Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1748 (starts 11/29/17)

This week's show starts with sets from 1967 and 1968, but soon becomes a series of journeys covering several years. There's also an Airplane set hidden in there somewhere.

Artist:    First Edition
Title:    Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source:    CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Mickey Newbury
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle wrote most of the songs on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Within You Without You
Source:    British import LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone/EMI
Year:    1967
    George Harrison began to take an interest in the Sitar as early as 1965. By 1966 he had become proficient enough on the Indian instrument to compose and record Love You To for the Revolver album. He followed that up with perhaps his most popular sitar-based track, Within You Without You, which opens side two of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Harrison would record one more similarly-styled song, The Inner Light, in 1968, before deciding that he was never going to be in the same league as Ravi Shankar, whom Harrison had become friends with by that time. For the remainder of his time with the Beatles Harrison would concentrate on his guitar work and songwriting skills, resulting in classic songs such as While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Something and Here Comes The Sun.

Artist:     Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:     Third Stone From The Sun
Source:     CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1967
     Jimi Hendrix once stated that he was far more comfortable as a guitarist than as a vocalist, at least in the early days of the Experience. In that case, he was certainly in his element for his classic instrumental from the Are You Experienced? album, Third Stone From The Sun. The train sequence at the end of the track, incidentally, was done entirely on guitar.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Look (Song For The Children)/Child Is Father To The Man
Source:    LP: The Smile Sessions
Writer(s):    Wilson/Parks
Label:    Capitol
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2011
    In 2004 Brian Wilson released Smile, the culmination of a project that went back nearly 40 years. Smile had begun as the projected follow up to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, with recording for the new album beginning in 1966. Due to a number of reasons the project was suspended in 1967, and a much less ambitious LP called Smiley Smile appeared in its place. For the rest of the 20th century Smile was little more than a legend, surrounded by rumours concerning the disposition of the material that had been recorded before the project was dropped. In the early 1990s some of the tapes resurfaced and were issued as part of the Beach Boys 30th anniversary box set. Still, these were only fragments, without any real sense of how they were meant to be presented on the original album. Finally, with the release of Brian Wilson's all new recordings of much of the same material, there was a template that could be used as a guideline for assembling the original album. Some elements, such as Carl Wilson's backing vocals on tracks like Child Is Father To The Man were actually recorded after the project itself was cancelled and used on later Beach Boys albums. Nonetheless, The Smile Sessions is probably the closest thing we'll ever hear to the original Smile album.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Overs
Source:    LP: Bookends
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Originally written for (but not used in) the film The Graduate, Overs is the middle part of a series of songs on side one of the Bookends album that follow the cycle of life from childhood to old age. The song deals with a long relationship that is coming to an end after years of slow stagnation. Musically the tune is quiet and contemplative, with a loose structure that has more in common with the cool jazz of Miles Davis than either folk or rock.
   
Artist:    Flies
Title:    Winter Afternoon
Source:    British import CD: Love, Poetry & Revolution
Writer(s):    Peter Dunton
Label:    Grapefruit
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 2013
    The Flies were an obscure British pyschedelic band best known for covering the audience with exploding bags of flour at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream happening in 1967. Toward the end of their run they were joined by vocalist Peter Dunton, who wrote both sides of a failed single for the RCA label in 1968. Later in the year Dunton and the band recorded Winter Afternoon. Although it was quite possibly their best work, it went unreleased until 2013, when it was included on Grapefruit's psychedelic anthology Love, Poetry & Revolution.

Artist:    Aardvarks
Title:    Subconscious Train Of Thought
Source:    Mono CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Borman/Daley/Newman/Wee
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Arch)
Year:    1968
    Not much is known about the Aardvarks other than they were reportedly from Florissant, Missouri. Their only known single was a track called Subconscious Train Of Thought that was released in 1968 on the St. Louis based Arch Records. Interestingly, the record lists Memphis Group guitarist Steve Cropper as co-producer.

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    I'm A Man
Source:    Mono LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Miller
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1967
    The Spencer Davis Group, featuring Steve and Muff Winwood, was one of the UK's most successful white R&B bands of the sixties, cranking out a steady stream of hit singles. Two of them, the iconic Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man, were also major hits in the US, the latter being the last song to feature the Winwood brothers. Muff Winwood became a successful record producer. The group itself continued on for several years, but were never able to duplicate their earlier successes. As for Steve Winwood, he quickly faded off into obscurity, never to be heard from again. Except as the leader of Traffic. And a member of Blind Faith. And Traffic again. And some critically-acclaimed collaborations in the early 1980s with Asian musicians. Oh yeah, and a few major solo hits (Higher Love, Roll With It...that kinda thing) in the late 80s. Other than that, nothing.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The Crystal Ship
Source:    45 RPM single B side (European reissue of Japanese single)
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    One of the most popular B sides ever released, The Crystal Ship is a slow moody piece with vivid lyrical images. The mono mix of the song sounds a bit different from the more commonly-heard stereo version. Not only is the mix itself a bit hotter, it is also a touch faster. This is due to an error in the mastering of the stereo version of the first Doors LP that resulted in the entire album running at a 3.5% slower speed than it was originally recorded. This discrepancy went unnoticed for over 40 years, until a college professor pointed out that every recorded live performance of Light My Fire was in a key that was about half a step higher than the stereo studio version.

Artist:    Show Stoppers
Title:    If You Want To, Why Don't You
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    W.E. Hjerpe
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    The Show Stoppers were a Rochester, NY based club band that included Don Potter and Bat McGrath, who would go on to release an album together on the Epic label in 1969. The Show Stoppers were discovered by John Hammond in 1967 and signed to the Columbia label, where they released two singles. Although three of the tracks would best be described as danceable pop music, the A side of their second single, If You Want To, Why Don't You, had more of a garage-rock sound, and has appeared on at least one garage-rock compilation. Both Potter and McGrath now reside in Nashville, where Potter became well-known as the creator of the "Judds sound" in the 1980s. Special thanks to Tom at the Bop Shop in Rochester (a record store that specializes in vinyl) for making this record available to me.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Obviously 5 Believers
Source:    Mono LP: Blonde On Blonde
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1966
    The earliest music recordings were made to be played through a single speaker (well, technically a big horn in the early days). Despite various advances in technology, this remained the case for half a century, until, in the 1950s, various engineers came up with a couple of ways to record in stereo (tape and stereo vinyl). Still, for a good ten years after stereo became commercially available, monoraul was still the industry standard for most recordings, with stereo mixes often created as an afterthought. This was literally the case with the 1966 Bob Dylan album Blonde On Blonde. Producer Bob Johnston says that they worked on the mono mix of the album for three or four days. At some point, one of the engineers reminded Johnston that they also needed to do a stereo mix. It took them about four hours. Nonetheless, for many years the only version of Blonde On Blonde available for sale was the stereo version, with the mono mix finally being reissued on vinyl in 2003. The album itself is considered one of Dylan's best, and has historical significance as the first double-LP to be released by a popular contemporary artist. One of the most overlooked songs on the album is Obviously 5 Believers, which closes out side three of the album. Dylan himself did not feel the need to spend much time on it, calling it "very easy", and the entire track was finished in four takes. Personally, I find it to be one of my favorite Dylan tracks. Oddly enough, Dylan does not play his own harmonica on the piece; it's actually the work of Charlie McCoy, with Robbie Robertson on guitar and Ken Buttrey on drums.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Let's Spend The Night Together
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    I seem to recall some TV show (Ed Sullivan, maybe?) making Mick Jagger change the words of Let's Spend The Night Together to "Let's Spend Some Time Together". I can't imagine anyone doing that to the Stones now.

