Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1914 (starts 4/1/19)

Artist:    Love
Title:    My Little Red Book
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Bacharach/David
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    The first rock record ever released by Elektra Records was a single by Love called My Little Red Book. The track itself (which also opens Love's debut LP), is a punked out version of tune originally recorded by Manfred Mann for the What's New Pussycat movie soundtrack. Needless to say, Love's version was not exactly what composers Burt Bacharach and Hal David had in mind.

Artist:     Buffalo Springfield
Title:     Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing
Source:     CD: Buffalo Springfield
Writer:    Neil Young
Label:     Atco
Year:     1966
     One of the most influential folk-rock bands to come out of the L.A. scene was the Buffalo Springfield. The Springfield had several quality songwriters, including Neil Young, whose voice was deemed "too weird" by certain record company people. Thus we have Richie Furay handling the lead vocals on Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing, the group's debut single. The track was just one of several Young songs sung by Furay on the band's first album. By the time the second Buffalo Springfield album was released things had changed somewhat, and Young got to do his own lead vocals on songs like Mr. Soul and Broken Arrow.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    It's Not Easy
Source:    British import LP: Aftermath
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original US label: London)
Year:    1966
    The Rolling Stones' Aftermath, along with the Beatles' Rubber Soul, began a revolution in rock music that was felt for several decades. Prior to those two releases, albums were basically a mix of original and cover songs meant to provide a little supplemental income for popular artists who had hit singles. Aftermath, however, was full of songs that could stand on their own. Even songs like It's Not Easy, which could have been hit singles for lesser artists, were completely overlooked in favor of tracks like Under My Thumb, which is arguably the first true rock classic not to be released as a single. Within the short span of two years, rock would find itself in a place where an artist could be considered a success without having a hit single, something that was completely unheard of when Aftermath was released.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Are You Experienced?
Source:    LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Until the release of Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience the emphasis in rock music (then called pop) was on the 45 RPM single, with albums seen as a luxury item that supplemented an artist's career rather than defined it. Are You Experience helped change all that. The album was not only highly influential, it was a major seller, despite getting virtually no airplay on top 40 radio. The grand finale of the LP was the title track, which features an array of studio effects, including backwards masking and tape loops. Interestingly enough, the album was originally issued only in a mono version in the UK, with European pressings using a simulated stereo mix. After Reprise bought the rights to release the LP in the US it hired its own engineers to create stereo mixes of the songs from the four-track master tapes.

Artist:    Sly And The Family Stone
Title:    Underdog
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: A Whole New Thing)
Writer(s):    Sylvester Stewart
Label:    Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year:    1967
    Sly and the Family Stone were a showstopper at the Woodstock festival in 1969, but their story starts years before that historic performance. Sylvester Stewart was a popular DJ and record producer in mid-60s San Francisco, responsible for the first recordings of the Warlocks (later the Grateful Dead) and the Great! Society, among others. During that time he became acquainted with a wealth of talent, including bassist Larry Graham. In 1967, with Autumn Records having been sold to and closed down by Warner Brothers, he decided to form his own band. Anchored by Graham, Sly and the Family Stone's first LP, A Whole New Thing, was possibly the very first pure funk album ever released.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The End
Source:    LP: The Doors
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    Prior to recording their first album the Doors' honed their craft at various Sunset Strip clubs, working up live versions of the songs they would soon record, including their show-stopper, The End. Originally written as a breakup song by singer/lyricist Jim Morrison, The End runs nearly twelve minutes and includes the controversial spoken "Oedipus section" that reportedly lost the group their residency at the Whisky-A-Go-Go. My own take on the famous "blue bus" line earlier in the song is that Morrison, being a military brat, was probably familiar with the blue shuttle buses used on military bases for a variety of purposes, including taking kids to school, and simply incorporated his experiences with them into his lyrics.  The End got its greatest exposure in 1979, when Oliver Stone used it in his film Apocalypse Now.

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Alley Oop
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Dallas Frazier
Label:    Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year:    1965/2011
    The Lovin' Spoonful didn't actually release their version of the old Hollywood Argyles song Alley Oop as a single in 1965. In fact, they didn't release the song at all, even though it was recorded during the same sessions that became their debut LP that year. In 2011 the people at Sundazed decided to create a "single that never was", pairing Alley Oop with the full-length version of Night Owl Blues, a song that had been included on the 1965 debut in edited form. The Spoonful version of Alley Oop has an almost garage-band feel about it, and is perhaps the best indication on vinyl of what the band actually sounded like in their early days as a local fixture on the Greenwich Village scene.

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    Somebody Help Me
Source:    Mono LP: Gimme Some Lovin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Jackie Edwards
Label:    United Artists (original label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    The Spencer Davis Group hit it big in the US with their early 1967 hit Gimme Some Lovin'. It was not the first single to have been released in the US, however. The group's British label, Fontana, released the band's second single, I Can't Stand It, in the US in Decembeer of 1964, but the record went nowhere. The following year the band took two songs written by the Jamaican born Jackie Edwards to the top of the British charts. Both of these, Keep On Running and Somebody Help Me, were licensed to the US Atco label, but again, neither made an impression west of the Atlantic. Finally, in December of 1966, Gimme Some Lovin' was released in the US on the United Artists label and became a major hit, prompting the label to compile an album from the group's earlier recordings, including Somebody Help Me. That album was issued in early 1967.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Hideaway
Source:    CD: Underground
Writer(s):    Lowe/Tulin
Label:    Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    After the moderately successful first Electric Prunes album, producer David Hassinger loosened the reigns a bit for the followup, Underground. Among the original tunes on Underground was Hideaway, a song that probably would have been a better choice as a single than what actually got released: a novelty tune called Dr. Feelgood written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, who had also written the band's first hit, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star
Source:    CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    Hillman/McGuinn
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    By early 1967 there was a building resentment among musicians and rock press alike concerning the instant (and in many eyes unearned) success of the Monkees. One notable expression of this resentment was the Byrds' So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star, which takes a somewhat sarcastic look at what it takes to succeed in the music business. Unfortunately, much of what they talk about in the song continues to apply today (although the guitar has been somewhat supplanted by the computer as the instrument of choice).

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Page/McCarty
Label:    Epic
Year:    1967
    By 1967 the Yardbirds had moved far away from their blues roots and were on their fourth lead guitarist, studio whiz Jimmy Page. The band had recently picked up a new producer, Mickey Most, known mostly for his work with Herman's Hermits and the original Animals. Most had a tendency to concentrate solely on the band's single A sides, leaving Page an opportunity to develop his own songwriting and production skills on songs such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, a track that also shows signs of Page's innovative guitar style (including an instrumental break played with a violin bow) that would help define 70s rock.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Today
Source:    Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s):    Balin/Kantner
Label:    Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1967
    Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to Today, an early collaboration between rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and bandleader Marty Balin on Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/With A Little Help From My Friends
Source:    LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1967
            One of the first tracks recorded for the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the title track itself, which opens up side one of the LP. The following song, With A Little Help From My Friends (tentatively titled Bad Finger Boogie at the time), was recorded nearly two months later, yet the two sound like one continuous performance. In fact, it was this painstaking attention to every facet of the recording and production process that made Sgt. Pepper's such a landmark album. Whereas the first Beatle album took 585 minutes to record, Sgt. Pepper's took over 700 hours. At this point in the band's career, drummer Ringo Starr was generally given one song to sing (usually written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney) on each of the group's albums. Originally, these were throwaway songs such as I Wanna Be Your Man (which was actually written for the Rolling Stones), but on the previous album, Revolver, the biggest hit on the album ended up being the song Ringo sang, Yellow Submarine. Although no singles were released from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, With A Little Help From My Friends received considerable airplay on top 40 radio and is one of the most popular Beatle songs ever recorded.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Come Together
Source:    LP: Abbey Road
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1969
    After the Beatles released their 1968 double LP (the so-called White Album), they went to work on their final film project, a documentary about the band making an album. Unfortunately, what the cameras captured was a group on the verge of disintegration, and both the album and the film itself were shelved indefinitely. Instead, the band went to work recording an entirely new group of compositions. Somehow, despite the internal difficulties the band was going through, they managed to turn out a masterpiece: Abbey Road. Before the album itself came out, a single was released. The official A side was George Harrison's Something, the first Harrison song ever to be released as a Beatle A side. The other side was the song that opened the album itself, John Lennon's Come Together. In later years Come Together came to be Lennon's signature song and was a staple of his live performances.

