Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1931 (starts 7/29/19)

    This week the emphasis is on long sets from specific years (1966, 67 and 68), along with a pair of artists' sets from Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. We start off in 1967...

Artist:     Electric Prunes
Song:     Get Me To the World On Time
Source:     Mono CD: The complete Reprise singles (originally released on LP: The Electric Prunes and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Tucker/Jones
Label:     Real Gone/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1967
     Songwriter Annette Tucker usually worked with Nancy Mantz, and the pair was responsible for the Electric Prunes biggest hit, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night). On Get Me To The World On Time, which originally appeared on the band's first LP, she instead teamed up with Jill Jones and came up with a kind of psychedelic Bo Diddley song that ended up being the Prunes second biggest hit (and the first rock song that I ever heard first on an FM station rather than an AM one).

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Unhappy Girl
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    After the success of their first album and the single Light My Fire in early 1967, the Doors quickly returned to the studio, releasing a second LP, Strange Days, later the same year. The first single released from the new album was People Are Strange. The B side of that single was Unhappy Girl, from the same album. Both sides got played on the jukebox at a place called the Woog in the village of Meisenbach near Ramstein Air Force Base (which is where I was spending most of my evenings that autumn).

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Double Yellow Line
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Rhino (original label: Original Sound, stereo LP version released on Warner Brothers)
Year:    1967
    One of the Original Sound singles that also appeared on the Warner Brothers LP Bonniwell Music Machine, Double Yellow Line features lyrics that were literally written by Bonniwell on the way to the recording studio. In fact, his inability to stay in his lane while driving with one hand and writing with the other resulted in a traffic ticket. The ever resourceful Bonniwell wrote the rest of the lyrics on the back of the ticket and even invited the officer in to watch the recording session. He declined.

Artist:    Mad River
Title:    A Gazelle
Source:    Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released in US on EP: Mad River)
Writer(s):    Lawrence Hammond
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Wee)
Year:    1967
    Mad River was formed in 1965 in Yellow Spings, Ohio, as the Mad River Blues Band. The group (after several personnel changes) relocated to the Berkeley, California in spring of 1967, and soon began appearing at local clubs, often alongside Country Joe And The Fish. Around this time the band came into contact with Lonnie Hewitt, a jazz musician who had started his own R&B-oriented label, Wee. After auditioning for Fantasy Records, the band decided instead to finance their own studio recordings, which were then issued as a three-song EP on Wee. With all their material having been written and arranged before the band left Ohio, and then perfected over a period of months, Mad River's EP was far more musically complex than what was generally being heard in the Bay Area at the time. The opening track, Amphetamine Gazell (the title having been temporarily shortened to A Gazelle for the EP) contains several starts and stops, as well as time changes. Bassist Lawrence Hammond's high pitched, almost operatic, vocal style actually enhances the lyrics, which drummer Greg Dewey described as "a teenager's idea of what it must be like to be hip and cool in California". The song was recut (with its original title restored and even more abrupt starts and stops), for Mad River's Capitol debut LP the following year.

Artist:    Circus Maximus
Title:    Travelin' Around
Source:    LP: Circus Maximus
Writer:    Bob Bruno
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    Circus Maximus was formed in Greenwich Village in 1967 by lead guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Bob Bruno (who wrote most of the band's material) and guitarist/vocalist Jerry Jeff Walker, who went on to much greater success as a songwriter after he left the group for a solo career (he wrote the classic Mr. Bojangles, among other things). The lead vocals on the first Circus Maximus LP were split between the two, with one exception: guitarist Peter Troutner shares lead vocal duties with Bruno on the album's opening track, the high-energy Travelin' Around.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Why
Source:    CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    McGuinn/Crosby
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
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 new version of Why, and that version was used for the band's next LP, Younger Than Yesterday.

Artist:    First Edition
Title:    Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The First Edition and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mickey Newbury
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle was the official leader on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.

Artist:    Superfine Dandelion
Title:    Crazy Town (Move On Little Children)
Source:    CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Collins/Musel
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1967
    The Mile Ends were a Phoenix, Arizona band that were regulars at a local teen club called the Fifth Estate, which was run by a guy named Jim Musil. Musil became the group's manager, booking studio time to record a drinking song called Bottle Up And Go in 1966. Not long after that the group, now consisting of guitarists Mike McFadden and Ed Black, along with drummer Mike Collins, began calling themselves the Superfine Dandelion for a studio project sponsored by Musil. The group recorded an album's worth of material that came to the attention of Bob Shad, who was looking for material to issue on his Mainstream label. Shad bought the tapes, releasing the album in November of 1967. Shad chose Crazy Town (Move On Little Children) as a single, but a lack of interest by both radio and the record buying public brought the story of the Superfine Dandelion to a close by mid-1968.

Artist:    Immediate Family
Title:    Rubiyat
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on CD: What A Way To Come Down)
Writer(s):    Kovacs/Khayyam
Label:    Rhino (original label: Big Beat)
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1997
    The members of the Immediate Family hailed from the city of Concord, a conservative suburb east of San Francisco bay. They didn't actually make music in their hometown, however. Instead they practiced at the home of organist Kriss Kovacs's mother Judy Davis (the vocal coach to the stars who numbered such diverse talents as Grace Slick, Barbra Streisand and even Frank Sinatra among her pupils). The band was able to get the backing to lay down some tracks at Golden State Recorders (the top studio in the area at the time), but reportedly lost their record deal due to emotional instability on the part of Kovacs. The song Rubiyat is an adaptation of the Rubiyat Of Omar Khayyam. Ambitious to be sure, but done well enough to make one wonder what it could have led to.

Artist:     Buffalo Springfield
Title:     Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing
Source:     CD: Buffalo Springfield
Writer:    Neil Young
Label:     Atco
Year:     1966
     One of the most influential folk-rock bands to come out of the L.A. scene was the Buffalo Springfield. The Springfield had several quality songwriters, including Neil Young, whose voice was deemed "too weird" by certain record company people. Thus we have Richie Furay handling the lead vocals on Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing, the group's debut single. The track was just one of several Young songs sung by Furay on the band's first album. By the time the second Buffalo Springfield album was released things had changed somewhat, and Young got to do his own lead vocals on songs like Mr. Soul and Broken Arrow.

Artist:    Motorcycle Abileen
Title:    (You Used To) Ride So High
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: Warren Zevon: The First Sessions)
Writer(s):    Warren Zevon
Label:    Rhino (original label: Varese Sarabande)
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2003
    One of the ripple effects of the British Invasion was the near-disappearance of the solo artist from the top 40 charts for several years. There were exceptions, of course. Folk singers such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, pop singers such as Jackie DeShannon and Dionne Warwick and more adult-oriented vocalists such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin all did reasonably well, but if you wanted to be a rock and roll star you had to have a band. Producers took to creating band names for pieces that were in fact entirely performed by studio musicians, and in a few cases a solo artist would use a band name for his own recordings. One such case is the Motorcycle Abilene, which was in reality producer Bones Howe on various percussion devices working with singer/songwriter Warren Zevon, who sings and plays all non-percussion instruments on (You Used To) Ride So High, a song he wrote shortly after disbanding the duo Lyme And Cybelle (he was Lyme, presumably).

Artist:    Count Five
Title:    Psychotic Reaction
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label:    Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year:    1965
    San Jose, California, had a vibrant teen music scene in the late 60s, despite the fact that the relatively small (at the time) city was overshadowed by San Francisco at the other end of the bay (both cities were then, as now, considered part of the same metropolitan market). One of the more popular bands in town was Count Five, a group of five individuals who chose to dress up like Bela Lugosi's Dracula, capes and all. Musically, they idolized the Yardbirds (Jeff Beck era), and for slightly more than three minutes managed to sound more like their idols than the Yardbirds themselves (who by then had replaced Beck with Jimmy Page).

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    It's Breaking Me Up
Source:    LP: This Was
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    Jethro Tull originally was part of the British blues scene, but even in the early days the band's principal songwriter Ian Anderson made no secret of the fact that he wanted to expand beyond the confines of that particular genre. Ironically, It's Breaking Me Up, from Jethro Tull's first LP, is an Anderson composition that is rooted solidly in the British blues style.

