Artist: Donovan
Title: Season Of The Witch
Source: CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer: Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony Music Special Products (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
Season Of The Witch has proved to be one of the most popular and enduring tracks on Donovan's Sunshine Superman album. Due to a contract dispute with Pye Records, the album was not released in the UK until late 1967, and then only as an LP combining tracks from both the Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow albums. Like all tracks from both Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, Season Of The Witch was only available in a mono mix until 1969, when a new stereo mix was created from the original multi-track masters for the singer/songwriter's first greatest hits compilation. Season of the Witch has since been covered by an impressive array of artists, including Al Kooper and Stephen Stills (on the Super Session album) and Vanilla Fudge.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Psychedelic Trip
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Loomis/Flores/Tolby/Aguilar/Andrijasevich
Label: Tower/Sundazed
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2012
Psychedelic Trip is essentially an early instrumental version of what would eventually become the title track for the Chocolate Watchband's debut album, No Way Out. Although Psychedelic Trip is credited to the entire band, producer/manager Ed Cobb (the Ed Wood of psychedelic music) took sole credit for the song No Way Out.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Fly Away
Source: LP: special DJ record (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer: Al Kooper
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Al Kooper was a guitarist with some talent (but no professional experience) on keyboards who was already sufficiently connected enough to be allowed in the studio when Bob Dylan was recording his Highway 61 Revisited album. Not content to be merely a spectator (Mike Bloomfield was already there as a guitarist), Kooper noticed that there was an organ in the studio and immediately sat down and started playing on the sessions. Dylan was impressed enough with Kooper's playing to not only include him on the album, but to invite him to perform with him at the upcoming Newport Jazz Festival as well. The gig became probably Dylan's most notorious moment in his career, as several folk purists voiced their displeasure with Dylan's use of electric instruments. Some of them even stormed the stage, knocking over Kooper's keyboards in the process. After the gig Kooper became an in-demand studio musician. It was in this capacity (brought in to play piano by producer Tom Wilson) that he first met Danny Kalb, Andy Kuhlberg, Tommy Flanders, Roy Blumenthal and Steve Katz, who had recently formed the Blues Project and were making their first recordings for Columbia Records at their New York studios. Kooper had been looking for an opportunity to improve his skills on the keyboards (most of his gigs as a studio musician were for producers hoping to cash in on the "Dylan sound", which he found limiting), and soon joined the band as their full-time keyboardist. In addition to his instrumental contributions to the band, he provided some of their best original material as well. One such tune is Fly Away, from the Projections album (generally considered to be the apex of the Blues Project's studio career).
Artist: Masada
Title: A Hundred Days And Nights
Source: CD: A Heavy Dose Of Lyte Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Paul Brissetts
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Sadbird)
Year: 1968
The only thing known about the single A Hundred Days And Nights by a band called Masada is that the record was a product of Metcalf Recording Studios in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It's a good sounding record, though. If anyone has any information about this band, feel free to share it with me.
Artist: Si-Dells
Title: Watch Out Mother
Source: CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Hubert Deans
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: East Coast Sound)
Year: 1968
Although Durham, North Carolina, is not particularly known as a psychedelic hotspot, the bull city was home to the Si-Dells, whose Watch Out Mother, although relegated to the B side of one of the group's two singles, has come to be regarded as a bit of a psych classic, thanks to its inclusion on the legendary Tobacco A Go Go (volume 1) anthology.
Artist: Tea Company
Title: Come And Have Some Tea With Me
Source: Mono CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wild Psych (originally released on LP: Don't Make Waves and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Carr/Lossandro
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Smash)
Year: 1968
Formed in 1967, the Tea Company started off in New York as the Naturals, but soon changed their name to the Lip-Tin Tea Company, shortening it when they signed a contract with Mercury's subsidiary Smash label in 1968. They recorded an album, Don't Make Waves, that included a song called Come And Have Some Tea With Me. An edited version of the track was issued as a B side as well.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Summertime
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Gershwin/Heyward
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Since this show is originally airing shortly after Memorial Day weekend, I figured its about time to play the Big Brother and the Holding Company version of Summertime (featuring Janis Joplin) once again. Which reminds me, Stuck in the Psychedelic Era's first syndicated show was on Memorial Day weekend of 2010. Since then we have played 6195 tracks, not including the yearly Yule and year end shows. Happy birthday to us!
Artist: Love
Title: Softly To Me
Source: Australian import CD: Comes In Colours (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer: Bryan McLean
Label: Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
Before the signing of Love in 1966, Elektra was a folk and ethnic music label whose closest thing to a rock band was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was at that time very much into creating as authentic Chicago blues sound as possible for a band from New York. Love, on the other hand, was a bona-fide rock band that was packing the clubs on the Sunset Strip nightly. To underscore the significance of the signing, Elektra started a whole new numbering series for Love's debut album. Bryan McLean's role as a songwriter in Love was similar to George Harrison's as a Beatle. He didn't have many songs on any particular album, but those songs were often among the best tracks on the album. The first of these was Softly To Me from the band's debut LP.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Fool On The Hill
Source: LP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol
Year: 1967
The Beatles only came up with six new songs for their 1967 telefilm Magical Mystery Tour, enough to fill up only one side of an LP. Rather than use outtakes and B sides to complete the album (which they had done in 1965 for the Help album), the band chose to release the six songs on a two-record 45 RPM Extended Play set, complete with a booklet that included the storyline, lyric sheets and several still photographs from the film itself. Magical Mystery Tour appeared in this form in both the UK and in Europe, while in the US and Canada, Capitol Records instead issued the album in standard LP format, using the band's 1967 singles and B sides to fill up side two. None of the songs from the telefilm were issued as singles, although one, I Am The Walrus, was used as the B side to the Hello Goodbye single. Another song, Fool On The Hill, was covered by Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66, making the US charts in early 1968. By the 1980s, however, the only version of the song still played on the radio was the original Beatles version, with the footage from the Magical Mystery Tour telefilm used as a video on early music TV channels.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Source: CD: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
I think there is a law on the books somewhere that says I need to play the full version of Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida every so often, so here it is.
Artist: Chicago
Title: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is
Source: CD: The Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s): Robert Lamm
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
There are actually three versions of the Chicago song Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is, all taken from the same original recording on the band's debut LP. The most well-known is the second edited version that has appeared on all the band's anthology albums. That version starts with a horn intro section in a staggered rhythm followed by a short Robert Lamm's piano section in 5/8 time that leads directly into the main body of the song. An earlier single edit leaves out the entire intro of the song, starting in rather abruptly with the familiar two-chord pattern and trumpet riff that leads into the first verse of the song. The orginal album version heard here, however, has a long free-form piano section that sets the stage for the entire song, transforming it in the process.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: I Wish You Would
Source: Mono Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): B.B. Arnold
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1964
The first Yardbirds record ever released was, predictably, a cover of an old blues song. I Wish You Would had originally been written and recorded by Billy Boy Arnold. Arnold's original version, released in 1955 on the Vee Jay label, featured a Bo-Diddley style beat; indeed, the song had originally been intended for Diddley himself and would have been his second single if not for the fact that Arnold got it into his head that Leonard Chess, whose Chess label Diddley recorded for, did not like him, so he ended up taking the song to Vee Jay and recording it himself. The Yardbirds version of the song, released in 1964, is missing the Bo Diddley beat, and is reportedly a much shorter version than the band performed live at the time.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Everybody's Been Burned
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): David Crosby
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
There is a common misconception that David Crosby's songwriting skills didn't fully develop until he began working with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. A listen to Everybody's Been Burned from the Byrds' 1967 album Younger Than Yesterday, however, puts the lie to that theory in a hurry. The track has all the hallmarks of a classic Crosby song: a strong melody, intelligent lyrics and an innovative chord structure. It's also my personal favorite tune from what is arguably the Byrds' best LP.
Artist: Byrds
Title: My Back Pages
Source: Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
One of the items of contention between David Crosby and Roger McGuinn was the latter's insistence on continuing to record covers of Bob Dylan songs when the band members themselves had a wealth of their own material available. Indeed, it was reportedly an argument over whether or not to include Crosby's Triad on the next album that resulted in Crosby being fired from the band in October of 1967. Nonetheless, the last Dylan cover with Crosby still in the band was perhaps their best as well. Although not as big a hit as Mr. Tambourine Man, My Back Pages from the Younger Than Yesterday album did respectably well on the charts, becoming one of the Byrds' last top 40 hits.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Lady Friend
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): David Crosby
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
One of the least-known Byrds recordings is David Crosby's Lady Friend. The song was released as a non-album single in 1967, after Younger Than Yesterday was on the racks but before Crosby's falling out with the other members of the band during the recording of The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The single did not chart, and with Crosby no longer a member of the Byrds by 1968, it is not surprising that Lady Friend was not included on any subsequent Byrds albums or greatest hits anthologies. The song is now available as a bonus track on the remastered version of Younger Than Yesterday.
Artist: Five Man Electrical Band
Title: Signs
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Les Emerson
Label: Lionel
Year: 1971
Everybody has at least one song they have fond memories of hearing on the radio while riding around in a friend's car on a hot summer evening. Signs, from Canada's Five Man Electrical Band, is one of mine.
Artist: David Peel And The Lower East Side
Title: The Pledge Of Allegiance/Legalize Marijuana
Source: LP: The American Revolution
Writer(s): David Peel
Label: Elektra
Year: 1970
If there was any one band that could be called a Yippie band, it was David Peel and the Lower East Side. As much street theater as rock and roll, the group consisted of three core members: David Peel (guitar, vocals), Billy Joe White (guitar, vocals), and Harold C. Black (tambourine, vocals), plus just about anyone who wanted to play and/or sing along. The group's first album was Have A Marijuana, recorded live at New York's Washington Square at a cost of around $4,000. The album was a surprise cult hit, netting Elektra nearly a million dollars. The band's priorities, however, were more about social issues than musical (or financial) ones, and the group did not get around to recording another album until 1970. By then the Yippie movement had run its course, and the decision was made to abandon the street theater aspect of the group and concentrate instead on making a studio album. To do this, they enlisted several new semi-official members to record The American Revolution, arguably the first true punk-rock LP ever recorded. The songs covered a variety of topical issues, including sex (Girls, Girls, Girls), religion (God), and the still-raging Vietnam War (I Want To Kill You and Hey, Mr. Draftboard). Still, there was one issue near and dear to the band above all others, as a listen to Peel's unique take on The Pledge Of Allegiance and its follow-up track, Legalize Marijuana, makes obvious.
Artist: Second Helping
Title: Hard Times
Source: Mono LP: Ain't It Hard (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Kenny Loggins
Label: Sundazed (original label: Viva)
Year: 1968
Second Helping was a local L.A. band led by a 19-year-old Kenny Loggins that was signed to Snuff Garrett's Viva Records in 1968. Hard Times, the B side of one of the band's three singles for the label, has more in common with garage bands than with the 70s soft-rock that Loggins would eventually become known for.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Greasy Heart
Source: CD: Crown Of Creation
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1968
The Jefferson Airplane released their fourth LP, Crown of Creation, in the summer of '68. Greasy Heart, a Grace Slick composition, was chosen for single release to AM top 40 radio, but by then the group was getting far more airplay on album-oriented FM stations with tunes like Lather and Triad and the mysteriously named House at Pooniel Corners. As a result, Greasy Heart, despite being a more commercial tune, is far less familiar to most people than any of those other songs.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Serenade To A Cuckoo
Source: CD: This Was
Writer(s): Roland Kirk
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Jethro Tull did not, as a general rule, record cover tunes. The most notable exception is Roland Kirk's classic jazz piece Serenade To A Cuckoo, which was included on their first LP, This Was.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Hideaway
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Underground)
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
After the moderately successful first Electric Prunes album, producer David Hassinger loosened the reigns a bit for the followup, Underground. Among the original tunes on Underground was Hideaway, a song that probably would have been a better choice as a single than what actually got released: a novelty tune called Dr. Feelgood written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, who had also written the band's first hit, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night).
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.
Artist: Garden Club
Title: Little Girl Lost-And-Found
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Walsh/Almer
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: 1967
Garden Club was in reality Ruthann Friedman (who wrote the Association hit Windy) on vocals with a bunch of studio musicians performing a song co-written by Tandyn Almer (co-writer of the Association hit Along Comes Mary and inventor of the dual-chamber bong). Oddly enough, the track reminds me somehow of Suzanne Vega.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Set Me Free
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1965
After scoring international success with a series of R&B influenced rockers in 1964, the Kinks started to mellow a bit in 1965, releasing more melodic songs such as Set Me Free. The band would continue to evolve throughout the decade, eventually becoming one of the first groups to release a concept album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), in 1969.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Mr. Farmer
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: A Web Of Sound)
Writer: Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino
Year: 1966
With two tracks (Can't Seem To Make You Mine and Pushin' Too Hard) from their first album getting decent airplay on L.A. radio stations in 1966 the Seeds headed back to the studio to record a second LP, A Web Of Sound. The first single released from the album was Mr. Farmer, a song that once again did well locally. The only national hit for the Seeds came when Pushin' Too Hard was re-released in December of 1966, hitting its national peak the following spring.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: If You Want This Love
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Part One)
Writer: Baker Knight
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The first West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album, Volume One, had a limited print run on, Fifa, a small independent label in L.A. After landing a contract with Reprise, the band recut many of the songs (most of which were cover tunes) from Volume One and called the new album Part One. If You Want This Love, a song written and originally recorded by L.A. local legend Baker Knight, is one of those recut tracks.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Feelin' Alright
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s): Dave Mason
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
Although Traffic is generally known as an early underground rock band heard mostly on progressive FM stations in the US, the band had its share of hit singles in its native England as well. Many of these early hits were written by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mason, who would leave the band in 1968, only to return for the live Welcome To The Canteen album before leaving again, this time for good. One of Mason's most memorable songs was Feelin' Alright, from Traffic's self-titled second LP. The song very quickly became a rock standard when Joe Cocker sped it up and made it his own signature song. Grand Funk Railroad slowed it back down and scored a hit with their version in 1971, and Mason himself got some airplay with a new solo recording of the song later in the decade. Even comedian John Belushi got into the act with his dead-on cover of Cocker's version of the song on the Saturday Night Live TV show.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1421 (starts 5/21/14)
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Keep On Running
Source: Mono LP: Gimme Some Lovin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Jackie Edwards
Label: United Artists (original label: Atco)
Year: 1965
The Spencer Davis Group began a streak of top 10 hits in the UK in 1964, with the then 14-year-old Steve Winwood on lead vocals and keyboards (and occassional guitar). What is not well known is that many of those singles were also released in the US on the Atco label, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. None of the Atco releases charted in the US and eventually the distribution rights to the band's recordings fell to United Artists Records. In 1967 the Spencer Davis Group finally got its breakthrough hit in the US with Gimme Some Lovin' a tune that had originally been released in the fall of 1966. United Artists immediately went to work on compiling an album made up mostly of the band's earlier singles and B sides, releasing it in spring of 1967. One of the many UK hits on the album was Jackie Edwards' Keep On Running, which the Spencer Davis Group had taken to the top of the British charts in 1965.
