Artist: Grand Funk Railroad
Title: Mr. Limousine Driver (extended version)
Source: CD: Grand Funk (bonus track)
Writer(s): Mark Farner
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
With the advent of eight-track technology, artists sometimes found themselves with more recording space than they actually needed. Bands like Grand Funk Railroad, who only had three members, were generally able to lay down the basic instrumentals on only four tracks (two for drums and one each for bass and guitar), adding vocals on one or two of the remaining tracks. This left extra room for multiple takes of the lead guitar solos and fills. This extended version of one of their most popular tunes, Mr. Limousine Driver, (which was originally released on the band's second LP, Grand Funk (aka The Red Album)), uses the same basic instrumental and vocal tracks as the LP version, but features an unused alternate lead guitar track and does not fade out early like the version heard on the album Grand Funk.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: My Mirage
Source: LP: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
One thing about Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida album is that almost nobody remembers any of the songs from the other side of the album. That's a bit of a shame, because there are a couple of really good tunes on there, such as My Mirage, a Doug Ingle composition that helped lay the groundwork for the progressive rock movement of the 1970s.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Cool, Calm And Collected
Source: LP: Between The Buttons
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
The Rolling Stones were beginning to experiment with psychedelia on their first album of 1967, Between The Buttons. Cool, Calm and Collected, which closes side one of the LP, features pianist Nicky Hopkins prominently. Hopkins, one of the most respected British session players (and the inspiration for the Kinks song Session Man) would soon start showing up on albums by American artists, and even became a member of one of them (Quicksilver Messenger Service) for a time.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
Gene Clark's final contribution to the Byrds was his collaboration with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Eight Miles High. Despite a newsletter from the most powerful man in top 40 radio, Bill Drake, advising stations not to play this "drug song", the song managed to hit the top 20 in 1966. The band members themselves claimed that Eight Miles High was not a drug song at all, but was instead referring to the experience of travelling by air. In fact, it was Gene Clark's fear of flying that in part led to his leaving the Byrds.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Subterranean Homesick Blues
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
1965 was the year Bob Dylan went electric, and got his first top 40 hit, Subterranean Homesick Blues, in the process. Although the song, which also led off his Bringing It All Back Home album, stalled out in the lower 30s, it did pave the way for electrified cover versions of Dylan songs by the Byrds and Turtles and Dylan's own Like A Rolling Stone, which would revolutionize top 40 radio. A line from the song itself, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", became the inspiration for a radical offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that called itself the Weathermen (later the Weather Underground).
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
The first time I heard Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit was on Denver's first FM rock station, KLZ-FM, in the spring of 1967. The station branded itself as having a top 100 (as opposed to local ratings leader KIMN's top 60), and prided itself on being the first station in town to play new releases and album tracks. It wasn't long before White Rabbit was officially released as a single, and went on to become a top 10 hit, the last for the Airplane.
Artist: Bubble Puppy
Title: Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: A Gathering Or Promises)
Writer(s): Prince/Cox/Potter/Fore
Label: Priority (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1968
Bubble Puppy was a band from San Antonio, Texas that relocated to nearby Austin and signed a contract with International Artists, a label already known as the home of legendary Texas psychedelic bands 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola. The group hit the national top 20 in early 1969 with Hot Smoke and Sassafras, a song that was originally released the previous year as a B side. Not long after the release of their first LP, A Gathering Of Promises, the band relocated to California and changed their name to Demian, at least in part to disassociate themselves with the then-popular "bubble gum" style (but also because of problems with International Artists).