Artist:    Fever Tree
Title:    San Francisco Girls (Return Of The Native) (originally released on LP: Fever Tree)
Source:    CD: Psychedelic Pop
Writer(s):    Scott and Vivian Holtzman
Label:    BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Uni)
Year:    1968
    A minor, but notable trend in 1968 was for producer/songwriters to find a band to record their material exclusively. A prime example is Houston's Fever Tree, which featured the music of husband and wife team Scott and Vivian Holtzman. San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native) was the single from that album, peaking in the lower reaches of the Hot 100 charts.

Artist:    Nazz
Title:    Open My Eyes
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Nazz)
Writer(s):    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, as well as many 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:    Cream
Title:    Those Were The Days
Source:    LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s):    Baker/Taylor
Label:    RSO (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    Drummer Ginger Baker only contributed a handful of songs to the Cream repertoire, but each was, in its own way, quite memorable. Those Are The Days, with its sudden changes of time and key, presages the progressive rock that would flourish in the mid-1970s. As was often the case with Baker-penned songs, bassist Jack Bruce provides the vocals from this Wheels Of Fire track.

Artist:    Derek And The Dominos
Title:    Bell Bottom Blues
Source:    CD: Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
Writer(s):    Clapton/Whitlock
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1970
    Bell Bottom Blues, from the Derek And The Dominos album Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, is at once one of the many and one of the few. It is one of the many songs inspired by/written for George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd by Eric Clapton, who was in love with her at the time. At the same time it is one of the few songs on the album that does not include guitarist Duane Allman on it. Clapton wrote the song after Boyd asked him to pick up a pair of bell-bottom jeans on his next trip to the US (apparently they were not available in London at that time). The song was released twice as a single in 1971, but did not chart higher than the #78 spot. In 2015 drummer Bobby Whitlock, who had helped write the third verse, was given official credit as the song's co-writer.

Artist:    James Brown/Famous Flames
Title:    Think
Source:    Mono CD: All-Time 20 Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lowman Pauling
Label:    Polydor (original label: Federal)
Year:    1960
    James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, got his start with a group called the Gospel Starlighters, which eventually became the Famous Flames. Their first big hit was Please, Please, Please, which went into the top 10 on the R&B charts in 1956. The original group lasted until 1957, but did not have any other hit records. By the end of the decade, however, Brown had re-formed the Flames as his backup vocal group, accompanying the James Brown Orchestra (sometimes called the James Brown Band). A string of hits followed, including Think, the first Brown song to make the mainstream top 40 chart. By the end of 1960s Brown had established himself as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and is credited with creating and developing funk music, as well as laying the groundwork for what would eventually become hip-hop and rap music.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Oh, Sweet Mary
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Albin/Andrew/Getz/Gurley/Joplin
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    The only song credited to the entire membership of Big Brother And The Holding Company on their Cheap Thrills album was Oh, Sweet Mary (although the original label credits Janis Joplin as sole writer and the album cover itself gives only Joplin and Peter Albin credit). The tune bears a strong resemblance to Coo Coo, a non-album single the band had released on the Mainstream label before signing to Columbia. Oh, Sweet Mary, however, has new lyrics and, for a breath of fresh air, a bridge section played at a slower tempo than the rest of the tune.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Roadblock
Source:    CD: Cheap Thrills (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Joplin/Albin
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 1999
    Although producer John Simon was convinced that the best way to record Big Brother And The Holding Company was live, he did have the band cut a few tracks in the studio as well. Some of these, such as Summertime and Piece Of My Heart, ended up on the 1968 album Cheap Thrills. Others, like Roadblock, ended up on the shelf, where they stayed until 1999, when a newly remastered CD of the album included them as bonus tracks. Although it's not a bad song by any means, it's hard to imagine any of the tracks that were used for the original album being cut to make way for it.

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:     Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:     The Wind Cries Mary
Source:     LP: The Essential Jimi Hendrix Volume Two (originally released on LP Are You Experienced?)
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     Reprise
Year:     1967
     The US version of Are You Experienced was significantly different than its UK counterpart. For one thing, the original UK album was only available in mono. For the US version, engineers at Reprise Records, working from the original multi-track masters, created all new stereo mixes of about two-thirds of the album, along with all three of the singles that the Jimi Hendrix Experience had released in the UK. The third of these singles was The Wind Cries Mary, which had hit the British charts in February of 1967.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Bold As Love
Source:    CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    When working on the song Bold As Love for the second Jimi Hendrix Experience album in 1967, Jimi reportedly asked engineer Eddie Kramer if he could make a guitar sound like it was under water. Kramer's answer was to use a techique called phasing, which is what happens when two identical sound sources are played simultaneously, but slightly (as in microseconds) out of synch with each other. The technique, first used in 1958 but seldom tried in stereo, somewhat resembles the sound of a jet plane flying by. This is not to be confused with chorusing (sometimes called reverse phasing), a technique used often by the Beatles which electronically splits a single signal into two identical signals then delays one to create the illusion of being separate tracks.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Crosstown Traffic
Source:    LP: The Essential Jimi Hendrix Volume Two (originally released on LP: Electric Ladyland)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    By 1968 it didn't matter one bit whether the Jimi Hendrix Experience had any hit singles; their albums were guaranteed to be successful. Nonetheless the Electric Ladyland album had no less that three singles on it (although one was a new stereo mix of a 1967 single). The last of these was Crosstown Traffic, a song that has been included on several anthologies over the years.

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Summer In The City
Source:    LP: Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful
Writer(s):    Sebastian/Sebastian/Boone
Label:    Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year:    1966
    The Lovin' Spoonful changed gears completely for what would become their biggest hit of 1966: Summer In The City. Inspired by a poem by John Sebastian's brother, the song was recorded for the album Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful. That album was an attempt by the band to deliberately record in a variety of styles; in the case of Summer In The City, it was a rare foray into psychedelic rock for the band. Not coincidentally, Summer In The City is also my favorite Lovin' Spoonful song.

Artist:    Love
Title:    My Flash On You
Source:    Mono LP: Love
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    Sounding a bit like the fast version of Hey Joe (which was also on Love's debut LP), My Flash On You is essentially Arthur Lee in garage mode. A punk classic.

Artist:    Cyrkle
Title:    Why Can't You Give Me What I Want
Source:    Mono LP: Red Rubber Ball
Writer(s):    Dawes/Friedland
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    The Cyrkle was originally a frat-rock band from Easton, Pennsylvania called the Rhondells consisting of Don Danneman on guitar, Tom Dawes on bass, Marty Freid on drums and Earl Pickens on keyboards. In 1965, while playing gigs in Atlantic City they hooked up with a new manager, Brian Epstein, who promptly renamed them the Cyrkle (the odd spelling provided by John Lennon, a member of another band managed by Epstein). Under the new name and management, the band soon found themselves opening for the Beatles (on their last North American tour) and scoring a top 5 hit with Red Rubber Ball in the summer of 1966. The hit single was soon followed by an album of the same name that included a mix of cover tunes and Cyrkle originals such as Why Can't You Give Me What I Want. It was a volatile time in the pop music world, however, and the Cyrkle soon found themselves sounding a bit dated, and by 1968, after one more LP and a series of singles, each of which did successively worse than the previous one, the band decided to throw in the towel.

