https://exchange.prx.org/p/638857
This week's show features a new Advanced Psych segment featuring bands from the Finger Lakes region of New York state, three really long tracks back to back, and an entire segment of tunes from 1967. To start the show we take a trip from 1965 to 1969 and back again, one song at a time.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Dizzy Miss Lizzy
Source: CD: Help! (original US release: LP: Beatles VI)
Writer(s): Larry Williams
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1965
Like virtually every other rock 'n' roll band in the early 1960s, the Beatles had a lot of cover tunes in their repertoire. While local US bands tended to favor instrumental versions of current hits, however, British bands were big on rock 'n' roll and R&B classics from the mid to late 1950s. Among the most covered artists from that period was Larry Williams, who had a series of hits on the Specialty label, including Dizzy Miss Lizzy, which despite being now considered a rock 'n' roll classic, could only make it as high as #69 when it was released in 1958. The Beatles' version of the song first appeared in the UK on the soundtrack for the film Help, although it was not used in the film itself. The US Help soundtrack album, however, only included songs that were actually from the movie, along with instrumental connecting pieces composed by George Martin. Dizzy Miss Lizzy finally appeared in the US on the LP Beatles VI, an album that had no British counterpart.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Who's Driving Your Plane?
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966
By 1966 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were writing everything the Rolling Stones recorded. As their songwriting skills became more sophisticated the band began to lose touch with its R&B roots. To counteract this, Jagger and Richards would occasionally come up with tunes like Who's Driving Your Plane, a bluesy number that nonetheless is consistent with the band's cultivated image as the bad boys of rock. The song appeared as the B side (mistitled on the US version as Who's Driving My Plane) of their loudest single to date, the feedback-drenched Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow.
Artist: Blokes
Title: All American Girl
Source: Mono LP: Highs In The Mid Sixties Vol. 6- Michigan, part 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Schwar/Hack/Wagner
Label: AIP (original label: Dante)
Year: 1967
Is it my imagination, or did a lot of garage band guys in Michigan get really angry about the way some girl treated them and decide to get even by writing a song about it? And reveal a rather misogynistic attitude in the process?
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Taking Out Time
Source: Mono British import CD: Think I'm Going Weird (originally released on LP: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush)
Writer(s): Davis/Hardin
Label: Grapefruit (original US label: United Artists)
Year: 1968
When Steve Winwood left the Spencer Davis Group to form Traffic in 1967, Davis went out and found another teenage vocalist/keyboardist, Eddie Hardin, to replace him. Oddly enough, though, the new songs penned by Davis and Hardin didn't much resemble earlier Spencer Davis Group hits; rather, they tended to sound more like Traffic, as can be heard on Taking Out Time from the soundtrack of a movie called Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush. The movie's producers had negotiated the contract to do the soundtrack with Davis while Winwood was still a member of the group, however, so three of the songs on that album were actually by Traffic itself, including the title track. The album itself was quite psychedelic in nature, but due to being held back until the film itself was released in 1968, the music on it already sounded a bit dated when it was released.
