Friday, November 26, 2010

Show # 1027 playlist

First off, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to listeners of 89-1 the Blend, Northeast Iowa Community Radio KPVL, that has recently picked up the show and is running it Sunday evenings. As the show is now airing on multiple nights in various places I've decided to replace specific dates in the blog post title with the actual show number (1001 being the first syndicated show). I also wanted to give you advance notice (warning?) that I have a special edition of the show coming up in about three weeks called "Stuck with the hermit at Yuletime." The week after that I might just do some sort of retrospective of the past year's worth of shows, and then the week after that the numbering will jump up to #1101 and run through 1152 (which could very well be a retrospective of next year). Enough of this. On with the show:

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: How Do You Feel
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Year: 1967
We start off this week with a long set from 1967. How Do You Feel was also released as the B side of the first single from Surrealistic Pillow, My Best Friend.

Artist: Ballroom
Title: Baby, Please Don't Go
Source: CD: Where the Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Year: 1967
This rather unusual arrangement of the Joe Williams classic was the creation of producer/vocalist Curt Boettcher. Reportedly an executive from Columbia was so impressed with it that he hired Boettcher to be a staff producer. Boettcher was so prolific that it was often said that the giant CBS on the side of the building stood for Curt Boettcher Studios.

Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Summer Is The Man
Source: LP: Electric Comic Book (mono pressing)
Year: 1967
The Blues Magoos, known for their high-energy style on tracks such as the (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet and the extended Tobacco Road, nonetheless had a softer side as well. Summer Is The Man, from the second Magoos album, is a good example of that softer side.

Artist: Left Banke
Title: Desiree
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Year: 1967
After keyboardist Michael Brown made the ill-advised move of issuing the single Ivy Ivy under the Left Banke name without the participation or knowledge of his fellow band members, the entire band's career got permanently derailed. Though they resolved their differences in time to record and issue Desiree, most radio stations by then were wary of anything with the Left Banke name on it, which is a shame, since the song is a masterpiece of baroque pop.

Artist: Kinks
Title: Deadend Street
Source: 45 RPM single
Year: 1967
The last major Kinks hit in the US was Sunny Afternoon in late 1966. The follow-up Deadend Street, released in 1967, was in much the same style, but did not achieve the same kind of success (although it was a hit in the UK). The Kinks would not have another major US hit until Lola in 1970.

Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: If You Want This Love
Source: CD: Where the Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Part One)
Year: 1967
The first WCPAEB album, Volume One, had a limited print run on a small independent label in L.A. After landing a contract with Reprise, they recut many of the songs (most of which were cover tunes) from Volume One and called the new album Part One. This is one of those recut tracks.

Artist: Ringo Starr
Title: Early 1970
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Year: 1971
The first single to go gold by an ex-Beatle was not by John or Paul, as one would expect, but by drummer Ringo. The song was It Don't Come Easy (co-written by an uncredited George Harrison) and featured this track on the B side.

Artist: Beatles
Title: You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
Source: CD: Past Masters, vol. 2 (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Year: 1970
Speaking of B sides, we have this song found on the back of the Let It Be single. Although technically a Lennon/McCartney song, this track has so many ad-libs that credit probably should have been given to the whole band. The track is also notable for a guest appearance by the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones on saxophone.

Artist: Them
Title: If You And I Could Be As Two
Source: LP: Them
Year: 1965
Them burst onto the British rock scene in late 1964 from their home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and immediately caused a stir due to both their hard-driving style and their obnoxious behavior toward the press. This track from their first album shows a more subdued side to lead vocalist Van Morrison's writing style.

Artist: Los Bravos
Title: Black Is Black
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Year: 1966
The first band from Spain to have a major pop hit was Los Bravos, who took this song to the top 10 in several countries in late 1966. Interestingly, the band's lead vocalist, Mike Kogel, was actually a German.

Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Magic Carpet Ride
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf the Second)
Year: 1968
A short progression through the years kicks off with a pair of tunes from the band formerly known as Sparrow. Magic Carpet Ride, from the second album, was the band at their most psychedelic, not to mention the peak of their popularity.

Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Move Over
Source: LP: Monster
Year: 1969
Although Monster is generally regarded as their most political album, Move Over is a throwback to the more traditional Steppenwolf style.

Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Whiskey Train
Source: LP: Home
Year: 1970
By 1970, Procol Harum was being pulled in two very different musical directions at once: the semi-classical progressive style of Gary Brooker and Keith Reid that had always defined the band's style, and the more hard rock sound favored by guitarist Robin Trower heard on Whiskey Train. Ultimately this would lead to Trower's leaving the group for a successful solo career.

Artist: Fifty Foot Hose
Title: Cauldron
Source: LP: Cauldron
Year: 1968
The most avant-garde group to come out of the San Francisco scene was Fifty Foot Hose, which featured homemade electronic instruments and the unique vocal style of Nancy Blossom. After recording one album the group disbanded when most of the members left to join the cast of the San Francisco production of the musical Hair.