Artist:    New Colony Six
Title:    Don't You Think It's Time You Stopped Your Crying
Source:    Mono CD: Breakthrough
Writer(s):    Kemp/Graffia
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Centaur)
Year:    1966
    When you're young and in a rock 'n' roll band, there is no greater thrill than hearing your song on the radio for the first time. Or at least that's the way it was in mid-1960s Chicago, when a song called I Confess by a local band called the New Colony Six started getting airplay on WLS. Back then there were no college radio stations or underground FM outlets, so if your song got played, it got played alongside the most popular hits of the day and was heard by literally millions of listeners. For the most part WLS did not play songs by local bands. They were, after all, the second most listened to radio station in the entire United States (after New York's WABC), with a nighttime signal that could be heard halfway across the country (I remember picking it up in New Mexico in the early 1970s). Still, there was something about I Confess that made people want to hear it over and over. The song ended up hitting the #2 spot on WLS in early 1966, which led to the band, consisting of Ray Graffia, Jr. (vocals), Chick James (drums), Pat McBride (harmonica), Craig Kemp (organ), Wally Kemp (bass), and Gerry Van Kollenburg (guitar), to return to the studio to record Breakthrough, their first LP for Centaur Records, which was owned by Ray Graffia, Sr. Unusual for the time, most of the songs on Breakthrough were original compositions, including Don't You Think It's Time You Stopped Your Crying, which was, according to Graffia, written for Wally Kemp, who tended to take his breakups with various girlfriends rather hard. Interestingly enough, Kemp himself is credited as co-writer of the tune. The New Colony Six had a decent run over the years, scoring several more local hits, including I Will Always Think About You, which hit #1 on WLS on its way to becoming the group's first national top 40 hit, and Things I'd Like To Say, which topped out at #2 locally and made the top 20 on the national charts. Like many of their contemporaries, the NC6 went through many personnel changes over the years before finally disbanding in 1974.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Just Like A Woman
Source:    CD: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Blonde On Blonde)
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    By late 1966 the shock of Bob Dylan's going electric had long since worn off and Dylan was enjoying a string of top 40 hits in the wake of the success of Like A Rolling Stone. One of the last hits of the streak was Just Like A Woman, a track taken from his Blonde On Blonde album. This was actually the first Bob Dylan song I heard on top 40 radio.

Artist:     Animals
Title:     Inside Looking Out
Source:     Mono LP: Animalization
Writer:     Lomax/Lomax/Burdon/Chandler
Label:     M-G-M
Year:     1966
     One of the last songs recorded by the Animals before their first breakup, Inside Looking Out (a powerful song about life in prison) was covered a few years later by Grand Funk Railroad, who made it one of their concert staples. This has always been one of my all-time favorite rock songs, no matter who recorded it.

Artist:     Donovan
Title:     Writer In The Sun
Source:     LP: Mellow Yellow
Writer:     Donovan Leitch
Label:     Epic
Year:     1967
     In 1966-67 Donovan's career was almost derailed by a contractual dispute with his UK label, Pye Records. This resulted in two of his albums, Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, not being issued in the UK. At the time he felt that there was a real chance that he would be forced into retirement by the dispute, and wrote Writer In The Sun as a way of addressing the subject. Ironically his career was going nowhere but up in the US due to him switching from the relatively small Hickory label to industry giant Columbia's subsidiary label Epic Records and scoring top 10 singles with Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow. His success with those records in the US may have been a factor in Pye settling with the singer-songwriter and issuing a British album that combined tracks from the two albums in late 1967.

Artist:    Janis Ian
Title:    I'll Give You A Stone If You Throw It (Changing Tymes)
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue) (originally released on LP: Janis Ian)
Writer:    Janis Ian
Label:    Polydor (original label: Now Sounds, reissued nationally on Verve Forecast)
Year:    1967
    Janis Ian got her first poem published in a national magazine at age 12. Not content with mere literary pursuits, the talented Ms. Ian turned to music. After being turned down by several major labels, Ian finally got a contract with the tiny New Sounds label and scored her first major hit with Society's Child, a song about interracial dating that was banned on several stations in the southern US. This led to her self-titled debut album at age 15, and a contract with M-G-M subsidiary Verve Forecast. I'll Give You A Stone If You Throw It (Changing Tymes) is taken from that first LP.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1931 (starts 7/29/19)

    This week we start off feeling alright, get the blues, rock out a little, get progressive and finally go cosmic, all in one hour.

Artist:     Joe Cocker
Title:     Feelin' Alright
Source:     Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
Writer:     Dave Mason
Label:     Rhino
Year:     1969
    I went into some detail in a previous blog entry about why I generally prefer to use studio tracks over live recordings. Sometimes, though, the studio track is really nothing more than an instance of a live performance. Such is the case with the Joe Cocker version of Feelin' Alright. Like Elvis Presley, Cocker was almost exclusively a performer, leaving such things as writing and producing (and playing an instrument, for that matter) to the professionals.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield/Barry Goldberg/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title:    Albert's Shuffle
Source:    LP: Super Session
Writer(s):    Bloomfield/Kooper
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1968
    There is no doubt that one of the most important and influential albums of the late 1960s was the Super Session album. Released in 1968, the album was conceived in part because keyboardist/producer Al Kooper felt that Michael Bloomfield had never been recorded in the right context to truly showcase his prowess as a guitarist. Taking advantage of his position as staff producer for Columbia Records, Kooper enlisted  keyboardist Barry Goldberg and bassist Harvey Brooks (both of which had been Bloomfield's bandmates in the Electric Flag), as well as ace studio drummer Eddie Hoh for a series of taped jam sessions. Although Bloomfield himself went AWOL midway through the sessions, the quintet managed to get several outstanding tracks recorded, including Albert's Shuffle, which opens the LP. Over the years Kooper was often asked about his decision to add overdubbed horns to several of the tracks on Super Session, including Albert's Shuffle. By way of reply he prepared a 2002 remix that restored the recordings to their original state and included them as bonus tracks on the remastered CD version of the album, allowing listeners to compare the different versions.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    The Lemon Song
Source:    CD: Led Zeppelin II
Writer(s):    Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones/Burnett
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    If I had to choose just one Led Zeppelin song as representative of the band's early work it would have to be The Lemon Song, from their second album. The track has all the elements that made the Zep's reputation: Jimmy Page's distinctive guitar work, John Bonham's stuttered (but always timely) drum fills, John Paul Jones's funky bass line and Robert Plant's gutsy vocals (with lyrics famously derived from classic blues tunes). Squeeze my lemon, baby indeed!

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Roadhouse Blues
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jim Morrison
Label:    Elektra
Year:    Recorded 1970, released 1978
    Roadhouse Blues is one of the most instantly recognizable songs in the entire Doors catalog. Indeed, most people can identify it from the first guitar riff, long before Jim Morrison's vocals come in. The original studio version of the song was released on the album Morrison Hotel in 1970, and was also issued as the B side of one of the band's lesser-known singles. That same year the Doors undertook what became known as their Roadhouse Blues tour; many of the performances from that tour were recorded, but not released at the time. In 1978 the three remaining members of the band, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore, decided to put music to some recordings of Morrison reciting his own poetry made before his death in 1971. The resulting album, An American Prayer, also included a live version of Roadhouse Blues made from two separate concert tapes from their 1970 tour. An edited version of the album track was released as a 1978 single as well.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Embryo/Children Of The Grave
Source:    CD: Master Of Reality
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1971
    One of the spookiest experiences in my life was crashing at a stranger's house after having my mind blown at a Grand Funk Railroad concert in the fall of 1971. A bunch of us had ridden back to Weatherford, Oklahoma, from Norman (about an hour's drive) and somehow I ended up separated from my friends Mike and DeWayne, in whose college dorm room I had been crashing for a couple of days. So here I am, lying on the couch in this room with black walls, a black light, a few posters and a cheap stereo playing a brand new album I had never heard before: Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality. Suddenly I notice this weird little tapping sound going back and forth from speaker to speaker. Such was my state of mind at the time that I really couldn't tell if it was a hallucination or not. The stereo was one of those late 60s models that you could stack albums on, and whoever had put the album on had left the stereo in repeat mode before heading off to bed, with no more albums stacked after the Sabbath LP. This meant that every twenty minutes or so I would hear Children Of The Grave, with that weird little tapping sound going back and forth from speaker to speaker. Trust me, it was creepy, as was the whispering at the end of track. No wonder Ozzy Ozbourne called Children Of The Grave "the most kick-ass song we'd ever recorded."

Artist:    J. Geils Band
Title:    Whammer Jammer
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Juke Box Jimmie
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    First they were a Boston bar band called Snoopy and the Sopwith Camel. Then they became the J. Geils Blues Band. Finally they dropped the "blues" from the name and became famous. Whammer Jammer, an early B side showcasing "Magic Dick" Salwitz on lead harmonica, shows why the "blues" part was there in the first place.