Artist:     Kingsmen
Title:     Louie Louie
Source:     CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as a 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Richard Berry
Label:     Rhino (original label: Wand)
Year:     1963
     Although Paul Revere and the Raiders had recorded the song just a few days earlier, the version of Louie Louie that is remembered as the greatest party song of all time came from another Portland, Oregon band, the Kingsmen. With its basic three-chord structure and incomprehensible lyrics, the most popular song to ever come out of the Pacific Northwest was considered a must-learn song for garage bands nationwide.

Artist:    Ace Of Cups, featuring Buffy Sainte-Marie
Title:    Pepper In The Pot
Source:    CD: Ace Of Cups
Writer(s):    Kaufman/Sainte-Marie
Label:    High Moon
Year:    2018
    Buffy Sainte-Marie makes a guest appearance as lead vocalist on Pepper In The Pot, from the album Ace Of Cups. The song, which draws from such diverse sources as old jump-rope rhymes and the Bible, was co-written by Sainte-Marie and primary Ace songwriter Denise Kaufman.

Artist:    Ace Of Cups, featuring Bob Weir
Title:    The Well
Source:    CD: Ace Of Cups
Writer(s):    Kaufman/Mercy/Vitalich/Shae
Label:    High Moon
Year:    2018
    The Well actually dates back to the earliest days of Ace Of Cups, when it was, in the words of Denise Kaufman, "a holding place for a few lines we loved singing. They were like mantras, and the band would sing them over and over, harmonize them, explore different grooves-just playing." When Kaufman's old compatriot from the Merry Prankster days, Bob Weir, agreed to make a guest appearance on the 2018 Ace Of Cups album, The Well was dusted off and rearranged for him to not only sing, but also play lead guitar on. Indeed, the song sounds as if it was written with him in mind all along.

Artist:    Ace Of Cups, featuring Taj Mahal
Title:    Daydreamin'
Source:    CD: Ace Of Cups
Writer(s):    Kaufman/Mahal/Shea
Label:    High Moon
Year:    2018
    The Ace Of Cups/Taj Mahal connection goes back over 50 years to when they were all young musicians out to make a name for themselves. Their careers took different turns, however, with Mahal releasing his first of many solo albums in 1968. The Ace Of Cups, meanwhile, chose not to make any record deals during their original time together. Members of the Ace Of Cups have maintained a close friendship with Mahal, however, and when they finally got the opportunity to make a studio album on their own terms they invited Mahal to sing on a song called Life In Your Hands, written by Joe Allegra while band member Mary Gannon was in labor with his child. Mahal stuck around during the sessions, and late one night picked up a banjo and recorded a short piece called Daydreamin' that features  Ace members Diane Vitalich and Diane Kaufman on backup vocals.

Artist:    Blue Cheer
Title:    Babylon
Source:    LP: Outsideinside
Writer(s):    Dickie Peterson
Label:    Philips
Year:    1968
    By the time Blue Cheer began recording their second LP they had established themselves as the loudest band in the San Francisco Bay area, if not the entire world. Their decibel level was so high that midway through the album they were kicked out of the studio and had to finish recording outdoors on San Francisco's Pier 57. To immortalize the experience they decided to call the album Outsideinside, although it's not known which tracks were recorded where. Regardless of where it was recorded, the last track on the album, Babylon, by bassist Dickie Peterson, is a classic example of how Blue Cheer sounded in 1968.

Artist:    Legend
Title:    Enjoy Yourself
Source:    CD: A Lethal Dose of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Davis/Russ
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Megaphone)
Year:    1968
    Dragonfly was an album that came out on Los Angeles's Megaphone label in 1970. It's not entirely clear, howevere, if Dragonfly was actually the name of the band itself, or just the album, since no other credits are given. The reason for this confusion is that a couple of years earlier the exact same lineup of musicians had recorded a trio of singles for Megaphone as the Legend, including an early version of Enjoy Yourself, a song that is considered one of the highlights of the Dragonfly album. Now if only someone would send me a copy of the Dragonfly LP...

Artist:    Fever Tree
Title:    San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native)
Source:    LP: Fever Tree
Writer(s):    Hlotzman/Holtzman/Michaels
Label:    Uni
Year:    1968
    A minor trend in 1968 was for producer/songwriters to find a band to record their material exclusively. A prime example is Houston's Fever Tree, which featured the music of husband and wife team Scott and Vivian Holtzman. San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native) was the single from that album, peaking in the lower reaches of the Hot 100 charts.

Artist:    Johnny Rivers
Title:    Walkin' The Dog
Source:    LP: Johnny Rivers At Whisky-a-Go-Go
Writer(s):    Rufus Thomas
Label:    Imperial
Year:    1964
    Although not exactly a psychedelic album, Johnny Rivers At Whisky-A-Go-Go is nonetheless an important milestone in the history of psychedelic music in America. Released in 1964, it was the first album recorded at what was then a brand new venue on Los Angeles' Sunset Boulevard (in fact, Rivers was the club's first headliner). Although Rivers himself would go on to become part of the music industry establishment (starting Soul City Records in 1966), the Whisky soon became the epicenter of L.A.'s own underground rock scene, with such notables as Gypsy, Love and the Doors serving as house band at various times. Rivers, in the early part of his career, was a rock and roll purist, reviving such notable songs as Chuck Berry's Memphis. Another classic from the album was Rivers' cover of Rufus Thomas's signature song, Walkin' The Dog. Unlike later versions such as the early 70s Aerosmith cover of the song, Rivers's version of Walkin' The Dog, performed by a three piece band consisting of Rivers (guitar/vocals), Joe Osborne (bass) and Eddie Rubin (drums), is faithful to the original.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    On The Road Again
Source:    Mono LP: Bringing It All Back Home
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1965
    On January 14, 1965, Bob Dylan made his first recordings with an electric band at Columbia Records' Studio B. The following day, using mostly the same musicians, he recorded On The Road Again. The song, basically a declaration of indepence from his role as a folk singer, contains the lines "You ask why I don't live here. Honey, how come you don't move?".

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Spoonful
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released in UK on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Reaction)
Year:    1966
    When the album Fresh Cream was released by Atco in the US it was missing one track that was on the original UK version of the album: the band's original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1970 soundtrack album for the movie Homer that the studio version was finally released in the US. Unfortunately the compilers of that album left out the last 25 seconds or so from the original recording.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    You Keep Me Hangin' On
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Holland/Dozier/Holland
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967
    The Vanilla Fudge version of You Keep Me Hangin' On was originally recorded and released in 1967, not too long after the Supremes version of the song finished its own run on the charts. It wasn't until the following year, however, the the Vanilla Fudge recording caught on with radio listeners, turning it into the band's only top 40 hit. Although progressive FM stations often played the longer LP version, it was the mono single edit heard here that was most familiar to listeners of top 40 radio.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    The Beauty Of Time Is That It's Snowing
Source:    UK Import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released on LP: Children Of The Future)
Writer(s):    Steve Miller
Label:    Zonophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    When the name Steve Miller comes up, the first thing that comes to mind is Fly Like An Eagle, or maybe The Joker or even Living In The USA. In the beginning, though, the Miller band was a bit more eclectic, performing original tunes (by both Miller and fellow band member Boz Scaggs) ranging in style from straight blues to pure psychedelia, such as The Beauty Of Time Is That It's Snowing from their debut LP, Children Of The Future. Although born in Milwaukee, Wisconson, Miller was raised in Texas, playing in several local bands before relocating to Chicago, where he took an interest in electric blues. After a short return to Texas, Miller moved to San Francisco in 1966, where he met Boz Scaggs and formed the Steve Miller Band. Like fellow San Francisco bands Quicksilver Messenger Service and Mother Earth, Miller's group provided songs for the soundtrack of the documentary film Revolution, but did not sign a contract with a major label until 1968. Interestingly, their first LP, Children Of The Future, was recorded in England rather than in San Francisco, and was produced by the legendary Glyn Johns.