Artist: Wimple Winch
Title: Save My Soul
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Christopholus/Kelman
Label: Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1966
Dee Fenton and the Silhouettes were a fairly typical merseybeat band formed in 1961 by Dee Christopholus, a Greek immigrant whose parents had moved to Liverpool in the 1950s. In 1963 they changed their name to the Four Just Men, which became the Just Four Men when they were signed to Parlophone the following year. After a pair of singles failed to make a dent in the British charts EMI (Parlophone's parent company) cut the band from its roster. Rather than disband, the group decided to reinvent themselves as a British counterpart to the many garage bands popping up in the US. Changing their name to Wimple Winch, the group released three singles on the Fontana label, the second of which was Save My Soul, released in June of 1966. All three singles did well in Liverpool but failed to make an impression elsewhere. The band finally decided to call it quits when Fontana dropped them in early 1967.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: In Another Land
Source: CD: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
In Another Land was the first Rolling Stones song written and sung by bassist Bill Wyman, and was even released in the UK as a Wyman single. The song originally appeared on the Stones' most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, in late 1967.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Hurdy Gurdy Man
Source: CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Hurdy Gurdy Man)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony Music Special Products (original label: Epic)
Year: 1968
In early 1968 Donovan Leitch decided to try his hand at producing another band, Hurdy Gurdy, which included his old friend bassist Mac MacLeod. However, creative differences with the band led to Donovan recording the song himself and releasing it as a single in May of that year. The song is done in a harder rock style than most of Donovan's recordings, and features some of London's top studio musicians, including Clem Cattini and drums, Alan Parker on guitar and future Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones on bass. It has long been rumoured that Jimmy Page and John Bonham also participated on the recording, but their presence is disputed. Donovan reportedly wanted to use Jimi Hendrix on the recording, but the guitarist was unavailable.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Streetmasse
Source: LP: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Dryden/Blackman/Thompson/Balin
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
After Bathing At Baxter's is generally considered the most pyschedelic of all the Jefferson Airplane albums. For one thing, the members were reportedly all on LSD through most of the creative process and were involved in entire package, right down to the decision to divide the album up into five suites and press the vinyl in such a way that the spaces normally found between songs were only present between the suites themselves, making it almost impossible to set the needle down at the beginning of the second or third song of a suite (there is a slight overlap between songs as well). The first suite on After Bathing At Baxter's is called Streetmasse. It consists of three compositions: Paul Kantner's The Ballad of You and Me and Pooniel; A Small Package of Value Will Come To You Shortly (a free-form jazz piece led by drummer Spencer Dryden); and the Paul Kantner/Marty Balin composition Young Girl Sunday Blues.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Triad
Source: CD: The Notorius Byrd Brothers (bonus track)
Writer: David Crosby
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
By fall of 1967 David Crosby had pretty much pissed off Jim (now Roger) McGuinn about as much as he could without getting kicked out of the Byrds. In June he had made statements to the effect that the US government was covering up the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and gone on stage and performed with a rival band, the Buffalo Springfield (filling in for Neil Young, who had just quit the band). And he did this all at the same time and place, the Monterey International Pop Festival. Nobody but the participants knows for sure what the final straw was that got Crosby booted from the band, but before it happened they had recorded this original version of a song that would appear on the 1968 Jefferson Airplane album Crown of Creation. The Byrds version of Triad was naturally left off the album the group had been working on (the Notorious Byrd Brothers), only surfacing years later on a Byrds anthology album.
Artist: John Mayall
Title: Blues From Laurel Canyon (side one)
Source: Blues From Laurel Canyon
Writer(s): John Mayall
Label: London
Year: 1968
In the summer of 1968 John Mayall decided to disband the Bluesbreakers and take a three-week vacation in California. On his return to the UK he put together a new, four piece band consisting of himself, guitarist Mick Taylor, bassist Stephen Thompson and drummer Colin Allen and recorded a suite of songs that he had written about the vacation itself. The resulting album, Blues From Laurel Canyon, is considered not only one of Mayall's best, but one of the finest blues albums ever made. Side one of the LP starts off appropriately with a song called Vacation that features an extended solo from Taylor. This segues into one of Mayall's best-known tracks, Walking On Sunset, a hard-driving electric blues tune that gives everyone in the band a chance to shine. This leads into the slow, contemplative Laurel Canyon Home, a tune that lays the groundwork for several songs that appear later on the album. 2401, a fast rocker that was also released as a single, is full of references to the denizens of a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard known as the Log Cabin, which was the residence of Frank Zappa and his wife Gail and was frequented by various members and hangers on of both Zappa's band, the Mothers of Invention, and the GTOs, an all female band that Zappa produced. The final three tracks on side one of the album (Ready To Ride, Medicine Man, and Somebody's Acting Like A Child) concern an obviously short relationship that Mayall was involved in during his stay at the Log Cabin.
Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man)
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1965
In late 1965 songwriters/producers P.F. Sloan (Eve of Destruction) and Steve Barri decided to create a series of records by a band called the Grass Roots. The problem was that there was no band called the Grass Roots (at least not that they knew of), so Sloan and Barri decided to recruit an existing band and talk them into changing their name. The band they found was the Bedouins, one of the early San Francisco bands. As the rush to sign SF bands was still months away, the Bedouins were more than happy to record the songs Sloan and Barri picked out for them. The first single by the newly-named Grass Roots was a cover of Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man). The band soon got to work promoting the single to Southern California radio stations, but with both the Byrds and the Turtles already on the charts with Dylan covers it soon became obvious that the market was pretty much saturated. After a period of months the band, who wanted more freedom to write and record their own material, had a falling out with Sloan and Barri and it wasn't long before they moved back to San Francisco, leaving drummer Joel Larson in L.A. The group, with another drummer, continued to perform as the Grass Roots until Dunhill Records ordered them to stop. Eventually Dunhill would hire a local L.A. band called the 13th Floor to be the final incarnation of the Grass Roots who would crank out a series of top 40 hits in the early 70s. Meanwhile the original lineup changed their name but never had the opportunity to make records again.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Albert Common Is Dead
Source: CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book)
Writer(s): Gilbert/Scala
Label: Mercury
Year: 1967
The second Blues Magoos LP, Electric Comic Book, was much in the same vein as their 1966 debut album, Psychedelic Lollipop, with a mix of fast and slow originals and a couple of cover songs, one of which was done in an extended rave-up style. The second side opener, Albert Common Is Dead, is a fast rocker (with a slowed down final chorus) about an average guy's decision to take to the road, leaving his former life behind. As many young people were doing exactly that during the summer of 1967, you might expect such a song to become somewhat of a soundtrack of its times, but with so many other songs filling that role, Albert Common Is Dead was largely overlooked by the listening public.
Artist: Cyrkle
Title: How Can I Leave Her
Source: LP: Red Rubber Ball
Writer(s): Danneman/Dawes
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Originally known as the Rhondells, the Cyrkle got a huge break when they came to the attention of Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles, in late 1965. Epstein had been looking for an American band to manage, and liked what he heard when he caught the band in Atlantic City on Labor Day weekend. By the following summer the group, whom Epstein had renamed the Cyrkle (with John Lennon credited for the unique spelling) found itself opening for the Beatles on their last North American tour, including their final live performance at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29th. By then the Cyrkle had released a hit single, Red Rubber Ball, and soon would release an album with the same title. About half the tracks on the LP were written by band members, including the soft-pop How Can I Leave Her, which features the Cyrkle's Beach Boys-inspired harmonies.
Artist: Timon
Title: The Bitter Thoughts Of Little Jane
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Timon Dogg
Label: Rhino (original label: Pye)
Year: 1967
Timon Dogg was a British folk singer that came up with a bizarre little song called The Bitter Thoughts Of Little Jane, releasing it as a single on the Pye label in late 1967. The following year Dogg signed with the Beatles' Apple label, but a planned album was never completed. Dogg later could be found working as a street singer in the London Underground, often alongside his close friend John Mellon (who would later change his name to Joe Strummer and form a band called the Clash). Dogg would eventually appear as a guest vocalist on a song he wrote called Lose This Skin on the 1980 Clash album Sandinista.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Wild Honey Pie/The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill/While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Source: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
By early 1968 the Beatles were beginning to show signs that they would not be together as a band much longer. The group had just experienced their first commercial & critical failure, the Magical Mystery Tour telefilm (although the soundtrack did quite well). Additionally, each member (except maybe Ringo) was starting to move off in his own direction as a songwriter. Nonetheless they went ahead with plans to form Apple, a company designed to market not only their music, but other products as well. The first album released on the new label was titled simply The Beatles and had a plain white cover, resulting in it soon becoming known as the White Album. It was the Beatles' first double-LP set, and the only one to feature all-new material. The music covered a wide variety of styles, some of which are even now hard to describe. As an example we have Paul McCartney's Wild Honey Pie, which segues into John Lennon's The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill. I defy anyone to define exactly what genre these two tracks are representative of. George Harrison had already written several songs that had appeared on various Beatle albums (and an occasional B side) through 1968, but his first acknowledged classic was While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which immediately follows Bungalow Bill on the album. The recording features Harrison's close friend, guitarist Eric Clapton, who at that time was enjoying superstar status as a member of Cream.
Artist: Fairport Convention
Title: Fotheringay
Source: LP: Fairport Chronicles (originally released in UK on LP: What We Did On Our Holidays, retitled Fairport Convention for US release)
Writer(s): Sandy Denny
Label: A&M
Year: 1969 (US 1970)
The early history of Fairport Convention can be a bit confusing. The original lineup released their first LP in 1968, entitled simply Fairport Convention. This album, however, never appeared in the US. The following year the group released an album called What We Did On Our Holidays, featuring new vocalist Sandy Denny. After the band began to catch on with American audiences, What We Did On Our Holidays was repackaged and released (in the US only) under the name Fairport Convention. The opening track of that album was a song called Fotheringay, a name that would be used for Denny's own band a couple of years later. Just to add even more to the confusion, when A&M released a late 70s retrospective called Fairport Chronicles they listed all the songs from What We Did On Our Holidays as being from an album called Fairport Convention (which was technically true in the US), but listed the release year for the songs as 1968, the year the British album of the same name came out, rather than 1969, the actual release year of What We Did On Our Holidays or 1970, the year the US version was released.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: When I Was Young
Source: Mono CD: The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
After the Animals disbanded in 1966, Eric Burdon set out to form a new band that would be far more psychedelic than the original group. The first release from these "New Animals" was When I Was Young. The song was credited to the entire band, a practice that would continue throughout the entire existence of the group that came to be called Eric Burdon And The Animals.
Artist: Doors
Title: Strange Days
Source: The Best Of The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
One of the first rock albums to not picture the band members on the front cover was the Doors' second LP, Strange Days. Instead, the cover featured several circus performers doing various tricks on a city street, with the band's logo appearing on a poster on the wall of a building. The album itself contains some of the Doors' most memorable tracks, including the title song, which also appears on their greatest hits album (which has Jim Morrison's picture on the cover) despite never being released as a single.
Artist: Sons Of Champlain
Title: 1982-A
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Loosen Up Naturally)
Writer(s): Steven Tollestrup
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1969
Bill Champlin is probably best known as the lead guitarist for Chicago from 1981 to 2008 (more or less). In his earlier years, however, he fronted his own band, the Sons Of Champlin. Like Chicago, the Sons were distinguished by the presence of a horn section, a trend that was just getting underway in 1969. Unlike most other bands of their type, however, the Sons Of Champlin were a San Francisco band, and one of the more popular local acts of their time. They did not show much of an interest in touring outside the Bay Area, however, and as a result got limited national exposure. The first single from the first of two album they recorded for the Capitol label was a tune called 1982-A. I really can't say what the title has to do with the lyrics of the song, but it is a catchy little number nonetheless.
Artist: Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title: Really
Source: LP: Super Session
Writer: Bloomfield/Kooper
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1968
Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield first met when they were both members of Bob Dylan's band in 1965, playing on the classic Highway 61 Revisited album and famously performing at the Newport Folk Festival, where Kooper's organ was physically assaulted by angry folk purists. After a stint with seminal jam band The Blues Project, Kooper became a staff producer for Columbia Records in New York, where he came up with the idea of an album made up entirely of studio jams. He recruited Bloomfield, who had in the intervening years played with the Butterfield Blues Band and the Electric Flag, along with bassist Harvey Brooks (also from Butterfield's band) and studio drummer Eddie Hoh and came up with the surprise hit album of 1968, Super Session. Although Bloomfield bowed out of the project halfway through, he plays on all the tracks on side one of the album, including Really, which utilizes a classic blues progression.
