https://exchange.prx.org/p/502959
This week's show features artists' sets from two Los Angeles bands, Love and the Music Machine, along with an Advanced Psych segment made up of instrumental tracks recorded in the San Francisco Bay area. We also have a long 1968 set to start things off.
Artist: People
Title: I Love You
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Chris White
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
By 1968 the major labels had signed just about every San Francisco band with any perceived potential. Capitol, having had some success with the Chocolate Watchband from San Jose on its Tower subsidiary, decided to sign another south bay band, People, to the parent label. The most successful single for the band was a new recording of an obscure Zombies B side. I Love You ended up hitting the top 20 nationally, despite the active efforts of two of the most powerful men in the music industry, who set out to squash the song as a way of punishing the record's producer for something having nothing to do with the song or the band itself.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Source: LP: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple
Year: 1968
It is by now a well-known fact that very few of the songs on the 1968 double-LP The Beatles (aka the White Album) actually featured the entire group. One of those few (and reportedly both Paul McCartney's and George Harrison's favorite song on the album) was Happiness Is A Warm Gun. Written by John Lennon, the piece is actually a pastiche of three song fragments, each of which is radically different from the others. The opening lines (uncredited) were contributed by Derek Taylor, the London promoter who was one of many people sometimes referred to as the "fifth Beatle". The track, one of the most musically challenging in the entire Beatles catalog, took three days to record, and was produced by Chris Thomas, who was filling in for a vacationing George Martin at the time.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Porpoise Song
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1968
In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic.
Artist: July
Title: Dandelion Seeds
Source: Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Tom Newman
Label: Zonophone (original label: Major Minor)
Year: 1968
Although he is best remembered as the co-founder (with Richard Branson) of Manor Studios, where Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells was produced, Tom Newman was actually a veteran of several London bands, the most successful of which was July, which recorded a pair of singles for the independent Major Minor label in 1968. The B side of the first single was Dandelion Seeds, which shows Newman's budding talents as a songwriter.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience (sort of)
Title: Rainy Day, Dream Away
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although officially credited to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Rainy Day, Dream Away actually has several guest musicians appearing on it, including Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles, who would later be a member of Hendrix's short-lived Band of Gypsys and then have some success as leader of his own band. Also featured on the track are Mike Finnegan on organ, Freddie Smith on tenor sax, and Larry Faucette on congas. It's unclear whether regular Experience bassist Noel Redding or Hendrix himself provided bass parts on the track (or even if there is a bass track, as Finnegan could have been playing a Ray Manzarek style bassline on the keyboards for all I know).
Artist: Amboy Dukes
Title: Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nugent/Farmer
Label: Priority (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 Heard (later known as the Bob Seger System), the anarchistic MC5 and their "little brother" band, the Stooges, and Ted Nugent's outfit, the Amboy Dukes, who scored big in 1968 with Journey To The Center Of The Mind.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: Whole Lotta Love
Source: CD: 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: Circus Maximus
Title: Wind
Source: CD: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed out of the chance meeting of multi-instrumentalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in Greenwich Village in 1967. From the start the band was moving in different directions, with Bruno incorporating jazz elements into the band while Walker favored country-rock. Eventually the two would go their separate ways, but for the short time the band was together they made some of the best, if not best-known, psychedelic music on the East Coast. The band's most popular track was Wind, a Bruno tune from their debut album. The song got a considerable amount of airplay on the new "underground" radio stations that were popping up across the country at the time.