Artist:    Grand Funk
Title:    The Railroad
Source:    LP: We're An American Band
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1973
    After six albums working with producer Terry Knight, Grand Funk Railroad switched tracks in 1973, turning to Todd Rundgren, who had received critical acclaim for Something/Anything, a self-produced double LP solo effort from the previous year. The result was We're An American Band, which revitalized the band's career and spawned two hit singles, the title track and Walk Like A Man, both of which were sung by drummer Don Brewer. This was a major departure for the band, as guitarist Mark Farner had previously written and sung all of the band's singles. Farner still wrote and sang much of the material on the LP, however, including The Railroad (ironically the only use of the word "railroad" anywhere on the album, as the band had officially, albeit temporarily, shortened its name to Grand Funk prior to the album's release).

Artist:    Gentle Giant
Title:    The Face
Source:    CD: The Power And The Glory
Writer(s):    Shulman/Minnear/Shulman
Label:    Alucard (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1974
    The Power And The Glory is a 1974 album by Gentle Giant that focuses on an individual that chooses politics as a means to make the world a better place. Like his predecessors, however, he becomes corrupted by power and ultimately becomes that which he originally fought against. The piece called The Face is the climax of the album itself, in which the protagonist declares himself to be the ultimate authority and demands total loyalty and obedience from his subjects (kind of like certain current political leaders). As of 2014, The Power And The Glory is available on Blu-Ray, with each song fully animated with various abstract patterns and all the lyrics displayed prominently on the screen. The latter makes a huge difference in the ability to enjoy the album, as Gentle Giant's vocals are often hard to decipher.

Artist:    Renaissance
Title:    Song Of Scheherazade-part two
Source:    LP: Scheherazade And Other Stories
Writer(s):    Hout/Camp/Dunford/Thatcher
Label:    Sire
Year:    1975
    Probably the most musically ambitious piece in the entire Renaissance catalog, Song Of Scheheraze takes up the entire second side of the 1975 LP Scheherazade And Other Stories. The nearly 25-minute long suite is made up of several sections, with a break about halfway through. This the second half of that suite. The album itself, the band's 6th studio LP, was the first to not include any compositions from the group's founding members, drummer Jim McCarty having severed ties with the band following the release of Turn Of The Cards.

Artist:    Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Title:    Cosmic Cowboy
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Michael Martin Murphy
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1973
    The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has gone through several stylistic changes over the years. Formed in 1966 by Jeff Hanna and Bruce Kunkel (and soon expanded to six members, including a young Jackson Browne), the group started as a jug band, releasing a pair of albums on the Liberty label before switching to electric instruments in 1968. By that point the band had already gone through several personnel changes, including the departure of Kunkel and Browne, and the addition of Chris Darrow and John McEuen. The next pair of albums were not commercially successful, and the band went on hiatus for about six months in 1969. The emerged from this self-imposed exile with a new contract and more artistic freedom, releasing their most successful album to date, Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy, in 1970. The album included their hit cover version of Jerry Jeff Walker's Mr. Bojangles, which put the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at the forefront of the burgeoning country-rock movement of the early 1970s. In 1972 the band released Will The Circle Be Unbroken, a landmark collaboration with such country legends as Roy Acuff, Doc Watson and Mother Maybelle Carter, among others. The following year they released the live album Stars And Stripes Forever, which included the single Cosmic Cowboy. The band continued in a country-rock vein for the rest of the 1970s, including a stretch when they were known simply as the Dirt Band. By the 1980s, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (full name restored) was releasing records exclusively to country radio stations, and having great success with songs like Fishin' In The Dark.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1930 (starts 7/22/19)

    This week we have a unique Advanced Psych segment featuring a 21st century recording of an iconic late 60s Southern California psychedelic era band covering an equally iconic tune from another late 60s Southern California psychedelic era band, a popular British band from the 1980s recording under an assumed name and outselling themselves in the process, and one of the giants of the 60s music scene re-recording his most cherished classic nearly 40 years later. Oh, and we also close out the show with three tracks never played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era before.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Bookends Theme/Save The Life Of My Child/America
Source:    LP: Bookends
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia/Sundazed
Year:    1967
    An early example of a concept album (or at least half an album) was Simon And Garfunkel's fourth LP, Bookends. The side starts and ends with the Bookends theme. In between they go through a sort of life cycle of tracks, from Save The Life Of My Child (featuring a synthesizer opening programmed by Robert Moog himself), into America, a song that is very much in the sprit of Jack Kerouak's On The Road. One of these days I'll play the rest of the side, which takes us right into the age that many of us who bought the original LP are now approaching.

Artist:    Truth
Title:    P.S. (Prognosis Stegnoisis)
Source:    Mono CD: A Heavy Dose Of Lyte Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Jose Sanchez
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:    1968
    The truth about Truth is that nobody seems to know the truth about Truth. What is known is: 1)Truth recorded a single for Warner Brothers and released it in 1968. 2)The A side of that single was a song written by Jose Sanchez called P.S. (Prognosis Stegnoisis). 3)The record was produced by Dave Hassinger, engineer of the Rolling Stones' recordings made at RCA studios in Hollywood and producer of the first couple of Grateful Dead albums as well as the Electric Prunes. 4) The song P.S. (Prognosis Stegnoisis) is a nice example of acid rock. Enjoy!

Artist:    Iron Butterfly
Title:    Gentle As It May Seem
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Heavy)
Writer(s):    DeLoach/Weis
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    Personnel changes were pretty much a regular occurrence with Iron Butterfly. After the first album, Heavy, everyone except keyboardist Doug Ingle and drummer Ron Bushy left the band. This was accompanied by a drastic change in style as well, as Ingle, who had already been carrying the lion's share of lead vocals, became the group's primary songwriter as well. Gentle As It Seems, written by Daryl DeLoach and lead guitarist Danny Weis, is a good example of the band's original sound, back when they were scrounging for gigs in a rapidly shrinking L.A. all-ages club scene.

Artist:    Ace Of Cups
Title:    Glue
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on CD: It's Bad For You But Buy It)
Writer(s):    Denise Kaufman
Label:    Rhino (original label: Ace/Big Beat)
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 2003
    The Ace Of Cups were a pioneering all-female rock band from San Francisco that included Denise Kaufman, immortalized by Ken Kesey as Mary Microgram in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Koolaid Acid Test. As one of the major Merry Pranksters, Kaufman's irreverent attitude is in full evidence on the track Glue, which features a bit of guerilla theater parodying the standard TV commercials of the time. Lead vocals are by Mary Gannon, who came up with the idea of a rock band made up entirely of women in the first place.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    Heart Full Of Soul
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Graham Gouldman
Label:    Epic
Year:    1965
    Heart Full Of Soul, the Yardbirds' follow-up single to For Your Love was a huge hit, making the top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic in 1965. The song, the first to feature guitarist Jeff Beck prominently, was written by Graham Gouldman, who was then a member of Wayne Fontana's Mindbenders and would later be a founding member of 10cc.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Wrong
Source:    CD: Turn On The Music Machine
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    Sean Bonniwell was a member of the mainstream (i.e. lots of appearances on TV variety shows hosted by people like Perry Como and Bob Hope) folk group the Lamplighters in the early 60s. By 1966 he had morphed into one of the more mysterious figures on the LA music scene, leading a proto-punk band dressed entirely in black. Bonniwell himself wore a single black glove (Michael Jackson was about seven years old at the time), and was one of the most prolific songwriters of the day. His recordings, often featuring the distinctive Farfisa organ sound, were a primary influence on later L.A. bands such as Iron Butterfly and the Doors. A classic example of the Music Machine sound was the song Wrong, which was issued as the B side of the group's most successful single, Talk Talk.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Thoughts And Words
Source:    CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    Chris Hillman
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    In addition to recording the most commercially successful Dylan cover songs, the Byrds had a wealth of original material over the course of several albums. On their first album, these came primarily from guitarists Gene Clark and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn, with David Crosby emerging as the group's third songwriter on the band's second album. After Clark's departure, bassist Chris Hillman began writing as well, and had three credits as solo songwriter on the group's fourth LP, Younger Than Yesterday. Hillman credits McGuinn, however, for coming up with the distinctive reverse-guitar break midway through Thoughts And Words.