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

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Wrong
Source:    CD: Turn On The Music Machine
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    Sean Bonniwell was a member of the mainstream (i.e. lots of appearances on TV variety shows hosted by people like Perry Como and Bob Hope) folk group the Lamplighters in the early 60s. By 1966 he had morphed into one of the more mysterious figures on the LA music scene, leading a proto-punk band dressed entirely in black. Bonniwell himself wore a single black glove (Michael Jackson was about seven years old at the time), and was one of the most prolific songwriters of the day. His recordings, often featuring the distinctive Farfisa organ sound, were a primary influence on later L.A. bands such as Iron Butterfly and the Doors. A classic example of the Music Machine sound was the song Wrong, which was issued as the B side of the group's most successful single, Talk Talk.

Artist:    Cyrkle
Title:    Turn Down Day
Source:    Mono LP: Red Rubber Ball
Writer(s):    Keller/Blume
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    If there was ever a song that embodies the feel of late summer, it's the Cyrkle's Turn Down Day, from late summer of 1966. The song was the band's second consecutive top 20 hit, although it fell short of the nearly chart topping performace of the band's debut single, Red Rubber Ball. Subsequent singles by the band did progressively worse over the next year and a half and the Cyrkle disbanded in 1968, with two of its members going on to have successful careers as commercial jingle writers (remember Plop Plop Fizz Fizz?).

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1914 (starts 4/1/19)

       
    This week we mix in a little bit of soul, jazz, folk and electronica with a bunch of rock for a pair of sets. The first starts with the song that made the O'Jays famous and ends with one of Neil Young's best. The second set has as its showpiece Mike Oldfield's third LP, the nearly nineteen-minute long Ommadawn Part 1, an electronic rock masterpiece that I believe actually surpasses his earlier work. The set also includes moody pieces from Joni Mitchell and Rory Gallagher that show a strong jazz presence.

Artist:        O'Jays
Title:        Back Stabbers
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:        Huff/McFadden/Whitehead
Label:        Philadelphia International
Year:        1972
        The two hotspots of soul music in the late 60s were Detroit, Michigan (Motown Records) and Memphis, Tennessee (Stax Records). By the early 70s, however, Memphis was eclipsed by Philadelphia, thanks to Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, founders of and in-house producers for Philadelphia International Records. One of the first major hits for the label was Back Stabbers by the O'Jays, a Cleveland, Ohio vocal group that had been recording with only moderate success since the early 60s. Back Stabbers hit the top spot on the R&B charts in 1972 and crossed over to the top 40 as well, peaking at #3.

Artist:     James Gang
Title:     Funk # 48
Source:     CD: Yer Album
Writer:     Walsh/Fox/Kriss
Label:     MCA (original label: Bluesway)
Year:     1969
    Cleveland's James Gang was one of the original power trios of the seventies. Although generally known as the starting place of Joe Walsh, the band was actually led by Jim Fox, one of the most underrated drummers in the history of rock. Fox, who was the only member to stay with the group through its many personnel changes over the years, shares lead vocals with Walsh on Funk # 48 from the band's debut album on ABC's Bluesway label (they moved over to the parent label for subsequent releases). Yer Album, incidentally, was the only rock LP ever issued on Bluesway .

Artist:     Ten Years After
Title:     50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain
Source:     CD: Cricklewood Green
Writer:     Alvin Lee
Label:     Chrysalis (original label: Deram)
Year:     1970
    Alvin Lee travels to every planet in the solar system in the nearly eight-minute long 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain. The tune appeared on the 1970 LP Cricklewood Green, generally considered the band's best album.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Upsetter
Source:    45 RPM single (also released on LP: E Pluribus Funk)
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1972
    Grand Funk Railroad was something of an enigma. Due to universally negative reviews in the rock press, progressive FM stations avoided them like the plague. At the same time, top 40 radio was in the process of being supplanted as the voice of the mainstream by the Adult Contemporary (A/C) format, which tended to ignore hard rock. Nonetheless Grand Funk Railroad had a following. In fact, GFR was the first band to book (and sellout) entire sports arenas, setting attendance records wherever they played. This translated into major record sales, as they became the first band to have three LPs hit the million-seller mark in the same year (1970). That year they also had their first mainstream hit with I'm Your Captain (Closer To Home). From that point on the band would continue to release singles, although most, such as Upsetter, were still ignored by A/C radio (although they did get a fair amount of airplay from the remaining "true" top 40 stations). As the group's album sales were beginning to drop off, the singles became increasingly important to the band's continued success, and from 1973 on (starting with We're An American Band ) Grand Funk became pretty much a singles-oriented group, cranking out tunes like Bad Time and Some Kind Of Wonderful.

Artist:    Neil Young
Title:    The Needle And The Damage Done/Words (Between The Lines Of Age)
Source:    CD: Harvest
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1972
    One of Neil Young's best-known songs, The Needle And The Damage Done was written as Young watched his friend and bandmate Danny Whitten (of Crazy Horse) sink deeper and deeper into heroin addiction. It was not too long after the song appeared on Young's 1972 album Harvest that Whitten died of an overdose. The song was recorded live at UCLA in January of 1971. The recording includes the sound of audience applause which segues directly into the next track on the album, Words (Between The Lines Of Age). The song, featuring an extended guitar break in the tradition of Cowgirl In The Sand, was recorded in a barn on Young's ranch in California, with PA speakers set up for the band rather than the usual headphones. This resulted in some bleed through between microphones, which Young felt actually enhanced the "live" feel of the recording. Besides Young, the track features drummer Kenny Buttrey, bassist Tim Drummond, and steel-guitarist Ben Keith, who would collectively come to be known as Stray Gators. Jack Nitzsche also appears on the track playing piano and lap steel guitar.

Artist:    Mike Oldfield
Title:    Ommadawn Part 1
Source:    LP: Ommadawn
Writer(s):    Mike Oldfield
Label:    Virgin
Year:    1975
    Mike Oldfield became an overnight success in 1973 when his album-length Tubular Bells was featured prominently in the file The Exorcist. After his second album didn't do so well he decided to change his approach and had a studio built in his home rather than work in a commercial facility. This gave him all the time he needed to fully develop what became his third LP, Ommadawn. Oldfield played nearly every instrument on the album, which was released in 1975.

Artist:    Joni Mitchell
Title:    Down To You
Source:    LP: Court And Spark
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Asylum
Year:    1974
    Joni Mitchell already had a cult following when she released her most commercially successful record, Court And Spark, in 1974. The album provided two top 40 hits and showed a growing jazz presence in her work. One of the more sparsely instrumentalized tracks on the album is Down To You, which is basically Mitchell on vocal and piano unaccompanied. It's also one of the longer tracks on the album, running five and half minutes. Mitchell would continue in much the same vein with her next LP, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns.
   
Artist:    Rory Gallagher
Title:    Can't Believe It's True
Source:    British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Rory Gallagher)
Writer(s):    Rory Gallagher
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1971
    In addition to his obvious prowess on guitar, Rory Gallagher was an accomplished saxophonist, although he largely abandoned the instrument in the mid-1970s. This can be heard on Can't Believe It's True, the final and longest track on Gallagher's first solo album, recorded in 1971. Accompanying Gallagher on the album were drummer Wilgar Campbell and bass guitarist Gerry McAvoy. Gallagher had set up practice sessions with Campbell and McAvoy, as well as former Jimi Hendrix Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding following the breakup of his original band, Taste, but ultimately decided to form a power trio with the two Belfast natives for his solo debut.
     

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1913 (starts 3/25/19)

    A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from a listener suggesting I check out a band called the Claypool/Lennon Delerium for possible inclusion on a future Advanced Psych segment. I did, and was so impressed that I immediately ordered a copy of their first album, Monolith Of Phobos. The album did not disappoint, and this week's show features an entire set of tunes from the double LP. The show itself starts out with back to back artists' sets from two of the British Invasion's best bands.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    We Gotta Get Out Of This Place (US version)
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1965
    In 1965 producer Mickey Most put out a call to Don Kirschner's Brill building songwriters for material that could be recorded by the Animals. He ended up selecting three songs, all of which are among the Animals' most popular singles. Possibly the best-known of the three is a song written by the husband and wife team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil called We Gotta Get Out Of This Place. The song (the first Animals recording to featuring Dave Rowberry, who had replaced founder Alan Price on organ) starts off with what is probably Chas Chandler's best known bass line, slowly adding drums, vocals, guitar and finally keyboards on its way to an explosive chorus. The song was not originally intended for the Animals, however; it was written for the Righteous Brothers as a follow up to (You've Got That) Lovin' Feelin', which Mann and Weil had also provided for the duo. Mann, however, decided to record the song himself, but the Animals managed to get their version out first, taking it to the top 20 in the US and the top 5 in the UK. As the Vietnam war escalated, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place became a sort of underground anthem for US servicemen stationed in South Vietnam, and has been associated with that war ever since. Incidentally, there were actually two versions of We Gotta Get Out Of This Place recorded during the same recording session, with an alternate take accidentally being sent to M-G-M and subsequently being released as the US version of the single. This version (which some collectors and fans maintain has a stronger vocal track) appeared on the US-only LP Animal Tracks in the fall of 1965 as well as the original M-G-M pressings of the 1966 album Best Of The Animals. The original UK version, on the other hand, did not appear on any albums, as was common for British singles in the 1960s. By the 1980s record mogul Allen Klein had control of the original Animals' entire catalog, and decreed that all CD reissues of the song would use the original British version of the song, including the updated (and expanded) CD version of The Best Of The Animals. This expanded version of the album first appeared on the ABKCO label in 1973, but with the American, rather than the British, version of We Gotta Get Out Of This Place. Luckily I have a copy of that LP, which is where this track was taken from. It's not in the best of shape, but it's worth putting up with a few scratches to hear the song the way the troops heard it back in '65.
      