Artist: Otis Redding
Title: Try A Little Tenderness
Source: LP: Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer: Woods/Campbell/Connelly
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
One of the most electrifying performances at the legendary Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 happened on Saturday night during a rainstorm. Otis Redding (backed by Booker T. and the MGs, with Wayne Jackson on trumpet and Andrew Love on sax) was scheduled for the closing slot, but due to technical problems earlier in the day found himself with only enough time for five songs before the festival had to shut down for the night. At the end of his closing song, Try A Little Tenderness, Redding can be heard saying "I've got to go now. I don't want to go" as the festival's organizers, mindful of the terms of their permit, were rushing him off the stage.
Artist: Great! Society
Title: Somebody To Love
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Conspicuous Only In Its Absence)
Writer(s): Darby Slick
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1968
One of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era (and of the so-called San Francisco sound) is Somebody To Love, released by Jefferson Airplane in 1967 on their Surrealistic Pillow album. Somebody To Love was written by Darby Slick, guitarist for another San Francisco band, Great! Society. The Society had released the song, featuring Slick's sister-in-law Grace on lead vocals, as a single in early 1966 but was unable to get any local airplay for the record. In June the group played the Matrix, a club managed by Marty Balin, leader of Jefferson Airplane. The entire gig was recorded (probably by legendary Grateful Dead soundman Owsley Stanley, whose board recordings usually isolated the vocals in one channel and the instruments in the other to provide the band with a tape they could use to critique their own performance) and eventually released on an album called Conspicuous Only In Its Absence two years after Great! Society disbanded. Within a few weeks of this performance Grace Slick would leave the group to join Jefferson Airplane, taking the song with her. This whole set of circumstances can't help but raise the question of whether Balin was using the Society's gig at the Matrix as a kind of sideways audition for Slick.
Artist: Buckinghams
Title: Susan
Source: LP: The Buckinghams' Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Holvay/Beisbier/Guercio
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
The Buckinghams were a local Chicago cover band that made the big time with a song called Kind Of A Drag, released on the local USA label in 1966. Producer James William Guercio, who would become famous as the producer of both Blood, Sweat And Tears and Chicago, was enamored by the Buckinghams' use of a horn section, and got them signed to Columbia Records. The group's first LP for Columbia yielded two hit singles, Don't You Care and Mercy Mercy Mercy, as well as a few notable LP tracks written and arranged by Guercio himself. The band's last hit single, Susan, was released late in 1967. The song starts off as a somewhat bland lite pop tune, but takes an avant-garde turn about two-thirds of the way through, thanks to Guercio's unusual horn and string interlude.
Artist: Penny Peeps
Title: Model Village
Source: Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Alexander
Label: Zonophone (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
Although the British psychedelic era was considerably shorter (only about two years long) than its American counterpart, there are a surprisingly large number of British psych-pop singles that were never issued in the US. Among those was a somewhat forgettable song called Little Man With A Stick, released in 1967 by a band called the Penny Peeps. The band took its name from the risque coin-fed viewers at Brighton Beach (apparently London's version of Coney Island). Emulating his American counterparts, producer Les Reed (who wrote Little Man), allowed the band itself to come up with its own B side. The result was Model Village, a track that manages to convey a classic garage-rock energy while remaining uniquely British.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Ain't No Tellin'
Source: CD: 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.
Title: Keep On Running
Source: Mono LP: Gimme Some Lovin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Jackie Edwards
Label: United Artists (original label: Atco)
Year: 1965
The Spencer Davis Group began a streak of top 10 hits in the UK in 1964, with the then 14-year-old Steve Winwood on lead vocals and keyboards (and occassional guitar). What is not well known is that many of those singles were also released in the US on the Atco label, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. None of the Atco releases charted in the US and eventually the distribution rights to the band's recordings fell to United Artists Records. In 1967 the Spencer Davis Group finally got its breakthrough hit in the US with Gimme Some Lovin' a tune that had originally been released in the fall of 1966. United Artists immediately went to work on compiling an album made up mostly of the band's earlier singles and B sides, releasing it in spring of 1967. One of the many UK hits on the album was Jackie Edwards' Keep On Running, which the Spencer Davis Group had taken to the top of the British charts in 1965.
Artist: Wimple Winch
Title: Save My Soul
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Christopholus/Kelman
Label: Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1966
Dee Fenton and the Silhouettes were a fairly typical merseybeat band formed in 1961 by Dee Christopholus, a Greek immigrant whose parents had moved to Liverpool in the 1950s. In 1963 they changed their name to the Four Just Men, which became the Just Four Men when they were signed to Parlophone the following year. After a pair of singles failed to make a dent in the British charts EMI (Parlophone's parent company) cut the band from its roster. Rather than disband, the group decided to reinvent themselves as a British counterpart to the many garage bands popping up in the US. Changing their name to Wimple Winch, the group released three singles on the Fontana label, the second of which was Save My Soul, released in June of 1966. All three singles did well in Liverpool but failed to make an impression elsewhere. The band finally decided to call it quits when Fontana dropped them in early 1967.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: In Another Land
Source: CD: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
In Another Land was the first Rolling Stones song written and sung by bassist Bill Wyman, and was even released in the UK as a Wyman single. The song originally appeared on the Stones' most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, in late 1967.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Hurdy Gurdy Man
Source: CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Hurdy Gurdy Man)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony Music Special Products (original label: Epic)
Year: 1968
In early 1968 Donovan Leitch decided to try his hand at producing another band, Hurdy Gurdy, which included his old friend bassist Mac MacLeod. However, creative differences with the band led to Donovan recording the song himself and releasing it as a single in May of that year. The song is done in a harder rock style than most of Donovan's recordings, and features some of London's top studio musicians, including Clem Cattini and drums, Alan Parker on guitar and future Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones on bass. It has long been rumoured that Jimmy Page and John Bonham also participated on the recording, but their presence is disputed. Donovan reportedly wanted to use Jimi Hendrix on the recording, but the guitarist was unavailable.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Streetmasse
Source: LP: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Dryden/Blackman/Thompson/Balin
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
After Bathing At Baxter's is generally considered the most pyschedelic of all the Jefferson Airplane albums. For one thing, the members were reportedly all on LSD through most of the creative process and were involved in entire package, right down to the decision to divide the album up into five suites and press the vinyl in such a way that the spaces normally found between songs were only present between the suites themselves, making it almost impossible to set the needle down at the beginning of the second or third song of a suite (there is a slight overlap between songs as well). The first suite on After Bathing At Baxter's is called Streetmasse. It consists of three compositions: Paul Kantner's The Ballad of You and Me and Pooniel; A Small Package of Value Will Come To You Shortly (a free-form jazz piece led by drummer Spencer Dryden); and the Paul Kantner/Marty Balin composition Young Girl Sunday Blues.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Triad
Source: CD: The Notorius Byrd Brothers (bonus track)
Writer: David Crosby
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
By fall of 1967 David Crosby had pretty much pissed off Jim (now Roger) McGuinn about as much as he could without getting kicked out of the Byrds. In June he had made statements to the effect that the US government was covering up the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and gone on stage and performed with a rival band, the Buffalo Springfield (filling in for Neil Young, who had just quit the band). And he did this all at the same time and place, the Monterey International Pop Festival. Nobody but the participants knows for sure what the final straw was that got Crosby booted from the band, but before it happened they had recorded this original version of a song that would appear on the 1968 Jefferson Airplane album Crown of Creation. The Byrds version of Triad was naturally left off the album the group had been working on (the Notorious Byrd Brothers), only surfacing years later on a Byrds anthology album.
Artist: John Mayall
Title: Blues From Laurel Canyon (side one)
Source: Blues From Laurel Canyon
Writer(s): John Mayall
Label: London
Year: 1968
In the summer of 1968 John Mayall decided to disband the Bluesbreakers and take a three-week vacation in California. On his return to the UK he put together a new, four piece band consisting of himself, guitarist Mick Taylor, bassist Stephen Thompson and drummer Colin Allen and recorded a suite of songs that he had written about the vacation itself. The resulting album, Blues From Laurel Canyon, is considered not only one of Mayall's best, but one of the finest blues albums ever made. Side one of the LP starts off appropriately with a song called Vacation that features an extended solo from Taylor. This segues into one of Mayall's best-known tracks, Walking On Sunset, a hard-driving electric blues tune that gives everyone in the band a chance to shine. This leads into the slow, contemplative Laurel Canyon Home, a tune that lays the groundwork for several songs that appear later on the album. 2401, a fast rocker that was also released as a single, is full of references to the denizens of a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard known as the Log Cabin, which was the residence of Frank Zappa and his wife Gail and was frequented by various members and hangers on of both Zappa's band, the Mothers of Invention, and the GTOs, an all female band that Zappa produced. The final three tracks on side one of the album (Ready To Ride, Medicine Man, and Somebody's Acting Like A Child) concern an obviously short relationship that Mayall was involved in during his stay at the Log Cabin.
Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man)
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1965
In late 1965 songwriters/producers P.F. Sloan (Eve of Destruction) and Steve Barri decided to create a series of records by a band called the Grass Roots. The problem was that there was no band called the Grass Roots (at least not that they knew of), so Sloan and Barri decided to recruit an existing band and talk them into changing their name. The band they found was the Bedouins, one of the early San Francisco bands. As the rush to sign SF bands was still months away, the Bedouins were more than happy to record the songs Sloan and Barri picked out for them. The first single by the newly-named Grass Roots was a cover of Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man). The band soon got to work promoting the single to Southern California radio stations, but with both the Byrds and the Turtles already on the charts with Dylan covers it soon became obvious that the market was pretty much saturated. After a period of months the band, who wanted more freedom to write and record their own material, had a falling out with Sloan and Barri and it wasn't long before they moved back to San Francisco, leaving drummer Joel Larson in L.A. The group, with another drummer, continued to perform as the Grass Roots until Dunhill Records ordered them to stop. Eventually Dunhill would hire a local L.A. band called the 13th Floor to be the final incarnation of the Grass Roots who would crank out a series of top 40 hits in the early 70s. Meanwhile the original lineup changed their name but never had the opportunity to make records again.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Albert Common Is Dead
Source: CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book)
Writer(s): Gilbert/Scala
Label: Mercury
Year: 1967
The second Blues Magoos LP, Electric Comic Book, was much in the same vein as their 1966 debut album, Psychedelic Lollipop, with a mix of fast and slow originals and a couple of cover songs, one of which was done in an extended rave-up style. The second side opener, Albert Common Is Dead, is a fast rocker (with a slowed down final chorus) about an average guy's decision to take to the road, leaving his former life behind. As many young people were doing exactly that during the summer of 1967, you might expect such a song to become somewhat of a soundtrack of its times, but with so many other songs filling that role, Albert Common Is Dead was largely overlooked by the listening public.
Artist: Cyrkle
Title: How Can I Leave Her
Source: LP: Red Rubber Ball
Writer(s): Danneman/Dawes
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Originally known as the Rhondells, the Cyrkle got a huge break when they came to the attention of Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles, in late 1965. Epstein had been looking for an American band to manage, and liked what he heard when he caught the band in Atlantic City on Labor Day weekend. By the following summer the group, whom Epstein had renamed the Cyrkle (with John Lennon credited for the unique spelling) found itself opening for the Beatles on their last North American tour, including their final live performance at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29th. By then the Cyrkle had released a hit single, Red Rubber Ball, and soon would release an album with the same title. About half the tracks on the LP were written by band members, including the soft-pop How Can I Leave Her, which features the Cyrkle's Beach Boys-inspired harmonies.
Artist: Timon
Title: The Bitter Thoughts Of Little Jane
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Timon Dogg
Label: Rhino (original label: Pye)
Year: 1967
Timon Dogg was a British folk singer that came up with a bizarre little song called The Bitter Thoughts Of Little Jane, releasing it as a single on the Pye label in late 1967. The following year Dogg signed with the Beatles' Apple label, but a planned album was never completed. Dogg later could be found working as a street singer in the London Underground, often alongside his close friend John Mellon (who would later change his name to Joe Strummer and form a band called the Clash). Dogg would eventually appear as a guest vocalist on a song he wrote called Lose This Skin on the 1980 Clash album Sandinista.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Wild Honey Pie/The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill/While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Source: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
By early 1968 the Beatles were beginning to show signs that they would not be together as a band much longer. The group had just experienced their first commercial & critical failure, the Magical Mystery Tour telefilm (although the soundtrack did quite well). Additionally, each member (except maybe Ringo) was starting to move off in his own direction as a songwriter. Nonetheless they went ahead with plans to form Apple, a company designed to market not only their music, but other products as well. The first album released on the new label was titled simply The Beatles and had a plain white cover, resulting in it soon becoming known as the White Album. It was the Beatles' first double-LP set, and the only one to feature all-new material. The music covered a wide variety of styles, some of which are even now hard to describe. As an example we have Paul McCartney's Wild Honey Pie, which segues into John Lennon's The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill. I defy anyone to define exactly what genre these two tracks are representative of. George Harrison had already written several songs that had appeared on various Beatle albums (and an occasional B side) through 1968, but his first acknowledged classic was While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which immediately follows Bungalow Bill on the album. The recording features Harrison's close friend, guitarist Eric Clapton, who at that time was enjoying superstar status as a member of Cream.
Artist: Fairport Convention
Title: Fotheringay
Source: LP: Fairport Chronicles (originally released in UK on LP: What We Did On Our Holidays, retitled Fairport Convention for US release)
Writer(s): Sandy Denny
Label: A&M
Year: 1969 (US 1970)
The early history of Fairport Convention can be a bit confusing. The original lineup released their first LP in 1968, entitled simply Fairport Convention. This album, however, never appeared in the US. The following year the group released an album called What We Did On Our Holidays, featuring new vocalist Sandy Denny. After the band began to catch on with American audiences, What We Did On Our Holidays was repackaged and released (in the US only) under the name Fairport Convention. The opening track of that album was a song called Fotheringay, a name that would be used for Denny's own band a couple of years later. Just to add even more to the confusion, when A&M released a late 70s retrospective called Fairport Chronicles they listed all the songs from What We Did On Our Holidays as being from an album called Fairport Convention (which was technically true in the US), but listed the release year for the songs as 1968, the year the British album of the same name came out, rather than 1969, the actual release year of What We Did On Our Holidays or 1970, the year the US version was released.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: When I Was Young
Source: Mono CD: The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
After the Animals disbanded in 1966, Eric Burdon set out to form a new band that would be far more psychedelic than the original group. The first release from these "New Animals" was When I Was Young. The song was credited to the entire band, a practice that would continue throughout the entire existence of the group that came to be called Eric Burdon And The Animals.
