Artist: Blue Cheer
Title: Summertime Blues
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Vincebus Eruptum)
Writer(s): Cochrane/Capehart
Label: Priority (original label: Philips)
Year: 1968
European electronics giant Philips had its own record label in the 1960s. In the US, the label was distributed by Mercury Records, and was known primarily for a long string of hits by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. In 1968 the label surprised everyone by signing the loudest band in San Francisco, Blue Cheer. Their cover of the 50s Eddie Cochrane hit Summertime Blues was all over both the AM and FM airwaves that summer.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Living In The U.S.A.
Source: LP: Sailor
Writer(s): Steve Miller
Label: Capitol
Year: 1968
Although generally considered a San Francisco act, the Steve Miller Band, in truth, was never really confined to a single geographical area. Miller himself was originally from Chicago, and had cut his musical teeth in Texas. The first Miller Band album was recorded in London, while their second effort, Sailor, was made in Los Angeles. Appropriately enough, the best-known track from Sailor, and the first Steve Miller Band song to get significant national radio exposure, was Living In The U.S.A., a song that is still heard often on classic rock radio stations.
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: Hearts And Flowers
Title: Rock And Roll Gypsies
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Of Houses, Kids And Forgotten Women)
Writer(s): Roger Tillison
Label: Cotillion (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
Led by singer/songwriters Larry Murray and Dave Dawson, Hearts And Flowers is best known for launching the career of guitarist/vocalist Bernie Leadon, who joined the group for their second LP and would later go on to co-found the Eagles (he is now a producer in Nashville). That second album, Of Houses, Kids And Forgotten Women, is generally considered the most accessible of the group's three albums, and included the song Rock And Roll Gypsies, which was included on the Homer movie soundtrack album in 1970.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Goin' Home
Source: British import LP: Aftermath
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: Decca)
Year: 1966
Goin' Home was not originally meant to run over eleven minutes, but when the Rolling Stones recorded the track they decided to keep the tape rolling as the band kept on jamming after the intended two and a half minutes had passed. The result was one of the first extended-length studio recordings by a rock band and the first "jam" recorded expressly for an album. The regular lineup of Mick Jagger (vocals), Keith Richards (guitar), Billy Wyman (bass), Charlie Watts (drums) and Brian Jones (who plays harp on the tune) was augmented by Ian Stewart on piano and Jack Nitzsche on percussion. The track was included on both the US and UK versions of the Aftermath album, which was the first Stones LP to not include any cover songs as well as being the first Rolling Stones album to be recorded in true stereo.
Artist: Tim Rose
Title: Morning Dew
Source: LP: Tim Rose
Writer(s): Bonnie Dobson
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Time Rose was no stranger to controversy. It was his slowed-down version of Hey Joe that inspired the first Jimi Hendrix Experience single in 1966, yet his label credited Rose as the sole writer of the song, which, as it turns out, was actually written years earlier (possibly as early as 1958) by California-based folk singer Billy Roberts. Similarly, the song Morning Dew, which was written in 1961 by Canadian singer Bonnie Dobson, was credited to both Dobson and Rose on Rose's self-titled 1967 LP for Columbia. However, Rose's only apparent contribution to the song is the rewording of the first line (from "Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew to Take Me Out To The Morning Dew), and there is some evidence that even that change was originally made by Fred Neil when he recorded the song in 1964. Nonetheless, since 1967 the song has had been officially co-credited to Rose, with Dobson collecting on 75% of the royalties due to an agreement made prior to Rose's recording of the song. To this day Dobson disputes that credit, claiming that she never met Rose (who died in 2002).
Artist: Easybeats
Title: Heaven And Hell
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Vanda/Young
Label: Rhino (original label: Parlophone)
Year: 1967
Throughout the mid-60s Australia's most popular band was the Easybeats, often called the Australian Beatles. Although their early material sounded like slightly dated British Invasion music (Australia had a reputation for cultural lag, and besides, half the members were British immigrants), by late 1966 guitarist Harry Vanda (one of the two Dutch immigrant members of the group) had learned enough English to be able to replace vocalist Stevie Wright as George Young's writing partner. The new team was much more adventurous in their compositions than the Wright/Young team had been, and were responsible for the band's first international hit, Friday On My Mind. By then the Easybeats had relocated to England, and continued to produce fine singles such as Heaven And Hell.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Final Sequence
Source: British import LP: : Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
One of the great accidents of record production was the splice that turned the chicken at the end of Good Morning Good Morning into a guitar, starting off Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) and ultimately leading into A Day In The Life, with it's slowly dissolving orchestral chord that brings the number one album of 1967 to a close.
Artist: John Fahey
Title: Dance Of Death
Source: LP: Zabriskie Point soundtrack
Writer: John Fahey
Label: 4 Men With Beards (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1970
Although the movie Zabriskie Point has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made, the soundtrack is another story altogether. Most of the attention has been paid to the Pink Floyd tracks on the album, however there are other gems as well, such as this instrumental piece by acoustic guitarist John Fahey. As far as I can tell this particular recording of Dance Of Death does not appear on any of Fahey's own LPs, although in 1964 Fahey released an album of traditional folk tunes that included a seven-minute piece called The Dance Of Death as the title track.
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Oh Well
Source: CD: Then Play On
Writer(s): Peter Green
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
Fleetwood Mac had already established themselves as one of Britain's top up-and-coming blues bands by the time Then Play On was released in 1969. The band had just landed a deal in the US with Reprise, and Then Play On was their American debut LP. At the same time the album was released in the UK, a new non-LP single, Oh Well, appeared as well. The song was a top pick on Radio Luxembourg, the only non-BBC English language top 40 station still operating in 1969, and Oh Well (part one) soon shot all the way to the # 2 spot on the British charts. Meanwhile the US version of Then Play On (which had originally been issued with pretty much the same song lineup as the British version) was recalled, and a new version with Oh Well added to it was issued in its place. The song itself has two distinct parts: a fast blues-rocker sung by lead guitarist Peter Green lasting about two minutes, and a slow moody instrumental that runs about seven minutes. The original UK single featured about a minute's worth of part two tacked on to the end of the A side (with a fadeout ending), while the B side had the entire part two on it. Both sides of the single were added to the US version of the LP, which resulted in the first minute of part two repeating itself on the album. I've listened to this CD version a couple of times now and I can't hear any obvious repetition, so maybe they fixed it.
Artist: Romancers
Title: Love's The Thing
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Max and Bob Uballez
Label: Rhino (original label: Linda)
Year: 1965
Released three times on three labels under two different band names. Such was the studio scene in East L.A. in the mid-60s. Max Uballez, leader of the Romancers and East L.A.'s answer to Phil Spector (or maybe Brian Wilson), was the driving force behind Love's The Thing, a favorite on local radio in 1965.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Embryonic Journey
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Jorma Kaukonen
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
Jorma Kaukonen originally considered Embryonic Journey to be little more than a practice exercise. Other members of Jefferson Airplane insisted he record it, however, and it has since come to be identified as a kind of signature song for the guitarist, who played the tune live when the band was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: It's No Secret
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1966
Released in March of 1966, It's No Secret was an instant hit on San Francisco Bay area radio stations. This version differs from the album version released six months later in that it has a fade out ending and is thus a few seconds shorter. The song was featured on a 1966 Bell Telephone Hour special on Haight Ashbury that introduced a national TV audience to what was happening out on the coast and may have just touched off the exodus to San Francisco the following year.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1967
The first time I heard White Rabbit was on Denver's first FM rock station, KLZ-FM. The station branded itself as having a top 100 (as opposed to local ratings leader KIMN's top 60), and prided itself on being the first station in town to play new releases and album tracks. It wasn't long before White Rabbit was officially released as a single, and went on to become a top 10 hit, the last for the Airplane.
Artist: Them
Title: Market Place
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
I've often mentioned the lost WEOS vinyl archives that were found in a storage room on the Hobart & William Smith Colleges campus last year. Of the thousands of albums we found I ended up keeping about 200. Of those nearly half were unusable, mostly due to their condition. The remainder I divided into three piles. The largest of these piles were the marginal albums that may have one or two songs that might be worked into the show once in a while. The next pile was mostly duplicates of albums I already had on CD, although there were a few cases of stereo albums I had mono copies of, or vice versa. Only a handful of albums made the third pile, but these were the real gems of the bunch: genuine relics of the psychedelic era in playable condition that I didn't already have. Of these, two of the most valuable finds (for my purposes at any rate) were the two post-Van Morrison Them albums released by Tower Records in 1968 that feature new vocalist Kenny McDowell. Market Place is from the second of these, Time Out! Time In! For Them.
Artist: Turtles
Title: To See The Sun
Source: 12" 45 RPM extended play picture disc: The Turtles-1968
Writer: The Turtles
Label: Rhino
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Turtles, feeling restricted by the dictates of producers and record company people, decided to rent studio time to produce some tracks of their own. The result was four songs, three of which were rejected outright by their label, White Whale. (The fourth track, Surfer Joe, was included on their Battle of the Bands album). Several years later a new local L.A. record label, Rhino Records, was looking to move beyond the niche it had carved out for itself as a novelty label. The chance to make previously unreleased material such as To See The Sun from a band as well-known as the Turtles was just what the label was looking for, and, along with re-releasing long out-of-print Turtles albums, got the label moving in a whole new direction that they continue to excel at.
Artist: Randy Newman
Title: Last Night I Had A Dream
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Randy Newman
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Randy Newman has, over the course of the past forty-plus years, established himself as a Great American Writer of Songs. His work includes dozens of hit singles (over half of which were performed by other artists), nearly two dozen movie scores and eleven albums as a solo artist. Newman has won five Grammys, as well as two Oscars and Three Emmys. To my knowledge, Last Night I Had A Dream could quite possibly be his first recorded work as a solo artist, as it came out the same year as his first album, which does not include the song.
Artist: Standells
Title: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets
Writer: Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
The Standells were probably the most successful band to record for the Tower label (not counting Pink Floyd, whose first LP was issued, in modified form, on the label after being recorded in England). Besides their big hit Dirty Water, they hit the charts with other tunes such as Why Pick On Me, Try It, and the punk classic Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. Both Good Guys and Dirty Water were written by producer Ed Cobb, who has to be considered the most prolific punk-rock songwriter of the 60s, having also written some of the Chocolate Watch Band's best stuff as well.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz were songwriters who had their greatest success when the Electric Prunes released one of their songs, I Had Too Much Too Dream (Last Night), in early 1967. The record was such a great success, in fact, that the band's producer insisted that the group record more Tucker/Mantz songs, including a second charted single, Get Me To The World On Time, and several album tracks. One of those album tracks, I, is the only recording by the original band to exceed the five minute mark, an ironic fact considering that it is the song with the shortest title in history.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Fugue U/Parchman Farm/Wrath Of Daisey
Source: LP: Open
Writer: Allison/Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1970
Despite drawing crowds in south Florida and getting rave reviews from the rock press, Blues Image was never able to sell a lot of albums. This is a shame, as almost all of their material was as good or better than anything else being recorded in 1969-70. A classic example is the medley of Fugue U (emulating J.S. Bach), a jazz-rock arrangement of Mose Allison's Parchman Farm and the latin-rock instrumental Wrath Of Daisey. Guitarist Mike Pinera went on to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly the following year.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: One Rainy Wish
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
In the summer of 1967 my dad (who was a Sergeant in the Air Force), got transferred to Lindsay Air Station in Weisbaden, Germany. The housing situation there being what it was, it was several weeks before the rest of us could join him, and during that time he went out and bought an Akai X-355 reel to reel tape recorder that a fellow GI had picked up in Japan. The Akai had small speakers built into it, but the best way to listen to it was through headphones. It would be another year before he would pick up a turntable, so I started buying pre-recorded reel to reel tapes. Two of the first three tapes I bought were Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love, both by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. As I was forced to share a bedroom with my little brother I made it a habit to sleep on the couch instead, usually with the headphones on listening to Axis: Bold As Love. I was blown away by the stereo effects on the album, which I attributed (somewhat correctly) to Hendrix, although I would find out years later that much of the credit belongs to engineer Eddie Kramer as well. One Rainy Wish, for example, starts off with all the instruments in the center channel (essentially a mono mix). After a few seconds of slow spacy intro the song gets into gear with vocals isolated all the way over to the left, with a guitar overdub on the opposite side to balance it out. As the song continues, things move back and forth from side to side, fading in and out at the same time. It was a hell of a way to drift off to sleep every night.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dance The Night Away
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
The album Fresh Cream was perhaps the first LP from a rock supergroup, although at the time a more accurate description would have been British blues supergroup. Much of the album was reworking of blues standards by the trio of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, all of whom had established their credentials with various British blues bands. With Disraeli Gears, however, Cream showed a psychedelic side as well as their original blues orientation. Most of the more psychedelic material, such as Dance the Night Away, was from the songwriting team of Bruce and lyricist Pete Brown.