Artist:    Animals
Title:    I'm Crying
Source:    Mono CD: The Best Of The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Price/Burdon
Label:    Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1964
    Like most groups in the early 1960s, the Animals started their studio career by recording a mixture of songs provided to their producer by professional songwriters and covers of tunes previously recorded by other artists. Their first self-penned single was I'm Crying, a tune by vocalist Eric Burdon and organist Alan Price that was released in September of 1964. The song made the top 10 in Canada and the UK, but stalled out in the lower reaches of the top 40 in the US, falling far short of their previous international hit, House Of The Rising Sun. Producer Mickie Most decided from then on that songs written by the band itself would only be released as album tracks and B sides, a policy that stayed in effect until the Animals changed producers in 1966.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Benjamin/Marcus/Caldwell
Label:    Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1965
    1965 was a huge year for the Animals. Coming off the success of their 1964 smash House Of The Rising Sun, the Newcastle group racked up three major hits in 1965, including Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, a song originally recorded by jazz singer Nina Simone. The Animals version speeded up the tempo and used a signature riff that had been taken from Simone's outro. The Animals version of Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood made the top 20 in the US and the top five in both the UK and Canada.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Play With Fire
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and on LP: Out Of Our Heads)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1965
    Generally when one thinks of the Rolling Stones the first thing that comes to mind is down to earth rock and roll songs such as Satisfaction, Jumpin' Jack Flash and Honky Tonk Women. The band has always had a more mellow side, however. In fact, the first Mick Jagger/Keith Richards compositions were of the slower variety, including Heart Of Stone and As Tears Go By. Even after the duo started cranking out faster-paced hits like 19th Nervous Breakdown and The Last Time, they continued to write softer songs such as Play With Fire, which made the charts as a B side in 1965. The lyrics of Play With Fire, with their sneering warning to not mess with the protagonist of the song, helped cement the Stones' image as the bad boys of rock and roll.

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:    Rolling Stones
Title:    It's All Over Now
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Bobby & Shirley Womack
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1964
    During a 1964 on-air interview with the Rolling Stones, New York DJ Murray the K played a copy of a song called It's All Over Now by Bobby Womack's band, the Valentinos. The song had been a minor hit earlier in the year, spending two weeks in the top 100, and the Stones were reportedly knocked out by the record, calling it "our kind of song." Less than two weeks later the Stones recorded their own version of the song, which became their first number one hit in the UK. At first, Womack was reportedly against the idea of a British band recording his song, but changed his mind when he saw his first royalty check from the Stones' recording.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Your Saving Grace
Source:    LP: Your Saving Grace
Writer:    Tim Davis
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    One of the most highly regarded of the Steve Miller Band's early albums was 1969's Your Saving Grace. A listen to the title track of the album shows why. As often as not, spoken sections in the middle of a song come off as silly or pretentious, but here Miller manages to make it work, enhancing what is already a fine recording.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    My Friend
Source:    LP: The Cry Of Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 1971
    Most of the tracks on The Cry Of Love, the first Jimi Hendrix LP to be released post-humously, were recordings made in 1969 and 1970 that were in various states of completion. The exeption is a song called My Friend, recorded in 1968 not long after the Electric Ladyland album was released. The song, which features the still-intact original Jimi Hendrix Experience lineup of Hendrix, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, is basically a blues number that utilizes various background noises to make it sound as if it was recorded in a bar late at night.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Magic Of Love (live)
Source:    CD: Cheap Thrills (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Mark Spoelstra
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 1999
    Like many San Francisco bands of the psychedelic era, Big Brother And The Holding Company had a synergistic relationship with their audience. When they played, there would be people literally dancing in the aisles of places like the Avalon ballroom and the original Fillmore. The challenge for producer John Simon was to somehow capture the energy shared by band and audience on a vinyl disc. The group had already recorded one LP for Bob Shad's Mainstream label, but the album itself sounded sterile compared to the band's live performances. Simon's tentative solution for the second Big Brother album, Cheap Thrills, was to record the band live, starting with a show in Detroit on March 2, 1968. Ultimately, it was decided to shelve the live recordings (with one exception) and instead work with the band in the studio and sweeten the recordings with crowd sounds to simulate live performances. One of those shelved recordings, Magic Of Love (from the Detroit concert), finally surfaced on the 1999 CD reissue of Cheap Thrills as a bonus track.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Oh, Sweet Mary
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Albin/Andrew/Getz/Gurley/Joplin
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    The only song credited to the entire membership of Big Brother And The Holding Company on their Cheap Thrills album was Oh, Sweet Mary (although the original label credits Janis Joplin as sole writer and the album cover itself gives only Joplin and Peter Albin credit). The tune bears a strong resemblance to Coo Coo, a non-album single the band had released on the Mainstream label before signing to Columbia. Oh, Sweet Mary, however, has new lyrics and, for a breath of fresh air, a bridge section played at a slower tempo than the rest of the tune.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Ball And Chain
Source:    CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Willie Mae Thornton
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1968
    Big Brother And The Holding Company electrified the crowd at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 with their performance of Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's Ball And Chain. The rest of the world, however, would have to wait until the following year to hear Janis Joplin's version of the old blues tune, when a live performance recorded at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium was included on the LP Cheap Thrills.

Artist:    Lovin' Spoonful
Title:    Rain On The Roof
Source:    LP: Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful
Writer(s):    John Sebastian
Label:    Sundazed/Kama Sutra
Year:    1966
    The 1966 album Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful was deliberately recorded in a variety of styles to give the impression of several different bands performing on the record. Among the hit singles from the LP was Rain On The Roof, a folky piece with a childlike quality to it.
   
Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Rainy Day In June
Source:    British import CD: Face To Face
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Sanctuary (original US label: Reprise)
Year:    1966
    Ray Davies let his imagination run free on a Rainy Day In June, from the 1966 Kinks LP Face To Face. The result was a song "about fairies and little evil things within the trees that come to life".

Artist:    Young Rascals
Title:    You Better Run
Source:    CD: Groovin' (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Cavaliere/Brigati
Label:    Warner Special Products (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1966
    The Young Rascals were riding high in 1966, thanks to their second single, Good Lovin', going all the way to the top of the charts early in the year. Rather than to follow up Good Lovin' with another single the band's label, Atlantic, chose to instead release a new album, Collections, on May 10th. This was somewhat unusual for the time, as having a successful single was considered essential to an artist's career, while albums were still viewed as somewhat of a luxury item. Three weeks later, a new non-album single, You Better Run, was released, with a song from Collections, Love Is A Beautiful Thing, as the B side. The stereo version of the song appeared on the 1967 LP Groovin'.

Artist:       Easybeats
Title:        Friday On My Mind
Source:   CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Vanda/Young
Label:    Rhino (original label: United Artists)
Year:        1966
       Considered by many to be the "greatest Australian song" ever (despite the fact that it was actually recorded in London), the Easybeats' Friday On My Mind, released in late 1966, certainly was the first major international hit to emerge from a band on the island continent. Rhythm guitarist George Young, who co-wrote Friday On My Mind, would go on to produce another Australian band featuring his two younger brothers, Angus and Malcolm in the 1970s. That band? AC/DC.