Artist: Doors
Title: Strange Days
Source: The Best Of The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
One of the first rock albums to not picture the band members on the front cover was the Doors' second LP, Strange Days. Instead, the cover featured several circus performers doing various tricks on a city street, with the band's logo appearing on a poster on the wall of a building. The album itself contains some of the Doors' most memorable tracks, including the title song, which also appears on their greatest hits album (which has Jim Morrison's picture on the cover) despite never being released as a single.
Artist: Sons Of Champlain
Title: 1982-A
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Loosen Up Naturally)
Writer(s): Steven Tollestrup
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1969
Bill Champlin is probably best known as the lead guitarist for Chicago from 1981 to 2008 (more or less). In his earlier years, however, he fronted his own band, the Sons Of Champlin. Like Chicago, the Sons were distinguished by the presence of a horn section, a trend that was just getting underway in 1969. Unlike most other bands of their type, however, the Sons Of Champlin were a San Francisco band, and one of the more popular local acts of their time. They did not show much of an interest in touring outside the Bay Area, however, and as a result got limited national exposure. The first single from the first of two album they recorded for the Capitol label was a tune called 1982-A. I really can't say what the title has to do with the lyrics of the song, but it is a catchy little number nonetheless.
Artist: Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title: Really
Source: LP: Super Session
Writer: Bloomfield/Kooper
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1968
Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield first met when they were both members of Bob Dylan's band in 1965, playing on the classic Highway 61 Revisited album and famously performing at the Newport Folk Festival, where Kooper's organ was physically assaulted by angry folk purists. After a stint with seminal jam band The Blues Project, Kooper became a staff producer for Columbia Records in New York, where he came up with the idea of an album made up entirely of studio jams. He recruited Bloomfield, who had in the intervening years played with the Butterfield Blues Band and the Electric Flag, along with bassist Harvey Brooks (also from Butterfield's band) and studio drummer Eddie Hoh and came up with the surprise hit album of 1968, Super Session. Although Bloomfield bowed out of the project halfway through, he plays on all the tracks on side one of the album, including Really, which utilizes a classic blues progression.
Artist: Otis Redding
Title: Try A Little Tenderness
Source: LP: Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer: Woods/Campbell/Connelly
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
One of the most electrifying performances at the legendary Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 happened on Saturday night during a rainstorm. Otis Redding (backed by Booker T. and the MGs, with Wayne Jackson on trumpet and Andrew Love on sax) was scheduled for the closing slot, but due to technical problems earlier in the day found himself with only enough time for five songs before the festival had to shut down for the night. At the end of his closing song, Try A Little Tenderness, Redding can be heard saying "I've got to go now. I don't want to go" as the festival's organizers, mindful of the terms of their permit, were rushing him off the stage.
Artist: Great! Society
Title: Somebody To Love
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Conspicuous Only In Its Absence)
Writer(s): Darby Slick
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1968
One of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era (and of the so-called San Francisco sound) is Somebody To Love, released by Jefferson Airplane in 1967 on their Surrealistic Pillow album. Somebody To Love was written by Darby Slick, guitarist for another San Francisco band, Great! Society. The Society had released the song, featuring Slick's sister-in-law Grace on lead vocals, as a single in early 1966 but was unable to get any local airplay for the record. In June the group played the Matrix, a club managed by Marty Balin, leader of Jefferson Airplane. The entire gig was recorded (probably by legendary Grateful Dead soundman Owsley Stanley, whose board recordings usually isolated the vocals in one channel and the instruments in the other to provide the band with a tape they could use to critique their own performance) and eventually released on an album called Conspicuous Only In Its Absence two years after Great! Society disbanded. Within a few weeks of this performance Grace Slick would leave the group to join Jefferson Airplane, taking the song with her. This whole set of circumstances can't help but raise the question of whether Balin was using the Society's gig at the Matrix as a kind of sideways audition for Slick.
Artist: Buckinghams
Title: Susan
Source: LP: The Buckinghams' Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Holvay/Beisbier/Guercio
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
The Buckinghams were a local Chicago cover band that made the big time with a song called Kind Of A Drag, released on the local USA label in 1966. Producer James William Guercio, who would become famous as the producer of both Blood, Sweat And Tears and Chicago, was enamored by the Buckinghams' use of a horn section, and got them signed to Columbia Records. The group's first LP for Columbia yielded two hit singles, Don't You Care and Mercy Mercy Mercy, as well as a few notable LP tracks written and arranged by Guercio himself. The band's last hit single, Susan, was released late in 1967. The song starts off as a somewhat bland lite pop tune, but takes an avant-garde turn about two-thirds of the way through, thanks to Guercio's unusual horn and string interlude.
Artist: Penny Peeps
Title: Model Village
Source: Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Alexander
Label: Zonophone (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
Although the British psychedelic era was considerably shorter (only about two years long) than its American counterpart, there are a surprisingly large number of British psych-pop singles that were never issued in the US. Among those was a somewhat forgettable song called Little Man With A Stick, released in 1967 by a band called the Penny Peeps. The band took its name from the risque coin-fed viewers at Brighton Beach (apparently London's version of Coney Island). Emulating his American counterparts, producer Les Reed (who wrote Little Man), allowed the band itself to come up with its own B side. The result was Model Village, a track that manages to convey a classic garage-rock energy while remaining uniquely British.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Ain't No Tellin'
Source: CD: 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.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1420 (starts 5/14/14)
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Blue Avenue
Source: LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Wayne Ulaky
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
One of Boston's most popular bands, the Beacon Street Union, had already migrated to New York City by the time their first album, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union (produced by the legendary Tom Wilson), made its debut in February of 1968. The band itself was made up of Boston University dropouts John Lincoln Wright (lead vocals), Paul Tartachny (guitar, vocals), Robert Rhodes (keyboards, brass), Richard Weisberg (drums), and Wayne Ulaky (bass). Ulaky wrote what was probably the band's best-known song, Blue Avenue. The tune was particular popular in the UK, where it was heard on the Top Gear program. The Beacon Street Union, however, fell victim to hype; in this case the ill-advised attempt on the part of M-G-M records to market several disparate bands as being part of the "boss-town sound". After a second LP, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens (produced by future Partridge Family impressario Wes Farrell) failed to equal the somewhat limited success of their debut LP, the Beacon Street Union decided to call it quits.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Source: LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone/EMI (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
The top album of 1967 was the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also the first US Beatle album to have a song lineup that was identical to the original UK LP. As such, it was also the first Beatle album released in the US to not include any songs that were also released as singles. Nonetheless, several tracks from the LP found their way onto the playlists of both top 40 AM and "underground" FM stations from coast to coast. Among the most popular of these tracks was John Lennon's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which shows up on just about everyone's list of classic psychedelic tunes.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: The Flute Thing
Source: CD: Projections
Writer(s): Al Kooper
Label: Sundazed (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1966
The Blues Project was one of the most influential bands in rock history, yet one of the least known. Perhaps the first of the "underground" rock bands, the Project made their name by playing small colleges across the country (including Hobart College, where Stuck in the Psychedelic Era is produced). The Flute Thing, from the band's second album, Projections, features bassist Andy Kuhlberg on flute, with rhythm guitarist Steve Katz taking over the bass playing, joining lead guitarist Danny Kalb and keyboardist Al Kooper for a tune that owes more to jazz artists like Roland Kirk than to anything top 40 rock had to offer at the time.
Artist: Joan Baez
Title: Daddy You Been On My Mind
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1965
Although I had heard songs like Where Have All The Flowers Gone and Blowin' In The Wind on the radio and around campfires, I did not actually own a folk record until early 1966, when I picked up a brown paper "grab bag" of four singles at a discount price at the Post Exchange at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. Among the records in the bag was a single by Joan Baez that featured a Phil Ochs song on one side and a Bob Dylan song on the other. Being a twelve-year-old kid, I had never heard of Baez or Ochs, although the name Bob Dylan was vaguely familiar to me. Still, I was intrigued by this new kind of music, that was a bit similar to songs I had heard on the radio like Where Have All The Flowers Gone, but yet had a kind of exotic strangeness that set it apart. I ended up wearing out the grooves on that 45, but years later found a promo copy of the same single at a radio station I worked at. Since that station was no longer playing vinyl I of course helped myself to the record and am happy to share it with you this week. Enjoy!
Artist: Byrds
Title: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Source: Simulated Stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (
Writer(s): Pete Seeger
Label: Priority (origina label: Columbia)
Year: 1965
After their success covering Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, the band turned to an even more revered songwriter: the legendary Pete Seeger. Turn! Turn! Turn!, with lyrics taken directly from the book of Ecclesiastes, was first recorded by Seeger in the early 60s, nearly three years after he wrote the song.
Artist: Nightcrawlers
Title: The Little Black Egg
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Stone/Conlon
Label: Rhino (original label: Lee; re-released by Kapp in 1966)
Year: 1965
The Nightcrawlers were formed by a group of high school kids from Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1965. Led by Chuck Conlon, the group caught the attention of local music publisher Robert Quimby, who also owned Lee Records. The label released two singles by the band, the second of which was The Little Black Egg. The song went to the top spot on local radio station WROD, doing well on other Florida stations as well. This led to Kapp Records picking up the record for national distribution in late 1966 (after doing a complete remix from the master tape).
Artist: Missing Links
Title: You're Driving Me Insane
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Australia as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Baden Hutchins
Label: Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year: 1965
Long before AC/DC emerged from down under, the Missing Links were known as "Australia's wildest group". The name Missing Links was first used in 1964 by a group that released only one single in 1964. The following year an entirely new lineup made up of friends and associates of the original group began using the name, releasing three singles (the first of which was You're Driving Me Insane) and an album before disbanding in April of1966.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Sky Pilot
Source: CD: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals (originally released on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
After the original Animals lineup disbanded in late 1966, lead vocalist Eric Burdon quickly set out to form a "New Animals" group that would come to be called Eric Burdon and the Animals. Their biggest hit was 1968's Sky Pilot, a song that was so long it had to be split across two sides of a 45 RPM record. The uninterrupted version of the song was included on the group's second album, The Twain Shall Meet.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.
Artist: World Column
Title: Lantern Gospel
Source: Mono British import 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 in the UK through Warner Strategic Marketing.
Artist: Sagittarius
Title: Glass
Source: CD: Present Tense
Writer(s): Marks/Sheldon
Label: Sundazed (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
Sagittarius started as a spare time project by Columbia Records staff producer Gary Usher, who had established himself as the king of surf music during the genre's heyday, working with people like Brian Wilson, Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher, as well as the Wrecking Crew (the unofficial name given to the L.A. studio musicians that played on the records he produced). Usher had been in complete creative control of his projects during the surf years and was finding out that working with people like the Byrds and Simon And Garfunkel, while financially lucrative, was creatively stifling for him, as those artists had their own creative visions and he did not want to force his own ideas on them. In early 1967, inspired by his friend Brian Wilson's Good Vibrations, Usher began working on what would become Sagittarius over the weekends and late at night when the Columbia studios were not in use. Access to the studios were not an issue (he had his own keys), nor was access to L.A.'s top studio musicians such as drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Carol Kane, who were more than happy to help out the man who had provided them so much employment over the years. The first production to be released under the Sagittarius name was a single called My World Fell Down, a piece featuring Glen Campbell on vocals that rivaled Good Vibrations itself in complexity. Usher soon took on a partner in the project, producer Curt Boettcher, who had made a huge impression on both Usher and Wilson in early 1966 when he was a producer for Our Productions, working in the same building as Wilson and Usher. Boettcher brought considerable energy and a wealth of material to Sagittarius, and in one case even a lead vocalist. Craig Brewer, a friend of Boettcher's, reportedly just happened to wander in during the recording of Glass and was drafted to provide lead vocals to the song, which had previously been recorded by the Sandpipers, a middle-of-the-road vocal combo.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Gypsy Eyes
Source: Dutch import LP: The Singles (originally released on LP: Electric Ladyland)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Polydor (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
The last album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was a double LP mixture of studio recordings and live jams in the studio with an array of guest musicians. Gypsy Eyes is a good example of Hendrix's prowess at the mixing board as well as on guitar.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Ain't No Tellin'
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (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: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Highway Chile
Source: Dutch simulated stereo import LP: The Singles
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Polydor
Year: 1967
The Jimi Hendrix Experience already had three hit singles in the UK before releasing their first LP, Are You Experienced, in May of 1967. The following month the band made its US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The gig went over so well that Reprise Records soon made arrangements to release Are You Experienced in the US. To maximize the commercial potential of the LP, Reprise decided to include the A sides of all three singles on the album, even though those songs had not been on the British version. The B sides of all three singles, however, were not included on the album. Among those missing tracks was Highway Chile, a somewhat autobiographical song that was originally paired with The Wind Cries Mary.
Artist: We The People
Title: Mirror Of Your Mind
Source: Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Thomas Talton
Label: Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year: 1966
We The People were formed when an Orlando, Florida newspaper reporter talked members of two local bands to combine into a garage/punk supergroup. The result was one of the most successful regional bands in Florida history. After their first recording got airplay on a local station, they were signed to record in Nashville for Challenge Records (a label actually based in Los Angeles) and cranked out several regional hits over the next few years. The first of these was Mirror Of Your Mind. Written by lead vocalist Tom Talton, the song is an in-your-face rocker that got played on a number of local stations and has been covered by several bands since.
