews but poor sales. Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus was considered at the time to be their last chance to reach a larger audience. The pseudo-polygamous lyrics of the album's opening track, Prelude-Nothing To Hide, are actually about the band members' commitment to their music, a commitment that is apparent throughout this classic album. Unfortunately even that level of commitment did not translate to commercial success, leading vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes to split from Spirit to form Jo Jo Gunne soon thereafter.
Artist: Them
Title: Bent Over You
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Them/Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
While not an unlistenable track by any means, the most curious aspect of Bent Over You from Them's 1968 Time Out! Time In! For Them album is probably the fact that the entire band (but not the individual members) shares songwriting credit with Thomas Lane and Sharon Pulley, who in fact wrote most of the songs on the album itself. I have to wonder just how the royalties situation would have worked if the album had actually made any money.
Artist: Little Richard
Title: Dew Drop Inn
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Penniman/Esqrita/Winslow
Label: Reprise
Year: 1970
It can't be called psychedelic by any stretch of the imagination, I admit, but it's still a kick to pull out a Little Richard B side from 1970 and notice how similar it sounds to Creedence Clearwater Revival, at the time one of the hottest bands in the nation (if not the hottest). Besides, it keeps the all-vinyl streak going.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
Gene Clark's final contribution to the Byrds was his collaboration with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Eight Miles High. Despite a newsletter from the most powerful man in top 40 radio, Bill Drake, advising stations not to play this "drug song", the song managed to hit the top 20 in 1966. The band members themselves claimed that Eight Miles High was not a drug song at all, but was instead referring to the experience of travelling by air. In fact, it was Gene Clark's fear of flying that led to his leaving the Byrds.
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: Short-Haired Fathers
Source: CD: Circus Maximus
Writer: Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed in Greenwich Village by guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in 1967. The group originally wanted to call itself the Lost Sea Dreamers, but changed it after Vanguard Records expressed reservations about signing a group with the initials LSD. Of the eleven tracks on the band's debut LP, only four were written by Walker, and those were in more of a folk-rock vein. Bruno's seven tracks, on the other hand, are true gems of psychedelia, ranging from the jazz-influenced Wind to the proto-punk rocker Short-Haired Fathers. The group fell apart after only two albums, mostly due to the growing musical differences between Walker and Bruno. Walker, of course, went on to become one of the most successful songwriters of the country-rock genre. As for Bruno, he's still in New York City, concentrating more on the visual arts in recent years.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Born To Be Wild
Source: CD: Easy Rider Soundtrack (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf)
Writer(s): Mars Bonfire
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Born To Be Wild's status as a counter-cultural anthem was cemented when it was chosen for the soundtrack of the movie Easy Rider. The popularity of both the song and the movie resulted in Steppenwolf becoming the all-time favorite band of bikers all over the world.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Volunteers
Source: LP: Volunteers
Writer: Balin/Kantner
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1969
By 1969 Jefferson Airplane's music was a staple of progressive FM stations but had all but disappeared from the top 40 charts. Still, the band continued to release singles from their albums, including the title track to their fifth (and final with the classic JA lineup) LP, Volunteers.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: I Don't Live Today
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
I remember a black light poster that choked me up the first time I saw it. It was a shot of Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar with the caption I Don't Live Today. I don't believe Hendrix was being deliberately prophetic when he wrote and recorded this classic track for the Are You Experienced album, but it still spooks me a bit to hear it, even now.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Stone Free
Source: CD: Are You Experienced? (bonus track originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Track)
Year: 1966
Whether or not Stone Free was the first song ever written by Jimi Hendrix, there is no doubt it was the first original composition to be recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In fact, it is the only song written by Hendrix to be released in 1966 (as the B side to Hey Joe). The song was later included on the Smash Hits anthology album. A newer version was recorded in 1969 under the title Stone Free Again.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: The Wind Cries Mary
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The US version of Are You Experienced was significantly different than its UK counterpart. For one thing, the original UK album was only available in mono. For the US version, engineers at Reprise Records, working from the original multi-track masters, created all new stereo mixes of about two-thirds of the album, along with all three of the singles that the Jimi Hendrix Experience had released in the UK. The third of these singles was The Wind Cries Mary, which had hit the British charts in February of 1967.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: Time Has Come Today (single version one)
Source: Mono CD: The Time Has Come (bonus track)
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
Sometimes called the soundtrack song for the summer of love, the Chambers Brothers' Time Has Come Today was eleven minutes of pure psychedelia, closing out their 1967 LP The Time Has Come. The track was edited down twice for single release in 1968, with the later five-minute edit eventually becoming the most played version of the tune. What many people are not aware of, however, is the fact that there was an even earlier version of the song recorded in 1966 and released as a single in the fall of that year. At less than three minutes in length, this early version only hints at the extended space jam that propelled the Chambers Brothers into cult hero status the following year.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Here Comes The Sun
Source: CD: Abbey Road
Writer: George Harrison
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1969
In a way, George Harrison's career as a songwriter parallels the Beatles' recording career as a band. His first song to get any attention was If I Needed Someone on the Rubber Soul album, the LP that marked the beginning of the group's transition from performers to studio artists. As the Beatles' skills in the studio increased, so did Harrison's writing skills, reaching a peak with the Abbey Road album. As usual, Harrison wrote two songs for the LP, but this time one of them (Something) became the first single released from the album and the first Harrison song to hit the #1 spot on the charts. The other Harrison composition on Abbey Road was Here Comes The Sun. Although never released as a single, the song has gone on to become Harrison's most enduring masterpiece.
Artist: Ten Years After
Title: Speed Kills
Source: CD: Stonedhenge
Writer(s): Alvin Lee
Label: Deram
Year: 1969
Although they were generally considered part of the British blues scene of the late 1960s, Ten Years After traced their own roots as much to late 50s rock and roll artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard as to the traditional blues figures such as Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. As such, many of their songs had a touch of rockabilly that was absent from most of their contemporaries. A strong example of this rockabilly streak can be found in Speed Kills, the closing track of their 1969 Stonedhenge album.
