Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1401 (starts 1/1/14)

   To start the new year we have artist sets from the Standells and the Blues Magoos, making them (so far) the two most-played artists on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2014. Let's see how they rank 50 weeks from now :)

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Albert Common Is Dead
Source:    Mono LP: Electric Comic Book
Writer(s):    Gilbert/Scala
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1967
    The second Blues Magoos LP, Electric Comic Book, was much in the same vein as their 1966 debut album, Psychedelic Lollipop, with a mix of fast and slow originals and a couple of cover songs, one of which was done in an extended rave-up style. The second side opener, Albert Common Is Dead, is a fast rocker (with a slowed down final chorus) about an average guy's decision to take to the road, leaving his former life behind. As many young people were doing exactly that during the summer of 1967, you might expect such a song to become somewhat of a soundtrack of its times, but with so many other songs filling that role, Albert Common Is Dead was largely overlooked by the listening public.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Gilbert/Scala/Esposito/Thielhelm
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1966
    The Blues Magoos (original spelling: Bloos) were either the first or second band to use the word psychedelic in an album title. Both they and the 13th Floor Elevators released their debut albums in 1966 and it is unclear which one actually came out first. What's not in dispute is the fact that Psychedelic Lollipop far outsold The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. One major reason for this was the fact that (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet was a huge national hit in early 1967, which helped album sales considerably (of course the fact that they were on Mercury Records, one of the "big six" labels of the time, didn't hurt). Despite having a unique sound and a look to match (including electric suits), the Magoos were unable to duplicate the success of Nothin' Yet on subsequent releases, partially due to Mercury's pairing of two equally marketable songs on the band's next single without indicating to stations which one they were supposed to be playing.

Artist:     Blues Magoos
Title:     Gloria
Source:     Mono LP: Electric Comic Book
Writer:     Van Morrison
Label:     Mercury
Year:     1967
     Although the Blues Magoos are best known for their hit (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet, the band got a lot of airplay on underground FM stations for their extended psychedelic rave up on John D. Loudermilk's Tobacco Road, which had been a hit a couple of years before for the Nashville Teens. Both songs were featured on the band's debut LP, Psychedelic Lollipop. For their second album, Electric Comic Book, the Magoos decided to do a similar treatment on Van Morrison's Gloria, which had been a hit for the Shadows of Knight in 1966. The result was six minutes of pure madness.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Mr. Soul
Source:    CD: Retrospective (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again)
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967
    Executives at Atco Records originally considered Neil Young's voice "too weird" to be recorded. As a result many of Young's early tunes (including the band's debut single Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing), were sung by Richie Furay. By the time the band's second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, was released, the band had enough clout to make sure Young was allowed to sing his own songs. In fact, the album starts with a Young vocal on the classic Mr. Soul.

Artist:    Diana Ross And The Supremes
Title:    Love Child
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Taylor/Wilson/Sawyer/Richards
Label:    Motown
Year:    1968
    Although Motown's primary focus was on making successful pop records, they did manage to occassionally put out songs that had a deeper message. Such is the case with Love Child, a song by Diana Ross And The Supremes that addressed the issue of teen pregnancy, which was reaching epidemic proportions in some segments of society, including a good chunk of Motown's target audience. Of course, it was also a major hit, in fact displacing the Beatles' Hey Jude at the top of the charts.

Artist:    Common People
Title:    Soon There'll Be Thunder
Source:    British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released on LP: Of The People, By The People, For The People, From The Common People)
Writer(s):    Robinett/Robinett
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    After the surprise success of the single I Love You by the San Jose, California band People, Capitol Records decided to sign another California band with a similar name, the Common People. The result was the hard to find 1969 LP Of The People, By The People, For The People, From The Common People. Although there were no hit singles on the album, it did contain some decent tracks such as Soon There'll Be Thunder.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Dr. Jeckyl And Mr. Hyde
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Magic Bus-The Who On Tour (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    John Entwhistle
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1968
    The Who were blessed with not one, but two top-notch songwriters: Pete Townshend and John Entwhistle. Whereas Townsend's songs ranged from tight pop songs to more serious works such as Tommy, Entwistle's tunes had a slightly twisted outlook, dealing with such topics as crawly critters (Boris the Spider), imaginary friends (Whiskey Man) and even outright perversion (Fiddle About). Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde was originally released in the US as the B side to Call Me Lightning. Both songs were included on the Magic Bus album.

Artist:    Bee Gees
Title:    To Love Somebody
Source:    CD: Bee Gees 1st
Writer(s):    Barry and Robin Gibb
Label:    Reprise (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Although the Bee Gees had already established themselves in their native Australia (and recorded a pair of LPs for local labels), they decided to make a fresh start in 1967 by moving to England and issuing an album called Bee Gees 1st. The album was an immediate success, containing no less than three major hits. Of these, the biggest by far was To Love Somebody, which made the charts all over the world, including the all important US market. It was the beginning of one of the most successful runs in rock history.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Taxman
Source:    CD: Revolver
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1966
    The Beatles' 1966 LP Revolver was a major step forward, particularly for guitarist George Harrison, who for the first time had three of his own compositions on an album. Making it even sweeter was the fact that one of these, Taxman, was chosen to lead off the album itself. Although Harrison is usually considered the band's lead guitarist, the solo in Taxman is actually performed by Paul McCartney, whose own style had a harder edge than Harrison's. Harrison, on the other hand, reportedly played bass (McCartney's usual instrument) on the track. This made the song difficult to perform live, but, as the world would soon know, the group had already decided to retire from live performing altogether in order to concentrate on perfecting their studio work.

Artist:    Standells
Title:    Why Pick On Me
Source:    CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released on LP: Why Pick On Me/Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1966
    Ed Cobb was, in many ways, the Ed Wood of the late 60s record industry. Many of the bands who recorded under his guidance, such as LA.'s Standells, have become legends of garage rock. Wood wrote the first three singles released by the Standells, including their biggest hit, Dirty Water, and its follow-up, Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. Why Pick On Me, the title track of the band's second LP, was the third single released by the band, although it did not chart as well as its predecessors.

Artist:    Standells
Title:    Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1966
     If ever a song could be considered a garage-punk anthem, it's Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White, the follow-up single to the classic Dirty Water. Both songs were written by Standells' manager/producer Ed Cobb, the record industry's answer to Ed Wood.

Artist:    Standells
Title:    Dirty Water
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1966
    The Standells were not from Boston (they were a Los Angeles club band). Ed Cobb, who wrote and produced Dirty Water, was. The rest is history.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Patterns
Source:    LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1966
    Although it was the third Simon And Garfunkel album, 1966s' Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme was actually the first to contain songs written following the duo's shift from pure folk music to a more electric sound. The album was more adventurous overall, containing such sonic experiments as Silent Night juxtaposed with the 7 O'Clock News and Patterns, which opens with a guitar string being detuned (or maybe tuned) and features an African beat throughout. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme is now generally regarded as Simon's first true classic album.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Blues From An Airplane
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Balin/Spence
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    Blues From An Airplane was the opening song on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Although never released as a single, it was picked by the group to open their first anthology album, The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane, as well.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Tales Of Brave Ulysses
Source:    LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer:    Clapton/Sharp
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967
    Cream was one of the first bands to break British tradition and release singles that were also available as album cuts. This tradition likely came about because 45 RPM records (both singles and extended play 45s) tended to stay in print indefinitely in the UK, unlike in the US, where a hit single usually had a shelf life of around 2-3 months then disappeared forever. When the Disraeli Gears album was released, however, the song Strange Brew, which leads off the LP, was released in Europe as a single. The B side of that single was Tales Of Brave Ulysses, which opens side two of the album.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Sunshine Day
Source:    Mono British import CD: Spirit Of Joy
Writer(s):    Mick Abrahams
Label:    Polydor (original label: MGM)
Year:    1968
    Jethro Tull was formed when half the membership of a band called the John Evan Smash decided to call it quits, leaving vocalist Ian Anderson and bassist Glen Cornick looking for two new members. Since one of the departing members was John Evan himself, a new name was also called for. After recruiting guitarist Mick Abrahams and drummer Clive Bunker, the group played a series of gigs under the name Bag Of Blues. Somewhere along the way the band changed its name to Jethro Tull, releasing their first single on the British version of MGM records in early 1968. In addition to the fact that it was the only Tull record ever released on MGM, there are two other oddities about Sunshine Day. The first is that, unlike all future singles and nearly every album track everrecorded by the band, the song was not written by Ian Anderson; Abrahams was the songwriter of record for that first single. The second, and even odder oddity about that record is that the band name on the label was Jethro Toe. No wonder they changed labels.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Desperation
Source:    CD: Steppenwolf
Writer(s):    John Kay
Label:    MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1968
    A close listen to the first Steppenwolf album reveals a band still looking for its signature sound. As a result, the album includes songs from a greater variety of genres than on later efforts. Among those is the slow love ballad, as represented by John Kay's Desperation.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Grim Reaper Of Love
Source:    French import CD: Happy Together (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Portz/Nichol
Label:    Magic (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1966
    The Turtles had some early success in 1965 as a folk-rock band, recording the hit version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe and PF Sloan's Let Me Be. By 1966, however, it was getting harder and harder for the group to get a hit record. One attempt was Grim Reaper Of Love, co-written by Turtles lead guitarist Al Nichol. Personally I think it's a pretty cool tune, but was probably a bit too weird to appeal to the average top 40 radio listener in 1966. Grim Reaper Of Love did manage to make it to the # 81 spot on the charts, unlike the band's next two singles that failed to chart at all. It wasn't until the following year, when the Turtles recorded Happy Together, that the band would make it back onto the charts.