Artist: Doors
Title: You're Lost Little Girl
Source: CD: Strange Days
Writer: The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The Doors second LP, Strange Days, was stylistically similar to the first, and served notice to the world that this band was going to be around for awhile. Songwriting credit for You're Lost Little Girl (a haunting number that's always been a personal favorite of mine) was given to the entire band, a practice that would continue until the release of The Soft Parade in 1969.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Beggar's Farm
Source: LP: This Was
Writer(s): Abrahams/Anderson
Label: Chrysalis
Year: 1968
Although Jethro Tull would eventually come to be considered almost a backup band for flautist/vocalist/songwriter Ian Anderson, in the early days the group was much more democratically inclined, at least until the departure of guitarist and co-founder Mick Abrahams. In addition to providing a more blues-based orientation for the band, Abrahams shared songwriting duties with Anderson as well, including collaborations such as Beggar's Farm from the band's 1968 debut LP, This Was.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: One Kind Favor
Source: British import CD: Living The Blues
Writer(s): L T Tatman III
Label: BGO (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
Canned Heat's best known song is Going Up The Country, a single from the band's third LP, Living The Blues. The B side of that single, One Kind Favor, was also from the same album. One Kind Favor is one of two tracks on Living The Blues (the other being Boogie Music) credited to L.T. Tatman III, a name sometimes thought to be a pseudonym for one or more of the band members. The song itself bears a strong resemblance to an earlier Canned Heat single, On The Road Again, which appeared on the band's second LP, Boogie With Canned Heat.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1404 (starts 1/22/14)
Artist: Who
Title: My Generation
Source: Simulated stereo LP: The Who Sings My Generation
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1965
In late 1965 the Who released a song that quickly became the anthem of a generation. As a matter of fact it's My Generation. Some of us, including Who drummer Keith Moon, did indeed die before we got old. The rest of us weren't so lucky, but hey, that's life.
Artist: Young Rascals
Title: You Better Run
Source: CD: The Rascals' Greatest Hits-Time Peace (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Cavaliere/Brigati
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1966
The Young Rascals were riding high in 1966, thanks to their second single, Good Lovin', going all the way to the top of the charts early in the year. Rather than to follow up Good Lovin' with another single the band's label, Atlantic, chose to instead release a new album, Collections, on May 10th. This was somewhat unusual for the time, as having a successful single was considered essential to an artist's career, while albums were still viewed as somewhat of a luxury item. Three weeks later, a new non-album single, You Better Run was released, with a song from Collections, Love Is A Beautiful Thing, as the B side. You Better Run's only LP appearance was on the Rascals' Greatest Hits album a few years later.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Dandelion
Source: LP: Through The Past, Darkly (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
If there was a British equivalent to the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations in terms of time and money spent on a single song, it might be We Love You, a 1967 single released by the Rolling Stones. To go along with the single (with its state-of-the-art production) the band spent a considerable sum making a full-color promotional video, a practice that would not become commonplace until the advent of MTV in the 1980s. Despite all this, US radio stations virtually ignored We Love You, choosing to instead flip the record over and play the B side, a tune called Dandelion. As to why this came about, I suspect that Bill Drake, the man behind the nation's most influential top 40 stations, simply decided that the less elaborately produced Dandelion was better suited to the US market than We Love You and instructed his hand-picked program directors at such stations as WABC, KHJ and WLS to play Dandelion. The copycat nature of top 40 radio being what it is, Dandelion ended up being a moderate hit in the US in the summer of '67.
Artist: Asylum Choir
Title: Welcome To Hollywood
Source: Mono European import CD: Look Inside The Asylum Choir (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Russell/Benno
Label: Rev-Ola (original label: Smash)
Year: 1968
Leon Russell and Marc Benno were both well-established as studio musicians in L.A. when they teamed up to create an album called Look Inside The Asylum Choir in 1968. Although the album was not a hot seller (the fact that the cover featured a roll of toilet paper probably didn't help), it did provide the two a chance to indulge their own particular brand of insanity, as heard on the album's opening track, Welcome To Hollywood. Look Inside The Asylum Choir was re-released (with a new cover) three years later in the wake of Russell's emergence as a superstar in his own right.
Artist: King Crimson
Title: 21st Century Schizoid Man
Source: LP: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer: Fripp/McDonald/Lake/Giles/Sinfield
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1969
There are several bands with a legitimate claim to starting the art-rock movement of the mid-70s. The one most other musicians cite as the one that started it all, however, is King Crimson. Led by Robert Fripp, the band went through several personnel changes over the years. Many of the members went on to greater commercial success as members of other bands, including guitarist/keyboardist Ian McDonald (Foreigner), and lead vocalist/bassist Greg Lake (Emerson, Lake and Palmer) from the original lineup. Additionally, poet Peter Sinfield, who wrote all King Crimson's early lyrics, would go on to perform a similar function for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, including their magnum opus Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends. Other original members included Michael Giles on drums and Fripp himself on guitar. This week's track has special significance as the first song on the first album by King Crimson. Enjoy!
Artist: Santana
Title: Evil Ways
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Clarence Henry
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Evil Ways was originally released in 1968 by jazz percussionist Willie Bobo on an album of the same name. When Carlos Santana took his new band into the studio to record their first LP, they made the song their own, taking it into the top 10 in 1969.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Summertime
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Gershwin/Heyward
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Janis Joplin, on the 1968 Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, sounds like she was born to sing Gershwin's Summertime. Maybe she was.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Mercedes Benz
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Pearl)
Writer(s): Janis Joplin
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1971
To put it bluntly, Janis recorded Mercedes Benz then went home and OD'd on herion. End of story (and of Janis).
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Ball And Chain
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Willie Mae Thornton
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Big Brother And The Holding Company electrified the crowd at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 with their performance of Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's Ball And Chain. The rest of the world, however, would have to wait until the following year to hear Janis Joplin's version of the old blues tune, when a live performance recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium was included on the LP Cheap Thrills.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: I'm Not Your Stepping Stone
Source: LP: Midnight Ride
Writer(s): Boyce/Hart
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Predating the Monkees version by about six months, the Paul Revere And The Raiders version of I'm Not Your Stepping Stone was almost chosen for release as a single. If it had we probably would be talking about the big four from the Raiders instead of the big three (Just Like Me, Hungry and Kicks) hits released during the peak of their popularity.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: I Haven't Got The Nerve
Source: LP: Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina
Writer(s): Cameron/Martin
Label: Smash/Sundazed
Year: 1967
The first thought I had when seeing the title of Left Banke's 1967 debut LP was "if they had to name the album after the band's two hit singles, the rest of the songs must really suck", so I never gave it another thought. It turns out I was totally wrong, as the album is actually filled with fine tracks such as I Haven't Got The Nerve, which only took me until 2012 to discover. I still think it's a stupid name for an album, though.
Artist: Fargo
Title: Sunny Day Blue
Source: British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Marty Cooper
Label: Zonophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
Salt Lake City was home to Dean Wilden and Tony Decker, who recorded Sunny Day Blue as a single for Capitol in 1968 before moving over to RCA Victor for a 1969 LP called I See It Now. Both were produced by Marty Cooper, who also wrote Sunny Day Blue.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Winwood/Winwood/Davis
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becoming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Ironically, most of those stations are now playing 80s oldies.
Artist: Del-Vetts
Title: Last Time Around
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dennis Dahlquist
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The Del-Vetts were from Chicago's affluent North Shore. Their gimmick was to show up at a high school dance by driving their matching corvettes onto the gymnasium dance floor. Musically, like most garage/punk bands, they were heavily influenced by the British invasion bands. Unlike most garage/punk bands, who favored the Rolling Stones, the Del-Vetts were more into the Jeff Beck incarnation of the Yardbirds. The 'Vetts had a few regional hits from 1965-67, the biggest being this single issued on the Dunwich label, home of fellow Chicago suburbanites the Shadows of Knight. In retrospect, Last Time Around may well be the very first metal death rock song ever recorded.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Paperback Writer
Source: CD: Past Masters Volume Two
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1966
Following a successful 1965 that culminated with their classic Rubber Soul album, the Beatles' first release of 1966 was the equally classic Paperback Writer. The song was as influential as it was popular, to the point that the coda at the end of the song inspired Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to write what would become the Monkees' first number one hit: Last Train To Clarksville.
Artist: Human Beinz
Title: Nobody But Me
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as a 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ron Isley
Label: LP: Rhino (originally released on Capitol)
Year: 1968
The Human Beingz were a band that had been around since 1964 doing mostly club gigs in the Youngstown, Ohio area as the Premiers. In the late 60s they decided to update their image with a name more in tune with the times and came up with the Human Beingz. Unfortunately someone at Capitol misspelled their name (leaving out the "g") on the label of Nobody But Me, and after the song became a national hit the band was stuck with the new spelling. The band split up in 1969, but after Nobody But Me was featured in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill: Vol.1, original leader Ting Markulin reformed the band with a new lineup that has appeared in the Northeastern US in recent years.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Baby's House
Source: LP: Anthology (originally released on LP: Your Saving Grace)
Writer(s): Miller/Hopkins
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
One of the most haunting tunes in the Steve Miller Band catalog, Baby's House is collaborative effort between Miller and keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, who briefly joined up with Miller following an appearance onstage with Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock. The song appears on the band's fourth LP, Your Saving Grace, and runs nearly eight minutes.
Artist: Them
Title: Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out
Source: Mono LP: Now And Them
Writer(s): Jimmie Cox
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
The artist that comes to mind when I see the title of this Jimmy Cox tune is, of course, Eric Clapton, who included it on the Derek and the Dominos Layla album. This version of Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out, featuring vocalist Kenny McDowell, actually predates Clapton's by a couple years.
Artist: Jerry Garcia
Title: EEP Hour
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Garcia/Kreutzmann
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1972
In 1972 Warner Brothers Records encouraged the members of the Grateful Dead to make solo albums. Unlike Bob Weir's album, which used all the members of the band, the Jerry Garcia album featured only drummer Bill Kreutzmann from the Dead. All other instruments were played by Garcia himself, making it more literally a solo album. The single from the album, Sugaree, became a Grateful Dead standard at their live performances. On the other hand EEP Hour (pronounced E Power), the album track issued as the B side of Sugaree, was more of a musical study than an actual song. It has never to my knowledge been performed live.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Lucifer Sam
Source: Mono CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s): Syd Barrett
Label: Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Beyond a shadow of a doubt the original driving force behind Pink Floyd was the legendary Syd Barrett. Not only did he front the band during their rise to fame, he also wrote their first two singles, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, as well as most of their first LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. In fact it could be argued that one of the songs on that album, Lucifer Sam, could have just as easily been issued as a single, as it is stylistically similar to the first two songs. Sadly, Barrett's mental health deteriorated quickly over the next year and his participation in the making of the band's next LP, A Saucerful Of Secrets, was minimal. He soon left the group altogether, never to return (although several of his former bandmates did participate in the making of his 1970 solo album, The Madcap Laughs).
