https://exchange.prx.org/p/524153
This week Stuck in the Psychedelic Era presents, in its entirety, what many consider to be the greatest spoken word/comedy achievement of the entire psychedelic era: The Firesign Theatre's Further Adventures Of Nick Danger. Also this week: a set from the Who and the usual mix of singles, B sides and album tracks, included two from artists we've never heard from before, one from Canada and the other from England.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: Louie, Go Home
Source: CD: Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Midnight Ride)
Writer(s): Lindsay/Revere
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Nobody knows for sure who recorded Louie Louie first: the Kingsmen or Paul Revere And The Raiders. Both bands recorded the song in April of 1963 in the same studio in Portland, Oregon, but nobody seems to remember which band played at which session. Regardless, the Kingsmen ended up with the national hit version of the song, while Paul Revere And The Raiders went on to become one of the most successful American rock band of the mid-1960s, thanks in part to Dick Clark, who discovered them playing in Hawaii and chose them to be the house band on his new show Where The Action Is. By this time the band had been signed to Columbia Records, releasing their first single for the label, Louie-Go Home, in 1964. By 1966 they were riding high on the charts, and re-recorded Louie, Go Home (different punctuation, same song, different arrangement) in stereo for their second of three albums released that year: Midnight Ride.
Artist: Animals
Title: I Ain't Got You
Source: Mono LP: The Animals On Tour
Writer(s): Calvin Carter
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1965
As was almost always the case with British Invasion groups, the Animals' earliest US albums bear little resemblance to what could be found on the racks in the UK. Their second US album, The Animals On Tour, contained a mixture of tunes from their first British LP that had been left off the first American Animals LP, a pair of singles not available on any British album, and a handful of songs that hadn't been released in the UK at all (but would be three months later on an album called Animal Tracks that had an almost entirely different lineup of songs than the later US album of the same name). One example of the latter was a tune called I Ain't Got You. The shirts at M-G-M who compiled The Animals On Tour were so clueless, however, that the label credited "Will Advise" as the songwriter of I Ain't Got You. In reality it was Calvin Carter, producer and A&R man for Vee Jay Records, that composed the song in 1955, with a version by Billy Boy Arnold hitting the R&B charts in early 1956.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Hey Joe
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Billy Roberts
Label: Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year: 1966
In 1966 there were certain songs you had to know how to play if you had any aspirations of being in a band. Among those were Louie Louie, Gloria and Hey Joe. The Byrds' David Crosby claims to have discovered Hey Joe, but was not able to convince his bandmates to record it before their third album. In the meantime, several other bands had recorded the song, including Love (on their first album) and the Leaves. The version of Hey Joe heard here is actually the third recording the Leaves made of the tune. After the first two versions tanked, guitarist Bobby Arlin, who had recently replaced founding member Bill Rinehart on lead guitar, came up with the idea of adding fuzz guitar to the song. It was the missing element that transformed a rather bland song into a hit record (the only national hit the Leaves would have). As a side note, the Leaves credited Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti) as the writer of Hey Joe, but California-based folk singer Billy Roberts had copyrighted the song in 1962 and had reportedly been heard playing the tune as early as 1958.
Artist: Janis Ian
Title: Pro-Girl
Source: Mono LP: Janis Ian
Writer(s): Janis Ian
Label: Verve Folkways
Year: 1967
It took guts for a fifteen-year-old to write and record a song that is basically an open letter to a prostitute. It took maturity to do it without either condoning or condemning that kind of life. Janis Ian displayed both with the song Pro-Girl on her 1967 debut LP.
The first of our "new" bands this week has rather unusual instrumentation prompted by an unfortunate incident...
Artist: Third Ear Band
Title: Cosmic Trip
Source: Mono British import CD: Think I'm Going Weird (originally released on LP: National-Balkan Ensemble/Comedy Links And Bridges)
Writer(s): Minns/Sweeny/Coff/Cartland
Label: Grapefruit (original label: Standard Music Library)
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1970
Although officially formed in late 1967 the Third Ear Band didn't really take form until June of 1968, when all of their instruments and amps were stolen after a gig. This prompted the group's (electric) guitarist and (electric) cellist to move on to other things, but the remaining two members, percussionist Glen Sweeney and Oboeist Paul Minns, to continue as a purely acoustic act, adding violinist Richard Coff and violist Ben Cartland, who also played (acoustic) guitar. They often crossed paths with composer Ron Geesin (who arranged the strings and horns for Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother Suite), who invited the Third Ear Band to come record three tunes at his own home studio. Geesin sold the tapes to a company that specialized in production music, which released the three tracks, including Cosmic Trip, on an album called National-Balkan Ensemble/Comedy Links And Bridges in 1970. Apparently the tracks got used in some obscure film, or maybe a radio or TV show, because, according to Sweeny, the members of the Third Ear Band did receive small royalty checks. The Third Eye Band remained active until health problems forced Sweeny to retire from music in 1993.
Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Title: Shotgun
Source: Mono LP: Near The Beginning
Writer(s): Autry DeWalt
Label: Atco
Year: 1969
For their fourth LP, Vanilla Fudge returned to the formula that they found their original success with for the album Near The Beginning. Whereas their third LP, Renaissance, contained mostly original material, Near The Beginning was dominated by an extended version of the Junior Walker hit Shotgun. The single version of the song, which the group performed on the Ed Sullivan show, was the group's last song to hit the Billboard top 100, peaking at # 68. According to drummer Carmine Appice, it was the Vanilla Fudge version of Shotgun that convinced Jeff Beck to later form a band with Appice and bassist Tim Bogert.
Artist: Wet Paint
Title: Glass Road
Source: CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wild Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Wet Paint
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Onyx)
Year: 1970
Although most of the bands recording in the state of Massachusetts used studios in Boston, there were some exceptions. One such case was a band called Wet Paint, who recorded at Eastern Sounds Recordings in Metheun. Eastern even had its own in-house record label, Onyx, which is where Glass Road was released in 1970.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
Source: CD: Pet Sounds
Writer(s): Wilson/Asher
Label: Capitol
Year: 1966
Brian Wilson's songwriting reached its full maturity with the Pet Sounds album, released in 1966. In addition to the hits Wouldn't It Be Nice, Sloop John B and God Only Knows, the album featured several album tracks that redefined where a pop song could go. One such tune is Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), a slow, moody song with a chord structure that goes in unexpected directions. Like most of the songs on Pet Sounds, it was co-written by Tony Asher, who would later say the ideas were all Wilson's, with Asher just helping put them into words.
Artist: Who
Title: Happy Jack
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: Decca
Year: 1967
Happy Jack was originally released as a single in the UK in late 1966. It did not hit the US airwaves, however, until the early months of 1967. (I heard it for the first time on KLZ-FM, a Denver station whose format was a forerunner of progressive rock. KLZ-FM didn't call themselves a rock station. They instead marketed themselves as playing the top 100, as opposed to the top 60 played on KIMN, the dominant AM station in the city.) Although the song was not intended to be on an album, Decca Records quickly rearranged the track order of the Who's second album, A Quick One, to make room for the song, changing the name of the album itself to Happy Jack in the process.
Artist: Who
Title: Young Man Blues
Source: LP: Live At Leeds
Writer(s): Mose Allison
Label: Decca
Year: 1970
By the end of the 1960s, the Who were considered by many to be one of the best performing bands in existence. At the same time, however, they had achieved a kind of artsy reputation for the rock opera Tommy, which had been released in 1969, and we concerned that their reputation as a live band was being overshadowed. To counterract this, the band booked gigs at Leeds University and Hull City Hall specifically to record a live album. The result was Live At Leeds, an album that has been ranked by various critics as the greatest live rock recording of all time. The album starts with Mose Allison's Young Man Blues, a tune the Who had been playing off and on since 1964 and had made a major part of their stage repertoire since 1968. Allison, upon hearing the album, declared this recording to be the "Command Performance" version of the song. Young Man's Blues remained in the Who's regular stage repertoire through 1970, with it making occasional appearances over the years since then.
