https://exchange.prx.org/p/564659
This week we have a set of Beatles recordings that remained unreleased until 1996, including an expanded stereo mix of one of the group's most endearing B sides. Also, a set of electric Dylan tunes, and to get things started, a set of extra long album tracks.
Artist: Doors
Title: When The Music's Over
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
I remember the first time I heard When The Music's Over. My girlfriend's older brother had a copy of the Strange Days album on the stereo in his room and told us to get real close to the speakers so we could hear the sound of a butterfly while he turned the volume way up. What we got, of course, was a blast of "...we want the world and we want it now." Good times.
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: 13th Floor Elevators
Title: Postures (Leave Your Body Behind)
Source: CD: Easter Everywhere
Writer(s): Hall/Erickson
Label: Charly (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1967
There was so much going on with the 13th Floor Elevators in the months leading up to the release of their second LP, Easter Everywhere, that a book could easily be written about it all. The group returned to Texas following a successful California tour in late 1966 and were hailed as returning heroes, largely thanks to the success of their first single, You're Gonna Miss Me. Soon, however, things started to go wrong. The band was under considerable pressure to begin sessions for a new album, but the band members themselves were divided on whether to stay in Texas and work on studio projects or return to California, where the population was much more receptive to the psychedelic sounds the Elevators themselves had helped pioneer. The issue was finally decided when lead guitarist Stacy Sutherland, the one undecided member, got his probation revoked and was not allowed to leave the state. The band's rhythm section, Ronnie Leatherman and John Walton, went to California anyway, leaving Sutherland, guitarist/vocalist Roky Erickson and electric jug player Tommy Hall looking for replacements. Easter Anywhere was conceived as a major spiritual statement, meant to tie together elements of eastern and western religion with mind-expansion elements of LSD; an ambitious project, to be sure. Unfortunately, by the time the new bassist and drummer, Danny Galindo and Danny Thomas, arrived at the rural hunting cabin the rest of the band was hiding out in, Hall and Erickson were so deeply into the project (and LSD), that they were unable to effectively communicate their ideas to the new guys. As a result the group spent an excessive amount of time in the studio with little to show for it. Eventually, when time and money ran out the album was declared finished and Easter Anywhere was released in November of 1967.
Artist: Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Title: Ecstacy
Source: CD: Is Spreading/The Great Conspiracy (originally released on LP: The Great Conspiracy)
Writer(s): John Merrill
Label: Collectables (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
The members of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy were not able to play the way they really wanted to on their two LPs for Columbia Records. Much of the reason for this was because of Columbia itself, which had a history of being against just about everything that made psychedelic rock what it was. Immediately after signing the band, the label assigned Gary Usher, whose background was mainly in vocal surf music, to produce the group. Usher urged the band, who had already built up a sizable following playing Los Angeles clubs, to soften their sound and become more hit oriented. To do this he brought in several studio musicians he had previously worked with, including members of the Wrecking Crew, to fill out the band's sound. At first, it seemed to be a successful strategy, as the band's first single, It's A Happening Thing, sold fairly well in local record stores, but when the next two singles failed to generate any interest the band began to assert its right to play on their own records. As a result, all the instruments on the band's second LP, The Great Conspiracy, were played by members of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy itself, including new member Bill Wolff, who had previously played guitar with the Sound Machine. For the most part however, they were still not able to fully recreate the extended jams that they were known for in their live performances, although a couple of tracks, such as Ecstacy, come pretty close. Written by lead guitarist John Merrill, the piece is a classic psychedelic jam, running over six minutes in length. Around the same time as the album was released, Merrill began losing interest in the group, and did not contribute any songs to the band's final album, For Children Of All Ages, released on the Challenge label in 1969.
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: Bob Dylan
Title: Positively 4th Street
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of The Original Mono Recordings (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1965
Recorded during the same 1965 sessions that produced the classic Highway 61 Revisited album, Positively 4th Street was deliberately held back for release as a single later that year. It would not appear on an LP until Dylan's first Greatest Hits album.
