Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1303 (starts 1/17/13)

Artist:    Shadows Of Knight
Title:    I Got My Mojo Workin' (alternate version)
Source:    Mono CD: Gloria
Writer(s):    McKinley Morganfield
Label:    Sundazed
Year:    1966
    When it became apparent that the Shadows Of Knight version of Van Morrison's Gloria was going to be a hit single, the group's label, Dunwich, rushed them into the studio to record an entire LP's worth of material. Much of what the band recorded was covers of songs by legendary Chicago blues artists such as Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters. The band actually recorded two versions of one Muddy Waters song, I Got My Mojo Workin'. Whereas the later version used on the album is a bit more polished, the alternate version heard here is more in line with the way the band performed the song live, and has a kind of infectious energy that the LP version can't quite match.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Talk Talk
Source:    CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Rhino (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 Tim Rose had worked up together). 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 in 1966.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Let's Go Away For Awhile
Source:    Mono LP: Pet Sounds
Writer(s):    Brian Wilson
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1966
    After spending six months and a record amount of money making Good Vibrations, Brian Wilson and Capitol Records decided to use an existing track for the B side of the single rather than take the time to record something new. The chosen track was Let's Go Away For Awhile, a tune from the Pet Sounds album that Wilson described as the most satisfying instrumental piece he had ever written.

Artist:    Standells
Title:    Dirty Water
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1966
    The Standells were not from Boston (they were a Los Angeles club band). Ed Cobb, who wrote and produced Dirty Water, was. The rest is history.

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Priscilla Millionaira
Source:    LP: Everything Playing
Writer(s):    John Sebastian
Label:    Kama Sutra
Year:    1967
    Priscilla Millionaira, from the 1967 LP Everything Playing, has the distinction of having the only known lead vocal by Lovin' Spoonful bassist Steve Boone. John Sebastian's tenure as a member of the Spoonful was coming to an end when this album came out (co-founder Zal Yanovsky had already left), which may explain why he turned the lead vocals over to Boone for this track. Whatever the reason, I think we can all be thankful for this track's unique qualities.

Artist:        Randy Newman
Title:        Last Night I Had A Dream
Source:      Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:        Randy Newman
Label:        Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:        1968
        Randy Newman has, over the course of the past forty-plus years, established himself as a Great American Writer of Songs. His work includes dozens of hit singles (over half of which were performed by other artists), nearly two dozen movie scores and eleven albums as a solo artist. Newman has won five Grammys, as well as two Oscars and Three Emmys. To my knowledge, Last Night I Had A Dream could quite possibly be his first recorded work as a solo artist, as it came out the same year as his first album, which does not include the song.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    We Used To Know
Source:    CD: Stand Up
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol (original US label: Reprise)
Year:    1969
    The first of many personnel changes for Jethro Tull came with the departure of guitarist Mick Abrahams in late 1968. His replacement was Tony Iommi from the band Earth, who joined just in time to make an appearance miming the guitar parts to A Song For Jeffrey on the Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus, a TV special slated for a December airing on British TV, but pulled from the schedule at the last minute by the Stones themselves, who were not satisfied with their own performances on the show. The following month Iommi went back to Earth (who eventually changed their name to Black Sabbath) and Jethro Tull found a new guitarist, Martin Barre, in time to begin work on their second LP, Stand Up. Barre's guitar work is featured prominently on several tracks on Stand Up, including We Used To Know, a song that starts quietly and slowly builds to a wah-wah pedal dominated instrumental finale.

Artist:    Pink Fairies
Title:    Prologue/Right On, Fight On
Source:    CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: What A Bunch Of Sweeties)
Writer(s):    Pink Fairies
Label:    Polydor (UK import)
Year:    1972
    While most rock musicians in the early 1970s were dreaming of becoming rich and famous, there were a few notable exceptions on both sides of the Atlantic. Among those were Detroit's MC5, whose radical politics were at the forefront of everything they did, and the New York City street band David Peel and the Lower East Side, who were more a musical guerrilla theater group than an actual rock band. In the UK, it was the Pink Fairies bucking the establishment, performing such anarchic acts as giving free concerts outside the gates of places where other bands were playing for pay, such as the 1970 Isle Of Wight music festival. Formed from the ashes of another anarchic band, the Social Deviants, the Pink Fairies recorded three albums from 1971-73, finally cutting a single for Stiff Records in 1976 before splitting up. The group has reformed several times since.