Artist: Sound Barrier
Title: (My) Baby's Gone
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Paul Hess
Label: BFD (original label: Zounds)
Year: 1967
A couple weeks after the first time I played (My) Baby's Gone (in 2012), I got an e-mail from Paul Hess, leader and lead vocalist of Salem, Ohio's Sound Barrier. Hess confirmed that he indeed was the writer of the song in question, as well as the record's B side (I'm still waiting for him to send me a copy).
Artist: Seeds
Title: Tripmaker
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Tybalt/Hooper
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
For some strange reason whenever I hear the song Tripmaker from the second Seeds album, A Web Of Sound, I am reminded of a track from the Smash Mouth album Astro Lounge. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which one came first.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Suite It Is
Source: CD: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Casady/Dryden/Kaukonen
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
The second side of After Bathing At Baxters starts off fairly conventionally (for the Airplane), with Paul Kantner's Watch Her Ride, the first third or so of something called How Suite It Is. This leads (without a break in the audio) into Spare Chaynge, one of the coolest studio jams ever recorded, featuring intricate interplay between Jack Casady's bass and Jorma Kaukonen's guitar, with Spencer Dryden using his drum kit as enhancement rather than as a beat-setter. In particular, Cassidy's virtuoso performance helped redefine what could be done with an electric bass.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Amphetamine Annie
Source: LP: Boogie With Canned Heat
Writer(s): Canned Heat
Label: United Artists (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
By the end of 1967 the Haight-Ashbury scene had taken a definite turn for the worse. Most veterans of the street (i.e. those who had been there before the Summer of Love) placed the blame firmly on the influx of naive runaways that had flooded the area in the wake of calls to "go to San Francisco" earlier in the year, and on the drug dealers who preyed upon them. Methamphetamine (aka speed) was the drug usually singled out as the most destructive force at play. Back then it was the pill form of speed, such as white crosses, that was prevalent among users; the powdered crystal meth that has become a concern in modern rural America would not be used widely until the 1970s. As one of the original Bay Area bands, Canned Heat decided to take a stand against the drug, declaring in the song Amphetamine Annie that "speed kills", a phrase that would show up as graffiti on various walls in the city as well.
Artist: Leslie West
Title: Blood Of The Sun
Source: 45 RPM single B side (also released on LP: Mountain)
Writer: West/Pappaliardi/Collins
Label: Windfall
Year: 1969
After the Vagrants disbanded guitarist Leslie Weinstein changed his last name to West and recorded a solo album called Mountain. Helping him with the project was producer Felix Pappaliardi, who had previously worked with Cream on their Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire albums. Among the better tracks on the album was a tune called Blood Of The Sun, which the two of them wrote (along with Pappaliardi's wife Janet Collins). The pair of them meshed so well that they decided to form a band with drummer Corky Laing, using the name Mountain. One of the first gigs by the new band was the Woodstock festival, where they played Blood Of The Sun to an enthusiastic crowd.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Ritual # 2
Source: LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
There's a reason music like that of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band is sometimes called Acid Rock, and Ritual #2, from the band's last album for Reprise, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil, is as good an example as you'll find. Best listened to with headphones on.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Castles Made Of Sand
Source: CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released on LP: Axis: Bold As Love)
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Although born in Seattle, Washington, James Marshall Hendrix was never associated with the local music scene that produced some of the loudest and raunchiest punk-rock of the mid 60s. Instead, he paid his professional dues backing R&B artists on the "chitlin circuit" of clubs playing to a mostly-black clientele, mainly in the south. After a short stint leading his own soul band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, Hendrix, at the behest of one Chas Chandler, moved to London, where he recuited a pair of local musicians, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, to form the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Although known for his innovative use of feedback, Hendrix was quite capable of knocking out some of the most complex "clean" riffs ever to be committed to vinyl. A prime example of this is Castles Made Of Sand. Hendrix's highly melodic guitar work combined with unusual tempo changes and haunting lyrics makes Castles Made Of Sand a classic that sounds as fresh today as it did when Axis: Bold As Love was released in 1967. The first time I ever heard this song it gave me chills.
Title: My Generation
Source: Simulated stereo LP: The Who Sings My Generation
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1965
In late 1965 the Who released a song that quickly became the anthem of a generation. As a matter of fact it's My Generation. Some of us, including Who drummer Keith Moon, did indeed die before we got old. The rest of us weren't so lucky, but hey, that's life.
Artist: Young Rascals
Title: You Better Run
Source: CD: The Rascals' Greatest Hits-Time Peace (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Cavaliere/Brigati
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1966
The Young Rascals were riding high in 1966, thanks to their second single, Good Lovin', going all the way to the top of the charts early in the year. Rather than to follow up Good Lovin' with another single the band's label, Atlantic, chose to instead release a new album, Collections, on May 10th. This was somewhat unusual for the time, as having a successful single was considered essential to an artist's career, while albums were still viewed as somewhat of a luxury item. Three weeks later, a new non-album single, You Better Run was released, with a song from Collections, Love Is A Beautiful Thing, as the B side. You Better Run's only LP appearance was on the Rascals' Greatest Hits album a few years later.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Dandelion
Source: LP: Through The Past, Darkly (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
If there was a British equivalent to the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations in terms of time and money spent on a single song, it might be We Love You, a 1967 single released by the Rolling Stones. To go along with the single (with its state-of-the-art production) the band spent a considerable sum making a full-color promotional video, a practice that would not become commonplace until the advent of MTV in the 1980s. Despite all this, US radio stations virtually ignored We Love You, choosing to instead flip the record over and play the B side, a tune called Dandelion. As to why this came about, I suspect that Bill Drake, the man behind the nation's most influential top 40 stations, simply decided that the less elaborately produced Dandelion was better suited to the US market than We Love You and instructed his hand-picked program directors at such stations as WABC, KHJ and WLS to play Dandelion. The copycat nature of top 40 radio being what it is, Dandelion ended up being a moderate hit in the US in the summer of '67.
Artist: Asylum Choir
Title: Welcome To Hollywood
Source: Mono European import CD: Look Inside The Asylum Choir (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Russell/Benno
Label: Rev-Ola (original label: Smash)
Year: 1968
Leon Russell and Marc Benno were both well-established as studio musicians in L.A. when they teamed up to create an album called Look Inside The Asylum Choir in 1968. Although the album was not a hot seller (the fact that the cover featured a roll of toilet paper probably didn't help), it did provide the two a chance to indulge their own particular brand of insanity, as heard on the album's opening track, Welcome To Hollywood. Look Inside The Asylum Choir was re-released (with a new cover) three years later in the wake of Russell's emergence as a superstar in his own right.
Artist: King Crimson
Title: 21st Century Schizoid Man
Source: LP: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer: Fripp/McDonald/Lake/Giles/Sinfield
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1969
There are several bands with a legitimate claim to starting the art-rock movement of the mid-70s. The one most other musicians cite as the one that started it all, however, is King Crimson. Led by Robert Fripp, the band went through several personnel changes over the years. Many of the members went on to greater commercial success as members of other bands, including guitarist/keyboardist Ian McDonald (Foreigner), and lead vocalist/bassist Greg Lake (Emerson, Lake and Palmer) from the original lineup. Additionally, poet Peter Sinfield, who wrote all King Crimson's early lyrics, would go on to perform a similar function for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, including their magnum opus Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends. Other original members included Michael Giles on drums and Fripp himself on guitar. This week's track has special significance as the first song on the first album by King Crimson. Enjoy!
Artist: Santana
Title: Evil Ways
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Clarence Henry
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Evil Ways was originally released in 1968 by jazz percussionist Willie Bobo on an album of the same name. When Carlos Santana took his new band into the studio to record their first LP, they made the song their own, taking it into the top 10 in 1969.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Summertime
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Gershwin/Heyward
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Janis Joplin, on the 1968 Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, sounds like she was born to sing Gershwin's Summertime. Maybe she was.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Mercedes Benz
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Pearl)
Writer(s): Janis Joplin
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1971
To put it bluntly, Janis recorded Mercedes Benz then went home and OD'd on herion. End of story (and of Janis).
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Ball And Chain
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Willie Mae Thornton
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Big Brother And The Holding Company electrified the crowd at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 with their performance of Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's Ball And Chain. The rest of the world, however, would have to wait until the following year to hear Janis Joplin's version of the old blues tune, when a live performance recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium was included on the LP Cheap Thrills.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: I'm Not Your Stepping Stone
Source: LP: Midnight Ride
Writer(s): Boyce/Hart
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Predating the Monkees version by about six months, the Paul Revere And The Raiders version of I'm Not Your Stepping Stone was almost chosen for release as a single. If it had we probably would be talking about the big four from the Raiders instead of the big three (Just Like Me, Hungry and Kicks) hits released during the peak of their popularity.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: I Haven't Got The Nerve
Source: LP: Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina
Writer(s): Cameron/Martin
Label: Smash/Sundazed
Year: 1967
The first thought I had when seeing the title of Left Banke's 1967 debut LP was "if they had to name the album after the band's two hit singles, the rest of the songs must really suck", so I never gave it another thought. It turns out I was totally wrong, as the album is actually filled with fine tracks such as I Haven't Got The Nerve, which only took me until 2012 to discover. I still think it's a stupid name for an album, though.
Artist: Fargo
Title: Sunny Day Blue
Source: British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Marty Cooper
Label: Zonophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
Salt Lake City was home to Dean Wilden and Tony Decker, who recorded Sunny Day Blue as a single for Capitol in 1968 before moving over to RCA Victor for a 1969 LP called I See It Now. Both were produced by Marty Cooper, who also wrote Sunny Day Blue.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Winwood/Winwood/Davis
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becoming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Ironically, most of those stations are now playing 80s oldies.
Artist: Del-Vetts
Title: Last Time Around
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dennis Dahlquist
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The Del-Vetts were from Chicago's affluent North Shore. Their gimmick was to show up at a high school dance by driving their matching corvettes onto the gymnasium dance floor. Musically, like most garage/punk bands, they were heavily influenced by the British invasion bands. Unlike most garage/punk bands, who favored the Rolling Stones, the Del-Vetts were more into the Jeff Beck incarnation of the Yardbirds. The 'Vetts had a few regional hits from 1965-67, the biggest being this single issued on the Dunwich label, home of fellow Chicago suburbanites the Shadows of Knight. In retrospect, Last Time Around may well be the very first metal death rock song ever recorded.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Paperback Writer
Source: CD: Past Masters Volume Two
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1966
Following a successful 1965 that culminated with their classic Rubber Soul album, the Beatles' first release of 1966 was the equally classic Paperback Writer. The song was as influential as it was popular, to the point that the coda at the end of the song inspired Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to write what would become the Monkees' first number one hit: Last Train To Clarksville.
Artist: Human Beinz
Title: Nobody But Me
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as a 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ron Isley
Label: LP: Rhino (originally released on Capitol)
Year: 1968
The Human Beingz were a band that had been around since 1964 doing mostly club gigs in the Youngstown, Ohio area as the Premiers. In the late 60s they decided to update their image with a name more in tune with the times and came up with the Human Beingz. Unfortunately someone at Capitol misspelled their name (leaving out the "g") on the label of Nobody But Me, and after the song became a national hit the band was stuck with the new spelling. The band split up in 1969, but after Nobody But Me was featured in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill: Vol.1, original leader Ting Markulin reformed the band with a new lineup that has appeared in the Northeastern US in recent years.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Baby's House
Source: LP: Anthology (originally released on LP: Your Saving Grace)
Writer(s): Miller/Hopkins
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
One of the most haunting tunes in the Steve Miller Band catalog, Baby's House is collaborative effort between Miller and keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, who briefly joined up with Miller following an appearance onstage with Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock. The song appears on the band's fourth LP, Your Saving Grace, and runs nearly eight minutes.
Artist: Them
Title: Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out
Source: Mono LP: Now And Them
Writer(s): Jimmie Cox
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
The artist that comes to mind when I see the title of this Jimmy Cox tune is, of course, Eric Clapton, who included it on the Derek and the Dominos Layla album. This version of Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out, featuring vocalist Kenny McDowell, actually predates Clapton's by a couple years.
