Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1844 (starts 10/29/18)

    This week we have three artists' sets, one each from Cream, Love and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Otherwise it's a sort of mirror image of last week's show.

Artist:     Beatles
Title:     In My Life
Source:     CD: Rubber Soul
Writer:     Lennon/McCartney
Label:     Capitol/EMI
Year:     1965
    Rubber Soul was the first Beatles album to be made up entirely of songs written by the band members themselves, mostly John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Lennon's contributions in particular were starting to move away from the typical "young love" songs the band had become famous for. One of the best examples is In My Life, which is a nostalgic look back at Lennon's own past (although put in such a way that it could be universally applied). Despite never being released as a single, In My Life remains one of the most popular songs in the Beatles catalog.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Happy Jack (acoustic version)
Source:    Mono CD: A Quick One
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    MCA
Year:    1966
    It may seem odd now, but the Who did not find any great success in the US in their early years. Allthough several of their early singles were released in the US, none of them got played on the radio until spring of 1967, when Happy Jack became the group's first US hit. The band's second LP, A Quick One, had not yet been released in the US; with the success of Happy Jack as a single it was decided to add the song to the US version album and to retitle the LP Happy Jack. Interestingly enough, the 90s remastered CD version of A Quick One, which follows the original UK track order, does not include the familiar studio version of Happy Jack; instead, an earlier acoustic version of the song with slightly different lyrics appears as a bonus track.

Artist:    Noel Harrison
Title:    Life Is A Dream
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Smith/Ray
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    The son of actor Rex Harrison, Noel Harrison was a Britisher with L.A. connections that he parlayed into a short musical career in the wake of the British invasion. Although he didn't score any major hits, he did turn out a rather interesting B side in 1967 with Life Is A Dream. Harrison also did some acting, appearing in a regular role on the TV series The Girl From Uncle.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    In The Country
Source:    LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Harris
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1968
    By 1968, several bands, particularly in southern California, were starting to incorporate elements of country music into what were otherwise rock recordings. Some, like the Byrds and Poco, ended up being recognized as pioneers of what came to be known as country-rock. Others, such as L.A.'s West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, merely flirted with the idea on tracks such as In The Country on their fourth LP, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. By this point, conflicts within the band were starting to take their toll, and combined with a decided lack of commercial success, led to the band losing its contract with Reprise Records and falling deeper into obscurity before finally calling it quits in 1970.

Artist:    Richie Havens
Title:    Handsome Johnny
Source:    CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
Writer:    Gossett/Gossett/Havens
Label:    Rhino
Year:    1969
    When it became obvious that the amplifiers needed by the various rock bands that were scheduled to perform on the opening Friday afternoon at Woodstock would not be ready in time, singer/songwriter Richie Havens came to the rescue, performing for several hours as the new opening act. One of the highlights of Havens' performance was Handsome Johnny, a song that he had co-written with Lou Gossett and Lou Gossett, Jr. and released on his debut album.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Worried Life Blues
Source:    LP: Psychedelic Lollipop
Writer(s):    Major Merriweather
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1966
    Major "Big Macao" Merriweather was an early blues artist who is best known for a song he wrote and recorded in 1941. Worried Life Blues has since been covered literally hundreds of times, including a 1965 version on the US-only LP The Animals On Tour. The Blues Magoos apparently were impressed by the Animals' recording of the song, as they copied the arrangement pretty much note for note for their own debut LP, Psychedelic Lollipop, the following year.
   
Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Super Bird
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body)
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Rhino (original label: Vanguard)
Year:    1967
    Country Joe and the Fish, from Berkeley, California, were one of the first rock bands to incorporate political satire into their music. Their I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag is one of the most famous protest songs ever written. Super Bird is even heavier on the satire than the Rag. The song, from the band's debut LP, puts president Lyndon Johnson, whose wife and daughter were known as "Lady-bird" and "Linda-bird", in the role of a comic book superhero.

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

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Do It
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Morrison/Krieger
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1969
    One sign of a truly great band is that even at the lowest point in their history they manage to create songs that are above and beyond most other bands. Case in point: the Doors. 1969 was a horrendous year for the band. Jim Morrison was looking at possible jail time for indecent exposure and their producer, Paul Rothchild, was pressuring them to add strings and horns to their recordings. The result was what is universally considered the weakest of the Doors' studio albums, The Soft Parade. Recorded over a period of nine months, The Soft Parade was the first Doors album to give individual writing credits, reportedly because vocalist Jim Morrison did not want his name associated with some of guitarist Robby Kreiger's lyrics. Despite all this, there were some hidden gems on The Soft Parade. Do It, also released as a B side of a failed single, is one such gem.

Artist:     Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:     One Rainy Wish
Source:     CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1967
     In the summer of 1967 my dad (who was a Sergeant in the Air Force), got transferred to Lindsay Air Station in Weisbaden, Germany. The housing situation there being what it was, it was several weeks before the rest of us could join him, and during that time he went out and bought an Akai X-355 reel to reel tape recorder that a fellow GI had picked up in Japan. The Akai had small speakers built into it, but the best way to listen to it was through headphones. It would be another year before he would pick up a turntable, so I started buying pre-recorded reel to reel tapes. Two of the first three tapes I bought were Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love, both by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. As I was forced to share a bedroom with my little brother I made it a habit to sleep on the couch instead, usually with the headphones on listening to Axis: Bold As Love. I was blown away by the stereo effects on the album, which I attributed (somewhat correctly) to Hendrix, although I would find out years later that much of the credit belongs to engineer Eddie Kramer as well. One Rainy Wish, for example, starts off with all the instruments in the center channel (essentially a mono mix). After a few seconds of slow spacy intro the song gets into gear with vocals isolated all the way over to the left, with a guitar overdub on the opposite side to balance it out. As the song continues, things move back and forth from side to side, fading in and out at the same time. It was a hell of a way to drift off to sleep every night.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    I Don't Live Today
Source:    LP: The Essential Jimi Hendrix Volume Two (originally released on LP: Are You Experienced)
Writer:    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    I remember a black light poster that choked me up the first time I saw it. It was a shot of Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar with the caption I Don't Live Today. I don't believe Hendrix was being deliberately prophetic when he wrote and recorded this classic track for the Are You Experienced album, but it occasionally gives me chills to hear it, even now.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Wait Until Tomorrow
Source:    CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Jimi Hendrix showed a whimsical side with Wait Until Tomorrow, a track from his second Jimi Hendrix Experience LP, Axis: Bold As Love. The song tells a story of a young man standing outside his girlfriend's window trying to convince her to run away from him. He gets continually rebuffed by the girl, who keeps telling him to Wait Until Tomorrow. Ultimately the girl's father resolves the issue by shooting the young man. The entire story is punctuated by outstanding distortion-free guitar work that showcases just how gifted Hendrix was on his chosen instrument.

Artist:    The Ariel
Title:    It Feels Like I'm Crying
Source:    Mono British import CD: With Love- A Pot Of Flowers (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Jack Walters
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Brent)
Year:    1966
    San Francisco occupies the north end of a peninsula, with the Pacific Ocean to the west and San Francisco Bay to the north and east. At the south end of the bay is the city of San Jose. In between the two, about halfway down the peninsula itself, is the city of San Mateo. The city serves as the western terminus of the only bridge across the bay south of San Francisco itself. For much of 1966 it was also the home of a band called The Ariel. The band, originally called the Banshees, was formed in 1965 by a group of high school students from the San Mateo suburbs. The renamed themselves The Ariel in 1966 (Ariel being the name of a female fan from Hayward, the city on the eastern end of the bridge). In July they cut some demos at Golden State Recorders, which got them an audition with Bob Shad, owner of Mainstream Records, who was doing some talent scouting in the Bay Area that summer. They passed the audition and headed south to L.A. (at their own expense) to make a record. Unfortunately, when they arrived they learned that Shad was no longer interested in recording them. Nevertheless, they persisted (sorry, couldn't resist) and eventually got Shad to book them a couple hours in a local studio, where they a pair of songs written by the band's vocalist/lead guitarist, Jack Walters. It Feels Like I'm Crying was issued as the A side of the band's only single in late summer, but by then some of the band members were attending college and were not able to support the record with live appearances with any kind of regularity. By the end of the year The Ariel was history.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Why
Source:    Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    McGuinn/Crosby
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    One of the earliest collaborations between Byrds songwriters David Crosby and Roger McGuinn was the up-tempo raga rocker Why. The song was first recorded at RCA studios in Los Angeles in late 1965 as an intended B side for Eight Miles High, but due to the fact that the band's label, Columbia, refused to release recordings made at their main rival's studios, the band ended up having to re-record both songs at Columbia's own studios in early 1966. Although the band members felt the newer versions were inferior to the 1965 recordings, they were released as a single in March of 1966. Later that year, for reasons that are still unclear, Crosby insisted the band record a third version of Why, and that version was used for the band's next LP, Younger Than Yesterday.