Artist: Vagrants
Title: Respect
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Otis Redding
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Sounding a lot like the Rascals, the Vagrants were a popular Long Island band led by singer Peter Sabatino and best remembered for being the group that had guitarist Leslie Weinstein in it. Weinstein would change his last name to West and record a solo album called Mountain before forming the band of the same name. This version of Respect is fairly faithful to the original Otis Redding version. Unfortunately for the Vagrants, Aretha Franklin would release her rearranged version of the song just a few weeks after the Vagrants, relegating their version of the tune (and the Vagrants themselves) to footnote status.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: Time Has Come Today
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The Time Has Come)
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
One of the quintessential songs of the psychedelic era is the Chambers Brothers' classic Time Has Come Today. The song was originally recorded and issued as a single in 1966. The more familiar version heard here, however, was recorded in 1967 for the album The Time Has Come. The LP version of the song runs about eleven minutes, way too long for a 45 RPM record, so before releasing the song as a single for the second time, engineers at Columbia cut the song down to around 3 minutes. The edits proved so jarring that the record was recalled and a re-edited version, clocking in at 4:57 became the third and final single version of the song, hitting the charts in 1968.
Artist: Doors
Title: Unhappy Girl
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
After the success of their first album and the single Light My Fire in early 1967, the Doors quickly returned to the studio, releasing a second LP, Strange Days, later the same year. The first single released from the new album was People Are Strange. The B side of that single was Unhappy Girl, from the same album. Both sides got played on the jukebox at a neighborhood gasthaus known as the Woog in the village of Meisenbach near Ramstein Air Force Base (which is where I was spending most of my evenings that autumn).
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Short-Haired Fathers
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed in Greenwich Village by guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in 1967. The group originally wanted to call itself the Lost Sea Dreamers, but changed it after the Vanguard Records expressed reservations about signing a group with the initials LSD. Of the eleven tracks on the band's debut LP, only four were written by Walker, and those were in more of a folk-rock vein. Bruno's seven tracks, on the other hand, are true gems of psychedelia, ranging from the jazz-influenced Wind to the proto-punk rocker Short-Haired Fathers. The group fell apart after only two albums, mostly due to the growing musical differences between Walker and Bruno. Walker, of course, went on to become one of the most successful songwriters of the country-rock genre. As for Bruno, he's still in New York City, concentrating more on the visual arts in recent years.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in early 1967. The record, initially released without much promotion from the record label, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on both the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation and Rhino's first Nuggets LP.
Artist: Mystery Trend
Title: Johnny Was A Good Boy
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nagle/Cuff
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve)
Year: 1967
The Mystery Trend was a bit of an anomaly. Contemporaries of bands such as the Great! Society and the Charlatans, the Trend always stood a bit apart from the rest of the crowd, playing to an audience that was both a bit more affluent and a bit more "adult" (they were reportedly the house band at a Sausalito strip club). Although they played in the city itself as early as 1965, they did not release their first record until early 1967. The song, Johnny Was A Good Boy, tells the story of a seemingly normal middle-class kid who turns out to be a monster (without actually specifying what he did), surprising friends, family and neighbors. The same theme would be used by XTC in the early 1980s in the song No Thugs In Our House, one of the standout tracks from their landmark English Settlement album.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Lime Street Blues
Source: Mono British import CD: Procol Harum
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Salvo (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
Anyone expecting more of the same when flipping over their new copy of A Whiter Shade Of Pale got a big surprise when they heard Lime Street Blues. The song, reminiscent of an early Ray Charles track, was strong enough to be included on their first greatest hits collection, no mean feat for a B side.
Artist: Neil Young
Title: Southern Man
Source: CD: After The Gold Rush
Writer: Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1970
Neil Young stirred up a bit of controversy with the release of the album After The Gold Rush, mostly due to the inclusion of Southern Man, a scathingly critical look at racism in the American South. The song inspired the members of Lynnard Skynnard to write Sweet Home Alabama in response, although reportedly Young and the members of Skynnard actually thought highly of each other. There was even an attempt to get Young to make a surprise appearance at a Skynnard concert and sing the (modified) line "Southern Man don't need me around", but they were never able to coordinate their schedules enough to pull it off.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Belda-Beast
Source: LP: Evolution (originally released on LP: Ball)
Writer(s): Erik Brann
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Although his tenure as guitarist for the band was relatively short, Erik Brann is generally regarded as THE Iron Butterfly guitarist. This is probably because the two albums he recorded with the band, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Ball, are by far their best-known work. Brann, along with bassist Lee Dorman, joined keyboardist/vocalist Doug Ingle and drummer Ron Bushy after the original band split up shortly after the release of their first LP, Heavy. He quickly integrated himself into the band, co-writing several tunes with primary songwriter Ingle, and even providing one (Belda Beast from the Ball album) without any help from Ingle.
Artist: Cream
Title: Pressed Rat And Warthog
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer: Baker/Taylor
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
The opening track of side two of Cream's third album, Wheels Of Fire, is one of those songs you either love or hate. Personally I loved Pressed Rat And Warthog the first time I heard it but had several friends that absolutely detested it. As near as I can tell, Ginger Baker actually talks that way. Come to think of it, all the members of Cream have pretty heavy accents.
Artist: Third Bardo
Title: I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time
Source: Mono British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Evans/Pike
Label: Zonophone (original label: Roulette)
Year: 1967
The Third Bardo (the name coming from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) only released one single, but I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time has become, over a period of time, one of the most sought-after records of the psychedelic era. Not much is known of this New York band made up of Jeffrey Moon (vocals), Bruce Ginsberg (drums), Ricky Goldclang (lead guitar), Damian Kelly (bass) and Richy Seslowe (guitar).
Artist: Thoughts
Title: All Night Stand
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Rhino (original label: Planet)
Year: 1966
One of the most important persons in the 60s British music industry was producer Shel Talmy, who, in addition to producing the Who, the Kinks and other popular bands was involved in the book publishing business. One of the writers Talmy worked with was Thom Keyes, whose first novel, All Night Stand, dealt with the adventures of a fictitious British beat band. To help promote the book (and possibly lay the groundwork for a motion picture adaptation), Talmy commissioned the Kinks Ray Davies to write a title song for the book, which Talmy then gave to a band called the Thoughts that he had just signed to his Planet Records label. For their part the Thoughts made their living mostly by backing up local singers such as Paul Dean and the duo John And Johnny, with All Night Stand being their only record under their own name.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Dandelion
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco
Year: 1967
When the Rolling Stones' most expensive single to date, We Love You, got only a lukewarm response from American radio listeners stations began to flip the record over and play the B side, Dandelion, instead. The song ended up being one of the band's biggest US hits of 1967.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Under My Thumb
Source: LP: Aftermath
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966
With the exception of certain Beatle tracks, pretty much every well-known song from the beginning of recorded music through the year 1966 had been released as a single either on 45 or 78 RPM records (and for a while in the 1950s, on both). With Under My Thumb, from the Aftermath album, the Rolling Stones proved that someone besides the fab four could record a classic that was available only as a 33 1/3 RPM LP track. In a sense, then, Aftermath can be considered the very foundation of album rock, as more and groups put their most creative energy into making albums rather than singles in the ensuing years. Thanks, Stones.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Stoned
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Nanker Phelge
Label: Abkco (original label: Decca)
Year: 1963
The second Rolling Stones single, from November of 1963, was slated to be their first US release, but was cancelled by the shirts at London Records, who objected to the record's B side, an instrumental jam called Stoned, on "moral grounds." The track is credited to Nanker Phelge, a fictitious name created for the purpose of making sure all the band members, as well as producer Andrew Oldham, shared royalties from the song equally (not that there were any royalties to be made from a B side anyway). The record's A side, I Wanna Be Your Man (a song given to the Stones by John Lennon and Paul McCartney), was eventually issued as the B side of the Stones' next single in March of 1964, but Stoned remained unavailable in the US (except as a hard to find import) for several years.
Title: Blue Avenue
Source: LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Wayne Ulaky
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
One of Boston's most popular bands, the Beacon Street Union, had already migrated to New York City by the time their first album, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union (produced by the legendary Tom Wilson), made its debut in February of 1968. The band itself was made up of Boston University dropouts John Lincoln Wright (lead vocals), Paul Tartachny (guitar, vocals), Robert Rhodes (keyboards, brass), Richard Weisberg (drums), and Wayne Ulaky (bass). Ulaky wrote what was probably the band's best-known song, Blue Avenue. The tune was particular popular in the UK, where it was heard on the Top Gear program. The Beacon Street Union, however, fell victim to hype; in this case the ill-advised attempt on the part of M-G-M records to market several disparate bands as being part of the "boss-town sound". After a second LP, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens (produced by future Partridge Family impressario Wes Farrell) failed to equal the somewhat limited success of their debut LP, the Beacon Street Union decided to call it quits.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Source: LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone/EMI (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
The top album of 1967 was the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also the first US Beatle album to have a song lineup that was identical to the original UK LP. As such, it was also the first Beatle album released in the US to not include any songs that were also released as singles. Nonetheless, several tracks from the LP found their way onto the playlists of both top 40 AM and "underground" FM stations from coast to coast. Among the most popular of these tracks was John Lennon's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which shows up on just about everyone's list of classic psychedelic tunes.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: The Flute Thing
Source: CD: Projections
Writer(s): Al Kooper
Label: Sundazed (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1966
The Blues Project was one of the most influential bands in rock history, yet one of the least known. Perhaps the first of the "underground" rock bands, the Project made their name by playing small colleges across the country (including Hobart College, where Stuck in the Psychedelic Era is produced). The Flute Thing, from the band's second album, Projections, features bassist Andy Kuhlberg on flute, with rhythm guitarist Steve Katz taking over the bass playing, joining lead guitarist Danny Kalb and keyboardist Al Kooper for a tune that owes more to jazz artists like Roland Kirk than to anything top 40 rock had to offer at the time.
Artist: Joan Baez
Title: Daddy You Been On My Mind
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1965
Although I had heard songs like Where Have All The Flowers Gone and Blowin' In The Wind on the radio and around campfires, I did not actually own a folk record until early 1966, when I picked up a brown paper "grab bag" of four singles at a discount price at the Post Exchange at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. Among the records in the bag was a single by Joan Baez that featured a Phil Ochs song on one side and a Bob Dylan song on the other. Being a twelve-year-old kid, I had never heard of Baez or Ochs, although the name Bob Dylan was vaguely familiar to me. Still, I was intrigued by this new kind of music, that was a bit similar to songs I had heard on the radio like Where Have All The Flowers Gone, but yet had a kind of exotic strangeness that set it apart. I ended up wearing out the grooves on that 45, but years later found a promo copy of the same single at a radio station I worked at. Since that station was no longer playing vinyl I of course helped myself to the record and am happy to share it with you this week. Enjoy!
Artist: Byrds
Title: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Source: Simulated Stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (
Writer(s): Pete Seeger
Label: Priority (origina label: Columbia)
Year: 1965
After their success covering Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, the band turned to an even more revered songwriter: the legendary Pete Seeger. Turn! Turn! Turn!, with lyrics taken directly from the book of Ecclesiastes, was first recorded by Seeger in the early 60s, nearly three years after he wrote the song.
Artist: Nightcrawlers
Title: The Little Black Egg
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Stone/Conlon
Label: Rhino (original label: Lee; re-released by Kapp in 1966)
Year: 1965
The Nightcrawlers were formed by a group of high school kids from Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1965. Led by Chuck Conlon, the group caught the attention of local music publisher Robert Quimby, who also owned Lee Records. The label released two singles by the band, the second of which was The Little Black Egg. The song went to the top spot on local radio station WROD, doing well on other Florida stations as well. This led to Kapp Records picking up the record for national distribution in late 1966 (after doing a complete remix from the master tape).
Artist: Missing Links
Title: You're Driving Me Insane
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Australia as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Baden Hutchins
Label: Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year: 1965
Long before AC/DC emerged from down under, the Missing Links were known as "Australia's wildest group". The name Missing Links was first used in 1964 by a group that released only one single in 1964. The following year an entirely new lineup made up of friends and associates of the original group began using the name, releasing three singles (the first of which was You're Driving Me Insane) and an album before disbanding in April of1966.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Sky Pilot
Source: CD: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals (originally released on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
After the original Animals lineup disbanded in late 1966, lead vocalist Eric Burdon quickly set out to form a "New Animals" group that would come to be called Eric Burdon and the Animals. Their biggest hit was 1968's Sky Pilot, a song that was so long it had to be split across two sides of a 45 RPM record. The uninterrupted version of the song was included on the group's second album, The Twain Shall Meet.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.
Artist: World Column
Title: Lantern Gospel
Source: Mono British import 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 in the UK through Warner Strategic Marketing.