Artist: Who
Title: Pinball Wizard
Source: CD: Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl and featured on LP: Tommy)
Year: 1969
Wrapping up the first hour we have a song from the rock opera Tommy that was actually released as a single a few weeks before the album came out. It was a marketing strategy that would become the music industry standard for decades, until internet downloading changed everything.

Artist: Mamas and the Papas
Title: That Kind Of Girl
Source: CD: The Mamas and the Papas
Year: 1966
The second Mamas and Papas album was unusual in that mama Michelle, who is featured prominently on the album cover, only sings on a couple of songs, having been temporarily kicked out of the band for having an affair with papa Denny, even though she was married to papa John. Kinda makes you wonder why Denny didn't get kicked out as well.

Artist: Blues Project
Title: I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes
Source: CD: Anthology (originally released on LP: Projections)
Year: 1966
There are actually two versions of this song: the Blues Project version heard here and an Al Kooper solo version released earlier the same year. Both are worth listening to, and one of these days I'll play the other one to prove it.

Artist: Vagrants
Title: Respect
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Year: 1967
Sounding a lot like the Rascals, the Vagrants were a Long Island band best remembered for being the band that had guitarist Leslie Weinstein in it. Weinstein would change his last name to West and record a solo album called Mountain before forming the band of the same name. This version of Respect is fairly faithful to the original Otis Redding version. Unfortunately for the Vagrants, Aretha Franklin would release here rearranged version of the song just a few weeks after the Vagrants, relegating their version of the tune (and the Vagrants themselves) to footnote status.

Artist: Human Beinz
Title: Nobody But Me
Source: LP: Nuggets vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Year: 1968
These guys were actually called the Human Beingz, but a misspelling on the label of Nobody But Me stuck the group permanently with a name they all hated. It was all moot, anyway, since they never scored another hit.

Artist: Butterfield Blues Band
Title: No Amount Of Loving
Source: CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
Year: 1969
Many of the performances at Woodstock were flawed, not so much by problems in musicianship, but by technical gaffs such as the one that made the vocals to this track almost inaudible. Still, the folks at Rhino decided to include it on their 40th anniversary Woodstock collection. After all, their emphasis was on presenting the music exactly as the audience heard it, and such flaws were actually fairly common on live recordings in the late 60s, as a listen to most of the recordings made at the Monterey International Pop Festival (including the set by Butterfield) demonstrates.

Artist: James Gang
Title: The Bomber
Source: CD: James Gang Rides Again
Year: 1970
The last time I played this track I had to cut it off early due to my misreading the clock and running out of time. This time I promised myself I'd get it right. The entire middle section of the piece was edited out of the album after the first pressings after the Ravel family objected to the use of Bolero without obtaining permission. The piece was finally restored to its original length sometime in the 80s.

Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Everybody Knows You're Not In Love
Source: 45 RPM single
Year: 1968
The Electric Prunes had greater creative control over their second album than their first. That control continued into early 1968, when this single, penned by band members Mark Tulin and James Lowe, was released. Unfortunately, the single didn't sell well and the next album, David Axelrod's Mass In F Minor, was played almost entirely by studio musicians. The original group broke up during the recording of Mass and did not play together again until the 21st century.

Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Source: CD: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Year: 1968
The title track of the Beacon Street Union's second album shows a maturation of the band's sound. Sadly, it would be their last LP.

Artist: Blood, Sweat and Tears
Title: So Much Love/Underture
Source: LP: Child Is Father To The Man
Year: 1968
After leaving the Blues Project, Al Kooper made an appearance at Monterey with a pickup band then made the Super Session album with Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills. The following year Kooper reunited with BP bandmate Steve Katz to form Blood, Sweat and Tears. Although Kooper wrote much of the material, there were also songs written by outside songwriters such as Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman and this track from Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

Artist: Traffic
Title: (Roamin' Through the Gloamin' With) 40,000 Headmen
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies
Year: 1968
One of the best remembered tracks from the second Traffic album was the Steve Winwood/Jim Capaldi tune.

Artist: Cream
Title: N.S.U.
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Year: 1966
We finish out the night with a set of Cream tracks, starting with the original studio version of a Jack Bruce tune we heard a couple weeks ago from the album Live Cream.

Artist: Cream
Title: Dance The Night Away
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Year: 1967
With Disraeli Gears, Cream established itself as having a psychedelic side as well as their original blues orientation. Most of the more psychedelic material was from the team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown, such as Dance the Night Away.