Artist:    Sound Sandwich
Title:    Tow Away
Source:    Mono LP: Ain't It Hard (released to radio stations as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Johnny Cole
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Viva)
Year:    1968
    Sound Sandwich was a young (as in high school age) Los Angeles band that came under the wing of producer Johnny Cole, who wrote both of the band's singles. The second of these, Tow Away, does not show up in the database I usually use, leading me to believe the record was only released as a promo to L.A. area radio stations shortly before Viva Records closed its doors permanently.

Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Miss Attraction
Source:    LP: The Best Of The Strawberry Alarm Clock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Weitz/Pitman/King/Freeman/Gunnels
Label:    Sundazed/Uni
Year:    1969
    The Strawberry Alarm Clock had always had a bit of a fluid lineup, having been formed in the first place by the merger of two local Los Angeles bands, Waterfyrd Traene and Thee Sixpence. Their biggest hit, Incense and Peppermints featured lead vocals from a member of yet another local band, and one of their main songwriters on the first album (who also played flute on several tracks) was not credited as a band member at all. Such confusion continued to plague the band throughout its existence. In 1968, for instance, their former manager recruited two ex-members to form a second Strawberry Alarm Clock to tour and play the band's songs while the current group was working on their fourth and final LP, Good Morning Starshine. A court injunction stopped the new group from using the name, but by the time it took effect the damage had already been done. Promoters refused to book the band, not knowing who would actually show up. The group's sound had changed a bit by then as well, as can be heard on Miss Attraction, the first single released from Good Morning Starshine. Founding member and co-leader Ed King, the band's lead guitarist, had already been playing many of the bass lines on the group's studio recordings. For Good Morning Starshine he officially switched to bass, although he also provided some of the guitar tracks on the album as well. Following the breakup of the Strawberry Alarm Clock King would take a similar role in his new group, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Apeman
Source:    Canadia import CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection. (originally released on LP: Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneyground Part One)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Polygram/Polytel (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1970
    The Kinks, whose commercial success had been on the decline for a number of years, scored a huge international hit in 1970 with the title track from their album Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneyground Part One. They followed it up with the 1971 single Apeman, taken from the same album. The song was a top 10 single in the UK, although it was only moderately successful elsewhere.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Dark Star (single version)
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Garcia/Hunter
Label:    Rhino (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:    1968
    Studio recording. Single version. Shortest Dark Star ever.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    We've Got A Groovey Thing Going
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    In late 1965, producer Tom Wilson decided to perform an experiment. He took the original recording of a song from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's 1964 album, Wednesday Morning 6AM, and added electric instruments to it (using the same musicians that had played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album), essentially creating a whole new version of the song and, for that matter, a whole new genre: folk-rock. The Sound of Silence, backed by We've Got a Groovey Thing Going, became a huge national hit, going all the way to #1 on the top 40 charts. The only problem was that by the time all this happened, Simon and Garfunkel had gone their separate ways, briefly reuniting to record We've Got a Groovey Thing Going in 1965, but not releasing it at the time. Paul Simon, who was by then living in England, returned to the states in early 1966, got back together with Art Garfunkel and quickly recorded a new album, Sounds Of Silence. The album included a new stereo mix of We've Got A Groovey Thing Going made from the original 4-track master tape. By the way, this is the only instance I know of of the word "groovy" being spelled "groovey".

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 both folk-rock and garage rock. A solid example of this blend 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.

Artist:    Love
Title:    7&7 Is
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year:    1966
    The first rock band signed to Elektra Records was Love, a popular L.A. club band that boasted two talented songwriters, Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean. On the heels of their first album, which included the single My Little Red Book and one of the first recordings of the fast version of Hey Joe, came their most successful single, the manic 7&7 Is, released in July of 1966.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Signed D.C.
Source:    Mono LP: Love
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    The only acoustic track on the first Love album was Signed D.C., a slow ballad in the tradition of House of the Rising Sun. The song takes the form of a letter penned by a heroin addict, and the imagery is both stark and disturbing. Although Lee was known to occasionally say otherwise, the song title probably refers to Love's original drummer Don Conka, who left the band before their first recording sessions due to (you guessed it) heroin addiction.

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

Artist:    Santana
Title:    Waiting
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Santana (band)
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1970
    Possibly the most successful (in the long term) of the musicians to emerge from late 60s San Francisco was Carlos Santana, a Mexican-born guitarist who still plays to sellout crowds worldwide. Santana's band originally got lukewarm reviews from the rock press, but after their legendary performance at Woodstock found themselves among rock's royalty. Waiting, from the group's first LP, is an instrumental that was also released as the B side of the band's first single, Evil Ways.

Artist:      Grand Funk Railroad
Title:     Mr. Limousine Driver
Source:      CD: Grand Funk
Writer:    Mark Farner
Label:     Capitol
Year:     1969
     When Grand Funk Railroad first appeared on the scene they were universally panned by the rock press (much as Kiss would be a few years later). Despite this, they managed to set attendance records across the nation and were instrumental to establishing sports arenas as the venue of choice for 70s rock bands. Although their first album, On Time, was not an instant hit, their popularity took off with the release of their second LP, Grand Funk (also known as the Red Album). One of the many popular tracks on Grand Funk was Mr. Limousine Driver, a song that reflects the same attitude as their later hit We're An American Band.

Artist:    Uriah Heep
Title:    Simon The Bullet Freak
Source:    LP: Salisbury
Writer(s):    Ken Hensley
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1971
    Uriah Heep combined elements of progressive rock and heavy metal to create a sound that was uniquely their own. The band had two main songwriting sources: the team of vocalist David Byron and guitarist Mick Box, who wrote most of the band's early material, and keyboardist Ken Hensley, whose writing dominated the band's most popular period. The group' second LP, Salisbury, was in many senses a transition album, with the songwriting split about evenly between the two. One of Hensley's compositions, Simon The Bullet Freak, was released in Germany as a B side and included on the US version of the Salisbury album in early 1971. The song made its first UK appearance as the B side of the single version of the title track of the band's third LP, Look At Yourself.

Artist:     Savoy Brown
Title:     Made Up My Mind
Source:     British import CD: A Step Further
Writer:     Chris Youlden
Label:     Polygram/Deram (original US label: Parrot)
Year:     1969
     To coincide with a US tour, the fourth Savoy Brown album, A Step Further, was actually released in North America several months before it was in the UK, with Made Up My Mind being simultaneously released as a single. Luckily for the band, 1969 was a year that continued the industry-wide trend away from hit singles and toward successful albums instead, at least among the more progressive groups, as the single itself tanked. Aided by a decent amount of airplay on progressive FM radio, however, the album (the last to feature lead vocalist Chris Youlden) peaked comfortably within the top 100.

Artist:    Fleetwood Mac
Title:    Lazy Poker Blues
Source:    LP: Vintage Years (originally released in UK on LP: Mr. Wonderful)
Writer(s):    Green/Adams
Label:    Sire (original label: Blue Horizon)
Year:    1968
    The only thing the original Fleetwood Mac and the superstar band of the 1980s had in common was the presence of Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass. Stylistically, the two were worlds apart. Instead of the slick pop-rock of the later version of the band, the original lineup featured British blues-rock tunes such as Lazy Poker Blues written and sung by guitarist Peter Green. The original lineup recorded two LPs for Blue Horizon that were never issued in the US. Once Fleetwood Mac became a household name, Sire Records issued a double-LP compilation album called Vintage Years that included cuts from both albums as well as several UK-only single tracks.

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:    Mono 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 teensploitation 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:    Standells
Title:    Dirty Water
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Ed Cobb
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
    Dirty Water has long since been adopted by the city of Boston (and especially its sports teams), yet the band that originally recorded this Ed Cobb tune was purely an L.A. band, having started off playing cover tunes in the early 60s. Lead vocalist/drummer Dickie Dodd, incidently, was a former Mouseketeer who had played on the surf-rock hit Mr. Moto as a member of the Bel-Airs.