Artist: Jerry Garcia
Title: EEP Hour
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Garcia/Kreutzmann
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1972
In 1972 Warner Brothers Records encouraged the members of the Grateful Dead to make solo albums. Unlike Bob Weir's album, which used all the members of the band, the Jerry Garcia album featured only drummer Bill Kreutzmann from the Dead. All other instruments were played by Garcia himself, making it more literally a solo album. The single from the album, Sugaree, became a Grateful Dead standard at their live performances. On the other hand EEP Hour (pronounced E Power), the album track issued as the B side of Sugaree, was more of a musical study than an actual song. It has never to my knowledge been performed live.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Lucifer Sam
Source: Mono CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s): Syd Barrett
Label: Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Beyond a shadow of a doubt the original driving force behind Pink Floyd was the legendary Syd Barrett. Not only did he front the band during their rise to fame, he also wrote their first two singles, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, as well as most of their first LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. In fact it could be argued that one of the songs on that album, Lucifer Sam, could have just as easily been issued as a single, as it is stylistically similar to the first two songs. Sadly, Barrett's mental health deteriorated quickly over the next year and his participation in the making of the band's next LP, A Saucerful Of Secrets, was minimal. He soon left the group altogether, never to return (although several of his former bandmates did participate in the making of his 1970 solo album, The Madcap Laughs).
Artist: Sound Barrier
Title: (My) Baby's Gone
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Paul Hess
Label: BFD (original label: Zounds)
Year: 1967
A couple weeks after the first time I played (My) Baby's Gone (in 2012), I got an e-mail from Paul Hess, leader and lead vocalist of Salem, Ohio's Sound Barrier. Hess confirmed that he indeed was the writer of the song in question, as well as the record's B side (I'm still waiting for him to send me a copy).
Artist: Seeds
Title: Tripmaker
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Tybalt/Hooper
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
For some strange reason whenever I hear the song Tripmaker from the second Seeds album, A Web Of Sound, I am reminded of a track from the Smash Mouth album Astro Lounge. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which one came first.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Suite It Is
Source: CD: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Casady/Dryden/Kaukonen
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
The second side of After Bathing At Baxters starts off fairly conventionally (for the Airplane), with Paul Kantner's Watch Her Ride, the first third or so of something called How Suite It Is. This leads (without a break in the audio) into Spare Chaynge, one of the coolest studio jams ever recorded, featuring intricate interplay between Jack Casady's bass and Jorma Kaukonen's guitar, with Spencer Dryden using his drum kit as enhancement rather than as a beat-setter. In particular, Cassidy's virtuoso performance helped redefine what could be done with an electric bass.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Amphetamine Annie
Source: LP: Boogie With Canned Heat
Writer(s): Canned Heat
Label: United Artists (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
By the end of 1967 the Haight-Ashbury scene had taken a definite turn for the worse. Most veterans of the street (i.e. those who had been there before the Summer of Love) placed the blame firmly on the influx of naive runaways that had flooded the area in the wake of calls to "go to San Francisco" earlier in the year, and on the drug dealers who preyed upon them. Methamphetamine (aka speed) was the drug usually singled out as the most destructive force at play. Back then it was the pill form of speed, such as white crosses, that was prevalent among users; the powdered crystal meth that has become a concern in modern rural America would not be used widely until the 1970s. As one of the original Bay Area bands, Canned Heat decided to take a stand against the drug, declaring in the song Amphetamine Annie that "speed kills", a phrase that would show up as graffiti on various walls in the city as well.
Artist: Leslie West
Title: Blood Of The Sun
Source: 45 RPM single B side (also released on LP: Mountain)
Writer: West/Pappaliardi/Collins
Label: Windfall
Year: 1969
After the Vagrants disbanded guitarist Leslie Weinstein changed his last name to West and recorded a solo album called Mountain. Helping him with the project was producer Felix Pappaliardi, who had previously worked with Cream on their Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire albums. Among the better tracks on the album was a tune called Blood Of The Sun, which the two of them wrote (along with Pappaliardi's wife Janet Collins). The pair of them meshed so well that they decided to form a band with drummer Corky Laing, using the name Mountain. One of the first gigs by the new band was the Woodstock festival, where they played Blood Of The Sun to an enthusiastic crowd.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Ritual # 2
Source: LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
There's a reason music like that of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band is sometimes called Acid Rock, and Ritual #2, from the band's last album for Reprise, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil, is as good an example as you'll find. Best listened to with headphones on.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Castles Made Of Sand
Source: CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released on LP: Axis: Bold As Love)
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Although born in Seattle, Washington, James Marshall Hendrix was never associated with the local music scene that produced some of the loudest and raunchiest punk-rock of the mid 60s. Instead, he paid his professional dues backing R&B artists on the "chitlin circuit" of clubs playing to a mostly-black clientele, mainly in the south. After a short stint leading his own soul band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, Hendrix, at the behest of one Chas Chandler, moved to London, where he recuited a pair of local musicians, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, to form the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Although known for his innovative use of feedback, Hendrix was quite capable of knocking out some of the most complex "clean" riffs ever to be committed to vinyl. A prime example of this is Castles Made Of Sand. Hendrix's highly melodic guitar work combined with unusual tempo changes and haunting lyrics makes Castles Made Of Sand a classic that sounds as fresh today as it did when Axis: Bold As Love was released in 1967. The first time I ever heard this song it gave me chills.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1403 (starts 1/15/14)
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
By all rights, the Byrds' Eight Miles High should have been a huge hit. Unfortunately, Bill Drake, the most influential man in the history of Top 40 radio, got it into his head that this was a drug song, despite the band's insistence that it was about a transatlantic plane trip. The band's version actually makes sense, as Gene Clark had just quit the group due to his fear of flying (he is listed as a co-writer of the song), and the subject was probably a hot topic of discussion among the remaining members.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Celeste
Source: Mono LP: Sunshine Superman
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sundazed/Epic
Year: 1966
Although most major labels were issuing LPs in both mono and stereo versions in the mid-1960s, a handful of artists were still only doing monoraul mixes of their recordings as late as 1967. One of the most prominent of these "mono only" artists was the Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan, whose material appeared in the US on the Epic label, the largest subsidiary of the second largest label in the world (CBS/Columbia). In fact, only a handful of songs from Donovan's two most successful albums, Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, have ever been mixed in stereo. Among those still only available in mono is Celeste, the last track on Sunshine Superman.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Somewhere They Can't Find Me
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds of Silence)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Simon and Garfunkel's success as a folk-rock duo was actually due to the unauthorized actions of producer John Simon, who, after working on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album, got Dylan's band to add new tracks to the song Sound of Silence. The song had been recorded as an acoustic number for the album Wednesday Morning 3AM, which had, by 1966, been deleted from the Columbia catalog. The new version of the song was sent out to select radio stations, and got such positive response that it was released as a single, eventually making the top 10. Meanwhile, Paul Simon, who had since moved to London and recorded an album called the Paul Simon Songbook, found himself returning to the US and reuniting with Art Garfunkel. Armed with an array of quality studio musicians they set about making their first electric album, Sounds of Silence. The song Somewhere They Can't Find Me was one of the new songs recorded for that album. The song shows a strong influence from British folk guitarist Bert Jansch, whom Simon greatly admired.
Artist: Magic Mushrooms
Title: It's-A-Happening
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Casella/Rice
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1966
It's not known whether or not the Magic Mushrooms heard any of the tracks from the Mothers Of Invention album Freak Out when they recorded It's-A-Happening. Still, it's hard to imagine this bit of inspired weirdness being created in a vacuum. Besides this one single, nobody seems to have any knowledge whatsoever of the group known as the Magic Mushrooms, other than the fact that they hailed from Philadelphia, Pa.
Artist: Cream
Title: We're Going Wrong
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer: Jack Bruce
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
On Fresh Cream the slowest-paced tracks were bluesy numbers like Sleepy Time Time. For the group's second LP, bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce came up with We're Going Wrong, a song with a haunting melody supplemented by some of Eric Clapton's best guitar fills. Ginger Baker put away his drumsticks in favor of mallets, giving the song an otherworldly feel.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Where You're At
Source: Mono LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Although by 1968 almost all albums released in the US were only issued in stereo (often with the words "also playable mono" on the album cover somewhere), a few labels sent special mono pressings to radio stations that were still using older mono turntables that were prone to damage stereo records. M-G-M Records, in particular, sent out mono pressings of just about everything they released, including the second Ultimate Spinach album, Behold And See. At the time, WEOS-FM in Geneva, NY, still years away from broadcasting in stereo, received a mono copy of Behold And See that is still usable nearly 45 years later. This version of Where You're At, the opening track of side two of the album, is from that copy.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Just Trying To Be
Source: CD: Benefit (bonus track originally released on LP: Living In The Past)
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol
Year: 1970
By 1970 Jethro Tull was firmly in the control of flautist/acoustic guitarist/vocalist Ian Anderson, who wrote all the band's material. During sessions for the Benefit album Anderson recorded a short piece called Just Trying To Be that stylistically presaged the Aqualung album. That piece remained unreleased until 1973's Living In The Past compilation, although it is now available as a bonus track on the Benefit CD.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Because
Source: LP: Abbey Road
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple
Year: 1969
Take Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Turn a few notes around, add some variations and write some lyrics. Add the Beatles' trademark multi-part harmonies and you have John Lennon's Because, from the Abbey Road album. A simply beautiful recording.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: CD: Time Has Come Today
Source: The Time Has Come
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
The Chambers Brothers were an eclectic band with a gospel music background that dated back to the mid-50s, when oldest brother George finished his tour of duty with the US Army and settled down in the L.A. area. His three brothers soon followed him out to the coast from their native Mississippi, and began playing the Southern California gospel circuit before going after a more secular audience in the early 60s. Their best-known recording was Time Has Come Today, considered to be one of the defining tracks of the psychedelic era. The song, written by brothers Joe and Willie Chambers, was originally recorded in 1966 and released as a single, but went largely unnoticed by radio and the record-buying public. In 1967 the band recorded a new, eleven-minute version of Time Has Come Today for their album The Time Has Come. This version got considerable airplay on the handful of so-called "underground" FM stations that were starting to pop up across the US in college towns and major metropolitan areas, but was considered too long for most commercial stations. The following year an edited version of the track was released, getting enough airplay to make the top 40; as a result the full-length version has become somewhat of a rarity on the radio since the shorter version was made available in stereo. This week Stuck in the Psychedelic Era presents the full-length version of Time Has Come Today. Enjoy!
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: Grateful Dead
Title: Don't Ease Me In
Source: Mono CD: Birth Of The Dead (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Trad. Arr. Grateful Dead
Label: Rhino (original label: Scorpio)
Year: 1966
The Grateful Dead entered the studio for the first time in late 1965, when they were still calling themselves the Warlocks. One of the band members had heard that there was another band already recording as the Warlocks, so the group hastily rechristened themselves The Emergency Crew for the sessions. None of those recordings were released, and the band soon changed its name to the Grateful Dead. The following summer, the Dead made their second foray into recording, this time at studios owned by Scorpio Records, a small San Francisco label. Only one record was released from those sessions, a single which included the band's cover of Don't Ease Me In, a song originally recorded by Henry Thomas in the late 1920s, on the B side.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single. Stereo version released on LP: Da Capo)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
The word "seven" does not appear anywhere in the song 7&7 Is. In fact, I have no idea where Arthur Lee got that title from. Nonetheless, the song is among the most intense tracks to ever make the top 40. 7&7 Is starts off with power chords played over a constant drum roll (possibly played by Lee himself), with cymbals crashing over equally manic semi-spoken lyrics. The song builds up to an explosive climax: an atomic bomb blast followed by a slow post-apocalyptic instrumental that quickly fades away.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Shapes Of Things
Source: Mono CD: Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame-Volume VII (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: McCarty/Relf/Samwell-Smith
Label: Legacy (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
Unlike earlier Yardbirds hits, 1966's Shapes Of Things was written by members of the band. The song, featuring one of guitarist Jeff Beck's most distinctive solos, just barely missed the top 10 in the US, although it was a top 5 single in the UK.