Artist: Leigh Stephens
Title: Red Weather
Source: LP: Red Weather
Writer(s): Leigh Stephens
Label: Mercury
Year: 1969
After two moderately successful albums with perhaps the loudest band in the world at that time, Blue Cheer. guitarist Leigh Stephens decided to leave the heavy feedback in San Francisco and relocate to the UK, where he recorded his solo LP, Red Weather, with a group of London studio musicians. The result was a collection of somewhat meandering jams that nonetheless showcase Stephens's skills far beyond what was heard on either of his Blue Cheer LPs. Stephens also sang on some tracks, including the title track Red Weather, although those vocals were somewhat buried in the final mix.
Artist: Animals
Title: House Of The Rising Sun
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): trad., arr. Price
Label: Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1964
Sometimes, to use a baseball analogy, you hit a home run your first time out of the box. Such was the case with the Animals recording of the traditional folk song House Of The Rising Sun. The record, released in 1964, went to the top of the charts virtually all over the planet and the song itself has long since come to be identified specifically with the Animals, despite its 19th century (some say even earlier) origins. In fact, Bob Dylan, who recorded the song years before the Animals, removed the song from his own repertoire when he was accused of stealing it from the latter band. Dave Van Ronk, who taught the song to Dylan in the first place, has claimed that the Animals were actually using his arrangement of the song. Regardless, the fact remains that if you were going to play guitar in a rock and roll band in the mid-60s you had to know how to play the Animals version of House Of The Rising Sun. It helped if you had the stamina in your chord hand to still be playing it six verses later.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Milk Cow Blues
Source: Mono LP: The Kink Kontroversy
Writer(s): Kokomo Arnold
Label: Reprise
Year: 1965
The strength of Ray Davies's songwriting skills was such that the Kink Kontroversy album, released in 1965, contained only two cover songs at a time when even the Beatles were including three or four covers per LP (and the Rolling Stones' albums of the time actually had more covers than Jagger/Richards compositions on them). Nonetheless, one of those two covers, Kokomo Arnold's Milk Cow Blues, was chosen to open the album. As it turns out, Milk Cow Blues is one of the more outstanding tracks on the LP.
Artist: Kenny And The Kasuals
Title: Journey To Tyme
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Smith/Lee
Label: Rhino (original labels: Mark Ltd. and United Artists)
Year: 1966
One of the most popular Dallas area bands in the mid-1960s was Kenny and the Kasuals. Formed in 1962, the band was best known for playing high school dances and such. They got their shot at stardom in 1966 when they recorded Journey To Tyme for Mark Ltd. Productions. The song was picked up later in the year for national distribution by United Artists and made it all the way to the # 1 spot in Buffalo, NY and Pittsburgh, Pa. Despite this success the band was unable to get a long-term contract with United Artists (thanks in part to problems with their own manager) and soon disbanded.
Artist: Doors
Title: Strange Days
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
One of the first rock albums to not picture the band members on the front cover was the Doors' second LP, Strange Days. Instead, the cover featured several circus performers doing various tricks on a city street, with the band's logo appearing on a poster on the wall of a building. The album itself contains some of the Doors' most memorable tracks, including the title song, which also appears on their greatest hits album despite never being released as a single.
Artist: Donovan/Lulu
Title: What A Beautiful Creature You Are
Source: CD: The Hurdy Gurdy Man (bonus track)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI
Year: 1968
While working on his 1968 album The Hurdy Gurdy Man, Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch took time out to record What A Beautiful Creature You Are with one of Britain's most popular singers, Lulu, who had scored a huge hit that year with the song To Sir With Love (from the film of the same name). Although the recording was not released (until being included as a bonus track on the 2005 CD reissue of The Hurdy Gurdy Man), Lulu did perform the Donovan-penned song as a duet with Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees on a British television show.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?
Source: LP: Through The Past, Darkly (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Flowers)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1966
By mid-1966 there was a population explosion of teenage rock bands popping up in garages and basements all across the US, the majority of which were doing their best to emulate the grungy sound of their heroes, the Rolling Stones. The Stones themselves responded by ramping up the grunge factor to a previously unheard of degree with their last single of the year, Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow? It was the most feedback-laden record ever to make the top 40 at that point in time, and it inspired America's garage bands to buy even more powerful amps and crank up the volume (driving their parents to drink in the process).
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: The Warmth Of The Sun
Source: Mono CD: Good Vibrations-Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys (originally released on LP: Shut Down, Volume 2)
Writer(s): Wilson/Love
Label: Capitol
Year: 1964
Along with Don't Worry Baby, The Warmth Of The Sun represents the beginning of the evolution of Brian Wilson's music away from the relatively lightweight surf and hot rod songs of the Beach Boys' early years toward the more sophisticated sounds that would characterize the Pet Sounds album (and subsequent Smile sessions) a couple of years later. The Warmth Of The Sun was written the night that JFK died and the melody and chord structure reflect the melancholy everyone was feeling at the time. Mike Love had recently gone through a personal disappointment with a girl and channeled his feelings into what became one of the best post-breakup songs ever written. The song first appeared on the Shut Down, Volume 2 album (Volume 1 was a multi-artist hot rod collection put out by Capitol Records) and was also issued as a 1964 B side.
Artist: Astronauts
Title: Razzamatazz
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Venet/Boyce/Allison
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1965
Landlocked Boulder, Colorado would seem an unlikely place for a surf music band. Nonetheless, the Astonauts were just that, and a pretty successful one at that. That success, however, came from an equally unlikely place. After being together for about three years and having only one charted single in the US (Baja, which spent one week on the chart in 1963, peaking in the #94 spot), the band discovered that their records were doing quite well in Japan, where the mostly-instrumental Astronauts were actually outselling the Beach Boys. The group soon began touring extensively in the Far East and when all was said and done had released nine albums and a dozen singles over a period of less than 10 years. Razzamatazz is the instrumental B side to the Astronauts' 1965 recording of Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, a tune that would appear the next year on the first Monkees album (and on their TV show). Razzamatazz itself is basically the instrumental track for Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day with some harmonica added.