Artist:    Otis Redding
Title:    Respect
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Otis Redding
Label:    Volt
Year:    1965
    Released well over a year before Aretha Franklin's version, Otis Redding's Respect was a hit on the R&B charts and managed to crack the lower reaches of the mainstream charts as well. Although not as well known as Franklin's version, the Redding track has its own unique energy and is a classic in its own right. The track, like most of Redding's recordings, features the Memphis Group rhythm section and the Bar-Kays on horns.

    Fans of alternative rock are no doubt familiar with a band called Primus, led by bassist Les Claypool. One of the more colorful characters on the modern music scene, Claypool was once rejected by Metallica as being "too good" for them. Claypool himself has said that he thought James Hetfield was just being nice when he told him that, but the fact is that Claypool is indeed one of the most talented bass players (if not the best) in rock history. Sean Lennon is, of course, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Unlike his half-borther Julian, Sean has never had to prove anything to anyone, and, thanks in large part to his mother's influence (and let's be honest here, money), has always felt free to pursue his own artistic path without having to bow to commercial pressures. The two of them met when their respective bands were on tour and they immediately recognized that they had a musical connection. That connection manifested itself in the album Monolith Of Phobos (a title inspired by Arthur Clarke's works), released in 2016. This week, for our Advanced Psych segment, we feature a set of tunes from that album.

Artist:    Claypool/Lennon Delerium
Title:    Ohmerica
Source:    LP: Monolith Of Phobos
Writer(s):    Claypool/Lennon
Label:    Ato
Year:    2016
    A pointed look at the state of the nation.
   
Artist:    Claypool/Lennon Delerium
Title:    Cricket And The Genie
Source:    LP: Monolith Of Phobos
Writer(s):    Claypool/Lennon
Label:    Ato
Year:    2016
    Cricket And The Genie actually comes in two parts. Both parts were released separately as singles.

Artist:    Claypool/Lennon Delerium
Title:    Bubbles Burst/There's No Underwear In Space
Source:    LP: Monolith Of Phobos
Writer(s):    Claypool/Lennon
Label:    Ato
Year:    2016
    If any one track captures the essence of the Claypool/Lennon Delerium, it's the final vocal work on Monolith Of Phobos, Bubbles Burst. The song seamlessly segues into the instrumental There's No Underwear In Space to close out the album.

Artist:    Blind Faith
Title:    Sea Of Joy
Source:    CD: Blind Faith
Writer(s):    Steve Winwood
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
    At the time Blind Faith was formed there is no question that the biggest names in the band were guitarist Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, having just come off a successful three-year run with Cream. Yet the true architect of the Blind Faith sound was actually Steve Winwood, formerly of the Spencer Davis Group and, more recently, Traffic. Not only did Winwood handle most of the lead vocals for the group, he also wrote more songs on the band's only album than any other member. Among the Winwood tunes on that album is Sea Of Joy, which opens side two of the LP. The track also features some tasty violin work from the often-overlooked fourth member of Blind Faith, bassist Rick Grech, who would later join Winwood in a reformed Traffic.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Onie
Source:    CD: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) (original album title: The Electric Prunes)
Writer(s):    Tucker/Mantz
Label:    Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Producer Dave Hassinger is a bit of an enigma. When working with the Rolling Stones as an engineer, he was involved in some of their best work and was thought of highly by the Stones themselves. As producer of the Grateful Dead, however, he obviously had no clue as to what the band was about, and bailed out midway through the production of the second album. As the producer of the first Electric Prunes LP he seems to have been trying to follow a formula that been established by Don Kirshner on the first two Monkees albums. That formula was to use professional songwriters (in this case mostly Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz) to provide a hit single and establish a particular sound, allowing the band members themselves to contribute only two songs to the album. Another part of the formula was to include a novelty number or two and at least one slow teenybopper-oriented ballad, in this case a song called Onie. Perhaps in response to seeing how the Monkees had rebelled against Kirshner following the release of More Of The Monkees, Hassinger eased up on the band a bit for their second album, Underground. Unfortunately that freedom was short-lived, but that's a story for another time.
   
Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Incense And Peppermints
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label:    Rhino (original labels: USA/Uni)
Year:    1967
    Incense and Peppermints is one of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era, yet when it was originally released to Los Angeles area radio stations it was intended to be the B side of The Birdman of Alkatrash. Somewhere along the line a DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) picked up the Strawberry Alarm Clock's contract and reissued the record nationally with Incense And Peppermints as the A side.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    The Masked Marauder
Source:    LP: 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 (which is rather ironic, considering that they were actually based in Berkeley on the other side of the bay and rarely visited the city itself, except to play gigs). 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:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Eskimo Blue Day
Source:    LP: Volunteers
Writer(s):    Slick/Kantner
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1969
    Jefferson Airplane's sixth LP, Volunteers, was by far their most socio-political album, from the first track (We Can Be Together, with its famous "up against the wall" refrain) to the last (the song Volunteers itself). One of the more controversial tracks on the 1969 album is Eskimo Blue Day, which describes just how meaningless human concerns are in the greater scheme of things with the repeated use of the phrase "doesn't mean shit to a tree". Eskimo Blue Day was one of two songs from Volunteers performed by the Airplane at Woodstock.

Artist:    Phil Ochs
Title:    The War Is Over
Source:    CD: The Best Of Phil Ochs (originally released on LP: Tape From California)
Writer(s):    Phil Ochs
Label:    A&M
Year:    1968
    Considered one of the most iconic antiwar songs of the 1960s, The War Is Over, from Phil Ochs' fifth album, Tape From California, was inspired by poet Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg's idea was that, instead of expending energy protesting against the war in Vietnam, people should simply declare that the war was over, and if enough people did so, the war would indeed end. Of course, like all wars, the Vietnam War did eventually end, but not for several more years, although Ochs's song did inspire many young men to burn their draft cards as a symbolic gesture.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    House Of Jansch
Source:    Mono LP: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Epic
Year:    1967
    One of the most respected names in British folk music during the 1960s was Bert Jansch. House Of Jansch, from the Mellow Yellow album, was Donovan's way of acknowledging Jansch's influence on his own music.

   

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1913 (starts 3/25/19)

    This week's show is a musical journey from 1968 to 1974 and back again, one year at a time. That's a total of 13 tracks, the most ever on Rockin' in the Days of Confusion. And just to make it more interesting, the two 1971 tracks are manifestations of the most messy divorce in rock and roll history. Read on...

Artist:     Cream
Title:     Sitting On Top Of The World
Source:     CD: Wheels Of Fire
Writer:     Vinson/Chatmon (original) Chester Burnett (modern version)
Label:     Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:     1968
     Throughout their existence British blues supergroup Cream recorded covers of blues classics. One of the best of these is Sitting On Top Of The World from the album Wheels Of Fire, which in its earliest form was written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon and recorded by the Mississippi Shieks in 1930. Cream's version uses the lyrics from the 1957 rewrite of the song by Chester Burnett, better known as Howlin' Wolf.

Artist:    Kak
Title:    Trieulogy
Source:    British import CD: Kak-Ola (originally released in US on LP: Kak)
Writer(s):    Yoder/Grelecki
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Epic)
Year:    1969
    The story of Kak is one of the strangest in rock history. Guitarists Gary Yoder and Dehner Patton had both been members of the Oxford Circle, the legendary East (San Francisco) Bay area band that broke up in early summer of 1967. Not long the breakup Yoder was approached by a guy named Gary Grelecki, who introduced himself as a fan of the band and offered to get Yoder a deal with Columbia, then the second largest record label in the country. Yoder figured that he didn't have anything to lose by saying yes; sure enough, two months later he got a call from Grelecki saying the contract was a done deal. It turned out that Grelicki's father was with the CIA and had been using Columbia as a front for agency activities in East Asia, and actually had legitimate contacts at the label. Yoder got into contact with Dehner, who had been playing in a band called Cherry Jam since the Oxford breakup, performing original material in the Davis area. One of the other members of Cherry Jam was percussionist/harpsichordist Chris Lockheed, who had previously played in a band called the Majestics. The lineup was completed with the addition of bassist Joe-Dave Damrill, who had been playing with another Davis band called Group B. The new band, calling itself Kak, was signed to Columbia's Epic subsidiary, releasing their only LP in 1969. Although neither the band (which played fewer than a dozen gigs in its entire existence) or the album was a commercial success at the time, Kak gained a cult following that exists to this day. The most ambitious track on the album, Trieulogy, is made up of three originally unrelated pieces, Golgotha, Mirage and Rain, that Yoder later said "blended well together", adding that "it's a logical pattern, lyrically and musically." The third part of Trieulogy, Rain, was also released as a single in 1969.