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: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Ed Cobb
Label: Elektra (original label: Tower)
Year: 1965
Dirty Water has long since been adopted by the city of Boston (and especially its sports teams), yet the band that originally recorded this Ed Cobb tune was purely an L.A. band, having started off playing cover tunes at frat parties in the early 60s. Drummer Dickie Dodd, who sings lead on Dirty Water, was a former Mouseketeer who had played on the surf-rock hit Mr. Moto as a member of the Bel-Airs.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Electric Prunes)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in late 1966 and hitting the charts in early 1967. The record, initially released without much promotion from the record label, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on both the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation and Rhino's first Nuggets LP.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Down On Me
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Trad. Arr. Joplin
Label: Mainstream
Year: 1967
Big Brother And The Holding Company's first album, featuring the single Down On Me, was recorded in 1967 at the studios of Mainstream Records, a medium-sized Chicago label known for its jazz recordings. At the time, Mainstream's engineers had no experience with a rock band, particularly a loud one like Big Brother, and vainly attempted to clean up the band's sound as best they could. The result was an album full of relatively sterile recordings sucked dry of the energy that made Big Brother and the Holding Company one of the top live attractions of the San Francisco Bay Area. Probably the stongest track on the album was lead vocalist Janis Joplin's arrangement of Down On Me, a "freedom song" dating back at least to the 1920s that Mainstream issued as a single during the Summer of Love. A hit in San Francisco, the song almost made the national top 40 charts, peaking at #42.
Artist: Gods
Title: Toward The Skies
Source: British import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK on LP: Genesis)
Writer(s): Joe Konas
Label: Zonophone (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
It was probably pretty pretentious for a band to call themselves the Gods, but when you consider that, at various times, the band's lineup included Greg Lake and Mick Taylor (both future rock gods), as well as two future members of Uriah Heep, the claim somehow doesn't seem quite so outrageous. By the time their first album, Genesis, came out in 1968 both Taylor and Lake had moved on, but between guitarist/keyboardist Ken Hensley, drummer Lee Kerslake (the two aforementioned Heepsters), bassist John Glascock (who would eventually serve as Jethro Tull's bassist until his untimely death in 1979) and guitarist Joe Konas, who wrote the album's opening track, Toward The Skies, the Gods had talent to spare.
Artist: Box Tops
Title: Cry Like A Baby
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Penn/Oldham
Label: Priority (original label: Mala)
Year: 1968
The Box Tops' second top 5 single, Cry Like A Baby, was the result of an all-night songwriting session. The band's producer, Dan Penn, was under pressure from the record company to come up with a follow up hit to The Letter, and asked his friend Spooner Oldham for help writing a song. The session, though long, was unproductive, and the two decided to call it a night and have breakfast at a cafe across the street. During the course of the conversation, Oldham expressed his frustration, saying "I could just cry like a baby." Penn decided then and there that Cry Like A Baby would be the title of the song and by the time the left the restaurant they had the first verse written. When Box Tops vocalist Alex Chilton showed up later that morning the two songwriters played him a demo of the new tune that they had come up with and the rest is history.
Artist: Beatles
Title: You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
Source: CD: Anthology 2 (mon version originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple/Parlophone
Year: 1970
Basically a studio concoction assembled by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) was originally intended to be released as a 1969 single by the Plastic Ono Band. The track was the result of four separate recording sessions dating back to 1967 and originally ran over six minutes long. The instrumental tracks were recorded around the same time the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in Spring of 1967. Brian Jones added a saxophone part on June 8th of that year. In April of 1969 Lennon and McCartney added vocals, while Lennon edited the entire track down from a monoraul mixdown to slightly over four minutes. The single was readied for a November release, but at the last minute was withdrawn. The recording was instead released as the B side of the Beatles' Let It Be single the following year. In 1996 the original tapes were re-edited to create a new stereo mix that runs a little over five and a half minutes in length. The new mix was included on the Anthology 2 CD.