Artist: McCoys
Title: Hang On Sloopy
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Russell/Farrell
Label: Bang
Year: 1965
The McCoys were a fairly typical Eastern Ohio band of the mid-60s, playing parties, teen clubs, high school dances and occassionally opening for out of town acts. In 1965 the McCoys opened for the Strangeloves, who were on the road promoting their hit single I Want Candy (of course, the Strangeloves were in reality a trio of professional songwriters who had come up with a rather unusual gimmick: they passed themselves off as sons of an Australian sheepherder). The members of the Strangeloves were so impressed with the McCoys, particularly vocalist/guitarist Rick Derringer, that they offered them the song that was slated to be the follow-up to I Want Candy: a song called Hang On Sloopy. The instrumental tracks for the song had already been recorded, so the only member of the McCoys to actually appear on the record is Derringer. Hang On Sloopy went all the way to the top of the charts, becoming one of the top 10 singles of the year and providing a stellar debut for Derringer, who went on to hook up with the Edgar Winter Group before embarking on a successful solo career.
Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: Nashville Cats
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful)
Writer(s): John B. Sebastian
Label: Cotillion (original label: Kama Sutra)
Year: 1966
After the success of their debut LP, Do You Believe In Magic, The Lovin' Spoonful deliberately set out to make a followup album that sounded like it was recorded by several different bands, as a way of showcasing their versatility. With Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful, released in 1966, they did just that. Songs on the album ranged from the folky Darlin' Be Home Soon to the rockin' psychedelic classic Summer In The City, with a liberal dose of what would come to be called country rock a few years later. The best example of the latter was Nashville Cats, a song that surprisingly went into the top 40 and became a staple of progressive FM radio in the early 70s.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: The Great Banana Hoax
Source: Mono CD: The Complete Reprise Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Real Gone Music/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
After three consecutive singles written by professional songwriters Annette Tucker, Nancie Mantz and Jill Jones, the Electric Prunes were finally given a chance to test the top 40 waters with their own material in late 1967 with the release of The Great Banana Hoax. The song, which had already appeared as the opening track from the band's second LP, Underground, failed to make a dent in the charts and, after one more unsuccessful single, the band's autonomy was usurped by producer Dave Hassinger, to whom the band had signed away the rights to their own name as part of their original contract.
Artist: Moody Blues
Title: The Afternoon/Evening/The Night
Source: LP: Days Of Future Passed
Writer(s): Redwave/Knight
Label: Deram
Year: 1967
In 1967 the Moody Blues went out on a limb and recorded an entire album using a symphony orchestra, creating an entire genre (classical rock) in the process. The album, Days Of Future Passed, is essentially a song cycle that covers a typical day, with side one covering the morning through lunchtime. The second side, which starts with the afternoon and continues into the night, includes two of the band's best known songs: Tuesday Afternoon and Nights In White Satin. Although Tuesday Afternoon charted in early 1968, Nights In White Satin did not hit the top 40 until an edited version was released in 1972.
Artist: Blue Cheer
Title: Doctor Please
Source: LP: Vincebus Eruptum
Writer(s): Dick Peterson
Label: Philips
Year: 1968
With it's raw feedback-drenched guitar and bass and heavily distorted drums, Blue Cheer is often cited as the first heavy metal band. If any one song most demonstrates their right to the title it's Doctor Please from the Vincebus Eruptum album. Written by bassist Dick Peterson, the song is exactly what your parents meant by "that noise". Contrary to the rumor going around in 1970, guitarist Leigh Stephens did not go deaf after recording two albums with Blue Cheer. In fact, he went to England and recorded the critically-acclaimed (but seldom heard) Red Weather album with some of the UK's top studio musicians.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Rambling On
Source: CD: Shine On Brightly
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M
Year: 1968
Procol Harum is generally considered to be one of the first progressive rock bands, thanks in part to their second LP, Shine On Brightly. In addition to the album's showpiece, the seventeen minute In Held Twas I, the album has several memorable tracks, including Rambling On, which closes out side one of the original LP. The song's rambling first-person lyrics (none of which actually rhyme) tell the story of a guy who, inspired by a Batman movie, decides to jump off a roof and fly. Oddly enough, he succeeds.
Artist: World Column
Title: Lantern Gospel
Source: Mono CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Kaplan/Meyer
Label: Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
World Column was actually an R&B band from the midwest that, for some unknown reason, decided to change styles and record a song which has since become a psychedelic classic. Lantern Gospel, released in the summer of 1968, appeared on a dozen bootleg compilation albums before finally being officially released on the Rhino Handmade CD My Mind Goes High, which is now available through Warner Strategic Marketing.
Artist: Animals
Title: Don't Bring Me Down
Source: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals-Vol. II (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Animalization)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1966
I originally bought the Animals Animalization album in early 1967 and immediately fell in love with the first song, Don't Bring Me Down. Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Don't Bring Me Down is one of the few songs written for the Animals by professional songwriters that lead vocalist Eric Burdon actually liked.
Artist: Squires
Title: Going All The Way
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Michael Bouyea
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1966
Originally known as the Rogues, this Bristol, Conn. group changed their name to the Squires for this 1966 recording. Apparently someone at Atco figured that a name like the Rogues was so good that somebody else must already be using it.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Ain't No Tellin'
Source: LP: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Possibly the closest thing to a traditional R&B style song in JImi Hendrix's repertoire, Ain't No Tellin' was also, at one minute and 47 seconds, one of the shortest tracks ever recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The tune appeared on the Axis: Bold As Love album in 1967.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Daily Nightly
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.)
Writer(s): Michael Nesmith
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
One of the first rock songs to feature a Moog synthesizer was the Monkees' Daily Nightly from the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones LTD. Micky Dolenz, who had a reputation for nailing it on the first take but being unable to duplicate his success in subsequent attempts, was at the controls of the new technology for this recording of Michael Nesmith's most psychedelic song (he also sang lead on it). The Moog itself had been programmed by electronic music pioneer Paul Beaver especially for this recording.
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
By all rights, the Byrds' Eight Miles High should have been a huge hit. Unfortunately, Bill Drake, the most influential man in the history of Top 40 radio, got it into his head that this was a drug song, despite the band's insistence that it was about a transatlantic plane trip. The band's version actually makes sense, as Gene Clark had just quit the group due to his fear of flying (he is listed as a co-writer of the song), and the subject was probably a hot topic of discussion among the remaining members.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Celeste
Source: Mono LP: Sunshine Superman
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sundazed/Epic
Year: 1966
Although most major labels were issuing LPs in both mono and stereo versions in the mid-1960s, a handful of artists were still only doing monoraul mixes of their recordings as late as 1967. One of the most prominent of these "mono only" artists was the Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan, whose material appeared in the US on the Epic label, the largest subsidiary of the second largest label in the world (CBS/Columbia). In fact, only a handful of songs from Donovan's two most successful albums, Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, have ever been mixed in stereo. Among those still only available in mono is Celeste, the last track on Sunshine Superman.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Somewhere They Can't Find Me
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds of Silence)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Simon and Garfunkel's success as a folk-rock duo was actually due to the unauthorized actions of producer John Simon, who, after working on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album, got Dylan's band to add new tracks to the song Sound of Silence. The song had been recorded as an acoustic number for the album Wednesday Morning 3AM, which had, by 1966, been deleted from the Columbia catalog. The new version of the song was sent out to select radio stations, and got such positive response that it was released as a single, eventually making the top 10. Meanwhile, Paul Simon, who had since moved to London and recorded an album called the Paul Simon Songbook, found himself returning to the US and reuniting with Art Garfunkel. Armed with an array of quality studio musicians they set about making their first electric album, Sounds of Silence. The song Somewhere They Can't Find Me was one of the new songs recorded for that album. The song shows a strong influence from British folk guitarist Bert Jansch, whom Simon greatly admired.
Artist: Magic Mushrooms
Title: It's-A-Happening
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Casella/Rice
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1966
It's not known whether or not the Magic Mushrooms heard any of the tracks from the Mothers Of Invention album Freak Out when they recorded It's-A-Happening. Still, it's hard to imagine this bit of inspired weirdness being created in a vacuum. Besides this one single, nobody seems to have any knowledge whatsoever of the group known as the Magic Mushrooms, other than the fact that they hailed from Philadelphia, Pa.
Artist: Cream
Title: We're Going Wrong
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer: Jack Bruce
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
On Fresh Cream the slowest-paced tracks were bluesy numbers like Sleepy Time Time. For the group's second LP, bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce came up with We're Going Wrong, a song with a haunting melody supplemented by some of Eric Clapton's best guitar fills. Ginger Baker put away his drumsticks in favor of mallets, giving the song an otherworldly feel.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Where You're At
Source: Mono LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Although by 1968 almost all albums released in the US were only issued in stereo (often with the words "also playable mono" on the album cover somewhere), a few labels sent special mono pressings to radio stations that were still using older mono turntables that were prone to damage stereo records. M-G-M Records, in particular, sent out mono pressings of just about everything they released, including the second Ultimate Spinach album, Behold And See. At the time, WEOS-FM in Geneva, NY, still years away from broadcasting in stereo, received a mono copy of Behold And See that is still usable nearly 45 years later. This version of Where You're At, the opening track of side two of the album, is from that copy.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Just Trying To Be
Source: CD: Benefit (bonus track originally released on LP: Living In The Past)
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol
Year: 1970
By 1970 Jethro Tull was firmly in the control of flautist/acoustic guitarist/vocalist Ian Anderson, who wrote all the band's material. During sessions for the Benefit album Anderson recorded a short piece called Just Trying To Be that stylistically presaged the Aqualung album. That piece remained unreleased until 1973's Living In The Past compilation, although it is now available as a bonus track on the Benefit CD.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Because
Source: LP: Abbey Road
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple
Year: 1969
Take Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Turn a few notes around, add some variations and write some lyrics. Add the Beatles' trademark multi-part harmonies and you have John Lennon's Because, from the Abbey Road album. A simply beautiful recording.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: CD: Time Has Come Today
Source: The Time Has Come
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
The Chambers Brothers were an eclectic band with a gospel music background that dated back to the mid-50s, when oldest brother George finished his tour of duty with the US Army and settled down in the L.A. area. His three brothers soon followed him out to the coast from their native Mississippi, and began playing the Southern California gospel circuit before going after a more secular audience in the early 60s. Their best-known recording was Time Has Come Today, considered to be one of the defining tracks of the psychedelic era. The song, written by brothers Joe and Willie Chambers, was originally recorded in 1966 and released as a single, but went largely unnoticed by radio and the record-buying public. In 1967 the band recorded a new, eleven-minute version of Time Has Come Today for their album The Time Has Come. This version got considerable airplay on the handful of so-called "underground" FM stations that were starting to pop up across the US in college towns and major metropolitan areas, but was considered too long for most commercial stations. The following year an edited version of the track was released, getting enough airplay to make the top 40; as a result the full-length version has become somewhat of a rarity on the radio since the shorter version was made available in stereo. This week Stuck in the Psychedelic Era presents the full-length version of Time Has Come Today. Enjoy!