Artist: Cream
Title: Sleepy Time Time
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Year: 1966
Before working with Brown, Bruce collaborated with his then-wife Janet on this track from the first album, which wraps up not only this set but this week's show as well. And despite it being the weekend following Thanksgiving, there was not a turkey in the bunch (although the Fifty Foot Hose track might qualify as the squash dish, being somewhat of an acquired taste)!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Playlist 1026

Artist: Blues Project
Title: Two Trains Running
Source: LP:Projections
Year: 1966
Leading off tonight we have possibly the most influential (yet least known outside of musicians' circles) band of the Psychedelic Era: the Blues Project. Formed in 1965 in Greenwich Village, the band worked its way from coast to coast playing mostly college campuses, in the process blazing a path that continues to be followed by underground/progressive/alternative artists. As if founding the whole college circuit wasn't enough, they were also the very first jam band, as their version of the Muddy Waters classic Two Trains Running shows. Among those drawing their inspiration from the Blues Project were the Warlocks, a group of young musicians who were traveling with Ken Kesey on the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test tour bus. The Warlocks would soon change their name to the Grateful Dead and take the jam band concept to a whole new level.

Artist: Groupies
Title: Primitive
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era
Year: 1966
You know, with a name like the Groupies you would expect an all-female band or at least something like the Mothers of Invention. Instead we get a band that billed themselves as "abstract rock." I guess that is using the term abstract in the same sense that scientific journals use it: to distill something complicated down to its basic essence, because these guys were musically exactly what the title of their only single implied: primitive.

Artist: Notes From the Underground
Title: Why Did You Put Me On
Source: CD: Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70
Year: 1968
Pinch-hitting for Country Joe and the Fish we have Notes From the Underground, fellow Berkleyites who played at the same club (the Jabberwock) when the Fish were busy elsewhere and even got a contract with the same record label (Vanguard). Unfortunately, like most pinch-hitters, the Notes were strictly second-string.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: All Along the Watchtower
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Year: 1968
In the cleanup spot we have The Jimi Hendrix Experience hitting it out of the park with what is generally acknowledged to be the best Bob Dylan cover ever recorded. Even Dylan himself now uses the Hendrix arrangement of All Along the Watchtower when he performs it live. You don't get much higher praise than that.

Artist: Del Shannon
Title: I Think I Love You
Source: CD: Where the Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Year: 1968
Del Shannon? The guy who did Runaway back in '62? Yep. Also the same Del Shannon who Tom Petty has acknowledged as his number one inspiration and who was on the verge of being asked to replace the late Roy Orbison in the Traveling Wilburys when he himself became the late Del Shannon. Unlike many of his early 60s contemporaries such as Bobby Vee or Fabian, Shannon was able to keep up with the times, as this piece of pure psychedelia (penned by Shannon himself) from the album The Further Adventures of Charles Westover demonstrates.

Artist: David Bowie
Title: Five Years
Source: CD: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
Year: 1972
If David Bowie's career had started about five years earlier than it did he would have been a major star of the psychedelic era. As it was, he came of age at a time when it took some fairly outrageous antics to get noticed, and he proved himself up to the task by pretty much singlehandedly creating glitter rock.

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop
Year: 1967
A while back a co-worker was asking me about what kind of music I played on the show. When I told him the show was called Stuck in the Psychedelic Era he immediately said "Oh, I bet you play White Rabbit a lot, huh?" As a matter of fact, I do.

Artist: Jan and Dean
Title: Dead Man's Curve
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Year: 1964
As I talk about in a really long scholarly article elsewhere on the web site, one of the many contributing factors to the temporary democratization of the US popular music industry was the surf music craze of 1962 and 63, which morphed into the hot rod music craze of 1964 and 65. Although the style was created by instrumentalists such as Dick Dale and the Ventures, it was the vocal groups such as the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean that found the greatest commercial success with it. One of the biggest hits was the eerily predictive Dead Man's Curve, about a car wreck along a particularly nasty stretch of Sunset Blvd. in the vicinity of Beverly Hills. About two years after this song topped the charts, Jan Berry was involved in a near-fatal collision just a few blocks from the infamous curve; an accident he never fully recovered from.

Artist: Merry-Go-Round
Title: Listen Listen
Source: CD: Where the Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Year: 1968
High school student Emitt Rhodes had his first success in 1965 as a member of the British-flavored Palace Guard with the song Like Falling Sugar. While still a teen he had an even bigger regional hit with the Merry-Go-Round song Live. Other singles followed, including this harder edged tune from 1968. Rhodes would go on have a moderately successful solo career as a singer-songwriter in the early 70s.

Artist: Cream
Title: White Room
Source: LP: Wheels of Fire
Year: 1968
Although Cream was conceived as a British blues super-group (as in cream of the crop), it was psychedelic rock tunes like White Room, written by bassist Jack Bruce and his frequent collaborator Pete Brown, that gave them their greatest commercial successes.

Artist: Left Banke
Title: She May Call You Up Tonight
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Year: 1967
Unlike their first two singles, Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina, this song failed to chart, possibly due to the release two months earlier of a song called Ivy Ivy, written by LB keyboardist Michael Brown and shown on the label as being by the Left Banke. However, the song was in reality performed entirely by session musicians, including lead vocals by Bert Sommer, who would be one of the acoustic acts on the opening afternoon of the Woodstock festival a couple years later. The resulting fued between Brown and the rest of the band left a large number of radio stations gun shy when came to any record with the name Left Banke on the label, and She May Call You Up Tonight tanked.