Artist:    Blood, Sweat And Tears
Title:    God Bless The Child
Source:    LP: Heavy Sounds
Writer(s):    Holiday/Herzog
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Although it was never released as a single, Blood, Sweat And Tears' version of the Billy Holiday classic God Bless The Child has become one of their most popular recordings over time, even to the point of being included on the group's Greatest Hits collection. The track was also chosen as the band's contribution to Columbia's Heavy Sounds collection that was released around 1969.

Artist:    First Edition
Title:    Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The First Edition and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mickey Newbury
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle was the official leader on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Willow Willow
Source:    CD: Love Story (originally released on LP: Out Here)
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra/Rhino (original label: Blue Thumb)
Year:    1969
    Following the disintegration of the original Love, bandleader Arthur Lee decided to keep the name alive with a whole new lineup of musicians, including lead guitarist Jay Donnelan, bassist Frank Fayad and drummer George Suranovich. One reason for this may be the fact that Love was still contractually obligated to provide Elektra Records with one more album. The new lineup recorded about three LP's worth of material, with Elektra getting first pick of the tracks. The tracks chosen by Elektra were released as the album Love Four Sail; the remaining material ended up on an album called Out Here, which was released on the new Blue Thumb label out of L.A. Among the better tracks on Out Here was Willow Willow, a song that is vaguely reminiscent of the first Love album. The band would record one more album for Blue Thumb before disbanding, with Lee continuing on as a solo artist with the album Vindicator for A&M.

Artist:    Parking Lot
Title:    World Spinning Sadly
Source:    Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Paul Samwell-Smith
Label:    Zonophone (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:    Fever Tree
Title:    San Francisco Girls (Return Of The Native) (originally released on LP: Fever Tree)
Source:    CD: Psychedelic Pop
Writer(s):    Scott and Vivian Holtzman
Label:    BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Uni)
Year:    1968
    A minor trend in 1968 was for producer/songwriters to find a band to record their material exclusively. A prime example is Houston's Fever Tree, which featured the music of husband and wife team Scott and Vivian Holtzman. San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native) was the single from that album, peaking in the lower reaches of the Hot 100 charts.

Artist:    Butterfield Blues Band
Title:    East-West
Source:    CD: East-West
Writer:    Bloomfield/Gravenites
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    Along with the Blues Project, the Butterfield Blues Band (and guitarist Michael Bloomfield in particular) are credited with starting the movement toward improvisation in rock music. Both are cited as influences on the new bands that were cropping up in San Francisco in late 1966m including Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Grateful Dead. The first Butterfield album did not have much in the way of improvisation, however, as Butterfield himself was a Chicago blues traditionalist who, like many of his idols, held the reins of the band tightly and did not tolerate deviation. By the time of the band's second LP, however, the group was becoming more of a democracy, especially after their successful live shows brought rave reviews for the musicianship of the individual members, especially Bloomfield (who in some polls was rated the number one guitarist in the country). Bloomfield used this new clout to push for more improvisation, and the result was the classic album East-West. The title track itself is a modal piece; that is, it (in jazz terms) stays on the One rather than following a traditional blues progression. Within that framework Bloomfield's solo uses scales found in eastern music (Indian in particular); hence the title of the piece: East-West. Another difference between East-West and the first Butterfield album was that second guitarist Elvin Bishop, who had played strictly rhythm guitar on the debut, got a chance to do some solo work of his own on East-West. Bishop would soon find himself the band's lead guitarist when Bloomfield left to form the Electric Flag in 1967.

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Do You Believe In Magic
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer:    John Sebastian
Label:    Buddah (original label: Kama Sutra)
Year:    1965
    Do You Believe In Magic, the debut single by the Lovin' Spoonful, was instrumental in establishing not only the band itself, but the Kama Sutra label as well. Within the next five years, the Spoonful (and later John Sebastian as a solo artist) would crank out a string of hits. Not to be outdone, Kama Sutra would itself morph into a company called Buddah Records and come to dominate the "bubble gum" genre of top 40 music throughout 1968 and well into 1969.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Most Exclusive Residence For Sale
Source:    Mono British import CD: Face To Face
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Sanctuary (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1966
    By 1966, Ray Davies' songwriting had matured considerably from his power chord driven love songs You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night. Like many of the songs on the Kinks' 1966 and 1967 LPs, Most Exclusive Residence For Sale tells a story; in this case the story of a man who achieved great success, bought an expensive house and then found himself forced to sell it when his fortunes took a downward turn.

Artist:    Thorinshield
Title:    Daydreaming
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Thorinshield)
Writer(s):    Ray/Smith
Label:    Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year:    1967
    Before 1966 it was virtually unheard of for a newly-signed band to record an album without first putting out a single to get an idea of their sales potential. By 1967, however, due to a variety of reasons, including the rise of album-oriented FM rock stations and the interest being shown in album tracks by groups like the Blues Project and the Butterfield Blues Band, as well as more established groups like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, some labels, particularly those not having a lot of top 40 hits anyway such as Philips (yes, the same company that invented CD technology and makes light bulbs), started taking chances with new acts such as L.A.'s Thorinshield. Sounding like a slightly more commercial version of the San Francisco bands making headlines that year on songs like Daydreaming, Thorinshield released one self-titled album before its members moved on to other things.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Prodigal Son
Source:    CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s):    Robert Wilkins
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    The Rolling Stones always had a fondness for American Roots music, but by 1967 had largely abandoned the genre in favor of more modern sounds such as pychedelia. The 1968 album Beggar's Banquet, however, marked a return to the band's own roots and included such tunes as Prodigal Son, which at first was credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In reality the song was written by the Reverend Robert Wilkins, and has since been acknowledged as such.

Artist:    Angel Angel Down We Go
Title:    Angel Angel Down We Go
Source:    CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wylde Psych (originally released as stereo 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Tower)
Year:    1969
    I don't have the slightest clue who plays on this record. What I do know is that is was the title track of an American International Pictures film called Angel Angel Down We Go. Unfortunately I had never seen or even heard of a movie called Angel Angel Down We Go before hearing this track, so I have no idea what is was about. But that's OK, because I strongly suspect I wouldn't be interested in watching a 1969 film from American International Pictures anyway. Then again, if it's cheesy enough, I just might. I actually did like Wild In The Streets the first time I saw it, after all (I was fifteen). Speaking of which, the theme from both that movie and Angel Angel Down We Go were written by Barry Mann and his wife Cynthia Weil, who also wrote (among other things) Kicks and Hungry for Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1352 (2013 year end countdown)

    Now that the show has actually run we have our year end compilation of the most played artists and songs on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. As with last year, the emphasis is on the artists, with all of the top 20 getting a chance to strut their stuff. There are a few top songs mixed in as well, as we take a look at what was heard the most in 2013.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Feelin' Alright
Source:    LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s):    Dave Mason
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1968
    Our 20th most played artist is Traffic, down from # 17 last year. Although the band is generally associated with Steve Winwood, I'm instead featuring a track written and sung by co-founder Dave Mason, who kept leaving the band and coming back before eventually departing for good for a fairly successful solo career.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Pushin' Too Hard
Source:    CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: The Seeds)
Writer(s):    Sky Saxon
Label:    Priority (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1965
    The Seeds dropped from 15 to 19 this year, with their most popular tune, Pushin' Too Hard, dropping from #4 to #5. We'll probably hear more from them next year.

Artist:    Standells
Title:    Dirty Water
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1966
    Although the Standells were not in the top 20 artists (they finished 29th), they did have the 16th most played song of the year, Dirty Water. Last year it was # 5.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet
Source:    CD: More Nuggets (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer(s):    Esposito/Gilbert/Scala
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1966
    The Blues Magoos moved up from # 27 to # 18 this year, although their most popular song, (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet, dropped out of the top 20. Still, it was their most played song in 2013.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Section 43 (EP version)
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as an extended play flexi-disc in a self-published newspaper)
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Rhino (original "label": Rag Baby)
Year:    1966
    At # 17 we have Country Joe And The Fish, down from # 14. On the other hand, Section 43 was the most-played instrumental on the show this year (not counting the theme music), finishing at # 11 overall.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Mrs. Robinson
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Simon And Garfunkel dropped down a bit this year, from 12 to 16. Still in the top 20 though.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    For What It's Worth
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Last year Buffalo Springfield wasn't even on the top artists list. This year they are # 15. Much of that is due to the fact that For What It's Worth, a great song that I've been overlooking in the past, finally got a decent amount of airplay this year. In fact, it was the third most played song of the year.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source:    Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Tucker/Mantz
Label:    BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Last year's most played song, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), dropped down to # 4 this year. The Electric Prunes themselves held fairly steady, however, dropping only one spot, from 13 to 14.