Artist: Beatles
Title: 12-Bar Original
Source: Anthology 2
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey
Label: Capitol/Apple
Year: Recorded 1965, released 1996
Apparently nobody at EMI studios was familiar with the term "blues jam", so they called this Rubber Soul outtake 12-Bar Original. The Beatles actually recorded two takes of this; the second of these ran about six and a half minutes in length. That second take was edited down to about three minutes for inclusion on the second Anthology album in 1996.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Not Guilty
Source: CD: Anthology 3
Writer(s): George Harrison
Label: Capitol/Apple
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1996
One of the most legendary unreleased Beatles recordings, Not Guilty was written by George Harrison after returning from the band members' spiritual retreat in Rishikesh, India, where they studied Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The song addresses his growing dissatisfaction with his role in the band, while defending himself against accusations that he led the group "astray on the road to Mandalay". The recording process was a difficult one, taking over 100 takes to get right, and even then Harrison was unsatisfied with the final recording, which may explain why the song, originally slated for inclusion on the White Album, remained unreleased for nearly 30 years.
Artist: Turtles
Title: The Last Thing I Remember, The First Thing I Knew
Source: CD: The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands (bonus track originally released on 12" 45 RPM Picture Disc: Turtles 1968)
Writer: The Turtles
Label: FloEdCo (original label: Rhino)
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1978
In 1968 the Turtles rebelled against their record company. They did not attempt to break the contract or go on strike, though. Instead, they simply went into the studio and produced four songs that they themselves wrote and chose to record. The record company, in turn, chose not to issue any of the self-produced recordings (although one, Surfer Dan, did end up on their Battle of the Bands album a few months later). Finally, in the late 1970s a small independent label known for issuing oddball recordings by the likes of Barnes and Barnes (Fish Heads) and professional wrestler Fred Blassie (Pencil-Neck Geek) put out a 12-inch picture disc featuring the four tunes. That label also began reissuing old Turtles albums, starting it on a path that has since become the stock in trade for Rhino Records. More recently, Turtles front men Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (aka Flo & Eddie) have reissued all four songs as bonus tracks on the expanded CD version of The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands on their own FloEdCo label.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Dandruff/Daddy's Song
Source: LP: Head soundtrack
Writer: Harry Nilsson
Label: Colgems
Year: 1968
After their TV show was cancelled in the spring of 1968, the Monkees set out to make a feature-length film. The movie, written by a young Jack Nicholson, was called Head, and was nothing like the TV show. The soundtrack album was nothing like any previous Monkees album either. For one thing, there were no songs written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. More importantly, there were clips from the movie itself, including Dandruff, which leads into the Harry Nillson tune Daddy's Song.
Artist: Pretty Things
Title: Walking Through My Dreams
Source: Mono British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): May/Taylor/Waller
Label: EMI (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
Like the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things were a product of London's somewhat rough and tumble blue collar neighborhoods, and in their early years played a similar mix of early rock 'n' roll and R&B cover tunes. By 1967, however, the band had embraced psychedelia far more than the Stones, even to the point of rivalling Pink Floyd for the unofficial title of Britain's leading psychedelic band. A case in point is Walking Though My Dreams, released in 1967 as the B side to the equally psychedelic Talkin' About The Good Times. For some reason, however, the Pretty Things never had the success in the US that the Stones (or even Pink Floyd) enjoyed.
Artist: J.K. & Co.
Title: Fly
Source: CD: A Heavy Dose Of Lyte Psych (originally released on LP: Suddenly One Summer)
Writer(s): Jay Kaye
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1969
By 1969, some of the glamor had worn off the drug scene, with Pot and LSD giving way to amphetamines and cocaine as the drug of choice among many users. Jay Kaye, an expatriate Canadian fronting his own band in Los Angeles, recorded the album Suddenly One Summer, including the song Fly, as a way of documenting the horrors of hard drug use. Although Suddenly One Summer was not a commercial success, J.K. & Co. deserve props for daring to go against the grain long before it became fashionable to eschew drug use.