Artist: Standells
Title: Dirty Water
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits
Year: 1966
When it comes to garage rock it really doesn't get any better than this 1966 classic, written by producer Ed Cobb, the Ed Wood of the record industry.

Artist: Jeannie C. Riley
Title: Harper Valley PTA
Source: 45 RPM single
Year: 1968
The second hour gets off to an unexpected start with the only number one hit for Jeannie C. Riley. It may not have been psychedelic, but it did have attitude.

Artist: Doors
Title: Soul Kitchen
Source: CD: The Doors
Year: 1967
Our 1967 Doors set starts with this tune from the first album, which starts off almost exactly the same way as When the Music's Over from the second album.

Artist: Doors
Title: Strange Days
Source: CD: Strange Days
Year: 1967
Speaking of the Doors' second album, we have the title cut in all its glory.

Artist: Doors
Title: Back Door Man
Source: CD: The Doors
Year: 1967
The song Primitive by the Groupies (heard in tonight's first set) borrowed its main riff from Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightning. Here the Doors borrow an entire Howlin' Wolf song, the classic Back Door Man.

Artist: Doors
Title: People Are Strange
Source: CD: Strange Days
Year: 1967
The first hit single from Strange Days was also the shortest song on the album, barely breaking the two minute mark at a time when songs were getting longer and longer.

Artist: Vejtables
Title: Anything
Source: CD: Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70
Year: 1965
As with any music scene, some of the early San Francisco acts fell by the wayside before the scene really took off. Such was the case with the Vejtables, who got a contract with local label Autumn Records and released this single in 1965. Lead vocalist and drummer Jan Errico would later join the Mojo Men in time for their 1967 cover of Buffalo Springfield's Sit Down I Think I Love You.

Artist: Seeds
Title: You Can't Be Trusted
Source: LP: The Seeds
Year: 1966
A listen to the first Seeds album can get a bit tedious, as Sky Saxon's writing style, while unique, also tended to be a bit repetitious. Taken individually, however, the songs themselves are quite listenable and were even lyrically adventurous. The second album, incidentally, saw Saxon's writing beginning to branch out somewhat, while still retaining the distinctive Seeds sound.

Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Going To The Country
Source: LP: Number 5
Year: 1970
The Steve Miller Band started recording for Capitol as part of the San Francisco explosion, but didn't achieve true stardom until the mid 1970s with the release of The Joker. In the intervening years they cranked out a series of fine albums that got most of their airplay on progressive FM stations. (Top 40 radio was generally not heard on FM until around 1978. This is due to a variety of factors that I'm not going to go into here.)

Artist: Spirit
Title: Morning Will Come
Source: CD: The 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
Year: 1970
When Lou Adler switched distribution of Ode Records from Columbia to A&M, part of the deal was to sell Spirit's recording to Columbia's parent company, CBS. CBS then assigned the band to its Epic label, while strongly hinting that if the next album didn't show an improvement in sales over their previous efforts their contract would be terminated. Spirit responded with the 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, widely regarded as their best album.

Artist: Neil Young with Crazy Horse
Title: Down By The River
Source: CD: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Year: 1969
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was Neil Young's second solo album. It was also the first one with Crazy Horse. Down By the River was one of three tracks on the album to get significant FM airplay and continued to be a staple of album rock stations for years.

Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: Your Time Is Gonna Come/Black Mountain Side
Source: CD: Led Zeppelin
Year: 1969
And speaking of album rock radio, here we have the group that most typifies the format, albeit with a track that never got a lot of commercial airplay. One of the great ironies of Led Zeppelin is that half the members of a band that was revered for its live performances were in fact in-demand studio musicians long before they started performing live. This pair of tracks from the debut Zeppelin album was written by those two members, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.

Artist: Who
Title: My Generation
Source: LP: The Who Sings My Generation
Year: 1966
My Generation was the signature song of the pre-Tommy Who. Although it was first released in the UK in late 1965, I'm counting it as a 1966 track for this set that progresses through the years. The reason? The US version of the album (used here) didn't come out until April of '66.

Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets
Year: 1967
If any one song is representative of the psychedelic era, it's this one. Lenny Kaye thought so, too, when he assembled the very first Nuggets album in the early '70s. He used it as the opening track on the album.

Artist: Them
Title: I'm Your Witch Doctor
Source: LP: Now and Them
Year: 1968
Tonight's closer is an oddity: a pyschedelicized version of a John Mayall song by Van Morrison's old band with a new vocalist. Just to make it even odder we have sound effects at the beginning of the song that were obviously added after the fact by the producer (and not done particularly well at that). But then, what else would you expect from the label that put out an LP by a band that didn't even participate in the recording of half the tracks on the album (Chocolate Watchband's No Way Out), a song about a city that none of the band members had even been to (the Standells' Dirty Water), and soundtrack albums to films like Wild In the Streets, Riot On Sunset Strip and The Love In? Let's hear it for Tower Records!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Playlist 1025

This week it's the sequel to the "25" show from early summer. What that means is that once again we have 25 songs from 25 artists, some of which were probably into some 25 of their own.