Artist: Blackwood Apology
Title: Dixie And The War
Source: LP: House Of Leather
Writer(s): Dale Menten
Label: Fontana
Year: 1969
House Of Leather was a studio project by Minneapolis guitarist Dale Menten and vocalist Dennis Libby, who used the name Blackwood Apology and then recruited a band to perform the songs on the album, along with Menten's own arrangements of blues and rock cover songs. The album itself was a collection of tunes centered on the US Civil War (the one in the 19th century, not the current one). House Of Leather was also turned into a regionally successful rock musical, while the band, now known as Blackwood, was eventually inducted into the Minnesota Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Bourée
Source: CD: Stand Up
Writer: Bach, arr. Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
The second Jethro Tull album, Stand Up, saw the band moving a considerable distance from its blues-rock roots, as flautist Ian Anderson asserted himself as leader and sole songwriter for the group. Nowhere is that more evident than on the last track of the first side of Stand Up, the instrumental Bouree, which successfully melds jazz and classical influences into the Jethro Tull sound.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Dandruff/Daddy's Song
Source: LP: Head soundtrack
Writer: Harry Nilsson
Label: Rhino (original 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, sung by Davy Jones.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Long Day's Flight
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Weakley/Yorty
Label: Collector's Choice (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Originally from the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California, the Electric Prunes were often mislabeled as a Pacific Northwest band, due to their popularity in the Seattle area. Interestingly enough, the band also enjoyed greater popularity in the UK than many of their L.A. contemporaries (such as the Doors). Long Day's Flight, an anthemic track from the band's second LP, was released as a single in the UK, but not in the US. To my knowledge it is the only song in the Electric Prunes catalog penned by drummer "Quint" Weakley.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Source: LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1966
After the surprise success of the Sound Of Silence single, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who had disbanded their partnership after the seeming failure of their Wednesday Morning 3 AM album in 1964, hastily reunited to record a new album of electrified versions of songs written by Simon, many of which had appeared on his 1965 solo LP the Paul Simon Songbook. With their newfound success, the duo set about recording an album's worth of new material. This time around, however, Simon had the time (and knowledge of what was working for the duo) to compose songs that would play to both the strengths of himself and Garfunkel as vocalists, as well as take advantage of the additional instrumentation available to him. The result was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme, featuring tracks such as The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine, an energetic piece that effectively combines folk and rock with intelligent (if somewhat satirical) lyrics.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: High Flying Bird
Source: Mono LP: Early Flight
Writer(s): Billy Edd Wheeler
Label: Grunt
Year: Recorded 1965, released 1974
One of the more outstanding performances at the Monterey International Pop Festival was Jefferson Airplane's rendition of High Flyin' Bird, a song usually associated with Buffy St.-Marie. The song had actually been in the band's repertoire almost from the beginning, as this recording from 1965, featuring the original Airplane lineup of Marty Balin and Signe Anderson (vocals), Jorma Kaukonen and Paul Kantner (guitars), Jack Casidy (bass) and Skip Spence (drums), demonstrates.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Help, I'm A Rock (single mix)
Source: Mono CD: Part One (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Frank Zappa
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Ya gotta hand it to the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. It takes cojones to record a cover of a Frank Zappa tune, especially within a year of the original Mothers of Invention version coming out. To top it off, the W.C.P.A.E.B. even prepared a single edit of Help, I'm A Rock, although to my knowledge it was never released as such.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Incense And Peppermints
Source: Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label: Rhino (original label: Uni)
Year: 1967
Incense and Peppermints started off as an instrumental from Los Angeles band Thee Sixpence members Mark Weitz and Ed King, mostly because the band simply couldn't come up with any lyrics. Their producer decided to bring in professional songwriters John S. Carter and Tim Gilbert to finish the song, and ended up giving them full credit for it. This did not sit well with the band members. In fact, they hated the lyrics so much that they refused to sing them. Undaunted, the producer persuaded 16-year-old Greg Munford, a friend of the band who had accompanied them to the recording studio, to sing the lead vocals on the track, which was was then issued as the B side of the group's fourth single, The Birdman Of Alkatrash, on the All-American label. Somewhere along the line a local DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) immediately signed the band (which by then had changed their name to the Strawberry Alarm Clock) issuing the record nationally with Incense And Peppermints as the A side. Naturally, the song went to the number one spot, becoming the band's only major hit.
Artist: Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Title: Too Many Do
Source: CD: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy Is Spreading /The Great Conspiracy (originally released on LP: The Great Conspiracy)
Writer(s): Alan Brackett
Label: Collectables (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1967
After a pop-driven first album that was dominated by producer Gary Usher, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy were able to sound more like their live performances on the follow-up LP, The Great Conspiracy. The longest track on the album was Too Many Do, which became one of the first six-minute songs to get airplay, mostly on the new "underground" FM stations that were beginning to pop up in large cities and smaller college towns across the country.
