I managed to get this one posted on time!
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Think About It
Source: Mono Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Relf/McCarty/Page
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1968
The final Yardbirds record was a single released in early 1968. Although the group made TV appearances in Europe to promote the A side, Good Night Josephine, it is the B side of that record, Think About It, that deserves to be considered the last Yardbirds song. Instrumentally the song sounds a lot like something off of Led Zeppelin's first couple of albums. Once Keith Relf's vocals come in, however, there is no doubt that this is vintage Yardbirds, and quite possibly the best track of the entire Jimmy Page era.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Page/McCarty
Label: Epic
Year: 1967
By 1967 the Yardbirds had moved far away from their blues roots and were on their fourth lead guitarist, studio whiz Jimmy Page. The band had recently picked up a new producer, Mickey Most, known mostly for his work with Herman's Hermits and the original Animals. Most had a tendency to concentrate solely on the band's single A sides, leaving Page an opportunity to develop his own songwriting and production skills on songs such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, a track that also shows signs of Page's innovative guitar style that would help define 70s rock.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Puzzles
Source: Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Page/McCarty/Relf
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
The 1967 single Little Games/Puzzles was typical of the late period Yardbirds releases in that the A side, produced by Mickey Most, was a somewhat poppish tune from outside songwriters, with the B side featuring a song composed by the band, and, in fact if not in name, produced by guitarist Jimmy Page. As such, Puzzles featured an almost Led Zeppelin sounding guitar break that does not entirely mesh with the rest of the song. By the 1969 debut of Zeppelin, Page had solved that by making the songs themselves heavier and more in tune with his guitar style.
Artist: Catfish Knight And The Blue Express
Title: Deathwish
Source: CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): J. Knight
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Verve)
Year: 1968
A fairly common practice in the mid-1960s was for a producer to sign a new band and assign them to record a song of his own choosing. In fact, the producer often already had the song in mind before finding a band to record it. That song would then be issued as a single, with the band itself being allowed to choose and record the B side. Such is the likely case with Deathwish, a truly manic B side form a group called Catfish Knight And The Blue Express. Virtually nothing is known about the band itself, and the A side of the record, from what I have heard, was pretty lame in comparison to Deathwish.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Good Times
Source: LP: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dreaming
Source: LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
Although Cream recorded several songs that bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce co-wrote with various lyricists (notably poet Pete Brown), there were relatively few that Bruce himself wrote words for. One of these is Dreaming, a song from the band's first LP that features both Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton on lead vocals. Dreaming is also one of the shortest Cream songs on record, clocking in at one second under two minutes in length.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Let Me Be
Source: CD: 20 Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: It Ain't Me Babe and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): P.F. Sloan
Label: Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1965
The Turtles were nothing if not able to redefine themselves when the need arose. Originally a surf band known as the Crossfires, the band quickly adopted an "angry young men" stance with their first single, Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, and the subsequent album of the same name. For the follow-up single the band chose a track from their album, Let Me Be, that, although written by a different writer, had the same general message as It Ain't Me Babe. The band would soon switch over to love songs like You Baby and Happy Together before taking their whole chameleon bit to its logical extreme with an album called Battle Of The Bands on which each track was meant to sound like it was done by an entirely different band.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Mother's Little Helper
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1966
By 1966 the Rolling Stones had already had a few brushes with the law over their use of illegal drugs. Mother's Little Helper, released in spring of 1966, is a scathing criticism of the parents of the Stones' fans for their habitual abuse of "legal" prescription drugs while simultaneously persecuting those same fans (and the band itself) for smoking pot. Perhaps more than any other song that year, Mother's Little Helper illustrates the increasingly hostile generation gap that had sprung up between the young baby boomers and the previous generation.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Purple Haze
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Purple Haze has one of the most convoluted release histories of any song ever recorded. Originally issued in the UK as a single, it scored high on the British charts. When Reprise got the rights to release the first Hendrix album, Are You Experienced?, they chose to replace the first track on the album with Purple Haze, moving the original opening track, Foxy Lady, to side two of the LP. The song next appeared on the Smash Hits album, which in Europe was on the Polydor label. This was the way things stayed until the early 1990s, when MCA acquired the rights to the Hendrix catalog and re-issued Are You Experienced? with the tracks restored to the UK ordering, but preceded by the six non-album sides (including Purple Haze) that had originally been released prior to the album. Most recently, the Hendrix Family Trust has again changed labels and the US version of Are You Experienced? is once again in print, this time on Sony's Legacy label. This means that Purple Haze (heard here in its original mono mix) has now been released by all three of the world's major record companies. That's right. There are only three major record companies left in the entire world, Sony (which owns Columbia and RCA, among others), Warner Brothers (which owns Elektra, Atlantic, Reprise and others) and Universal (which started off as MCA and now, as the world's largest record company, owns far too many current and former labels to list here). Don't you just love out of control corporate consolidation?