Artist:    James Gang
Title:    There I Go Again
Source:    CD: James Gang Rides Again
Writer(s):    Joe Walsh
Label:    MCA (original label: ABC)
Year:    1970
    The two sides of James Gang Rides Again sound like two entirely different albums. As it turns out, this was somewhat intentional. According to bassist Dale Peters, guitarist Joe Walsh had written a set of acoustic tunes while the band was recording what would become side one of the album. Rather than try to hastily come up with another side's worth of tunes, the band decided just to let Walsh record the songs he had already written with a minimum of accompaniment. Among those tunes on side two of James Gang Rides Again is There I Go Again, a catchy number that features Walsh on both acoustic and steel guitar.

Artist:    John Lennon
Title:    How Do You Sleep
Source:    CD: Lennon (box set) (originally released on LP: Imagine)
Writer(s):    John Lennon
Label:    Capitol (original label: Apple)
Year:    1971
    When it comes to pure vitriol, few, if any, songs in the history of rock can compare with John Lennon's How Do You Sleep. Released in 1971 on the Imagine album, How do You Sleep is nothing short of a full-scale attack on Lennon's former bandmate, Paul McCartney, in response to what Lennon perceived as a series of personal attacks included on Paul and Linda McCartney's album Ram, released earlier the same year. Musically, it's one of Lennon's most powerful pieces as a solo artist, and was singled out as one of the three best tracks on Imagine by Rolling Stone magazine at the time the album was released.

Artist:    Uriah Heep
Title:    Sunrise
Source:    British import CD: The Magician's Birthday
Writer(s):    Ken Hensley
Label:    Sanctuary (original US label: Mercury)
Year:    1972
    The 1972 album Demons And Wizards catapulted Uriah Heep into the ranks of first-tier rock bands. The sucess of the album, however, brought with it pressure from the band's record label to get a follow-up LP on the market as soon as possible. This resulted in their next LP, The Magician's Birthday, sounding a bit rushed in places, with the band not having the time to fully develop all the material. At the same time internal friction was developing between band members, particularly vocalis David Byron and keyboardist Ken Hensley, who at this point was writing almost all of the band's material. Nonetheless, the album contains some of Uriah Heep's most memorable songs, including sunrise, which opens the LP.    

Artist:    Steely Dan
Title:    Razor Boy
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Becker/Fagen
Label:    ABC
Year:    1973
    Countdown To Ecstasy is the second Steely Dan album and the first to feature Donald Fagen as the group's sole lead vocalist. It is also the first of a trilogy of albums by the band that expose the seamy underside of Southern California culture in the 1970s. Razor Boy, for instance, targets the twin vices of materialism and complacency, asking the question: "Will you still have a song to sing when the razor boy comes and takes your fancy things away?" The album was not initially a major commercial success, but proved durable enough to attain gold status over a period of years. 

Artist:    Gentle Giant
Title:    Playing The Game
Source:    CD: The Power And The Glory
Writer(s):    Shulman/Shulman/Minnear
Label:    Alucard (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1974
    Following the departure of founding member Phil Shulman in 1973, the remaining members of Gentle Giant, after a period of soul-searching, decided to carry on as a five-piece group with the album In A Glass House. Their US label however, decided not to release the album. Despite this, In A Glass House sold well in the US as an import, leading to a new contract with a different label. The first Gentle Giant to be released on Capitol was The Power And The Glory, which hit the racks in 1974. One of the tracks that got a lot of airplay on FM rock radio was Playing The Game, which closes out the first side of the original LP. For those who might be interested in such things, a special edition of The Power And The Glory has been released on the Alucard label which features not only the original album remastered (plus bonus tracks), but a DVD containing animated video versions of every track on the album, all of which enhance the album's original concept concerning how power can corrupt even those with the best of intentions.

Artist:    Little Feat
Title:    Two Trains
Source:    CD: Dixie Chicken
Writer(s):    Lowell George
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Lowell George's band, Little Feat, truly found their sound, a brand of rock flavored with New Orleans spice, on their third LP, Dixie Chicken. That sound can be heard clearly on tracks like Two Trains, the second song on the album.

Artist:    Edgar Winter Group
Title:    Frankenstein (edited version)
Source:    European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: They Only Come Out At Night. Edited version released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Edgar Winter
Label:    Sony Music (original label: Epic)
Year:    1973
    A real monster hit (sorry, couldn't resist).

Artist:    Paul And Linda McCartney
Title:    Too Many People
Source:    LP: Ram
Writer(s):    Paul McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1971
    Over the years, Paul McCartney has tried to downplay the animosity between himself and former bandmate John Lennon following the breakup of the Beatles in 1970. However, Too Many People, the opening track of his 1971 LP Ram, has several lines that Lennon took rather personally, including the repeated chorus line "that was your big mistake", referring the the breakup itself. Lennon's response, in the song How Do You Sleep, however, makes McCartney's lines look like soft ribbing by comparison.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Friend Of The Devil
Source:    CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: American Beauty)
Writer(s):    Garcia/Dawson/Hunter
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    The Grateful Dead spent three years and four albums trying to capture the energy of their live performances on vinyl. Having finally succeeded with the 1969 Live Dead album the group began to focus more on their songwriting capabilities. The result was two outstanding studio albums, both released in 1970: Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. Of the two, American Beauty is made up almost entirely of songs played on acoustic instruments, including pedal steel guitar, which was played by Jerry Garcia. One of the best-known tracks on American Beauty is Friend Of The Devil, which lyricist Robert Hunter referred to as "the closest we've come to what may be a classic song."

Artist:    Albert King/Steve Cropper/Pop Staples
Title:    Homer's Theme
Source:    LP: Jammed Together
Writer(s):    Banks/Jackson
Label:    Stax
Year:    1969
    Continuing a tradition established by such legendary Chicago artists as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon, the Memphis-based Stax Records brought three legends of its own, Albert King, Steve Cropper and Roebuck "Pop" Staples, together for an album's worth of, well, mosty jams such as the instrumental Homer's Theme. The LP, Jammed Together, generally does not make anyone's top albums list, nor is it considered historically essential. Nonetheless, it is interesting to hear how the three guitarists' styles blend and occasionally clash with each other.

Artist:    Savoy Brown
Title:    The Incredible Gnome Meets Jaxman
Source:    LP: Getting To The Point
Writer(s):    Kim Simmonds
Label:    Parrot
Year:    1968
    Savoy Brown, perhaps more than any other band in rock history (except Fleetwood Mac), was famous for its constantly changing lineup. Besides founder and bandleader Kim Simmonds on lead guitar, only one musician (pianist Bob Hall) that played on the first Savoy Brown LP, Shake Down, was around for the group's sophomore effort, 1968's Getting To The Point. New members included Chris Youlden (vocals), Dave Peverett (guitar), Rivers Jobe (bass) and Roger Earl (drums). With the change in lineup came a change in focus as well. While Shake Down was made up almost entirely of blues covers, Getting To The Point had seven originals, including the instrumental The Incredible Gnome Meets Jaxman.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1912 (starts 3/18/19)

    It's generally acknowledged that the psychedelic era hit its peak around 1967, and this week we acknowledge that with 15 songs from that year, spread out over three sets. In between we have a couple sets each from 1966 and 1968, a mid-60s Beatles set and a pair of tunes from 1965.

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:    Kinks
Title:    Sunny Afternoon
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1966
    My family got our first real stereo in late summer of 1966, just in time for me to catch the Kinks' Sunny Afternoon at the peak of its popularity. My school had just gone into split sessions and all my classes were over by one o'clock, which gave me the chance to explore the world of top 40 radio through decent speakers for a couple hours every day without the rest of the family telling me to turn it down (or off). Unfortunately, Denver's first FM rock station was still a few months off, so the decent speakers were handicapped by being fed an AM radio signal.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Section 43 (EP version)
Source:    Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released on EP: Rag Baby #2)
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Rag Baby)
Year:    1966
    Rag Baby was an underground journal published by Country Joe McDonald in mid-60s Berkeley, California. In 1965 McDonald decided to do a "talking issue" of the paper with an extended play (EP) record containing two songs by McDonald's band, Country Joe and the Fish and two by singer Peter Krug. In 1966 McDonald published a second Rag Baby EP, this time featuring four songs by Country Joe and the Fish. Among those was the original version of Section 43, a psychedelic instrumental that would appear in a re-recorded (and slightly changed) stereo form on the band's first LP, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, in early 1967.