Artist:    Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title:    Steppin' Out (stereo remix)
Source:    CD: Greatest Hits
Writer(s):    Revere/Lindsay
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1965
    1965 was the year that Paul Revere and the Raiders hit the big time. The Portland, Oregon band had already been performing together for several years, and had been the first rock band to record Louie Louie in the spring of 1963, getting airplay on the West Coast and Hawaii but losing out nationally to another Portland band, the Kingsmen, whose version was recorded the same month as the Raiders'. While playing in Hawaii the band came to the attention of Dick Clark, who was looking for a band to appear on his new afternoon TV program, Where The Action Is. Clark introduced the band to Terry Melcher, a successful producer at Columbia Records, which led to the Raiders being the first true rock band signed by the label. Appearing on Action turned out to be a major turning point for the band, who soon became the show's defacto hosts as well as house band. The Raiders' first national hit in their new role was Steppin' Out, a song written by Revere and vocalist Mark Lindsay about a guy returning from military service (as Revere himself had done in the early 60s, reforming the band upon his return) and finding out his girl had been unfaithful. The song was originally mixed only in mono, but in the 1990s a new stereo mix was created from the original multi-track master tape.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Dreaming
Source:    CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Jack Bruce
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    Although Cream recorded several songs that bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce co-wrote with various lyricists (notably poet Pete Brown), there were a few that Bruce himself wrote words for. One of these is Dreaming, a song from the band's first LP that features both Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton on lead vocals. Dreaming is also one of the shortest Cream songs on record, clocking in at one second under two minutes in length.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Spoonful
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released in UK on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Reaction)
Year:    1966
    When the album Fresh Cream was released by Atco in the US it was missing one track that was on the original UK version of the album: the band's original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1970 soundtrack album for the movie Homer that the studio version was finally released in the US. Unfortunately the compilers of that album left out the last 25 seconds or so from the original recording.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Cat's Squirrel
Source:    CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. S. Splurge
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    One of the few instrumentals in the Cream repertoire, Cat's Squirrel was something of a blues standard whose origins are lost in antiquity. Unlike the 1968 Jethro Tull version, which emphasises Mick Abrahams's guitar work, Cream's Cat's Squirrel is heavy on the harmonica, played by bassist Jack Bruce. Arranger credits for the recording were given to S. Splurge, a pseudonym for the band itself, in the tradition of Nanker Phelge.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Food
Source:    CD: The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands
Writer(s):    The Turtles
Label:    Sundazed (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1968
    By 1968 the Turtles' relationship with their label, White Whale, had deteriorated to the point that the group was starting to consider the possibility of disbanding in order to get out of their contract. They had self-produced several songs earlier in the year that the label had rejected and were under constant pressure to come up with another monster hit like Happy Together. Against this backdrop the group released one of the most unique albums in rock history. Entitled The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands, the album contained a dozen tunes, each done in a different style and credited to a different band. Food, for instance, was credited to the Bigg Brothers, and sounded like one of the more whimsical tracks from the Association. The song also included the following recipe within its lyrics, which I am presenting here as a public service:

Two thirds cups of flour
A teaspoon full of salt
A quarter pound of butter
Add an egg and blend it out
Two squares of dark chocolate
Walnuts, pot and sugar
A teaspoon of bakin' powder
Thirty minutes in the heat and it's over

Although The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands peaked at only the #128 spot, it is now considered one of the band's best efforts.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1844 (starts 10/29/18)

    Two sets this time. The first one is a sampling of 1974 releases from the Stones, the Doobies and the Who. The next set is mostly deep tracks from 1969-1974 (with one hit single thrown in).

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It)
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single (promo)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Rolling Stones
Year:    1974
    You'd think that after writing such legendary classics as (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, Jumpin' Jack Flash and Honky Tonk Women, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would be pretty much tapped out for the rest of their lives. But, nope. They had to come up yet another iconic song in 1974, It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It). Hell, the title alone probably should be inscribed over the entrance of the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame. The song itself was reportedly written in response to critics who seemed to think that the Stones, Mick and Keith in particular, somehow had a responsibility to be role models, and were not living up to those critics' expectations of how they should be conducting themselves.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Naked Eye
Source:    British import CD (Spirit Of Joy) (originally released on LP: Odds And Sods)
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Polydor (original US label: Decca)
Year:    1974
    While touring to promote the Tommy album, the Who began developing several new songs as part of their live act. Many of these appeared, at least in part, on the Live At Leeds album in 1970. One of those songs, Naked Eye, was partially recorded in the studio around the same time, but remained unfinished when the 1971 album Who's Next was released. Over the next couple of years several bootlegs of the Who's live performances were in circulation, prompting bassist John Entwhistle to compile a new album of outtakes and unreleased tracks in 1974. The album Odds And Sods, included the completed version of Naked Eye.

Artist:    Doobie Brothers
Title:    Daughters Of The Sea/Flying Cloud
Source:    CD: What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits
Writer(s):    Simmons/Porter
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1974
    When I got out of basic training in southwestern Texas I was told to report to duty at my tech school in northern Texas. Now this might seem a fairly short distance; apparently the people making my travel arrangements thought so, because, rather than a plane flight, they put me on a bus. This bus also had several other basic training graduates on it, all heading for the same tech school location. The ride took approximately six hours, as I recall, and one of the guys had used his initial paycheck to buy a boombox and an 8-track tape of the new Doobie Brothers album, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. Apparently he didn't realize how big Texas is, as he did not buy any other tapes. And so, for six hours, we listened to the new Doobie Brothers album, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits, over and over. And over. And over. Luckily, it's actually a pretty decent album, although some songs are more listenable than others, of course. A personal favorite is (are?) the closing track of the original LP, which is actually two songs that merge together, Daughters Of The Sea and the short instrumental Flying Cloud. A good way to end a good album.

Artist:    Fleetwood Mac
Title:    Oh Well
Source:    Mono LP: The Big Ball (originally released on LP: Then Play On)
Writer(s):    Peter Green
Label:    Warner Brothers (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1969
    Fleetwood Mac had already established themselves as one of Britain's top up-and-coming blues bands by the time Then Play On was released in 1969. The band had just landed a deal in the US with Reprise, and Then Play On was their American debut LP. At the same time the album was released in the UK, a new non-LP single, Oh Well, appeared as well. The song was a top pick on Radio Luxembourg, the only non-BBC English language top 40 station still operating in Europe in 1969 (not counting the American Forces Network, which was only a top 40 station for an hour or two a day), and Oh Well soon shot all the way to the # 2 spot on the British charts. Meanwhile the US version of Then Play On (which had originally been issued with pretty much the same song lineup as the British version) was recalled, and a new version with Oh Well added to it was issued in its place. The song itself has two distinct parts: a fast blues-rocker sung by lead guitarist Peter Green lasting about two minutes, and a slow moody instrumental that runs about seven minutes. The original UK single featured about a minute's worth of part two tacked on to the end of the A side (with a fadeout ending), while the B side had the entire part two on it. Both sides of the single were added to the US version of the LP, which resulted in the first minute of part two repeating itself on the album.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    That's The Way
Source:    CD: Led Zeppelin III
Writer(s):    Page/Plant
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    I read somewhere that Jimmy Page came up with The Rain Song (from the album Houses Of The Holy) in response to someone asking him why Led Zeppelin hadn't recorded any ballads. Apparently that person had never heard That's The Way, from the album Led Zeppelin III. If that ain't a ballad, I don't know what is.

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Fools
Source:    LP: fireball
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1971
    Although, according to guitarist Richie Blackmore, the production on the 1971 album Fireball was "rushed" due to a heavy touring schedule, the LP was a major success for the band, topping the British album charts. Several of the tracks on Fireball have been singled out by vocalist Ian Gillan as favorites, including Fools, the longest track on the album.

Artist:    Blue Oyster Cult
Title:    Workshop Of The Telescopes/Redeemed
Source:    LP: Blue Oyster Cult
Writer(s):    Pearlman/Blue Oyster Cult/Farcas
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1972
    Songwriting credits on the first Blue Oyster Cult album are rather complicated. Manager Sandy Pearlman, for instance, wrote the lyrics for over half the songs on the album, including Workshop Of The Telescopes. In fact, the entire band is credited for that particular track. Redeemed, which segues out of Workshop to end the album, was actually bought from singer/songwriter Harry Farcas, but drummer Albert Bouchard and rhythm guitarist Allen Lanier, as well as Pearlman, are listed as co-writers due to their extensive rearranging of the tune.

Artist:     Grand Funk
Title:     We're An American Band
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer:     Don Brewer
Label:     Capitol
Year:     1973
     In 1972 I was the bass player/vocalist in a power trio that played a lot of Grand Funk Railroad, Black Sabbath and the like. Shortly after that band split up I started taking broadcasting classes from Tim Daniels, an Air Force Sergeant who had previously worked for the Armed Forces Vietnam Network (the same station that Adrian Cronauer worked at, although at that time nobody outside the military had ever heard of him). That led to my first regular airshift on the "Voice of Holloman" a closed-circuit station that was piped into the gym and bowling alley and some of the barracks at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. One of the hot new records that the station got promo copies of was We're An American Band, pressed on bright yellow translucent vinyl with the stereo version on one side and the mono mix on the other. I snagged one of the extra copies Capitol sent and have somehow managed to hang onto it over the years.