Artist: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Title: Buy For Me The Rain
Source: LP: Nuggets vol. 10-Folk Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Noonan/Copeland
Label: Rhino (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
Although they are best known for their country-rock tunes like Mr. Bojangles (and a long string of hits on the country charts in the 1980s), the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started off as more of a mainstream L.A. pop group, as can be heard on their first single, Buy For Me The Rain.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Shadow In The Corner Of Your Mind
Source: LP: The First Edition
Writer(s): Mike Settle
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The First Edition was formed by Mike Settle and Kenny Rogers, both members of the New Christy Minstrels, a group that made more appearances on TV variety shows than on the record charts (imagine a professional version of high school madrigal choir). The two wanted to get into something a little more hip than watered-down choral versions of Simon and Garfunkel songs and the like, and in late 1967 recorded an album that included folk-rock, country-rock and even the full-blown psychedelia of Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In), which ended up being their first single. For the B side of that single one of Settle's songs, Shadow In The Corner Of Your Mind, was selected. The song, a decent piece of folk-rock with reasonably intelligent lyrics, would have been hit record material itself if it weren't for the fact that by 1968 folk-rock had pretty much run its course.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Masculine Intuition
Source: CD: The Very Best Of The Music Machine-Turn On (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
If you take out the cover songs that Original Sound Records added to the album without the band's knowledge or approval, Turn On The Music Machine has to be considered one of the best LPs of 1966. Not that the covers were badly done, but they were intended to be used for lip synching on a local TV show and were included without the knowledge or approval of the band, and that's never a good thing. Every one of the Sean Bonniwell originals on the other hand, combines strong musical structure and intelligent lyrics with musicianship far surpassing the average garage band. This is especially true in the case of Masculine Intuition, which was also issued as the B side of the band's second single.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
When it came time for Sean Bonniwell's band, the Music Machine, to go into the studio to record an album, the group decided to go for the best sound possible. This meant signing with tiny Original Sound Records, despite having offers from bigger labels, due to Original Sound having their own state-of-the-art eight-track studios. Unfortunately for the band, they soon discovered that having great equipment did not mean Original Sound made great decisions. One of the first, in fact, was to include a handful of cover songs on the Music Machine's first LP that were recorded for use on a local TV show. Bonniwell was livid when he found out, as he had envisioned an album made up entirely of his own compositions (although he reportedly did plan to use a slowed-down version of Hey Joe that he and Tim Rose had worked up together). From that point on it was only a matter of time until the Music Machine and Original Sound parted company, but not until after they scored a big national hit (# 15) with Talk Talk (which had been recorded at the four-track RCA Studios) in 1966.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Trouble
Source: CD: The Very Best Of The Music Machine-Turn On (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
Sean Bonniwell had definite plans for the Music Machine's first album. His primary goal was to have all original material, with the exception of a slow version of Hey Joe that he and fellow songwriter Tim Rose had been working on (and before you ask, both Rose and the Music Machine recorded it before Jimi Hendrix did). Unfortunately, the shirts at Original Sound Records did not take their own company name seriously and inserted four cover songs that the band had recorded for a local TV show. This was just the first in a series of bad decisions by the aforementioned shirts that led to a great band not getting the success it deserved. To hear Turn On The Music Machine the way Bonniwell intended it to be heard program your CD player to skip all the extra cover songs. Listened to that way, Trouble is restored to its rightful place as the second song on the disc (following Talk Talk) and a fairly decent album is transformed into a work that is equal to the best albums of 1966.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Maggie's Farm
Source: Mono LP: Bringing It All Back Home
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1965
On Sunday, July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan literally rocked the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival by performing Maggie's Farm and two other songs with an electric band. The song had been originally recorded on January 15 and released on the album Bringing It All Back Home a couple months later. Dylan's use of electric instruments offended some folk purists, of course, including festival organizer Alan Lomax, who had also objected to the previous day's performance by the Butterfield Blues Band. The song itself is a highly relatable classic, especially to anyone who has had to endure the tedium of working in the service industry, and contains some of Dylan's most memorable lines.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Dupree's Diamond Blues
Source: 45 RPM promo single
Writer(s): Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1969
The 1969 Grateful Dead album Aoxomoxoa was one of the first albums to be recorded using state-of-the-art sixteen track equipment, and the band, in the words of guitarist Jerry Garcia, "tended to put too much on everything...A lot of the music was just lost in the mix, a lot of what was really there." Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh would return to the master tapes in 1971, remixing the entire album for the version that has appeared on vinyl and CD ever since then. This particular track is the single version of Dupree's Diamond Blues using a mono folddown from the original 1969 mix. It has never been reissued in this form.
Artist: Desmond Dekker And The Aces
Title: Israelites
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Desmond Dekker
Label: Uni
Year: 1968
Originally released in Jamaica as Poor Me Israelites in 1968, Desmond Dekker's Israelites became a surprise hit in 1969, becoming the firsr reggae song to top the British charts and make the US top 10. Both British and American labels credit producer Leslie Kong as the song's co-writer (and use Dekker's birth name Desmond Dacris), but since the original Jamaican 45 credits only Dekker I'm going to go out on a limb and assume Kong, following the practice of many 60s record producers, tacked his own name onto the credits in order to steal a share of the royalties once it became apparent that Israelites was going to be a hit.
