Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Blues From An Airplane
Source: LP: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off)
Writer(s): Balin/Spence
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1966
Blues From An Airplane was the opening song on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Although never released as a single, it was picked by the group to open their first retrospective album, The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane, as well.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: The Masked Marauder
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Perhaps more than any other band, Country Joe and the Fish capture the essence of the San Francisco scene in the late 60s. Their first two releases were floppy inserts included in Joe McDonald's self-published Rag Baby underground newspaper. In 1967 the band was signed to Vanguard Records, a primarily folk-oriented prestige label that also had Joan Baez on its roster. Their first LP, Electric Music For the Mind and Body had such classic cuts as Section 43, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, and the political parody Superbird on it, as well as the mostly-instrumental tune The Masked Marauder. Not for the unenlightened.
Artist: Them
Title: Black Widow Spider
Source: LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s): Lane/Pulley
Label: Tower
Year: 1968
After Van Morrison left Them for a solo career, the band headed back to Belfast, where they recruited vocalist Kenny McDowell. Them soon relocated permanently to the US west coast, where they landed a contract with Tower Records. After a first album that featured songs from a variety of sources, they hooked up with Sharon Pulley and Tom Lane, who wrote an album's worth of material for the band. That album was Time Out! Time In! For Them, an album that has stayed under the radar for over 40 years, despite tunes like Black Widow Spider, which closes out the first side of the LP.
Artist: Kevin Ayers
Title: Song For Insane Times
Source: British import CD: Insane Times (originally released on LP: Joy Of A Toy)
Writer(s): Kevin Ayers
Label: Zonophone (original label: Harvest)
Year: 1969
Kevin Ayers was part of a group of young Bohemian intellectuals that hung out in Canterbury, England in the early 1960s, listening to modern jazz while consuming massive quantities of beat poetry and Dadaist art. By the summer of 1963 the most musically inclined of the group had formed a band called the Wilde Flowers, with Ayers serving as lead vocalist. In 1965 Ayers and Australian beatnik Daevid Allen took a trip to Ibiza, where they met up with Wes Brunson, an American with money to burn. Brunson offered to finance the two if they would form a "serious" band. In June of 1966 the two returned to Canterbury and started a band called Mister Head, which changed its name to Soft Machine after Allen secured permission to use the name from author William Burroughs. In late 1968 Ayers announced his intention to leave Soft Machine, which by then was a trio featuring Ayers on bass and lead vocals. The following year Ayers released his first solo LP, Joy Of A Toy, backed, ironically, by the other members of Soft Machine. Among the standout tracks on the album was Song For Insane Times, a tribute to the psychedelic era.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
The first rock band signed to Elektra Records was Love, a popular L.A. club band that boasted two talented songwriters, Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean. On the heels of their first album, which included the single My Little Red Book and one of the first recordings of the fast version of Hey Joe, came their most successful single, the manic 7&7 Is, released in July of 1966.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: I Can't Get Enough Of It
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Miller/Winwood
Label: United Artists
Year: 1967
One listen to the B side of the Spencer Davis Group's1967 hit I'm A Man and it's easy to see why the young Stevie Winwood was often compared to Ray Charles by the British music press. I Can't Get Enough Of It, co-written by producer Jimmy Miller, features Winwood on both lead vocal and piano. Winwood would leave the group shortly after the release of this single and resurface with the more psychedelically-tinged Traffic later the same year.
Artist: Nazz
Title: Open My Eyes
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Nazz)
Writer(s): Todd Rundgren
Label: Rhino (original label: SGC)
Year: 1968
The Nazz was a band from Philadelphia who were basically the victims of their own bad timing. 1968 was the year that progressive FM radio began to get recognition as a viable format while top 40 radio was being dominated by bubble gum pop bands such as the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. The Nazz, on the other hand, sounded more like British bands such as the Move and Brian Augur's Trinity that were performing well on the UK charts but were unable to buy a hit in the US. The band had plenty of talent, most notably guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Todd Rundgren, who would go on to establish a successful career, both as an artist (he played all the instruments on his Something/Anything LP and led the band Utopia) and a producer (Grand Funk's We're An American Band, as well as many others). Open My Eyes was originally issued as the A side of a single, but ended up being eclipsed in popularity by its flip side, a song called Hello It's Me, that ended up getting airplay in Boston and other cities, eventually hitting the Canadian charts (a new version would become a solo hit for Rundgren five years later).