Artist:    Robin Trower
Title:    The Fool And Me
Source:    CD: Bridge Of Sighs
Writer(s):    Trower/Dewar
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol
Year:    1974
    Guitarist Robin Trower's breakthrough album, Bridge Of Sighs, featured vocals by bassist James Dewar, who also co-wrote a couple of the songs on the LP. The best of these was The Fool And Me, which closes out side one of the original LP. Drummer Reg Isidore completed the trio.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1843 (starts 10/22/18)

    This week's show is backwards.The second hour was recorded first, and all but one of the segments start around the end of the psychedelic era and work their way back toward the beginning, one year at a time. The only exception is in the second hour, which starts with the Tim Rose version of Hey Joe, which was the direct inspiration for the more popular Jimi Hendrix version of the tune, and even that set is in a way backwards, as the last song of the segment is a cover of a song originally written and recorded in the 1950s by Tito Puente, making it the oldest song (but not the oldest recording) in the set.

Artist:      Bloodrock
Title:    Lucky In the Morning
Source:      CD: Bloodrock 2
Writer(s):    John Nitzinger
Label:    One Way/Cema Special Products (original label: Capitol)
Year:     1970
     In the early 1970s the Dallas-Fort Worth area was known mostly as the home of guys with names like Landry and Staubach. For a short time in 1971, however, even their fame was rivalled by a band called Bloodrock, whose D.O.A., a first-person account of the aftermath of a plane crash as seen by one of the victims, is considered one of the goriest songs in rock history. Bloodrock rise to fame began when they signed on as the second band to be produced and managed by Terry Knight, touring as Grand Funk Railroad's opening act in 1970. Their first two LPs both came out in 1970, with D.O.A. being released in edited form as a single in early 1971. The opening track of Bloodrock 2 was a tune called Lucky In The Morning, written for the band by a local guitarist named John Nitzenger. Nitzenger wrote several songs for Bloodrock over the course of four LPs and eventually released a couple albums of his own as well. As an aside, Lucky In The Morning is actually a bit of an oxymoron, due to a phenomena known as "morning breath".

Artist:     Arlo Guthrie
Title:     Coming Into Los Angeles
Source:     LP: The Big Ball (originally released on LP: Running Down The Road)
Writer:     Arlo Guthrie
Label:     Warner Brothers (original label: Rising Son)
Year:     1969
    Coming Into Los Angeles is one of Arlo Guthrie's most popular songs. It is also the song with the most confusing recording history. The song first came to prominence when Guthrie's live performance of the tune was included in the movie Woodstock. When the soundtrack of the film was released, however, a different recording was used. At first I figured they had simply used the studio version of the song, from the 1969 album Running Down The Road, but it turns out there are significant differences between that version (heard here) and the one included on Woodstock album. Complicating matters is the fact that the version included on The Best Of Arlo Guthrie later in the decade seems to be an altogether different recording than any of the previous releases. If anyone out there (Arlo, are you reading this?) can shed some light on this for me, it would be greatly appreciated.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    Dove In Hawk's Clothing
Source:    Mono LP: Ultimate Spinach (promo copy)
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1968
    One of the criticisms of Ultimate Spinach (and the whole overly-hyped "Boss-Town Sound") was that the band tried too hard to sound like West Coast psychedelic bands such as Country Joe And The Fish. A listen to Dove In Hawk's Clothing, an anti-draft piece that played on the popular hawk and dove stereotypes of the time, shows that such criticism did indeed have some validity to it. Still, it is one of the few protest songs that takes the point of view of the unwilling draftee forced to fight in a war rather than that of someone protesting that war.

Artist:      Rolling Stones
Title:     On With the Show
Source:      LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:     London
Year:     1967
     On With The Show, the final track on the last album from the Rolling Stones' psychedelic period, Their Satanic Majesties Request, makes you wonder if rock's Bad Boys were ever in the position of having to perform in a strip club. Then again, it could be about how some people go about getting their jollies, regardless of how the world is falling apart around them. Don't ask me, I suck at allegory.

Artist:    Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title:    Moonchild
Source:    LP: The Legendary A&M Sessions (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    David Gates
Label:    A&M
Year:    1966
    No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. That is indeed the name David Gates listed as the songwriter of Moonchild, the second single released by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band in 1966. And yes, it is indeed the same David Gates that later wrote songs like Everything I Own, Baby I'm A Want You and If for his own band, Bread, in the 1970s. The irony is that neither Gates nor the good Captain got famous doing songs that were anything even remotely like Moonchild.

Artist:    Them
Title:    All For Myself
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Backtrackin'
Writer(s):    Van Morrison
Label:    London (original label: Parrot)
Year:    1965   
    Them was the first major rock band to come from Belfast, Ireland, bursting on the British music scene with their energetic cover of Big Joe Turner's Baby, Please Don't Go in 1964. Their follow-up single, Here Comes The Night, went to the # 2 spot in the UK and became their first international hit as well. Although Here Comes The Night was written by a professional songwriter, Bert Burns, the B side of the single, All For Myself, was written by lead vocalist Van Morrison, who would go on to become one of the most respected singer/songwriters in rock history. The song was not included on any albums at the time, and would only appear on LP vinyl after Allen Klein had purchased the rights to Them's early recordings in the 1970s and issued several of them, including All For Myself, on an album called Backtrackin'.

Artist:    Easybeats
Title:        Friday On My Mind
Source:    Mono CD: Battle Of The Bands-Vol. Two (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Vanda/Young
Label:    Era (original label: United Artists)
Year:        1966
       Considered by many to be the "greatest Australian song" ever recorded, the Easybeats' Friday On My Mind, released in late 1966, certainly was the first (and for many years only) major international hit by a band from the island continent. Technically, however, Friday On My Mind is not an Australian song at all, since it was recorded after the band had relocated to London. The group continued to release records for the next year or two, but were never able to duplicate the success of Friday On My Mind. Ultimately vocalist Stevie Wright returned to Australia, where he had a successful solo career. Guitarists Harry Vanda and George Young, who had written Friday On My Mind, also returned home to form a band called Flash And The Pan in the early 1970s. Later in the decade Young would help launch the careers of his two younger brothers, Angus and Malcolm, in their own band, AC/DC.

Artist:    Iron Butterfly
Title:    In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Source:    LP: 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 at least once a year to retain the show's psychedelic cred.

Artist:    Moby Grape
Title:    Fall On You
Source:    LP: Moby Grape
Writer(s):    Peter Lewis
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    In a band overloaded with talent like Moby Grape was it's easy to overlook the contributions of the band's third guitarist, Peter Lewis. That would be a mistake, however. Although not as flashy as some of the other members, Lewis, the son of actress Loretta Young, showed his songwriting talents on tunes such as Fall On You from the first Moby Grape LP.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    You Can't Catch Me
Source:    LP: Tommy Flanders, Danny Kalb, Steve Katz, Al Kooper, Andy Kuhlberg, Roy Blumenfeld Of The Blues Project (promo copy) (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer:    Chuck Berry
Label:    Verve Forecast
Year:    1966
    One of the reasons for Chuck Berry's enduring popularity throughout the 1960s (despite a lack of major hits during the decade) was the fact that so many bands covered his 50s hits, often updating them for a 60s audience. Although not as well-known as Roll Over Beethoven or Johnny B. Goode, You Can't Catch Me nonetheless got its fair share of coverage, including versions by the Rolling Stones and the Blues Project (as well as providing John Lennon an opening line for the song Come Together).

 Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Sunny South Kensington
Source:    Mono British import CD: Mellow Yellow (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    EMI (original label: Epic)
Year:    1966
    Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch followed up his 1966 hit single Sunshine Superman with an album of the same name. He then repeated himself with the song and album Mellow Yellow. The Mellow Yellow single, released in late 1966, included Sunny South Kensington, a song done in a similar style to Sunshine Superman, as its B side. The Mellow Yellow album itself appeared in the US in early 1967.  Due to a contractual dispute in the UK between Donovan and Pye Records, neither Sunshine Superman or Mellow Yellow were issued in their original forms in Britain, although a hybrid album featuring tracks from both LPs did appear later.