Artist:    Pretty Things
Title:    Walking Through My Dreams
Source:    Mono British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    May/Taylor/Waller
Label:    EMI (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    Like the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things were a product of London's somewhat rough and tumble blue collar neighborhoods, and in their early years played a similar mix of early rock 'n' roll and R&B cover tunes. By 1967, however, the band had embraced psychedelia far more than the Stones, even to the point of rivalling Pink Floyd for the unofficial title of Britain's leading psychedelic band. A case in point is Walking Though My Dreams, released in 1967 as the B side to the equally psychedelic Talkin' About The Good Times. For some reason, however, the Pretty Things never had the success in the US that the Stones (or even Pink Floyd) enjoyed.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    Shotgun
Source:    Mono CD: The Complete Atco Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Autry DeWalt
Label:    Real Gone Music/Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
           For their fourth LP, Vanilla Fudge returned to the formula that they found their original success with for the album Near The Beginning. Whereas their third LP, Renaissance, contained mostly original material, Near The Beginning was dominated by an extended version of the Junior Walker hit Shotgun. The single version of the song, which the group performed on the Ed Sullivan show, was the group's last song to hit the Billboard top 100, peaking at # 68. According to drummer Carmine Appice, it was the Vanilla Fudge version of Shotgun that convinced Jeff Beck to later form a band with Appice and bassist Tim Bogert.
       
Artist:    Orange Wedge
Title:    From The Womb To The Tomb
Source:    Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    L.S.P.
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Blue Flat Ownsley Memorial)
Year:    1968
    Recorded in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1968, From The Womb To The Tomb was the only single from Orange Wedge, a forerunner of more famous Michigan bands such as the Stooges and the MC5.

Artist:    Procol Harum
Title:    Lime Street Blues
Source:    Mono British import CD: Procol Harum
Writer(s):    Brooker/Reid
Label:    Salvo/Fly (original label: Deram)
Year:    1967
    Anyone expecting more of the same when flipping over their new copy of A Whiter Shade Of Pale got a big surprise when they heard Lime Street Blues. The song, reminiscent of an early Ray Charles track, was strong enough to be included on their first greatest hits collection, no mean feat for a B side.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Bringing Me Down
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (also released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Balin/Kantner
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    One of several singles released mainly to San Francisco Bay area radio stations and record stores, Bringing Me Down is an early collaboration between vocalist Marty Balin and guitarist/vocalist Paul Kantner. Balin had invited Kantner into the band without having heard him play a single note. It turned out to be one of many right-on-the-money decisions by the young bandleader.
   
Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     Volunteers
Source:     CD: Volunteers
Writer:     Balin/Kantner
Label:     BMG/RCA
Year:     1969
     By 1969 Jefferson Airplane's music was a staple of progressive FM stations but had all but disappeared from the top 40 charts. Still, the band continued to release singles from their albums, including the title track to their fifth (and final with the classic JA lineup) LP, Volunteers.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Tobacco Road
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    John D. Loudermilk
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    In their early days Jefferson Airplane, like most of their contemporaries, included several cover tunes in their repertoire. Unlike many other bands, however, the Airplane managed to stamp all of their covers with their own unmistakable sound. One excellent example of this is the Airplane's version of Tobacco Road, a song by John D. Loudermilk that had been a hit for the British invasion band Nashville Teens in 1964. The Airplane version, which appears on their debut LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, takes an entirely different approach than the Teens' rendition (or the similarly styled Blues Magoos version recorded around the same time as the Airplane's), laying off the power chords in favor of a jazzier approach more in tune with guitarist Jorma Kaukonen's style of playing.

Artist:     Barry McGuire
Title:     Eve of Destruction
Source:     CD: Songs Of Protest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     P.F. Sloan
Label:     Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:     1965
     P.F. Sloan had already established a reputation for writing songs that captured the anger of youth by the time he wrote Eve Of Destruction, which Barry McGuire took into the top 10 in 1965. It would be McGuire's only major hit, and represented folk-rock at the peak of its popularity.

Artist:    Count Five
Title:    Psychotic Reaction
Source:    Mono CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michalski
Label:    Priority (original label: Double Shot)
Year:    1966
    San Jose, California, was home to one of the most vibrant local music scenes in the late 60s, despite its relatively  small, pre-silicon valley population. One of the most popular bands on that scene was Count Five, a group of five guys who dressed like Bela Lugosi's Dracula and sounded like the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds. Fortunately for Count Five, Jeff Beck had just left the Yardbirds when Psychotic Reaction came out, leaving a hole that the boys from San Jose were more than happy to fill.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    The Wind Blows Your Hair
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Saxon/Bigelow
Label:    Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1967
    The Wind Blows Your Hair is actually one of the Seeds' better tracks. Unfortunately, by the time it was released the whole concept of Flower Power (which the Seeds were intimately tied to) had become yesterday's news and the single went nowhere.

Artist:    Tangerine Zoo
Title:    Nature's Children
Source:    CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released on LP: Tangerine Zoo)
Writer(s):    Medeiros/Smith
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Many of the acts signed to Bob Shad's Mainstream label are considered by rock historians to be somewhat lacking in one or another categories, such as songwriting, virtuosity or just plain commercial viability. This has resulted in the reputations of the few quality bands appearing on the label to be somewhat unfairly tarnished by association. One of those bands that really deserves a second look is the Tangerine Zoo, from Swansea, Mass., a few miles south of Boston. The band, made up of Tony Taviera (bass), Wayne Gagnon (guitar), Ron Medieros(organ), Bob Benevides (lead vocals) and Donald Smith (drums), recorded two albums for the label, both of which were released in 1968. Tangerine Zoo had actually been approached by no less than two major labels (RCA Victor and Mercury) before deciding to go with Mainstream, the only label to offer them an album contract from the start. Unfortunately internal issues caused the Zoo to close down before they could record a third LP.

Artist:     Grateful Dead
Title:     St. Stephen
Source:     CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: Aoxomoxoa)
Writer(s):     Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label:     Warner Brothers
Year:     1969
     One of the Grateful Dead's most recognizable tunes is St. Stephen, written by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter. The song first appeared on the 1969 album Aoxomoxoa, and remained in the Grateful Dead stage repertoire for pretty much their entire existence.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    The Wizard
Source:    LP: Black Sabbath
Writer:    Osborne/Iommi/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    Often cited as the first true heavy metal album, Black Sabbath's debut LP features one of my all-time favorite album covers (check out the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era Facebook page) as well as several outstanding tracks. One of the best of these is The Wizard, which was reportedly inspired by the Gandalf character from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Stranger In A Strange Land
Source:    CD: Turn! Turn! Turn! (bonus track)
Writer(s):    David Crosby
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1965, released 1996
    One thing David Crosby and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn of the Byrds shared was a love of science fiction. Crosby borrowed the title of Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land for a song that was released by the San Francisco folk-rock duo Blackburn & Snow in 1967. The Byrds themselves had gotten as far as laying down basic instrumental tracks for the song two years earlier, but never got around to recording vocals for the song.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Kicks
Source:    Rechanneled Stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released on 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Priority (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1966
    Kicks was not the first pop song with a strong anti-drug message, but it was the first one to be a certified hit, making it to the number four spot on the US charts and hitting number one in Canada. It was also the biggest hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders until Indian Reservation went all the way to the top of the charts five years later.