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Song For A Dreamer
Source: LP: Broken Barricades
Writer(s): Trower/Reid
Label: A&M
Year: 1971
Both guitarist Robin Trower and lyricist Keith Reid were shocked and saddened at the premature death of Jimi Hendrix in 1970. As a tribute to the guitarist, the two collaborated on the haunting Song For A Dreamer for Procol Harum's fifth LP, Broken Barricades. Not long after the album's release Trower would leave Procol Harum to embark on a successful solo career.
Artist: Turtles
Title: You Baby
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Sloan/Barri
Label: White Whale
Year: 1966
After first hitting the charts with their version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles released yet another "angry young rebel" song, P.F. Sloan's Let Me Be. Realizing that they needed to vary their subject matter somewhat if they planned on having a career last longer than six months, the band formerly known as the Crossfires went with another Sloan tune, You Baby, for their first single of 1966. Although the music was in a similar style to Let Me Be, the lyrics, written by Steve Barri, were fairly typical of teen-oriented love songs of the era. The Turtles would continue to record songs from professional songwriters for single release for the remainder of their existence, with their original compositions showing up mostly as album tracks and B sides.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Psychedelic Trip
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Loomis/Flores/Tolby/Aguilar/Andrijasevich
Label: Sundazed
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2012
Psychedelic Trip is essentially an early instrumental version of what would eventually become the title track for the Chocolate Watchband's debut album, No Way Out. Although Psychedelic Trip was written by the entire band, producer/manager Ed Cobb (the Ed Wood of psychedelic music) took sole credit for the song No Way Out.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label: Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year: 1965
San Jose, California, had a vibrant teen music scene in the late 60s, despite the fact that the relatively small (at the time) city was overshadowed by San Francisco at the other end of the bay (both cities were then, as now, considered part of the same metropolitan market). One of the more popular bands in town was Count Five, a group of five individuals who chose to dress up like Bela Lugosi's Dracula, capes and all. Musically, they idolized the Yardbirds (Jeff Beck era), and for slightly more than three minutes managed to sound more like their idols than the Yardbirds themselves (who by then had replaced Beck with Jimmy Page).
Artist: Left Banke
Title: Pretty Ballerina
Source: LP: Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina
Writer(s): Sommer/Brown/Lookofsky
Label: Smash/Sundazed
Year: 1967
The Left Banke, taking advantage of bandleader Michael Brown's industry connections (his father owned a New York recording studio), ushered in what was considered to be the "next big thing" in popular music in early 1967: baroque pop. After their debut single, Walk Away Renee, became a huge bestseller, the band followed it up with Pretty Ballerina, which easily made the top 20 as well. Subsequent releases were sabotaged by a series of bad decisions by Brown and the other band members that left radio stations leery of playing any record with the words "Left Banke" on the label.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: San Franciscan Nights
Source: CD: The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released on LP: Winds of Change and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
In late 1966, after losing several original members over a period of about a year, the original Animals disbanded. Eric Burdon, after releasing one single as a solo artist (but using the Animals name), decided to form a "new" Animals. After releasing a moderately successful single, When I Was Young, the new band appeared at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. While in the area, the band fell in love with the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, during what came to be called the Summer Of Love. The first single to be released from their debut album, Winds Of Change, was a tribute to the city by the bay called San Franciscan Nights. Because of the topicality of the song's subject matter, San Franciscan Nights was not released in the UK as a single. Instead, the song Good Times (which was the US B side of the record), became the new group's biggest UK hit to date (and one of the Animals' biggest UK hits overall). Eventually San Franciscan Nights was released as a single in the UK as well (with a different B side) and ended up doing quite well.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: Viola Lee Blues
Source: LP: The Grateful Dead
Writer(s): Noah Lewis
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1967
The Grateful Dead established a reputation over the years for playing long extended jams. The first of these to be released on vinyl was Viola Lee Blues, clocking in at about 10 minutes. Compared to some of the later performances of Dark Star or St. Stephen, ten minutes does not seem very long, but the track does show flashes of the interplay between band members that would become the stuff of legends.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966 (first stereo release: 1968)
Originally released as a single in late 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs slated to be used in the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold.
