https://exchange.prx.org/p/616643
This week we have a handful of obscure tracks never heard on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era before, a couple of which are from artists you might be quite familiar with. Speaking of familiar artists, we also have a pair of artists' sets, each of which is taken from a single album. Plus, of course, a selection of hits, misses, album tracks and B sides from 1964-1970.
Artist: Outsiders
Title: Time Won't Let Me
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): King/Kelly
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
One of Cleveland's most popular local bands was a group called Tom King And The Starfires. Formed in 1959, the band had a series of regional instrumental hits in the early 1960s before adding lead vocalist Sonny Gerachi in 1965 and changing their name to the Outsiders. King, energized by the change, took the band into Cleveland Recording Company's studios to cut demos of the band, which he then shopped around to various national record labels. The group signed a contract with Capitol Records, releasing their first single, Time Won't Let Me, in January of 1966. The song ended up being the band's biggest hit, although it was not their last charted single by any means. Starfires drummer Jimmy Fox, who had temporarily left the group at the time Time Won't Let Me was recorded, returned in time to appear on several of the band's later singles, and would later go on to form his own band, the James Gang, with guitarist Joe Walsh and bassist Tom Kriss. Vocalist Sonny Geracci eventually left the Outsiders as well, reappearing a few years later with a band called Climax singing a song called Precious and Few, which is one of the greatest juxtapositions of artist names and song titles ever. King would continue to release records under the Outsiders name using various lineups until 1972 or so.
Artist: Hollies
Title: It's You
Source: British import 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Clarke/Hicks/Nash
Label: Parlophone
Year: 1966
The last Hollies single to be released in 1966 was also the first to feature original compositions by Allan Clarke, Terry Hicks and Graham Nash on both sides of the record. Both sides have somewhat atypical lyrics for the time, with Stop Stop Stop describing a weekly ritual of the singer attempting to molest a dancer (stripper?) in the middle of her act, while the B side, It's You, talks about who is really the problem in a relationship going bad.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: Turn On-The Very Best Of The Music Machine (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
When it came time for Sean Bonniwell's band, the Music Machine, to go into the studio, 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 singer/songwriter Tim Rose had worked up). 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 with Talk Talk (a song that ironically had been recorded on four-track equipment at RCA's Burbank studios prior to the band's signing with Original Sound) in 1966.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Winds Of Change
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change/The Twain Shall Meet
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BGO (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
In late 1966 the original Animals disbanded, and Eric Burdon began working on a new solo album called Eric Is Here. Unsatisfied with the results of the project, Burdon set about creating a new version of the Animals, which was at first known as the New Animals but would soon come to be called Eric Burdon And The Animals. The new band's first LP was Winds of Change, an ambitious album that gave writing credit to all five band members for all the tracks on the album (with the exception of a cover version of the Rolling Stones' Paint It Black). The album's title track, which opens the LP, is basically Eric Burdon paying tribute to all his musical heroes, and it's quite an impressive list, including jazz and blues greats as well as some of the most important names in the annals of rock and roll.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Viola Lee Blues
Source: LP: The Grateful Dead
Writer(s): Noah Lewis
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1967
The Grateful Dead established a reputation over the years for playing long extended jams. The first of these to be released on vinyl was Viola Lee Blues, clocking in at about 10 minutes. Compared to some of the later performances of Dark Star or St. Stephen, ten minutes does not seem very long, but the track does show flashes of the interplay between band members that would become the stuff of legends.
Artist: Yellow Balloon
Title: Yellow Balloon
Source: Mono LP: Also Dug-Its (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl and included on LP: The Yellow Balloon)
Writer(s): Zeckley/St. John/Lee
Label: Elektra (original label: Canterbury)
Year: 1967
After Jan Berry's near-fatal car wreck in April of 1966, partner Dean Torrance turned to songwriter Gary Zeckley for material for a new album. Zeckley responded by writing the song Yellow Balloon, but was unhappy with Jan and Dean's recording of the song and decided to cut his own version. The resulting recording, utilizing studio musicians for the instrumental tracks, was released in May of 1967 on the Canterbury label and was a moderately successful hit, peaking at #25 (Jan and Dean's version stalled out at #111).