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Lucifer Sam
Source:    CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s):    Syd Barrett
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1967
    Although Pink Floyd did not make the most-played artists list this year, Lucifer Sam, from their first album, was the # 14 song.

Artist:    Penny Peeps
Title:    Model Village
Source:    Mono CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Alexander
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Parlophone)
Year:    1967
    A hot "new" song this year was Model Village from the obscure British band Penny Peeps, which took the # 13 spot.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    The Observation
Source:    Mono CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    EMI (original label: Epic)
Year:    1967
    Donovan actually moved up a few slots from last year, going from 16 to 13.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    Two Trains Running
Source:    CD: Anthology (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer(s):    McKinley Morganfield
Label:    Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year:    1966
    Although the Blues Project dropped off the top 20 artists list this year (they were # 18) last year, they did make the top 10 songs list with their eleven and a half minute version of Muddy Waters's Two Trains Running from the Projections album.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Porpoise Song
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1968
    The Monkees' Porpoise Song is usually among the 20 most played songs on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in any given year. Not so this time around, although the group itself ended up at # 12.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Talk Talk
Source:    CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    Although they didn't get as much airplay as in 2012 (thanks to a special Sean Bonniwell memorial show early that year), the Music Machine still made both top 20 artists (# 11) and song (Talk Talk at # 15) lists this year. Last year the group was # 4 and the song # 3.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Rael 1
Source:    CD: The Who Sell Out
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1967
    The Who have the distinction of being the only band to place exactly the same as last year, at # 10.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Why
Source:    CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    McGuinn/Crosby
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    Last year's # 11 group, the Byrds, managed to move up a couple notches to # 9 this year.

Artist:    Love
Title:    7&7 Is
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year:    1966
    Last year's # 2 song, Love's 7&7 Is, somehow dropped entirely off this list this time around. Still, with the emphasis shifting to a variety of the band's excellent album tracks, Love itself stayed in the top 10, dropping from 6th to 8th most played artist on the show this year.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    You Keep Me Hangin' On
Source:    Mono CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Vanilla Fudge and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Holland/Dozier/Holland
Label:    BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Vanilla Fudge was not one of the most played artists this year. Their best-known recording, however, did. You Keep Me Hangin' On finished at # 9 this year, up a couple notches from 2012.

Artist:    Balloon Farm
Title:    A Question Of Temperature
Source:    Mono CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Appel/Schnug/Henny
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Laurie)
Year:    1967
    I'm not sure just why the Balloon Farm's A Question Of Temperature got played as much as it did this year, but it did, finishing in the # 8 spot.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    All Day And All Of The Night
Source:    Mono CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    PolyTel (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1964
    The Kinks got played even more this year than last, moving up from 9 to 7.

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    Gimme Some Lovin'
Source:    Mono LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Winwood/Davis
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1966
    The Spencer Davis Group has the distinction of being the only artist to have two songs on the top 20 list this year, I'm A Man (17) and Gimme Some Lovin', which was the seventh most played song of the year.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Unhappy Girl
Source:    LP: Strange Days
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    The Doors were heard a bit more in 2013 than the previous year, moving up from # 8 to # 6.

Artist:    Chambers Brothers
Title:    Time Has Come Today
Source:    CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: The Time Has Come)
Writer(s):    Joe and Willie Chambers
Label:    Priority (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1967
    Time Has Come Today, by the Chambers Brothers, always makes the top 10 list on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. This year it's at # 6, up a notch from 2012.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Sweet Wine
Source:    CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Baker/Godfrey
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    Although Cream actually dropped a couple slots this year, from # 3 to # 5, they did manage to get the # 20 song with Sweet Wine from the Fresh Cream album.
   
Artist:    Beatles
Title:    I Am The Walrus
Source:    Stereo British EP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone
Year:    1967
    Thanks to the Beatles catalog finally being released on high-quality 180 gram vinyl in late 2012 (and me snagging copies of every album from Revolver to Abbey Road), the fab four got increased exposure on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2013, resulting in a move up from # 7 to # 4. I Am The Walrus, perhaps their ultimate psychedelic track, was # 19 on the song list as well.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1966
    We heard a lot of Rolling Stones on the show this year, resulting in their moving up from # 5 to # 3 on the artists list. One of the contributing factors was the repeated airing of the single Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?, which was the 18th most played song of the year.

Artist:    Count Five
Title:    Psychotic Reaction
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label:    Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year:    1966
    Last year, Count Five's Psychotic Reaction was the 14th most played song of the year on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. This year, it was the 2nd most played song. Not bad for a one-hit wonder.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    White Rabbit
Source:    CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Surrealistic Pillow)
Writer(s):    Grace Slick
Label:    BMG/RCA/Buddah
Year:    1967
    Up through 2012, the band getting the most airplay on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era was, year after year, Jefferson Airplane. They finally got knocked out of the top spot in 2013, though, dropping to # 2. White Rabbit, incidentally, finished 12th.

Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Incense And Peppermints
Source:    Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Uni)
Year:    1967
    Topping the list of most played songs this year we have a tune that is almost universally cited as an example of a typical "psychedelic" song: the Strawberry Alarm Clock's Incense And Peppermints. As is often the case with huge hit records, the band itself hated the track and was never able to duplicate its success.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Fire
Source:    CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    A couple years ago I made a resolution to play more Hendrix. For once I managed to keep a resolution, as this year's most played artist is: Jimi Hendrix. Now let's see if I can do it again next year.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

What? No playlist?

This week we count down the 20 most played artists (and a good portion of the 20 most played songs as well) on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era in 2013. Obviously, if I posted a playlist it would kind of kill the suspense of doing a countdown, so, unless you are the type to studiously go back through the last 50 blog posts and count appearances by each and every artist, you'll just have to listen to the show itself to find out who ranked where. Trust me, it's easier that way.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Stuck with the hermit at Yuletide (# 1351) (starts 12/18/13)

    Just about every weekly radio show does a Christmas special this time of year, and for several years now Stuck In the Psychedelic Era has been no exception. There is a problem, though, and that is the unavoidable fact that for the most part the artists featured on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era never had the opportunity (or inclination, for that matter) to record Christmas songs. There are exceptions, of course, and this week you'll hear some of those by Jethro Tull, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, and others. But, unless I wanted to spend over half the show on Beach Boys Christmas songs (and there are nearly enough of those for an entire show), I knew I would have to take an entirely different approach to selecting the songs. After a couple of years of experimenting around with various approaches I finally decided to just pick out the coolest holiday tracks I could find, regardless of genre or year they were recorded, and have been doing it that way ever since. As a result, on this year's show we'll be hearing tunes that span from 1948 through 1983. One unintended consequence of doing it this way is that nearly every track used on the show tonight is from a CD. So prepare to be Stuck with the Hermit at Yuletide without any scratchy records this year.

Artist:      Mannheim Steamroller
Title:     Hark! The Herald Trumpets Sing
Source:  CD: A Fresh Aire Christmas
Year:     1988
     I was looking for something that was both pompous and cool at the same time to start the show. Mannheim Steamroller seemed to fit the bill. Besides, Chip Davis wrote it to be an introduction, so I figured why not?

Artist:  George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Song Title: Rock and Roll Christmas
Source:  CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1983
 George Thorogood has always said that his group was at heart a bar band. As a bar band is just a step away from being a garage band, this seemed like as good a place as any to get into the actual meat of the show.

Artist:  Beatles
Song Title: Christmas Time (Is Here Again)
Source:  CD single: Free As a Bird
Release Year: 1967/1997
 Every year the Beatles would record a special Christmas message to go out to members of their fan club, and mail it out on what was then known as a floppy disc. This was not the same as a computer floppy disc, however. In fact, the medium the Beatles used eventually came to be known as a flexi-disc, just to keep things from getting any more confusing. Regardless of what you called it, the things tended to wear out after just a few plays and I doubt there are many playable copies of these discs left in the universe. Luckily for us, George Martin had the foresight to hang on to everything the Beatles ever recorded, including this tune, which was chopped up and used for the 1967 Christmas Greeting. When the Beatles Anthology was released in 1997, the piece was included on the Free As a Bird CD single, and we got to hear the song in its uninterrupted entirety for the first time.

Artist:  John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Song Title: Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Source:  CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1971
 Originally intended as an anti-Vietnam War song, John and Yoko's Happy Xmas (War Is Over) has long since acquired classic status and is now one of the most familiar songs of the season. It was first released in the US in December of 1971, but due to a problem with the publisher did not appear in the rest of the world until November of 1972.

Artist:  Beach Boys
Song Title: Morning Christmas
Source:  CD: Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas
Release Year: 1977
 Dennis Wilson was not hanging around with the rest of the clan in 1977, but did want to make a contribution to their new Christmas album that year, so he sent in this recording. The album ended up not being released, but the track finally did see the light of day on the Ultimate Christmas collection issued four or five years ago.

