Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Draft Resister
Source: LP: Monster
Writer(s): Kay/McJohn/Byrom
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1969
By far the most political of Steppenwolf's albums was their 1969 effort Monster. Although there is a chance that a truly unperceptive person might miss the point of the title track that opens the LP, the next song, Draft Resister, makes a point that even a dedicated Rush Limbaugh fan would notice.
Artist: Spirit
Title: Mr. Skin
Source: CD: Best of Spirit (originally released on LP: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus)
Writer(s): Jay Ferguson
Label: Epic
Year: 1970
Mr. Skin, a song originally released on the 1970 album The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus, shows just how far Spirit had moved away from the jazz influences heard on their first LP in the space of only a couple of years.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: A Pillow Of Winds
Source: LP: Meddle
Writer(s): Waters/Gilmour
Label: Harvest
Year: 1971
Early in 1971, Pink Floyd began work on their sixth LP, Meddle, at EMI's Abbey Road studios. The group soon found the studio's eight-track equipment to be insufficient for their needs, and moved the project over to a pair of smaller studios, Morgan and AIR, which had recently upgraded to state of the art sixteen-track tech. Musically, the album has more variety than most Pink Floyd albums, including tracks like A Pillow Of Winds, one of the few soft acoustic love songs in the entire Pink Floyd catalog. Meddle was more successful in the UK than in the US initially, due in large part to a lack of promotion on the part of the band's US label, although catalog sales increased dramatically following the success of Dark Side Of The Moon and later Pink Floyd albums.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Tired Of Waiting For You
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Priority (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1965
After a series of hard-rocking hits such as You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night, the Kinks surprised everyone with the highly melodic Tired Of Waiting For You in 1965. As it turns out the song was just one of many steps in the continually maturing songwriting of Ray Davies.
Artist: Trade Winds
Title: Mind Excursion
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Excursions)
Writer(s): Anders/Poncia
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Kama Sutra)
Year: 1966
The Trade Winds were a semi-studio band from New York that first scored in 1965 with the song New York Is A Lonely Town (When You're the Only Surfer Boy Around). A year later, they had their second and last hit, Mind Excursion, which holds up as one of the best examples of "flower power" pop ever recorded.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Suite It Is
Source: CD: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Casady/Dryden/Kaukonen
Label: RCA/BMG Heritage
Year: 1967
The second side of After Bathing At Baxters starts off fairly conventionally (for the Airplane), with Paul Kantner's Watch Her Ride, the first third or so of something called How Suite It Is. This leads (without a break in the audio) into Spare Chaynge, one of the coolest studio jams ever recorded, featuring intricate interplay between Jack Casady's bass and Jorma Kaukonen's guitar, with Spencer Dryden using his drum kit as enhancement rather than as a beat-setter. In particular, Cassidy's virtuoso performance helped redefine what could be done with an electric bass.
Artist: Hearts And Flowers
Title: Rock And Roll Gypsies
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Of Houses, Kids And Forgotten Women)
Writer(s): Roger Tillison
Label: Cotillion (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
Led by singer/songwriters Larry Murray and Dave Dawson, Hearts And Flowers is best known for launching the career of guitarist/vocalist Bernie Leadon, who joined the group for their second LP and would later go on to co-found the Eagles (he is now a producer in Nashville). That second album, Of Houses, Kids And Forgotten Women, is generally considered the most accessible of the group's three albums, and included the song Rock And Roll Gypsies, which was included on the Homer movie soundtrack album in 1970.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Yesterday's Train
Source: LP: (untitled)
Writer(s): Parsons/Battin
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
By 1970 the Byrds had gone through several lineup changes, including the departure of three of the band's most talented songwriters. The group was able to make up for the loss, however, with the addition of the prolific Gram Parsons, who, along with new bassist Skip Battin, provided the song Yesterday's Train for the band's ninth album. The double LP consisted of two sides of live material and two sides of new studio tracks. Called " Byrds (untitled)", the album is generally considered the best of the late period incarnation of the band.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
According to principal songwriter John Lennon, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite was inspired by a turn of the century circus poster that the Beatles ran across while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Most of the lyrics refer to items on the poster itself, such as the Hendersons and Henry the Horse.