Our first "new" obscure tune from a familiar artist comes from the first Electric Prunes album...
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: The King Is In His Counting House
Source: Mono LP: The Electric Prunes
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Dave Hassinger's first success as a producer was the Electric Prunes' recording of I Had Too Much Too Dream (Last Night) a song written by the songwriting team of Annette Tucker and Nanci Mantz. Following the principle of "if it works, keep doing it", Hassinger then chose five more Tucker/Mantz compositions (and two Tucker collaborations will Jill Jones) for the band to record on their debut LP. Although some of these are among the strongest tracks on the album, a couple of them leave a lot to be desired. I'll leave it to you to decide which category The King Is In His Counting House fits into.
Artist: Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones)
Title: In Another Land
Source: LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s): Bill Wyman
Label: London
Year: 1967
During recording sessions for the late 1967 Rolling Stones album Their Satanic Majesties Request bassist Bill Wyman made a forty-five minute drive to the studio one evening only to find out that the session had been cancelled. The band's manager and producer, Andrew Loog Oldham, managed to salvage the moment by asking Wyman if he had any song ideas he'd like to work on while he was there. As it turned out, Wyman had just come up with a song called In Another Land, about waking up from a dream only to discover you are actually still dreaming. Utilizing the talents of various people on hand, including Steve Marriott, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Nicky Hopkins, Wyman recorded a rough demo of his new tune. When Mick Jagger and Keith Richards heard the song they liked it so much that they added background vocals and insisted the track be used on the album and released as a single by Bill Wyman (with another track from the LP on the B side credited to the entire band). They even went so far as to give Wyman solo artist credit on the label of the LP itself (the label reads: Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones*, with the next line reading *by Bill Wyman), with an additional asterisk preceeding the song title in the track listing. Wyman reportedly hated the sound of his own voice on the song, and insisted that a tremelo effect be added to it in the final mix. The snoring at the end of the track is Wyman himself, as captured in the studio by Mick and Keith.
Artist: Doors
Title: Peace Frog/Blue Sunday
Source: Morrison Hotel
Writer(s): Morrison/Kreiger
Label: Elektra/Rhino
Year: 1970
The Doors' Peace Frog, in a very basic sense, is actually two separate works of art. The track started off as an instrumental piece by guitarist Robbie Kreiger, recorded while the rest of the band was waiting for Jim Morrison to come up with lyrics for another piece. Not long after the track was recorded, producer Paul Rothchild ran across a poem of Morrison's called Abortion Stories and encouraged him to adapt it to the new instrumental tracks. Peace Frog, which appears on the album Morrison Hotel, leads directly into Blue Sunday, one of many poems/songs written by Morrison for Pamela Courson, his significant other since 1965.
Artist: Illinois Speed Press
Title: Hard Luck Story
Source: German import LP: Underground '70 (originally released on LP: Illinois Speed Press)
Writer(s): Kal David
Label: CBS (original US label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
In 1967 someone coined the phrase "San Francisco sound" to describe the wave of bands coming out of the Bay Area that year, despite the fact that there really was no specific San Francisco sound. The following year, someone at M-G-M Records (which had missed out entirely on the whole San Francisco thing, with the exception of the Eric Burdon And The Animals single San Franciscan Nights) decided to sign a bunch of Boston bands and market them as the "Boss-Town Sound." This campaign went over like a lead balloon, actually hurting the chances of the bands to make a name for themselves. Undeterred, Columbia Records tried the same thing in Chicago in 1969, signing the Chicago Transit Authority, the Flock, Aorta and Illinois Speed Press and marketing them as the "Chicago Sound". Producer James William Guercio, who had previously worked with the Buckinghams and Blood, Sweat & Tears, was brought in to produce the first Illinois Speed Press album, which included the song Hard Luck Story, a somewhat atypical piece of blues-rock written by Kal David, who along with Paul Cotton formed the core of the band. David and Cotton soon wearied of being lumped in with other Chicago bands, and relocated to California, essentially becoming a duo in the process and helping pioneer the country-rock sound that would emerge from Southern California in the mid-1970s. Cotton later assumed a leadership role with the southern California country-rock band Poco.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Forty Thousand Headmen
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released in UK as 45 RPM B side and later on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s): Capaldi/Winwood
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1968
The second Traffic album saw the band taking in a broader set of influences, including traditional English folk music. Forty Thousand Headmen, originally released in the UK seven months earlier as the B side of No Face, No Name, No Number, combines those influences with the Steve Winwood brand of British R&B to create a timeless classic.