Artist:  Simon and Garfunkel
Song Title: Silent Night/7 O'Clock News
Source:  CD: Complete Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Release Year: 1966
 Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News is unique for several reasons. The most obvious is that it uses two unrelated recordings to make an ironically chilling point. The first is a rendition of Franz Gruber's Silent Night, with vocals in the center channel and piano only coming from one speaker. As the song progresses a newscast in the other channel slowly gets louder. Eventually the song ends and there is only the news. What's also unusual is that this well-known Christmas carol is not featured on a Christmas album at all; instead it appears as the final track of the duo's 1966 LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme.

Artist:  Simon and Garfunkel
Song Title: A Hazy Shade of Winter
Source:  CD: Complete Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Release Year: 1966
 I wish I could take credit for putting Simon And Garfunkel's Silent Night/7 O'Clock News and A Hazy Shade of Winter back to back. The truth is I don't know who came up with the idea; my best guess is someone from Westwood One radio, as I first heard it done on one of their syndicated programs. Still, it's not a bad idea, and I happened to have a copy of the Westwood One version of the paired tracks, so there it is.

Artist:  Jethro Tull
Song Title: Ring Out Solstice Bells
Source:  LP: Songs From the Wod
Release Year: 1976
 Until the late 1940s the predominate form of recorded music was the 78 RPM (revolutions per minute) record, which was either 10 or 12 inches in diameter and made of a brittle material called shellac. The 10 inch version was the standard for popular music, with a running time of about 3 to 4 minutes. RCA Victor developed a direct replacement for the 78 that was 7 inches in diameter and ran at 45 RPM. Meanwhile, RCA's top rival, Columbia Records, developed a slower long-playing record that used something called microgroove technology that allowed up to half an hour's worth of recorded material per side. Somewhere along the way somebody decided to try the microgroove approach to the 45 and the Extended Play (EP) record was born. In the US, EPs were somewhat popular in the 1950s, but pretty much died out by the time of the Beatles, except for specialized formats such as children's records and low-budget cover labels that would hire anonymous studio musicians to re-create popular hits. In the UK, on the other hand, the format remained viable up through the mid-70s. Jethro Tull took advantage of the EP format to release a Christmas record in December of 1976. Ring Out Solstice Bells was the featured song on the EP, and would not be released in the US until the following spring, when it was included on the album Songs From the Wood.

Artist:  Ed "Cookie" Byrnes
Song Title: Yulesville
Source:  CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1959
 The ABC TV network was a perennial also-ran that was just starting to find a winning formula in the late 50s with shows targeted toward a younger audience. The most popular of these was 77 Sunset Strip, starring Ed "Cookie" Byrnes. He and co-star Connie Stevens, staying in character, cut a hit novelty record called "Cookie, Cookie," which played on Cookie's propensity for combing his hair. Byrnes, again in character, followed it up with this hip retelling of the classic poem Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Artist:  Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Song Title: Monster's Holiday
Source:  CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1962
 Bobby Picket scored big with his Halloween hit Monster Mash in 1962, and quickly followed it up with this sequel set around the Christmas holidays. Legendary producer Gary Paxton was responsible for both recordings making it onto vinyl and on the air.

Artist:  Johnny Preston
Song Title: (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar
Source:  CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1960
 Johnny Preston recorded his signature song in 1960, the classic Running Bear, penned by J.P. Richardson, the Big Bopper. The pair teamed up again to create a brand new Christmas song, (I Want a) Rock and Roll Guitar, later the same year. Interesting enough, by the middle of the decade a guitar was exactly what many kids were indeed asking for. I should know; I got my first guitar (and amp) as a Christmas present after badgering my parents mercilessly for months. I think between the two they might have run about $100, which made it the most expensive Christmas I ever had.

Artist:  Foghat
Song Title: All I Want For Christmas Is You
Source:  CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1981
 Foghat was formed when all the members of Savoy Brown except leader Kim Simmonds decided to form their own band in the early 70s. After a moderately successful run, founding member "Lonesome" Dave Peverett was all set to call it quits in 1981, but not until after he wrote and recorded All I Want For Christmas Is You.

Artist:  Kinks
Song Title: Father Christmas
Source:  CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1977
 There are not many socially-conscious Christmas songs, especially slightly twisted ones like the Kinks' classic Father Christmas from 1977. I guess by then getting a guitar was kind of passe anyway.

Artist:  Charles Brown
Song Title: Please Come Home For Christmas
Source:  CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits (1955-Present)
Release Year: 1961
 By now just about everyone is familiar with the Eagles version of Please Come Home For Christmas. Not everyone, however, knows the song was written by blues great Charles Brown. Even fewer have actually heard Brown's 1961 original, which is a shame, as it blows the Eagles version clean out of the water.

Artist:  James Brown
Song Title: Santa Claus, Santa Claus
Source:  CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1968
 Few people would ever accuse James Brown of being a blues artist, but this recording of Santa Claus, Santa Claus (sometimes called just Santa Claus) from 1968 shows what it would have sounded like if he was.

Artist:  Clarence Carter
Song Title: Back Door Santa
Source:  CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1969
 Clarence Carter is an icon of the beach music (for you non-Carolinians, beach music has nothing to do with surf music) crowd. For everyone else, he is a moderately successful soul artist known mostly for his mid-70s hit Slip Away. Regardless of where you might know him from, his Back Door Santa will surprise you with its down and funky energy.

Artist:  Jimmy McCracklin
Song Title: Christmas Time
Source:  CD: New Gold on CD
Release Year: 1961 (?)
 Jimmy McCracklin recorded one of the catchiest, yet underplayed, tunes of the 50s when he did The Walk. Christmas Time, from a few years later, actually sounds like beach music. Go figure.

Artist:  Chuck Berry
Song Title: Run Rudolph Run
Source:  CD: Chuck Berry Chess Box
Release Year: 1958
 Chuck Berry established a reputation in the 60s for reworking his old songs from the 50s, giving them new lyrics and sometimes new guitar rifts. Probably the best-known example of this was No Particular Place To Go, which is a reworked version of School Day. His first reworking of a previously-recorded song was 1958's Run Rudoph Run, which was virtually identical to Little Queenie, released earlier the same year. To me it sounds like he actually used the Little Queenie instrumental tracks rather than to re-record the song. This kind of cost-cutting measure would be consistent with his later practice of using pick-up bands rather than incurring the travel expenses of having his own band on the road.

Artist:  Jack Scott
Song Title: There's Trouble Brewin'
Source:  CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1963
Canadian born Jack Scott was one of the great rockabilly performers of the late 50s, scoring several top 10 hits, including My True Love and Burning Bridges. This 1963 recording of There's Trouble Brewin' shows him at the peak of his vocal powers.

Artist:  Cheech and Chong
Song Title: Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Source:  CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1971
 I heard Cheech And Chong's Santa Claus and His Old Lady on the radio the year it was released and managed to find a copy of the 45 only to have it disappear on me a few years later. Luckily, the folks at Rhino somehow knew of my dilemma and included it on their Rock and Roll Christmas CD (sure they did). Incidentally, the B side of that old 45 was Dave's Not Here from Cheech and Chong's first album.

Artist:  Ray Stevens
Song Title: Santa Claus Is Watching You
Source:  CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1962
 I've mentioned something called the Grab Bag before. Basically, it was a sealed paper bag (sometimes with a clear plastic front) containing four 45 RPM records, generally "cut-outs" that were no longer in print. The one my family bought for Christmas of 1964 had a Sing Along With Mitch Christmas EP in the front. By far the oddest record in the bag was Santa Claus Is Watching You by Ray Stevens, although I seem to remember that version being slightly different than the one heard here. One thing that both versions had in common was the presence of Clyde the Camel from Stevens's first hit Ahab the Arab.

Artist:  Spike Jones and His City Slickers
Song Title: All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)
Source:  CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954
Release Year: 1948
 Spike Jones and His City Slickers were a highly talented bunch who made music out of sound effects, toy instruments, and whatever else it occurred to them to use. Their forte was the novelty record, and no one did it better.  All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) was written by Middleton, NY schoolteacher Donald Yetter Gardner, who was inspired to write the song when he asked his second grade class what they wanted for Christmas and was struck by how many of them were lisping due to missing front teeth.

Artist:  Chipmunks
Song Title: The Chipmunk Song
Source:  CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1955-Present
Release Year: 1958
 In 1958 pop-jazz composer/bandleader Ross Bagdasarian decided to play around with a variable-speed tape recorder and came up with the novelty hit Witch Doctor. He followed it up by using multiple tape machines to create a trio of sped up voices that he called the Chipmunks, and released this smash hit in time for the Christmas season. The success of The Chipmunk Song led to a Saturday morning cartoon series and a series of albums for the Liberty label. His son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. has revived the concept in recent years, although not with the same level of success.