Artist: Them
Song: One Two Brown Eyes
Source: LP: Them
Year: 1965
This Van Morrison original was first released in the UK in late 1964 as the B side of Them's first single. It was included on the US version of Them's first album, but not the version released in the UK.

Artist: Moby Grape
Song: Rose Colored Eyes
Source: LP: Wow
Year: 1968
Moby Grape's second album is considered generally inferior to the first, possibly because the band seemed to be moving in several directions at once. This is due to the fact that they had a wealth of songwriters, each in the process of developing their own style. This song is indicative of the direction bass player Bob Mosley was going in.

Artist: Mothers of Invention
Song: Trouble Coming Every Day
Source: LP: Freak Out!
Year: 1966
Starting off a progression through the years we have Frank Zappa with the original version of a song that he would update and re-record on more than one occassion. Although some of the references are topical and thus dated, the general tone of the song remains as relevant today as when it was first recorded.

Artist: Dave Davies
Song: Death of a Clown
Source: CD: Kinks-25 Years-The Ultimate Collection
Year: 1967
Although Ray Davies was the leader and primary songwriter of the Kinks, it was brother Dave who first recorded as a solo artist with this 1967 single.

Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Song: Mrs. Robinson
Source: CD: Collected Works
Year: 1968
A shortened version of Mrs. Robinson first appeared on the soundtrack for the file The Graduate in 1967, but it wasn't until the Bookends album came out in 1968 that the full four minute version was released.

Artist: Tommy James and the Shondells
Song: I Know Who I Am
Source: LP: Cellophane Symphony
Year: 1969
By 1969 Tommy James and the Shondells had already seen their best years and were trying to find a way to remain relevant. The album Cellophane Symphony was an attempt at moving the band in a more progressive direction while also trying to satisfy the demands of a dying record company that really had no other successful artists left on its roster.

Artist: Richie Havens
Song: Eyesight to the Blind
Source: 45 RPM single
Year: 1972
In between the original release of Tommy in 1969 and the movie version in 1975 there was the Orchestral Tommy in 1972, featuring performances by several artists that did not perform on either of the other versions. Among those were Richie Havens, who was then at the peak of his popularity.

Artist: Cream
Song: N.S.U.
Source: LP: Live Cream
Year: 1968
After the breakup of Cream, Atco decided to issue a live album in 1970, featuring songs that had originally appeared on the album Fresh Cream. This ten minute version of N.S.U., recorded at Winterland in 1968, shows how far the band had progressed in the two years since recording the studio version.

Artist: Dave Clark Five
Song: Glad All Over
Source: CD: 5 By Five
Year: 1964
The Dave Clark Five were originally formed as a way of raising money for Clark's football (soccer) team. Toward the end of 1963 they scored a number one hit in England with Glad All Over, which was released to an enthusiastic US audience a few months later.

Artist: Turtles
Song: She's My Girl
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock
Year: 1967
After a moderate amount of success in 1965 with a series of singles starting with a cover of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles found themselves running out of steam by the end of 1966. Rather than throw in the towel, they enlisted the services of the Bonner/Gordon songwriting team and recorded their most successful single, Happy Together, in 1967. They dipped into the same well for this tune later the same year.

Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Song: (Ballad of the) Hip Death Goddess
Source: LP: Ultimate Spinach
Year: 1967
Ultimate Spinach was the brainchild of Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote and arranged all the band's material. Although the group had no hit singles, some tracks, such as (Ballad of the) Hip Death Goddess received a significant amount of airplay on progressive "underground" FM stations.

Artist: Stephen Stills
Song: Love the One You're With
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo promo pressing)
Year: 1971
Depending on your point of view Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young) have either split up several times over the years or have never actually split up at all. It was during one of these maybe split-ups that Stills recorded this classic. Presumably he and Judy Collins were no longer an item at that point.

Artist: Traffic
Song: Dear Mr. Fantasy
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies
Year: 1967
A long set of tunes from 1967 starts with this classic from the first Traffic album.

Artist: Love
Song: Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hillsdale
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Year: 1967
When Forever Changes was recorded, the band took some flack for the use of horns and strings. What the critics of the time failed to take into account was that the added instruments were not, as was usually the case, added by the producer as a way to cover up weak musicianship. In fact the band members themselves (particularly leader Arthur Lee) were responsible for the addition and worked closely with arranger David Angel to come up with the sound they wanted.

Artist: Box Tops
Song: The Letter
Source: CD: Billboard Top Rock and Roll Hits-1967
Year: 1967
Here's an unusual recipe for you: take one novice producer, add a newly-signed band that hadn't even decided on a name yet, and mix in a songwriter that had recently submitted his first demo tape to the novice producer's ex-boss. Put them all together and you get a song that goes all the way to the top of the charts and stays there for four weeks.