Artist:    Astronauts
Title:    Razzamatazz
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Venet/Boyce/Allison
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1965
    Landlocked Boulder, Colorado would seem an unlikely place for a surf music band. Nonetheless, the Astonauts were just that, and a pretty successful one at that. That success, however, came from an equally unlikely place. After being together for about three years and having only one charted single in the US (Baja, which spent one week on the chart in 1963, peaking in the #94 spot), the band discovered that their records were doing quite well in Japan, where the mostly-instrumental Astronauts were actually outselling the Beach Boys. The group soon began touring extensively in the Far East and when all was said and done had released nine albums and a dozen singles over a period of less than 10 years. Razzamatazz is the instrumental B side to the Astronauts' 1965 recording of Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, a US-only single that sought to tie the Astronauts to the wave of self-contained American bands that were popping up in response to the previous year's British Invasion. Razzamatazz itself is basically the instrumental track for Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day with some harmonica added.
   
Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Birds In My Tree
Source:    LP: Incense And Peppermints
Writer(s):    Bunnell/Bartek
Label:    Sundazed/Uni
Year:    1967
    The Strawberry Alarm Clock had a history of not acknowledging everyone involved in making their records, especially near the beginning of their career. For instance, the lead vocalist on Incense And Peppermints itself, Greg Munford, was not even a member of the band. Furthermore, four of the ten songs on the album, including Birds In My Tree, we co-written (with bassist George Bunnell) by Steve Bartok, who also provided flute parts for several songs, but received no credit for his work. Birds In My Tree, incidentally, was chosen as the B side for the band's second single, Tomorrow.

Artist:    Tim Rose
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Tim Rose (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Billy Roberts
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966 (stereo version: 1967)
    The folk music revival of the late 50s and early 60s is generally thought of as an East Coast phenomena, centered in the coffee houses of cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia. California, though, had its share of folk music artists, especially in the San Francisco area, where the beatniks espoused a Bohemian lifestyle that would pave the way for the Hippy movement centered in the city's Haight-Ashbury district. Among the California folkies were Billy Roberts, who copyrighted the song Hey Joe in 1962, and Tim Rose, who (along with the Music Machine's Sean Bonniwell) came up with a slower version of the song. Rose's version, released as a single in mid-1966, got considerable airplay on San Francisco radio stations and was the inspiration for the more famous Jimi Hendrix version of the song that made the British top 10 toward the end of the year. Rose's version was not widely available until 1967, when his debut LP for Columbia was released. By then, however, the Hendrix version was all over the progressive FM airwaves in the US, and the Rose version (now in stereo) remained for the most part unheard.

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 Beatles 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:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Mrs. Robinson
Source:    LP: Bookends
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1968
    A shortened version of Mrs. Robinson first appeared on the soundtrack for the film The Graduate in 1967, but it wasn't until the Bookends album came out in 1968 that the full four minute version was released. Although the Graduate was one of the most successful films of the decade, I suspect that many more people have heard the song than have seen the film. Take that, movie lovers!

Artist:    James Gang
Title:    Bluebird
Source:    CD: Yer' Album
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    MCA (original label: Bluesway)
Year:    1969
    One of the highlights of the first James Gang album was a six-minute-long cover version of Bluebird, a Stephen Stills song that had originally appeared on the second Buffalo Springfield album. The James Gang version of the tune opens with a new instrumental intro written by drummer Jim Fox (playing piano), which leads into a short second intro featuring Joe Walsh on backwards-masked guitar. This in turn segues directly into the body of the song itself, which is played at a considerably slower tempo than the Springfield original (sort of a Vanilla Fudge approach, you might say). Yer' Album (so named in response to friends of the band always asking "when is yer album gonna come out?") was the only album by a rock band ever released on ABC's Bluesway subsidiary. The next four James Gang LPs would all appear on the ABC label itself.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Casey Jones
Source:    CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: Workingman's Dead)
Writer(s):    Hunter/Garcia
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    After three albums worth of studio material that the band was not entirely happy with, the Grateful Dead finally achieved their goal with the 1969 release of the double-LP Live Dead. So where do you go when you've finally accomplished your original mission? For the Dead the answer was to concentrate on their songwriting skills. The results of this new direction were heard on their next two studio LP's, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, both released in 1970. One of the highlights of Workingman's Dead was Casey Jones, a song based on an old folk tale (albeit updated a bit for a 1970 audience). Casey Jones was just one of many classic songs written by the team of guitarist Jerry Garcia and poet/lyricist Robert Hunter.

Artist:    Santana
Title:    Para Los Rumberos
Source:    LP: Santana (III)
Writer(s):    Tito Puente
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1971
    One of the highlights of Santana's second album, Abraxis, was a song called Oye Como Va. The song, sung entirely in Spanish, was a surprise hit and has been a part of Santana's stage repertoire ever since. The song was originally recorded in the 1950s by its songwriter, Tito Fuente, and his band, which he described as jazz with latin rhythms. Appropriately, Santana's music has often been described as rock with latin rhythms, so it was perhaps inevitable that Santana would record more of Puente's tunes. Indeed, the final track on the next Santana album was a Puente composition. Santana's version of Para Los Rumberos closely follows the original Puente arrangement, even to the presence of a horn section on the piece. I strongly recommend you use your search engine to find one of Puente's performances of the song, for comparison's sake. I did, and watching what turned out to be his final performance literally brought tears to my eyes.

Artist:      Jimi Hendrix
Title:     Astro Man
Source:      LP: The Cry Of Love
Writer:    Jimi Hendrix
Label:     Reprise
Year:     1971
     A little known fact about Jimi Hendrix is that he was a comic book fan. Astro Man, from the 1971 LP The Cry Of Love, reflects that aspect of the man. The track, recorded in 1970, features Billy Cox on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Juma Sultan on additional percussion.

Artist:    King Crimson
Title:    In The Wake Of Poseidon
Source:    LP: In The Wake Of Poseidon
Writer(s):    Fripp/Sinfield
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    Following King Crimson's tour to support their first LP, In The Court Of The Crimson King, most of the band members left to pursue other projects, leaving only bandleader Robert Fripp and lyricist to come up with enough material for a followup album. Vocalist Greg Lake, who was in the process of forming Emerson, Lake & Palmer, agreed to record vocals for the new album in return for possession of King Crimson's PA system, and ended up singing on all but one of the tracks on In The Wake Of Poseidon, including the eight-minute long title track itself. Michael Giles also returned long enough to provide drum tracks, while Fripp's longtime friend Gordon Haskell played bass. Fripp himself ended up playing the mellotron as well as all the guitar parts on the LP. King Crimson would continue to have a fluid lineup throughout its existence, with many of its members going on to become stars in their own right.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    Whole Lotta Love
Source:    German import LP: Led Zeppelin II
Writer(s):    Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones/Dixon
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    If any one song can be considered the bridge between psychedelic rock and heavy metal, it would have to be Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. Released in 1969 as the lead track to their second LP, the song became their biggest hit single. Whole Lotta Love was originally credited to the four band members. In recent years, however, co-credit has been given to Willie Dixon, whose lyrics to the 50s song You Need Love are almost identical to Robert Plant's.

Artist:     Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title:     Piece Of My Heart
Source:     LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer:     Ragovoy/Burns
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1968
     By 1968 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with their charismatic vocalist from Texas, Janis Joplin, had become as popular as fellow San Francisco bands Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Somehow, though, they were still without a major label record deal. That all changed with the release of Cheap Thrills, with cover art by the legendary underground comix artist R. Crumb. The album itself was a curious mixture of live performances and studio tracks, the latter being led by the band's powerful cover of the 1966 Barbara Lynn tune Piece Of My Heart. The song propelled the band, and Joplin, to stardom. That stardom would be short-lived for most of the band members, however, as well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed advice-givers convinced Joplin that Big Brother was holding her back. The reality was that the band was uniquely suited to support her better than anyone she would ever work with again.

Artist:     Music Machine
Title:     Double Yellow Line
Source:     Mono British import CD: The Ultimate Turn On (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Sean Bonniwell
Label:     Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year:     1967
     The original Music Machine released a string of singles from late 1966 through early 1967, but due to a lack of competence on the part of both management and label, none of them were hits. Songs like Double Yellow Line were certainly as good if not better than most of what was hitting the charts at the time. It was not until the 21st century that Sean Bonniwell's music began to receive the recognition it deserved, a process that is still under way.

Artist:    Early Rationals (circa 1966)
Title:    I Need You
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Rhino (original label: A Squared)
Year:    1968
    The Rationals were formed in 1965 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They soon got the attention of local label A2 (A Squared), and had a series of regional hits in the same Detroit soul-rock style favored by such notables as Mitch Ryder and Bob Seger. One of the best of these was a cover of a Kinks B side, I Need You, which the Rationals recorded in 1966, but did not release until late 1967, when it appeared as a B side backing another artist entirely. To confuse the matter the record was credited to the Early Rationals (circa 1966). Even stranger was the fact that the Rationals released a Gerry Goffin/Carole King song called I Need You on the same label that same year. My money's on this one as the better of the two tracks.

Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Too Many People
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pons/Rinehart
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1965
    The Leaves are a bit unusual in that in a city known for drawing wannabes from across the world, this local band's members were all native L.A.ins. Formed by members of a fraternity at Cal State Northridge, the Leaves had their greatest success when they took over as house band at Ciro's after the Byrds vacated the slot to go on tour. Like many bands of the time, they were given a song (Love Minus Zero) to record as a single by their producer and allowed to write their own B side. In this case that B side was Too Many People, written by bassist Jim Pons and  guitarist Bill Rhinehart. The song ended up getting more airplay on local radio stations than Love Minus Zero, making it their first regional hit. The Leaves had their only national hit the following year with their third attempt at recording the fast version of Hey Joe, the success of which led to their first LP, which included a watered down version of Too Many People. The version heard here is the 1965 original. Eventually Pons would leave the Leaves, hooking up first with the Turtles, then Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1843 (starts 10/22/18)

    This week's show is essentially two sets. The first, from 1970, consists mainly of pretty familiar tunes from well-known artists (although the David Bowie track is relatively obscure). The second, from 1972, is made up of longer tracks, including a live performance from the Band. We finish up with the last single released by Eric Burdon and War before they went their separate ways.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    The Wizard
Source:    CD: Black Sabbath
Writer:    Osborne/Iommi/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    Often cited as the first true heavy metal album, Black Sabbath's debut LP features one of my all-time favorite album covers (check out the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era Facebook page's Classic Album Covers section) as well as several outstanding tracks. One of the best of these is The Wizard, which was reportedly inspired by the Gandalf character from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Artist:    Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young
Title:    Woodstock
Source:    LP: déjà vu
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    It's somewhat ironic that the most famous song about the Woodstock Music and Art Festival was written by someone who was not even at the event. Joni Mitchell had been advised by her manager that she would be better off appearing on the Dick Cavett show that weekend, so she stayed in her New York City hotel room and watched televised reports of what was going on up at Max Yasgur's farm. Further inspiration came from her then-boyfried Graham Nash, who shared his firsthand experiences of the festival with Mitchell. The song was first released on the 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon, and was made famous the same year when it was chosen to be the first single released from the Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young album déjà vu. The CSNY version peaked just outside of the Billboard top 10.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    John Barleycorn
Source:    LP: John Barleycorn Must Die
Writer(s):    Traditional
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1970
    Following the breakup of Blind Faith in late 1969, Steve Winwood began work on what was to be his first solo LP. After completing one track on which he played all the instruments himself, Winwood decided to ask former Traffic drummer Jim Capaldi to help him out with the project. After the second track was completed, Winwood invited yet another former Traffic member, Chris Wood, to add woodwinds. It soon became obvious that what they were working on was, in fact, a new Traffic album, which came to be called John Barleycorn must die. In addition to the blues/R&B tinged rock that the group was already well known for, the new album incorporated elements from traditional British folk music, which was enjoying a renaissance thanks to groups such as Fairport Convention and the Pentangle. The best example of this new direction was the title track of the album itself, which traces its origins back to the days when England was more agrarian in nature.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    After All
Source:    CD: The Man Who Sold The World
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1970
    The Man Who Sold The World was the first David Bowie album to be produced entirely by Tony Visconti. As such, it is often considered the true beginning of the David Bowie legend. It is also the album with the most different covers; not cover songs, but cover artwork. The album was originally released in the US in November of 1970 with a hand-drawn Michael J. Weller cover depicting a cowboy carrying a rifle, with a shot-up church clock tower in the background. Bowie at first disliked the cover and insisted that a new one featuring  Bowie himself lying on a bed wearing a "man dress" be used for the British release of the album the following April. Meanwhile, a completely different cover entirely appeared in Germany. Rather than try to describe this one I'll just refer you to the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era web page, where you can find it in a photo album called Classic Album Covers. It'll be worth the effort I promise, as this cover is literally too cool for words. Finally, when RCA Victor reissued the album in the US in 1972, The Man Who Sold The World had yet another cover, this one depicting Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in a black and white photograph. The track lineup, however, remained consistent, with the often-overlooked classic After All appearing at the end of side one of the LP.

Artist:    Argent
Title:    Hold Your Head Up
Source:    European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: All Together Now)
Writer(s):    Argent/White
Label:    Sony Music (original US label: Epic)
Year:    1972
    Following the dissolution of the Zombies, keyboardist Rod Argent went about forming a new band called, appropriately enough, Argent. The new group had its greatest success in 1972 with the song Hold Your Head Up, which went to the #5 spot on the charts in both the US and UK. The song originally appeared on the album All Together Now, with a running time of over six minutes. The first single version of the tune ran less than three minutes, but was quickly replaced with a longer edit that made the song three minutes and fifteen seconds long. In the years since, the longer LP version has come to be the most familiar one to most radio listeners.

Artist:    Yes
Title:    And You And I
Source:    LP: Close To The Edge
Writer(s):    Anderson/Bruford/Howe/Squire
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1972
    Recording technology has been evolving since the first recordings were made on wax cylinders over a hundred years ago. That evolution has been anything but steady, however. The process was entirely acoustic until about 1930, when microphones began to replace the large horns that had been previously required to gather in sounds. From there, things stayed pretty much as they were until the late 1940s, when tape technology made it possible to edit recordings for the first time. Stereo came along in the 1950s, but was considered a luxury rather than an industry standard until the late 1960s, when the record labels began to phase out monoraul records altogether. Perhaps the biggest and most revolutionary change, however, was the invention of multi-track technology, or rather the expansion of such technology to more than three or four tracks. As first eight, and then sixteen track machines became common, the artists themselves began to use the recording studio itself as part of the creative process. There were times, however, when the process got a bit too complicated, at least for some musicians. Bill Bruford, the drummer for Yes, absolutely hated the slow development of material in the studio that went into the making of the album Close To The Edge, to the point that it would be his last studio LP as a member of Yes. Only one track on the album was credited to the entire band: And You And I, which was also the only single released (in edited form, since the original runs over ten minutes) from the album. The song originated as an acoustic piece by vocalist Jon Anderson and guitarist Steve Howe that was fleshed out by Bruford and bassist Chris Squire in the studio. The edited version of And You And I barely missed the top 40, peaking at #42.

Artist:     The Band
Title:     The Genetic Method/Chest Fever
Source:     CD: Rock Of Ages
Writer:     Hudson/Robertson
Label:     Capitol
Year:     1972
     I guess this is as good a place as any to mention that, given a choice between a live recording and a studio track I'll take the studio track almost every time. My reasoning is this: a live recording, no matter how well recorded, is still nothing more than a documentation of a performance that has already taken place. I believe that there is no possible way to duplicate the actual experience of hearing the song performed live. There are too many aspects of the concert experience that simply can't be captured on an audio (or even visual) medium, such as the emotional and/or mental state of the performers (or the audience members for that matter) at the time of the performance. A studio recording, on the other hand, is a work of, if not art, at least craftmanship. The ability of the artist to go back and make changes to the work until that artist is satisfied with the final product is what makes the studio recording more than just a snapshot of a performance. Just like a sculpture or painting, a studio recording is a set piece, meant to be repeatedly experienced in its final form. That said, here we have a live track from The Band's most popular album, Rock of Ages. Why did I choose this over the studio performance of Chest Fever from Music From Big Pink? Well, the main reason is the first part of the recording, The Genetic Method, which is an improvisational piece from Garth Hudson on the organ. As the two tracks run continuously there was really no choice but to include Chest Fever as well. One small aside: the performances used for Rock of Ages all came from a set of concerts held over the New Year's holidays. The presence of Auld Lang Syne in the middle of The Genetic Method suggests that Hudson started his performance at just a few minutes before midnight and played the familiar strains as the clock struck twelve.