Artist:  Beach Boys
Song Title: Little Saint Nick (stereo single version)
Source:  CD: Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas
Release Year: 1963
 When the Beach Boys first recorded Little Saint Nick they were the hottest surf music band in the country. A year later Beatlemania had set in, and a new version of Little Saint Nick was recorded for the Beach Boys Christmas Album. The new version put a greater emphasis on the vocals, and much of the original instrumentation was deleted from the arrangement. That is the version that usually gets heard on commercial radio every year. In the mid-70s, Carl Wilson, who by then had stepped into the leader's role formerly held by older brother Brian, pulled out the original 1963 tapes and created a new stereo mix of the song. The instruments have greater prominence in this version and include the distinctive sound of sleighbells that were completely exorcised from the 1964 version.

Artist:  Ventures
Song Title: Sleigh Ride
Source: CD: The Ventures Christmas Album
Release Year: 1965  
    The Ventures are by far the most successful instrumental rock group in history, with over 100 albums released over several decades. One of the most successful of these was their 1965 Christmas album, which featured this surfinated version of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride, a piece usually associated with the Boston Pops Orchestra.

Artist:  Sonics
Song Title: Santa Claus
Source:  CD: Cool Yule (originally released on LP:
Release Year: 1966
 The Pacific Northwest was home to several bands that can only be described as proto-punk (think Louie Louie). One of the top bands on the scene up there was the Sonics, who recorded raw hard-driving songs with titles like Psycho, the Witch and Strychnine. Santa Claus is very much in the same vein, making it the punkiest Christmas song of the sixties, if not all time.

Artist:  Jethro Tull
Song Title: Christmas Song
Source:  CD: This Was (bonus track originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1968
 I wanted to play one set made up entirely of songs from the psychedelic era performed by artists that I feature on the show on a fairly regular basis. One of these artists is the band Jethro Tull, led by flautist/acoustic guitarist/vocalist Ian Anderson. His somewhat cynical Christmas Song, originally released in the UK in 1968, did not appear in the US until the 1973 anthology album Living In the Past.

Artist:  Canned Heat
Song Title: Christmas Blues
Source:  CD: Billboard Rock and Roll Christmas
Release Year: 1968
 Although Steve Miller originally hailed from Chicago, it was Canned Head that emerged as the San Francisco Bay area's electric blues band of choice. With Robert "Big Bear" Hite fronting the band on blues harp and vocals, they recorded their Christmas Blues in time for the 1968 Yule season.

Artist:  Chuck Berry
Song Title: Merry Christmas, Baby
Source:  CD: Chuck Berry Chess Box
Release Year: 1958
 Chuck Berry did not record too many cover tunes, as he was a prolific songwriter himself. However, for the B side to Run Rudolph Run, he cut this tasty version of Charles Brown's "other" Christmas song, Merry Christmas, Baby.

Artist:  Solomon Burke
Song Title: Presents For Christmas
Source:  CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1966
 Solomon Burke was a staple artist for the Atlantic label at a time when Atlantic itself was being overshadowed by the Stax/Volt labels that it distributed. Nonetheless, Burke had several R&B hits throughout the sixties and was highly respected by his fellow artists. Presents For Christmas captures Burke at his peak in 1966.

Artist:  Eartha Kitt
Song Title: Santa Baby
Source:  CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits 1935-1954
Release Year: 1953
 Eartha Kitt has one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, and put it to good use on the original 1953 version of Santa Baby, a tune that has unfortunately in recent years become associated with Madonna. Kitt continued to perform with nearly as much energy as she had in the 50s right up to her death on Christmas Day, 2008.

Artist:  Rufus Thomas
Song Title: I'll Be Your Santa Baby
Source:  CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: unknown
 Rufus Thomas had a long and storied career, first with his "dog" hits in the early 60s (Walking the Dog being the most famous) and then later as a member of the Stax/Volt stable of artists. I'll Be Your Santa Baby, recorded for Stax, was released sometimes in the late 60s around the same time that his daughter Carla was making a name for herself with hits like B-A-B-Y and (with Otis Redding) Tramp.

Artist:  Cadillacs
Song Title: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Source:  CD: New Gold on CD (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1956
 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been recorded by a lot of different artists over the years, but this version by the Cadillacs stands out for its pure sense of fun. Doo-wop was at the peak of its popularity in 1956 and the Cadillacs, led by Earl "Speedoo" Carroll, were among the best of the bunch.

Artist:  Drifters
Song Title: White Christmas
Source:  CD: Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits (1955-Present)
Release Year: 1955
 The Drifters were a kind of early R&B doowop supergroup made up of ex-members of other R&B groups such as Billy Ward's Dominoes. The most distinctive voice of the original Drifters was high tenor Clyde McPhatter (for whom Ray Stevens's famous camel was named), which is heard prominently on their version of Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Over the years the group's lineup changed many times and led to several former members forming competing groups, all using the Drifters name. Over time, members of these offshoots would in turn form their own Drifters, despite having virtually no connection to the original group. This is why it sometimes seems that half the doowop singers in the world claim to be former members of the Drifters.

Artist:  Marquees
Song Title: Christmas In the Congo
Source:  CD: Cool Yule
Release Year: 1958
 You have to hear this one to believe it. 'Nuff said.

Artist:  King Curtis
Song Title: The Christmas Song
Source:  45 RPM vinyl
Release Year: 1966
 King Curtis was one of the most in-demand saxophone players of the first wave of rock and roll. His best known work was on the song Yakety Yak by the Coasters in 1958. In the sixties he became the music director for the Atlantic Records group, appearing on a variety of recordings by artists such as Solomon Burke and occassionally released material on the Atco label under his own name. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was the victim of a stabbing when he attempted to stop junkies from shooting up on his front steps in New York.

 So there it is: the Hermit's own take on Yuletime. I hope you enjoy the show. Next week we take a look back at the songs and artists that got the most airtime on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this past year.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1350 (starts 12/11/13)

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Ticket To Ride
Source:    CD: Help!
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1965
    Trying to figure out the Beatles' catalog can be a bit confusing, as Capitol Records, which had the rights to release the band's recordings in the US, had their own ideas about what should be on a Beatles album, which was often at odds with the wishes of the band members themselves. Some US albums, such as Beatles '65, had no British counterpart at all, while others had different track lineups than the original UK versions. Probably the most radically altered of the original LPs was the soundtrack album to the film Help! In the UK, side one of the album contained songs from the film itself, while side two contained a collection of unrelated studio recordings, some of which had been intended for, but not used in, the film. In the US, however, the Help album included incidental orchestral pieces heard throughout the movie interspersed with the songs heard on side one of the UK album. Among the tracks heard on both versions was Ticket To Ride, which was also issued as a single in the US (using one of the songs from side two of the UK Help album as a B side). The tune has gone on to become one of the most recognizable Beatle songs ever.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Come On In
Source:    CD: Turn On (also released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer:    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    It only cost a total of $150 for the Music Machine to record both sides of their debut single at RCA Studios in Los Angeles, thanks to the band having been performing the songs live for several months. The band then took the tapes to Original Sound, who issued Talk Talk and Come On In on their own label. Although Talk Talk was the obvious hit, Come On In had perhaps a greater influence on later bands such as the Doors and Iron Butterfly.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Love Is Only Sleeping
Source:    LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn And Jones, LTD.
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Colgems
Year:    1967
    Among the various professional songwriters hired by Don Kirschner in 1966 to write songs for the Monkees were the husband and wife team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who had hit it big with a pair of songs for Paul Revere And The Raiders (Kicks and Hungry) earlier that year. But when the Monkees rebelled against Kirschner's control over their recorded output in early 1967 it looked as though the band was done with Mann/Weil compositions altogether. Later that year, however, the Monkees themselves, now firmly in control of their own musical direction, chose to record a new Mann/Weil tune, Love Is Only Sleeping, as their fourth single. At the same time, the group was working on their fourth LP, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn And Jones, LTD. A last-minute change of plans resulted in a different song, Daydream Believer, being released as a single instead, with a tune from the album, Goin' Down, as the B side. Goin' Down was then deleted from the album lineup and Love Is Only Sleeping included in its place. It was the closest that Michael Nesmith would ever come to being the lead vocalist on a Monkees hit single. 

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    For Ladies Only
Source:    LP: For Ladies Only
Writer(s):    Edmonton/Henry/Day/McJohn
Label:    Dunhill
Year:    1971
    The fifth Steppenwolf album, For Ladies Only, is probably best remembered for its gatefold cover, the center of which was a photo of a full-sized motor vehicle that looked like, well, a giant penis with European plates being pulled over by the cops on a city street. The title track, which opens the album, is a long (over nine minutes) piece with a pro-feminist message. Mixed messages? Maybe, or possibly (from a 1971 perspective) two sides of the same coin.