Artist:     Beatles
Title:     Good Morning Good Morning/Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)/A Day In The Life
Source:     CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer:     Lennon/McCartney
Label:     Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:     1967
     One of the great accidents of record production was the splice that turned the chicken at the end of Good Morning Good Morning into a guitar, starting off Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) and ultimately leading into A Day In The Life, with it's slowly dissolving orchestral chord that brings the number one album of 1967 to a close.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooniel (live long version)
Source:    CD: After Bathing At Baxter's (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Paul Kantner
Label:    RCA/BMG Heritage
Year:    1967
    Jefferson Airplane's original plan for their third album, After Bathing At Baxter's, was to open the LP with a live, eleven-minute version of The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooniel. Plans changed, and a shorter studio version of the track was instead included as part of the first of six suites that made up the final album. This is the original live recording of the song, included as a bonus track on the remastered CD version of After Bathing At Baxter's.

Artist:    Shadows Of Knight
Title:    Someone Like Me
Source:    Mono CD: Gloria (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Novak/McDowell
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1967
    The last single released by the Shadows Of Knight on the Dunwich label (possibly the last single released on the Dunwich label by anyone) was a power punk song called Someone Like Me that foreshadows the direction the band (or at least vocalist Jim Sohns) would take over the next year or two, as they fell under the influence of bubble gum oriented Kavenitz/Katz Productions. Unlike previous releases, Someone Like Me features a horn section, and probably other studio musicians as well. Honestly, I don't know if, besides Sohns, any actual band members appear on this track at all.

Artist:     Cream
Title:     Sunshine Of Your Love
Source:     LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer:     Clapton/Bruce/Brown
Label:     Atco
Year:     1967
     Only a handful of songs can truly be described as "iconic". Sunshine Of Your Love, with its often-imitated signature riff, the line-by-line trading off of lead vocals by Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton and one of the best-known lead guitar solos in rock history, certainly qualifies.

Artist:    Wildflower
Title:    Coffee Cup
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: With Love-A Pot Of Flowers)
Writer(s):    Ehret/Ellis
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1967
    The Wildflower was somewhat typical of the San Francisco brand of folk-rock; less political in the lyrics and less jangly on the instrumental side. Although Coffee Cup was recorded in 1965, it did not get released until the summer of love two years later, on a collection of recordings by a variety of artists on Bob Shad's Mainstream label.

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:    Electric Prunes
Title:    7&7 Is
Source:    British import LP: Artifact
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Heartbeat
Year:    2001
    When the Electric Prunes reunited to record their first album of the 21st century they decided to stick mostly to original compositions. There were a couple exceptions, however, including an inventive cover of Arthur Lee's 7&7 Is. Although slower in tempo than Love's 1966 original recording, the Prunes' version of the tune is no less intense, albeit in a more subtle fashion.

Artist:    Dukes Of Stratosphear (aka XTC)
Title:    Vanishing Girl
Source:    CD: Chips From The Chocolate Factory (originally released in UK on LP: Psionic Psunspot)
Writer(s):    Colin Moulding
Label:    Caroline (original label: Virgin)
Year:    1987
    Andy Partridge of XTC had always been a fan of psychedelic era music, but for various reasons had kept that pretty much to himself. That began to change, however, in 1979, when guitarist Dick Gregory joined the band. It turned out that Gregory shared a fondness for psychedelic music, and the two began to discuss the possibility of sometime recording their own psychedelically-oriented tunes. Schedules were too full to accomodate additional projects at the time, however, and the idea went on the back burner for several years. Finally, in November of 1984, a month after the release of XTC's The Big Express, Partridge found himself with some unexpected free time and invited Gregory and XTC bassist Colin Moulding, along with Gregory's brother Ian (a drummer) to a small English recording studio to record what would become 25 O'Clock, an EP from a group called the Dukes Of Stratosphear. The EP was released on April 1, 1985 exclusively in the UK, where it outsold The Big Express by a 2-to-1 margin, even before word got out that the Dukes of Stratosphear were acually XTC in disguise. The liner notes of XTC's next LP, Skylarking, mention the Dukes of Stratosphear, thanking them for the use of their guitars. In August 1987, after a bit of hemming and hawing on Partridge's part,  the Dukes released their first and only full-length LP, Psionic Psunspot. Once again, the Dukes outsold the current XTC album (Skylarking). At the suggestion of the people at Virgin Records, the original planned running order of Psionic Psunspot was modified to make Colin Moulding's Vanishing Girl the album's opening track.

Artist:    Brian Wilson
Title:    Good Vibrations
Source:    CD: Brian Wilson Presents Smile
Writer(s):    Wilson/Love/Asher
Label:    Nonesuch
Year:    2004
    Rock history is full of stories about albums that were started with the best of intentions, but for one reason or another ended up on the shelf, sometimes indefinitely. Perhaps the most famous of these was the Beach Boys' follow up album to their critically acclaimed Pet Sounds LP. The album was to be called Smile, and the priviledged few who had heard the work in progress all agreed it was to be Brian Wilson's masterpiece, both as writer and producer. However, a series of problems, including internal disputes among the band members and Wilson's own mental state, kept pushing back the album's completion date. Finally the whole thing was scrapped, and a far less ambitious LP called Smiley Smile was hastily recorded in its place. The legend of the original Smile continued to grow over the years, however, with occasional fragments of the original tapes (which had first thought to have been destroyed) surfacing from time to time. Finally, in the early 2000s, Wilson decided to start the entire project over from scratch, working purely from his own creative vision and memory of what he originally had in mind. The result was Brian Wilson Presents Smile, released in 2004. Unlike the original Smile tapes, the new recording was done entirely in stereo (no small feat considering Wilson is deaf in one ear). There were other, more significant changes as well, such as new lyrics for one of Wilson's best known songs, Good Vibrations. Personally I find it a bit jarring to hear unexpected words on a familiar tune, but I leave it up to you to decide whether the new lyrics enhance or detract from the beauty of the song.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Your Mind And We Belong Together
Source:    Australian import CD: Comes In Colours (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year:    1968
    The last record to be released by the classic Love lineup of Arthur Lee, Ken Forssi, Johnny Echols, Bryan MacLean and Michael Stuart was a single, Your Mind And We Belong Together. Although released in 1968, the song is very much the same style as the 1967 album Forever Changes. A bonus track on the Forever Changes CD shows Lee very much in command of the recording sessions, calling for over two dozen takes before getting an acceptable version of the song. The song serves as a fitting close to the story of one of the most influential, yet overlooked, bands in rock history...or would have, if Lee had not tried unsuccessfully to duplicate the band's success with new members several times in the ensuing years.

Artist:    Legend
Title:    Enjoy Yourself
Source:    CD: A Lethal Dose of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Davis/Russ
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Megaphone)
Year:    1968
    Dragonfly was an album that came out on Los Angeles' Megaphone label in 1970. It's not entirely clear, however, if Dragonfly was actually the name of the band itself, or just the album, since no other credits are given. The reason for this confusion is that a couple of years earlier the exact same lineup of musicians had recorded a trio of singles for Megaphone as the Legend, including an early version of Enjoy Yourself, a song that is considered one of the highlights of the Dragonfly album. Now if only someone would send me a copy of the Dragonfly LP...