Artist:    Mothers Of Invention
Title:    Motherly Love
Source:    CD: Freak Out!
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Ryko (original label: Verve)
Year:    1966
    In addition to his high regard for avant-garde jazz and classical music, Frank Zappa had a fondness for late-1950s Doo-Wop music, as evidenced by songs such as Motherly Love from the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out!  According to the liner notes, the song is a body commercial for the band, advertising the delights to be had from social contact with the band members.

Artist:    Vagrants
Title:    Respect
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Otis Redding
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Sounding a lot like the Rascals, the Vagrants were a popular Long Island band led by singer Peter Sabatino and best remembered for being the group 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 her 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:    Doors
Title:    Spanish Caravan
Source:    CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Waiting For The Sun)
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1968
    The third Doors album, Waiting For The Sun, was somewhat of a departure from the first two, covering a greater variety of styles than their previous efforts. A prime example is Spanish Caravan, which starts with a flamenco solo from guitarist Robbie Kreiger and continues in a highly Spanish (not Mexican) flavored musical vein.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    I Am The Walrus
Source:    45 RPM EP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (UK import)
Year:    1967
    Common practice in the UK in the 1960s was to avoid duplication between single releases and album tracks. This led to a unique situation for the Beatles and their British label, EMI/Parlophone, in December of 1967. The band had self-produced a new telefilm to be shown on BBC-TV called Magical Mystery Tour and wanted to make the songs from the film available to the record-buying public in time for Christmas. The problem was that there were only six songs in the one-hour telefilm, not nearly enough to fill an entire album. The solution was to release the songs on a pair of Extended Play 45 RPM records, along with several pages of song lyrics, illustrations and stills from the film itself. In the US, however, EPs had long since been abandoned by the major record labels, and an album was put together combining songs from the film with all of the band's 1967 singles and B sides. Thus, the EP version of Magical Mystery Tour was only available in the UK and across Europe. My own introduction to Magical Mystery Tour was a friend's German copy of the EPs, and when years later I had the opportunity to pick up a copy of the original UK version, I of course couldn't resist. That copy got totalled in a flood a few years back, but in 2012 I was finally able to locate another copy of the EP set, which is the source of this week's airing of the ultimate British psychedelic recording, I Am The Walrus.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon
Source:    LP: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s):    Paul Kantner
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1967
    The first Jefferson Airplane album (the 1966 release Jefferson Airplane Takes Off) was dominated by songs from the pen of founder Marty Balin, a few of which were collaborations with other band members such as Paul Kantner and Jorma Kaukonen. The songwriting on the group's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow, was fairly evenly balanced between the three above and new arrival Grace Slick. By the band's third album, After Bathing At Baxter's, released in the fall of 1967, Kantner had emerged as the group's main songwriter, having a hand in over half the tracks on the LP. One of the most durable of these was the album's closing track, a medley of two songs, Won't You Try and Saturday Afternoon, the latter being about a free concert that band had participated in in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park earlier that year.

Artist:    Procol Harum
Title:    Cerdes (Outside The Gates Of)
Source:    Mono LP: Procol Harum
Writer(s):    Brooker/Reid
Label:    Deram
Year:    1967
    Ever wonder how music gets from the recording studio to you the listener? Well, these days it's usually just a matter of making digital copies and distributing them over the internet, but in the psychedelic era it was a much more complicated process. I always assumed someone took the master tapes to the record company and played them into a sort of reverse turntable that made records instead of played them, and that subsequest copies were made from that first disc. Basically that's true (although it turns out there is another set of copies made from the first disc that are used to make even more copies), but what I didn't know is that the cutting needle of the record lathe (which is the official name for the above-mentioned reverse turntable) has to be guided by hand to insure that the record grooves (actually one continuous spiral) are properly spaced to fit as much music as possible on the record surface without breaking down the walls of the adjoining groove. It is a painstaking and basically thankless process (not to mention anonymous) that if done right is never noticed by anyone but the most dedicated audiophiles. If done badly, however, it sounds like...well, like the original US pressing of side one of the first Procol Harum album. There are countless instances of albums being pressed with the holes not quite centered correctly. This is generally easily fixed by enlarging the hole itself and centering the record by hand when putting it on a turntable. Side one of Procol Harum, however, sounds like it was mastered with the hole off center, making every copy of the album sound like it's alternately speeding up and slowing down throughout the record. The only track on the side that is even listenable (in my opinion) is Cerdes (Outside The Gates Of), which is the final song on side one, and thus, being closest to the center of the album itself, has the least amount of fluctuation as the record spins. Still, if you have a sensitive ear this track may be a bit painful to listen to, but it's such a good song I decided to play it anyway.