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: Grateful Dead
Title: Don't Ease Me In
Source: Mono CD: Birth Of The Dead (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Trad. Arr. Grateful Dead
Label: Rhino (original label: Scorpio)
Year: 1966
The Grateful Dead entered the studio for the first time in late 1965, when they were still calling themselves the Warlocks. One of the band members had heard that there was another band already recording as the Warlocks, so the group hastily rechristened themselves The Emergency Crew for the sessions. None of those recordings were released, and the band soon changed its name to the Grateful Dead. The following summer, the Dead made their second foray into recording, this time at studios owned by Scorpio Records, a small San Francisco label. Only one record was released from those sessions, a single which included the band's cover of Don't Ease Me In, a song originally recorded by Henry Thomas in the late 1920s, on the B side.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single. Stereo version released on LP: Da Capo)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
The word "seven" does not appear anywhere in the song 7&7 Is. In fact, I have no idea where Arthur Lee got that title from. Nonetheless, the song is among the most intense tracks to ever make the top 40. 7&7 Is starts off with power chords played over a constant drum roll (possibly played by Lee himself), with cymbals crashing over equally manic semi-spoken lyrics. The song builds up to an explosive climax: an atomic bomb blast followed by a slow post-apocalyptic instrumental that quickly fades away.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Shapes Of Things
Source: Mono CD: Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame-Volume VII (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: McCarty/Relf/Samwell-Smith
Label: Legacy (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
Unlike earlier Yardbirds hits, 1966's Shapes Of Things was written by members of the band. The song, featuring one of guitarist Jeff Beck's most distinctive solos, just barely missed the top 10 in the US, although it was a top 5 single in the UK.
Artist: McCoys
Title: Hang On Sloopy
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Russell/Farrell
Label: Bang
Year: 1965
The McCoys were a fairly typical Eastern Ohio band of the mid-60s, playing parties, teen clubs, high school dances and occassionally opening for out of town acts. In 1965 the McCoys opened for the Strangeloves, who were on the road promoting their hit single I Want Candy (of course, the Strangeloves were in reality a trio of professional songwriters who had come up with a rather unusual gimmick: they passed themselves off as sons of an Australian sheepherder). The members of the Strangeloves were so impressed with the McCoys, particularly vocalist/guitarist Rick Derringer, that they offered them the song that was slated to be the follow-up to I Want Candy: a song called Hang On Sloopy. The instrumental tracks for the song had already been recorded, so the only member of the McCoys to actually appear on the record is Derringer. Hang On Sloopy went all the way to the top of the charts, becoming one of the top 10 singles of the year and providing a stellar debut for Derringer, who went on to hook up with the Edgar Winter Group before embarking on a successful solo career.
Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: Nashville Cats
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful)
Writer(s): John B. Sebastian
Label: Cotillion (original label: Kama Sutra)
Year: 1966
After the success of their debut LP, Do You Believe In Magic, The Lovin' Spoonful deliberately set out to make a followup album that sounded like it was recorded by several different bands, as a way of showcasing their versatility. With Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful, released in 1966, they did just that. Songs on the album ranged from the folky Darlin' Be Home Soon to the rockin' psychedelic classic Summer In The City, with a liberal dose of what would come to be called country rock a few years later. The best example of the latter was Nashville Cats, a song that surprisingly went into the top 40 and became a staple of progressive FM radio in the early 70s.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: The Great Banana Hoax
Source: Mono CD: The Complete Reprise Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Real Gone Music/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
After three consecutive singles written by professional songwriters Annette Tucker, Nancie Mantz and Jill Jones, the Electric Prunes were finally given a chance to test the top 40 waters with their own material in late 1967 with the release of The Great Banana Hoax. The song, which had already appeared as the opening track from the band's second LP, Underground, failed to make a dent in the charts and, after one more unsuccessful single, the band's autonomy was usurped by producer Dave Hassinger, to whom the band had signed away the rights to their own name as part of their original contract.
Artist: Moody Blues
Title: The Afternoon/Evening/The Night
Source: LP: Days Of Future Passed
Writer(s): Redwave/Knight
Label: Deram
Year: 1967
In 1967 the Moody Blues went out on a limb and recorded an entire album using a symphony orchestra, creating an entire genre (classical rock) in the process. The album, Days Of Future Passed, is essentially a song cycle that covers a typical day, with side one covering the morning through lunchtime. The second side, which starts with the afternoon and continues into the night, includes two of the band's best known songs: Tuesday Afternoon and Nights In White Satin. Although Tuesday Afternoon charted in early 1968, Nights In White Satin did not hit the top 40 until an edited version was released in 1972.
Artist: Blue Cheer
Title: Doctor Please
Source: LP: Vincebus Eruptum
Writer(s): Dick Peterson
Label: Philips
Year: 1968
With it's raw feedback-drenched guitar and bass and heavily distorted drums, Blue Cheer is often cited as the first heavy metal band. If any one song most demonstrates their right to the title it's Doctor Please from the Vincebus Eruptum album. Written by bassist Dick Peterson, the song is exactly what your parents meant by "that noise". Contrary to the rumor going around in 1970, guitarist Leigh Stephens did not go deaf after recording two albums with Blue Cheer. In fact, he went to England and recorded the critically-acclaimed (but seldom heard) Red Weather album with some of the UK's top studio musicians.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Rambling On
Source: CD: Shine On Brightly
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M
Year: 1968
Procol Harum is generally considered to be one of the first progressive rock bands, thanks in part to their second LP, Shine On Brightly. In addition to the album's showpiece, the seventeen minute In Held Twas I, the album has several memorable tracks, including Rambling On, which closes out side one of the original LP. The song's rambling first-person lyrics (none of which actually rhyme) tell the story of a guy who, inspired by a Batman movie, decides to jump off a roof and fly. Oddly enough, he succeeds.
Artist: World Column
Title: Lantern Gospel
Source: Mono CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Kaplan/Meyer
Label: Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
World Column was actually an R&B band from the midwest that, for some unknown reason, decided to change styles and record a song which has since become a psychedelic classic. Lantern Gospel, released in the summer of 1968, appeared on a dozen bootleg compilation albums before finally being officially released on the Rhino Handmade CD My Mind Goes High, which is now available through Warner Strategic Marketing.
Artist: Animals
Title: Don't Bring Me Down
Source: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals-Vol. II (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Animalization)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1966
I originally bought the Animals Animalization album in early 1967 and immediately fell in love with the first song, Don't Bring Me Down. Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Don't Bring Me Down is one of the few songs written for the Animals by professional songwriters that lead vocalist Eric Burdon actually liked.
Artist: Squires
Title: Going All The Way
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Michael Bouyea
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1966
Originally known as the Rogues, this Bristol, Conn. group changed their name to the Squires for this 1966 recording. Apparently someone at Atco figured that a name like the Rogues was so good that somebody else must already be using it.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Ain't No Tellin'
Source: LP: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Possibly the closest thing to a traditional R&B style song in JImi Hendrix's repertoire, Ain't No Tellin' was also, at one minute and 47 seconds, one of the shortest tracks ever recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The tune appeared on the Axis: Bold As Love album in 1967.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Daily Nightly
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.)
Writer(s): Michael Nesmith
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
One of the first rock songs to feature a Moog synthesizer was the Monkees' Daily Nightly from the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones LTD. Micky Dolenz, who had a reputation for nailing it on the first take but being unable to duplicate his success in subsequent attempts, was at the controls of the new technology for this recording of Michael Nesmith's most psychedelic song (he also sang lead on it). The Moog itself had been programmed by electronic music pioneer Paul Beaver especially for this recording.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1402 (starts 1/8/14)
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966 (first stereo release: 1968)
Originally released as a single in late 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs slated to be used in the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
According to principal songwriter John Lennon, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite was inspired by a turn of the century circus poster that the Beatles ran across while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Most of the lyrics refer to items on the poster itself, such as the Hendersons and Henry the Horse.
Title: Everybody Knows You're Not In Love
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
The Electric Prunes had greater creative control over their second album than their first. That control continued into early 1968, when Everybody Knows You're Not In Love, a single penned by band members Mark Tulin and James Lowe, was released. Unfortunately, the record didn't sell well and the next album, David Axelrod's Mass In F Minor, was played almost entirely by studio musicians. The original group broke up during the recording of the Mass and did not play together again until the 21st century.
Artist: Crystal Rain
Title: You And Me
Source: Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bill Moan
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Dynamic Sound)
Year: 1969
Crystal Rain was a band from Dayton, Ohio that released a pair of singles in 1969, the second of which was You And Me.
Artist: Cream
Title: N.S.U.
Source: LP: Live Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Atco
Year: 1970
After the breakup of Cream, Atco decided to issue a live album in 1970, featuring songs that had originally appeared on the album Fresh Cream. This ten minute version of N.S.U., recorded at Winterland in 1968, shows how far the band had progressed in the two years since recording the studio version.
Artist: Q'65
Title: The Life I Live
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the Netherlands as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bieler/Nuyens/Roelofs/Vink/Baar
Label: Rhino (original label: Decca)
Year: 1966
The phenomena of rebellious youth in the mid-1960s was not limited to just the English speaking world. In fact, while even the most radical bands in the US and Britain were still wearing hairstyles imitative of the Beatles, Holland's Q'65 had a look that would come to be associated with 70s rock stars, with shoulder-length (or longer) hair and a generally scruffy appearance. Musically, Q'65 started off in the same vein as such British blues bands as the Yardbirds or Rolling Stones, but soon began writing their own material, such as The Life I Live, an autobiographical declaration of a lifestyle that was still considered somewhat immoral (i.e. sex and drugs) in 1966 that became a huge hit in the Netherlands.
Artist: Tintern Abbey
Title: Vacuum Cleaner
Source: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969
Writer(s): David MacTavish
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
Although not a household name even in their native England, Tintern Alley managed to capture the essence of British psychedelia with Vacuum Cleaner, a B side released in 1967. It was the only known single from a band whose members went on to join various other equally obscure bands.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Ruby Tuesday
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
One of the most durable songs in the Rolling Stones catalog, Ruby Tuesday was originally intended to be the B side of their 1967 single Let's Spend The Night Together. Many stations, however, balked at the subject matter of the A side and began playing Ruby Tuesday instead, which is somewhat ironic considering the subject matter of the song (a groupie of the band's acquaintance).
Artist: Wildflowers
Title: More Than Me
Source: Mono CD: A Heavy Dose Of Lyte Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): The Wildflowers
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Aster)
Year: 1967
Phoenix, Arizona, was home to the Wildflowers, a band that included bassist Michael Bruce, who would go on to become a founding member of Alice Cooper. The Wildflowers only released a pair of singles, the second of which was More Than Me, released in 1967.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Somewhere
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy
Year: Recorded 1968, released 2013
Although the Jimi Hendrix Experience did not officially disband until 1969, Hendrix himself was spending more and more time working with musicians outside the band as early as 1968. The Electric Ladyland album itself features guest appearances by the likes of Steve Winwood, Buddy Miles and Chris Wood, among others, and for years there have been even more recordings by non-Experience members rumored to exist. Among those legendary tracks is Somewhere, a piece that features Miles on drums, and, unusually, Stephen Stills on bass. In addition to a special 45 RPM single release, Somewhere is available on the 2013 album People, Hell and Angels. According to engineer Eddie Kramer, this is the final collection of unreleased studio tracks to be issued by the Hendrix family estate.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Hush
Source: LP: Purple Passages (originally released on LP: Shades Of Deep Purple)
Writer(s): Joe South
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1968
British rockers Deep Purple scored a huge US hit in 1968 with their rocked out cover of Hush, a tune written by Joe South that had been an international hit for Billy Joe Royal the previous year. Oddly enough, the song was virtually ignored in their native England. The track was included on the album Tales Of Deep Purple, the first of three LPs to be released in the US on Tetragrammaton Records, a label partially owned by actor/comedian Bill Cosby. When Tetragrammaton folded shortly after the release of the third Deep Purple album the band was left without a US label, and went through some personnel changes, including adding new lead vocalist Ian Gillan (who had sung the part of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar LP) before signing to Warner Brothers and becoming a major force in 70s rock. Meanwhile, original vocalist Rod Evans hooked up with drummer Bobby Caldwell and two former members of Iron Butterfly to form Captain Beyond, releasing two fine LPs before fading from the public view.