Artist:    Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title:    Winds Of Change
Source:    CD: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals (original released on LP: Winds Of Change)
Writer(s):    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1967
    The new Animals first album was Winds of Change, an ambitious album that gave writing credit to all five band members for all the tracks on the album (with the exception of a cover of Paint It Black). The opening track is basically Eric Burdon paying tribute to all his musical heroes, and it's quite an impressive list, including jazz and blues greats as well as some of the most important names in the annals of rock and roll.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    Baroque # 1
Source:    LP: Ultimate Spinach (promo copy)
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    Of the six major US record labels of the time, only two, Decca and M-G-M, failed to sign any San Francisco bands in the late 1960s. Decca, which had been bought by MCA in the early 60s, was fast fading as a major force in the industry (ironic considering that Universal, the direct descendant of MCA, is now the world's largest record company). M-G-M, on the other hand, had a strong presence on the Greenwich Village scene thanks to Jerry Schoenbaum at the Verve Forecast label, who had signed such critically-acclaimed artists as Dave Van Ronk, Tim Hardin and the Blues Project. Taking this as an inspiration, the parent label decided to create interest in the Boston music scene, aggressively promoting (some would say hyping) the "Boss-Town Sound". One of the bands signed was Ultimate Spinach, which was led by keyboardist Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote all the band's material, including the instrumental Baroque # 1.

Artist:    SRC
Title:    Up All Night
Source:    Mono import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and on LP: Milestones)
Writer(s):    Clawson/Richardson/Quackenbush/Lyman/Quackenbush
Label:    Zonophone UK (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    Stylistic and regional contemporaries of bands such as the MC5 and the Amboy Dukes, SRC were formed in 1965 as the Tremelos, soon changing their name to the Fugitives and releasing four singles and an album on various local Detroit labels. They released their first records under the name SRC in 1967, a pair of singles for the A[squared] label, which led to a contract with Capitol that resulted in one album per year from 1968-70. The most successful of these was the 1969 LP Milestones, which included the single Turn Into Love and its B side, Up All Night. After being dropped from the Capitol roster the group continued on for a couple more years, releasing a final single under the name Blue Scepter for Rare Earth Records in 1972.

Artist:    Joni Mitchell
Title:    The Priest
Source:    LP: Ladies Of The Canyon
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1970
    Joni Mitchell continued to develop her songwriting skills with her third album, Ladies Of The Canyon. The album title refers to southern California's Laurel Canyon, where Mitchell was spending much of her time in 1970. The Priest is one of those songs that I find appealing, but for the life of me I can't pin down why. This week's show starts with sets from 1967 and 1968, but soon becomes a series of journeys covering several years. There's also an Airplane set hidden in there somewhere.

Artist:    First Edition
Title:    Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source:    CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Mickey Newbury
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle wrote most of the songs on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Within You Without You
Source:    British import LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone/EMI
Year:    1967
    George Harrison began to take an interest in the Sitar as early as 1965. By 1966 he had become proficient enough on the Indian instrument to compose and record Love You To for the Revolver album. He followed that up with perhaps his most popular sitar-based track, Within You Without You, which opens side two of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Harrison would record one more similarly-styled song, The Inner Light, in 1968, before deciding that he was never going to be in the same league as Ravi Shankar, whom Harrison had become friends with by that time. For the remainder of his time with the Beatles Harrison would concentrate on his guitar work and songwriting skills, resulting in classic songs such as While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Something and Here Comes The Sun.

Artist:     Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:     Third Stone From The Sun
Source:     CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1967
     Jimi Hendrix once stated that he was far more comfortable as a guitarist than as a vocalist, at least in the early days of the Experience. In that case, he was certainly in his element for his classic instrumental from the Are You Experienced? album, Third Stone From The Sun. The train sequence at the end of the track, incidentally, was done entirely on guitar.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Look (Song For The Children)/Child Is Father To The Man
Source:    LP: The Smile Sessions
Writer(s):    Wilson/Parks
Label:    Capitol
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2011
    In 2004 Brian Wilson released Smile, the culmination of a project that went back nearly 40 years. Smile had begun as the projected follow up to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, with recording for the new album beginning in 1966. Due to a number of reasons the project was suspended in 1967, and a much less ambitious LP called Smiley Smile appeared in its place. For the rest of the 20th century Smile was little more than a legend, surrounded by rumours concerning the disposition of the material that had been recorded before the project was dropped. In the early 1990s some of the tapes resurfaced and were issued as part of the Beach Boys 30th anniversary box set. Still, these were only fragments, without any real sense of how they were meant to be presented on the original album. Finally, with the release of Brian Wilson's all new recordings of much of the same material, there was a template that could be used as a guideline for assembling the original album. Some elements, such as Carl Wilson's backing vocals on tracks like Child Is Father To The Man were actually recorded after the project itself was cancelled and used on later Beach Boys albums. Nonetheless, The Smile Sessions is probably the closest thing we'll ever hear to the original Smile album.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Overs
Source:    LP: Bookends
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Originally written for (but not used in) the film The Graduate, Overs is the middle part of a series of songs on side one of the Bookends album that follow the cycle of life from childhood to old age. The song deals with a long relationship that is coming to an end after years of slow stagnation. Musically the tune is quiet and contemplative, with a loose structure that has more in common with the cool jazz of Miles Davis than either folk or rock.
   
Artist:    Flies
Title:    Winter Afternoon
Source:    British import CD: Love, Poetry & Revolution
Writer(s):    Peter Dunton
Label:    Grapefruit
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 2013
    The Flies were an obscure British pyschedelic band best known for covering the audience with exploding bags of flour at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream happening in 1967. Toward the end of their run they were joined by vocalist Peter Dunton, who wrote both sides of a failed single for the RCA label in 1968. Later in the year Dunton and the band recorded Winter Afternoon. Although it was quite possibly their best work, it went unreleased until 2013, when it was included on Grapefruit's psychedelic anthology Love, Poetry & Revolution.

Artist:    Aardvarks
Title:    Subconscious Train Of Thought
Source:    Mono CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Borman/Daley/Newman/Wee
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Arch)
Year:    1968
    Not much is known about the Aardvarks other than they were reportedly from Florissant, Missouri. Their only known single was a track called Subconscious Train Of Thought that was released in 1968 on the St. Louis based Arch Records. Interestingly, the record lists Memphis Group guitarist Steve Cropper as co-producer.

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    I'm A Man
Source:    Mono LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Miller
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1967
    The Spencer Davis Group, featuring Steve and Muff Winwood, was one of the UK's most successful white R&B bands of the sixties, cranking out a steady stream of hit singles. Two of them, the iconic Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man, were also major hits in the US, the latter being the last song to feature the Winwood brothers. Muff Winwood became a successful record producer. The group itself continued on for several years, but were never able to duplicate their earlier successes. As for Steve Winwood, he quickly faded off into obscurity, never to be heard from again. Except as the leader of Traffic. And a member of Blind Faith. And Traffic again. And some critically-acclaimed collaborations in the early 1980s with Asian musicians. Oh yeah, and a few major solo hits (Higher Love, Roll With It...that kinda thing) in the late 80s. Other than that, nothing.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The Crystal Ship
Source:    45 RPM single B side (European reissue of Japanese single)
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    One of the most popular B sides ever released, The Crystal Ship is a slow moody piece with vivid lyrical images. The mono mix of the song sounds a bit different from the more commonly-heard stereo version. Not only is the mix itself a bit hotter, it is also a touch faster. This is due to an error in the mastering of the stereo version of the first Doors LP that resulted in the entire album running at a 3.5% slower speed than it was originally recorded. This discrepancy went unnoticed for over 40 years, until a college professor pointed out that every recorded live performance of Light My Fire was in a key that was about half a step higher than the stereo studio version.