Artist: Young Rascals
Title: Good Lovin'
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Resnick/Clark
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1966
Garfield, New Jersey was the point of origin for the band that came to define the term "blue-eyed soul". Led by Eddie Brigati and Felix Cavaliere, the Rascals (adding the name Young to avert a lawsuit from a group called the Harmonica Rascals) racked up an impressive number of top 40 hits over a period of about three years. After scoring a pair of relatively minor hits with You Better Run and I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore, the group hit the big time with Good Lovin', taking the tune into the top 5 in 1966.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Love Story
Source: LP: Living In The Past (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1968 (UK), 1969 (US)
Love Story was the last studio recording by the original Jethro Tull lineup of Ian Anderson, Mick Abrahams, Clive Bunker and Glenn Cornish. The song was released as a single in December of 1968, following the band's debut LP, This Was. Shortly after its release Abrahams left the group, citing differences with Anderson over the band's musical direction. The song spent eight weeks on the UK singles chart, reaching the #29 spot. In the U.S., Love Story was released in March 1969, with A Song for Jeffrey (an album track from This Was) on the B-side, but did not chart. Like most songs released as singles in the UK, Love Story did not appear on an album until several years later; in this case on the 1973 anthology album Living In The Past. It has most recently been included as a bonus track on the expanded CD version of This Was.
Artist: Cream
Title: White Room
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Although Cream was conceived as a British blues super-group (as in cream of the crop), it was psychedelic rock tunes like White Room, written by bassist Jack Bruce and his frequent collaborator Pete Brown, that gave them their greatest commercial successes.
Artist: Peter, Paul And Mary
Title: Puff
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Yarrow/Lipton
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1963
If Peter, Paul and Mary's Puff doesn't put you in touch with your inner child, chances are nothing will. The 1963 classic about a childhood friend (who happens to be a magic dragon) has long been considered one of the most memorable tunes to come out the folk music movement of the late 50s-early 60s and helped to cement the trio of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers' reputation as one of those rare acts whose appeal transcends the generational gap.
Artist: Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title: Steppin' Out
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Greatest Hits
Writer(s): Revere/Lindsay
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
1965 was the year that Paul Revere and the Raiders hit the big time. The Portland, Oregon band had already been performing together for several years, and had been the first rock band to record Louie Louie in the spring of 1963, getting airplay on the West Coast and Hawaii but losing out nationally to another Portland band, the Kingsmen, whose version was recorded the same month as the Raiders'. While playing in Hawaii the band came to the attention of Dick Clark, who was looking for a band to appear on his new afternoon TV program, Where The Action Is. Clark introduced the band to Terry Melcher, a successful producer at Columbia Records, which led to the Raiders being the first true rock band signed by the label. Appearing on Action turned out to be a major turning point for the band, who soon became the show's defacto hosts as well as house band. The Raiders' first national hit in their new role was Steppin' Out, a song written by Revere and vocalist Mark Lindsay about a guy returning from military service (as Revere himself had done in the early 60s, reforming the band upon his return) and finding out his girl had been unfaithful. Working with Melcher, the Raiders enjoyed a run of hits from 1965-67 unequalled by any other Amercian rock band of the time.
Artist: Jo Jo Gunne
Title: Run Run Run
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single (promo copy)
Writer: Ferguson/Andes
Label: Asylum
Year: 1972
After Spirit called it quits following the disappointing sales of the Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, lead vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes hooked up with Andes's brother Matt and William "Curly" Smith to form Jo Jo Gunne. Their best known song was Run Run Run, which hit the British top 10 and the US top 30 in 1972, receiving considerable amount of airplay on progressive rock stations as well.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Cosmic Charlie
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
After spending several months working on their 1969 album, Aoxomoxoa, experimenting with state-of-the-art 16-track equipment and coming in waaaaay over budget in the process, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh returned to the studio in 1971 to remix the entire album. Garcia felt that the band had "tended to put too much on everything...A lot of the music was just lost in the mix, a lot of what was really there" when doing the original mix, and the newer mix has been the only one in print ever since. Because the remix was done relatively soon after the original release, copies of the earlier mix are now considered quite rare and have become collectors items. Rarer still are the mono mixes of two tracks from the album that were issued as a 45 RPM single in 1969. The B side of that single was Cosmic Charlie. Feel free to compare it to your newer copy of the album (you know you have one, admit it).
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Boogie Music
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Living The Blues and as 45 RPM single B side)
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 a stereo mix of that version, featured on a United Artists anthology album released in 1969.
Artist: Spirit
Title: Prelude-Nothing To Hide
Source: LP: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus
Writer(s): Randy California
Label: Epic
Year: 1970
Spirit's first few albums had generated good reviews but poor sales. Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus was considered at the time to be their last chance to reach a larger audience. The pseudo-polygamous lyrics of the album's opening track, Prelude-Nothing To Hide, are actually about the band members' commitment to their music, a commitment that is apparent throughout this classic album. Unfortunately even that level of commitment did not translate to commercial success, leading vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes to split from Spirit to form Jo Jo Gunne soon thereafter.
Artist: Them
Title: Bent Over You
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Them/Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
While not an unlistenable track by any means, the most curious aspect of Bent Over You from Them's 1968 Time Out! Time In! For Them album is probably the fact that the entire band (but not the individual members) shares songwriting credit with Thomas Lane and Sharon Pulley, who in fact wrote most of the songs on the album itself. I have to wonder just how the royalties situation would have worked if the album had actually made any money.
Artist: Little Richard
Title: Dew Drop Inn
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Penniman/Esqrita/Winslow
Label: Reprise
Year: 1970
It can't be called psychedelic by any stretch of the imagination, I admit, but it's still a kick to pull out a Little Richard B side from 1970 and notice how similar it sounds to Creedence Clearwater Revival, at the time one of the hottest bands in the nation (if not the hottest). Besides, it keeps the all-vinyl streak going.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
Gene Clark's final contribution to the Byrds was his collaboration with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Eight Miles High. Despite a newsletter from the most powerful man in top 40 radio, Bill Drake, advising stations not to play this "drug song", the song managed to hit the top 20 in 1966. The band members themselves claimed that Eight Miles High was not a drug song at all, but was instead referring to the experience of travelling by air. In fact, it was Gene Clark's fear of flying that led to his leaving the Byrds.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1310 (starts 3/7/13)
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP: The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Boogie Music
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Living The Blues and as 45 RPM single B side)
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 a stereo mix of that version, featured on a United Artists anthology album released in 1969.
Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title: Light Your Windows
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Quicksilver Messenger Service)
Writer: Duncan/Freiberg
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
One of the last of the legendary San Francisco bands that played at Monterey to get signed to a major label was Quicksilver Messenger Service. Inspired by a conversation between Dino Valenti and guitarist John Cippolina, there are differing opinions on just how serious Valenti was about forming a new band at that time. Since Valenti was busted for drugs the very next day (and ended up spending the next two years in jail), we'll never know for sure. Cippolina, however, was motivated enough to begin finding members for the new band, including bassist David Freiberg (later to join Starship) and drummer Skip Spence. When Marty Balin stole Spence away to join his own new band (Jefferson Airplane), he tried to make up for it by introducing Cippolina to vocalist/guitarist Gary Duncan and drummer Greg Elmore, whose own band, the Brogues, had recently disbanded. Taking the name Quicksilver Messenger Service (so named for all the member's astrological connections with the planet Mercury), the new band soon became a fixture on the San Francisco scene. Inspired by the Blues Project, Cippolina and Duncan quickly established a reputation for their dual guitar improvisational abilities. Unlike other San Francisco bands such as the Airplane and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service did not jump at their first offer from a major record label, preferring to hold out for the best deal. This meant their debut album did not come out until 1968, missing out on the initial buzz surrounding the summer of love.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Pictures And Designs
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Saxon/Hooper
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
The first Seeds album was somewhat unusual for its time in that all the songs on the album (including both singles from the album) were written by members of the band itself. Unfortunately this resulted in a sort of formulaic sameness from one track to the next, with many tunes sounding like attempts to recapture the magic of their most famous song, Pushin' Too Hard. The second Seeds album, A Web Of Sound, also was made up of (mostly) original material, but this time Sky Saxon and company made an effort to expand beyond the formula with tracks like Pictures And Designs, which starts off sounding a bit like the Yardbirds, but soon becomes a snarling punk drone that manages to break new ground for the band while maintaining the distinctive Seeds sound.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In)
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: No Way Out)
Writer(s): McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in truth the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: 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: Them
Title: Baby, Please Don't Go
Source: Mono 12" single (reissue)
Writer: Joe Williams
Label: A&M
Year: 1964
Belfast, Northern Ireland was home to one of the first bands that could be legitimately described as punk rock. Led by Van Morrison, the band 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 rock and roll version of the 1923 Joe Williams tune Baby, Please Don't Go. Despite its UK success, the single was never issued 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.
Artist: Who
Title: Top Gear/Glittering Girl/Coke
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out (bonus track)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
The Who Sell Out was designed to sound like Radio London, the most successful of the pirate radio stations that broadcast from floating transmitters outside of the three-mile limit surrounding Great Britain in the mid 1960s. At least that's how the album starts out. For some reason the entire concept disappears about a third of the way through side two of the original LP. At first one might think that the band simply ran out of the various jingles and faux commercials that are heard between the songs throughout side one, but that theory is belied by the inclusion of several of these bits as bonus tracks on the 1993 reissue of The Who Sell Out on CD. Among those are commercials for Top Gear and Coca-Cola, heard before and after the bonus track Glittering Girl, an unreleased track recorded sometime before the sessions for the album itself got under way in July of 1967.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Fields of Sun
Source: Heavy
Writer(s): Ingle/DeLoach
Label: Rhino
Year: 1968
Before In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida there was Heavy. The debut LP from Iron Butterfly featured vocalist/tambourinist Darryl DeLoach, guitarist Danny Weis and bassist Jerry Penrod, all of whom would leave the band after the album was recorded, along with drummer Ron Bushy and keyboardist Doug Ingle, who would find themselves having to recruit two new members before recording the classic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album. One of the best-known tracks from Heavy is Fields of Sun, with its Baroque-influenced instrumental bridge played and sung (an octave higher) by Ingle.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Gentle As It May Seem
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Heavy)
Writer(s): DeLoach/Weis
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
Personnel changes were pretty much a regular occurrence with Iron Butterfly. After the first album, Heavy, everyone except keyboardist Doug Ingle and drummer Ron Bushy left the band. This was accompanied by a drastic change in style as well, as Ingle, who had already been carrying the lion's share of lead vocals, became the group's primary songwriter as well. Gentle As It Seems, written by DeLoach and lead guitarist Danny Weis, is a good example of the band's original sound, back when they were scrounging for gigs in a rapidly shrinking L.A. all-ages club scene.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Iron Butterfly Theme
Source: CD: Heavy
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
Although much of the material on the first Iron Butterfly album, Heavy, has a somewhat generic L.A. club sound to it, the final track, the Iron Butterfly Theme, sounds more in line with the style the band would become known for on their In-A-Gadda-Vida album a few months later.
Artist: Move
Title: My Marge
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Wood/Lynne
Label: United Artists
Year: 1971
The Move were a hugely successful British band that couldn't buy a hit in the US, despite scoring several top 10 singles in their native UK in the latter part of the 1960s. By 1971 the band was in the middle of a transition period that would see them give birth to two new bands: Roy Wood's Wizzard and Jeff Lynne's Electric Light Orchestra. In fact, the same group of musicians were actually working on two albums in the same studio at the same time that summer: the first ELO album and the last Move LP. One of the tracks from the latter, My Marge, was used as a B side of a final Move single in the US shortly after ELO had their first American hit, Roll Over Beethoven, in 1973.