Artist: Doors
Title: Love Me Two Times
Source: CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Strange Days)
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Although the second Doors album is sometimes dismissed as being full of tracks that didn't make the cut on the debut LP, the fact is that Strange Days contains some of the Doors best-known tunes. One of those is Love Me Two Times, which was the second single released from the album. The song continues to get heavy airplay on classic rock stations.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In) (originally released on LP: No Way Out and as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk
Writer: McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in fact the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.
Artist: Love
Title: You Set The Scene
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Forever Changes)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
During the production of Forever Changes, vocalist/guitarist Arthur Lee became convinced that he was destined to die soon after the release of the album. Accordingly, he crafted lyrics that were meant to be his final words to the world. As the final track on the LP, You Set The Scene in particular reflected this viewpoint. As it turned out, Forever Changes was not Lee's swan song. It was, however, the last album to feature the lineup that had been the most popular band on Sunset Strip for the past two years. Subsequent Love albums would feature a whole new lineup backing Lee, and would have an entirely different sound as well. Ironically, Lee was still around at the dawn of the 21st century over 30 years later (dying of acute myeloid leukemia in 2006), outliving several of his old bandmates.
Artist: Who
Title: Call Me Lightning
Source: Mono Canadian import CD: Magic Bus-The Who On Tour (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original US label: Decca)
Year: 1968
Although it sounds more like their earlier "maximum R&B" recordings, the Who's Call Me Lightning was actually recorded in 1968. The song was released only in the US (as a single), while the considerably less conventional Dogs was chosen for release in the UK. These days the US single is better remembered for its B side, John Entwistle's Dr. Jeckle And Mr. Hyde. Both songs ended up being included on the Magic Bus album, which was only available in North America and has never been issued on CD in the US (although it is available as a Canadian import).
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: I Need A Man To Love
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Joplin/Andrew
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Big Brother and the Holding Company recorded their first album at the Chicago studios of Mainstream records in 1967. Mainstream, however, was a jazz label and their engineers had no idea how to make a band like Big Brother sound good. When the band signed to Columbia the following year it was decided that the best way to record the band was onstage at the Fillmore West. As a result, when Cheap Thrills was released, four of the seven tracks were live recordings, including the Janis Joplin/Peter Albin collaboration I Need A Man To Love.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Sympathy For The Devil
Source: CD: Beggars Banquet
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
Beggar's Banquet was a turning point for the Rolling Stones. They had just ended their association with Andrew Loog Oldham, who had produced all of their mid-60s records, and instead were working with Jimmy Miller, who was known for his association with Steve Winwood, both in his current band Traffic and the earlier Spencer Davis Group. Right from the opening bongo beats of Sympathy For The Devil, it was evident that this was the beginning of a new era for bad boys of rock and roll. The song itself has gone on to be one of the defining tunes of album rock radio.
Artist: Buckinghams
Title: Remember
Source: LP: Time And Changes
Writer(s): James William Guercio
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
The Buckinghams were officially christened in early 1966, when the producers of a show called All-Time Hits that ran on Chicago's WGN-TV convinced their new house band, the Pulsations, that they should try a more British sounding name. The group soon got a contract with local label USA Records and recorded a dozen songs, many of which were released as singles. The most successful of these singles was Kind Of A Drag, which became a major US hit, spending two weeks at #1 in early 1967. This was soon followed by the band's first album, which included the group's previous singles as well. Around this time the band hooked up with producer James William Guercio, who got them a contract with Columbia Records. The band's first album for Columbia was Time And Changes, which included two hit singles, Don't You Care and Mercy Mercy Mercy, as well as several songs written by Guercio himself. Among the latter was Remember, which, like the other Guercio-penned tracks on the album, featured horns and strings arranged by the producer himself. The band recorded one more album with Guercio before creative tensions brought the whole thing to a screeching halt in 1968.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Wind
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed out of the chance meeting of multi-instrumentalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in Greenwich Village in 1967. From the start the band was moving in different directions, with Bruno incorporating jazz elements into the band while Walker favored country-rock. Eventually the two would go their separate ways, but for the short time the band was together they made some of the best, if not best-known, psychedelic music on the East Coast. The band's most popular track was Wind, a Bruno tune from their debut album. The song got a considerable amount of airplay on the new "underground" radio stations that were popping up across the country at the time.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Dr. Do-Good
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
I have a theory that the decision makers at Reprise Records didn't bother to actually listen to this bit of weirdness from Underground, the second Electric Prunes album. Instead, they apparently just looked at the songwriting credits, saw that Dr. Do-Good was written by Annette Tucker and Nancy Mantz (the same songwriting team that had come up with the band's first big hit, I Had Too Much To Dream), and decided to issue it as the first single from the album, leaving everyone, including producer Dave Hassinger and the band members themselves, scratching their heads.