Artist: Sagittarius
Title: Glass
Source: CD: Present Tense
Writer(s): Marks/Sheldon
Label: Sundazed (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
Sagittarius started as a spare time project by Columbia Records staff producer Gary Usher, who had established himself as the king of surf music during the genre's heyday, working with people like Brian Wilson, Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher, as well as the Wrecking Crew (the unofficial name given to the L.A. studio musicians that played on the records he produced). Usher had been in complete creative control of his projects during the surf years and was finding out that working with people like the Byrds and Simon And Garfunkel, while financially lucrative, was creatively stifling for him, as those artists had their own creative visions and he did not want to force his own ideas on them. In early 1967, inspired by his friend Brian Wilson's Good Vibrations, Usher began working on what would become Sagittarius over the weekends and late at night when the Columbia studios were not in use. Access to the studios were not an issue (he had his own keys), nor was access to L.A.'s top studio musicians such as drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Carol Kane, who were more than happy to help out the man who had provided them so much employment over the years. The first production to be released under the Sagittarius name was a single called My World Fell Down, a piece featuring Glen Campbell on vocals that rivaled Good Vibrations itself in complexity. Usher soon took on a partner in the project, producer Curt Boettcher, who had made a huge impression on both Usher and Wilson in early 1966 when he was a producer for Our Productions, working in the same building as Wilson and Usher. Boettcher brought considerable energy and a wealth of material to Sagittarius, and in one case even a lead vocalist. Craig Brewer, a friend of Boettcher's, reportedly just happened to wander in during the recording of Glass and was drafted to provide lead vocals to the song, which had previously been recorded by the Sandpipers, a middle-of-the-road vocal combo.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Gypsy Eyes
Source: Dutch import LP: The Singles (originally released on LP: Electric Ladyland)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Polydor (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
The last album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was a double LP mixture of studio recordings and live jams in the studio with an array of guest musicians. Gypsy Eyes is a good example of Hendrix's prowess at the mixing board as well as on guitar.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Ain't No Tellin'
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (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: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Highway Chile
Source: Dutch simulated stereo import LP: The Singles
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Polydor
Year: 1967
The Jimi Hendrix Experience already had three hit singles in the UK before releasing their first LP, Are You Experienced, in May of 1967. The following month the band made its US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The gig went over so well that Reprise Records soon made arrangements to release Are You Experienced in the US. To maximize the commercial potential of the LP, Reprise decided to include the A sides of all three singles on the album, even though those songs had not been on the British version. The B sides of all three singles, however, were not included on the album. Among those missing tracks was Highway Chile, a somewhat autobiographical song that was originally paired with The Wind Cries Mary.
Artist: We The People
Title: Mirror Of Your Mind
Source: Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Thomas Talton
Label: Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year: 1966
We The People were formed when an Orlando, Florida newspaper reporter talked members of two local bands to combine into a garage/punk supergroup. The result was one of the most successful regional bands in Florida history. After their first recording got airplay on a local station, they were signed to record in Nashville for Challenge Records (a label actually based in Los Angeles) and cranked out several regional hits over the next few years. The first of these was Mirror Of Your Mind. Written by lead vocalist Tom Talton, the song is an in-your-face rocker that got played on a number of local stations and has been covered by several bands since.
Artist: Vagrants
Title: Respect
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Otis Redding
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Sounding a lot like the Rascals, the Vagrants were a popular Long Island band led by singer Peter Sabatino and best remembered for being the group that had guitarist Leslie Weinstein in it. Weinstein would change his last name to West and record a solo album called Mountain before forming the band of the same name. This version of Respect is fairly faithful to the original Otis Redding version. Unfortunately for the Vagrants, Aretha Franklin would release her rearranged version of the song just a few weeks after the Vagrants, relegating their version of the tune (and the Vagrants themselves) to footnote status.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: Time Has Come Today
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The Time Has Come)
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
One of the quintessential songs of the psychedelic era is the Chambers Brothers' classic Time Has Come Today. The song was originally recorded and issued as a single in 1966. The more familiar version heard here, however, was recorded in 1967 for the album The Time Has Come. The LP version of the song runs about eleven minutes, way too long for a 45 RPM record, so before releasing the song as a single for the second time, engineers at Columbia cut the song down to around 3 minutes. The edits proved so jarring that the record was recalled and a re-edited version, clocking in at 4:57 became the third and final single version of the song, hitting the charts in 1968.
Artist: Doors
Title: Unhappy Girl
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
After the success of their first album and the single Light My Fire in early 1967, the Doors quickly returned to the studio, releasing a second LP, Strange Days, later the same year. The first single released from the new album was People Are Strange. The B side of that single was Unhappy Girl, from the same album. Both sides got played on the jukebox at a neighborhood gasthaus known as the Woog in the village of Meisenbach near Ramstein Air Force Base (which is where I was spending most of my evenings that autumn).
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Short-Haired Fathers
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed in Greenwich Village by guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in 1967. The group originally wanted to call itself the Lost Sea Dreamers, but changed it after the Vanguard Records expressed reservations about signing a group with the initials LSD. Of the eleven tracks on the band's debut LP, only four were written by Walker, and those were in more of a folk-rock vein. Bruno's seven tracks, on the other hand, are true gems of psychedelia, ranging from the jazz-influenced Wind to the proto-punk rocker Short-Haired Fathers. The group fell apart after only two albums, mostly due to the growing musical differences between Walker and Bruno. Walker, of course, went on to become one of the most successful songwriters of the country-rock genre. As for Bruno, he's still in New York City, concentrating more on the visual arts in recent years.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in early 1967. The record, initially released without much promotion from the record label, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on both the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation and Rhino's first Nuggets LP.
Artist: Mystery Trend
Title: Johnny Was A Good Boy
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nagle/Cuff
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve)
Year: 1967
The Mystery Trend was a bit of an anomaly. Contemporaries of bands such as the Great! Society and the Charlatans, the Trend always stood a bit apart from the rest of the crowd, playing to an audience that was both a bit more affluent and a bit more "adult" (they were reportedly the house band at a Sausalito strip club). Although they played in the city itself as early as 1965, they did not release their first record until early 1967. The song, Johnny Was A Good Boy, tells the story of a seemingly normal middle-class kid who turns out to be a monster (without actually specifying what he did), surprising friends, family and neighbors. The same theme would be used by XTC in the early 1980s in the song No Thugs In Our House, one of the standout tracks from their landmark English Settlement album.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Lime Street Blues
Source: Mono British import CD: Procol Harum
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Salvo (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
Anyone expecting more of the same when flipping over their new copy of A Whiter Shade Of Pale got a big surprise when they heard Lime Street Blues. The song, reminiscent of an early Ray Charles track, was strong enough to be included on their first greatest hits collection, no mean feat for a B side.
Artist: Neil Young
Title: Southern Man
Source: CD: After The Gold Rush
Writer: Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1970
Neil Young stirred up a bit of controversy with the release of the album After The Gold Rush, mostly due to the inclusion of Southern Man, a scathingly critical look at racism in the American South. The song inspired the members of Lynnard Skynnard to write Sweet Home Alabama in response, although reportedly Young and the members of Skynnard actually thought highly of each other. There was even an attempt to get Young to make a surprise appearance at a Skynnard concert and sing the (modified) line "Southern Man don't need me around", but they were never able to coordinate their schedules enough to pull it off.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Belda-Beast
Source: LP: Evolution (originally released on LP: Ball)
Writer(s): Erik Brann
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
Although his tenure as guitarist for the band was relatively short, Erik Brann is generally regarded as THE Iron Butterfly guitarist. This is probably because the two albums he recorded with the band, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Ball, are by far their best-known work. Brann, along with bassist Lee Dorman, joined keyboardist/vocalist Doug Ingle and drummer Ron Bushy after the original band split up shortly after the release of their first LP, Heavy. He quickly integrated himself into the band, co-writing several tunes with primary songwriter Ingle, and even providing one (Belda Beast from the Ball album) without any help from Ingle.
Artist: Cream
Title: Pressed Rat And Warthog
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer: Baker/Taylor
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
The opening track of side two of Cream's third album, Wheels Of Fire, is one of those songs you either love or hate. Personally I loved Pressed Rat And Warthog the first time I heard it but had several friends that absolutely detested it. As near as I can tell, Ginger Baker actually talks that way. Come to think of it, all the members of Cream have pretty heavy accents.
Artist: Third Bardo
Title: I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time
Source: Mono British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Evans/Pike
Label: Zonophone (original label: Roulette)
Year: 1967
The Third Bardo (the name coming from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) only released one single, but I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time has become, over a period of time, one of the most sought-after records of the psychedelic era. Not much is known of this New York band made up of Jeffrey Moon (vocals), Bruce Ginsberg (drums), Ricky Goldclang (lead guitar), Damian Kelly (bass) and Richy Seslowe (guitar).
Artist: Thoughts
Title: All Night Stand
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Rhino (original label: Planet)
Year: 1966
One of the most important persons in the 60s British music industry was producer Shel Talmy, who, in addition to producing the Who, the Kinks and other popular bands was involved in the book publishing business. One of the writers Talmy worked with was Thom Keyes, whose first novel, All Night Stand, dealt with the adventures of a fictitious British beat band. To help promote the book (and possibly lay the groundwork for a motion picture adaptation), Talmy commissioned the Kinks Ray Davies to write a title song for the book, which Talmy then gave to a band called the Thoughts that he had just signed to his Planet Records label. For their part the Thoughts made their living mostly by backing up local singers such as Paul Dean and the duo John And Johnny, with All Night Stand being their only record under their own name.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Dandelion
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco
Year: 1967
When the Rolling Stones' most expensive single to date, We Love You, got only a lukewarm response from American radio listeners stations began to flip the record over and play the B side, Dandelion, instead. The song ended up being one of the band's biggest US hits of 1967.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Under My Thumb
Source: LP: Aftermath
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966
With the exception of certain Beatle tracks, pretty much every well-known song from the beginning of recorded music through the year 1966 had been released as a single either on 45 or 78 RPM records (and for a while in the 1950s, on both). With Under My Thumb, from the Aftermath album, the Rolling Stones proved that someone besides the fab four could record a classic that was available only as a 33 1/3 RPM LP track. In a sense, then, Aftermath can be considered the very foundation of album rock, as more and groups put their most creative energy into making albums rather than singles in the ensuing years. Thanks, Stones.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Stoned
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Nanker Phelge
Label: Abkco (original label: Decca)
Year: 1963
The second Rolling Stones single, from November of 1963, was slated to be their first US release, but was cancelled by the shirts at London Records, who objected to the record's B side, an instrumental jam called Stoned, on "moral grounds." The track is credited to Nanker Phelge, a fictitious name created for the purpose of making sure all the band members, as well as producer Andrew Oldham, shared royalties from the song equally (not that there were any royalties to be made from a B side anyway). The record's A side, I Wanna Be Your Man (a song given to the Stones by John Lennon and Paul McCartney), was eventually issued as the B side of the Stones' next single in March of 1964, but Stoned remained unavailable in the US (except as a hard to find import) for several years.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1419 (starts 5/7/14)
Artist: Beatles
Title: Lovely Rita
Source: LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol/EMI
Year: 1967
By 1967 John Lennon and Paul McCartney were a songwriting team in name only, with nearly all their compositions being the work of one or the other, but not both. Lovely Rita, from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, was pure McCartney. The song features McCartney on both piano and overdubbed bass, with Lennon and George Harrison on guitars and Ringo Starr on drums. Pink Floyd, who were recording their debut LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn at the same Abbey Road studios the Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's at, ended up borrowing some of the effects heard toward the end of Lovely Rita for their own Pow R Toc H.
Artist: Who
Title: Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
There are at least three versions of Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands. A faster, electric version of the song was released only in the US as the B side to I Can See For Miles, while this semi-latin flavored acoustic version was included on The Who Sell Out. Yet another version is featured as a bonus track on the 1993 CD release of Sell Out.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: Desiree
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brown/Feher
Label: Rhino (original label: Smash)
Year: 1967
For a while it looked as if the Left Banke would emerge as one of the most important bands of the late 60s. They certainly got off to a good start, with back-to-back top 10 singles Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina. But then bandleader Michael Brown and Smash Records made a serious misstep, issuing a Brown solo effort called Ivy Ivy utilizing studio musicians and trying to pass it off as a Left Banke record. The other band members refused to go along with the charade and sent out letters to their fan club membership denouncing the single. The outraged fans, in turn, threatened to boycott any radio stations that played the single. Brown and the rest of the band, meanwhile, managed to patch things up enough to record a new single, Desiree, and released the song in late 1967. By then, however, radio stations were leery of playing anything with the words Left Banke on the label, and the song failed to chart, despite being an outstanding single. Brown left the Left Banke soon after.
Artist: Doors
Title: Take It As It Comes
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
L.A.'s Whisky-A-Go-Go was the place to be in 1966. Not only were some of the city's hottest bands playing there, but for a while the house band was none other than the Doors, playing songs like Take It As It Comes. One evening in early August Jack Holzman, president of Elektra Records, and producer Paul Rothchild were among those attending the club, having been invited there to hear the Doors by Arthur Lee (who with his band Love was already recording for Elektra). After hearing two sets Holzman signed the group to a contract with the label, making the Doors only the second rock band on the Elektra label (although the Butterfield Blues Band is considered by some to be the first, predating Love by several months). By the end of the month the Doors were in the studio recording songs like Take It As It Comes for their debut LP, which was released in January of 1967.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Good Times, Bad Times
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1964
It may be hard to imagine now, but the first Rolling Stones US tour was less than a complete success. In order to salvage something positive about the trip abroad, producer Andrew Loog Oldham arranged for the band to book time at Chicago's Chess Records studio, where many of the band's idols had recorded for the past decade. One of the songs from those sessions was Good Times, Bad Times. The song was only the second Jagger/Richards composition to be recorded by the Stones, and the first to be released on 45 RPM vinyl. Since 45s outsold LPs by a factor of at least five to one in 1964, this was an important distinction.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
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: Pretty Things
Title: Talkin' About The Good Times
Source: Mono British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): May/Taylor/Waller
Label: EMI (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
Although the Pretty Things, co-founded by guitarist Dick Taylor and vocalist Phil May, had started off doing R&B cover tunes (as did their London contemporaries the Who and the Rolling Stones), by late 1967 they had moved into psychedelic territory, with Taylor and May developing their songwriting skills at the same time. Working with producer Norman Smith (who had just finished engineering Pink Floyd's debut LP), the band recorded a pair of sides for EMI's flagship Columbia label at Abbey Road studios in November. The resulting single, Talkin' About The Good Times, was successful enough to give the band the opportunity to record an entire album, the legendary S.F. Sorrow.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Can You See Me
Source: CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
Before releasing the first Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Are You Experienced, in the US, Reprise Records decided to make some changes to the track lineup, adding three songs that had been released as non-album singles in the UK. To make room for these, three songs were cut from the original UK version of the LP. The most popular of these three tracks was Can You See Me, a song that was included in the band's US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. Despite the audience's positive response to the song, the band apparently dropped Can You See Me from their live set shortly after Monterey. The song was originally slated to be released as the B side of The Wind Cries Mary, but instead was used as an album track.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Message To Love
Source: LP: Band Of Gypsys
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Capitol
Year: 1970
In the mid-1960s Jimi Hendrix sat in on some recording sessions with his friend Curtis Knight, signing what he thought was a standard release contract at the time. It wasn't until Hendrix was an international star that the signing came back to haunt him in the form of a lawsuit by Capitol Records accusing him of breach of contract. The end result was that Hendrix ended up owing the label two albums, the first being an album called Get That Feeling that was made up of the material Hendrix had recorded with Knight. The second album was to be all new material, but at the time of the settlement in mid-1969 Hendrix had just disbanded the Experience and was experimenting around with different combinations of musicians before getting to work on his next studio project. Hendrix appeared at Woodstock with a number of these musicians, including his old Army buddy Billy Cox on bass. The two of them soon began to work up a live set with drummer Buddy Miles, who had made a guest appearance on the last Experience album, Electric Ladyland. The new three-piece group, calling itself Band Of Gypsys, played a two-night engagement at New York's Madison Square Garden over the New Year's holiday, using the best performances from both nights to compile a live album that was released by Capitol the following spring. Among the new songs that made their debut on Band Of Gypsys was Message To Love. The song is a fair indication of the direction that Hendrix's music was beginning to take.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Manic Depression
Source: CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
On February 22, 1967 the Jimi Hendrix Experience played what was possibly their worst gig, which culminated in Hendrix's white Stratocaster being stolen before it was fully paid for. Later that night the band made an appearance at a press reception at which Hendrix, in the words of manager/producer Chas Chandler, sounded like a manic depressive. Inspired by Chandler's observation, Hendrix wrote a song on the subject, which he taught to the band and recorded the next day. Hendrix later referred to Manic Depression as "ugly times music", calling it a "today's type of blues."