Artist: Mandrake Paddle Steamer
Title: Strange Walking Man
Source: Mono import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Briley/Engle
Label: Zonophone (UK) (originally label: Columbia UK)
Year: 1969
Mandrake Paddle Steamer was the brainchild of art school students Martin Briley and Brian Engle, who, with producer Robert Finnis, were among the first to take advantage of EMI's new 8-track recording equipment at their Abbey Road studios. The result was Strange Walking Man, a single released in 1969. The track includes a coda created by Finnis by splicing a tape of studio musicians playing a cover version of an Incredible String Band tune, Maybe Someday.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: J.P.P. McStep B. Blues
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow (bonus track originally released on LP: Early Flight)
Writer(s): Skip Spence
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1974
One of the first songs recorded for the Surrealistic Pillow album, J.P.P. McStep B. Blues ended up being shelved, possibly because drummer Skip Spence, who wrote the song, had left the band by the time the album came out.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: High Flyin' Bird
Source: LP: Early Flight
Writer(s): Billy Edd Wheeler
Label: Grunt
Year: Recorded 1965, released 1974
One of the more outstanding performances at the Monterey International Pop Festival was Jefferson Airplane's rendition of High Flyin' Bird, a song usually associated with Buffy St.-Marie. The song had actually been in the band's repertoire almost from the beginning, as this recording from 1965, featuring the original Airplane lineup of Marty Balin and Signe Anderson (vocals), Jorma Kaukonen and Paul Kantner (guitars), Jack Casidy (bass) and Skip Spence (drums), demonstrates.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Go To Her
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow (bonus track originally released on LP: Early Flight)
Writer(s): Kantner/Estes
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage (original label: Grunt)
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1974
Nearly every major artist acquires a backlog of unreleased songs over a period of time, usually due to lack of space on their official albums. Eventually many of these tracks get released on compilation albums or (more recently) as bonus tracks on CD versions of the original albums. One of the first of these compilation albums was Jefferson Airplane's Early Flight LP, released in 1974. Of the nine tracks on Early Flight, five were recorded during sessions for the band's first two LPs, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and Surrealistic Pillow. One song originally intended for Surrealistic Pillow was Go To Her, an early Paul Kantner collaboration. At four minutes, the recording was longer than any of the songs that actually appeared on the album, which is probably the reason it didn't make the final cut, as it would have meant that two other songs would have to have been deleted instead.
Artist: Focus
Title: Hocus Pocus
Source: Import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Moving Waves)
Writer(s): van Leer/Akkerman
Label: Polydor UK (original US label: Sire)
Year: 1971
Although it was not a hit until 1973, Hocus Pocus by the Dutch progressive rock band Focus has the type of simple structure coupled with high energy that was characteristic of many of the garage bands of the mid to late 60s. The song was originally released on the band's second LP, known alternately as Focus II and Moving Waves, in 1971. Both guitarist Jan Akkerman and keyboardist/vocalist/flautist Thijs Van Leer have gone on to have successful careers, with Van Leer continuing to use to Focus name as recently as 2006.
Artist: Salvation
Title: Think Twice
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Salvation)
Writer(s): Joe Tate
Label: Rhino (original label: ABC)
Year: 1968
If there is any one band that typifies the San Francisco music scene of 1968 it would have to be Salvation. Originally known as the Salvation Army Banned, the group came to the attention of ABC Records after a series of successful gigs at Golden Gate Park. The band was often seen cruising the streets of San Francisco in a converted bus and often found themselves sharing the playbill with acts like Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. After recording their debut LP, Salvation, the group did a coast to coast promotional tour "from the Golden Gate to the Village Gate", only to find themselves stranded on the east coast when their management team absconded with the band's advance money. The band's fate was sealed when they, to quote keyboardist Art Resnick, "acted so incredibly wild at the main offices of ABC In in NYC when going there to meet all the top execs. It was totally insane! Wilder than any rock movie I've ever seen."
Artist: Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck
Title: One Ring Jane
Source: Import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released on LP: Home Grown Stuff)
Writer(s): McDougall/Ivanuck
Label: Zonophone UK (original label: Capitol Canada)
Year: 1969
Sometimes called Canada's most psychedelic band, Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck was formed in British Columbia in 1967. After recording one unsuccessful single for London, the Duck switched to Capitol Records Canada and scored nationally with the album Home Grown Stuff. After a couple more years spent opening for big name bands such as Alice Cooper and Deep Purple and a couple more albums (on the Capitol-owned Duck Records) the group disbanded, with vocalist/guitarist Donny McDougall joining the Guess Who in 1972.
Artist: Hysterics
Title: Everything's There
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): David Donaghue
Label: Rhino (original label: Bing)
Year: 1965
Much as San Jose, California had its own thriving teen-oriented music scene within the greater San Francisco media market, the San Bernardino/Riverside area of Southern California was home to several local bands that were able to score recording contracts with various small labels in the area. Among those were the Hysterics, who recorded four songs for two seperate labels in 1965. The best of those was Everything's There, which appeared as the B side of the second single issued by the band. At some point, Everything's There was reissued (along with the A side of the first record, That's All She Wrote) on yet a third label, but this time credited to the Love Ins. Such was the state of the indy record business in the late 60s.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Originally released as a single in late 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs slated to be used in the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold.
Artist: Doors
Title: Back Door Man
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
In their early days as an L.A. club band, the Doors supplemented their growing body of original material with covers of classic blues tunes (rather than covers of top 40 hits like many of their contemporaries). Perhaps best of these was Willie Dixon's Back Door Man, which had been a mid-50s R&B hit for Howlin' Wolf. The Doors themselves certainly thought so, as it was the only cover song to appear on their debut LP.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Parachute Woman
Source: CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
The last Rolling Stones album with the original lineup was Beggar's Banquet, released in 1968. The album itself was a conscious effort on the part of the band to get back to their roots after the psychedelic excesses of Their Satanic Majesties Request. Sadly, Brian Jones was fast deteriorating at the time and his contributions to the album are minimal compared to the band's earlier efforts. As a result, Keith Richards was responsible for most of the guitar work on Beggar's Banquet, including both lead and rhythm parts on Parachute Woman.
Artist: Others
Title: I Can't Stand This Love, Goodbye
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brand/Costa/Shepley
Label: BFD (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1965
Not much is known about the Rhode Island band known as the Others (not to be confused with either the California or Florida bands called the Others), other (sorry) than the fact that they were apparently popular enough to land a contract with the largest record label in the world, RCA Victor, recording two singles for the label in late 1965. The first of these was I Can't Stand This Love, Goodbye, released in September of that year.