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: In The Country
Source: CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
By 1968, several bands, particularly in southern California, were starting to incorporate elements of country music into what were otherwise rock recordings. Some, like the Byrds and Poco, ended up being recognized as pioneers of what came to be known as country-rock. Others, such as L.A.'s West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, merely flirted with the idea on tracks such as In The Country on their fourth LP, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. By this point, conflicts within the band were starting to take their toll, and combined with a decided lack of commercial success, led to the band losing its contract with Reprise Records and falling into obscurity before finally calling it quits in 1970.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Reasons For Waiting
Source: LP: Stand Up
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
Strictly speaking, Reasons For Waiting, from the Stand Up album, is not a Jethro Tull piece. Rather, it is an Ian Anderson solo work with orchestration. This was quite a departure from the first Tull album, which was (like most debut albums) made up of songs already in the group's live performance repertoire (the exception being Mick Abrahams's Move On Along, which in addition to having Abrahams on lead vocals, added a horn section).
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Oh, Sweet Mary
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Albin/Andrew/Getz/Gurley/Joplin
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
The only song credited to the entire membership of Big Brother And The Holding Company on their Cheap Thrills album was Oh, Sweet Mary (although some copies credit Janis Joplin as sole writer). The tune bears a strong resemblance to Coo Coo, a non-album single the band had released on the Mainstream label before signing to Columbia. Oh, Sweet Mary, however, has new lyrics and a "dreamy" bridge section played at a slower tempo than the rest of the tune.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Today
Source: Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Balin/Kantner
Label: Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to Today, an early collaboration between rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and bandleader Marty Balin on Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow.
Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Light Bulb Blues
Source: CD: Gloria (also released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Kelley/Sohns/McGeorge
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Following the national success of their cover of Van Morrison's Gloria, Chicago's Shadows Of Knight returned to the studio to cut a cover of a Bo Diddley tune, Oh Yeah. For the B side of that record the band was allowed to record one of their own compositions. Light Bulb Blues captures the essence of the Shadows' style: hard-driving garage/punk that follows a traditional 12-bar blues progression. The result is a track that sounds a bit like a twisted variation on Muddy Waters's classic Rollin' And Tumblin'.
Artist: Byrds
Title: The Times They Are A-Changin' (first version)
Source: Mono CD: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1965
In their early days the Byrds established themselves as the premier interpreters of Bob Dylan songs, helping to popularize the folk-rock movement in the process. In fact, the band's first two singles were covers of Dylan songs, and the group fully intended on recording and releasing a third Dylan-penned single as late as mid-1965. On June 28th the band recorded two Dylan songs: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and The Times They Are A-Changin'. Neither recording was issued, although a later recording of The Times They Are A-Changin' appeared on the band's second LP, Turn! Turn! Turn!
Artist: Manfred Mann
Title: Do Wah Diddy Diddy
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Barry/Greenwich
Label: Silver Spotlight
Year: 1964
Manfred Mann started off as the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers and were part of the same London British blues scene as the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones. In 1964 they took a decidedly commercial turn with one of the silliest, yet memorable hits of the British invasion, Do Wah Diddy Diddy. The song was written by the husband and wife team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, who operated out of New York's Brill building under the supervision of Don Kirschner. Do Wah Diddy Diddy, with lead vocals by Paul Jones, topped the charts for several weeks and ended up among the top 10 songs of 1965.