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    Life Has Just Begun
Source:    CD: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus
Writer(s):    Randy California
Label:    Epic/Legacy
Year:    1970
    Spirit was one of those bands that always was favored by the critics but was unable to turn that into commercial success. Their potential was such that when Ode Records was transferred from Columbia to A&M records, a special exception was made for Spirit, whose contract was moved over to Epic, a Columbia subsidiary. By 1970 the band was desperate to have a best-seller, and created what is often seen to be their masterpiece, an album called Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus. Unlike the early Spirit albums, on which nearly every song was composed by vocalist Jay Ferguson, Twelve Dreams featured tunes from all the band members, particularly guitarist Randy California, who penned Life Has Just Begun. After Twelve Dreams failed to make the upper reaches of the charts, the group fractured, with only keyboardist John Locke and drummer Ed Cassidy appearing on the next LP. California would return by the mid-1970s, staying with the group for the rest of its existence.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Plastic Fantastic Lover
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Marty Balin
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1967
    Jefferson Airplane scored their first top 10 hit with Somebody To Love, the second single released from the Surrealistic Pillow album. Almost immediately, forward-thinking FM stations began playing other tracks from the album. One of those favored album tracks, Plastic Fantastic Lover, ended up being the B side of the band's follow-up single, White Rabbit. When the Airplane reunited in 1989 and issued their two-disc retrospective, 2400 Fulton Street, they issued a special stereo pressing of the single on white vinyl as a way of promoting the collection.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Section 43 (EP version)
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 (original label: Rag Baby)
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:    Cream
Title:    Sleepy Time Time
Source:    LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Bruce/Godfrey
Label:    Atco
Year:    1966
    When Cream was first formed, both Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker worked with co-writers on original material for the band. Baker's partner was Pete Brown, while Bruce worked with his wife, Janet Godfrey. Eventually Bruce and Brown began collaborating, creating some of Cream's most memorable songs, but not before Bruce and Godfrey wrote Sleepy Time Time, one of the high points of the Fresh Cream album.

Artist:    Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Title:    Eventually
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: Spreading From The Ashes)
Writer(s):    Alan Brackett
Label:    Rhino (original label: Ace/Big Beat)
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2005
    The Peanut Butter Conspiracy (or PBC) was one of the more psychedelic of the local L.A. bands playing the various clubs along L.A.'s Sunset Strip during its golden years of 1965-68. As was the case with so many bands of that time and place, they never really got the opportunity to strut their stuff, although they did leave some decent tapes behind, such as Eventually, recorded in 1966 but not released until 2005.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Live And Let Live
Source:    CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    In late spring of 1967 L.A.'s most popular local band, Love, was falling apart, mostly due to constant partying on the part of some of the band members. This became a real issue for producer Bruce Botnick when it came time to begin sessions for the band's third LP, Forever Changes. Botnick had already lost his co-producer on the project, Neil Young, when Young's own band, Buffalo Springfield, found themselves hugely popular in the wake of the success of the single For What It's Worth, and Botnick was now faced with a heavier-than-expected workload. Botnick's solution to the problem became evident when the band entered Sunset Sound Recorders on June 9th, only to find a group of studio musicians already set up and ready to record. Two new Arthur Lee songs were recorded that day, and the rest of the band was literally shocked in sobriety, returning to the studio the next day to record overdubs on the tracks to make them sound more like the work of the band itself. After two month's worth of intensive practice, the band was ready to return to the studio, recording the first track for the album performed entirely by the band itself, Live And Let Live. The unusual first line of the song was reportedly the result of Lee falling asleep in a chair with his nose running during practice sessions.

Artist:    Sagittarius
Title:    My World Fell Down
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Carter/Stephens
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1967
    The Beach Boys' 1966 masterpiece Good Vibrations sent shock waves reverberating throughout the L.A. studio scene. Among those inspired by Brian Wilson's achievement were Wilson's former collaborator Gary Usher, who formed the studio band Sagittarius to record My World Fell Down in 1967. Among those participating in the project were Glen Campbell, who was the first person to take Wilson's place onstage when Wilson retired from performing to concentrate on his songwriting and record producing; Bruce Johnston, who succeeded Campbell and remains the group's bassist to this day; and Terry Melcher, best known as the producer who helped make Paul Revere and the Raiders a household name in 1965 (he was sometimes referred to as the "fifth Raider"). The rhythm section consisted of two of the top studio musicians in pop music history: bassist Carol Kaye and drummer Hal Blaine. With Campbell on lead vocals, Sagittarius was a critical and commercial success that nonetheless did not last past their first LP (possibly due to the sheer amount of ego in the group).

Artist:    Moby Grape
Title:    Omaha
Source:    LP: Moby Grape
Writer(s):    Skip Spence
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    As an ill-advised promotional gimmick, Columbia Records released five separate singles concurrently with the first Moby Grape album. Of the five singles, only one, Omaha, actually charted, and it only got to the #86 spot. Meanwhile, the heavy promotion by the label led to Moby Grape getting the reputation of being over-hyped, much to the detriment of the band's career.

Artist:    Motorcycle Abileen
Title:    (You Used To) Ride So High
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: Warren Zevon: The First Sessions)
Writer(s):    Warren Zevon
Label:    Rhino (original label: Varese Sarabande)
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2003
    One of the ripple effects of the British Invasion was the near-disappearance of the solo artist from the top 40 charts for several years. There were exceptions, of course. Folk singers such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, pop singers such as Jackie DeShannon and Dionne Warwick and more adult-oriented vocalists such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin all did reasonably well, but if you wanted to be a rock and roll star you had to have a band. Producers took to creating band names for pieces that were in fact entirely performed by studio musicians, and in a few cases a solo artist would use a band name for his own recordings. One such case is the Motorcycle Abilene, which was in reality producer Bones Howe on various percussion devices working with singer/songwriter Warren Zevon, who sings and plays all non-percussion instruments on (You Used To) Ride So High, a song he wrote shortly after disbanding the duo Lyme And Cybelle (he was Lyme).

Artist:    ? And The Mysterians
Title:    96 Tears
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    The Mysterians
Label:    Abkco (original label: Cameo)
Year:    1966
    Although his birth certificate gives the name Rudy Martinez, the leader of the Mysterians had his name legally changed to "?" several years ago. He asserts that he is actually from the planet Mars and has lived among dinosaurs in a past life. Sometimes I feel like I'm living among dinosaurs in this life, so I guess I can relate a little.

Artist:      Mothers of Invention
Title:     The M.O.I. American Pageant
Source:   CD: Absolutely Free
Year:     1967
     Following up on their debut double-LP Freak Out, the Mothers came up with one of the first concept albums with Absolutely Free, which consisted of two "rock oratorios", each taking up one side of the album. Included in the M.O.I. American Pageant is Brown Shoes Don't Make It, which composer Frank Zappa described as a two-hour musical in condensed form (it runs slightly less than 7 minutes). The entire Pageant runs about 19 minutes.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Unhappy Girl
Source:    LP: Strange Days
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    After the success of their first album and the single Light My Fire in early 1967, the Doors quickly returned to the studio, releasing a second LP, Strange Days, later the same year. The first single released from the new album was People Are Strange. The B side of that single was Unhappy Girl, from the same album. Both sides got played on the jukebox at a neighborhood gasthaus known as the Woog in the village of Meisenbach near Ramstein Air Force Base (which is where I was spending most of my evenings that autumn).

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)/Moon Turn The Tides (Gently, Gently Away)
Source:    LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer:    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1968
    1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)/Moon Turn The Tides (Gently, Gently Away) from the Electric Ladyland album is the longest work created purely in the studio by Jimi Hendrix, with a running time of over 16 minutes. The piece starts with tape effects that lead into the song's main guitar rift. The vocals and drums join in to tell a science fiction story set in a future world where the human race has had to move underwater in order to survive some unspecified catastrophe. After a couple verses, the piece goes into a long unstructured section made up mostly of guitar effects before returning to the main theme and closing out with more effects that combine volume control and stereo panning to create a circular effect. As is the case with several tracks on Electric Ladyland, 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)/Moon Turn The Tides (Gently, Gently Away) features Hendrix on both guitar and bass, with Mitch Mitchell on drums and special guest Chris Wood (from Traffic) on flute.

Artist:    John B. Sebastian
Title:    Rainbow All Over Your Blues
Source:    CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm (originally released on LP: Woodstock: Original Music From The Original Soundtrack and More)
Writer(s):    John B. Sebastian
Label:    Rhino (original label: Cotillion)
Year:    1969
    Max Yasgur's farm did not have a lot of access routes available. This became a problem when it was time for the festival to start and most of the amplifiers for the electric bands were still stuck in traffic. Luckily, there was a community of acoustic musicians available to pitch in and entertain the crowd until the equipment could be flown in by helicopter. Among them was Lovin' Spoonful founder John Sebastian, who was not actually scheduled to perform at the festival. Among the many songs he did perform at Woodstock this was Rainbow All Over Your Blues. The song was ultimately chosen for inclusion on the original soundtrack album.