Artist: Bees
Title: Voices Green And Purple
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era
Writer(s): Wood/Willsie
Label: Rhino (original label: Liverpool)
Year: 1966
One of the shortest, as well as most demented, singles ever released, Voices Green And Purple recounts a bad acid trip in just over a minute and a half. The Bees themselves were an early indy punk band from LaVerne, California, an obscure L.A. suburb.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Lucifer Sam
Source: CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s): Syd Barrett
Label: Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Beyond a shadow of a doubt the original driving force behind Pink Floyd was the legendary Syd Barrett. Not only did he front the band during their rise to fame, he also wrote their first two singles, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, as well as most of their first LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. In fact it could be argued that one of the songs on that album, Lucifer Sam, could have just as easily been issued as a single, as it is stylistically similar to the first two songs. Sadly, Barrett's mental health deteriorated quickly over the next year and his participation in the making of the band's next LP, A Saucerful Of Secrets, was minimal. He soon left the group altogether, never to return (although several of his former bandmates did participate in the making of his 1970 solo album, The Madcap Laughs).
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Crosstown Traffic
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
By 1968 it didn't matter one bit whether the Jimi Hendrix Experience had any hit singles; their albums were guaranteed to be successful. Nonetheless the Electric Ladyland album had no less that three singles on it (although one was a new stereo mix of a 1967 single). The first single to be released concurrently with Electric Ladyland was Crosstown Traffic, a song that has been included on several anthologies over the years.
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Searching For Madge
Source: CD: Then Play On
Writer(s): John McVie
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
Fleetwood Mac was founded by Peter Green in 1967. Green had been a member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and as a Christmas gift, Mayall bought Green some studio time to use as he saw fit. Green used the time to record a set of tunes with drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer in the hope that the three of them might form a new band. Green chose the name Fleetwood Mac as a way of enticing Bluesbreakers bassist John McVie into joining the band as well. It wasn't until after the album was released and the new band started getting gigs that McVie did indeed come on board, eventually bringing his girlfriend, Christine Perfect, into the band as well. In 1969 another guitarist, Danny Kirwan, joined the lineup for Then Play On, the first Fleetwood Mac LP to be released in the US. It was also Green's last album with the band. Two of the tracks on Then Play On are actually sections of a long jam session, both containing the word Madge in their official title. The longer of these is Searching For Madge, which runs nearly seven minutes.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Waterloo Sunset
Source: LP: Something Else
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
One of the most beautiful tunes ever recorded by the Kinks is Waterloo Sunset, a song that was a hit single in the UK, but was totally ignored by US radio stations. The reason for this neglect of such a stong song is a mystery, however it may have been due to the fear that American audiences would not be able to relate to all the references to places in and around London in the song's lyrics.
Artist: Bee Gees
Title: One Minute Woman
Source: CD: Bee Gees 1st
Writer(s): Barry and Robin Gibb
Label: Reprise (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
The Bee Gees had actually released two albums in Australia before relocating to England in 1967 and recording the album Bee Gees 1st. Nonetheless the LP, which included three songs that would become hits (New York Mining Disaster-1941, To Love Somebody and Holiday) as well as several notable album tracks such as One Minute Woman, was their first to be released internationally, and in a very sense marks the true beginning of their rise to major stardom.
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP: The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Boogie Music
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Living The Blues and as 45 RPM single B side)
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 a stereo mix of that version, featured on a United Artists anthology album released in 1969.
Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title: Light Your Windows
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Quicksilver Messenger Service)
Writer: Duncan/Freiberg
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
One of the last of the legendary San Francisco bands that played at Monterey to get signed to a major label was Quicksilver Messenger Service. Inspired by a conversation between Dino Valenti and guitarist John Cippolina, there are differing opinions on just how serious Valenti was about forming a new band at that time. Since Valenti was busted for drugs the very next day (and ended up spending the next two years in jail), we'll never know for sure. Cippolina, however, was motivated enough to begin finding members for the new band, including bassist David Freiberg (later to join Starship) and drummer Skip Spence. When Marty Balin stole Spence away to join his own new band (Jefferson Airplane), he tried to make up for it by introducing Cippolina to vocalist/guitarist Gary Duncan and drummer Greg Elmore, whose own band, the Brogues, had recently disbanded. Taking the name Quicksilver Messenger Service (so named for all the member's astrological connections with the planet Mercury), the new band soon became a fixture on the San Francisco scene. Inspired by the Blues Project, Cippolina and Duncan quickly established a reputation for their dual guitar improvisational abilities. Unlike other San Francisco bands such as the Airplane and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service did not jump at their first offer from a major record label, preferring to hold out for the best deal. This meant their debut album did not come out until 1968, missing out on the initial buzz surrounding the summer of love.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Pictures And Designs
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Saxon/Hooper
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
The first Seeds album was somewhat unusual for its time in that all the songs on the album (including both singles from the album) were written by members of the band itself. Unfortunately this resulted in a sort of formulaic sameness from one track to the next, with many tunes sounding like attempts to recapture the magic of their most famous song, Pushin' Too Hard. The second Seeds album, A Web Of Sound, also was made up of (mostly) original material, but this time Sky Saxon and company made an effort to expand beyond the formula with tracks like Pictures And Designs, which starts off sounding a bit like the Yardbirds, but soon becomes a snarling punk drone that manages to break new ground for the band while maintaining the distinctive Seeds sound.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In)
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: No Way Out)
Writer(s): McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in truth the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: 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: Them
Title: Baby, Please Don't Go
Source: Mono 12" single (reissue)
Writer: Joe Williams
Label: A&M
Year: 1964
Belfast, Northern Ireland was home to one of the first bands that could be legitimately described as punk rock. Led by Van Morrison, the band 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 rock and roll version of the 1923 Joe Williams tune Baby, Please Don't Go. Despite its UK success, the single was never issued 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.