Artist:    Show Stoppers
Title:    If You Want To, Why Don't You
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    W.E. Hjerpe
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    The Show Stoppers were a Rochester, NY based club band that included Don Potter and Bat McGrath, who would go on to release an album together on the Epic label in 1969. The Show Stoppers were discovered by John Hammond in 1967 and signed to the Columbia label, where they released two singles. Although three of the tracks would best be described as danceable pop music, the A side of their second single, If You Want To, Why Don't You, had more of a garage-rock sound, and has appeared on at least one garage-rock compilation. Both Potter and McGrath now reside in Nashville, where Potter became well-known as the creator of the "Judds sound" in the 1980s. Special thanks to Tom at the Bop Shop in Rochester (a record store that specializes in vinyl) for making this record available to me.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Obviously 5 Believers
Source:    Mono LP: Blonde On Blonde
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1966
    The earliest music recordings were made to be played through a single speaker (well, technically a big horn in the early days). Despite various advances in technology, this remained the case for half a century, until, in the 1950s, various engineers came up with a couple of ways to record in stereo (tape and stereo vinyl). Still, for a good ten years after stereo became commercially available, monoraul was still the industry standard for most recordings, with stereo mixes often created as an afterthought. This was literally the case with the 1966 Bob Dylan album Blonde On Blonde. Producer Bob Johnston says that they worked on the mono mix of the album for three or four days. At some point, one of the engineers reminded Johnston that they also needed to do a stereo mix. It took them about four hours. Nonetheless, for many years the only version of Blonde On Blonde available for sale was the stereo version, with the mono mix finally being reissued on vinyl in 2003. The album itself is considered one of Dylan's best, and has historical significance as the first double-LP to be released by a popular contemporary artist. One of the most overlooked songs on the album is Obviously 5 Believers, which closes out side three of the album. Dylan himself did not feel the need to spend much time on it, calling it "very easy", and the entire track was finished in four takes. Personally, I find it to be one of my favorite Dylan tracks. Oddly enough, Dylan does not play his own harmonica on the piece; it's actually the work of Charlie McCoy, with Robbie Robertson on guitar and Ken Buttrey on drums.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Let's Spend The Night Together
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    I seem to recall some TV show (Ed Sullivan, maybe?) making Mick Jagger change the words of Let's Spend The Night Together to "Let's Spend Some Time Together". I can't imagine anyone doing that to the Stones now.

Artist:    Pretty Things
Title:    Walking Through My Dreams
Source:    Mono British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    May/Taylor/Waller
Label:    EMI (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    Like the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things were a product of London's somewhat rough and tumble blue collar neighborhoods, and in their early years played a similar mix of early rock 'n' roll and R&B cover tunes. By 1967, however, the band had embraced psychedelia far more than the Stones, even to the point of rivalling Pink Floyd for the unofficial title of Britain's leading psychedelic band. A case in point is Walking Though My Dreams, released in 1967 as the B side to the equally psychedelic Talkin' About The Good Times. For some reason, however, the Pretty Things never had the success in the US that the Stones (or even Pink Floyd) enjoyed.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    Shotgun
Source:    Mono CD: The Complete Atco Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Autry DeWalt
Label:    Real Gone Music/Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
           For their fourth LP, Vanilla Fudge returned to the formula that they found their original success with for the album Near The Beginning. Whereas their third LP, Renaissance, contained mostly original material, Near The Beginning was dominated by an extended version of the Junior Walker hit Shotgun. The single version of the song, which the group performed on the Ed Sullivan show, was the group's last song to hit the Billboard top 100, peaking at # 68. According to drummer Carmine Appice, it was the Vanilla Fudge version of Shotgun that convinced Jeff Beck to later form a band with Appice and bassist Tim Bogert.
       
Artist:    Orange Wedge
Title:    From The Womb To The Tomb
Source:    Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    L.S.P.
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Blue Flat Ownsley Memorial)
Year:    1968
    Recorded in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1968, From The Womb To The Tomb was the only single from Orange Wedge, a forerunner of more famous Michigan bands such as the Stooges and the MC5.

Artist:    Procol Harum
Title:    Lime Street Blues
Source:    Mono British import CD: Procol Harum
Writer(s):    Brooker/Reid
Label:    Salvo/Fly (original label: Deram)
Year:    1967
    Anyone expecting more of the same when flipping over their new copy of A Whiter Shade Of Pale got a big surprise when they heard Lime Street Blues. The song, reminiscent of an early Ray Charles track, was strong enough to be included on their first greatest hits collection, no mean feat for a B side.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Bringing Me Down
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (also released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Balin/Kantner
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    One of several singles released mainly to San Francisco Bay area radio stations and record stores, Bringing Me Down is an early collaboration between vocalist Marty Balin and guitarist/vocalist Paul Kantner. Balin had invited Kantner into the band without having heard him play a single note. It turned out to be one of many right-on-the-money decisions by the young bandleader.
   
Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     Volunteers
Source:     CD: Volunteers
Writer:     Balin/Kantner
Label:     BMG/RCA
Year:     1969
     By 1969 Jefferson Airplane's music was a staple of progressive FM stations but had all but disappeared from the top 40 charts. Still, the band continued to release singles from their albums, including the title track to their fifth (and final with the classic JA lineup) LP, Volunteers.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Tobacco Road
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    John D. Loudermilk
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    In their early days Jefferson Airplane, like most of their contemporaries, included several cover tunes in their repertoire. Unlike many other bands, however, the Airplane managed to stamp all of their covers with their own unmistakable sound. One excellent example of this is the Airplane's version of Tobacco Road, a song by John D. Loudermilk that had been a hit for the British invasion band Nashville Teens in 1964. The Airplane version, which appears on their debut LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, takes an entirely different approach than the Teens' rendition (or the similarly styled Blues Magoos version recorded around the same time as the Airplane's), laying off the power chords in favor of a jazzier approach more in tune with guitarist Jorma Kaukonen's style of playing.

Artist:     Barry McGuire
Title:     Eve of Destruction
Source:     CD: Songs Of Protest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     P.F. Sloan
Label:     Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:     1965
     P.F. Sloan had already established a reputation for writing songs that captured the anger of youth by the time he wrote Eve Of Destruction, which Barry McGuire took into the top 10 in 1965. It would be McGuire's only major hit, and represented folk-rock at the peak of its popularity.

Artist:    Count Five
Title:    Psychotic Reaction
Source:    Mono CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michalski
Label:    Priority (original label: Double Shot)
Year:    1966
    San Jose, California, was home to one of the most vibrant local music scenes in the late 60s, despite its relatively  small, pre-silicon valley population. One of the most popular bands on that scene was Count Five, a group of five guys who dressed like Bela Lugosi's Dracula and sounded like the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds. Fortunately for Count Five, Jeff Beck had just left the Yardbirds when Psychotic Reaction came out, leaving a hole that the boys from San Jose were more than happy to fill.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    The Wind Blows Your Hair
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Saxon/Bigelow
Label:    Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1967
    The Wind Blows Your Hair is actually one of the Seeds' better tracks. Unfortunately, by the time it was released the whole concept of Flower Power (which the Seeds were intimately tied to) had become yesterday's news and the single went nowhere.

Artist:    Tangerine Zoo
Title:    Nature's Children
Source:    CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released on LP: Tangerine Zoo)
Writer(s):    Medeiros/Smith
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Many of the acts signed to Bob Shad's Mainstream label are considered by rock historians to be somewhat lacking in one or another categories, such as songwriting, virtuosity or just plain commercial viability. This has resulted in the reputations of the few quality bands appearing on the label to be somewhat unfairly tarnished by association. One of those bands that really deserves a second look is the Tangerine Zoo, from Swansea, Mass., a few miles south of Boston. The band, made up of Tony Taviera (bass), Wayne Gagnon (guitar), Ron Medieros(organ), Bob Benevides (lead vocals) and Donald Smith (drums), recorded two albums for the label, both of which were released in 1968. Tangerine Zoo had actually been approached by no less than two major labels (RCA Victor and Mercury) before deciding to go with Mainstream, the only label to offer them an album contract from the start. Unfortunately internal issues caused the Zoo to close down before they could record a third LP.