Artist: Blues Image
Title: Fugue U/Parchman Farm/Wrath Of Daisey
Source: CD: Open
Writer(s): Blues Image/Allison
Label: Sundazed (original label: Atco)
Year: 1970
Despite drawing crowds in south Florida and getting rave reviews from the rock press, Blues Image was never able to sell a lot of albums. This is a shame, as almost all of their material was as good or better than anything else being recorded in 1969-70. A classic example is the medley of Fugue U (emulating J.S. Bach), a jazz-rock arrangement of Mose Allison's Parchman Farm and the latin-rock instrumental Wrath Of Daisey). Guitarist Mike Pinera went on to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly the following year.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix/Band Of Gypsys
Title: Earth Blues
Source: LP: People, Hell And Angels
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy
Year: Recorded 1969, released 2013
1969 was a strange year for Jimi Hendrix. For one thing, the guitarist was rock's highest-paid entertainer that year despite the fact that he did not release any new recordings. This was due, at least in part, to events happening offstage, the most important being a lawsuit filed by the producer of recordings made in 1965 by R&B vocalist Curtis Knight with Hendrix sitting in as a sideman. Hendrix had signed what appeared to be a standard release contract to the effect that he had been paid for the recordings and was not entitled to any royalties from them. The producer, however, claimed that Hendrix was under exclusive contract, and issued the recordings on an LP called Get That Feeling on the Capitol label, with Knight and Hendrix sharing equal billing on the album cover. A deal was worked out that Hendrix would provide Capitol with one album to make the lawsuit go away, consisting of either new studio recordings or a live performance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Before this could happen, however, bassist Noel Redding left the band to join a new group called Fat Mattress. Hendrix, meanwhile, began work on several tracks with a variety of backing musicians, including his old Army buddy, bassist Billy Cox, and drummer Buddy Miles, who had already made a guest appearance on the third Experience album, Electric Ladyland. Finally, in December, it was decided that the trio, now calling themselves Band Of Gypsys, would record a series of four live New Year's concerts at the Fillmore East and issue the best performances as a live album. In preparation for the concerts, the group made several studio recordings, including an early version of Earth Blues. Unlike the version heard on the Rainbow Bridge album, this track contains no overdubs.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Shanghai Noodle Factory
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: Last Exit)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1968
After Traffic split up (for the first time), Island Records decided to milk one more album out of one their most popular groups. To do so they took studio outtakes, singles that had not been included on previous albums and even an entire side of live performances, issuing the entire package in 1969 under the title Last Exit. Shanghai Noodle Factory, a song that was recorded without the participation of guitarist Dave Mason, was originally released in late 1968 as the B side of the Medicated Goo single.
Artist: Kinks
Title: It's All Right
Source: Mono LP: Kinkdom
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1964
It's All Right, the original B side of the Kinks first hit, You Really Got Me, was not available on an LP until the 1965 album Kinkdom, which was a US-only album made up mostly of tracks that had previously been issued only in the UK. The song shows how strong an influence early US rock and roll had on Ray Davies's songwriting.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Session Man
Source: Mono import CD: Face To Face
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary UK (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
Nicky Hopkins was one of only a handful of studio musicians who managed to acquire some fame beyond the musicians' community itself. The keyboardist had actually been a member of a band at age 16, but was forced to quit when health issues made it impossible for him to perform live on a regular basis. Such was his level of talent, however, that he soon found work in various London studios, playing on dozens of albums by such well-known groups as the Who, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks. The Kinks, in particular, were so impressed with his work that their leader, Ray Davies, wrote a song about him, Session Man, and recorded it on their 1966 Face To Face album. Hopkins would eventually get even more exposure, performing with Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock and becoming, for a time, a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Artist: Kinks
Title: I Need You
Source: Mono LP: Kinkdom
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1965
After a series of hard-rocking hits in 1964 such as You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night, the Kinks mellowed out a bit with songs like Set Me Free the following year. Lurking on the other side of the single, though, was a song that showed that the band still knew how to rock out: I Need You. The song was also included on the 1965 LP Kinks Kinkdom, and went on to become something of a garage rock standard.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Can't Seem To Make You Mine
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From the Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1965
One of the first psychedelic singles to hit the L.A. airwaves was the Seeds' debut single, Can't Seem To Make You Mine, released in 1965. The song was also chosen to lead off the first Seeds album the following year. Indeed, it could be argued that this was the song that first defined the "flower power" sound, predating the Seeds' biggest hit, Pushin' Too Hard.
Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Gloria
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
The original Them version of Van Morrison's Gloria found itself banned on the majority of US radio stations due to controversial lyrics. By changing one line (essentially substituting "around here" for "up to my room") the suburban Chicago punk-blues band Shadows of Knight turned it into a huge hit and a garage band standard.