Artist: Bobby Vega
Title: Run With You
Source: CD: What Cha Got
Writer(s): Bobby Vega
Label: Little Village
Year: 2023
Bobby Vega first started playing bass while still in junior high school, joining a local band in his native San Francisco and eventually dropping out of high school altogether. By then, however, he was sitting in with people like Lee Oskar (War), Sly Stone and the Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart. His credits over the years include stints with Quicksilver Messenger Service and both versions of Jefferson Starship as well as contributions to albums by Santana, Etta James and Booker T. Jones, among others. In 2023 he finally got the opportunity to record an album of his own music. What Cha Got is due to be released on November 30, 2023. One of the quieter tunes on the album is Run With You, which Vega describes as being about "wanting to hang with someone, to be with someone you can't be with".
Artist: Chocolate Coffee Pot
Title: Three Food Groups
Source: CD: Chocolate Coffee Pot
Writer(s): Gans/Brighton/Sylvester/Hampton/Feinstein
Label: Perfectible
Year: 2016
Chocolate Coffee Pot is what happens when a bunch of like-minded (and talented) musicians get together and spend some studio time being creative. The best example of this creativity can be found on a track called Three Food Groups that runs over 22 minutes in length.
Artist: Doors
Title: Shaman's Blues
Source: LP: Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine (originally released on LP: The Soft Parade)
Writer: Jim Morrison
Label: Elektra
Year: 1969
Often dismissed as the weakest entry in the Doors catalogue, The Soft Parade nonetheless is significant in that for the first time songwriting credits were given to individual band members. Shaman's Blues, in my opinion one of the four redeeming tracks on the album, is Jim Morrison's.
Artist: Sagittarius
Title: The Truth Is Not Real
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Present Tense)
Writer: Gary Usher
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
After the success of the first Sagittarius single, My World Fell Down, Gary Usher enlisted the aid of Curt Boettcher, who had been working on a studio project of his own called the Ballroom for another production company. Using many of the same studio musicians they created a follow-up single, The Truth Is Not Real. It's interesting to compare Usher's lyrics with those of In My Room, a Brian Wilson tune that Usher had provided lyrics for in 1965.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Retrospective (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the single intro onto the main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. Most versions I have heard use the mono version of the short intro section, but this particular one, from a CD called Retrospective, has the entire song in true stereo.
Artist: Love
Title: Signed D.C.
Source: German import CD: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra/Warner Strategic Marketing
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: Love
Title: My Little Red Book
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s): Bacharach/David
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
The first rock record ever released by Elektra Records was a single by Love called My Little Red Book. The track itself (which also opens Love's debut LP), is a punked out version of a tune originally recorded by Manfred Mann for the What's New Pussycat movie soundtrack. Needless to say, Love's version was not exactly what composers Burt Bacharach and Hal David had in mind when they wrote the song.
Artist: Love
Title: You I'll Be Following
Source: German import CD: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra/Warner Strategic Marketing
Year: 1966
When the Byrds decided to tour heavily to support their early hits Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, Arthur Lee's band Love was more than happy to fill the void left on the L.A. club scene. The group quickly established itself as the top band on the strip, a title it would hold until the scene itself had its plug pulled by the city in late 1966. From Lee's perspective, the secret to keeping that title was staying close to home, a policy that would prevent them from achieving any kind of major national success. Ironically, Love ultimately had their greatest success in the UK, where they managed to build an ever-growing following despite never having played there.
Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Title: 4 Eyes
Source: LP: Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful
Writer(s): John Sebastian
Label: Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year: 1966
The Lovin' Spoonful were at the top of their game in 1966 when they decided to put out an album of songs done in a variety of musical styles. From the hard-rockin' Summer In the City, to the countrified Nashville Cats, the album produced no less than four hit singles. The album track 4 Eyes defies easy classification, but reflects the band's own roots in the Greenwich Village club scene.
Artist: Thoughts
Title: All Night Stand
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Rhino (original label: Planet)
Year: 1966
One of the most important persons in the 60s British music industry was producer Shel Talmy, who, in addition to producing the Who, the Kinks and other popular bands was involved in the book publishing business. One of the writers Talmy worked with was Thom Keyes, whose first novel, All Night Stand, dealt with the adventures of a fictitious British beat band. To help promote the book (and possibly lay the groundwork for a motion picture adaptation), Talmy commissioned the Kinks Ray Davies to write a title song for the book, which Talmy then gave to a band called the Thoughts that he had just signed to his Planet Records label. For their part the Thoughts made their living mostly by backing up local singers such as Paul Dean and the duo John And Johnny, with All Night Stand being their only record under their own name.
