https://exchange.prx.org/p/530616
Although we don't have any artists' sets this week, we do have half a dozen tunes that have never been played on the show before (and one that hasn't been played since 2011).
Title: Pictures Of Matchstick Men
Source: Mono CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Francis Rossi
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Cadet Concept)
Year: 1967
If you have ever seen the film This Is Spinal Tap, the story of Britain's Status Quo might seem a bit familiar. Signed to Pye Records in 1967 the group scored a huge international hit with their first single, Pictures Of Matchstick Men, but were unable to duplicate that success with subsequent releases. In the early 1970s the band totally reinvented itself as a boogie band and began a run in the UK that resulted in them scoring more charted singles than any other band in history, including the Beatles and Rolling Stones. For all that, however, they never again charted in the US, where they are generally remembered as one-hit wonders. In addition to their UK success, Status Quo remains immensely popular in the Scandanavian countries, where they continue to play to sellout crowds on a regular basis.
Artist: Small Faces
Title: Itchycoo Park
Source: CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Marriott/Lane
Label: K-Tel (original label: Immediate)
Year: 1967
Led by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, the Small Faces got their name from the fact that all the members of the band were somewhat vertically challenged. The group was quite popular with the London mod crowd, and was sometimes referred to as the East End's answer to the Who. Although quite successful in the UK, the group only managed to score one hit in the US, the iconic Itchycoo Park, which was released in late 1967. Following the departure of Marriott the group shortened their name to Faces, and recruited a new lead vocalist named Rod Stewart. Needless to say, the new version of the band did much better in the US than its previous incarnation before itself being destroyed by Stewart's solo career.
Artist: Blossom Toes
Title: You
Source: British import CD: We Are Ever So Clean
Writer(s): Brian Godding
Label: Sunbeam (original label: Marmalade)
Year: 1968
Originally known as the Ingoes, Blossom Toes were discovered playing in Paris (where they had released an EP) by Giorgio Gomelsky, manager of the Yardbirds, who signed them to his own label, Marmalade, in 1967. Everyone on the British music scene was talking about (and listening to) the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, trying to figure out how to apply the album's advanced production techniques to their own material, including Gomelsky and Blossom Toes. The result was an album called We Are Ever So Clean, one of the first post-Sgt. Pepper albums to be released in the UK. Most of the songs on the album were written by keyboardist/vocalist Brian Godding, including You, the last complete song on the album (followed by a sped up compilation of the entire album titled Track For Speedy Freaks, or Instant LP Digest).
Artist: Beatles
Title: Back In The USSR/Dear Prudence
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
The day it appeared in the Ramstein AFB Base Exchange, I bought a numbered copy of The Beatles (aka the White Album) without ever having heard a single track from it. I took it home, unwrapped it from the cellophane and put it on the turntable. My first thought when I head the album's opening track, Back In The USSR, was "this sounds like the Beach Boys!" The song was, according to Paul McCartney, written from the point of view of a Russian spy returning home to the USSR after an extended mission in the United States, and that he intended it to be a "spoof" on the typical American international traveller's contention that "it's just so much better back home" and their yearning for the comforts of their homeland. The song ends with the sound of a jet plane that cross fades into John Lennon's Dear Prudence, a song written with the intention of bringing Mia Farrow's sister Prudence out of her shell while they were all in India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Artist: Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Title: Rest Cure
Source: European import CD: The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Writer(s): Brown/Crane
Label: Polydor (original US label: Atlantic)
Year: 1968
One of the more disturbing trends of the early 1970s was the rise of "glitter-rock" artists such as T-Rex, Gary Glitter and, of course, David Bowie. Glitter-rock was not so much as musical style as it was a performance art, with an emphasis on outrageous visual presentation set against a rock background, like a cross between French cabaret and a college frat party. The guy who started it all was a Britisher named Arthur Brown. While other rockers were playing as loudly as they could get away with, occassionally destroying their instruments in the process, Brown was busy being dropped onto stage suspended by a crane, wearing a glittering mask and colorful costumes (both male and female) and, on occasion, a crown of actual fire. Musically, Arthur Brown was at least as adventurous as any of his contemporaries, yet could exhibit a commercial side as well, as can be heard on Rest Cure, a track from his first album that was also selected to be the B side of his hit single, Fire. It was probably a good choice, as I remember hearing it played almost as often as Fire itself on the local jukebox.
Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title: Bears
Source: British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released in US as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Roger Perkins
Label: Zonophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
Possibly the most obscure song in the Quicksilver Messenger Service catalog, Bears appeared as the B side to Dino Valenti's Stand By Me (no relation to the Ben E. King song) in late 1968. To my knowledge, this novelty song was never included on any Quicksilver albums.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: I Want You
Source: CD: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Blonde On Blonde)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
I Want You, Bob Dylan's first single of 1966, was released in advance of his Blonde On Blonde album and was immediately picked by the rock press to be a hit. It was.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Today
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Balin/Kantner
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to Today, an early collaboration between rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and vocalist Marty Balin on Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Boogie Music
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Living The Blues and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): L.T.Tatman III
Label: United Artists (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
Canned Heat was formed in 1966 by a group of San Francisco Bay Area blues purists. Although a favorite on the rock scene, the band continued to remain true to the blues throughout its existence, even after relocating to the Laurel Canyon area near Los Angeles in 1968. The band's most popular single was Going Up the Country from the album Living the Blues. The B side of that single was another track from Living The Blues that actually had a longer running time on the single than on the album version. Although the single uses the same basic recording of Boogie Music as the album, it includes a short low-fidelity instrumental tacked onto the end of the song that sounds suspiciously like a 1920s recording of someone playing a melody similar to Going Up The Country on a fiddle. The only time this unique version of the song appeared in true stereo was on a 1969 United Artists compilation called Progressive Heavies that also featured tracks from Johnny Winter, Traffic, the Spencer Davis Group and others.
Artist: 13th Floor Elevators
Title: She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own)
Source: British import simulated stereo CD: Easter Everywhere
Writer(s): Hall/Erickson
Label: Charly (original US label: International Artists)
Year: 1967
The 13th Floor Elevators, following a tour of California, returned to their native Austin, Texas in early 1967 and got to work on their second LP, Easter Everywhere. There were problems brewing within the band itself, however, that led to two of its members, drummer John Ike Walton and bassist Ronnie Leatherman, returning to California without the rest of the band. Before they left, however, they, along with vocalist/guitarist Roky Erickson, electric jug player Tommy Hall and lead guitarist Stacy Sutherland, completed two songs for the album, one of which was She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own). The album itself was awarded a special "merit pick" by Billboard magazine, which described the effort as "intellectual rock". Easter Everywhere was not a major seller, but has since come to be regarded as one of the hidden gems of the psychedelic era.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth) while they were together. Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Richie Furay, Jim Messina, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock And Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 50 years after it was recorded.
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: Jeff Beck
Title: Shapes Of Things
Source: LP: Truth
Writer(s): Relf/Mccarty/Samwell-Smith
Label: Epic
Year: 1968
Jeff Beck has never been the kind of guitarist to find something that works and then stick with it until it doesn't work any longer. In fact, he has, throughout his career, done the exact opposite, making it nearly impossible to predict what he will do next. After leaving the Yardbirds he recorded a pair of forgettable singles for producer Mickey Most (imagine Beck trying to sound like Herman's Hermits) before emerging later in 1967 with the first incarnation of the Jeff Beck Group, which included which included Rod Stewart on vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano and Aynsley Dunbar on drums. After Dunbar left to form the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, the band recruited Mickey Waller, and old bandmate of Stewart's, and recorded the album Truth, releasing it in July of 1968 in the US and November in the UK. Although Most produced the album, Beck chose to eschew Most's preference for commercial pop in favor of a sound that would come to define hard rock in the early 1970s. The album's opening track, Shapes Of Things, a remake of a Yardbirds classic, showed just how hard Beck and his new band were willing to push the boundaries of rock, and is now considered a classic in its own right.
Artist: Don Fardon
Title: Dreaming Room
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Miki Dallon
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1968
Although Don Fardon is best known for the British hit version of J.D. Loudermilk's Indian Reservation, the B side of that single, a tune called Dreaming Room, is probably more representative of Fardon's style, which might be described as a slightly more psychedelic Tom Jones. Well, that's what I hear anyway.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Watch Yourself
Source: CD: Volume 3-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer: Robert Yeazel
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Although the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band usually wrote their own material, they occassionally drew from outside sources. One example is Watch Yourself, written by Robert Yeazel, who would go on to join Sugarloaf for their second LP, Spaceship Earth, writing much of the material on that album.
Artist: Mystery Trend
Title: Carl Street
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on CD: So Glad I Found You)
Writer: Ron Nagle
Label: Rhino (original label: Ace/Big Beat)
Year: Recorded: 1967; released: 1999)
Production notes for the final recording sessions of the Mystery Trend describe the band as neurotic and up-tight. Indeed, despite the band being one of the first and most talented bands on the San Francisco scene, they always seemed to be their own worst enemy. Still, they recorded some outstanding tracks, the last of which was Carl Street, which sat on a shelf for over 20 years before finally being released in 1999.