Artist: Circus Maximus
Song: Bright Light Lovers
Source: LP: Circus Maximus
Year: 1967
Although keyboardist Bob Bruno's contributions as a songwriter to Circus Maximus tended to favor jazz arrangements, he shows here that he could rock out with the best of the garage bands when the mood hit.

Artist: Electric Prunes
Song: Get Me To the World On Time
Source: CD: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Year: 1967
Songwriter Annette Tucker usually worked with Nancy Mantz, and the pair was responsible for the Prunes biggest hit, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night). For this composition she instead teamed up with Jill Jones and came up with a kind of psychedelic Bo Diddley song that ended up being the Prunes second biggest hit (and the first rock song that I ever heard first on an FM station rather than an AM one).

Artist: Leaves
Song: To Try For the Sun
Source: CD: All the Good That's Happening
Year: 1967
After their success with the fast version of Hey Joe in 1966 the Leaves signed with Capitol Records and recorded their second LP. Unfortunately, the band was already in the process of disintegrating by then and no more hits were forthcoming. One song that shows their interest in folk music was their cover of Donovan's To Try For the Sun. It was the only purely acoustic song the band ever recorded.

Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Song: Season of the Witch
Source: LP: Renaissance
Year: 1968
Another Donovan tune, this time given the patented Vanilla Fudge treatment on the album Renaissance. The Fudge arrangement includes spoken lyrics from Essra Mohawk's We Never Learn. Interestingly enough, the only other cover tune on the album is The Spell That Comes After, also written by Mohawk.

Artist: Music Machine
Song: Talk Talk
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits
Year: 1966
From 1965 to 1968 L.A. was home to a thriving club scene that gave bands the opportunity to perform their own original material. One of the most sophisticated of those bands was the Music Machine, which would fire off song after song without pause until it was break time, then come back and do it again for the next set.

Artist: Beach Boys
Song: That's Not Me
Source: CD: Pet Sounds
Year: 1966
The Beach Boys were about as mainstream as the Music Machine was underground, yet Brian Wilson was turning out music every bit as original as any of the club bands in town. The album Pet Sounds is considered one of the masterpieces of the era, with the majority of songs, including That's Not Me, written by Wilson with lyrics by Tony Asher.

Artist: Canned Heat
Song: Catfish Blues
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies
Year: 1967
Canned Heat's entire first album consisted of covers of blues classics like this one: Robert Petway's Catfish Blues, considered by most blues experts to be the inspiration for Muddy Waters's first recording Rolling Stone.

Artist: Monkees
Song: Porpoise Song
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock
Year: 1968
This Gerry Goffin/Carole King tune was the feature track from the Monkees movie Head. Although the song and movie pretty much flopped on release, both have achieved cult status in the years since.

Artist: Jethro Tull
Song: A New Day Yesterday
Source: CD: Stand Up
Year: 1969
Stand Up was the second Jethro Tull album and the first with new guitarist Martin Barre replacing founding member Mick Abrahams. There was, however, another guitarist that made an appearance as a member of the band before Barre joined, but only on the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV special that was never broadcast. The name of that interim guitarist was Tony Iommi, who would soon go on to found Black Sabbath. Starting with Stand Up, each successive Jethro Tull album would feature one additional personnel change until, as of Thick As a Brick, Ian Anderson was the only original member left.

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Song: White Rabbit
Source: LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Year: 1967
It only seems appropriate for the 25th song this week to be White Rabbit. Conspiracy buffs enjoy!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Playlist 11/5-7/10

For years I've had this recurring nightmare of being in a radio station where the last song has just run out and I don't have another one ready yet. This week's first segment comes about as close to that happening as I ever want to get. I mean, nine songs in under 27 minutes; Holy Top 40 Radio, Batman!.

Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Song Title: Incense and Peppermints
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop
Release Year: 1967
The first track of the segment is also the longest, clocking in at two minutes and 46 seconds. Incense and Peppermints is one of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era, yet when it was released it was intended to be the B side of The Birdman of Alkatrash. Somewhere along the line a radio DJ flipped the record over and the rest is history.

Artist: Cream
Song Title: Anyone For Tennis
Source: CD: Goodbye Cream (Bonus track not on original LP. Originally released in UK on 45 RPM vinyl)
Release Year: 1968
Although credited to the entire band, this song is actually Eric Clapton's first release as a solo artist.

Artist: Lovin' Spoonful
Song Title: Full Measure
Source: LP: Best of the Lovin' Spoonful-Vol. 2 (originally charted as a B side)
Release Year: 1966
1966 was a fairly solid year for the Spoonful. In addition to Summer in the City, their only song to make it to the # 1 spot on the charts, they also had one of their most enduring hits, Nashville Cats. The B side of that record, Full Measure, managed to chart briefly as well, peaking in the lower 90s.