Artist: Cream
Title: Tales Of Brave Ulysses
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Clapton/Sharp
Label: RSO (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Cream was one of the first bands to break British tradition and release singles that were also available as album cuts. This tradition likely came about because 45 RPM records (both singles and extended play 45s) tended to stay in print indefinitely in the UK, unlike in the US, where a hit single usually had a shelf life of around 4-6 months then disappeared forever. When the Disraeli Gears album was released, however, the song Strange Brew, which leads off the LP, was released in Europe as a single. The B side of that single was Tales Of Brave Ulysses, which opens side two of the album. The track is notable for being the first song on which Eric Clapton uses a wah-wah pedal.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Ball And Chain
Source: LP: Live At Monterey International Pop Festival Sunday, June 18, 1967
Writer(s): Willie Mae Thornton
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Big Brother And The Holding Company electrified the crowd at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 with their performance of Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's Ball And Chain on Saturday, June 17, 1967. The band's managment, however, refused to let D.A. Pennebacker's crew film it. The performance itself went over so well that the band was invited to come back the next day. This time, under pressure from the band itself, the managers relented and allowed the performance heard here to be filmed.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: A Girl Named Sandoz
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
The original Animals officially disbanded at the end of 1966, but before long a new group, Eric Burdon And The Animals, had arrived to take its place. Unlike the original Animals, this new band wrote nearly all their own material, with credits going to the entire membership on every song. The first single from this new band was a song called When I Was Young, a semi-autobiographical piece with lyrics by Burdon that performed decently, if not spectacularly, on the charts in both the US and the UK. It was the B side of that record, however, a tune called A Girl Named Sandoz, that truly indicated what this new band was about. Sandoz was the name of the laboratory that originally developed and manufactured LSD, and the song itself is a thinly-veiled tribute to the mind-expanding properties of the wonder drug. It would soon become apparent that whereas the original Animals were solidly rooted in American R&B (with the emphasis on the B), this new group was pure acid-rock.
Artist: Majority
Title: One Third
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Barry Graham
Label: Rhino (original label: Decca)
Year: 1966
Originally known as Barry Graham and the Mustangs, the Majority moved south from Hull to London after signing with the British Decca label in 1965. A highly adaptable group, the Majority recorded a total of eight singles for Decca without achieving any chart success. Among the best of these tracks was One Third, a song from July of 1966 that was sadly relegated to being a B side. The group did manage to pick up a following on the European continent, and after their contract with Decca expired in 1968 the band packed their bags and moved overseas. After a moderately successful run in Europe using the name Majority One, the group disbanded in the mid-1970s.
Artist: Static Cling
Title: Just The Facts
Source: CD EP: Infrarad Radiation Orchestra: Mad Dog Sullivan (originally released on cassette: Timbimboo)
Writer(s): Kim Draheim
Label: GTG
Year: Recorded late 1980s, released 2024
Static Cling was a punk/new wave band from East Palmyra in the Finger Lakes region of New York State led by guitarist/vocalist Kim Draheim that was active from the 1980s through the early 2000s. In addition to a mini album and a pair of singles, the group released an album called Timbimboo that was only available as a cassette tape. After the dissolution of Static Cling Draheim formed the Infrared Radiation Orchestra. One of the more recent releases by IRO is an EP called Mad Dog Sullivan that includes a Static Cling song originally released on Timbimboo called Just The Facts.
Artist: Chesterfield Kings
Title: Electrified
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Babiuk/Okolowicz/Okolowicz/Van Zandt
Label: Wicked Cool
Year: 2024
Formed in 1979 in Rochester, NY, The Chesterfield Kings deliberately emulated the sounds of mid-60s garage rock bands, eventually earning themselves a steady gig at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City in the early 1980s. By the end of the decade the Kings had started writing their own material, much of it with a harder rock sound. In 1990 they surprised everyone with an album of acoustic blues numbers called Drunk On Muddy Water. In 2000 they released a full-length feature film called Where Is The Chesterfield King, that combined elements of comedy and noir detective fiction. In 2009, following the departure of lead vocalist Greg Prevost for a solo career, the group went on hiatus, returning in 2024 with a pair of singles on the Wicked Cool label. The second of these, Electrified, features longtime members Andy Babiuk, Mike Boise, Jeff Okolowicz, and Ted Okolowicz, along with newcomer John Cammarosano.