Artist: Who
Title: Top Gear/Glittering Girl/Coke
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out (bonus track)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
The Who Sell Out was designed to sound like Radio London, the most successful of the pirate radio stations that broadcast from floating transmitters outside of the three-mile limit surrounding Great Britain in the mid 1960s. At least that's how the album starts out. For some reason the entire concept disappears about a third of the way through side two of the original LP. At first one might think that the band simply ran out of the various jingles and faux commercials that are heard between the songs throughout side one, but that theory is belied by the inclusion of several of these bits as bonus tracks on the 1993 reissue of The Who Sell Out on CD. Among those are commercials for Top Gear and Coca-Cola, heard before and after the bonus track Glittering Girl, an unreleased track recorded sometime before the sessions for the album itself got under way in July of 1967.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Fields of Sun
Source: Heavy
Writer(s): Ingle/DeLoach
Label: Rhino
Year: 1968
Before In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida there was Heavy. The debut LP from Iron Butterfly featured vocalist/tambourinist Darryl DeLoach, guitarist Danny Weis and bassist Jerry Penrod, all of whom would leave the band after the album was recorded, along with drummer Ron Bushy and keyboardist Doug Ingle, who would find themselves having to recruit two new members before recording the classic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album. One of the best-known tracks from Heavy is Fields of Sun, with its Baroque-influenced instrumental bridge played and sung (an octave higher) by Ingle.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Gentle As It May Seem
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Heavy)
Writer(s): DeLoach/Weis
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
Personnel changes were pretty much a regular occurrence with Iron Butterfly. After the first album, Heavy, everyone except keyboardist Doug Ingle and drummer Ron Bushy left the band. This was accompanied by a drastic change in style as well, as Ingle, who had already been carrying the lion's share of lead vocals, became the group's primary songwriter as well. Gentle As It Seems, written by DeLoach and lead guitarist Danny Weis, is a good example of the band's original sound, back when they were scrounging for gigs in a rapidly shrinking L.A. all-ages club scene.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Iron Butterfly Theme
Source: CD: Heavy
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
Although much of the material on the first Iron Butterfly album, Heavy, has a somewhat generic L.A. club sound to it, the final track, the Iron Butterfly Theme, sounds more in line with the style the band would become known for on their In-A-Gadda-Vida album a few months later.
Artist: Move
Title: My Marge
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Wood/Lynne
Label: United Artists
Year: 1971
The Move were a hugely successful British band that couldn't buy a hit in the US, despite scoring several top 10 singles in their native UK in the latter part of the 1960s. By 1971 the band was in the middle of a transition period that would see them give birth to two new bands: Roy Wood's Wizzard and Jeff Lynne's Electric Light Orchestra. In fact, the same group of musicians were actually working on two albums in the same studio at the same time that summer: the first ELO album and the last Move LP. One of the tracks from the latter, My Marge, was used as a B side of a final Move single in the US shortly after ELO had their first American hit, Roll Over Beethoven, in 1973.
Artist: Mandrake Paddle Steamer
Title: Strange Walking Man
Source: Mono import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Briley/Engle
Label: Zonophone (UK) (originally label: Columbia UK)
Year: 1969
Mandrake Paddle Steamer was the brainchild of art school students Martin Briley and Brian Engle, who, with producer Robert Finnis, were among the first to take advantage of EMI's new 8-track recording equipment at their Abbey Road studios. The result was Strange Walking Man, a single released in 1969. The track includes a coda created by Finnis by splicing a tape of studio musicians playing a cover version of an Incredible String Band tune, Maybe Someday.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: J.P.P. McStep B. Blues
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow (bonus track originally released on LP: Early Flight)
Writer(s): Skip Spence
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1974
One of the first songs recorded for the Surrealistic Pillow album, J.P.P. McStep B. Blues ended up being shelved, possibly because drummer Skip Spence, who wrote the song, had left the band by the time the album came out.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: High Flyin' Bird
Source: LP: Early Flight
Writer(s): Billy Edd Wheeler
Label: Grunt
Year: Recorded 1965, released 1974
One of the more outstanding performances at the Monterey International Pop Festival was Jefferson Airplane's rendition of High Flyin' Bird, a song usually associated with Buffy St.-Marie. The song had actually been in the band's repertoire almost from the beginning, as this recording from 1965, featuring the original Airplane lineup of Marty Balin and Signe Anderson (vocals), Jorma Kaukonen and Paul Kantner (guitars), Jack Casidy (bass) and Skip Spence (drums), demonstrates.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Go To Her
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow (bonus track originally released on LP: Early Flight)
Writer(s): Kantner/Estes
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage (original label: Grunt)
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1974
Nearly every major artist acquires a backlog of unreleased songs over a period of time, usually due to lack of space on their official albums. Eventually many of these tracks get released on compilation albums or (more recently) as bonus tracks on CD versions of the original albums. One of the first of these compilation albums was Jefferson Airplane's Early Flight LP, released in 1974. Of the nine tracks on Early Flight, five were recorded during sessions for the band's first two LPs, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and Surrealistic Pillow. One song originally intended for Surrealistic Pillow was Go To Her, an early Paul Kantner collaboration. At four minutes, the recording was longer than any of the songs that actually appeared on the album, which is probably the reason it didn't make the final cut, as it would have meant that two other songs would have to have been deleted instead.
Artist: Focus
Title: Hocus Pocus
Source: Import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Moving Waves)
Writer(s): van Leer/Akkerman
Label: Polydor UK (original US label: Sire)
Year: 1971
Although it was not a hit until 1973, Hocus Pocus by the Dutch progressive rock band Focus has the type of simple structure coupled with high energy that was characteristic of many of the garage bands of the mid to late 60s. The song was originally released on the band's second LP, known alternately as Focus II and Moving Waves, in 1971. Both guitarist Jan Akkerman and keyboardist/vocalist/flautist Thijs Van Leer have gone on to have successful careers, with Van Leer continuing to use to Focus name as recently as 2006.
Artist: Salvation
Title: Think Twice
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Salvation)
Writer(s): Joe Tate
Label: Rhino (original label: ABC)
Year: 1968
If there is any one band that typifies the San Francisco music scene of 1968 it would have to be Salvation. Originally known as the Salvation Army Banned, the group came to the attention of ABC Records after a series of successful gigs at Golden Gate Park. The band was often seen cruising the streets of San Francisco in a converted bus and often found themselves sharing the playbill with acts like Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. After recording their debut LP, Salvation, the group did a coast to coast promotional tour "from the Golden Gate to the Village Gate", only to find themselves stranded on the east coast when their management team absconded with the band's advance money. The band's fate was sealed when they, to quote keyboardist Art Resnick, "acted so incredibly wild at the main offices of ABC In in NYC when going there to meet all the top execs. It was totally insane! Wilder than any rock movie I've ever seen."