Artist:    Eric Burdon And War
Title:    They Can't Take Away Our Music
Source:    CD: The Black Man's Burdon
Writer(s):    Goldstein/War
Label:    UMe (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1970
    A common feature of record stores in the 1970s was something called the cut-out bin. It was basically a place where unsold records ended up after being deleted from the official catalogs of the record labels. Since they would not accept returns of such records, the store owners themselves would sell them at a reduced rate after finding a way to permanently mark each record as being a cut-out. Thi usually involved a hole or a notch in the cover (for LPs) or a small hole through the label of the record itself, in the case of 45 RPM singles. I would occasionally look through these piles of cut-outs to see if there was anything that might be of interest to me. On one of those occasions, around 1973 or so, I ran across a single by Eric Burdon and War called They Can't Take Away Our Music. I, like many others, had lost track of Eric Burdon's career after the Animals disbanded, and was only vaguely aware of the fact that he had made a couple of albums with a band called War. By this time War was becoming pretty popular for hits like All Day Music and Cisco Kid, so I was curious to hear what a collaboration between Eric Burdon and War might sound like. They Can't Take Away Our Music is an inspirational tune, with lead vocals being traded off between Burdon and various members of War leading up to a litany of influential jazz, blues and R&B artists of the previous fifty years, from Bessie Smith to Jimi Hendrix (who was still alive when the song was recorded), all against a backdrop of the song's title being repeatedly sung in a style reminiscent of a gospel choir. I wore that single out rather quickly (M-G-M having switched to notoriously cheap materials for their singles around the time the record had been released), and went without a copy of the song for almost fifty years before finding a copy of the album it was taken from, The Black Man's Burdon. The double-length album was the last collaboration between Eric Burdon and War, with They Can't Take Away Our Music finishing out the album's final side. It was an appropriate way for Burdon to end that chapter in his long career, paving the way for War to come into its own as one of the more popular bands of the 1970s.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1842 (starts 10/15/18)

    This week, rather than dig up songs that have never been featured on the show before, we are pulling out a bunch of tracks that haven't been heard on Stuck in the Psychedelic in over a year. In a couple of cases, they haven't been played in over seven years. Just to balance things out a bit, we do finish out with a song that is in contention for "most played song of 2018" on the show, but, hey, it's a great song that deserves to be heard.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Superlungs (My Supergirl)
Source:    CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released on LP: Barabajabal)
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sony Music Special Products (original label: Epic)
Year:    1969
    Donovan originally recorded a song called Supergirl for his 1966 album Sunshine Superman album, but ultimately chose not to use the track. Over two years later he recorded an entirely new version of the song, retitling it Superlungs (My Supergirl) for the 1969 Barabajagal album.

Artist:     Nazz
Title:     Open My Eyes
Source:     LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Nazz)
Writer:     Todd Rundgren
Label:     Rhino (original label: SGC)
Year:     1968
     The Nazz was a band from Philadelphia who were basically the victims of their own bad timing. 1968 was the year that progressive FM radio began to get recognition as a viable format while top 40 radio was being dominated by bubble gum pop bands such as the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. The Nazz, on the other hand, sounded more like British bands such as the Move and Brian Augur's Trinity that were performing well on the UK charts but were unable to buy a hit in the US. The band had plenty of talent, most notably guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Todd Rundgren, who would go on to establish a successful career, both as an artist (he played all the instruments on his Something/Anything LP and led the band Utopia) and a producer (Grand Funk's We're An American Band, among others). Open My Eyes was originally issued as the A side of a single, but ended up being eclipsed in popularity by its flip side, a song called Hello It's Me, that ended up getting airplay in Boston and other cities, eventually hitting the Canadian charts (a new version would become a solo hit for Rundgren five years later).

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 crackdown 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:    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:        Bob Dylan
Title:        Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Source:   Highway 61 Revisited
Writer:        Bob Dylan
Label:        Columbia
Year:        1965
        Although Bob Dylan is not usually thought of as a psychedelic artist, he was the first major folk artist to go electric and was instrumental in introducing several of his fellow musicians to mind-expanding substances. 1965's Highway 61 Revisited album is generally regarded as being among the most influential of Dylan's albums, thanks to tracks like Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.

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

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Hush
Source:    CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Shades Of Deep Purple)
Writer:    Joe South
Label:    K-Tel (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year:    1968
    British rockers Deep Purple scored a huge US hit in 1968 with their rocked out cover of Hush, a tune written by Joe South that had been an international hit for Billy Joe Royal the previous year. Oddly enough, the Deep Purple version of the tune was virtually ignored in their native England. The song was included on the album Shades Of Deep Purple, the first of three LPs to be released in the US on Tetragrammaton Records, a label partially owned by actor/comedian Bill Cosby. When Tetragrammaton folded shortly after the release of the third Deep Purple album, The Book Of Taleisyn, the band was left without a US label, and went through some personnel changes, including the addition of new lead vocalist Ian Gillian (who had sung the part of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album), before signing to Warner Brothers and becoming a major force in 70s rock. Meanwhile, original vocalist Rod Evans hooked up with drummer Bobby Caldwell and two former members of Iron Butterfly to form Captain Beyond before fading from public view.

Artist:     Bob Seger System
Title:     Death Row
Source:     45 RPM single B side
Writer:     Bob Seger
Label:     Capitol
Year:     1968
     I like to play Bob Seger's Death Row, written from the perspective of a convicted murderer waiting to be executed, for fans of the Silver Bullet Band who think that Turn the Page is about as intense as it gets. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled across this rare single at a radio station I used to work for. Even better, the station had no desire to keep the record, as the A side, the equally intense anti-war song 2+2=?, never charted.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Overs
Source:    LP: Bookends
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Originally written for (but not used in) the film The Graduate, Overs is the middle part of a series of songs on side one of the Bookends album that follow the cycle of life from childhood to old age. The song deals with a long relationship that is coming to an end after years of slow stagnation. Musically the tune is quiet and contemplative, with a loose structure that has more in common with the cool jazz of Miles Davis than either folk or rock.
   
Artist:    George Harrison
Title:    Ski-ing
Source:    CD: Wonderwall Music
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Apple
Year:    1968
    Starting in 1966 George Harrison showed an intense interest in the music of sitarist Ravi Shankar, and in Indian classical music in general, even to the point of learning to play the sitar himself. His first composition along those lines was Love You To, from the Revolver album, followed in 1967 by Within You Without You from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1968 Harrison took it a step further by composing and performing music for the soundtrack of a film by director Joe Massot called called Wonderwall. The film itself dealt with a wall separating two apartments occupied by individuals from extremely different backgrounds (a lonely college professor and a Vogue model), and a small gap in the wall itself creating a bridge between the two. Harrison used the film as a springboard to fuse music from Eastern (Indian classical) and Western (rock) traditions, introducing Western audiences to various Indian instruments in the process. The album, Wonderwall Music, was Harrison's first solo project as well as the first album released on the Apple label (predating the White album by several weeks). The album featured several guest musicians, including Eric Clapton, who is probably the lead guitarist on Ski-ing, the shortest track on the album. Although Wonderwall Music was not a commercial success at the time of its release, it has since come to be highly regarded as a forerunner of both electronica and world music.

Artist:    Young Rascals
Title:    In The Midnight Hour
Source:    CD: Time Peace-The Rascals' Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: The Young Rascals)
Writer:    Pickett/Cropper
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1966
    The Rascals were the premier blue-eyed soul band of the 1960s (in fact, the term blue-eyed soul was coined specifically to describe the Rascals). Originally from New Jersey, the group changed its name to the Young Rascals at the behest of Atlantic Records for reasons that are lost to history before releasing their debut LP. In addition to the hit single Good Lovin', the album boasted several R&B cover songs. The best-known of these was Wilson Pickett's In The Midnight Hour, which was popular enough to be included on the Rascal's Greatest Hits album.

Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     Let Me In
Source:     LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer:     Balin/Kantner
Label:     RCA Victor
Year:     1966
     Jefferson Airplane was the brainchild of vocalist and club manager Marty Balin, who hand-picked the band's original lineup. Among those charter members was Paul Kantner, who Balin had asked to join the band without ever having heard him sing or play. Balin said later that he just knew that Kantner was someone he wanted for his new band. Kantner very quickly developed into a strong singer/songwriter in his own right, starting with the song Let Me In (co-written by Balin), Kantner's first recorded lead vocal for the band.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    The Flute Thing
Source:    Mono 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:    Turtles
Title:    Like The Seasons
Source:    Mono CD: All The Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Warren Zevon
Label:    Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1967
    Although by far the most successful, the Turtles were by no means the only act signed to the White Whale label in the mid-1960s. Among their labelmates were a duo calling themselves lyme and cybelle (the lack of capitalization was deliberate), whose real names were Warren Zevon and Voilet Santangelo. Although not particularly successful as a recording artist at that time, Zevon did write several tunes for the Turtles to record, including Like The Seasons, which first appeared as the B side of a song called Outside Chance in late 1966. The following year it again appeared as a B side, this time paired with the band's most successful single, Happy Together..
 
Artist:    Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title:    Abba Zaba
Source:    45 RPM single (originally issued as B side and included on LP: Safe As Milk)
Writer(s):    Don Van Vliet
Label:    Sundazed/Buddah
Year:    1967
    After an aborted recording career with A&M Records, future avant-garde rock superstar Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) signed a contract with the newly formed Buddah record label. The first record ever released by Buddah was the album Safe As Milk, which included the single Yellow Brick Road, backed with Abba Zaba. Although the Captain's music was at that time still somewhat blues-based, the album was not a commercial success, and Buddah cut Beefheart and his Magic Band from the label in favor of more pop oriented groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. Captain Beefheart then moved to yet another fledgling label, Blue Thumb, before finding a more permanent home with his old high school classmate Frank Zappa's Bizarre Records, where he released the classic Trout Mask Replica. More recently, Sundazed has re-released the Buddah single, but with Abba Zaba as the A side.