Artist:    Blues Image
Title:    La Bamba/Consuelate
Source:    CD: Open
Writer(s):    Traditional/Blues Image
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Atco)
Year:    1970
    The Blues Project evolved out of a Tampa, Florida band called Mike West And The Motions ("Mike West" being a stage name for guitarist Mike Pinera). Unlike other bands in the area, who tended to play covers of British Invasion bands, the Motions were into John Mayall, Muddy Waters, and especially the Blues Project. They also experimented with using two drummers, inspiring fellow Floridians Duane and Gregg Allman to do the same with their new band. After changing their name to Blues Image (inspired by Blues Project), the band opened their own club, Thee Image, hiring the Mothers Of Invention for opening night in 1968. It was Mothers leader Frank Zappa that told the members of Blues Image that their strength was in arranging rather than composing, an opinion given validity by such tracks as La Bamba, which leads directly into a track that is essentially an extension of La Bamba itself, although it bears the title Consuelate. A series of unrelated events saw the band move to L.A. by the end of the year, closing Thee Image in the process. After two LPs for Atco, Pinera left the band he helped found to join Iron Butterfly. After one more LP the group called it quits, with various members going on to become studio musicians and hooking up with people like Stephen Stills.

Artist:    Association
Title:    Round Again
Source:    LP: And Now…Along Comes The Association
Writer(s):    Gary Alexander
Label:    Valiant
Year:    1966
    Although they are now best remembered for love ballads such as Cherish and Never My Love, the Association was, in their early days, one of the hottest and tightest acts on the Los Angeles club scene. Their first LP, for the Valiant label, reflects the sheer amount of raw talent in the band, including Gary Alexander, who wrote the offbeat Round Again.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    The Observation
Source:    Mono LP: Mellow Yellow
Writer:    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Epic
Year:    1967
    Donovan was at first hailed as Britain's answer to Bob Dylan, but by 1967 he was proving that he was much more than that. The Observation, with its distinctive use of an acoustic double-bass, is one of many innovative tunes that helped redefine Donovan from folk singer to singer/songwriter, transforming the entire genre in the process.

Artist:    Orange Wedge
Title:    From The Womb To The Tomb
Source:    An Overdose Of Heavy Psych
Writer(s):    L.S.P.
Label:    Arf! Arf!
Year:    1968
    Recorded in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1968, From The Womb To The Tomb was the only single from Orange Wedge, a forerunner of more famous Michigan bands such as the Stooges and the MC5.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1349 (starts 12/4/13)

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Eleanor Rigby
Source:    British import LP: Revolver
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone
Year:    1966
    The Beatles' Revolver album is usually cited as the beginning of the British psychedelic era, and with good reason. Although the band still had one last tour in them in 1966, they were already far more focused on their studio work than on their live performances, and thus turned out an album full of short masterpieces such as Paul McCartney's Eleanor Rigby. As always, the song was credited to both McCartney and John Lennon, but in reality the only Beatle to appear on the recording was McCartney himself, and then only in a vocal capacity. The instrumentation consisted of simply a string quartet, arranged and conducted by producer George Martin. Released as a double-A-sided single, along with Yellow Submarine, the song shot to the upper echelons of the charts in nearly every country in the western world and remains one of the band's most popular and recognizable tunes.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Let's Spend The Night Together
Source:    LP: Between The Buttons
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    I seem to recall some TV show (Ed Sullivan, maybe?) making Mick Jagger change the words to "Let's Spend Some Time Together". I can't imagine anyone doing that to the Stones now. Nor can I imagine the band agreeing to it.

Artist:    Eire Apparent
Title:    Here I Go Again
Source:    Swedish import CD: Sunrise (bonus track originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Lutton/Graham/McCulloch/Stewart
Label:    Flawed Gems (original label: Track)
Year:    1968
    Eire Apparent was originally part of the same Northern Ireland music scene that produced Van Morrison and Them a few years earlier. The band was first signed to Track Records, where they released one UK-only single with Here I Go Again as the B side. This led to a spot opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience and an album, Sunrise, that was produced by Hendrix himself. After the album failed to catch on, the group quietly disbanded.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Tobacco Road
Source:    LP: Psychedelic Lollipop
Writer(s):    John D. Loudermilk
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1966
    For years I've been trying to find a DVD copy of a video I saw on YouTube. It was the Blues Magoos, complete with electric suits and smoke generators, performing Tobacco Road on a Bob Hope TV special. The performance itself was a vintage piece of psychedelia, but the true appeal of the video is in Hope's reaction to the band immediately following the song. You can practically hear him thinking "Well, that's one act I'm not taking with me on my next USO tour."

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Source:    LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    While not as commercially successful as the Airplane or as long-lived as the Dead (there's an oxymoron for ya), Country Joe and the Fish may well be the most accurate musical representation of what the whole Haight-Ashbury scene was about, which is itself ironic, since the band operated out of Berkeley on the other side of the bay. Of all the tracks on their first album, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine probably got the most airplay on various underground radio stations that were popping up on the FM dial at the time (some of them even legally).

Artist:    Gun
Title:    Take Off
Source:    British import CD: Gun
Writer(s):    Adrian Gurvitz
Label:    Repertoire (original label: CBS)
Year:    1968
    As was becoming more and more common in 1968, the final track of Gun's debut LP was an extended jam piece designed to showcase each of the band members' individual talents as well as their improvisational ability as a group. What makes Take Off a bit unusual is the addition of horns to the mix, something that Al Kooper was experimenting with in the US at around the same time, as can be heard on the Super Session album.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Wind Chimes
Source:    Mono CD: Good Vibrations-Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys
Writer(s):    Brian Wilson
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1966
    For many years there were conflicting rumors concerning the fate of the original tapes made by Brian Wilson for his aborted Beach Boys album, Smile. Most people thought the tapes had long since been destroyed, yet there was growing evidence that there were still copies of at least some of the tracks, albeit in generally unfinished states. Finally, in 1993, Capitol Records unveiled several of these rough tracks as part of the four disc box set Good Vibrations-Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys. As was the case with the Pet Sounds album, Wilson used several different recording studios for the Smile project and often used splicing and cross-fading to mix the various segments into a cohesive whole. In the case of Wind Chimes, the splice is not quite clean, creating a jarring silence for a fraction of a second about two-thirds of the way through. With Wilson's reputation as a perfectionist I would imagine he found the track to be unacceptable in this state, but never got around to doing anything about it.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Dark White
Source:    CD: Ignition
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Sundazed
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2003
    One of the final recordings by Sean Bonniwell using the name Music Machine, Dark White is also one of the most sophisticated, both lyrically and musically. And since Bonniwell's music was by far the most sophisticated to get labeled "garage rock", that is really saying a lot. The song is best described as a cat and mouse love dance (but that really falls short of the mark as well). Best just to take a listen and decide for yourself. Although the liner notes for the Ignition CD (released in 2003) show the song as not being an unreleased track, I have not been able to find any evidence of the song ever appearing anywhere else.

rtist:    Love
Title:    Alone Again Or
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Bryan MacLean
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    The only song Love ever released as a single that was not written by Arthur Lee was Alone Again Or, issued in 1970. The song had originally appeared as the opening track from the Forever Changes album three years earlier. Bryan McLean would later say that he was not happy with the recording due to his own vocal being buried beneath that of Lee, since Lee's part was meant to be a harmony line to McLean's melody. McLean would later re-record the song for a solo album, but reportedly was not satisfied with that version either.

Artist:    Iron Butterfly
Title:    So-Lo
Source:    CD: Heavy
Writer(s):    Ingle/DeLoach
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    The band that came to be known as Iron Butterfly traces its roots to two local San Diego cover bands: the Palace Pages, which included organist Doug Ingle and guitarist Danny Weis, and the Voxmen, which included bassist Jerry Penrod and drummer Ron Bushy. In 1966 Ingle and Weis decided to move north to Los Angeles and form a new band, which they called Iron Butterfly. The original bassist and drummer didn't work out, and Ingle and Weis persuaded Penrod and Bushy to join them, along with vocalist Daryl DeLoach. After a slow start the band started to build a following on the Sunset Strip, and in 1967 landed a contract with Atco, recording their first album, Heavy. Although DeLoach's role with the band was limited to vocals, tambourine and percussion, he actually sang lead on only four of the album's ten tracks, among them the opening track of the second side of the LP, a tune he and Ingle co-wrote called So-Lo. Before the album was released, the band temporarily split up, and it was not until the new lineup of Ingle, Bushy, guitarist Erik Braunn and bassist Lee Dorman hit the stage in early 1968 that Atco decided to release Heavy. That lineup would go on to record two more Iron Butterfly albums, including the iconic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Artist:    Thor's Hammer
Title:    My Life
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released on British EP: Umbarumbamba for export to Iceland)
Writer(s):    Thordarson/Ostlund
Label:    Rhino (original label: Parlophone)
Year:    1966
    Originally formed in 1964 in Keflavik, Iceland, Hljomar, led by Gunnar Thordarson quickly became one of the most popular teen-oriented bands on the island nation, commencing to record locally in their native language in 1965. It soon became evident, however, that for the band to increase their audience base they would have to start recording in English, and by the end of the year had travelled to England to record songs under the name Thor's Hammer for an upcoming movie starring the band. Both the movie itself and a four-song EP featuring tunes from the film were released in late 1966, both bearing the name Umbarumbamba. Neither the movie or the EP did particularly well, however, despite strong tunes such as My Life, and, after a final attempt at an English language single in 1967, the band returned to Iceland, becoming Hljomar once more for the remainder of their existence.