Artist: Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck
Title: One Ring Jane
Source: Import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released on LP: Home Grown Stuff)
Writer(s): McDougall/Ivanuck
Label: Zonophone UK (original label: Capitol Canada)
Year: 1969
Sometimes called Canada's most psychedelic band, Mother Tucker's Yellow Duck was formed in British Columbia in 1967. After recording one unsuccessful single for London, the Duck switched to Capitol Records Canada and scored nationally with the album Home Grown Stuff. After a couple more years spent opening for big name bands such as Alice Cooper and Deep Purple and a couple more albums (on the Capitol-owned Duck Records) the group disbanded, with vocalist/guitarist Donny McDougall joining the Guess Who in 1972.
Artist: Hysterics
Title: Everything's There
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): David Donaghue
Label: Rhino (original label: Bing)
Year: 1965
Much as San Jose, California had its own thriving teen-oriented music scene within the greater San Francisco media market, the San Bernardino/Riverside area of Southern California was home to several local bands that were able to score recording contracts with various small labels in the area. Among those were the Hysterics, who recorded four songs for two seperate labels in 1965. The best of those was Everything's There, which appeared as the B side of the second single issued by the band. At some point, Everything's There was reissued (along with the A side of the first record, That's All She Wrote) on yet a third label, but this time credited to the Love Ins. Such was the state of the indy record business in the late 60s.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Originally released as a single in late 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs slated to be used in the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold.
Artist: Doors
Title: Back Door Man
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
In their early days as an L.A. club band, the Doors supplemented their growing body of original material with covers of classic blues tunes (rather than covers of top 40 hits like many of their contemporaries). Perhaps best of these was Willie Dixon's Back Door Man, which had been a mid-50s R&B hit for Howlin' Wolf. The Doors themselves certainly thought so, as it was the only cover song to appear on their debut LP.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Parachute Woman
Source: CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
The last Rolling Stones album with the original lineup was Beggar's Banquet, released in 1968. The album itself was a conscious effort on the part of the band to get back to their roots after the psychedelic excesses of Their Satanic Majesties Request. Sadly, Brian Jones was fast deteriorating at the time and his contributions to the album are minimal compared to the band's earlier efforts. As a result, Keith Richards was responsible for most of the guitar work on Beggar's Banquet, including both lead and rhythm parts on Parachute Woman.
Artist: Others
Title: I Can't Stand This Love, Goodbye
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brand/Costa/Shepley
Label: BFD (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1965
Not much is known about the Rhode Island band known as the Others (not to be confused with either the California or Florida bands called the Others), other (sorry) than the fact that they were apparently popular enough to land a contract with the largest record label in the world, RCA Victor, recording two singles for the label in late 1965. The first of these was I Can't Stand This Love, Goodbye, released in September of that year.
Artist: Bees
Title: Voices Green And Purple
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era
Writer(s): Wood/Willsie
Label: Rhino (original label: Liverpool)
Year: 1966
One of the shortest, as well as most demented, singles ever released, Voices Green And Purple recounts a bad acid trip in just over a minute and a half. The Bees themselves were an early indy punk band from LaVerne, California, an obscure L.A. suburb.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Lucifer Sam
Source: CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s): Syd Barrett
Label: Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Beyond a shadow of a doubt the original driving force behind Pink Floyd was the legendary Syd Barrett. Not only did he front the band during their rise to fame, he also wrote their first two singles, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, as well as most of their first LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. In fact it could be argued that one of the songs on that album, Lucifer Sam, could have just as easily been issued as a single, as it is stylistically similar to the first two songs. Sadly, Barrett's mental health deteriorated quickly over the next year and his participation in the making of the band's next LP, A Saucerful Of Secrets, was minimal. He soon left the group altogether, never to return (although several of his former bandmates did participate in the making of his 1970 solo album, The Madcap Laughs).
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Crosstown Traffic
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
By 1968 it didn't matter one bit whether the Jimi Hendrix Experience had any hit singles; their albums were guaranteed to be successful. Nonetheless the Electric Ladyland album had no less that three singles on it (although one was a new stereo mix of a 1967 single). The first single to be released concurrently with Electric Ladyland was Crosstown Traffic, a song that has been included on several anthologies over the years.
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Searching For Madge
Source: CD: Then Play On
Writer(s): John McVie
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
Fleetwood Mac was founded by Peter Green in 1967. Green had been a member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and as a Christmas gift, Mayall bought Green some studio time to use as he saw fit. Green used the time to record a set of tunes with drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Jeremy Spencer in the hope that the three of them might form a new band. Green chose the name Fleetwood Mac as a way of enticing Bluesbreakers bassist John McVie into joining the band as well. It wasn't until after the album was released and the new band started getting gigs that McVie did indeed come on board, eventually bringing his girlfriend, Christine Perfect, into the band as well. In 1969 another guitarist, Danny Kirwan, joined the lineup for Then Play On, the first Fleetwood Mac LP to be released in the US. It was also Green's last album with the band. Two of the tracks on Then Play On are actually sections of a long jam session, both containing the word Madge in their official title. The longer of these is Searching For Madge, which runs nearly seven minutes.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Waterloo Sunset
Source: LP: Something Else
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
One of the most beautiful tunes ever recorded by the Kinks is Waterloo Sunset, a song that was a hit single in the UK, but was totally ignored by US radio stations. The reason for this neglect of such a stong song is a mystery, however it may have been due to the fear that American audiences would not be able to relate to all the references to places in and around London in the song's lyrics.
Artist: Bee Gees
Title: One Minute Woman
Source: CD: Bee Gees 1st
Writer(s): Barry and Robin Gibb
Label: Reprise (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
The Bee Gees had actually released two albums in Australia before relocating to England in 1967 and recording the album Bee Gees 1st. Nonetheless the LP, which included three songs that would become hits (New York Mining Disaster-1941, To Love Somebody and Holiday) as well as several notable album tracks such as One Minute Woman, was their first to be released internationally, and in a very sense marks the true beginning of their rise to major stardom.
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