Artist: Brian Wilson
Title: Surf's Up
Source: CD: Brian Wilson Presents Smile
Writer(s): Wilson/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 priveleged few who had heard the work in progress all agreed it was to be Brian Wilson's masterpiece, both as a writer and a 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. Throughout this time Wilson had resisted the urge to reopen the Smile project, but in the early 2000s he began to integrate some of the songs into his live concerts, including a 2001 performance of Heroes And Villains at Radio City Music Hall in New York. This led to members of his current band suggesting that he work up the majority of Smile for new performances as a followup to his Pet Sounds Live concerts. Wilson approved the idea, and with the help of band member Darian Sahanaja in particular began updating the material for the 21st century, eventually reuniting with lyricist Van Dyke Parks to finish the project. The newly completed version of Smile was first performed live in February of 2004; the concert was a critical and commercial success, and Wilson's band continued to perform Smile throughout 2004 and 2005. Beginning in April of 2004 Wilson began work on a studio version of Smile, which required substantial reworking from the stage version. Finally, in September, of 2004, Brian Wilson Presents Smile was released. The completed version of Smile is divided into three sections: Americana, Cycle Of Life, and The Elements. The middle section, Cycle Of Life, is also the shortest, consisting of just four songs, Wonderful, Song For The Children, Child Is Father Of The Man, and, heard here as a separate piece, Surf's Up, a song that the Beach Boys had recorded in 1971 as the title track of their 17th album.
Artist: Dukes Of Stratosphear (XTC)
Title: Little Lighthouse
Source: CD: Chips From The Chocolate Fireball (originally released in UK on LP: Psonic Psunspot)
Writer(s): Andy Partridge
Label: Caroline (original label: Virgin)
Year: 1985
Following up on their 1985 mini-LP, 25 O'Clock, XTC, recording as the Dukes Of Stratosphear, released a full-length album called Psonic Psunspot in 1987. Interestingly enough, the album, featuring songs like Little Lighthouse, outsold the band's current LP at the time, Skylarking, proving (to me at least) the inherent superiority of psychedelic rock over 80s pop. Some critics have suggested that it was the freedom from the pressure to write "serious" songs that resulted in the overall superior quality of the Dukes' releases. Several subsequent Dukes projects were proposed over the next few years, but none came to fruition.
Artist: Claypool/Lennon Delerium
Title: Cricket And The Genie
Source: LP: Monolith Of Phobos
Writer(s): Claypool/Lennon
Label: Ato
Year: 2016
Fans of alternative rock are no doubt familiar with a band called Primus, led by bassist Les Claypool. One of the more colorful characters on the modern music scene, Claypool was once rejected by Metallica as being "too good" for them. Claypool himself has said that he thought James Hetfield was just being nice when he told him that, but the fact is that Claypool is indeed one of the most talented bass players (if not the best) in rock history. Sean Lennon is, of course, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Unlike his half-borther Julian, Sean has never had to prove anything to anyone, and, thanks in large part to his mother's influence (and let's be honest here, money), has always felt free to pursue his own artistic path without having to bow to commercial pressures. The two of them met when their respective bands were on tour and they immediately recognized that they had a musical connection. That connection manifested itself in the album Monolith Of Phobos (a title inspired by Arthur Clarke's works), released in 2016. The longest track on the album, Cricket And The Genie, actually comes in two parts. Both parts were released separately as singles.