Artist: Tomorrow
Title: Revolution (unissued original phased version)
Source: British import CD: 50 Minute Technicolour Dream
Writer(s): Keith Hopkins
Label: RPM
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1998
Tomorrow only released one album during their existence, but it is considered one of the best British psychedelic albums ever made. Unfortunately, the release of the album was delayed almost a year, which in the late 1960s, with its quickly changing musical trends, was a fatal blow to the band. The first single released from that album was a song called Revolution that may have influenced John Lennon to write his own song with the same title after hearing it performed at London's UFO club in 1967. Tomorrow actually recorded two different versions of Revolution. The first one, recorded in 1967, included extensive stereo phasing effects, making it unsuitable to be folded down to a single track for AM radio broadcast. That version remained unreleased until 1998, when it was included on a retrospective CD called 50 Minute Technicolor Dream.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Catch The Wind
Source: CD: The Blues Project Anthology (originally released on LP: Live At Cafe Au Go Go and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Donovan Leitch
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Folkways)
Year: 1966
One of the more underrated talents in US rock is guitarist Steve Katz. One of the original members of the Blues Project, Katz always comes across as a team player, subsuming his own ego to the good of the band. When it was time for Andy Kuhlberg to play a flute solo onstage at Monterey, Katz was the one who obligingly shifted over to bass guitar to cover for him. Steve Katz did occasionally get the chance to shine, though. As a singer/songwriter he provided Sometimes In Winter for the album Blood, Sweat and Tears and Steve's Song for the Blues Project's Projections album. He also was the lead vocalist on the second Blues Project single, a cover of Donovan's Catch The Wind taken from the album Live At Cafe Au Go Go.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: The Sound Of Silence
Source: LP: Sounds of Silence
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
The Sound Of Silence was originally an acoustic piece that was included on Simon and Garfunkel's 1964 debut album, Wednesday Morning 3AM. The album went nowhere and was soon deleted from the Columbia Records catalog. Simon and Garfunkel themselves went their separate ways, with Simon moving to London and recording a solo LP, the Paul Simon Songbook. While Simon was in the UK, producer John Simon, who had been working with Bob Dylan on his Highway 61 Revisited album, pulled out the master tape of The Sound Of Silence and got several of the musicians who had been working on the Dylan LP to add electric instruments to the Simon And Garfunkel track. The song was released to local radio stations, where it garnered enough interest to get the modified recording released as a single. It turned out to be a huge hit and prompted Paul Simon to move back to the US and reunite with Art Garfunkel. The rest, as they say, is history.
Artist: Them
Title: Gloria
Source: Mono LP: 93/KHJ Boss Goldens (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Original Sound (original US label: Parrot)
Year: 1964
Gloria was one of the first seven songs that Van Morrison's band, Them, recorded for the British Decca label on July 5, 1964. Morrison had been performing the song since he wrote it in 1963, often stretching out the performance to twenty minutes or longer. The band's producer, Dick Rowe, brought in session musicians on organ and drums for the recordings, as he considered the band members themselves "inexperienced". The song was released as the B side of Them's first single, Baby Please Don't Go, in November of 1964. The song was also released in the US in early 1965, but was soon banned in most parts of the country for its suggestive lyrics. Later that year a suburban Chicago band, the Shadows Of Knight, recorded their own version of Gloria. That version, with slight lyrical revisions, became a major hit in 1966.