Artist:     Grateful Dead
Title:     St. Stephen
Source:     CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: Aoxomoxoa)
Writer(s):     Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label:     Warner Brothers
Year:     1969
     One of the Grateful Dead's most recognizable tunes is St. Stephen, written by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter. The song first appeared on the 1969 album Aoxomoxoa, and remained in the Grateful Dead stage repertoire for pretty much their entire existence.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    The Wizard
Source:    LP: Black Sabbath
Writer:    Osborne/Iommi/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    Often cited as the first true heavy metal album, Black Sabbath's debut LP features one of my all-time favorite album covers (check out the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era Facebook page) as well as several outstanding tracks. One of the best of these is The Wizard, which was reportedly inspired by the Gandalf character from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Stranger In A Strange Land
Source:    CD: Turn! Turn! Turn! (bonus track)
Writer(s):    David Crosby
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1965, released 1996
    One thing David Crosby and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn of the Byrds shared was a love of science fiction. Crosby borrowed the title of Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land for a song that was released by the San Francisco folk-rock duo Blackburn & Snow in 1967. The Byrds themselves had gotten as far as laying down basic instrumental tracks for the song two years earlier, but never got around to recording vocals for the song.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Kicks
Source:    Rechanneled Stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released on 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Priority (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1966
    Kicks was not the first pop song with a strong anti-drug message, but it was the first one to be a certified hit, making it to the number four spot on the US charts and hitting number one in Canada. It was also the biggest hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders until Indian Reservation went all the way to the top of the charts five years later.

Artist:    Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title:    Winds Of Change
Source:    CD: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals (original released on LP: Winds Of Change)
Writer(s):    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1967
    The new Animals first album was Winds of Change, an ambitious album that gave writing credit to all five band members for all the tracks on the album (with the exception of a cover of Paint It Black). The opening track is basically Eric Burdon paying tribute to all his musical heroes, and it's quite an impressive list, including jazz and blues greats as well as some of the most important names in the annals of rock and roll.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    Baroque # 1
Source:    LP: Ultimate Spinach (promo copy)
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    Of the six major US record labels of the time, only two, Decca and M-G-M, failed to sign any San Francisco bands in the late 1960s. Decca, which had been bought by MCA in the early 60s, was fast fading as a major force in the industry (ironic considering that Universal, the direct descendant of MCA, is now the world's largest record company). M-G-M, on the other hand, had a strong presence on the Greenwich Village scene thanks to Jerry Schoenbaum at the Verve Forecast label, who had signed such critically-acclaimed artists as Dave Van Ronk, Tim Hardin and the Blues Project. Taking this as an inspiration, the parent label decided to create interest in the Boston music scene, aggressively promoting (some would say hyping) the "Boss-Town Sound". One of the bands signed was Ultimate Spinach, which was led by keyboardist Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote all the band's material, including the instrumental Baroque # 1.

Artist:    SRC
Title:    Up All Night
Source:    Mono import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and on LP: Milestones)
Writer(s):    Clawson/Richardson/Quackenbush/Lyman/Quackenbush
Label:    Zonophone UK (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    Stylistic and regional contemporaries of bands such as the MC5 and the Amboy Dukes, SRC were formed in 1965 as the Tremelos, soon changing their name to the Fugitives and releasing four singles and an album on various local Detroit labels. They released their first records under the name SRC in 1967, a pair of singles for the A[squared] label, which led to a contract with Capitol that resulted in one album per year from 1968-70. The most successful of these was the 1969 LP Milestones, which included the single Turn Into Love and its B side, Up All Night. After being dropped from the Capitol roster the group continued on for a couple more years, releasing a final single under the name Blue Scepter for Rare Earth Records in 1972.

Artist:    Joni Mitchell
Title:    The Priest
Source:    LP: Ladies Of The Canyon
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1970
    Joni Mitchell continued to develop her songwriting skills with her third album, Ladies Of The Canyon. The album title refers to southern California's Laurel Canyon, where Mitchell was spending much of her time in 1970. The Priest is one of those songs that I find appealing, but for the life of me I can't pin down why.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1748 (starts 11/29/17)

The show is broken into four sets this week: a 1971 set, a 1969 set, a freeform blues-rock set and a pair of nice tunes to wrap it all up..................................................

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Seamus
Source:    CD: Meddle
Writer:    Waters/Wright/Mason/Gilmour
Label:    Pink Floyd Records (original label: Harvest)
Year:    1971
    After spending several months on the concept album Atom Heart Mother, the members of Pink Floyd decided to lighten things up a bit for their next album, Meddle. Stylistically, Meddle probably has the most variety of any Pink Floyd album, ranging from the driving rocker One Of These Days, to the acoustic blues tune Seamus. The latter song is best played loud, preferably with at least one dog in the room with you.

Artist:    Mountain
Title:    The Animal Trainer And The Toad
Source:    LP: Nantucket Sleighride
Writer(s):    West/Palmer
Label:    Windfall/Bell
Year:    1971
    Mountain hit their commercial and creative peak with the 1971 album Nantucket Sleighride. The album is full of outstanding tracks, including the side two opener, The Animal Trainer And The Toad.

Artist:    Full Tilt Boogie Band
Title:    Buried Alive In The Blues
Source:    LP: Pearl (Janis Joplin album)
Writer(s):    Nick Gravenites
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1971
    The Full Tillt Boogie Band was formed in the late 60s as a side project by New York studio guitarist John Till. All the members, including Till, pianist Richard Bell, bassist Brad Campbell, drummer Clark Pierson, and organist Ken Pearson were Canadian citizens, mostly hailing from the province of Ontario. In 1969, Till, along with several other studio musicians, were tapped to become Janis Joplin's Kozmic Blues Band, backing up the vocalist on her solo debut album. Joplin, however, was not entirely comfortable with all the members of this new band, and after the album itself got mostly negative reviews from critics and fans alike, Joplin decided to disband the group, keeping only Till. Till then convinced her to use the Full Tilt Boogie Band (dropped the second "L" in Tillt) for her next album, Pearl. The new combo started touring in the spring of 1970, beginning work on the album itself that September. At the time of Joplin's sudden death on October 4, 1970, the band had completed all the basic tracks for the album; only one song, Buried Alive In The Blues, lacked a usable vocal track. Although Nick Gravenites, the Electric Flag veteran who had written the tune, offered to provide vocals for the track, the band decided to keep it an instrumental instead.

Artist:    Beau
Title:    Creation
Source:    British import CD: Love, Poetry & Revolution (originally released on LP: Creation)
Writer(s):    Trevor Midgley
Label:    Grapefruit (original label: Dandelion)
Year:    1971
    "When I wrote the songs for Creation, my mind was in a strange place." These are the words of John Trevor, better known as Trevor Midgley, the first person to release a record (a single called 1917 Revolution) on John Peel's Dandelion label (in 1969). Trevor went on to record a pair of LPs for Dandelion, the second of which was Creation, credited to Beau (which was basically Trevor plus labelmates The Way We Live, a band that would eventually come to be known as Tractor). The piece sounds to me like the intro to something heavier, but it never quite seems to get there.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Nothing Is Easy
Source:    LP: The Big Ball (originally released on LP: Stand Up)
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Warner Brothers (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1969
    Not long after the release of the first Jethro Tull album, guitarist Mick Abrahams, who was a blues enthusiast, left the group due to musical differences with lead vocalist/flautist Ian Anderson, who favored a more eclectic approach to songwriting. Abrahams's replacement was Martin Barre, who remains a member of the group to this day. One of the first songs recorded with Barre is Nothing Is Easy, a blues rocker that opens side two of the band's second LP, Stand Up. More than any other track on Stand Up, Nothing Is Easy sounds like it could have been an outtake from This Was, the band's debut LP.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Just A Passin' Fancy In A Midnight Dream
Source:    LP: Your Saving Grace
Writer(s):    Miller/Sidran
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    1969 was a bit of a transition year for the Steve Miller Band. Guitarist/vocalist Boz Scaggs and keyboardist Jim Peterman had both left the band, to be replaced by keyboardist Ben Sidran, along with British session whiz Nicky Hopkins on piano. Sidran, in addition to his keyboard work, was a prolific songwriter, and he and Miller wrote several songs together for the album Your Saving Grace, including the somehow creepy sounding Just A Passin' Fancy In A Midnight Dream.