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Like A Rolling Stone
Source: CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Bob Dylan incurred the wrath of folk purists when he decided to use electric instruments for his 1965 LP Highway 61 Revisited. The opening track on the album is the six-minute Like A Rolling Stone, a song that was also selected to be the first single released from the new album. After the single was pressed, the shirts at Columbia Records decided to cancel the release due to its length. An acetate copy of the record, however, made it to a local New York club, where, by audience request, the record was played over and over until it was worn out (acetate copies not being as durable as their vinyl counterparts). When Columbia started getting calls from local radio stations demanding copies of the song the next morning they decided to release the single after all. Like A Rolling Stone ended up going all the way to the number two spot on the US charts, doing quite well in several other countries as well. Personnel on this historic recording included guitarist Michael Bloomfield, pianist Paul Griffin, drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Joe Madho, guitarist Charlie McCoy and tambourinist Bruce Langhorne. In addition, guitarist Al Kooper, who was on the scene as a guest of producer Tom Wilson, sat in on organ, ad-libbing a part that so impressed Dylan that he insisted it be given a prominent place in the final mixdown. This in turn led to Kooper permanently switching over to keyboards for the remainder of his career.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Blowin' In The Wind
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of The Original Mono Recordings (originally released on LP: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1963
Generally acknowledged as Bob Dylan's first true classic, Blowin' In The Wind first appeared on the 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The song was popularized the following year by Peter, Paul and Mary and soon was the single most played song around campfires from coast to coast. For all I know it still is. (Do people still sing around campfires?)
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: From A Buick 6
Source: CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Although Bob Dylan had experimented with using electric instruments on some of the tracks of his 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, he went all out with his next LP, Highway 61 Revisited. Many of the songs had a whole new sound to them, while others, such as From A Buick 6, were more or less in the same style as Dylan's earlier songs, but electrified.
Artist: Byrds
Title: The Times They Are A-Changin'
Source: LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Despite occupying a prominent place in rock history, the folk-rock movement actually had a fairly short lifespan. The most successful folk-rock band, the Byrds, only cut two albums with their original lineup before entering a more experimental phase with the 5D album. Both those early LPs were released in 1965, and by mid-1966 folk-rock had already given way to garage-rock, flower power and psychedelic music. Like the Mr. Tambourine Man album before it, Turn! Turn! Turn! was dominated by electrified versions of existing folk songs, many of which were written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan. Although The Times They Are A-Changin' was a staple of the band's live sets at Ciro's Le Disc on Sunset Strip and on the road, the song was only released as a single in the UK, where it became one of the band's biggest hits there.
Artist: Byrds
Title: You Movin'
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: The Preflyte Sessions)
Writer(s): Gene Clark
Label: Rhino (original label: Sundazed)
Year: Recorded 1964, released 2001
Although the Byrds got their first hit with a Bob Dylan cover, Mr. Tambourine Man, they did have a quality songwriter right from the beginning in the person of guitarist Gene Clark. One of the earliest Clark songs to be recorded by the band was You Movin', which was included on a 1964 demo tape that remained unreleased until 2001.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Source: LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
It did not take long for the Byrds to get a reputation as the band that depended on Bob Dylan for their material. This reputation was not entirely undeserved, as they did include a inordinately large number of Dylan covers on their first two albums. Among the many Dylan songs on their second LP, 1965's Turn! Turn! Turn!, was Lay Down Your Weary Tune. At least this one was never released as a single.
Artist: Kinks
Title: House In The Country
Source: Mono LP: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1966
The Kinks 1966 LP Face To Face is sometimes considered an early concept album, dealing as it does with the subject of modern life, particulary in the band's native England. Then again, nearly all their material from 1966 deals with the same theme, so whether Face To Face is a true concept album along the lines of their later album Arthur is debatable. Regardless, Face To Face is indeed full of topical songs such as House In The Country (something most modern city dwellers dream of at least occasionally).
Artist: Cream
Title: World Of Pain
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Collins/Pappalardi
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Whereas the first Cream LP was made up of mostly blues-oriented material, Disraeli Gears took a much more psychedelic turn, due in large part to the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. The Bruce/Brown team was not, however, the only source of material for the band. Both Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker made contributions, as did Cream's unofficial fourth member, producer (and keyboardist) Felix Pappalardi, who, along with his wife Janet Collins, provided World Of Pain.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Today
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to Today, an early collaboration between rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and bandleader Marty Balin on Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Punky's Dilemma
Source: LP: Bookends
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1968
Originally written specifically for the 1967 soundtrack of the movie The Graduate but rejected by the producers, Punky's Dilemma sat on the shelf until the following year, when it became the only track on side two of Simon And Garfunkel's Bookends LP that had not been previously released. The lyrics are about as psychedelic as Simon And Garfunkel ever got.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Shine On Brightly
Source: LP: Shine On Brightly
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M
Year: 1968
Although it was never released as a single, the title track of Procol Harum's second album, Shine On Brightly, is probably their most commercially viable song on the album. Opening with power chords from organist Matthew Fischer and augmented by guitarist Robin Trower, the song quickly moves into psychedelic territory with some of Keith Reid's trippiest lyrics ever, including the refrain "my befuddled brain shines on brightly, quite insane." One of their best tracks ever.
Artist: Quiet Jungle
Title: Everything
Source: Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released in Canada as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mark Taylor
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Yorkshire)
Year: 1967
Musically speaking, 1967 was a busy year in the US, with the Summer of Love in San Francisco, the aftermath of the Sunset Strip crackdowns on teenagers in Los Angeles, Andy Warhol's unveiling of the Velvet Underground in New York, and of course, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band casting its shadow over everything. It's easy to see, then, how happenings in neighboring Canada pretty much went under the radar, with bands like the Guess Who cranking out hit after hit without getting any attention whatsoever south of the border. That all changed in 1969 for that band, but other groups, such as Toronto's Quiet Jungle, were never successful outside of Canada itself. That did not stop Yorkshire Records from putting out plenty of singles, however, including Everything, a 1967 tune from the aforementioned Quiet Jungle.
Artist: Santana
Title: Samba Pa Ti
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer(s): Carlos Santana
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
One of the most enduring tracks from Santana's second LP, Abraxis, Samba Pa Ti starts off as a slow instrumental, slowly picking up the pace and adding percussion to give it a decidedly latin flavor. As far as I know, Carlos Santana still includes Samba Pa Ti in his concert repertoire.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Where There's Smoke, There's Fire
Source: LP: Live At Town Hall
Writer: Kooper/Levine/Brass
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Al Kooper left the Blues Project in early 1967. That probably should have been the end of the story, but the record company instead decided to patch together some recordings made while Kooper was still with the band to create a new album. They called the album Live At Town Hall, despite the fact that several tracks were not recorded live, instead being studio tracks with audience sounds overdubbed onto the beginning and end of each track, and most of the live tracks were not actually recorded at Town Hall. One of these studio tracks was Where There's Smoke, There's Fire, which actually predates the 1966 Projections album and was released as a single (without the fake audience sounds) in June of that year.
Artist: Charlatans
Title: How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away
Source: CD: The Amazing Charlatans
Writer(s): Dan Hicks
Label: Big Beat
Year: 1967
The Charlatans tried to make a point of writing and performing songs that were not tied to any particular time or place (such as mid-60s San Francisco). Oddly enough this led to some songs, such as How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away, having a decidedly 19th century feel to them. Since the band tended to wear 19th century clothing, it actually worked quite well. Charlatans drummer Dan Hicks, who wrote How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away, later recorded a more commercial version of the song with his own band, Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks, in 1969. For my money, however, the original unreleased 1967 Charlatans version of the tune is far more fun to listen to, sloppiness and all.
Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title: Codine
Source: LP: Revolution soundtrack
Writer(s): Buffy St. Marie
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
Buffy St. Marie's Codine was a popular favorite among the club crowd in mid-60s California. In 1967, L.A. band The Leaves included it on their second LP. Around the same time, up the coast in San Francisco, the Charlatans selected it to be their debut single. The suits at Kama-Sutra Records, however, balked at the choice, and instead sold the band's master tapes to Kapp Records, who then released the group's cover of the Coasters' The Shadow Knows (and sped up the master tape in the mastering process). The novelty-flavored record bombed so bad that the label decided not to release any more Charlatans tracks, thus leaving their version of Codine gathering dust in the vaults until the mid 1990s, when the entire Kama-Sutra sessions were released on CD. Meanwhile, back in 1968, fellow San Francisco band Quicksilver Messenger Service was still without a record contract, despite pulling decent crowds at various Bay Area venues, including a credible appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. Quicksilver did find their way onto vinyl, however, when the producers of the quasi-documentary film Revolution decided to include footage of the band playing Codine, and commissioned this studio recording of the song for the soundtrack album.
Artist: Allman Brothers Band
Title: Whipping Post
Source: CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: The Allman Brothers Band)
Writer(s): Gregg Allman
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1969
It's hard to believe now, but when it was released in 1969, the first Allman Brothers Band LP did not sell all that well. Even stranger, the critics were at best lukewarm in their reviews of the album. It wasn't until the band released a live album in 1971 that had been recorded during the final days of the Fillmore East that the Allman Brothers became a major force in rock. Not long after that Atco Records re-released both the Allman Brothers Band and its followup, Idlewild South, as a double-LP entitled Beginnings. One of the high points of the Fillmore East album was the band's rendition of Whipping Post, heard here in its original studio form.
Artist: Mothers of Invention
Title: Return of the Son of Monster Magnet
Source: LP: Freak Out
Writer: Frank Zappa
Label: Verve
Year: 1966
Return of the Son of Monster Magnet was the most experimental piece on the first Mothers Of Invention album, taking up the entirety of side four. Described in the liner notes (written by Frank Zappa) as the result of turning a bunch of freaks loose in the studio with $300 worth of rented percussion instruments at 3AM, the piece served notice that Zappa was not afraid to emulate such modern composers as John Cage and Edgard Varese.
Title: Lovely Rita
Source: LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol/EMI
Year: 1967
By 1967 John Lennon and Paul McCartney were a songwriting team in name only, with nearly all their compositions being the work of one or the other, but not both. Lovely Rita, from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, was pure McCartney. The song features McCartney on both piano and overdubbed bass, with Lennon and George Harrison on guitars and Ringo Starr on drums. Pink Floyd, who were recording their debut LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn at the same Abbey Road studios the Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's at, ended up borrowing some of the effects heard toward the end of Lovely Rita for their own Pow R Toc H.
Artist: Who
Title: Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands
Source: CD: The Who Sell Out
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
There are at least three versions of Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands. A faster, electric version of the song was released only in the US as the B side to I Can See For Miles, while this semi-latin flavored acoustic version was included on The Who Sell Out. Yet another version is featured as a bonus track on the 1993 CD release of Sell Out.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: Desiree
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brown/Feher
Label: Rhino (original label: Smash)
Year: 1967
For a while it looked as if the Left Banke would emerge as one of the most important bands of the late 60s. They certainly got off to a good start, with back-to-back top 10 singles Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina. But then bandleader Michael Brown and Smash Records made a serious misstep, issuing a Brown solo effort called Ivy Ivy utilizing studio musicians and trying to pass it off as a Left Banke record. The other band members refused to go along with the charade and sent out letters to their fan club membership denouncing the single. The outraged fans, in turn, threatened to boycott any radio stations that played the single. Brown and the rest of the band, meanwhile, managed to patch things up enough to record a new single, Desiree, and released the song in late 1967. By then, however, radio stations were leery of playing anything with the words Left Banke on the label, and the song failed to chart, despite being an outstanding single. Brown left the Left Banke soon after.