Our second "new" obscurity from a well-known artist comes from one of the biggest rock stars of all time.
Artist: David Bowie
Title: Let Me Sleep Beside You
Source: Mono CD: The Deram Anthology 1966-1968 (originally released on LP: Love You Till Tuesday)
Writer: David Bowie
Label: Deram
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1970
When David Jones first started his recording career he was a fairly conventional pop singer, even after changing his name to David Bowie (to avoid being confused with Davy Jones of the Monkees). After several singles and a 1967 self-title debut LP failed to make a dent in the charts, Bowie decided to take a more experimental approach, working with producer Tony Visconti for the first time and taking a more rock-oriented approach than he had on his LP. The result was a song called Let Me Sleep Beside You that was promptly rejected by the record company due to its risque title. The song itself utilized the talents of not only Visconti on bass, but none other than Mahavishnu John McLaughlin on lead guitar and Andy White (the studio drummer who played on the LP version of the Beatles' Love Me Do) on drums, supplemented by Big Jim Sullivan on acoustic guitar and Siegrid Visconti on backing vocals.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Combination Of The Two
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Sam Andrew
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1968
Everything about Big Brother And The Holding Company can be summed up by the title of the opening track for their Cheap Thrills album (and their usual show opener as well): Combination Of The Two. A classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, Big Brother, with Janis Joplin on lead vocals, had an energy that neither Joplin or the band itself was able to duplicate once they parted company. On the song itself, the actual lead vocals for the verses are the work of Combination Of The Two's writer, bassist Sam Houston Andrew III, but those vocals are eclipsed by the layered non-verbal chorus that starts with Joplin then repeats itself with Andrew providing a harmony line which leads to Joplin's promise to "rock you, sock you, gonna give it to you now". It was a promise that the group seldom failed to deliver on.
Artist: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title: Piece Of My Heart
Source: British import CD: Peace And Love-The Woodstock Generation (originally released in US on LP: Cheap Thrills)
Writer: Ragovoy/Burns
Label: Warner Strategic Marketing (original US label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
By 1968 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with their charismatic vocalist from Texas, Janis Joplin, had become as popular as fellow San Francisco bands Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Somehow, though, they were still without a major label record deal. That all changed with the release of Cheap Thrills, with cover art by the legendary underground comix artist R. Crumb. The album itself was a curious mixture of live performances and studio tracks, the latter being led by the band's powerful cover of the 1966 Barbara Lynn tune Piece Of My Heart. The song propelled the band, and Joplin, to stardom. That stardom would be short-lived for most of the band members, however, as well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed advice-givers convinced Joplin that Big Brother was holding her back. The reality was that Joplin was far more integrated with Big Brother And The Holding Company than anyone she would ever work with again.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Roadblock
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills (bonus track)
Writer(s): Joplin/Albin
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1999
Although producer John Simon was convinced that the best way to record Big Brother And The Holding Company was live, he did have the band cut a few tracks in the studio as well. Some of these, such as Summertime and Piece Of My Heart, ended up on the 1968 album Cheap Thrills. Others, like Roadblock, ended up on the shelf, where they stayed until 1999, when a newly remastered CD of the album included them as bonus tracks. Although Roadblock is not a bad song by any means, it's hard to imagine any of the tracks that were used for the original album being cut to make room for it.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Lover Of The Bayou
Source: LP: (untitled)
Writer(s): McGuinn/Levy
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
By 1970 the band called the Byrds bore little resemblance to the group that had taken the world by storm with its electrified covers of Bob Dylan songs in 1965. The band had gone through several personnel changes, with only Roger (nee Jim) McGuinn left from the original lineup. The band's sound had changed as well, having emerged from its psychedelic phase of 1966-68 to become one of the world's premier country-rock bands. The band's live performances had improved as well; indeed, the 1970 lineup is considered by many to be the group's best in that regard. No wonder, then, that half of the 1970 double album (untitled) was made up of live tracks. All of these elements can be heard on the album's opening track, Lover Of The Bayou, a song that was originally written (with Broadway producer Jacques Levy) as part of a proposed stage production called Gene Tryp that would have seen the Peer Gynt story updated and set in the mid-1800s American Southwest.