Artist:     Beatles
Title:     Abbey Road Medley #2
Source:     CD: Abbey Road
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Parlophone
Year:     1969
     The Beatles had been experimenting with songs leading into other songs since the Sgt. Pepper's album. With Abbey Road they took it a step further, with side two of the album containing two such medleys. The second one consists of Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End, with Her Majesty (not included on this week's show) tossed in as a kind of "hidden" track at the end of the album. The End is somewhat unique in that it features solos by all three guitar-playing members of the band, as well as the only Ringo Starr drum solo to appear on a Beatles album.

Artist:    Love Sculpture
Title:    The Stumble
Source:    British import CD: Blues Helping
Writer(s):    King/Thompson
Label:    EMI (original US label: Rare Earth)
Year:    1968
    Most people associate the name Dave Edmunds with his hit version of I Hear You Knockin' from the early 1970s. What many don't know, however, is that Edmunds was first and foremost a smokin' hot blues guitarist, as can be heard on the opening track of the first of two albums he recorded with bassist John Williams and drummer Congo Jones as Love Sculpture. Like most of the songs on Blues Helping, The Stumble is a cover of a blues classic, in this case written and originally recorded by Freddie King in 1961 and released as a single the following year.

Artist:    Johnny Winter
Title:    Be Careful With A Fool
Source:    British import CD: Johnny Winter
Writer(s):    King/Josea
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    Johnny Winter's first album for Columbia (his second overall) is nothing less than a blues masterpiece. Accompanied by bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Uncle John Turner, Winter pours his soul into classics like B.B. King's Be Careful With A Fool, possibly even improving on the original (if such a thing is even possible at all).

Artist:      Grand Funk Railroad
Title:     Mr. Limousine Driver
Source:      CD: Heavy Hitters! (originally released on LP: Grand Funk)
Writer:    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:     1969
     When Grand Funk Railroad first appeared on the scene they were universally panned by the rock press (much as Kiss would be a few years later). Despite this, they managed to set attendance records across the nation and were instrumental to establishing sports arenas as the venue of choice for 70s rock bands. One of their earliest favorites was Mr. Limousine Driver, a possibly true story from their second LP, Grand Funk (also known as the Red Album). Like most of the band's early material, Mr. Limousine Driver was written by vocalist/guitarist Mark Farner.

Artist:     Jo Jo Gunne
Title:     99 Days
Source:     LP: Jo Jo Gunne
Writer:     Jay Ferguson
Label:     Asylum
Year:     1972
     After the commercial disappointment of The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus in 1971, vocalist Jay Ferguson and bass player Mark Andes left Spirit to form a new band, Jo Jo Gunne. Lead guitarist Matt Andes provided a much heavier rock sound than Spirit's Randy California, who had strong jazz roots. The result was a band that sometimes sounded like a heavier version of Spirit, which was natural, since Ferguson had served as Spirit's primary songwriter throughout his tenure with the band. 99 Days, which opens side two of Jo Jo Gunne's first album, was selected as a follow up single to Run Run Run. Both songs got a decent amount of airplay on FM rock radio, which at the time had a more or less free-form format and did not report their playlists (which varied from station to station and even from DJ to DJ) to the national charts.

Artist:    Joe Walsh
Title:    Rocky Mountain Way
Source:    LP: The Best Of Joe Walsh (originally released on LP: The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get)
Writer(s):    Joe Walsh
Label:    ABC
Year:    1973
    Those who wondered just who Joe Walsh was when he joined the Eagles in 1977 (yes, there were one or two), needed only to listen to a few bars of Rocky Mountain Way to recognize one of the most distinctive vocalist/guitarists in the world of rock. The song appeared on Walsh's second LP, The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get, getting extensive airplay on both AM and FM stations, propelling the album into the top 10. Walsh was already familiar to many radio listeners for his work with the James Gang, appearing on their first three albums. Walsh has floated several stories over the years as to the inspiration for Rocky Mountain Way, the most picturesque being that he was mowing his lawn in Colorado when he looked up and saw snow on the mountains in the middle of summer and realized that living that close to the Rockies beat the hell out of living in Cleveland.

Artist:    Crosby, Stills And Nash
Title:    Wooden Ships
Source:    CD: Crosby, Stills And Nash
Writer(s):    Crosby/Stills/Kantner
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    Among the various legendary characters on the late 60s San Francisco music scene, none is more reviled than Matthew Katz. His mistreatment of It's A Beautiful Day is legendary. Just about every band he managed was desperate to get out of their contract with him, including Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane. In fact, it was because of the Airplane's fight to get out from under Katz's thumb that Paul Kantner did not get a writing credit for Wooden Ships on the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album. David Crosby had this to say on the matter: "Paul called me up and said that he was having this major duke-out with this horrible guy who was managing the band, and he was freezing everything their names were on. 'He might injunct the release of your record,' he told me. So we didn’t put Paul’s name on it for a while. In later versions, we made it very certain that he wrote it with us. Of course, we evened things up with him with a whole mess of cash when the record went huge." Although Jefferson Airplane eventually won their battle with Katz, others weren't so fortunate. Katz's San Francisco Sound still owns the rights to recordings by Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day, which explains why it's so hard to find quality copies of those recordings these days. Anyone want to take a guess how much the surviving members of those bands receive in royalties from the CD reissues of their albums?

Artist:    Al DiMeola
Title:    Love Theme From "Pictures At The Sea"
Source:    LP: Land Of The Midnight Sun
Writer(s):    Al DiMeola
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1976
    One of the finest guitarists to emerge from the jazz-rock fusion movement of the early 1970s was Al DiMeola, who came to prominence as a member of Chick Corea's band, Return To Forever. For his first album released under his own name, DiMeola called upon fellow jazzmen Barry Miles (electric piano, Mini-Moog synthesizer) Anthony Jackson (bass),  Lenny White (drums) and  Mingo Lewis (percussion) to record Land Of The Midnight Sun. The album, released in 1976, shows DiMeola's talents as both a composer and instrumentalist. What it doesn't explain, however, is the title of the last track on side one, Love Theme From "Pictures At The Sea". This composition, one of the few on the album with vocals, was written entirely by DiMeola, which makes me wonder if there is even such a thing as "Pictures At The Sea".

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1747 (starts 11/22/17)

This week, We're Only In It For The Money...or at least that's what Frank Zappa and the Mothers would have you believe in 1968...........................................................