Artist: Who
Title: Whiskey Man
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: John Entwhistle
Label: Decca
Year: 1966
Although the Who had previously issued a pair of singles in the US, the first one to make any kind of waves was Happy Jack, released in late 1966 and hitting its peak the following year. The B side of that record was the song Whiskey Man. Like all the Who songs penned by bassist John Entwhistle, this one has an unusual subject: in this case, psychotic alcohol-induced hallucinations that are more enjoyable than reality.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: A Song For Jeffrey
Source: LP: This Was
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Jethro Tull's second single (and first European hit) was A Song For Jeffrey from their debut LP, This Was. The Jeffrey in the song title is Jeffrey Hammond, who, according to the liner notes, was "one of us, though he doesn't play anything". The notes go on to say he "makes bombs and stuff". In fact, Hammond would replace bassist Glen Cornick a few albums later and remain with the group for several years. The song itself proved popular enough that when the band compiled their first Anthology album, Living In The Past, A Song For Jeffrey was chosen to open the album.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: The Shield
Source: LP: Purple Passages (originally released on LP: The Book Of Taliesyn
Writer(s): Blackmore/Evans/Lord
Label: Warner Brothers (original label: Tetragrammaton)
Year: 1968
The story of the original Deep Purple lineup is, in a way, two entirely different stories. At home the band was virtually ignored by audiences and press alike, and struggled to even get their records released. In the US, however, they were overnight sensations, thanks in large part to the success of the single Hush in the spring of 1968. A North American tour was set up, scheduled to begin in October of that year, but their American label, Tetragrammaton, wanted a second album from the band to be on the racks before the tour opened. This meant that the group was in the studio only two months after releasing Shades of Deep Purple, working on what would become The Book Of Taleisyn, despite the fact that Shades of Deep Purple had not even been released yet in the UK. The first song recorded for the new LP was The Shield, an imaginative piece incorporating unusual drum patterns from Ian Paice and appropriately mystical lyrics from Rod Evans, along with some nice guitar and organ work from Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord. Although The Book Of Taleisyn was not as big a seller in the US as Shades Of Deep Purple, the tour itself was a huge success. Still, the band still was not getting any respect at home. In fact, The Book Of Taleisyn did not even come out in the UK until mid-1969, by which time Evans and bassist Nicky Simper were no longer members of Deep Purple.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Mystic Mourning
Source: British import CD: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Ulaky/Weisberg/Rhodes
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
If I had to choose one single recording that represents the psychedelic era, my choice would be Mystic Mourning, from the album The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union. Everything about the tune screams (whispers? purrs?) psychedelic, starting with a short spacy intro of electric piano over cymbals, leading into a raga beat with a solo bass line that builds up to a repeating riff that ends up getting played at various times by guitar, bass, and/or piano. The lyrics are appropriately existential, and both guitar and piano get a chance to show their stuff over the course of the nearly six-minute track.
Our second band making its Stuck in the Psychedelic Era debut this week is a Canadian power trio that started off covering Hendrix and Cream, but soon carved out musical territory of their own...
Artist: Factree
Title: Kaleidoscope
Source: Mono CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released in Canada as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Weaver/Gauther
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Sparton)
Year: 1968
Not too far from Niagara Falls lies the small city of Welland, Ontario. This city of about 50,000 people was home to the Factree, an early power trio consisting of guitarist Chris Smith, bassist Rick Gauthier and drummer Mike Weaver, all of whom provided vocals for the band. A local disc jockey playing some of their demos led to a contract with RCA, who brought the band to a studio in Toronto to record four songs, with Kaleidoscope being issued as the A side of their first single. The song got decent airplay in Toronto, and a second single from the same sessions was slated to be released, but somehow the master tapes got damaged and the band had a falling out with their producer. They did record another single (as Tree) for a smaller Canadian label before splitting up.
Artist: Kinks
Title: You Really Got Me
Source: Mono CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: K-Tel (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1964
Although the Beatles touched off the British Invasion, it was the sheer in-your-face simplicity of You Really Got Me, recorded by an "upstart band of teenagers" from London's Muswell Hill district named the Kinks and released in August of 1964 that made the goal of forming your own band and recording a hit single seem to be a viable one. And sure enough, within a year garages and basements all across America were filled with guitars, amps, drums and aspiring high-school age musicians, some of whom would indeed get their own records played on the radio.
Artist: Firesign Theatre
Title: The Further Adventures Of Nick Danger
Source: CD: How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All
Writer(s): Proctor/Bergman/Austin/Ossman
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1969
The Firesign Theatre, consisting of Phil Proctor, Peter Bergman, Phil Austin and David Ossman, pioneered a type of "counter-culture comedy" that would be followed up on by such stars as Cheech and Chong, George Carlin, and the Credibility Gap (with Harry Shearer and Michael McKean), as well as the National Lampoon Radio Hour (featuring Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Christopher Guest and others). Their most famous work is The Further Adventures Of Nick Danger from the 1969 album How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All. The piece itself runs over 28 minutes, taking up the entire second side of the original LP. It is a parody of old-time radio detective dramas, done in a noir style that has itself become a standard comedy trope. The plot itself is secondary to the jokes, many of which are references to counter-cultural icons such as the Beatles. There have been several more Nick Danger pieces by the Firesign Theatre over the years, the most recent being The Bride Of Firesign, released in 2001.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Everydays
Source: LP: Buffalo Springfield Again
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
Everydays has the distinction of being both the first song recorded for the album Buffalo Springfield Again and the last one to be released as a single, albeit a B side. Such was the quality of Stephen Stills's songwriting at this point in his career that a decent song like Everydays has gone completely overlooked in the years since it was released.