Artist: Santana
Title: Evil Ways
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Santana)
Writer(s): Clarence Henry
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
Evil Ways was originally released in 1968 by jazz percussionist Willie Bobo on an album of the same name. When Carlos Santana took his new band into the studio to record their first LP, they made the song their own, taking it into the top 10 in 1969.
Artist: Frumious Bandersnatch
Title: Hearts To Cry
Source: British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released on self-titled EP)
Writer: Jack King
Label: Big Beat (original label: Muggles Gramophone Works)
Year: 1968
Rock music and the real estate business have something in common: location can make all the difference. Take the San Francisco Bay Area. You have one of the world's great Cosmopolitan cities at the north end of a peninsula. South of the city, along the peninsula itself you have mostly redwood forest land interspersed with fairly affluent communities along the way to Silicon Valley and the city of San Jose at the south end of the bay. The eastern side of the bay, on the other hand, spans a socio-economic range from blue collar to ghetto and is politically conservative; not exactly the most receptive environment for a hippy band calling itself Frumious Bandersnatch, which is a shame, since they had at least as much talent as any other band in the area. Unable to develop much of a following, they are one of the great "should have beens" of the psychedelic era, as evidenced by Hearts To Cry, the lead track of their 1968 untitled EP.
Not all of our "new" obscurities come from well-known artists. In fact this next artist is about as obscure as the come.
Artist: Dantalion's Chariot
Title: World War III
Source: Mono British import CD: Think I'm Going Weird (originally released on LP: Chariot Rising)
Writer(s): Money/Somers
Label: Grapefruit (original label: Tenth Plane)
Year: Recorded 1968, released 1995
In the early to mid 1960s the US had literally hundreds of talented artists playing the so-called "chitlin' circuit", whose records appeared on the Rhythm & Blues charts, sometimes crossing over to the pop charts as well. In the UK, these artists were a distant legend, although their music was quite popular there. To fill a demand for live R&B in British clubs, several cover bands popped up throughout the decade. One of the most popular, and musically accomplished, bands on the London R&B/soul scene was Zoot Money's Big Roll Band. As the decade rolled on, however, public tastes started changing, and the Big Roll Band was finding it difficult to find steady work. Money responded to the situation by disbanding the group and forming the four-piece Dantalion's Chariot in 1967. The band soon gained a reputation for both their musicianship and their light show, and were considered, along with Pink Floyd and Tomorrow, to be the cream of the crop of British psychedelic bands. Unfortunately, the band had too much talent to survive long, and split up by the end of the year. Just how talented were they? Well, in addition to Money himself on vocals and keyboards, the band included a guitarist named Andy Somers, who would eventually change the spelling of his last name to Summers and form a band called the Police. Then there was the drummer, Colin Allen, who would soon resurface as a member of John Mayall's new band on the album Blues From Laurel Canyon. Not bad for a group that only released one single, along with an album's worth of unreleased tracks such as World War III that finally saw the light of day on a 1995 limited release LP called Chariot Rising.