Artist: Who
Title: Amazing Journey
Source: Import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Tommy)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: Polydor UK (original US label: Decca)
Year: 1969
After achieving major success in their native England with a series of hit singles in 1965-67, the Who began to concentrate more on their albums from 1968 on. The first of these concept albums was The Who Sell Out, released in December of 1967. The Who Sell Out was a collection of songs connected by faux radio spots and actual jingles from England's last remaining pirate radio station, Radio London. After releasing a few more singles in 1968, the Who began work on their most ambitious project yet: the world's first rock opera. Tommy, released in 1969, was a double LP telling the story of a boy who, after being tramautized into becoming a blind deaf-mute, eventually emerges as a kind of messiah, only to have his followers ultimately abandon him. One of the early tracks on the album is Amazing Journey, describing Tommy's voyage into the recesses of his own mind in response to the traumatic event that results in his blind, deaf and dumb condition.
Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Gloria
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The original Them version of Van Morrison's Gloria found itself banned on the majority of US radio stations due to controversial lyrics. By changing one line (essentially substituting "around here" for "up to my room") the suburban Chicago punk-blues band Shadows of Knight turned it into a huge hit and a garage band standard.
Artist: Bruthers
Title: Bad Way To Go
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Joe Delia (?)
Label: BFD (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1966
Not much is known about the Bruthers other than 1) they were from Pearl River, NY (wherever that is) 2) they recorded a single called Bad Way To Go that was released on the RCA Victor label in 1966, and 3) they had at least one member named Joe Delia who may or may not have written the above mentioned song (the Pebbles people were not big on documentation).
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Mean Old Fireman
Source: LP: The Original Fleetwood Mac
Writer(s): Arthur Crudup
Label: Sire
Year: 1967
The original Fleetwood Mac was formed around and by guitarist Peter Green, who was at the time working steadily as the guitarist for John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. As a gift, Mayall donated studio time to Green, who grabbed fellow Bluesbreakers Mick Fleetwood (drums) and John McVie (bass) to record a selection of blues covers such as Arthur Crudup's Mean Old Fireman along with a few Green originals. Many of those recordings (especially the cover tunes) went unreleased until the 1970s, when Sire Records issued a collection called The Original Fleetwood Mac. By this point the band had already undergone several changes in both sound and personnel, including the loss of Green himself, and the double LP anthology was considered a bit of an oddity at the time.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Giving To You
Source: CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi/Wood/Mason
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
Traffic's first LP, Mr. Fantasy, was released in late 1967 under the name Heaven Is In Your Mind by United Artists Records in the US. The reason for this is not entirely clear, although the label may have been expecting the song Heaven Is In Your Mind to be a hit and wanted to capitalize on the title. As it turns out the song didn't do much on the US charts, despite the lead vocals of Steve Winwood, whose voice had already graced two top 10 singles by the Spencer Davis Group (Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man) earlier that year. More recently Island Records, which always had the UK rights to Traffic's material and has had US rights since the early 70s, decided to release CDs under both titles. Mr. Fantasy contains the mono mixes of the songs (plus mono bonus tracks), while Heaven Is In Your Mind has the stereo mixes of the same songs (with some slight differences in bonus tracks). One track that benefits from the stereo mix is Giving To You. Basically an instrumental, the song has a short lounge lizard style vocal introduction, along with some interesting spoken parts and stereo sound effects at the beginning and end of what is otherwise a rather tasty jam session.
Artist: Otis Redding
Title: I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)
Source: LP: Historic Performances Recorded At The Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer(s): Redding/Butler
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Although his name had appeared on the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts since 1962, it wasn't until the release of I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) in 1965 that Redding began to get noticed by the public at large. The song hit # 2 on the R&B chart and just barely missed making the top 20 on the mainstream chart. Two years later Redding performed the song as part of his set at the Monterey International Pop Festival, backed by Booker T and the MGs, along with the Bar-Kays horn section. Less than a year later a plane crash would claim the lives of Redding and the Bar-Kays, just as the singer was achieving his greatest success.
Artist: Doors
Title: Break On Through (To The Other Side)
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The first Doors song to be released as a single was not, as usually assumed, Light My Fire. Rather, it was Break On Through (To The Other Side), the opening track from the band's debut LP, that was chosen to do introduce the band to top 40 radio. Although the single was not an immediate hit, it did eventually catch on with progressive FM radio listeners and still is heard on classic rock stations from time to time.
Artist: Richie Havens
Title: High Flyin' Bird
Source: LP: Mixed Bag
Writer(s): Billy Edd Wheeler
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1967
Richie Havens is probably best known as the man who heroically took the stage for nearly three hours to get the Woodstock Performing Arts Festival underway when circumstances threatened to delay the festival's opening. Havens' career, however, was much longer and more significant than just that one appearance. Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children. At age 20 he moved to Greenwich Village and became part of the beatnik movement, reading poetry in the various coffee houses. He also drew portraits and stayed up late listening to folk artists perform, eventually taking up the guitar himself. After a couple records on the independent Douglas label, Havens landed a contract with Verve Forecast and released his first LP, Mixed Bag, featuring a mixture of Havens originals and covers of songs currently making the rounds on the folk scene. Among those covers was High Flyin' Bird, a tune originally associated with Buffy Saint-Marie and often performed live by Jefferson Airplane in their early days. More Havens LPs on Verve followed, and eventually Havens formed his own label, Stormy Forest. More recently Havens was awarded the American Eagle Award by the National Music Council for his achievements, including his role as an environmental educator/activist.
Artist: Them
Title: All For Myself
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Backtrackin'
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: London (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1965
Them was the first major rock band to come from Belfast, Ireland, bursting on the British music scene with their energetic cover of Big Joe Turner's Baby, Please Don't Go in 1964. Their follow-up single, Here Comes The Night, went to the # 2 spot in the UK and became their first international hit as well. Although Here Comes The Night was written by a professional songwriter, Bert Burns, the B side of the single, All For Myself, was written by lead vocalist Van Morrison, who would go on to become one of the most respected singer/songwriters in rock history. The song was not included on any albums at the time, and would only appear on LP vinyl after Allen Klein had purchased the rights to Them's early recordings in the 1970s and issued several of them, including All For Myself, on an album called Backtrackin'.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Reality Does Not Inspire
Source: LP: Blues Image
Writer(s): Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Formed in 1967, Blues Image cited Greenwich Village's Blues Project as their primary inspiration, and is generally acknowledged to be Florida's first jam band. They were also one of the few bands to open their own club, the legendary Thee Image, and played host to many big name acts during the club's short run. Among the Blues Images fans was Jimi Hendrix, who once told them they did great arrangements of other people's material, but their own stuff was relatively weak. The band responded by temporarily putting their original material on the shelf, pulling it out later and giving it the same treatment they would any other cover song. This approach seemed to work well, as Reality Does Not Inspire, the nine minute "showcase" track for their debut LP demonstrates.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: China Cat Sunflower
Source: CD: Aoxomoxoa
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
The third Grateful Dead album, Aoxomoxoa, was an experimental mixture of live audio and studio enhancements, much in the same vein as their previous effort, Anthem Of The Sun. One significant difference between the two is that, unlike Anthem, Aoxomoxoa was written entirely by the team of guitarist Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh and poet Robert Hunter, giving the album a more cohesive sound. One track on Aoxomoxoa, China Cat Sunflower, is almost entirely a studio creation, and as such has a bit cleaner sound than the rest of the LP.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Do You Feel
Source: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Tom Mastin
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
How Do You Feel is one of the few Jefferson Airplane songs that was not written by band members. Truth to tell, I don't know a thing about Tom Mastin, who wrote the tune. I do know that the song was selected to be the B side of their first single from Surrealistic Pillow (the A side was the Skip Spence tune My Best Friend), and that neither tune charted nationally, although they both got airplay on San Francisco area radio stations.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: Surrealistic Pillow)
Writer: Grace Slick
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
A few years back a co-worker asked me about what kind of music I played on the show. When I told him the show was called Stuck in the Psychedelic Era he immediately said "Oh, I bet you play White Rabbit a lot, huh?" As a matter of fact, I do, although not as much as some songs (see the post from show # 1352, in which I run down the list of which songs and artists got played the most in 2013).
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: CD: Somebody To Love
Source: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer: Darby Slick
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
Over 40 years after the fact, it's hard to imagine just how big an impact Somebody To Love had on the garage band scene. Whereas before Somebody To Love came out you could just dismiss hard-to-cover songs as being "lame" anyway, here was a tune that was undeniably cool, and yet virtually impossible for anyone but the Airplane to play well (and even they were unable to get it to sound quite the same when they performed it live). Although garage bands would continue to exist (and still do), the days when a group of kids from the suburbs could form a band, play a handful of parties, maybe win a battle of the bands and write and record a hit record with virtually no prior experience were gone forever.
Artist: Clefs Of Lavender Hill
Title: Stop-Get A Ticket
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Travis & Coventry Fairchild
Label: Rhino (original label: Thames)
Year: 1966
The Clefs Of Lavender Hill were a band from North Miami that featured not one, but two sets of siblings: the brother and sister team of Travis and Coventry Fairchild (both of which sang and played guitar) and the Moss brothers, Bill (bass) and Fred (drums). The first single from the band was a song called First Tell Me Why, but it was the B side of the record, a Beatlesque tune called Stop-Get A Ticket that became a hit on Miami radio stations. The song was picked up by Date Records and peaked nationally at # 80. Subsequent releases by the Clefs failed to crack the Hot 100 and the group (after several personnel changes) finally called it quits in 1968.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Winwood/Winwood/Davis
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becoming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Ironically, most of those stations are now playing 80s oldies.
Title: A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966 (first stereo release: 1968)
Originally released as a single in late 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs slated to be used in the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
According to principal songwriter John Lennon, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite was inspired by a turn of the century circus poster that the Beatles ran across while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Most of the lyrics refer to items on the poster itself, such as the Hendersons and Henry the Horse.
Title: Everybody Knows You're Not In Love
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
The Electric Prunes had greater creative control over their second album than their first. That control continued into early 1968, when Everybody Knows You're Not In Love, a single penned by band members Mark Tulin and James Lowe, was released. Unfortunately, the record didn't sell well and the next album, David Axelrod's Mass In F Minor, was played almost entirely by studio musicians. The original group broke up during the recording of the Mass and did not play together again until the 21st century.
Artist: Crystal Rain
Title: You And Me
Source: Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bill Moan
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Dynamic Sound)
Year: 1969
Crystal Rain was a band from Dayton, Ohio that released a pair of singles in 1969, the second of which was You And Me.
Artist: Cream
Title: N.S.U.
Source: LP: Live Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Atco
Year: 1970
After the breakup of Cream, Atco decided to issue a live album in 1970, featuring songs that had originally appeared on the album Fresh Cream. This ten minute version of N.S.U., recorded at Winterland in 1968, shows how far the band had progressed in the two years since recording the studio version.
Artist: Q'65
Title: The Life I Live
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the Netherlands as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bieler/Nuyens/Roelofs/Vink/Baar
Label: Rhino (original label: Decca)
Year: 1966
The phenomena of rebellious youth in the mid-1960s was not limited to just the English speaking world. In fact, while even the most radical bands in the US and Britain were still wearing hairstyles imitative of the Beatles, Holland's Q'65 had a look that would come to be associated with 70s rock stars, with shoulder-length (or longer) hair and a generally scruffy appearance. Musically, Q'65 started off in the same vein as such British blues bands as the Yardbirds or Rolling Stones, but soon began writing their own material, such as The Life I Live, an autobiographical declaration of a lifestyle that was still considered somewhat immoral (i.e. sex and drugs) in 1966 that became a huge hit in the Netherlands.
Artist: Tintern Abbey
Title: Vacuum Cleaner
Source: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969
Writer(s): David MacTavish
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
Although not a household name even in their native England, Tintern Alley managed to capture the essence of British psychedelia with Vacuum Cleaner, a B side released in 1967. It was the only known single from a band whose members went on to join various other equally obscure bands.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Ruby Tuesday
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
One of the most durable songs in the Rolling Stones catalog, Ruby Tuesday was originally intended to be the B side of their 1967 single Let's Spend The Night Together. Many stations, however, balked at the subject matter of the A side and began playing Ruby Tuesday instead, which is somewhat ironic considering the subject matter of the song (a groupie of the band's acquaintance).