Artist: Fifty Foot Hose
Title: Fantasy
Source: LP: Cauldron
Writer(s): David Blossom
Label: Limelight
Year: 1968
Although Fifty Foot Hose was not a commercial success in 1968, they are now highly regarded as pioneers of electronic music. The group's core members were the husband and wife team of David and Nancy Blossom (on guitar and vocals respectively) and Cork Marcheschi, who provided various electronic effects. Marcheschi actually created the devices he used with the group, being as much an inventor/engineer as a musician (perhaps even more). David Blossom, on the other hand, was the band's primary songwriter, creating pieces such as Fantasy, which at over ten minutes was the longest track on the group's only album, Cauldron.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Help!
Source: LP: Shades Of Deep Purple
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Tetragrammaton
Year: 1968
It takes brass for a band to include a Beatles cover on their debut LP, especially if they have chosen to completely rearrange the song, a la Vanilla Fudge. Nonetheless, that is exactly what happened on the album Shades Of Deep Purple, which hit the stands in 1968. The Beatles cover song in question is the classic Help! Deep Purple gives it a kind of slow, soft treatment that is both light years away from the original, and, in my opinion, quite an enjoyable listen.
Artist: Max Frost And The Troopers
Title: Shape Of Things To Come
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Wild In The Streets (soundtrack))
Writer(s): Mann/Weill
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1968
Max Frost was a politically savvy rock star who rode the youth movement all the way to the White House, first through getting the support of a hip young Senator, then getting the age requirements for holding high political office lowered to 21, and finally lowering the voting age to 14. Everyone over 30 was locked away in internment camps, similar to those used during WWII by various governments to hold those of questionable loyalty to the current regime. What? You don't remember any of that? You say it sounds like the plot of a cheapie late 60s teen exploitation flick? Right on all counts. "Wild in the Streets" starred Christopher Jones as the rock star, Hal Holbrook as the hip young senator, and a Poseidon Adventure-sized Shelly Winter as the rock star's interred mom. Richard Pryor, in his film debut, played the band's hook-handed drummer/political activist Stanley X. The band itself, Max Frost And The Troopers, was actually a group called the 13th Power (and was credited as such on the soundtrack album, but not the single).
Artist: Ten Years After
Title: Love Until I Die (Top Gear version)
Source: Mono CD: Ten Years After (bonus track)
Writer(s): Alvin Lee
Label: Deram
Year: 1967
When the British government pulled the plug on Radio London in 1967, DJ John Peel, who had hosted a popular and influential underground radio show on the popular pirate station, immediately found work on the new BBC Radio 1, which was launched specifically to capture Radio London's former audience. He soon found himself involved with the revival of a program called Top Gear, that featured a mixture of records and live performances by Britain's most popular bands. Under Peel's guidance, the show became an important part of the emerging blues and progressive rock scenes. One of the first bands to be featured on the show was Ten Years After, performing songs from their first album, such as Love Until I Die, an Alvin Lee original that builds on the same riff that Eric Clapton And The Powerhouse had used for their version of Crossroads on the 1966 LP What's Shakin' (and Cream would use on their 1968 Wheels Of Fire album), but soon takes off in an entirely different musical direction.
Artist: Executives
Title: The Ginza Strip
Source: Mono British import CD: Acid Daze (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Roy and Tony Carr
Label: Uncut (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
The Executives were one of the many British beat bands that decided to try their hand at psychedelia in 1967. They had previously been tied closely to the Mod movement however (in fact producer/bandleader Tony Carr had written the 1964 hit March Of The Mods) and, despite the fact that The Ginza Strip is a fine slice of psychedelia, were unable to shed their Mod image enough to gain credibility with the psychedelic crowd.
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