Artist: Love
Title: Signed D.C. (alternate version)
Source: German import CD: Love (bonus track)
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: Beatles
Title: For No One
Source: European import LP: Revolver
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
With the predominance of the keyboards and french horn (played by Alan Civil) in the mix, For No One (essentially a Paul McCartney solo number) shows just how far the Beatles had moved away from their original image as a "guitar band" by the time they recorded the Revolver album in 1966. John Lennon considered For No One to be one of Paul's best songs.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Eleanor Rigby
Source: CD: Revolver
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol/EMI
Year: 1966
The Beatles' Revolver album is usually cited as the beginning of the British psychedelic era, and with good reason. Although the band still had one last tour in them in 1966, they were already far more focused on their studio work than on their live performances, and thus turned out an album full of short masterpieces such as Paul McCartney's Eleanor Rigby. As always, the song was credited to both McCartney and John Lennon, but in reality the only Beatle to appear on the recording was McCartney himself, and then only in a vocal capacity. The instrumentation consisted of simply a string quartet, arranged and conducted by producer George Martin. Released as a double-A-sided single, along with Yellow Submarine, the song shot to the upper echelons of the charts in nearly every country in the western world and remains one of the band's most popular and recognizable tunes.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Tomorrow Never Knows
Source: CD: Revolver
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
A few years ago I started to compile an (admittedly subjective) list of the top psychedelic songs ever recorded. Although I never finished ranking the songs, one of the top contenders for the number one spot was Tomorrow Never Knows from the Beatles' 1966 LP Revolver. The song is one of the first to use studio techniques such as backwards masking and has been hailed as a masterpiece of 4-track studio production.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Chauffeur Blues
Source: CD: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s): Lester Melrose (disputed, likely to actually have been written by Lizzie Douglas, aka Memphis Minnie)
Label: RCA/ BMG Heritage
Year: 1966
The Jefferson Airplane's original female vocalist was Signe Toly Anderson. Unlike Grace Slick, who basically shared lead vocals with founder Marty Balin, Anderson mostly functioned as a backup singer. The only Airplane recording to feature Anderson as a lead vocalist was Chauffeur Blues, a cover of an old Memphis Minnie tune that was included on the 1966 LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. The song was credited on the album's label to Lester Melrose, who produced the original Memphis Minnie version of the song. However, the original 1941 78 RPM label gives the songwriting credit to "Lawler", which is thought to be a misspelled reference to Minnie's husband, Ernest "Little Son Joe" Lawlars. It is now believed that Memphis Minnie, whose given name was Lizzie Douglas, was the actual writer of Chaffeur Blues, but that it was easier to get the song published under her husband's name.
Artist: Nice
Title: The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack
Source: British import CD: Acid Daze (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack)
Writer(s): Emerson/O'List/Davison/Jackson
Label: Fuel 2000 (original label: Immediate)
Year: 1967
The first record released by the Nice was a song called The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack, preceding their album of the same name by about four months. The band had already established itself as a showcase for keyboardist Keith Emerson, but the single and subsequent album gave equal billing to all four members. In fact the name "Everlist Davjack" was actually a portmanteau of Emerson, (David) O'List, (Brian) Davison and (Lee) Jackson.
Artist: Nazz
Title: Open My Eyes
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Nazz)
Writer(s): Todd Rundgren
Label: Rhino (original label: SGC)
Year: 1968
Nazz was a band from Philadelphia who were basically the victims of their own bad timing. 1968 was the year that progressive FM radio began to get recognition as a viable format while top 40 radio was being dominated by bubble gum pop bands such as the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. Nazz, on the other hand, sounded more like British bands such as the Move and Brian Augur's Trinity that were performing well on the UK charts but were unable to buy a hit in the US. The band had plenty of talent, most notably guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Todd Rundgren, who would go on to establish a successful career, both as an artist (he played all the instruments on his Something/Anything LP and led the band Utopia) and a producer (Grand Funk's We're An American Band, among others). Open My Eyes was originally issued as the A side of a single, but ended up being eclipsed in popularity by its flip side, a song called Hello It's Me, that ended up getting airplay in Boston and other cities, eventually hitting the Canadian charts. A newly recorded solo version of Hello It's Me would become Rundgren's first major top 40 hit five years later.