Artist: Doors
Title: Take It As It Comes
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
L.A.'s Whisky-A-Go-Go was the place to be in 1966. Not only were some of the city's hottest bands playing there, but for a while the house band was none other than the Doors, playing songs like Take It As It Comes. One evening in early August Jack Holzman, president of Elektra Records, and producer Paul Rothchild were among those attending the club, having been invited there to hear the Doors by Arthur Lee (who with his band Love was already recording for Elektra). After hearing two sets Holzman signed the group to a contract with the label, making the Doors only the second rock band on the Elektra label (although the Butterfield Blues Band is considered by some to be the first, predating Love by several months). By the end of the month the Doors were in the studio recording songs like Take It As It Comes for their debut LP, which was released in January of 1967.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Good Times, Bad Times
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1964
It may be hard to imagine now, but the first Rolling Stones US tour was less than a complete success. In order to salvage something positive about the trip abroad, producer Andrew Loog Oldham arranged for the band to book time at Chicago's Chess Records studio, where many of the band's idols had recorded for the past decade. One of the songs from those sessions was Good Times, Bad Times. The song was only the second Jagger/Richards composition to be recorded by the Stones, and the first to be released on 45 RPM vinyl. Since 45s outsold LPs by a factor of at least five to one in 1964, this was an important distinction.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: CD: Da Capo
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
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: Pretty Things
Title: Talkin' About The Good Times
Source: Mono British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): May/Taylor/Waller
Label: EMI (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
Although the Pretty Things, co-founded by guitarist Dick Taylor and vocalist Phil May, had started off doing R&B cover tunes (as did their London contemporaries the Who and the Rolling Stones), by late 1967 they had moved into psychedelic territory, with Taylor and May developing their songwriting skills at the same time. Working with producer Norman Smith (who had just finished engineering Pink Floyd's debut LP), the band recorded a pair of sides for EMI's flagship Columbia label at Abbey Road studios in November. The resulting single, Talkin' About The Good Times, was successful enough to give the band the opportunity to record an entire album, the legendary S.F. Sorrow.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Can You See Me
Source: CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA
Year: 1967
Before releasing the first Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Are You Experienced, in the US, Reprise Records decided to make some changes to the track lineup, adding three songs that had been released as non-album singles in the UK. To make room for these, three songs were cut from the original UK version of the LP. The most popular of these three tracks was Can You See Me, a song that was included in the band's US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. Despite the audience's positive response to the song, the band apparently dropped Can You See Me from their live set shortly after Monterey. The song was originally slated to be released as the B side of The Wind Cries Mary, but instead was used as an album track.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Title: Message To Love
Source: LP: Band Of Gypsys
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Capitol
Year: 1970
In the mid-1960s Jimi Hendrix sat in on some recording sessions with his friend Curtis Knight, signing what he thought was a standard release contract at the time. It wasn't until Hendrix was an international star that the signing came back to haunt him in the form of a lawsuit by Capitol Records accusing him of breach of contract. The end result was that Hendrix ended up owing the label two albums, the first being an album called Get That Feeling that was made up of the material Hendrix had recorded with Knight. The second album was to be all new material, but at the time of the settlement in mid-1969 Hendrix had just disbanded the Experience and was experimenting around with different combinations of musicians before getting to work on his next studio project. Hendrix appeared at Woodstock with a number of these musicians, including his old Army buddy Billy Cox on bass. The two of them soon began to work up a live set with drummer Buddy Miles, who had made a guest appearance on the last Experience album, Electric Ladyland. The new three-piece group, calling itself Band Of Gypsys, played a two-night engagement at New York's Madison Square Garden over the New Year's holiday, using the best performances from both nights to compile a live album that was released by Capitol the following spring. Among the new songs that made their debut on Band Of Gypsys was Message To Love. The song is a fair indication of the direction that Hendrix's music was beginning to take.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Manic Depression
Source: CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
On February 22, 1967 the Jimi Hendrix Experience played what was possibly their worst gig, which culminated in Hendrix's white Stratocaster being stolen before it was fully paid for. Later that night the band made an appearance at a press reception at which Hendrix, in the words of manager/producer Chas Chandler, sounded like a manic depressive. Inspired by Chandler's observation, Hendrix wrote a song on the subject, which he taught to the band and recorded the next day. Hendrix later referred to Manic Depression as "ugly times music", calling it a "today's type of blues."
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Like A Rolling Stone
Source: CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Bob Dylan incurred the wrath of folk purists when he decided to use electric instruments for his 1965 LP Highway 61 Revisited. The opening track on the album is the six-minute Like A Rolling Stone, a song that was also selected to be the first single released from the new album. After the single was pressed, the shirts at Columbia Records decided to cancel the release due to its length. An acetate copy of the record, however, made it to a local New York club, where, by audience request, the record was played over and over until it was worn out (acetate copies not being as durable as their vinyl counterparts). When Columbia started getting calls from local radio stations demanding copies of the song the next morning they decided to release the single after all. Like A Rolling Stone ended up going all the way to the number two spot on the US charts, doing quite well in several other countries as well. Personnel on this historic recording included guitarist Michael Bloomfield, pianist Paul Griffin, drummer Bobby Gregg, bassist Joe Madho, guitarist Charlie McCoy and tambourinist Bruce Langhorne. In addition, guitarist Al Kooper, who was on the scene as a guest of producer Tom Wilson, sat in on organ, ad-libbing a part that so impressed Dylan that he insisted it be given a prominent place in the final mixdown. This in turn led to Kooper permanently switching over to keyboards for the remainder of his career.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Blowin' In The Wind
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of The Original Mono Recordings (originally released on LP: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1963
Generally acknowledged as Bob Dylan's first true classic, Blowin' In The Wind first appeared on the 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The song was popularized the following year by Peter, Paul and Mary and soon was the single most played song around campfires from coast to coast. For all I know it still is. (Do people still sing around campfires?)
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: From A Buick 6
Source: CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Although Bob Dylan had experimented with using electric instruments on some of the tracks of his 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, he went all out with his next LP, Highway 61 Revisited. Many of the songs had a whole new sound to them, while others, such as From A Buick 6, were more or less in the same style as Dylan's earlier songs, but electrified.
Artist: Byrds
Title: The Times They Are A-Changin'
Source: LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Despite occupying a prominent place in rock history, the folk-rock movement actually had a fairly short lifespan. The most successful folk-rock band, the Byrds, only cut two albums with their original lineup before entering a more experimental phase with the 5D album. Both those early LPs were released in 1965, and by mid-1966 folk-rock had already given way to garage-rock, flower power and psychedelic music. Like the Mr. Tambourine Man album before it, Turn! Turn! Turn! was dominated by electrified versions of existing folk songs, many of which were written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan. Although The Times They Are A-Changin' was a staple of the band's live sets at Ciro's Le Disc on Sunset Strip and on the road, the song was only released as a single in the UK, where it became one of the band's biggest hits there.
Artist: Byrds
Title: You Movin'
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: The Preflyte Sessions)
Writer(s): Gene Clark
Label: Rhino (original label: Sundazed)
Year: Recorded 1964, released 2001
Although the Byrds got their first hit with a Bob Dylan cover, Mr. Tambourine Man, they did have a quality songwriter right from the beginning in the person of guitarist Gene Clark. One of the earliest Clark songs to be recorded by the band was You Movin', which was included on a 1964 demo tape that remained unreleased until 2001.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Source: LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
It did not take long for the Byrds to get a reputation as the band that depended on Bob Dylan for their material. This reputation was not entirely undeserved, as they did include a inordinately large number of Dylan covers on their first two albums. Among the many Dylan songs on their second LP, 1965's Turn! Turn! Turn!, was Lay Down Your Weary Tune. At least this one was never released as a single.
Artist: Kinks
Title: House In The Country
Source: Mono LP: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1966
The Kinks 1966 LP Face To Face is sometimes considered an early concept album, dealing as it does with the subject of modern life, particulary in the band's native England. Then again, nearly all their material from 1966 deals with the same theme, so whether Face To Face is a true concept album along the lines of their later album Arthur is debatable. Regardless, Face To Face is indeed full of topical songs such as House In The Country (something most modern city dwellers dream of at least occasionally).
Artist: Cream
Title: World Of Pain
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Collins/Pappalardi
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Whereas the first Cream LP was made up of mostly blues-oriented material, Disraeli Gears took a much more psychedelic turn, due in large part to the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. The Bruce/Brown team was not, however, the only source of material for the band. Both Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker made contributions, as did Cream's unofficial fourth member, producer (and keyboardist) Felix Pappalardi, who, along with his wife Janet Collins, provided World Of Pain.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Today
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to Today, an early collaboration between rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and bandleader Marty Balin on Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Punky's Dilemma
Source: LP: Bookends
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1968
Originally written specifically for the 1967 soundtrack of the movie The Graduate but rejected by the producers, Punky's Dilemma sat on the shelf until the following year, when it became the only track on side two of Simon And Garfunkel's Bookends LP that had not been previously released. The lyrics are about as psychedelic as Simon And Garfunkel ever got.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Shine On Brightly
Source: LP: Shine On Brightly
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M
Year: 1968
Although it was never released as a single, the title track of Procol Harum's second album, Shine On Brightly, is probably their most commercially viable song on the album. Opening with power chords from organist Matthew Fischer and augmented by guitarist Robin Trower, the song quickly moves into psychedelic territory with some of Keith Reid's trippiest lyrics ever, including the refrain "my befuddled brain shines on brightly, quite insane." One of their best tracks ever.
Artist: Quiet Jungle
Title: Everything
Source: Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released in Canada as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mark Taylor
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Yorkshire)
Year: 1967
Musically speaking, 1967 was a busy year in the US, with the Summer of Love in San Francisco, the aftermath of the Sunset Strip crackdowns on teenagers in Los Angeles, Andy Warhol's unveiling of the Velvet Underground in New York, and of course, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band casting its shadow over everything. It's easy to see, then, how happenings in neighboring Canada pretty much went under the radar, with bands like the Guess Who cranking out hit after hit without getting any attention whatsoever south of the border. That all changed in 1969 for that band, but other groups, such as Toronto's Quiet Jungle, were never successful outside of Canada itself. That did not stop Yorkshire Records from putting out plenty of singles, however, including Everything, a 1967 tune from the aforementioned Quiet Jungle.
Artist: Santana
Title: Samba Pa Ti
Source: CD: Abraxas
Writer(s): Carlos Santana
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
One of the most enduring tracks from Santana's second LP, Abraxis, Samba Pa Ti starts off as a slow instrumental, slowly picking up the pace and adding percussion to give it a decidedly latin flavor. As far as I know, Carlos Santana still includes Samba Pa Ti in his concert repertoire.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Where There's Smoke, There's Fire
Source: LP: Live At Town Hall
Writer: Kooper/Levine/Brass
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Al Kooper left the Blues Project in early 1967. That probably should have been the end of the story, but the record company instead decided to patch together some recordings made while Kooper was still with the band to create a new album. They called the album Live At Town Hall, despite the fact that several tracks were not recorded live, instead being studio tracks with audience sounds overdubbed onto the beginning and end of each track, and most of the live tracks were not actually recorded at Town Hall. One of these studio tracks was Where There's Smoke, There's Fire, which actually predates the 1966 Projections album and was released as a single (without the fake audience sounds) in June of that year.
Artist: Charlatans
Title: How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away
Source: CD: The Amazing Charlatans
Writer(s): Dan Hicks
Label: Big Beat
Year: 1967
The Charlatans tried to make a point of writing and performing songs that were not tied to any particular time or place (such as mid-60s San Francisco). Oddly enough this led to some songs, such as How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away, having a decidedly 19th century feel to them. Since the band tended to wear 19th century clothing, it actually worked quite well. Charlatans drummer Dan Hicks, who wrote How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away, later recorded a more commercial version of the song with his own band, Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks, in 1969. For my money, however, the original unreleased 1967 Charlatans version of the tune is far more fun to listen to, sloppiness and all.
Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title: Codine
Source: LP: Revolution soundtrack
Writer(s): Buffy St. Marie
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
Buffy St. Marie's Codine was a popular favorite among the club crowd in mid-60s California. In 1967, L.A. band The Leaves included it on their second LP. Around the same time, up the coast in San Francisco, the Charlatans selected it to be their debut single. The suits at Kama-Sutra Records, however, balked at the choice, and instead sold the band's master tapes to Kapp Records, who then released the group's cover of the Coasters' The Shadow Knows (and sped up the master tape in the mastering process). The novelty-flavored record bombed so bad that the label decided not to release any more Charlatans tracks, thus leaving their version of Codine gathering dust in the vaults until the mid 1990s, when the entire Kama-Sutra sessions were released on CD. Meanwhile, back in 1968, fellow San Francisco band Quicksilver Messenger Service was still without a record contract, despite pulling decent crowds at various Bay Area venues, including a credible appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. Quicksilver did find their way onto vinyl, however, when the producers of the quasi-documentary film Revolution decided to include footage of the band playing Codine, and commissioned this studio recording of the song for the soundtrack album.
Artist: Allman Brothers Band
Title: Whipping Post
Source: CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: The Allman Brothers Band)
Writer(s): Gregg Allman
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1969
It's hard to believe now, but when it was released in 1969, the first Allman Brothers Band LP did not sell all that well. Even stranger, the critics were at best lukewarm in their reviews of the album. It wasn't until the band released a live album in 1971 that had been recorded during the final days of the Fillmore East that the Allman Brothers became a major force in rock. Not long after that Atco Records re-released both the Allman Brothers Band and its followup, Idlewild South, as a double-LP entitled Beginnings. One of the high points of the Fillmore East album was the band's rendition of Whipping Post, heard here in its original studio form.
Artist: Mothers of Invention
Title: Return of the Son of Monster Magnet
Source: LP: Freak Out
Writer: Frank Zappa
Label: Verve
Year: 1966
Return of the Son of Monster Magnet was the most experimental piece on the first Mothers Of Invention album, taking up the entirety of side four. Described in the liner notes (written by Frank Zappa) as the result of turning a bunch of freaks loose in the studio with $300 worth of rented percussion instruments at 3AM, the piece served notice that Zappa was not afraid to emulate such modern composers as John Cage and Edgard Varese.
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