Artist: Fire Birds
Title: No Tomorrows
Source: CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released on LP: Light My Fire)
Writer(s): Firebirds
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Crown)
Year: 1969
Throughout the 50s and 60s there were literally hundreds of budget labels that made their fortunes fooling record buyers into thinking they were getting hit records at a discounted price, when in reality they were getting cheap cover versions by uncredited and underpaid studio musicians. One of the most successful of these budget labels was Crown, a label created in 1953 by the Bahari Brothers which specialized in low-priced LPs spotlighting either a specific genre (polka, blues, gospel, etc.) or a particular artist via a tribute album that did not include any recordings by the actual artist. In 1969 Crown released a pair of hard psychedelic LPs: Hair, by 31 Flavors, and Light My Fire, by the Firebirds. In reality, they were both by the same band, rumored to be a local Los Angeles group that was not actually called either the Firebirds or 31 Flavors. Unlike most Crown releases, however, these two albums featured original material such as No Tomorrow that would not have been out of place beside albums by Blue Cheer or early Grand Funk Railroad.
Artist: Second Helping
Title: Floating Downstream On An Inflatable Rubber Raft
Source: Mono LP: Ain't It Hard (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Kenny Loggins
Label: Sundazed (original label: Viva)
Year: 1968
Among the handful of bands recording for Snuff Garrett's Viva label in 1967-68 was a group called the Second Helping. The band is best remembered as the support group for a teenaged Kenny Loggins, who wrote and sang all of the band's material, including Floating Downstream On An Inflatable Rubber Raft, which was released as a single in 1968.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: Heroes And Villains (alternate take)
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: Smiley Smile/Wild Honey)
Writer(s): Wilson/Parks
Label: Rhino
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1995
The last major Beach Boys hit of the 1960s was Heroes And Villains, released as a follow-up to Good Vibrations in early 1967. The song was intended to be part of the Smile album, but ended up being released as a single in an entirely different form than Brian Wilson originally intended. Eventually the entire Smile project was cancelled, and a considerably less sophisticated album called Smiley Smile was released in its place. Nearly 30 years later Smiley Smile and its follow-up album, Wild Honey, were released on compact disc as a set. One of the bonus tracks in that set was this alternate version of Heroes And Villains, which is now believed to be the version that would have been included on Smile had it been completed.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Bass Strings
Source: Simulated stereo LP: The Life And Times Of Country Joe And The Fish (originally released as EP included in Rag Baby newspaper # 2)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1966
One of the more original ways to get one's music heard is to publish an underground arts-oriented newspaper and include a pullout flexi-disc in it. Country Joe and the Fish did just that; not once, but twice. The first one was split with another artist and featured the original recording of the I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag. The second Rag Baby EP, released in 1966, was all Fish, and featured two tracks that would be re-recorded for their debut LP the following year. In addition to the instrumental Section 43, the EP included a four-minute version of Bass Strings, a track with decidedly psychedelic lyrics.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
While not as commercially successful as the Airplane or as long-lived as the Dead (there's an oxymoron for ya), Country Joe and the Fish may well be the most accurate musical representation of what the whole Haight-Ashbury scene was about, which is itself ironic, since the band operated out of Berkeley on the other side of the bay. Of all the tracks on their first album, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine probably got the most airplay on various underground radio stations that were popping up on the FM dial at the time (some of them even legally).
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Flying High
Source: LP: The Life And Times Of Country Joe And The Fish (originally released on LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Any guesses to what a song called Flying High from an album called Electric Music For The Mind And Body by Country Joe And The Fish released in 1967 might be about? I thought not.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Two Trains Running
Source: LP: Projections
Writer(s): McKinley Morganfield
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Possibly the most influential (yet least known outside of musicians' circles) band of the Psychedelic Era was 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 arguably 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. Still, they may never have moved in that direction at all if it weren't for the Blues Project.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: From Here To There Eventually
Source: LP: Monster
Writer: Kay/McJohn/Edmonton
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1969
The final track of Steppenwolf's fourth LP, Monster, is a perfect example of the band's typical hard-driving beat and John Kay's distinctive vocal style. The album itself is generally considered to be Steppenwolf's most blatantly political.