Artist:    Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title:    Who Do You Love
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on CD: Quicksilver: Lost Gold And Silver)
Writer(s):    Elias McDaniel
Label:    Rhino (original label: Collector's Choice)
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 1999
    The classic San Francisco music scene (c 1966) had at its core three popular local bands: Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Although none of these bands were at their artistic peak, they did epitomize the spirit of the city's counter-culture and the Haight-Ashbury district in particular. The Airplane was the first to experience national success, thanks to a membership shuffle in late 1966 that brought Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden into the group. The Dead followed in 1967, leaving only Quicksilver without a record contract as late as 1968. By the time they did sign their deal to Capitol, Quicksilver had already had its own share of personnel changes, including the departure of original lead vocalist Jim Murray. In fact, the only QMS recording I know of with Murray at the helm is this 1966 demo of the Bo Diddley classic Who Do You Love, featuring an extended jam that was typical of the band in its early days.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Dandelion
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    If there was a British equivalent to the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations in terms of time and money spent on a single song, it might be We Love You, a 1967 single released by the Rolling Stones. To go along with the single (with its state-of-the-art production) the band spent a considerable sum making a full-color promotional video, a practice that would not become commonplace until the advent of MTV in the 1980s. Despite all this, US radio stations virtually ignored We Love You, choosing to instead flip the record over and play the B side, a tune called Dandelion. As to why this came about, I suspect that Bill Drake, the man behind the nation's most influential top 40 stations, simply decided that the less elaborately produced Dandelion was better suited to the US market than We Love You and instructed his hand-picked program directors at such stations as WABC (New York), KHJ (Los Angeles) and WLS (Chicago) to play Dandelion. The copycat nature of top 40 radio being what it is, Dandelion ended up being a moderate hit in the US in the summer of '67.
       
Artist:    Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title:    Good Times
Source:    British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s):    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1967
    By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.

Artist:    Kaleidoscope (UK)
Title:    Flight From Ashiya
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Daltry/Pumer
Label:    Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year:    1967
    Although they did not have any hit singles, London's Kaleidoscope had enough staying power to record two album's worth of material for the Fontana label before disbanding. The group's first release was Flight From Ashiya, a single released in September of 1967. Describing a bad plane trip with a stoned pilot, the song is filled with chaotic images, making the song's story a bit hard to follow. Still, it's certainly worth a listen.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Superbyrd
Source:    LP: Revolution soundtrack
Writer(s):    Steve Miller
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1968
    Before releasing their debut LP on the Capitol label in 1968, the Steve Miller Band appeared in the documentary film Revolution, which was filmed the previous year on the streets of San Francisco. Among the songs performed in the film, and then re-recorded in the studio for the soundtrack album, was a trippy instrumental called Superbyrd, which doesn't sound anything like Superbird by Country Joe and the Fish (who also appeared in the film).

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    I Need A Man To Love
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Joplin/Andrew
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Big Brother and the Holding Company recorded their first album at the Chicago studios of Mainstream records in 1967. Mainstream, however, was a jazz label and their engineers had no idea how to make a band like Big Brother sound good. When the band signed to Columbia the following year it was decided that the best way to record the band was onstage at the Fillmore West. As a result, when Cheap Thrills was released, four of the seven tracks were live recordings, including the Janis Joplin/Peter Albin collaboration I Need A Man To Love.

Artist:    Insect Trust
Title:    Mountain Song
Source:    LP: The Insect Trust
Writer(s):    Barth/Jeffries/Palmer/Keohler/Faust
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1968
    It's sometimes assumed that psychedelic rock was purely a west coast phenomena. The truth is that there were psychedelic bands popping up all over the place in the late 1960s. New York's brand of psychedelia was decidedly more avant garde than in other locations, due to the city's position as a major art center. The most famous link between pop art and psychedelic rock was Andy Warhol's sponsorship of the Velvet Underground, but it was not the only one. The United States Of America was born directly out of the New York art scene before relocating to Los Angeles. Less known was the Insect Trust, which included saxophonist Robert Palmer, who would go on to greater fame as the longtime popular music critic for the new York Times. The front person for the group was vocalist Nancy Jeffries, whose voice is heard on Mountain Song, a relatively quiet tune credited to the entire band.  After a second, more R&B-oriented album for a different label, the Insect Trust disbanded in the early 1970s.

Artist:    Jelly Bean Bandits
Title:    Tapestries
Source:    British Import CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released on LP: The Jelly Bean Bandits)
Writer(s):    Buck/Donald/Dougherty/Raab/Scalfari
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Of the various albums released on Bob Shad's Mainstream label from 1966-1969, one of the most fully realized was the first (and only) album by the Jelly Bean Bandits. Formed as the Mirror in 1966, the Bandits built up a following in the native Newburgh, NY and surrounding areas over a period on months. The particularly brash move of tearing pages out of the yellow pages and showing up unannounced at the offices of various record labels led them to a meeting with Shad at Mainstream's New York offices. After listening to the band's demos Shad offered the Jelly Bean Bandits a contract to record three albums, but, sadly, only one was released. One of the highlights of that album was Tapestries, sung by drummer Joe Scalfari. The Bandits immediately got to work on a second album, but a combination of internal and financial difficulties, coupled with lack of promotional support from their label, led to the group's early demise.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Rock And Roll Woman
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth) while they were together. Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock And Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.

Artist:     Music Machine
Title:     Astrologically Incompatible
Source:     Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Sean Bonniwell
Label:     Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:     1967
     While touring extensively in 1967 the Music Machine continued to take every possible opportunity to record new material in the studio, while at the same time working to change record labels. The first single to be issued on the Warner Brothers label was Bottom Of The Soul, released in late 1967. The B side of that record was Astrologically Incompatible, one of the first rock songs to deal with astrological themes, albeit in a slightly tongue-in-cheek manner.

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 mid-to-late 1980s. Other than that, nothing.

Artist:    Supremes
Title:    Reflections
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Holland/Dozier/Holland
Label:    Motown
Year:    1967
    The Supremes weren't exactly known as a psychedelic group, nor were their primary songwriters, Lamont Dozier and the Holland brothers. Nonetheless, together they produced one of the most psychedelic tunes ever to come out of Motown. Well, it was 1967, after all.

Artist:    Kaleidoscope (US)
Title:    You Don't Love Me
Source:    CD: Pulsating Dreams (originally released on LP: A Beacon From Mars)
Writer(s):    Willie Cobbs
Label:    Retroworld/Floating World (original label: Epic)
Year:    1968
    Despite being a product of the same club scene that brought us Love, the Byrds and the Doors, Kaleidoscope had a reputation for being the "eclectic electric" band. A listen to their first two albums confirms that Kaleidoscope did indeed cover a wide range of musical ground, including a mix of original compositions and cover versions of older material such as Willie Cobbs' signature tune You Don't Love Me.  The band's original lineup of David Saul Feldthouse, David Lindley, Fenrus Epp and Chris Darrow (multi-instrumentalists all), along with drummer John Vidican (who also played a little tympani), only recorded two LPs (the second of which was 1968's A Beacon From Mars) before internal friction led to the departure of Darrow and Vidican. Kaleidoscope continued on with new members for two more albums before finally disbanding in 1970.

Artist:    Max Frost And The Troopers
Title:    Shape Of Things To Come
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Wild In The Streets (soundtrack))
Writer(s):    Mann/Weill
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1968
    Max Frost was a politically savvy rock star who rode the youth movement all the way to the White House, first through getting the support of a hip young Senator, then getting the age requirements for holding high political office lowered to 21, and finally lowering the voting age to 14. Everyone over 30 was locked away in internment camps, similar to those used during WWII by various governments to hold those of questionable loyalty to the current regime. What? You don't remember any of that? You say it sounds like the plot of a cheapie late 60s teen exploitation flick? Right on all counts. "Wild in the Streets" starred Christopher Jones as the rock star, Hal Holbrook as the hip young senator, and a Poseidon Adventure-sized Shelly Winter as the rock star's interred mom. Richard Pryor, in his film debut, played the band's hook-handed drummer/political activist Stanley X. The band itself, Max Frost And The Troopers, was actually either a group called the 13th Power (as credited on the label) or Davie Allen And The Arrows, an instrumental group that was often called on to provide music for teen-oriented B movie soundtracks.