Artist: Beatles
Title: She's Leaving Home
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
One of the striking things about the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the sheer variety of styles on the album. Never before had a rock band gone so far beyond its roots in so many directions at once. One of Paul McCartney's most poignant songs on the album was She's Leaving Home. The song tells the story of a young girl who has decided that her stable homelife is just too unfulling to bear and heads for the big city. Giving the song added depth is the somewhat clueless response of her parents, who can't seem to understand what went wrong.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Michelle
Source: LP: Rubber Soul
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
1965 was the year it became obvious that John Lennon and Paul McCartney, while officially still a songwriting team, were moving in different directions. By the time the Rubber Soul album was released in December, it had become relatively easy to tell which of the two wrote which songs (or in some cases sections of songs). One obvious McCartney tune from Rubber Soul was Michelle, a song covered by my high school madrigal choir a few years later. The recording deliberately evokes a Parisian atmosphere, both in musical style and in the use of the French language on one of the verses.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Fixing A Hole
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
Until 1967 every Beatle album released in the US had at least one hit single included that was not on the British version of the album (or was never released as a single in the UK). With the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, however, the track lineup became universal, making it the first Beatle album released in the US to not have a hit single on it. Nonetheless, the importance (and popularity) of the album was such that virtually every song on it got top 40 airplay at one time or another, although some tracks got more exposure than others. One of the many tracks that falls in between these extremes is Fixing A Hole, a tune by Paul McCartney that features the harpsichord prominently.
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.
Artist: Fairport Convention
Title: Portfolio
Source: British import CD: Fairport Convention
Writer(s): Dyble/Hutchings
Label: Polydor
Year: 1968
Fairport Convention are well known as one of the premier British folk bands of the 1970s. They did not, however, start off that way. The original lineup, consisting of Ian McDonald (lead vocals), Judy Dyble (lead vocals, autoharp, recorder, piano) Richard Thompson (guitars, vocals, mandolin), Simon Nicol (guitars, vocals), Ashley Hutchings (bass), and Martin Lamble (percussion, violin), were an eclectic bunch with eclectic tastes that included the written works of Spike Milligan and James Joyce and the music of John Coltrane, Doc Watson, and the Butterfield Blues Band, among others. Their own music was a synthesis of folk, rock, jazz, blues and the avant-garde, and was hailed as Britain's answer to the Jefferson Airplane. The first self-titled Fairport Convention album was only released in the UK (which in later years would lead to some confusion, since the band's next LP, 1969's What We Did On Our Holidays, was released in the US in 1970 with no other name than Fairport Convention). Not every track on the original Fairport Convention LP had vocals. One of the strongest tracks, in fact, was an instrumental written by Dyble and Hutchings called Portfolio that manages, in just two minutes, to give a strong impression of where the band was at musically in 1968. As much as I like the much better known Sandy Denny version of Fairport Convention, I would have loved to hear more from this original lineup of the band.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Turtle Blues
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Janis Joplin
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Sometimes I do play favorites. Turtle Blues, from the Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, is certainly one of them. Besides vocalist Janis Joplin, who wrote the tune, the only other band member heard on the track is guitarist Peter Albin. Legendary producer John Simon provides the piano playing.
Artist: Bloodrock
Title: D.O.A.
Source: CD: Bloodrock 2
Writer(s): Cobb/Grundy/Hill/Pickens/Rutledge
Label: One Way (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1970
Bloodrock gained infamy in 1970 with the inclusion of D.O.A. on their second LP, a song reputed to be the cause of more bad acid trips than any other track ever recorded. Although the origins of the song are popularly attributed to a plane crash that killed several student atheletes in October of 1970, the fact that the album was already in the hands of record reviewers within a week of that event makes it unlikely that the two are related. The more likely story is that it was inspired by band member Lee Pickens's witnessing of a friend crashing his light plane a couple years before. Regardless of the song's origins, D.O.A. has to be considered one of the creepiest recordings ever made.
Artist: Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs
Title: Wooly Bully
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Domingo Samudio
Label: Rhino (original label: XL)
Year: 1964
Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs were pioneers of what has come to be called Tex-Mex, a style that can best described as straight ahead rock and roll seasoned with traditional Mexican forms such as salsa and ranchero. The Pharaohs were already a popular band in their native Texas when they recorded Wooly Bully for the regional XL label in 1964. The song proved so popular that it (and the band's contract) was bought outright by M-G-M Records, at the time one of the largest labels in the country. Wooly Bully was re-released nationally on M-G-M in 1965 and ended up among the top 10 records of the year.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
When it came time for Sean Bonniwell's band, the Music Machine, to go into the studio to record an album, the group decided to go for the best sound possible. This meant signing with tiny Original Sound Records, despite having offers from bigger labels, due to Original Sound having their own state-of-the-art eight-track studios. Unfortunately for the band, they soon discovered that having great equipment did not mean Original Sound made great decisions. One of the first, in fact, was to include a handful of cover songs on the Music Machine's first LP that were recorded for use on a local TV show. Bonniwell was livid when he found out, as he had envisioned an album made up entirely of his own compositions (although he reportedly did plan to use a slowed-down version of Hey Joe that he and Tim Rose had worked up together). From that point on it was only a matter of time until the Music Machine and Original Sound parted company, but not until after they scored a big national hit (# 15) with Talk Talk (which had been recorded at the four-track RCA Studios) in 1966.