Artist:    Fairport Convention
Title:    It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft
Source:    CD: Spirit of Joy (originally released on LP: Fairport Convention)
Writer(s):    Hutchings/Thompson
Label:    Polydor (original US label: Cotillion)
Year:    1968
    Fairport Convention has long been known for being an important part of the British folk music revival that came to prominence in the early 70s. Originally, however, the band was modeled after the folk-rock bands that had risen to prominence on the US West Coast from 1965-66. Their first LP was released in early 1968, and drew favorable reviews from the UK rock press, which saw them at Britain's answer to Jefferson Airplane. One of the LP's highlights is It's Alright, It's Only Witchcraft, which features electric guitar work by Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol that rivals that of Jorma Kaukonen. The album was not initially released in the US. Two years later, following the success of Fairport Convention's later albums with vocalist Sandy Denny on the A&M label, the band's first LP (with Judy Dyble) was given a limited release on Atlantic's Cotillion subsidiary.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Love Me Two Times
Source:    LP: 13 (originally released on LP: Strange Days and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    Although the second Doors album is sometimes dismissed as being full of tracks that didn't make the cut on the debut LP, the fact is that Strange Days contains some of the Doors best-known tunes. One of those is Love Me Two Times, which was the second single released from the album. The song continues to get heavy airplay on classic rock stations.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Me About You
Source:    CD: 20 Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Happy Together)
Writer(s):    Bonner/Gordon
Label:    Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1967
    Despite being, in the words of the Turtles' co-leader Mark Volman, one of the band's best recordings, Me About You was not chosen to be released as a single in 1967. Instead, two other bands, the Mojo Men and the Lovin' Spoonful, took a shot at the song, but neither version charted. Eventually, after the Turtles had split up, White Whale Records did release the song as the group's last single, but by then nobody was interested in hearing the Turtles on the radio and the song stalled out in the 105 spot. Described by Volman as "progressive pop with a pulse beat", Me About You features strings and horns by Jerry Yester, a member of the Modern Folk Quintet who would eventually join the Lovin' Spoonful.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Bluebird
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again)
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    When it comes right down to it Buffalo Springfield has one of the highest ratios of songs recorded to songs played on the radio of any band in history, especially if you only count the two albums worth of material that was released while the band was still active. This is probably because Buffalo Springfield had more raw songwriting talent than just about any two other bands. Although Neil Young was just starting to hit his stride as a songwriter, bandmate Stephen Stills was already at an early peak, as songs like Bluebird clearly demonstrate.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix/Band Of Gypsys
Title:    Who Knows
Source:    LP: Band Of Gypsys
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1970
    The first song you hear on an album may not always be the best song on the album, but it is usually the first one that comes to mind whenever that album is mentioned. Such is the case with Who Knows, which opens the Hendrix/Band Of Gypsys album. The thing is, it really isn't much of a song at all, just a sequence of ten notes repeated over and over with occasional vocals and guitar solos on top. It was, however, a fun song to jam on, as it only took a few seconds to learn the sequence.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Shorty Blackwell
Source:    LP: Instant Replay
Writer(s):    Mickey Dolenz
Label:    Colgems
Year:    1969
    The longest track ever released by the Monkees was also the last track on their last original LP, Instant Replay. The Monkees' TV show had finished its original run in March of 1968. Not long after that Peter Tork, no longer obligated as an actor to continue his role, announced his departure from the group. Even before any of that happened, however, Mickey Dolenz had begun work on Shorty Blackwell, a piece that is impossible to categorize. Descriptions from various reviewers include words like "weird", "over-wrought" and "Broadway on acid". Like nearly all the tracks on Instant Replay, the song is essentially a solo piece performed entirely (except for the vocals) by studio musicians, with no participation whatsoever from the other two Monkees.

Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Sit With The Guru
Source:    LP: The Best Of The Strawberry Alarm Clock (originally released on LP: Wake Up...It's Tomorrow and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Weitz/King/Freeman
Label:    Sundazed/Uni
Year:    1968
    Sit With The Guru is the second single from the second Strawberry Alarm Clock album, Wake Up...It's Tomorrow. The song addresses the subject of polytheism, which might explain the fact that it only peaked at #65 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1930 (starts 7/22/19)

    Once again we have an hour of free-form rock, with a definite emphasis on the progressive side of things (hey, if it ain't broke...)

Artist:    Doors
Title:    People Are Strange
Source:    CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Strange Days and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    The first single from the second Doors album was People Are Strange. The song quickly dispelled any notion that the Doors might be one-hit wonders and helped establish the band as an international act as opposed to just another band from L.A. The album itself, Strange Days, was a turning point for Elektra Records as well, as it shifted the label's promotional efforts away from their original rock band, Love, to the Doors, whom ironically had been recommended to the label by Love's leader, Arthur Lee.

Artist:    Todd Rundgren
Title:    Good Vibrations
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Wilson/Love
Label:    Bearsville
Year:    1976
    Todd Rundgren has stated that his musical career began in 1966, the year he formed Nazz. Ten years later he released the album Faithful. The first side of that album was made up entirely of near-perfect replicas of some of Rundgren's favorite songs from 1966 (and one from early 1967). One of these, Good Vibrations, was also released as a single. Although Rundgren's voice isn't quite up to the level of the mid-60s Beach Boys in the harmony department, the arrangement of the song is dead on, and is actually less jarring to listen to than Brian Wilson's own remake of the song from 2004.

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Our Lady
Source:    Japanese import CD: Who Do We Think We Are
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Deep Purple was the top selling artist of 1973, thanks in large part to the release of their seventh studio album, Who Do We Think We Are. It was also the final year for the band's classic MK2 lineup, with both Ian Gillan and Roger Glover leaving the band that summer. According to Gillan, the band had just finished 18 months of touring and every member had had some sort of major illness over that same period, yet their managers insisted that they immediately get to work on the new album, even though the band members desperately needed a break. Nonetheless the album itself is one of their strongest, in spite of the fact that, for the most part the band members weren't even on speaking terms and much of the album was recorded piecemeal, with each member adding his part at a different time. The final track on the album, Our Lady, was a return to the band's psychedelic roots, with a definite Hendrix vibe to the entire piece.

Artist:    Genesis
Title:    Watcher Of The Skies
Source:    CD: Foxtrot
Writer(s):    Banks/Collins/Gabriel/Hackett/Rutherford
Label:    Rhino/Atlantic (original label: Charisma)
Year:    1972
    The opening song for most of Genesis's live performances throughout the mid-1970s was also the opening track of their 1972 album Foxtrot. Watcher Of The Skies was inspired by the works of science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End) and legendary comic book writer Stan Lee (the Watcher series), although the title itself reportedly was taken from an 1817 poem by John Keats. The two alternating chords at the beginning of the piece were actually the result of the limitations of a Mellotron MKII that keyboardist Tony Banks had just bought from King Crimson. According to Banks "There were these two chords that sounded really good on that instrument. There are some chords you can't play on that instrument because they'd be so out of tune. These chords created an incredible atmosphere. That's why it's just an incredible intro number. It never sounded so good on the later Mellotron."

Artist:    Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Title:    Knife-Edge
Source:    CD: Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Writer(s):    Janocek, arr. Emerson/Lake/Palmer
Label:    Rhino (original label: Cotillion)
Year:    1970
    Starting with the release of their first self-titled LP, Emerson, Lake & Palmer were known for incorporating classical music into rock compositions. One of the earliest examples of this is Knife-Edge, an adaptation of  the first movement of Leoš Janácek's Sinfonietta that incorporates a section of Johann Sebastian Bach's first French Suite in D minor as well. All this on a piece that rocks out as hard, if not harder, than anything else released in 1970.

Artist:    Nektar
Title:    A Tab In The Ocean
Source:    LP: A Tab In The Ocean
Writer(s):    Nektar
Label:    Passport (original German label: Bellaphon)
Year:    1972 (US release: 1976)
    On the surface it seems like a story you've heard before: a group of young British musicians go to Hamburg, Germany to hone their craft, building up a cult following in the process. But this story is not about the Beatles. It is about Nektar, formed in 1969 by Roye Albrighton on guitars and vocals, Allan "Taff" Freeman on keyboards, Derek "Mo" Moore on bass, Ron Howden on drums, and Mick Brockett and Keith Walters on lights and special effects. Nektar's early style is well represented on the title track of their second LP, A Tab In The Ocean, which takes up the entire first side of the album. The LP was originally released in Germany in 1972 on the Bellaphon label. Nektar would eventually become closely associated with the progressive rock movement of the early to mid 1970s, thanks in large part to A Tab In The Ocean finally being released in the US in 1976. Like fellow prog-rockers Genesis and Gentle Giant, Nektar began to commercialize their sound with shorter songs containing fewer time and key changes as the decade wore on; unlike those other bands, however, Nektar did not become more popular because of the changes. Indeed, by 1978, the band had decided to call it quits, although two of the members reformed the band briefly the following year, releasing one album in 1980 before disbanding again in 1982.

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Breathe/Speak To Me/On The Run
Source:    CD: The Dark Side Of The Moon
Writer(s):    Mason/Waters/Gilmour/Wright
Label:    Capitol (original label: Harvest)
Year:    1973
    Is there really anything I can say about Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon that hasn't been said a hundred times already? Probably not, so let's just kick back and enjoy the album's opening tracks, Breathe/Speak To Me and On The Run.