Artist: Infrared Light Orchestra
Title: I'm Not Your Dog
Source: CD: Sumus Quo Sumus
Writer(s): Draheim
Label: GTG
Year: 2018
Vocalist H. Elizabeth Alcott takes center stage on I'm Not Your Dog, from the 2018 Infrared Radiation Orchestra album Sumus Quo Sumus. As is the case with most of IRO's material, the song was written by guitarist Kim Draheim. The IRO is planning on releasing a vinyl compilation disc in late 2026.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)/Moon Turn The Tides (Gently, Gently Away) from the Electric Ladyland album is the longest work created purely in the studio by Jimi Hendrix, with a running time of over 16 minutes. The piece starts with tape effects that lead into the song's main guitar rift. The vocals and drums join in to tell a science fiction story set in a future world where the human race has had to move underwater in order to survive some unspecified catastrophe. After a couple verses, the piece goes into a long unstructured section made up mostly of guitar effects before returning to the main theme and closing out with more effects that combine volume control and stereo panning to create a circular effect. As is the case with several tracks on Electric Ladyland, 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)/Moon Turn The Tides (Gently, Gently Away) features Hendrix on both guitar and bass, with Mitch Mitchell on drums and special guest Chris Wood (from Traffic) on flute.
Artist: Earth Opera
Title: The American Eagle Tragedy
Source: LP: The Great American Eagle Tragedy
Writer(s): Peter Rowan
Label: Elektra
Year: 1969
Formed in 1967 in Boston, Earth Opera is probably best remembered as the band that launched the career of guitar and mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, who is well known both as a solo artist and as a frequent collaborator with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia in the band Old And In The Way (he also wrote and played on the theme to NPR's long-running Car Talk program). In addition to Grisman, Earth Opera featured Peter Rowan, who wrote nearly all the band's material, including the lengthy title track from the band's final album,The Great American Eagle Tragedy. Grisman plays saxophone on the piece, which takes on the quality of a Greek Tragedy.
Artist: Neil Young/Crazy Horse
Title: Down By The River
Source: CD: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
Down By The River is one of four songs on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere that Neil Young wrote while running a fever of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (that's 39.5 degrees for people in civilized nations that use the Celsius, aka centrigrade, scale). By some strange coincidence, they are the four best songs on the album. I wish I could have been that sick in my days as a wannabe rock star.
Artist: Shocking Blue
Title: Poor Boy
Source: LP: The Shocking Blue
Writer(s): Robbie Van Leeuwin
Label: Colossus
Year: 1969
In 1968 one of The Hague's most popular bands, Shocking Blue, had a problem. Their lead singer, Fred de Wilde, had just left the band to join the Dutch army, leaving the remaining members, Robbie Van Leeuwin, Klaasje van der Wal and Cor van der Beek in a bit of a bind, as none of them were frontman material. Then they were introduced to a local club singer named Mariska Veres. Then they recorded the song Venus, which was an international hit. Although they followed Venus up with a series of international hits, none of them were successful in either the US or the UK, making the Shocking Blue one-hit wonders in those two countries. They released several albums before disbanding in 1974, including At Home, which was released in the US under the title The Shocking Blue. One of the better tracks from that album is Poor Boy, which closes out the LP's first side.
Artist: Sonny And Cher
Title: The Beat Goes On
Source: LP: Smash Sounds (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sonny Bono
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
When Carol Kaye (who played on over 10,000 recordings, mostly uncredited, as a member of the collection of L.A. studio musicians known now as the Wrecking Crew) was asked if there was any one song that she took personal credit for making into a hit, the bassist immediately cited The Beat Goes On, a Sonny And Cher song released in late 1966. The original arrangement (credited to Harold Battiste) included a walking bass line, but during the recording session Kaye reworked it into one of the most famous bass hooks in the history of popular music. The song went on to become one of Sonny And Cher's biggest hits, peaking at #6 in early 1967. As a matter of fact, the words "and the beat goes on" are inscribed on Sonny Bono's tombstone.