Artist: Hollies
Song Title: Don't Run and Hide
Source: single B side
Release Year: 1966
The Hollies were already established in the UK with a series of hit records by the time they scored their breakthrough US hit, Bus Stop, in 1966. Don't Run and Hide is the B side of that US single.

Artist: Standells
Song Title: Dirty Water
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era
Release Year: 1966
This song has long since been adopted by the city of Boston, yet the band that originally recorded this Ed Cobb tune was purely an L.A. band, having started off playing cover tunes in the early 60s. Lead vocalist Dickie Dodd, incidently, was the little blond kid in the front row on the original Micky Mouse Club TV show.

Artist: Richard and the Young Lions
Song Title: Open Up Your Door
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era
Release Year: 1966
Continuing out 1966 set we have this tune originally released on the Philips label, best known at the time as the home of the Four Seasons. Richard and the Young Lions, hailing from New Jersey, rocked out a whole lot harder on one record than Frankie Valli and the boys did in their entire career.

Artist: Rare Breed
Song Title: Beg, Borrow and Steal
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era
Release Year: 1966
Our final 1966 track is from one of the first bands signed to the Kasenatz-Katz stable of artists and one of the first to leave that organization as well, citing a stifling of creativity. Kasenatz-Katz would become quite successful the following year with a new style of top 40 song known as "bubble gum", so it's not difficult to see why a legitimate band would have problems with them.

Artist: Country Joe and the Fish
Song Title: Love
Source: LP: Electric Music For the Mind and Body
Release Year: 1967
In the mid 60s the primary performance venues for rock bands were dances, and the audiences (mostly middle-class baby boomers) demanded a healthy dose of both rock and soul. Rather than to record covers of Wilson Pickett or Otis Redding songs, Country Joe McDonald chose to write his own brand of rock and soul music. Love, from the Fish's first album, is a good example of this.

Artist: Syndicate of Sound
Song Title: Little Girl
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era
Release Year: 1966
San Jose California was home to a thriving music scene in the mid 60s that produced an extraordinarily high number of national successes. Among those successes was this hit from the Syndicate of Sound, considered a punk classic for its abundance of attitude.

For this week's second segment I made a conscious attempt to play some longer tracks by focusing on the year 1969. As you will see, that lasted for all of three songs before the shorter tunes once again hijacked the show.

Artist: Pentangle
Song Title: House Carpenter
Source: LP: Basket of Light
Release Year: 1969
Pentangle, Britains first folk supergroup, lasted longer than most supergroups do, keeping their original lineup intact from 1967 until their breakup in 1973. This track, taken from their third album, features the group's two guitarists branching out a bit, with John Renbourne on banjo and Bert Jansch on sitar.

Artist: David Bowie
Song Title: Space Oddity
Source: CD: Sound and Vision Sampler (originally released on LP: Space Oddity)
Release Year: 1969
When David Jones first started his recording career he was a fairly conventional folk singer. With Space Oddity he became David Bowie (or maybe Ziggy Stardust) and the rock world was never quite the same.

Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Song Title: I Put a Spell On You
Source: CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
Release Year: 1969
Even a casual Creedence fan knows that the band started their chart success in 1968 with a cover of Dale Hawkins' hit Suzy Q. What most are not aware of, however, is that CCR also released a single covering a different Hawkins in 1968, in this case Screaming Jay Hawkins. The band's performance of the song at Woodstock shows a side of John Fogerty not often heard: the hard rockin' lead guitarist.

Artist: Seeds
Song Title: Tripmaker
Source: CD: Where the Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: A Web of Sound)
Release Year: 1966
We only have one progression through the years this week, and it starts in 1966 with this Seeds album track. Any resemblance to a tune on Smash Mouth's Astral Lounge album from the late 1990s is probably intentional.

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Song Title: Somebody To Love
Source: single
Release Year: 1967
One of the most important singles ever released, heard here in its original mono mix.

Artist: Doors
Song Title: Touch Me
Source: single
Release Year: 1968
The Doors took an unusual turn by adding a horn section for this December 1968 single. It was a major hit.

Artist: Black Sabbath
Song Title: Electric Funeral
Source: CD: Paranoid
Release Year: 1970
When Black Sabbath first appeared on vinyl they were perceived as the next step in the evolution of rock, building on the acid rock of the late sixties and laying the groundwork for what would become heavy metal. This song shows that evolution in progress.

Artist: Sonics
Song Title: Strychnine
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released on LP: Here Are the Sonics)
Release Year: 1965
Starting off hour # 2 we have a band that maintains a cult following to this day: the legendary Sonics, generally considered the foundation stone of the Seattle music scene. Although the majority of songs on their albums were cover tunes, virtually all of their originals are now considered punk classics; indeed, the Sonics are often cited as the first true punk rock band.