Artist:    Human Beingz
Title:    My Generation
Source:    Mono LP: Pebbles Vol. 8 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    BFD (original label: Elysian)
Year:    1966
    Regular listeners of Stuck in the Psychedelic Era are probably familiar with a song called Nobody But Me by the Human Beinz (it holds the record for the most iterations of the word no on a top 40 hit song). What most people aren't aware of, however, is the fact that the band had actually been spelling its name Human Beingz for over a year before signing with Capitol Records, who accidently left the 'g' out on the label of Nobody But Me in 1968. One of the earliest regional hits for the Youngstown, Ohio based Human Beingz was this cover of the Who's I Can't Explain, released on the local Elysian label in 1966.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Gonna Buy Me A Dog (unused backing track)
Source:    CD: The Monkees
Writer(s):    Boyce/Hart
Label:    Rhino
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2006
    In an effort to follow a Beatle template, it was decided early on that the first Monkees album would have one novelty song, similar to Ringo getting to sing on one song per Beatle album. That song was Gonna Buy Me A Dog, a Tommy Boyce/Bobby Hart composition that featured Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones playing off each other for about three minutes against a background provided by an array of top studio musicians and produced by Boyce and Hart themselves. Two weeks earlier Michael Nesmith had produced an instrumental version of the same song using an entirely different lineup of studio musicians, including (among others) drummer Hal Blaine, organist Billy Preston and guitarists Glen Campbell and fellow Monkee Peter Tork (but not Nesmith himself). The Nesmith version has a faster tempo than the released track, with more of a country-blues-rock feel to it.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Toad
Source:    LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Ginger Baker
Label:    Atco
Year:    1966
    By 1970, pretty much every rock band in the world featured a drum solo during live performances. Before 1966, however, the practice was unheard of; in fact, drum solos were considered solely the province of jazz musicians. The guy who changed all that was Ginger Baker of Cream, who, on the band's very first album provided the studio version of Toad. Due to the limitations of four-track recording, the entire drum solo, which takes up the bulk of the five-minute recording, is assigned to one single track, which on the stereo version of the song is mixed entirely to one channel/speaker. This makes for a rather odd listening experience under certain circumstances. A longer version of Toad recorded live at the Fillmore would appear on Cream's third album, Wheels Of Fire, in 1968 (this time with the drums mixed in full stereo).

Artist:     Seatrain
Title:     Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Lady
Source:     CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Sea Train)
Writer(s):Gregory/Roberts
Label:     Rhino (original label: Edsel)
Year:     1969
     Following the breakup of the Blues Project, two of the members, bassist/flautist Andy Kuhlberg and drummer Roy Blumenthal, relocated to San Francisco. They hooked up with Richard Greene (violin, keyboards, viola, vocals), John Gregory (guitar, vocals), Don Kretmar (bass, saxophone) and vocalist Jim Roberts to form Seatrain. Their first album, Sea Train, appeared in 1969 on the obscure Edsel label.