Artist:    Steeleye Span
Title:    The Wife Of Ushers Well
Source:    LP: All Around My Hat
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Hart/Prior/Knight/Johnson/Kemp
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1975
    Steeleye Span hit the peak of their popularity in 1975 with the album All Around My Hat, which spent six months on the British album charts, peaking at #5. It was also their first album to chart in the US, peaking at #143. Although all the songs on the album were credited to the band members, many of the tunes, such as The Wife Of Ushers Well, were actually traditional English folk ballads that had been given electric rock arrangements by the band.

Artist:    Faces
Title:    Ooh-La-La
Source:    45 RPM single (promo copy)
Writer(s):    Wood/Lane
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Rod Stewart does not perform on the song Ooh-La-La (that's Ronnie Wood on lead vocals). In fact, he is entirely missing from three of the ten tracks on the 1973 album Ooh La La. This is because by 1973 Rod Stewart was a Big Solo Rock Star who apparently had little interest in honoring his commitments to his bandmates. He missed the first two weeks of sessions for the album entirely and appeared to be distracted when he did bother to show up. After the album was released he went out of his way to tell anyone that would listen how bad the album was. Now do you understand why I have zero respect for Rod Stewart?

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Stranger To Himself
Source:    LP: John Barleycorn Must Die
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1970
    Stranger To Himself is one of two songs that Steve Winwood had completed for his first solo album when he decided to instead make a new Traffic album. Rather than recut the song, Winwood included the recording, on which he plays all the instruments himself, as the first track of side two of the fourth Traffic LP, John Barleycorn Must Die.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1929 (starts 7/15/19)

    This one is all over the place folks!

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Summer In The City
Source:    LP: Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful
Writer(s):    Sebastian/Sebastian/Boone
Label:    Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year:    1966
    The Lovin' Spoonful changed gears completely for what would become their biggest hit of 1966: Summer In The City. Inspired by a poem by John Sebastian's brother, the song was recorded for the album Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful. That album was an attempt by the band to deliberately record in a variety of styles; in the case of Summer In The City, it was a rare foray into psychedelic rock for the band. Not coincidentally, Summer In The City is also my favorite Lovin' Spoonful song.

Artist:    Harbinger Complex
Title:    I Think I'm Down
Source:    Mono British import CD: With Love-A Pot Of Flowers (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Hockstaff/Hoyle
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Brent)
Year:    1966
    Most garage/club bands never made it beyond a single or two for a relatively small independent label. Freemont, California's Harbinger Complex is a good example. The group was one of many that were signed by Bob Shad, owner of Mainstream Records and its various subsidiaries such as Time and Brent. The band had already released one single on the independent Amber label and were recording at Golden State Recorders in San Francisco when they were discovered by Shad, who signed them to Brent. The band's first single for the label was the British-influenced I Think I'm Down, which came out in 1966 and was included on Mainstream's 1967 showcase album With Love-A Pot Of Flowers.

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    Gimme Some Lovin'
Source:    Mono LP: Gimme Some Lovin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Steve Winwood
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1966
    The 1980s movie The Big Chill used Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group as the backdrop for a touch football game at an informal reunion of former college students from the 60s. From that point on, movie soundtracks became much more than just background music and soundtrack albums started becomming best-sellers. Not entirely coincidentally, 60s-oriented oldies radio stations began to appear in major markets as well. Most of them are now playing 80s oldies, by the way.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Plastic Fantastic Lover (live version)
Source:    LP: Bless Its Pointed Little Head
Writer(s):    Marty Balin
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1969
    Marty Balin's Plastic Fantastic Lover first appeared on the 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow and was issued as the B side of White Rabbit. For Jefferson Airplane's 1969 live album, Bless Its Pointed Little Head, the band, including new drummer Joey Covington, upped the tempo considerably, transforming a good song for potheads to dance to into one more suited to an audience on speed, reflecting the changes on the streets of San Francisco itself.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Mexico
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: Early Flight)
Writer(s):    Grace Slick
Label:    Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1970
    The B side of the last Jefferson Airplane single to include founding member (and original leader) Marty Balin was Mexico, a scathing response by Grace Slick to President Richard Nixon's attempts to eradicate the marijuana trade between the US and Mexico. The song was slated to be included on the next Airplane album, Long John Silver, but Balin's departure necessitated a change in plans, and Mexico did not appear on an LP until Early Flight was released in 1974.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Rock Me Baby
Source:    LP: Bless Its Pointed Little Head
Writer(s):    B.B. King
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1969
    Rock Me Baby became B.B. King's first top 40 hit when it was released in 1964. There have been several covers of the song recorded since that time, most of which credit King as the song's writer. As is the case with many blues songs, however, the tune's lyrics can actually be traced much further back, to a 1950 recording by Lil' Son Jackson called Rockin' And Rollin', although musically the songs are completely different. As you would expect, Jackson's Rockin' And Rollin' itself borrowed extensively from various recordings as far back as the 1920s. This probably explains why, on the label of the Jefferson Airplane's 1969 live album Bless Its Pointed Little Head, the songwriting credits read "traditional". Regardless of the song's origins, the Jefferson Airplane version of Rock Me Baby, sung by lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, follows King's version closely, although it does include an extended instrumental section that stretches the song out to nearly eight minutes long.

Artist:    Zombies
Title:    Beechwood Park
Source:    CD: Odessey And Oracle (originally released in UK as 45 RPM B side)
Writer(s):    Chris White
Label:    Varese Sarabande (original label: CBS)
Year:    1967
    In 1967 the Zombies signed a contract with CBS records that gave them total artistic control over their recordings. The band immediately got to work on what would become Odessey And Oracle. Midway through the project they decided to release a couple tracks from the upcoming album as a single, available only in the UK. The B side of that single was Chris White's Beechwood Park. The hope was to whet the public's appetite for the upcoming album, but, when first released, Odessey and Oracle did not sell well at all, prompting the Zombies to disband. Right around that time, someone discovered another track on the album, Time Of The Season, and began playing it on the radio. It ended up being one of their biggest hits, despite the fact that there was now no band to promote the song.

Artist:     Moby Grape
Title:     Omaha
Source:     Mono European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Moby Grape)
Writer:     Skip Spence
Label:     Sony Music (original label: Columbia)
Year:     1967
     As an ill-advised promotional gimmick, Columbia Records released five separate singles concurrently with the first Moby Grape album. Of the five singles, only one, Omaha, actually charted, and it only got to the #86 spot. Meanwhile, the heavy promotion by the label led to Moby Grape getting the reputation of being over-hyped, much to the detriment of the band's career.

Artist:    Amboy Dukes
Title:    Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nugent/Farmer
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Detroit was one of the major centers of pop music in the late 60s. In addition to the myriad Motown acts, the area boasted the popular retro-rock&roll band Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the harder rocking Bob Seger System, the non-Motown R&B band the Capitols, and Ted Nugent's outfit, the Amboy Dukes, who scored big in 1968 with Journey To The Center Of The Mind.

Artist:    Fleetwood Mac
Title:    Underway
Source:    LP: Then Play On (original promo copy)
Writer(s):    Peter Green
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1969
    Fleetwood Mac's third album, Then Play On, included three tracks that were compiled by guitarist Peter Green from several hours of studio jam sessions made by the band. Underway, which originally closed out side one of the US version of the album (before Oh Well was inserted into the lineup in a revised edition of the LP), is the mellowest of the three tracks.