Artist: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Song Title: Turtle Blues
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Release Year: 1968
Only one artist set this week, and technically it actually features two entirely different bands. The connecting factor is, of course, Janis Joplin, considered by many to be the greatest rock vocalist of the psychedelic era. The first track in the set is a Joplin original that features producer John Simon on piano.

Artist: Janis Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band
Song Title: Ball and Chain
Source: CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
Release Year: 1969
From Woodstock we have Janis performing her show stopper, Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's Ball and Chain. The Kozmic Blues Band was Joplin's only group to feature a horn section, and, despite its members having a higher degree of technical proficiency than Big Brother, is generally considered to be lacking in the type of raw energy that helped propel Joplin to stardom.

Artist: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Song Title: I Need a Man To Love
Source: CD:Cheap Thrills
Release Year: 1968
To prove the point made in the previous song's commentary we have a live performance of a tune co-written by Joplin and bandmate Sam Houston Andrew III. Now this is the context in which Janis truly shines.

Artist: Moby Grape
Song Title: Fall On You
Source: LP: Moby Grape
Release Year: 1967
Once again the short songs hijack the show to finish out the third segment. This track from the first Moby Grape album clocks in at under two minutes.

Artist: Knickerbockers
Song Title: Lies
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From the Psychedelic 60s
Release Year: 1965
A lot of people thought this was the Beatles recording under a pseudonym when it came out. It wasn't, and I can't help but wonder why anyone would have thought the Beatles had any need to record under a different name in the first place. Is it a Richard Bachman kind of thing?

Artist: New Breed
Song Title: Want Ad Reader
Source: CD: Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70
Release Year: 1966
An energetic 1966 track from a Sacramento band that was never heard from again. Well, not as the New Breed anyway. A couple years later they resurfaced in L.A. using the name Glad and cut a couple albums for Dunhill. After that, most of the members went on to form Redbone, known for their recording of Witch Queen of New Orleans. The bass-playing lead vocalist, on the other hand, went on to replace Randy Meisner in Poco when he left that band to help form the Eagles. That same bass-playing lead vocalist would eventually replace Meisner in the Eagles as well. His name: Timothy B. Schmidt.

Artist: Bob Seger System
Song Title: Death Row
Source: single B side
Release Year: 1968
I like to play this song for fans of the Silver Bullet Band who think that Turn the Page is about as intense as it gets. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled across this record.

Artist: Monkees
Song Title: Gravy
Source: LP: Head
Release Year: 1968
With this track the short cuts declare total victory. It's five seconds long.

Artist: James Brown
Song Title: Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose
Source: CD: 20 All-Time Greatest Hits
Release Year: 1968
James Brown earned his myriad of titles (Godfather of Soul, King of Funk, Soul Brother # 1, etc.) with tracks like this one, written by his personal manager Charles Bobbit.

Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Song Title: The Windmills of Your Mind
Source: LP: Rock and Roll
Release Year: 1969
Vanilla Fudge all but abandoned their early practice of slowing down and psychedelicizing pop tunes with their third LP Renaissance, but by their fifth album Rock and Roll were at it again, as this revisioning of this Dusty Springfield tune shows.

Artist: Flock
Song Title: Tired of Waiting
Source: LP: The Flock
Release Year: 1969
In 1969, while living in Germany, I ran across a sampler album from CBS records called Underground in a local department store. This collection of tracks from US albums that had not been released in Europe was priced considerably lower than most other LPs so I decided to give it a shot. I was immediately struck by two things: the guy playing electric violin on the cover and the fact that the record itself was pressed on purple vinyl (which I later discovered glowed under a black light). I soon discovered that the guy on the cover was Jerry Goodman, whose solo opens one of the best Kinks covers ever recorded. Some of the other artists on the album included Chicago, the Chambers Brothers, NRBQ and Pacific Gas and Electric, by the way. Too bad my copy mysteriously disappeared many years ago.

Artist: Blues Image
Song Title: Pay My Dues
Source: LP: Open
Release Year: 1970
When I first heard Ride Captain Ride on the radio I wasn't all that impressed with it. Then the local club I hung out at got it on the jukebox and people started playing the B side, a song called Pay My Dues. Then I went out and bought the album. Yes, Pay My Dues is that good. As it turns out, so is the rest of the album. Even Ride Captain Ride sounds better now.

Artist: Electric Prunes
Song Title: The Great Banana Hoax
Source: CD: Underground
Release Year: 1967
Following the success of I Had Too Much To Dream, the Electric Prunes were given a bit more artistic freedom for their second album, Underground (no relation to the Europe-only-issue sampler album referred to a couple songs ago). The opening track, The Great Banana Hoax, is notable for two reasons: first, it was composed by band members and second, it has nothing to do with bananas.

Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Song Title: Little Wing
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Release Year: 1967
Just when I thought I had re-established control of the show with a set of longer tracks, along comes Jimi Hendrix (who I would expect a lengthy jam from) with Little Wing. All two minutes and twenty-nine seconds worth. I give up.