Artist: Doors
Title: Five To One
Source: CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Waiting For The Sun)
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1968
Despite the fact that it was the Doors' only album to hit the top of the charts, Waiting For The Sun was actually a disappointment for many of the band's fans, who felt that the material lacked the edginess of the first two Doors LPs. One notable exception was the album's closing track, Five To One, which features one of Jim Morrison's most famous lines: "No one here gets out alive".
Artist: Adrian Pride
Title: Her Name Is Melody
Source: Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Schwartz/Slater
Label: Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1967
Seriously? You've never heard of Adrian Pride? How about Don Atello? Bernie Ballantine? The Comfortable Chair? No? These are all names used by Bernie Schwartz, either as a solo artist or with a band (you can probably figure out which one that was). After recording a few self-penned singles in the early 60s, Schwartz came to the attention of the Everly Brothers, who in turn got him signed to Warner Brothers Records, at that time a medium-sized label owned by a large Hollywood movie studio. Schwartz recorded a pair of singles, the second of which was Her Name Was Melody, before forming the Comfortable Chair. Interestingly, Schwartz later claimed that, although he received a songwriting credit for the tune, it was actually written by Don Everly and Terry Slater. Schwartz eventually retired from music and became an author of such self-help books as A Guide To Fashionable Psychological Disorders and Are You A Newrotic?
Artist: Standells
Title: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets
Writer: Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
The Standells were probably the most successful band to record for the Tower label (not counting Pink Floyd, whose first LP was issued, in modified form, on the label after being recorded in England). Besides their big hit Dirty Water, they hit the charts with other tunes such as Why Pick On Me, Try It, and the punk classic Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. All but Try It were written by producer Ed Cobb, who has to be considered the most prolific punk-rock songwriter of the 60s, having also written some of the Chocolate Watch Band's best stuff as well.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Flying On The Ground Is Wrong
Source: CD: Buffalo Springfield
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
It's a fact: the people at Atco Records thought Neil Young's voice was "too weird" to record, and insisted that fellow Buffalo Springfield member Richie Furay sing his songs instead of Young himself. Among the Young tunes sung by Furay on the first Buffalo Springfield album is Flying On The Ground Is Wrong. By the time the band got around to recording a second LP things had changed a bit and Young sang his own material.
Artist: Syn
Title: 14 Hour Technicolour Dream
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Nardelli/Jackman
Label: Rhino (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
Once upon a time there was an underground newspaper that got raided by the local police. In response, several local underground bands got together and staged a 14-hour long happening in support of the paper. As much as this sounds like a slice of San Francisco or maybe Los Angeles history, this actually happened in London, with such notable bands as Pink Floyd, the Pretty Things, the Creation, the Soft Machine, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and others contributing to what came to be called the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at the Alexandria Palace on April 29-30, 1967. Later that year, mod band the Syn (formerly known as the Selfs) recorded a song celebrating the event and released it as the B side of their second single for Deram. The group disbanded in 1968, with members Peter Banks and Chris Squire eventually going on to form Yes in the early 1970s.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Green Destroys The Gold
Source: CD: The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union
Writer: Wayne Ulaky
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
The Beacon Street Union found itself handicapped by being signed to M-G-M and being promoted as part of the "boss-town sound." The problem was that there was no "boss-town sound", any more than there was a San Francisco sound or an L.A sound (there is a Long Island Sound, but that has nothing to do with music). In fact, the only legitimate "sound" of the time was the "Motown Sound", and that was confined to a single record company that achieved a consistent sound through the use of the same studio musicians on virtually every recording. What made the situation even more ironic for the Beacon Street Union was that by the time their first LP came out they had relocated to New York City anyway. If there is a New York sound, it has more to do with traffic than music. None of which has anything to do specifically with the song Green Destroys The Gold, which was written by the band's bass player, Wayne Ulaky, and included on their debut album The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union.
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