Artist:    Seatrain
Title:    Out Where The Hills
Source:    British import CD: Seatrain/Marblehead Messenger (originally released on LP: Seatrain)
Writer(s):    Kuhlberg/Roberts
Label:    BGO (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1970
    The addition of guitarist Peter Rowan to the Seatrain lineup for their self-titled second LP saw the group suddenly at the forefront of the country-rock movement, which can plainly be heard on songs like Out Where The Hills. Being more of an East Coast band, however, Seatrain was unable to build the same kind of audience as groups like Poco and the Flying Burrito Brothers, and after just two more albums the group disbanded.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    The World Keeps Going Round
Source:    Mono LP: The Kink Kontroversy
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1965
    By 1965 Ray Davies of the Kinks had come to realize that writing recording nothing but hard rocking songs like You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night would make for a fairly short, albeit successful career. Thus he began writing more introspective and melodic songs such as The World Keeps Going Round, which opens side two of the LP The Kinks Kontroversy. The basic message of the song is actually pretty simple: no matter how big your problems seem to be, the Earth keeps on spinning its way through space, with or without you.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Gotta Get Away
Source:    LP: Psychedelic Lollipop
Writer(s):    Gordon/Adams
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1966
    As was common with most 1966 LPs, the Blues Magoos debut album, Psychedelic Lollipop, included a handful of cover songs, not all of which had been hits for other groups. One of the non-hits was Gotta Get Away, a fairly typical piece of garage rock that opens side two of the LP. The song was also selected as the B side for the group's second (and by far most successful) single, (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet. As the usual practice was to bring in outside songwriters for a new band's early singles and let the band write their own B side, it is possible that Gotta Get Away, which was co-written by Alan Gordon (co-writer of the Turtles' Happy Together and several other tunes) may have been the intended A side of the single.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Gomper
Source:    CD: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco
Year:    1967
    Probably the most overtly psychedelic track ever recorded by the Rolling Stones, Gomper might best be described as a hippy love song with its references to nature, innocence and, of course, pyschedelic substances. Brian Jones makes one of his last significant contributions as a member of the band he founded, playing the dulcimer, as well as tablas, organ, pan flutes and various percussion instruments on the song.

Artist:    Procol Harum
Title:    Quite Rightly So
Source:    Mono European import 45 RPM EP: Homburg (originally released on LP: Shine On Brightly)
Writer(s):    Brooker/Reid
Label:    Esoteric (original US label: A&M)
Year:    1968
    In 1969, while living on Ramstein AFB in Germany, my dad managed to get use of one of the basement storage rooms in building 913, the 18-unit apartment building we resided in. For a few months (until getting in trouble for having overnight guests and making too much noise...hey I was 16, whaddaya expect?) I got to use that room as a bedroom. I had a small record player that shut itself off when it got to the end of the record, which meant I got to go to sleep every night to the album of my choice. As often as not that album was Shine On Brightly, a copy of which I had gotten in trade for another album (the Best of the Beach Boys I think) from a guy who was expecting A Whiter Shade of Pale and was disappointed to discover it was not on this album. I always thought I got the better end of that deal, despite the fact that there was a skip during the fade of Quite Rightly So, causing the words "one was me" to repeat over and over until I scooted the needle over a bit. Luckily Quite Rightly So is the first song on the album, so I was usually awake enough to do that.

Artist:     Dave Clark Five
Title:    Glad All Over
Source:     LP: The Dave Clark Five (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Clark/Smith
Label:    Epic
Year:     1963
     The Dave Clark Five were originally formed as a way of raising money for Clark's football (soccer) team. Toward the end of 1963 they scored a number one hit in England with Glad All Over, which was released to an enthusiastic US audience a few months later. For a while they even rivaled the Beatles in popularity.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    EXP/Up From The Skies
Source:    CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    The second Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Axis: Bold As Love, is very much a studio creation. Hendrix had been taking a growing interest in what could be done with multiple tracks to work with, and came up with a masterpiece. What makes the achievement even more remarkable is the fact that he actually only had four tracks to work with (compared to the virtually unlimited number available with modern digital equipment). EXP, which opens the album, is an exercise in creative feedback, using volume and panning to create the illusion of circular motion. The intro to the piece is a faux interview of a slowed-down Hendrix (posing as his friend Paul Caruso) by bassist Noel Redding. The track leads directly into Up From The Skies, the only song on the album to be issued as a single in the US. Up From The Skies features Hendrix's extensive use of a wah-wah pedal, with vocals and guitar panning back and forth from speaker to speaker over the jazz-styled brushes of drummer Mitch Mitchell.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Smash Hits (originally released on LP: Are You Experienced?)
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1966
    The first track recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was Hey Joe, a song that Hendrix had seen Tim Rose perform in Greenwich Village before relocating to London to form his new band. Hendrix's version is a bit heavier than Rose's and leaves off the first verse ("where you going with that money in your hand") entirely. The song itself was copyrighted in 1962 by California folk singer Billy Roberts and a much faster version by the Leaves had hit the US charts in early 1966.

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:     Bob Dylan
Title:     Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source:     45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer:     Bob Dylan
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1966
     "Everybody must get stoned." 'Nuff said.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Take It As It Comes
Source:    CD: The Doors
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    L.A.'s Whisky-A-Go-Go was the place to be in 1966. Not only were some of the city's hottest bands playing there, but for a while the house band was none other than the Doors, playing songs like Take It As It Comes. One evening in early August Jack Holzman, president of Elektra Records, and producer Paul Rothchild were among those attending the club, having been invited there to hear the Doors by Arthur Lee (who with his band Love was already recording for Elektra). After hearing two sets Holzman signed the group to a contract with the label, making the Doors only the second rock band on the Elektra label (although the Butterfield Blues Band is considered by some to be the first, predating Love by several months). By the end of the month the Doors were in the studio recording songs like Take It As It Comes for their debut LP, which was released in January of 1967.

Artist:    Mass Temper
Title:    Gravedigger
Source:    Mono CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wylde Psych (originally released on 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Cassidy/Pittman
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Kix)
Year:    1968
    Bailey, NC, may seem an unlikely place to find a proto-metal band, but that's exactly where Mass Temper hailed from. Gravedigger, the A side of a single on the Kix label, is almost impossible to find in its original form, mainly because there were only 100 copies of the record ever pressed. Not much else is known about the record, other than the sad fact that the lead guitarist (presumably either Cassidy or Pittman) died a year after the single was released.

Artist:    Taste
Title:    Dual Carraigeway Pain
Source:    British import CD: Taste
Writer(s):    Rory Gallagher
Label:    Polydor (original US label: Atco)
Year:    1969
    Guitarist Rory Gallagher cuts loose on Dual Carraigeway Pain, from the first Taste album. One thing, though. What exactly is a "dual carraigeway? Some sort of divided highway?

Artist:    Janis Joplin
Title:    Kozmic Blues
Source:    LP: I Got Dem 'Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama
Writer(s):    Joplin/Mekler
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    After she parted company with Big Brother and the Holding Company following the Cheap Thrills album, Janis Joplin got to work forming a new band that would come to be known as the Kozmic Blues Band. Unlike Big Brother, this new band included a horn section, and leaned more toward R&B than the earlier band's hard rocking sound. Joplin released only one studio album with the Kozmic Blues Band, 1969's I Got Dem 'Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama. Although the album sold well, it was savaged by the rock press. Still, there were some standout tracks on the album, including the title tune (of sorts), Kozmic Blues. Joplin made several live appearances with this group, including the Woodstock performing arts festival, before disbanding the unit in favor of a smaller group, the Full-Tilt Boogie Band.

Artist:    Savoy Brown
Title:    Flood In Houston
Source:    LP: Getting To The Point
Writer(s):    Youlden/Simmonds
Label:    Parrot
Year:    1968
    Savoy Brown's second LP, Getting To The Point, was the first to feature lead vocalist Chris Youlden. It was also the first Savoy Brown album to have more original material than cover songs on it. These new originals included the album's opening track, Flood In Houston, written by Youlden, along with bandleader/guitarist Kim Simmonds. Youlden would be gone by 1970, one of many to leave Savoy Brown over the years. In fact, Simmonds is the only member to appear on every Savoy Brown album.

Artist:    First Edition
Title:    Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The First Edition and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mickey Newbury
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle was the official leader on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    Two Trains Running
Source:    LP: Projections
Writer(s):    McKinley Morganfield
Label:    Verve Forecast
Year:    1966
     Possibly the most influential (yet least known outside of musicians' circles) band of the Psychedelic Era was the Blues Project. Formed in 1965 in Greenwich Village, the band worked its way from coast to coast playing mostly college campuses, in the process blazing a path that continues to be followed by underground/progressive/alternative artists. As if founding the whole college circuit wasn't enough, they were arguably the very first jam band, as their version of the Muddy Waters classic Two Trains Running demonstrates. Among those drawing their inspiration from the Blues Project were a group of young musicians who were participating in Ken Kesey's Electric Cool-Aid Acid Tests. Like several other San Francisco residents they caught the Blues Project at the Fillmore Auditorium in April of 1966, and soon began to incorporate long improvisational sections into their own performances.

Artist:    Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:    The Black Plague
Source:    British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s):    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: M-G-M)
Year:    1967
    One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a scroll against a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.