Artist: Bruce Haack
Title: Song Of The Death Machine
Source: 7" 33 1/3 sampler: Dig This (originally released on LP: The Electric Lucifer)
Writer(s): Bruce Haack
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Canadian electronic music composer Bruce Haack was born about fifteen years too soon. A prodigy who was giving piano lessons as a teenager, Haack was a member of a popular local band in the early 1950s, and was invited by indigenous Canadians to participate in their pow wows and take peyote. After being rejected by one music school for his poor notation skills (I can relate to that) he ended up at Edmonton University, where he wrote and recorded music for campus theater productions, played in a band and hosted a radio show. In 1954 he moved to New York and enrolled at Julliard, but dropped out less that a year later because of that school's restrictive approach to music. Later in the decade he wrote in a variety of styles, ranging from pop songs to musique concrète. By the 1960s he was appearing on TV shows such as I've Got A Secret, where he and his friend Ted "Praxiteles" Pandel played a device called the Dermatron, a touch and heat sensitive synthesizer on the foreheads of 12 "chromatically pitched" young women. The two of them also started Dimension 5 Records, which specialized in children's records with an emphasis on musical education. Throughout this period Haack continued to experiment with electronic music, usually using devices he invented himself. In the late 1960s he was introduced to psychedelic rock, leading him to record an album called the Electric Lucifer. Song Of The Death Machine is excerpted from that album. Haack continued to record both experimental electronic and children's records for the rest of his life. In fact, Dimension 5 is still active today, with Pandel carrying on following Haack's death in 1988.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Victoria
Source: CD: The Kink Kronikles (originally released on LP: Arthur or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Polygram/PolyTel (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
The Kinks were at their commercial low point in 1969 when they released their third single from their controversial concept album Arthur or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire. Their previous two singles had failed to chart, even in their native England, and the band had not had a top 20 hit in the US since Sunny Afternoon in 1966. Victoria was a comeback of sorts, as it did manage to reach the #62 spot in the US and the #33 spot in the UK.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: Let's Go Away For Awhile
Source: 45 RPM single B side (originally released on LP: Pet Sounds)
Writer: Brian Wilson
Label: Capitol
Year: 1966
Although the Beach Boys are known primarily as a vocal group, their catalog is sprinkled with occassional instrumental pieces, usually featuring the youngest Wilson brother, Carl, on lead guitar. By 1966, however, the band was using studio musicians extensively on their recordings. This was taken to its extreme on the Pet Sounds album with the tune Let's Go Away For Awhile, which was made without the participation of any of the actual band members (except composer/producer Brian Wilson, who said at the time that the track was the most satisfying piece of music he had ever made). To give the song even greater exposure, Wilson used the track as the B side of the band's next single, Good Vibrations.
Artist: Gary Lewis & The Playboys
Title: Jill
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bonner/Gordon
Label: Rhino (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
After posting a series of top 10 hits in 1965 and 1966, Gary Lewis's career was suddenly put on hold when he received his draft notice in late 1966. While on leave in 1967 he recorded Jill, a tune written by Gary Bonner and Al Gordon, who had provided the Turtles with their biggest hit, Happy Together. With Lewis stationed in Seoul, South Korea, however, he was unable to promote the record, and the song stalled out in the lower reaches of the top 40. By the time Lewis got out of the army the musical landscape had altered dramatically, and Lewis's music was considered out of fashion.
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.
Artist: Grand Funk Railroad
Title: Can't Be Too Long
Source: LP: On Time
Writer(s): Mark Farner
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
Never has there been a band as univerally hated by the rock press as Grand Funk Railroad (although Uriah Heep in their early years came close). Apparently, someone decided that between Hendrix and Cream, everything good that could possibly be done with a power trio had been done, and there was really no reason for another one to ever exist. Or so it seemed in 1969, when Grand Funk Railroad's first LP, On Time, hit the racks. A funny thing happened, though. The band built a following, despite the critics disdain. In fact, they built a bigger following than any other band had built at that point in time. How big were they? Consider this: In 1970 the first two Grand Funk Railroad albums, which had been released the previous year, achieved gold record status. As did their live album, released in 1970. As did their third studio album, Closer To Home, which was also released in 1970. That's right. Four gold record awards in the same year. That's a pretty big following, especially when you consider just how primitive tracks like Can't Be Too Long, from their first album, really are. But then, that's what rock music is really all about. Primitive, and loud. Really, really loud. Which is how this track should be listened to.
Artist: King Crimson
Title: Happy Family
Source: British import LP: Lizard
Writer(s): Fripp/Sinfield
Label: Polydor
Year: 1970
King Crimson may well hold the record for the most lineup changes by a rock band. By the time their third album, Lizard, was released, only guitarist Robert Fripp and lyricist Peter Sinfield remained from the lineup that had created the band's debut LP. New vocalist Gordon Haskell and drummer Andy McCulloch would only stick around long enough to record one album, and never performed with the band live. Happy Family, a song about the breakup of the Beatles, is one of the most accessible tracks on the album.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience (II)
Title: Drifting
Source: LP: The Cry Of Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: Recorded 1970, released 1971
Recorded during July and August of 1970, Drifting was first released on the 1971 album The Cry Of Love six months after the death of Jimi Hendrix. The song features Hendrix on guitar and vocal, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Billy Cox on bass. Buzzy Linhart makes a guest appearance on the tune, playing vibraphone.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: I Am A Rock
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
The success of I Am A Rock, when released as a single in 1966, showed that the first Simon And Garfunkel hit, The Sound Of Silence, was no fluke. The two songs served as bookends to a very successful LP, Sounds Of Silence, and would lead to several more hit records before the two singers went their separate ways in 1970. This was actually the second time I Am A Rock had been issued as a single. An earlier version, from the Paul Simon Songbook, had been released in 1965. Both the single and the LP were only available for a short time and only in the UK, and were deleted at Simon's request.