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Revolution 1
Source:    CD: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Apple)
Year:    1968
    The Beatles' Revolution has a somewhat convoluted history. The song, as originally recorded, was over eight minutes long and included what eventually became Revolution 1 and part of Revolution 9. The song's writer, John Lennon, at some point decided to separate the sections into two distinct tracks, both of which ended up on the Beatles self-titled double LP (aka the White Album). Lennon wanted to release Revolution 1 as a single, but was voted down by both George Harrison and Paul McCartney on the grounds that the song's tempo was too slow. Lennon then came up with a faster version of the song, which ended up being released a few weeks before the album came out as the B side to the band's 1968 single Hey Jude. As a result, many of the band's fans erroneously assumed that Revolution 1 was the newer version of the song.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Fool On The Hill
Source:    British import stereo 45 RPM Extended Play album: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone
Year:    1967
    The Beatles only came up with six new songs for their 1967 telefilm Magical Mystery Tour, enough to fill up only one side of an LP. Rather than use outtakes and B sides to complete the album (which they had done in 1965 for the Help album), the band chose to release the six songs on a two-record 45 RPM Extended Play set, complete with a booklet that included the storyline, lyric sheets and several still photographs from the film itself. Magical Mystery Tour appeared in this form in both the UK and in Europe, while in the US and Canada, Capitol Records instead issued the album in standard LP format, using the band's 1967 singles and B sides to fill up side two. None of the songs from the telefilm were issued as singles, although one, I Am The Walrus, was used as the B side to the Hello Goodbye single. Another song, Fool On The Hill, was covered by Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66, making the US charts in early 1968. By the 1980s, however, the only version of the song still played on the radio was the original Beatles version, with the footage from the Magical Mystery Tour telefilm used as a video on early music TV channels.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    I've Got A Way Of My Own
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    L. Ransford
Label:    Sundazed/Reprise
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2016
    Not all of the songs the Electric Prunes recorded during sessions for their debut LP, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), ended up being included on the album itself. Among the unused tracks was a cover of a Hollies B side called I've Got A Way Of My Own. The song was actually one of the first tunes that the band recorded, while they were still, in the words of vocalist James Lowe, "searching for a sound and style we could capture on a record." Following the sessions the band decided that harmonies were better left to other groups, and I've Got A Way Of My Own remained unreleased until the 21st century.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Worried Life Blues
Source:    LP: Psychedelic Lollipop
Writer(s):    Major Merriweather
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1966
    Major "Big Macao" Merriweather was an early blues artist who is best known for a song he wrote and recorded in 1941. Worried Life Blues has since been covered literally hundreds of times, including a 1965 version on the US-only LP The Animals On Tour. The Blues Magoos apparently were impressed by the Animals' recording of the song, as they copied the arrangement pretty much note for note for their own debut LP, Psychedelic Lollipop, the following year.
   
Artist:    Standells
Title:    Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
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. Both Good Guys and Dirty Water were written by producer Ed Cobb, who has to be considered the most prolific punk-rock songwriter of the 60s, having also written songs for the "E" Types and Chocolate Watchband (both of which he also produced).

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 fifty-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. Last Night I Had A Dream was Newman's second single for the Reprise label  (his third overall), coming out the same year as his first LP, which did not include the song.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Porpoise Song
Source:    CD: Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1968
    In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic. Porpoise Song, a Gerry Goffin/Carole King composition used as the theme for Head, was also a departure in style for the Monkees, yet managed to retain a decidedly Monkees sound due to the distinctive lead vocals of Mickey Dolenz.

Artist:    Salt
Title:    Lucifer
Source:    British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Levine/Bellack
Label:    Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Cotillion)
Year:    1968
    One of the most bizarre concepts to come out of the psychedelic era was a song called Lucifer (yes, That Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, Ruler of Hell, etc.), done in a style similar to that of the 1910 Fruitgum Company. Yes, that's right. A bubble gum song about the devil. Lucifer was the product of the minds of Joey Levine and Marc Bellack, who had previously collaborated on the Standells' Try It, and would later produce a single called Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me) by a band called Reunion. Also involved with the Lucifer project was co-producer David Lucas, who, along with Bellack, would have fronted a band called The Salt had the single taken off. Luckily for all of us, it didn't.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Stephen Stills/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title:    Harvey's Tune
Source:    CD: Super Session
Writer(s):    Harvey Brooks
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1968
    Probably the most overlooked track on the classic Super Session LP is the album's closer, a two-minute instrumental called Harvey's Tune. The piece was written by bassist Harvey Brooks, who, along with Mike Bloomfield, had been a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and later, the Electric Flag.

Artist:    Lothar And The Hand People
Title:    This Is It
Source:    CD: Presenting…Lothar And The Hand People
Writer(s):    Conly/Emelin/Ford/Flye/King
Label:    Microwerks (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    Lothar and the Hand People was a band formed in Denver, Colorado in 1965 that relocated, not to California as would be expected, but to the wilds of Manhattan, where they quickly became favorites of the avant-garde crowd. One of the reasons was Lothar itself. Yes, I did say "it" self. You see, Lothar was a theremin, one of those weird sounding things heard in vintage science fiction movies and on the Beach Boys hit Good Vibrations. It resembled nothing more than a box with a pair of antennae sticking out of the top. Lothar made just one sound, a tone created by an oscillator. That tone was varied by someone waving their hands around in the general vicinity of the antennae, thus the "hand people". Unfortunately for the band, the very thing that made them popular in New York was the one thing that could not be translated into an audio medium, and neither of the groups two albums sold particularly well. One of their more commercial tunes was You Won't Be Lonely, from their debut LP. Try to imagine someone flailing their arms wildly above a box as you listen to it.

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:    Janis Ian
Title:    Then Tangles Of My Mind
Source:    LP: Janis Ian
Writer(s):    Janis Ian
Label:    Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast
Year:    1967
    Janis Ian first came to national prominence at the age of 16 when her song Society's Child was featured on a Leonard Berstein TV special called Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution in 1967. Ian had written and recorded the song two years earlier for Atlantic Records, which chose not to release the record, instead returning the master to Ian herself. Ian then shopped the song around until it was picked up by the Verve Forecast label. The single was actually issued three times by the label before Ian's appearance on the Bernstein generated enough interest in the song to make it a hit, peaking at #14 on the national charts in the summer of 1967 despite being banned on several radio stations for being too controversial (the song was about inter-racial dating). The success of Society's Child led to Ian's self-titled debut LP being released that same year. Although not a major commercial success, the album boasts several excellent songs, including Then Tangles Of My Mind.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    At The Zoo
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    Simon and Garfunkel did not release any new albums in 1967, instead concentrating on their live performances. They did, however, issue several singles over the course of the year, most of which ended up being included on 1968's Bookends LP. At The Zoo was one of the first of those 1967 singles. It's B side ended up being a hit as well, but by Harper's Bizarre, which took The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) to the top 10 early in the year.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    CD: Epistle To Dippy (alt. arrangement)
Source:    CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    EMI (original label: Epic)
Year:    1967
    Following up on his successful Mellow Yellow album, Donovan released Epistle To Dippy in the spring of 1967. The song, utilizing the same kind of instrumentation as Mellow Yellow, was further proof that the Scottish singer was continuing to move beyond the restrictions of the "folk singer" label and was quickly becoming the model for what would come to be called "singer/songwriters" in the following decade. Due to an ongoing contractual dispute between the artist and his UK record label (Pye), Epistle To Dippy was only released in the US. This alternate arrangement of the song was recorded about 10 months after the single version and features a violin prominently, replacing the electric guitar used on the original.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Sitting On Top Of The World
Source:    CD: The Grateful Dead
Writer(s):    Jacobs/Carter
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1967
    Most versions of Sitting On Top Of The World (such as the one by Cream) have a slow, melancholy tempo that emphasizes the irony of the lyrics. The Grateful Dead version, on the other hand, goes at about twice the speed and has lyrics I have never heard on any other version. I suspect this is because, like most of the songs on the first Dead album, the tune was part of their early live repertoire; a repertoire that called for a lot of upbeat songs to keep the crowd on their feet. Is this Rob "Pig Pen" McKernon on the vocals? I think so, but am open to any corrections you might want to send along (just use the contact button on the www.hermitradio.com website).

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Astronomy Domine
Source:    CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (originally released in UK and Canada)
Writer(s):    Syd Barrett
Label:    Capitol (original label: EMI Columbia)
Year:    1967
    When the US version of the first Pink Floyd LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, was released on the Tower label, it was missing several tracks that had appeared on the original British version of the album. Among the most notable omissions was the original album's opening track, Astronomy Domine, which was replaced by the non-LP single See Emily Play.  Astronomy Domine is a Syd Barrett composition that was a popular part of the band's stage repertoire for several years. The piece is considered one of the earliest examples of "space rock", in part because of the spoken intro (by the band's manager Peter Jenner) reciting the names of the planets (and some moons) of the solar system through a megaphone.