Artist:     Johnny Winter
Title:     Bad Luck And Trouble
Source:     LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: The Progressive Blues Experiment)
Writer:     Johnny Winter
Label:     United Artists (original labels: Sonobeat/Imperial)
Year:     1968
     Johnny Winter first started getting attention while playing the Texas blues circuit. His first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment, originally appeared on the regional Sonobeat label and was subsequently reissued nationally on Imperial. Unlike his brother Edgar, who gravitated to rock music, Johnny Winter has remained primarily a blues musician throughout his career.

Artist:    J. Geils Band
Title:    Whammer Jammer
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Juke Box Jimmie
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1972
    First they were a Boston bar band called Snoopy and the Sopwith Camel. Then they became the J. Geils Blues Band. Finally they dropped the "blues" from the name and became famous. Whammer Jammer, an early B side showcasing "Magic Dick" Salwitz on lead harmonica, shows why the "blues" part was there in the first place.

Artist:     Johnny Rivers
Title:     Secret Agent Man
Source:     45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer:     Sloan/Barri
Label:     Imperial
Year:     1966
     The sixties were a decade of fads and trends in the US, many of them imported from England. One of the most popular was the spy craze. Inspired by cold war politics and the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, TV producers began cranking out shows like I-Spy and the Man from U.N.C.L.E. One of the earliest of these shows was a British production called Danger Man, aired in the US under the name Secret Agent. The show starred Darrin McGavin as a (surprise) secret agent for a fictional version of MI6, the British intelligence agency, and enjoyed a successful run on both sides of the Atlantic. After a few seasons McGavin got tired of doing the show and Danger Man/Secret Agent was cancelled. Before that happened, however, Johnny Rivers scored a huge hit with the theme song written by Steve Barri and PF Sloan especially for the US airings of the show. McGavin would make another series called the Prisoner about a former secret agent that had been "retired" to a closed village in order to protect the secret knowledge he had accumulated over the years. Although it was never explicitly stated, it was assumed that his character (who had indeed been given a number and had his name taken away) was the same one he had played in the earlier show.

Artist:    Flock
Title:    Introduction
Source:    CD: The Flock
Writer(s):    The Flock
Label:    BGO (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    Rock bands from the city of Chicago, starting with the Buckinghams, are known for their horn sections; in fact the most successful of these "horn bands" actually ended up renaming itself after the city itself. One of these bands, however, managed to find a member whose presence actually made the horns almost unnoticable. That member was violinist Jerry Goodman, who is heard prominently on the opening track of the first Flock album, appropriately titled Introduction. Goodman would go on to be a charter member of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra in the early 1970s.

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:    Chambers Brothers
Title:    Time Has Come Today
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The Time Has Come)
Writer(s):    Joe and Willie Chambers
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1967
    One of the quintessential songs of the psychedelic era is the Chambers Brothers' classic Time Has Come Today. The song was originally recorded and issued as a single in 1966. The more familiar version heard here, however, was recorded in 1967 for the album The Time Has Come. The LP version of the song runs about eleven minutes, way too long for a 45 RPM record, so before releasing the song as a single for the second time, engineers at Columbia cut the song down to around 3 minutes. The edits proved so jarring that the record was recalled and a re-edited version, clocking in at 4:57 became the third and final single version of the song, hitting the charts in 1968.

Artist:    Red Squares
Title:    You Can Be My Baby
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Denmark as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Martin/Bell
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1966
    Originally formed in Boston, England, in 1964, the Red Squares relocated to Denmark in 1966 and soon became massively popular. For the most part the band's sound was similar to the Hollies, as can be heard on the original LP version of You Can Be My Baby. The single version of the song heard here, however, cranks up the energy levels to something approaching the early Who records.

Artist:    Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title:    Steppin' Out
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Just Like Us
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 rock band signed by the label, predating the Byrds by about a year. 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:    Tea Company
Title:    Flowers
Source:    Mono CD: A Heavy Dose Of Lyte Psych (originally released on LP: Come And Have Some Tea With The Tea Company and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Carr/Lassando
Label:    Arf! Arf!
Year:    1968
    Nobody seems to know for sure, but the Tea Company apparently came from somewhere in the Northeastern US. What is known is that their only LP for Smash was reportedly about as psychedelic as you can get, using some of the stereo techniques developed by Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Kramer for the Axis: Bold As Love album. The single version of Flowers, unfortunately, is a heavily edited mono remix, which makes me even more curious to hear the actual LP. Anyone got a copy?

Artist:    Chris St. John (Mouse And The Traps)
Title:    I've Got Her Love
Source:    Mono British import CD: The Fraternity Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Barton/Brians
Label:    Big Beat
Year:    1967
    Ronnie "Mouse" Weiss had already established a reputation locally in Tyler Texas as a session musician by the time he had his first regional hit record, the Dylanesque A Public Execution, in 1966. The success of A Public Execution led to the formation of a backing band, the Traps, made up mostly of the same studio musicians who had played on the single. The band didn't take long to build a following, thanks to relentless touring across the southern US from Texas to Virginia. Still, they couldn't seem to get the kind of breakout hit single that would put them on the national map. As an experiment the band even released a 1967 single, I've Got Her Love, under the name Chris St. John, but the record failed to chart. The band continued to release singles with varying degrees of success (even having the number one record in Nashville at one point), but the rigors of touring and a fluctuating lineup eventually led to the Traps being dismantled in 1970.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    The Coffee Song
Source:    CD: Fresh Cream (bonus track originally released in Sweden on LP: Fresh Cream and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Smith/Colton
Label:    Polydor
Year:    1966
    Cream's debut single, Wrapping Paper, appeared in England in 1966. The record did not chart and was soon forgotten. Cream's next single, I Feel Free, was a huge hit in the UK and the band soon got to work on their first LP. The practice in the UK at the time was to not include any songs on an album that had previously been released as singles; Fresh Cream partially broke with this tradition by using I Feel Free's B side, N.S.U., as the opening track.  When a US version of Fresh Cream was released in early 1967, I Feel Free was added to the lineup (replacing the original studio version of Spoonful). Neither side of the band's first single was included on the album...with one notable exception. The German pressing of Fresh Cream used the same track listing as the original UK version, but a Swedish version, manufactured in Germany, had two extra tracks: Wrapping Paper and another unreleased recording, The Coffee Song. Neither song was released anywhere else until the late 1980s, when the first US CD version of Fresh Cream included all the tracks from the various LP pressings of the album. For unknown reasons, subsequent releases of Fresh Cream have not included either Wrapping Paper or The Coffee Song.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Spoonful
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released in UK only on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Reaction)
Year:    1966
    When the album Fresh Cream was released by Atco in the US it was missing one track that was on the original UK version of the album: the band's original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1970 soundtrack album for the movie Homer that the studio version was finally released in the US.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Sleepy Time Time
Source:    CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Bruce/Godfrey
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    When Cream was first formed, both Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker worked with co-writers on original material for the band. Baker's partner was Pete Brown, while Bruce worked with his wife, Janet Godfrey. Eventually Bruce and Brown began collaborating, creating some of Cream's most memorable songs, but not before Bruce and Godfrey wrote Sleepy Time Time, one of the high points of the Fresh Cream album.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Nothin' In This World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl
Source:    Mono LP: Kinda Kinks
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1965
    The Kinks can never be accused of resting on their laurels. Despite virtually inventing hard rock with their 1964 singles You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night, the band, led by Ray Davies, virtually abandoned their own style the following year, moving into more melodic territory with singles like Set Me Free and Tired Of Waiting For You, as well as folky material such as Nothin' In This World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl, on their LP Kinda Kinks.

Artist:    Dave Davies
Title:    Suzannah's Still Alive
Source:    Mono Canadian CD: Kinks-25 Years-The Ultimate Collection (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Dave Davies
Label:    Polygram/PolyTel (original label: Pye)
Year:    1967
    Although Ray Davies was the leader and primary songwriter for the Kinks, it was brother Dave who first recorded as a solo artist, with Death of a Clown (which received extensive airplay on the 100,000 watt English language semi-pirate station Radio Luxembourg in late 1967), followed by Suzannah's Still Alive in early 1968. After the next two singles flopped, however, Dave returned to the fold and has been a Kink ever since.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Set Me Free
Source:    Mono LP: Kinda Kinks
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1965
    After scoring international success with a series of R&B influenced rockers in 1964, the Kinks started to mellow a bit in 1965, releasing more melodic songs such as Set Me Free. The band would continue to evolve throughout the decade, eventually becoming one of the first groups to release a concept album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), in 1969.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Shanghai Noodle Factory
Source:    CD: Smiling Phases (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: Last Exit)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1968
    After Traffic split up (for the first time), Island Records decided to milk one more album out of one their most popular groups. To do so they took studio outtakes, singles that had not been included on previous albums and even an entire side of live performances, issuing the entire package in 1969 under the title Last Exit. Shanghai Noodle Factory, a song that was recorded without the participation of guitarist Dave Mason, was originally released in late 1968 as the B side of the Medicated Goo single.