Artist: Wildflowers
Title: More Than Me
Source: Mono CD: A Heavy Dose Of Lyte Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): The Wildflowers
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Aster)
Year: 1967
Phoenix, Arizona, was home to the Wildflowers, a band that included bassist Michael Bruce, who would go on to become a founding member of Alice Cooper. The Wildflowers only released a pair of singles, the second of which was More Than Me, released in 1967.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Somewhere
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy
Year: Recorded 1968, released 2013
Although the Jimi Hendrix Experience did not officially disband until 1969, Hendrix himself was spending more and more time working with musicians outside the band as early as 1968. The Electric Ladyland album itself features guest appearances by the likes of Steve Winwood, Buddy Miles and Chris Wood, among others, and for years there have been even more recordings by non-Experience members rumored to exist. Among those legendary tracks is Somewhere, a piece that features Miles on drums, and, unusually, Stephen Stills on bass. In addition to a special 45 RPM single release, Somewhere is available on the 2013 album People, Hell and Angels. According to engineer Eddie Kramer, this is the final collection of unreleased studio tracks to be issued by the Hendrix family estate.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Hush
Source: LP: Purple Passages (originally released on LP: Shades Of Deep Purple)
Writer(s): Joe South
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1968
British rockers Deep Purple scored a huge US hit in 1968 with their rocked out cover of Hush, a tune written by Joe South that had been an international hit for Billy Joe Royal the previous year. Oddly enough, the song was virtually ignored in their native England. The track was included on the album Tales Of Deep Purple, the first of three LPs to be released in the US on Tetragrammaton Records, a label partially owned by actor/comedian Bill Cosby. When Tetragrammaton folded shortly after the release of the third Deep Purple album the band was left without a US label, and went through some personnel changes, including adding new lead vocalist Ian Gillan (who had sung the part of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar LP) before signing to Warner Brothers and becoming a major force in 70s rock. Meanwhile, original vocalist Rod Evans hooked up with drummer Bobby Caldwell and two former members of Iron Butterfly to form Captain Beyond, releasing two fine LPs before fading from the public view.
Artist: Who
Title: Amazing Journey
Source: Import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Tommy)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: Polydor UK (original US label: Decca)
Year: 1969
After achieving major success in their native England with a series of hit singles in 1965-67, the Who began to concentrate more on their albums from 1968 on. The first of these concept albums was The Who Sell Out, released in December of 1967. The Who Sell Out was a collection of songs connected by faux radio spots and actual jingles from England's last remaining pirate radio station, Radio London. After releasing a few more singles in 1968, the Who began work on their most ambitious project yet: the world's first rock opera. Tommy, released in 1969, was a double LP telling the story of a boy who, after being tramautized into becoming a blind deaf-mute, eventually emerges as a kind of messiah, only to have his followers ultimately abandon him. One of the early tracks on the album is Amazing Journey, describing Tommy's voyage into the recesses of his own mind in response to the traumatic event that results in his blind, deaf and dumb condition.
Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Gloria
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The original Them version of Van Morrison's Gloria found itself banned on the majority of US radio stations due to controversial lyrics. By changing one line (essentially substituting "around here" for "up to my room") the suburban Chicago punk-blues band Shadows of Knight turned it into a huge hit and a garage band standard.
Artist: Bruthers
Title: Bad Way To Go
Source: Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Joe Delia (?)
Label: BFD (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1966
Not much is known about the Bruthers other than 1) they were from Pearl River, NY (wherever that is) 2) they recorded a single called Bad Way To Go that was released on the RCA Victor label in 1966, and 3) they had at least one member named Joe Delia who may or may not have written the above mentioned song (the Pebbles people were not big on documentation).
Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Mean Old Fireman
Source: LP: The Original Fleetwood Mac
Writer(s): Arthur Crudup
Label: Sire
Year: 1967
The original Fleetwood Mac was formed around and by guitarist Peter Green, who was at the time working steadily as the guitarist for John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. As a gift, Mayall donated studio time to Green, who grabbed fellow Bluesbreakers Mick Fleetwood (drums) and John McVie (bass) to record a selection of blues covers such as Arthur Crudup's Mean Old Fireman along with a few Green originals. Many of those recordings (especially the cover tunes) went unreleased until the 1970s, when Sire Records issued a collection called The Original Fleetwood Mac. By this point the band had already undergone several changes in both sound and personnel, including the loss of Green himself, and the double LP anthology was considered a bit of an oddity at the time.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Giving To You
Source: CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi/Wood/Mason
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
Traffic's first LP, Mr. Fantasy, was released in late 1967 under the name Heaven Is In Your Mind by United Artists Records in the US. The reason for this is not entirely clear, although the label may have been expecting the song Heaven Is In Your Mind to be a hit and wanted to capitalize on the title. As it turns out the song didn't do much on the US charts, despite the lead vocals of Steve Winwood, whose voice had already graced two top 10 singles by the Spencer Davis Group (Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man) earlier that year. More recently Island Records, which always had the UK rights to Traffic's material and has had US rights since the early 70s, decided to release CDs under both titles. Mr. Fantasy contains the mono mixes of the songs (plus mono bonus tracks), while Heaven Is In Your Mind has the stereo mixes of the same songs (with some slight differences in bonus tracks). One track that benefits from the stereo mix is Giving To You. Basically an instrumental, the song has a short lounge lizard style vocal introduction, along with some interesting spoken parts and stereo sound effects at the beginning and end of what is otherwise a rather tasty jam session.
Artist: Otis Redding
Title: I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)
Source: LP: Historic Performances Recorded At The Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer(s): Redding/Butler
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Although his name had appeared on the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts since 1962, it wasn't until the release of I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) in 1965 that Redding began to get noticed by the public at large. The song hit # 2 on the R&B chart and just barely missed making the top 20 on the mainstream chart. Two years later Redding performed the song as part of his set at the Monterey International Pop Festival, backed by Booker T and the MGs, along with the Bar-Kays horn section. Less than a year later a plane crash would claim the lives of Redding and the Bar-Kays, just as the singer was achieving his greatest success.
Artist: Doors
Title: Break On Through (To The Other Side)
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The first Doors song to be released as a single was not, as usually assumed, Light My Fire. Rather, it was Break On Through (To The Other Side), the opening track from the band's debut LP, that was chosen to do introduce the band to top 40 radio. Although the single was not an immediate hit, it did eventually catch on with progressive FM radio listeners and still is heard on classic rock stations from time to time.
Artist: Richie Havens
Title: High Flyin' Bird
Source: LP: Mixed Bag
Writer(s): Billy Edd Wheeler
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1967
Richie Havens is probably best known as the man who heroically took the stage for nearly three hours to get the Woodstock Performing Arts Festival underway when circumstances threatened to delay the festival's opening. Havens' career, however, was much longer and more significant than just that one appearance. Born in Brooklyn, Havens was the eldest of nine children. At age 20 he moved to Greenwich Village and became part of the beatnik movement, reading poetry in the various coffee houses. He also drew portraits and stayed up late listening to folk artists perform, eventually taking up the guitar himself. After a couple records on the independent Douglas label, Havens landed a contract with Verve Forecast and released his first LP, Mixed Bag, featuring a mixture of Havens originals and covers of songs currently making the rounds on the folk scene. Among those covers was High Flyin' Bird, a tune originally associated with Buffy Saint-Marie and often performed live by Jefferson Airplane in their early days. More Havens LPs on Verve followed, and eventually Havens formed his own label, Stormy Forest. More recently Havens was awarded the American Eagle Award by the National Music Council for his achievements, including his role as an environmental educator/activist.
Artist: Them
Title: All For Myself
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Backtrackin'
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: London (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1965
Them was the first major rock band to come from Belfast, Ireland, bursting on the British music scene with their energetic cover of Big Joe Turner's Baby, Please Don't Go in 1964. Their follow-up single, Here Comes The Night, went to the # 2 spot in the UK and became their first international hit as well. Although Here Comes The Night was written by a professional songwriter, Bert Burns, the B side of the single, All For Myself, was written by lead vocalist Van Morrison, who would go on to become one of the most respected singer/songwriters in rock history. The song was not included on any albums at the time, and would only appear on LP vinyl after Allen Klein had purchased the rights to Them's early recordings in the 1970s and issued several of them, including All For Myself, on an album called Backtrackin'.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Reality Does Not Inspire
Source: LP: Blues Image
Writer(s): Blues Image
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Formed in 1967, Blues Image cited Greenwich Village's Blues Project as their primary inspiration, and is generally acknowledged to be Florida's first jam band. They were also one of the few bands to open their own club, the legendary Thee Image, and played host to many big name acts during the club's short run. Among the Blues Images fans was Jimi Hendrix, who once told them they did great arrangements of other people's material, but their own stuff was relatively weak. The band responded by temporarily putting their original material on the shelf, pulling it out later and giving it the same treatment they would any other cover song. This approach seemed to work well, as Reality Does Not Inspire, the nine minute "showcase" track for their debut LP demonstrates.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: China Cat Sunflower
Source: CD: Aoxomoxoa
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
The third Grateful Dead album, Aoxomoxoa, was an experimental mixture of live audio and studio enhancements, much in the same vein as their previous effort, Anthem Of The Sun. One significant difference between the two is that, unlike Anthem, Aoxomoxoa was written entirely by the team of guitarist Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh and poet Robert Hunter, giving the album a more cohesive sound. One track on Aoxomoxoa, China Cat Sunflower, is almost entirely a studio creation, and as such has a bit cleaner sound than the rest of the LP.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Do You Feel
Source: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Tom Mastin
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
How Do You Feel is one of the few Jefferson Airplane songs that was not written by band members. Truth to tell, I don't know a thing about Tom Mastin, who wrote the tune. I do know that the song was selected to be the B side of their first single from Surrealistic Pillow (the A side was the Skip Spence tune My Best Friend), and that neither tune charted nationally, although they both got airplay on San Francisco area radio stations.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: Surrealistic Pillow)
Writer: Grace Slick
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
A few years back a co-worker asked me about what kind of music I played on the show. When I told him the show was called Stuck in the Psychedelic Era he immediately said "Oh, I bet you play White Rabbit a lot, huh?" As a matter of fact, I do, although not as much as some songs (see the post from show # 1352, in which I run down the list of which songs and artists got played the most in 2013).
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: CD: Somebody To Love
Source: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer: Darby Slick
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
Over 40 years after the fact, it's hard to imagine just how big an impact Somebody To Love had on the garage band scene. Whereas before Somebody To Love came out you could just dismiss hard-to-cover songs as being "lame" anyway, here was a tune that was undeniably cool, and yet virtually impossible for anyone but the Airplane to play well (and even they were unable to get it to sound quite the same when they performed it live). Although garage bands would continue to exist (and still do), the days when a group of kids from the suburbs could form a band, play a handful of parties, maybe win a battle of the bands and write and record a hit record with virtually no prior experience were gone forever.
Artist: Clefs Of Lavender Hill
Title: Stop-Get A Ticket
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Travis & Coventry Fairchild
Label: Rhino (original label: Thames)
Year: 1966
The Clefs Of Lavender Hill were a band from North Miami that featured not one, but two sets of siblings: the brother and sister team of Travis and Coventry Fairchild (both of which sang and played guitar) and the Moss brothers, Bill (bass) and Fred (drums). The first single from the band was a song called First Tell Me Why, but it was the B side of the record, a Beatlesque tune called Stop-Get A Ticket that became a hit on Miami radio stations. The song was picked up by Date Records and peaked nationally at # 80. Subsequent releases by the Clefs failed to crack the Hot 100 and the group (after several personnel changes) finally called it quits in 1968.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Winwood/Winwood/Davis
Label: United Artists
Year: 1966
The movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becoming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Ironically, most of those stations are now playing 80s oldies.
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