Artist: Blue Cheer
Title: Summertime Blues
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: Vincebus Eruptum)
Writer(s): Cochrane/Capehart
Label: Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year: 1968
If 1967 was the summer of love, then 1968 was the summer of violence. Framed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, both major anti-establishment movements of the time (civil rights and anti-war) became increasing radicalized and more violent. The hippies gave way to the Yippies, LSD gave way to crystal meth, and there were riots in the streets of several US cities. Against this backdrop Blue Cheer released one of the loudest and angriest recordings ever to grace the top 40: the proto-metal arrangement of Eddie Cochrane's 1958 classic Summertime Blues. It was the perfect soundtrack of its time.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Bold As Love
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
When working on the song Bold As Love for the second Jimi Hendrix Experience album in 1967, Jimi reportedly asked engineer Eddie Kramer if he could make a guitar sound like it was under water. Kramer's answer was to use a techique called phasing, which is what happens when two identical sound sources are played simultaneously, but slightly (as in microseconds) out of synch with each other. The technique, first used in 1958 but seldom tried in stereo, somewhat resembles the sound of a jet plane flying by. This is not to be confused with chorusing (sometimes called reverse phasing), a technique used often by the Beatles which splits a single signal into two identical signals then delays one to create the illusion of being seperate tracks.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Medicated Goo
Source: LP: Welcome To The Canteen
Writer: Winwood/Miller
Label: United Artists
Year: 1971
Traffic was still officially disbanded when a new live album, Welcome To The Canteen, was released. The front cover listed every musician who played on the album, including every past member of Traffic, and included several songs that had originally been recorded by the band, including Medicated Goo.
Artist: Neil Young/Crazy Horse
Title: Round And Round (It Won't Be Long)
Source: LP: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
Round And Round, from Neil Young's 1969 album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, was actually written while Young was still a member of Buffalo Springfield. The song features guest vocalist Robin Lane, as well as the members of Crazy Horse.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Highway 61 Revisited
Source: CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
US Highway 61 is part of the old Federal highway system that was developed in the 1920s and 30s and has since been largely supplanted by the Interstate highway system. It was at a crossroads along this route that legendary bluesman Robert Johnson is said to sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a successful career. In 1965 Bob Dylan decided to revisit the legend and add to it for his landmark album on which he invented an electrified version of the folk music he had become famous for. His backup musicians included some of the top talent in the New York area, including guitarist Michael Bloomfield of the Butterfield Blues Band and organist Al Kooper, who also plays the police whistle heard throughout the title track of Highway 61 Revisited.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Punky's Dilemma
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Originally written specifically for the 1967 soundtrack of the movie The Graduate but rejected by the producers, Punky's Dilemma sat on the shelf until the following year, when it became the only track on side two of Simon And Garfunkel's Bookends LP that had not been previously released. The lyrics are about as psychedelic as Simon And Garfunkel ever got.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: In My Neighborhood
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1995
Sean Bonniwell has been quoted as saying that he had overproduced the original version of In My Neighborhood, due to having too much idle time in the studio. As a result, he chose not to release the song at all. Years later, Bonniwell and Bob Irwin remixed the track for release on the anthology CD Beyond The Garage.
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