Artist: Merry-Go-Round
Title: You're A Very Lovely Woman (originally released on Emitt Rhodes LP: The American Dream)
Source: CD: More Nuggets
Writer: Emmit Rhodes
Label: Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1971
Emitt Rhodes first got noticed in his mid-teens as the drummer for the Palace Guard, a beatle-influenced L.A. band that had a minor hit with the song Like Falling Sugar in 1966. Rhodes would soon leave the guard to front his own band, the Merry-Go-Round, scoring one of the most popular regional hits in L.A. history with the song Live. In 1969 Rhodes decided to try his hand as a solo artist. The problem was that he was, as a member of the Merry-Go-Round, contractually obligated to record one more album for A&M. The album itself, featuring a mixture of Rhodes solo tunes and leftover Merry-Go-Round tracks, sat on the shelf for two years until Rhodes had released a pair of well-received LPs for his new label, at which time A&M finally issued The American Dream as an Emitt Rhodes album. One of the best tracks on The American Dream was You're A Very Lovely Woman, a Merry-Go-Round recording from 1967 that show's influences from fellow L.A band Love's Forever Changes album.
Artist: Denis Couldry And The Next Collection
Title: I Am Nearly There
Source: Mono British import CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Couldry/Wills
Label: Grapefruit (original label: Decca)
Year: 1968
Denis Couldry was a keyboardist and vocalist who joined up with a band called Felius Andromedus to record their only single, Meditations, in late 1967. Although the record (essential a Procol Harum knockoff) was not successful, its producer, Vic Keary, was impressed enough with Couldry to team him up with another band, the Next Collection, for a February 1968 single called James In The Basement. Couldry himself co-wrote the record's B side, a tune called I Am Nearly There.
Artist: Chicago
Title: Beginnings
Source: LP: Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s): Robert Lamm
Label: Columbia
Year: 1969
The first album by Chicago shows a band that had spent several months on the road honing its craft. Many of the tracks on the double album were recorded in one take, with a minimum of overdubs. Beginnings, which finishes out side one of the album, was released as a single in 1969 but failed to chart. After the band became more well-known, Beginnings was re-released, this time becoming a moderate hit. The single version ran less than three minutes, essentially cutting out the entire second half of the song, but a later album edit running about six minutes has been used on most compilation albums. The original version heard here runs nearly eight minutes, including over two minutes of percussion and vocals at the end of the song.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Roll With It
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Children Of The Future)
Writer: Steve Miller
Label: Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
Right from the beginning, the Steve Miller band stood out stylistically from other San Francisco area bands. This was in part because Miller was only recently arrived from Chicago, which had a music tradition of its own. But a lot of the credit has to go to Miller himself, who had the sense to give his bandmates (such as his college buddy Boz Scaggs) the freedom to provide songs for the band in addition to his own material. One example of the latter is Roll With It from the group's 1968 debut LP, Children Of The Future.
Artist: Bonzo Dog Band
Title: I'm The Urban Spaceman
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Neil Innes
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
The Bonzo Dog Dada Band (as they were originally called) was as much theatre (note the British spelling) as music, and were known for such antics as starting out their performances by doing calisthentics (after being introduced as the warm-up band) and having one of the members, "Legs" Larry Smith tapdance on stage (he was actually quite good). In 1967 they became the resident band on Do Not Adjust Your Set, a children's TV show that also featured sketch comedy by future Monty Python members Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin and David Jason, the future voice of Mr. Toad and Danger Mouse. In 1968 they released their only hit single, I'm The Urban Spaceman, co-produced by Paul McCartney. Neil Innes would go on to hook up with Eric Idle for the Rutles projects, among others, and is often referred to as the Seventh Python.
Artist: Pawnbrokers
Title: Realize
Source: Mono CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wild Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): English/Hanson/Richey/Rogne
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Big Sound)
Year: 1968
Starting around 1965, high school students all across middle America began forming garage bands, most of which emulated British Invasion bands such as the Kinks and the Rolling Stones. It's no surprise then, that by 1968 some of these same high schoolers were now enrolled in colleges such as the University of Northern Iowa and forming bands with names like the Pawnbrokers. The group, whose members came from Iowa, North Dakota and Minnesota, released three singles on at least two different labels before graduation brought an end to the whole thing. The second of these was Realize, which was issued on the Big Sound label out of Davenport (one of the Quad Cities).
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Green Destroys The Gold
Source: British import 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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