Artist: Country Joe and the Fish
Title: Section 43
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer: Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
In 1966 Country Joe and the Fish released their original mono version of an instrumental called Section 43. The song was included on a 7" EP inserted in Joe McDonald's underground arts newspaper called Rag Baby. In 1967 the group recorded an expanded stereo version of Section 43 and included it on their debut LP for Vanguard Records, Electric Music For The Mind And Body. It was this arrangement of the piece (and quite possibly this recording) that was used in D. A. Pennebacker's film chronicle of the Monterey International Pop Festival that June.
Artist: Oracle
Title: Don't Say No
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single).
Writer(s): Ruthann Friedmann
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1968
Before the days of arena rock, with two or three bands touring together and putting on virtually the same show night after night, headliner bands often looked to local talent for their opening act, making each stop on the tour a unique event. Sometimes the local opening band made enough of an impression to create a path to stardom for themselves as well, or at least to get a record contract. Take the case of a Lake Charles, Lousiana band known locally as the Great Society. Although they had not made any records, they had developed enough of a reputation to be able to score gigs across the state line in East Texas. One of those gigs was opening for the Music Machine in mid 1967. The Music Machine, at this point, was experiencing the frustration of being unable to score a successful follow up to their 1966 hit Talk Talk and was on the verge of dissolving, with the various individual members starting to explore other options. Among those members was bassist Keith Olsen, who liked Great Society enough to convince them to come out to Los Angeles and let Olsen produce them. Things did not go exactly as planned, however, as a bad acid trip left the band in no shape to cut a record. Olsen, however, working with co-producer Curt Boettcher, did get the group to provide vocals for a studio project the two of them were working on, a Ruthann Friedmann song called Don't Say No. As there had already been a band in California called Great! Society as recently as 1966, it was decided to rename the group the Oracle for the release of Don't Say No on the Verve Forecast label in 1968. Although the record was not a hit, it did help open doors for Olsen, who would go on to discover and produce the duo known as Buckingham Nicks, along with their breakthrough album as members of Fleetwood Mac. Since then Olsen has become one of the top producers in the history of rock music, working with such well known artists as the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir, Eddie Money, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Rick Springfield, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Heart, Joe Walsh, Starship, Santana, Kim Carnes, Jethro Tull, The Babys, Ozzy Osbourne, the Scorpions, .38 Special, Bad Company, Sammy Hagar, Russ Ballard, Whitesnake, Foreigner, Sheena Easton, Journey, Loverboy, and Lou Gramm. Not bad for a bass player from a one-hit wonder band.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: Barterers And Their Wives
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Brown/Feher
Label: Smash
Year: 1967
The Left Banke made a huge impact with their debut single, Walk Away Renee, in late 1966. All of a sudden the rock press (such as it was in 1966) was all abuzz with talk of "baroque rock" and how it was the latest, greatest thing. The band soon released a follow-up single, Pretty Ballerina, which made the top 10 as well, which led to an album entitled (naturally enough) Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina, which featured several more songs in the same vein, such as Barterers And Their Wives, which was also released as a B side later that year. An unfortunate misstep by keyboardist Michael Brown, however, led to the Left Banke's early demise, and baroque rock soon went the way of other sixties fads.
Artist: H.P. Lovecraft
Title: Electrollentando
Source: CD: Two Classic Albums from H. P. Lovecraft (originally released on LP: H.P. Lovecraft II)
Writer(s): George Edwards
Label: Collector's Choice (original label: Philips)
Year: 1968
The second album by H.P. Lovecraft (the band, not the author) is sometimes referred to as the ultimate acid rock album. In fact, it has been rumoured to be the first album made entirely under the influence of LSD (although the same has been said of the 1967 Jefferson Airplane LP After Bathing At Baxter's and both albums by the 13th Floor Elevators as well). This may in part because the band had relocated from their native Chicago to Marin County, California, where they shared billing with established Bay Area bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company and the aforementioned Jefferson Airplane. The album also featured more original material than the band's debut LP, including the easier to listen to than pronounce the title of Electrollentando.
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