Artist:    Full Treatment
Title:    Just Can't Wait
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Buzz Clifford
Label:    Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year:    1967
    In the fall of 1966 Brian Wilson produced the classic Beach Boys single Good Vibrations, which sent vibrations of its own throughout the L.A. studio scene. Suddenly producers were stumbling all over themselves to follow in Wilson's footsteps with mini-symphonies of their own. Buzz Clifford and Dan Moore, calling themselves the Full Treatment, created Just Can't Wait in 1967 and quickly sold the master tape to A&M Records. Despite enthusiam for the recording at the label, the song was mostly ignored by radio stations and the Full Treatment was never heard from again.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Yesterday's Papers
Source:    CD: Between The Buttons
Writer:    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label:London)
Year:    1967
    Between The Buttons was the Rolling Stones first album of 1967 and included their first forays into psychedelic music, a trend that would dominate their next LP, Their Satanic Majesties Request. The opening track of Between The Buttons was Yesterday's Papers, a song written in the wake of Mick Jagger's breakup with his girlfriend Chrissie Shrimpton (who, after the album was released, tried to commit suicide). The impact of the somewhat cynical song was considerably less in the US, where it was moved to the # 2 slot on side one to make room for Let's Spend The Night Together, a song that had only been released as a single in the band's native UK.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Think For Yourself
Source:    CD: Rubber Soul
Writer:    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1965
    By the end of 1965 George Harrison was writing two songs per Beatle album. On Rubber Soul, however, one of his two songs was deleted from the US version of the album and appeared on 1966's Yesterday...And Today LP instead. The remaining Harrison song on Rubber Soul was Think For Yourself. Harrison later said that he was still developing his songwriting skills at this point and that bandmate John Lennon had helped write Think For Yourself.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
Source:    Mono LP: Rarities (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Parlophone
Year:    1970
    Basically a studio concoction assembled by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) was originally intended to be released as a 1969 single by the Plastic Ono Band. The track was the result of four separate recording sessions dating back to 1967 and originally ran over six minutes long. The instrumental tracks were recorded around the same time the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in Spring of 1967. Brian Jones added a saxophone part on June 8th of that year. In April of 1969 Lennon and McCartney added vocals, while Lennon edited the entire track down to slightly over four minutes. The single was readied for a November release, but at the last minute was withdrawn. The recording was instead released as the B side of the Let It Be single the following year. The US pressing of the single gives the title as You Know My Name (Look Up My Number), as does the 1980 LP Rarities. This, however, was a mistake. Leave it to Capitol to not correct that mistake, even ten years after the fact.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Drive My Car
Source:    CD: Rubber Soul (originally released in US on LP: Yesterday...And Today)
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1965 (not released in US until 1966)
    Capitol Records repeatedly got the ire of the Beatles by omitting, adding and rearranging songs on the US versions of their LPs, especially in 1966, when the band was starting to put considerable time and effort into presenting the albums as a coherent package. At the root of the problem were two facts: albums in the UK had longer running times than US albums, and thus more songs, and UK singles stayed in print longer than their US counterparts and were generally not included on albums at all. This resulted in albums like Yesterday and Today that didn't even have a British counterpart. Drive My Car, for example, was released in the US in 1966 on the Yesterday...And Today LP. It had appeared six months earlier in the UK as the opening track of the Rubber Soul album. Oddly enough, despite being one of the group's most recognizable songs, Drive My Car was never issued as a single.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    Ego Trip
Source:    LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1968
    1968 was, among other things, the year of the "Boss-Town Sound", a gimmick used to promote several Boston-based bands signed to the M-G-M label (M-G-M having been asleep at the wheel during the recent band-signing frenzy in San Francisco). Derided in the music press as a crass attempt to manipulate record buyers, the ultimate victims of this fraud were the bands themselves, many of which were actually quite talented. Ultimate Spinach was the brainchild of keyboardist Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote all the material for the group's first two LPs. When the stigma of being part of the whole boss-town thing became too much to deal with, Bruce-Douglas left the group. Although the Ultimate Spinach name continued to be used, subsequent albums had little in common musically with the two Bruce-Douglas LPs.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    I Can Move A Mountain
Source:    Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Basic Blues Magoos)
Writer(s):    Theilhelm/Kelly
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1968
    After parting with an increasingly bubble-gum oriented management team, the Blues Magoos set out to reinvent themselves as a more progressive rock band in 1968. The resulting LP, Basic Blues Magoos, was self-produced and self-recorded, and showed a side of the band that had not been heard before. The group was unable to shed their baggage in the eyes of the record-buying public, however, and the album sold poorly.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Ball And Chain
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Willie Mae Thornton
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Big Brother And The Holding Company electrified the crowd at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 with their performance of Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's Ball And Chain. The rest of the world, however, would have to wait until the following year to hear Janis Joplin's version of the old blues tune, when a live performance recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium was included on the LP Cheap Thrills.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Little Wing
Source:    CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Although it didn't have any hit singles on it, Axis: Bold As Love, the second album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was full of memorable tunes, including one of Hendrix's most covered songs, Little Wing. The album itself is a showcase for Hendrix's rapidly developing skills, both as a songwriter and in the studio. The actual production of the album was a true collaborative effort, combining Hendrix's creativity, engineer Eddie Kramer's expertise and producer Chas Chandler's strong sense of how a record should sound, acquired through years of recording experience as a member of the Animals. The result was nothing short of a masterpiece.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix (Band Of Gypsys)
Title:    Power Of Soul
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1970, released 2013
    1969 was a strange year for Jimi Hendrix. For one thing, he did not release any new recordings that year, yet he remained the top money maker in rock music. One reason for the lack of new material was an ongoing dispute with Capitol Records over a contract he had signed in 1965 as a session player. By the end of the year an agreement was reached for Hendrix to provide Capitol with one album's worth of new material. At this point Hendrix had not released any live albums, so it was decided to tape his New Year's performances at the Fillmore East with his new Band Of Gypsys (with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox), playing songs that had never been released in studio form. As it turns out, however, studio versions of many of the songs on that album did indeed exist, but were not issued until after Hendrix's death, when producer Alan Douglas put out a pair of LPs (Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning), that had some of the original drum and bass tracks (and even some guitar tracks) re-recorded by musicians that had never actually worked with Hendrix. One of those songs is Power Of Soul, which has finally been released in its original Band Of Gypsys studio version, with background vocals provided by Cox and Miles.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Source:    CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    Still Raining, Still Dreaming, from the third Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Electric Ladyland, is the second half of a live studio recording featuring guest drummer Buddy Miles, who would later join Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Band Of Gypsys. The recording also features Mike Finnegan on organ, Freddie Smith on tenor sax and Larry Faucett on congas, as well as Experience member Noel Redding on bass.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    You Keep Me Hangin' On
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Holland/Dozier/Holland
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    You Keep Me Hangin' On, a hit for the Supremes in 1967, was the first song recorded by Vanilla Fudge, who laid down the seven-minute plus track in a single take. Producer Shadow Morton then used that recording to secure the band a contract with Atco Records (an Atlantic subsidiary) that same year. Rather than to re-record the song for their debut LP, Morton and the band chose to use the original tape, despite the fact that it was never mixed in stereo. For single release the song was cut down considerably, clocking in at around three minutes.

Artist:    Velvet Underground
Title:    I'm Waiting For The Man
Source:    CD: The Velvet Underground And Nico
Writer(s):    Lou Reed
Label:    Polydor (original label: Verve)
Year:    1967
    The most celebrated of the avant-garde psychedelic bands from New York City, the Velvet Underground, did not sell a lot of records during their existence, despite being closely affiliated with Andy Warhol, at the time the hottest name in the art world. This is probably because their music was not (and still isn't) easily accessible for the masses. In fact, the VU may well be that band that your parents were talking about when they were yelling at you to "turn down that noise!".  A listen to Lou Reed's I'm Waiting For The Man from the group's debut LP provides a basis for that particular theory.

Artist:     Moby Grape
Title:     Sitting By The Window
Source:     Mono LP: Moby Grape
Writer:     Peter Lewis
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1967
     Moby Grape's powerful 1967 debut managed to achieve what few bands have been able to: a coherent sound despite having wildly different writing styles from the individual members. One of Peter Lewis's contributions to the album was Sitting By The Window, one of those rare songs that sounds better every time you hear it.

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) while they were together. 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.