Artist:    Marmalade
Title:    I See The Rain
Source:    Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Campbell/McAleese
Label:    Rhino (original label: CBS)
Year:    1967
    Formed in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1961 as the Gaylords, the Marmalade is best known for its international smash hit Reflections Of My Life in late 1968. One often overlooked song was I See The Rain, which Jimi Hendrix once called his favorite record of 1967. The song was not a hit in either the US or UK, although it did make the top 30 in the Netherlands.

Artist:    13th Floor Elevators
Title:    Levitation
Source:    British import CD: Easter Everywhere
Writer(s):    Hall/Sutherland
Label:    Charly (original label: International Artists)
Year:    1967
    The first album by the 13th Floor Elevators has long been considered a milestone, in that it was one of the first truly psychedelic albums ever released (and the first to actually use the word "psychedelic" in the title). For their followup LP, the group decided to take their time, going through some personnel changes in the process. Still, the core membership of Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall and Stacy Sutherland held it together long enough to complete Easter Everywhere, releasing the album in 1967. The idea behind the album was to present a spiritual vision that combined both Eastern and Western religious concepts in a rock context. For the most part, such as on tracks like Levitation, it succeeds remarkably well, considering the strife the band was going through at the time.
       
Artist:     Mothers of Invention
Title:     We're Only In It For The Money (part two)
Source:     CD: We're Only In It For The Money
Writer:     Frank Zappa
Label:     Ryko (original label: Verve)
Year:     1968
     Following the release of Absolutely Free, Frank Zappa began working on an album that would feature music by the Mothers of Invention interspersed with Lenny Bruce comedy routines. However, the events of the Summer of Love, along with the chart dominance that summer of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band caused him to rethink the whole thing. Instead, he came up with an album that satirized Sgt.Pepper's, the San Francisco scene, and American culture in general (the latter being a theme that would characterize his entire career). This time around we present the second side of the original album, starting with a short piece called Hot Poop that was a sort of hidden track tacked onto the end of side one. The side officially starts with an instrumental piece called Nasal Retentive Calliope Music, which is really more of an audio collage inspired by the works of avant-garde classical composer Edgard Varese, Zappa's musical hero. The first actual song on the side is Let's Make The Water Turn Black, which tells the story of brothers Ronnie and Kenny growing up in middle-class America. This is followed by The Idiot Bastard Son. I think we all knew someone like that growing up. This is followed by perhaps the only song on the album with true commercial potential: Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance. It's also the most positive song Zappa ever wrote, so of course he had to follow it up with a reprise of What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body, one of the highlights of side one. Finally, we have the band's statement of who they were, Mother People, which is followed by another Varese-inspired instrumental, The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny.

Artist:    Neil Young
Title:    Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Source:    45 RPM single (promo)
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1970
    In the wake of the massive success of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album deja vu, each of the band members were given the opportunity to record solo albums. Neil Young, being the only member to have already released two solo LPs, chose to base his work on a screenplay by Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann for a proposed film to be called After The Gold Rush. Although the film was never made, Young liked the title, and used it for his 1970 solo album. Two singles were released from the album, the first being Only Love Can Break Your Heart, which was a minor hit, reaching the #33 spot. Stephen Stills contributed backup vocals to the track.

Artist:    Blues Image
Title:    Clean Love
Source:    CD: Open
Writer(s):    Blues Image
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Atco)
Year:    1970
    The story of Blues Image is tied closely with the legendary south Florida nightclub Thee Image. Blues Image was the house band there (and had helped set up the club itself) and were already well known and respected in musicians' circles by the time they released their first LP in 1969. Although the LP sold moderately, it failed to generate any airplay on either top 40 or progressive FM radio. The group came up with a genuine hit single, Ride Captain Ride, in 1970, but their second LP, Open, charted even lower than their first one, despite having some outstanding tracks, including Ride Captain Ride and one of the best blues-rock tracks ever recorded, the eight-minute long Clean Love. Frustrated by the lack of success, guitarist Mike Pinera left the band to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly, and after an even less successful third LP Blues Image called it quits.

Artist:    Albert King/Steve Cropper/Pop Staples
Title:    Opus De Soul
Source:    LP: Jammed Together
Writer(s):    Thomas/Isbell
Label:    Stax
Year:    1969
    Although Stax records was best known for its Memphis soul recordings by such artists as Otis Redding, Sam and Dave and Booker T. and the MGs, the label also was home to one of the most popular blues guitarists of the late 60s: Albert King. Among King's many recordings for the label is a collection of studio jams with MG guitarist Steve Cropper and the legendary Pop Staples called Jammed Together. Although not the most notable album in the Stax catalog, Jammed Together is still quite listenable, especially on instrumental pieces like Opus De Soul, which captures the essence of three talented musicians doing what they do best. 

Artist:    Sly And The Family Stone
Title:    Life
Source:    CD: Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Life)
Writer(s):    Sylvester Stewart
Label:    Epic
Year:    1968
    The third Sly And The Family Stone album, Life, was not as successful commercially as its predecessor, Dance To The Music. Nonetheless, it's a solid effort, as can be heard on the title track (that was also released as a single). The song itself is the kind of "message" song that the band would focus on more intensely on their next album, Stand!

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    No Return
Source:    CD: Something Else
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    Ray Davies continued to expand his musical horizons as a songwriter on the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks. A good example of this is No Return, which has a kind of laid-back jazzy feel to it. Although the album did not sell well when it was released (for a variety of reasons), it has since come to be held in high regard by Kinks fans.

Artist:    Monks
Title:    Complication
Source:    CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Burger/Spangler/Havlicek/Johnston/Shaw
Label:    Rhino (original label: Polydor)
Year:    1966
    In 1964 a group of American GIs stationed in Germany decided to get together and form a rock band. After their respective tours of duty ended they decided to stay in the country and in 1966 recorded this single for Polydor. Knowing that a large segment of their audience had a rudimentary grasp of English at best, they deliberately crafted a tune that would be easy to comprehend with clear, almost chanted lyrics. To take the chanting concept a step further they all had square patches shaved off the top of their heads and dressed in brown robes. After thinking about it for a couple days I think I've finally figured out who these guys remind me of: early AC/DC, especially Bon Scott's vocals. Compare this to Jailbreak. You'll hear what I mean.

Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Billy Roberts
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1966
    In 1966 there were certain songs you had to know how to play if you had any aspirations of being in a band. Among those were Louie Louie, Gloria and Hey Joe. The Byrds' David Crosby claims to have discovered Hey Joe, but was not able to convince his bandmates to record it before their third album. In the meantime, several other bands had recorded the song, including Love (on their first album) and the Leaves. The version of Hey Joe heard here is actually the third recording the Leaves made of the tune. After the first two versions tanked, guitarist Bobby Arlin, who had recently replaced founding member Bill Rinehart on lead guitar, came up with the idea of adding fuzz guitar to the song. It was the missing element that transformed a rather bland song into a hit record (the only national hit the Leaves would have). As a side note, the Leaves credited Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti) as the writer of Hey Joe, but California-based folk singer Billy Roberts had copyrighted the song in 1962 and had reportedly been heard playing the tune as early as 1958.

Artist:    Harbinger Complex
Title:    I Think I'm Down
Source:    Mono British import CD: With Love-A Pot Of Flowers (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Hockstaff/Hoyle
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Brent)
Year:    1966
    Most garage/club bands never made it beyond a single or two for a relatively small independent label. Freemont, California's Harbinger Complex is a good example. The group was one of many that were signed by Bob Shad, owner of Mainstream Records and its various subsidiaries such as Time and Brent. The band had already released one single on the independent Amber label and were recording at Golden State Recorders in San Francisco when they were discovered by Shad, who signed them to Brent. The band's first single for the label was the British-influenced I Think I'm Down, which came out in 1966 and was included on Mainstream's 1967 showcase album With Love-A Pot Of Flowers.