Artist: Cream
Title: SWLABR
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
I distinctly remember this song getting played on the local jukebox just as much as the single's A side, Sunshine Of Your Love (maybe even more). Like most of Cream's more psychedelic material, SWLABR (an anagram for She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow) was written by the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. Brown had originally been brought in as a co-writer for Ginger Baker, but soon realized that he and Bruce had better songwriting chemistry.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although never released as a single, Voodoo Child (Slight Return), has become a staple of classic rock radio over the years. The song was originally an outgrowth of a jam session at New York's Record Plant, which itself takes up most of side one of the Electric Ladyland LP. This more familiar studio reworking of the piece has been covered by a variety of artists over the years.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose
Source: CD: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s): Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir/Constanten
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1968
After completing their first album in three days, the Grateful Dead decided to take their time with the 1968 follow-up release. Anthem of the Sun was an attempt at mixing studio and live material into a coherent whole. That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose comprise most of the first side of that album. In order to increase the band's share of royalties for the album, That's It For The Other One was arbitrarily broken down into several parts on the album cover, although it is one continuous piece. The entire album was remixed by band members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh in the early 1970s, due to their feeling that much of the music was literally lost in the original mix. It is the remixed version that is now available on CD, although a limited pressing vinyl edition of the original mix (on high-quality 180g vinyl) has been released as well.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: The Black Plague
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BGO (original US label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.
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: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Poem By The Sea/Paint It, Black
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Label: BGO (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the highlights of the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 was the onstage debut of Eric Burdon's new Animals, a group much more in tune with the psychedelic happenings of the summer of love than its working class predecessor. The showstopper for the band's set was an extended version of the Rolling Stone's classic Paint It, Black. That summer saw the release of the group's first full LP, Winds Of Change, which included a studio version of Paint It, Black preceded by a slow piece called Poem By The Sea.
Artist: Jan And Dean
Title: Dead Man's Curve
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Berry/Christian/Kornfeld/Wilson
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1964
As I talk about in a really long scholarly article elsewhere on the web site, one of the many contributing factors to the temporary democratization of the US popular music industry was the surf music craze of 1962 and '63, which morphed into the hot rod music craze of 1964 and '65. Although the style was created by instrumentalists such as Dick Dale and the Ventures, it was the vocal groups such as the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean that found the greatest commercial success with it. One of the biggest hits was the eerily predictive Dead Man's Curve, about a car wreck along a particularly nasty stretch of Sunset Blvd. in the vicinity of Beverly Hills. About two years after this song topped the charts, Jan Berry was involved in a near-fatal collision just a few blocks from the infamous curve; an accident he never fully recovered from.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Things Are Getting Better
Source: LP: Kinks-Size (originally released in UK as an EP track(
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise (original UK label: Pye)
Year: UK: 1964, US: 1965
As was the case with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Kinks released several songs in their native England that did not appear on any of the band's British LPs. Instead, those songs were released either as singles or on 45 RPM extended play (EP) records. In the US, on the other hand, hit singles were routinely included on LPs, and the American record companies often replaced songs that were included on the original versions of albums with single tracks. This created a backlog of material that had been released in the UK, but not in the US. Every so often, these US labels would compile these leftover tracks on entirely new albums that had no British counterparts. Such is the case with Kinks-Size, which included songs like Things Are Getting Better, which originally an EP track. This practice continued until 1967, at which time the British and American versions of albums began to look the same.
Artist: Love
Title: Colored Balls Falling
Source: Mono LP: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
The first Love album is rooted solidly in the garage rock genre. A solid example of this is Colored Balls Falling, written by Arthur Lee. To my knowledge, Colored Balls Falling has never been included on any anthology albums, making this mono mix of the song somewhat of a rarity.
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