Artist:    Iron Butterfly
Title:    It Must Be Love
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Doug Ingle
Label:    Atco
Year:    1969
    Although it did not contain anything like the monster hit In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, the third Iron Butterfly LP, Ball, was probably a better album overall. The first single released from the album was In The Time Of Our Lives, backed with It Must Be Love, a tune that features some nice guitar work from Eric Brann, who would soon be leaving the band for an unsuccessful solo career.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Train For Tomorrow
Source:    CD: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Writer(s):    Lowe/Tulin/Williams/Spagnola/Ritter
Label:    Collector's Choice (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Although the bulk of material on the Electric Prunes' first LP was from outside sources, there were a few exceptions. One of the more notable ones was Train For Tomorrow, an innovative piece credited to the entire band that shows what this group could have done if allowed more artistic freedom.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Tucker/Mantz
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    The Electric Prunes biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in early 1967. The record, initially released without much promotion on Reprise Records, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Get Me To The World On Time
Source:    I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Writer(s):    Tucker/Jones
Label:    Collector's Choice (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    With I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) climbing the charts in early 1967, the Electric Prunes turned to songwriter Annette Tucker for two more tracks to include on their debut LP. One of those, Get Me To The World On Time (co-written by lyricist Jill Jones) was selected to be the follow up single to Dream. Although not as big a hit, the song still did respectably on the charts (and was actually the first Electric Prunes song I ever heard on FM radio).

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Dear Mr. Fantasy
Source:    LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s):    Capaldi/Winwood/Wood
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1967
    Steve Winwood is one of those artists that has multiple signature songs, having a career that has spanned decades (so far). Still, if there is any one song that is most closely associated with the guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist, it's the title track of Traffic's Mr. Fantasy album.

Artist:    Knack
Title:    Time Waits For No One
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Chain/Kaplan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1967
    In 1979 Capitol Records signed a group from Los Angeles called the Knack, promoted them heavily and released a single called My Sharona. It was a huge hit. Twelve years earlier Capitol Records signed a group from Los Angeles called the Knack, promoted them heavily and released a single called Time Waits For No One. It flopped. The strange thing is that Time Waits For No One is every bit as good a song as My Sharona, albeit in an entirely different style. Why one Knack succeeded and the other one failed is one of those mysteries that will probably never be solved.

Artist:    Thorinshield
Title:    Daydreaming
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Thorinshield)
Writer(s):    Ray/Smith
Label:    Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year:    1967
    Before 1966 it was virtually unheard of for a newly-signed band to record an album without first putting out a single to get an idea of their sales potential. By 1967, however, due to a variety of reasons, including the rise of album-oriented FM rock stations and the interest being shown in album tracks by groups like the Blues Project and the Butterfield Blues Band, as well as more established groups like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, some labels, particularly those not having a lot of top 40 hits anyway such as Philips (yes, the same company that invented CD technology and makes light bulbs), started taking chances with new acts such as L.A.'s Thorinshield. Sounding like a slightly more commercial version of the San Francisco bands making headlines that year on songs like Daydreaming, Thorinshield released one self-titled album before its members moved on to other things.

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:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Burning Of The Midnight Lamp
Source:    LP: The Singles Album
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Polydor (Holland) (original US label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Burning of the Midnight Lamp was the fourth, and at the time most sophisticated single released by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, coming out in mid-1967 between the Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love albums. As was the case with the previous three singles, the record was released only in Europe and the UK. Hendrix's US label, Reprise, had found a place for the A sides of the previous singles by revising the track lineup of Are You Experienced, but chose to release Axis: Bold As Love with the same track listing as its UK counterpart. This left Burning Of The Midnight Lamp unreleased in the US. Hendrix, though, having put a lot of work into the song, was not content to let the mono single release be the last word on the cut, and created a new stereo mix from the original tapes for inclusion on Electric Ladyland the following year.

Artist:    Arlo Guthrie
Title:    Motorcycle Song (Significance Of The Pickle)
Source:    The Best Of Arlo Guthrie
Writer(s):    Arlo Guthrie
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1968
    To be honest, I am not sure when this particular recording was made. Arlo Guthrie originally recorded the Motorcycle Song for his 1967 debut album, Alice's Restaurant. The first live recording of the song was released the following year on the LP Arlo. However, his reference to having been performing the song for twelve years makes me think this is a mid-seventies performance. It's even possible that the greatest hits album, issued in 1977, was the first time this particular performance was released.