Artist:    Sound Sandwich
Title:    Tow Away
Source:    Mono LP: Ain't It Hard (released to radio stations as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Johnny Cole
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Viva)
Year:    1968
    Sound Sandwich was a young (as in high school age) Los Angeles band that came under the wing of producer Johnny Cole, who wrote both of the band's singles. The second of these, Tow Away, does not show up in the database I usually use, leading me to believe the record was only released as a promo to L.A. area radio stations shortly before Viva Records closed its doors permanently.

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

Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Tomorrow
Source:    LP: The Best Of The Strawberry Alarm Clock
Writer(s):    Weitz/King
Label:    Sundazed/Uni
Year:    1967
    The story of the Strawberry Alarm Clock almost seems like a "best of" (or maybe "worst of") collection of things that could have happened to a band during the psychedelic era. Signed with a local label: check. Released single: check. Started getting airplay on local radio stations: check. Record picked up by major label for national distribution: check. Record becomes hit: check. Band gets to record an entire album: check. Album does reasonably well on charts, mostly due to popularity of single: check. Band gets to record second album, but with more creative freedom, thanks to previous successes: check. Single from second album does OK, but nowhere near as OK as first hit single: check. Second album fails to chart: check. Second single from second album charts lower than either previous single. Band soldiers on for a while longer, but never manages to duplicate success of first single: check. Band disbands: check. In the case of the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the hit single was huge. Incense And Peppermints is still one of the best known songs of 1967. The second single, Tomorrow, not so much, although it did indeed make the top 40, peaking at #23. Not that it's a bad song, by any means. But, to be honest, it's no Incense And Peppermints, either.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Dr. Do-Good
Source:    CD: Underground
Writer(s):    Tucker/Mantz
Label:    Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    I have a theory that the decision makers at Reprise Records didn't bother to actually listen to this bit of weirdness from Underground, the second Electric Prunes album. Instead, they apparently just looked at the songwriting credits, saw that Dr. Do-Good was written by Annette Tucker and Nancy Mantz (the same songwriting team that had come up with the band's first big hit, I Had Too Much To Dream), and decided to issue it as the first single from the album, leaving everyone, including producer Dave Hassinger and the band members themselves, scratching their heads.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star
Source:    Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    Hillman/McGuinn
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    By early 1967 there was a building resentment among musicians and rock press alike concerning the instant (and in many eyes unearned) success of the Monkees. One notable expression of this resentment was the Byrds' So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star, which takes a somewhat sarcastic look at what it takes to succeed in the music business. Unfortunately, much of what they talk about in the song continues to apply today (although the guitar has been somewhat supplanted by the computer as the instrument of choice).

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Foxy Lady
Source:    LP: The Essential Jimi Hendrix Volume Two (originally released on LP: Are You Experienced)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    The first track on the original release of Are You Experienced was Foxy Lady. The British custom of the time was to not include any songs on albums that had been previously released as singles. When Reprise Records got the rights to release the album in the US, it was decided to include three songs that had all been top 40 hits in the UK. One of those songs, Purple Haze, took over the opening spot on the album, and Foxy Lady was moved to the middle of side 2. For some reason Reprise Records misspelled the title as Foxey Lady, and continued to do so on posthumous compilations such as The Essential Jimi Hendrix Volume Two.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Strange Brew
Source:    LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s):    Clapton/Collins/Pappalardi
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967
    During sessions for Cream's second album, Disraeli Gears, the trio of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker recorded an instrumental track for an old blues tune, Lawdy Mama. Producer Felix Pappalardi and his wife Janet Collins reworked the melody and lyrics to create an entirely new song, Strange Brew. Clapton provided the lead vocals for the song, which was issued as a single in Europe and the UK, as well as being chosen as the lead track for the album itself.

Artist:     Donovan
Title:     Preachin' Love
Source:     Mono British import CD: Mellow Yellow (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM B side)
Writer:     Donovan Leitch
Label:     EMI (original US label: Epic)
Year:     1967
     Due to a contract dispute with his UK record label, Pye Records, Mellow Yellow (the song), did not get released in Donovan's native country until early 1967, well after the song had already run its course on the US charts. Preachin' Love, a swing jazz tune recorded in late 1966, was chosen as the record's B side. Around the same time Donovan's next US single, Epistle To Dippy, was released, also with Preachin' Love as the B side. The song was not included on any albums, however, until re-issued in the UK on the Mellow Yellow CD.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Yellow Submarine
Source:    CD: Revolver
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol)/EMI
Year:    1966
    Ringo's greatest hit. (What, you expected some sort of hidden insight into one of the best-known songs in pop culture history???)

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Ticket To Ride
Source:    CD: Help!
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1965
    Trying to figure out the Beatles' catalog can be a bit confusing, as Capitol Records, which had the rights to release the band's recordings in the US, had their own ideas about what should be on a Beatles album, which was often at odds with the wishes of the band members themselves. Some US albums, such as Beatles '65, had no British counterpart at all, while others had different track lineups than the original UK versions. Probably the most radically altered of the original LPs was the soundtrack album to the film Help! In the UK, side one of the album contained songs from the film itself, while side two contained a collection of unrelated studio recordings, some of which had been intended for, but not used in, the film. In the US, however, the Help album included incidental orchestral pieces heard throughout the movie interspersed with the songs heard on side one of the UK album. Among the tracks heard on both versions was Ticket To Ride, which was also issued as a single in the US (using one of the songs from side two of the UK Help album as a B side). The tune has gone on to become one of the most recognizable Beatle songs ever.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Taxman
Source:    CD: Revolver
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    The Beatles' 1966 LP Revolver was a major step forward, particularly for guitarist George Harrison, who for the first time had three of his own compositions on an album. Making it even sweeter was the fact that one of these, Taxman, was chosen to lead off the album itself. Although Harrison is usually considered the band's lead guitarist, the solo in Taxman is actually performed by Paul McCartney.
      
Artist:    Love
Title:    Gazing
Source:    Mono LP: Love
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    L.A's Sunset Strip blossomed as a hangout for teenaged baby boomers in the mid-1960s, with clubs like Ciro's and the Whisky-A-Go-Go pulling in capacity crowds on a regular basis. These clubs had learned early on that the best way to draw a crowd was to hire a live band, which gave rise to a thriving local music scene. Among the many bands playing the strip, perhaps the most popular was Love, the house band at the Whisky-A-Go-Go. Led by multi-instrumentalist Arthur Lee and boasting not one, but two songwriters (Lee and guitarist Bryan MacLean), Love made history in 1966 by being the first rock band signed to Elektra Records. Lee, a recent convert to the then-popular folk-rock style popularized by the Byrds (for whom MacLean had been a roadie) had come from an R&B background and counted a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix among his musician friends. Songs like Gazing, from Love's debut LP, gave an early indication that Lee, even while writing in the folk-rock idiom, had a powerful musical vision that was all his own.

Artist:    Janis Ian
Title:    Society's Child
Source:    Mono CD: Songs Of protest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Janis Ian
Label:    Rhino (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year:    1966
    Janis Ian began writing Society's Child, using the title Baby I've Been Thinking, when she was 13 years old, finishing it shortly after her 14th birthday. She shopped it around to several record labels before finally finding one (Now Sounds) to take a chance on the controversial song about interracial dating. The record got picked up and re-issued in 1966 by M-G-M's experimental label Verve Forecast, a label whose roster included Dave Van Ronk, Laura Nyro and the Blues Project, among others. Despite being banned on several radio stations the song became a major hit when re-released yet another time in early 1967. Ian had problems maintaining a balance between her performing career and being a student which ultimately led to her dropping out of high school. She would eventually get her career back on track in the mid-70s, scoring another major hit with At Seventeen, and becoming somewhat of a heroine to the feminist movement. Ironic, considering that Society's Child ends with the protagonist backing down and giving in to society's rules.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Tobacco Road
Source:    LP: Psychedelic Lollipop
Writer(s):    John D. Loudermilk
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1966
    For years I've been trying to find a DVD copy of a video I saw on YouTube. It was the Blues Magoos, complete with electric suits and smoke generators, performing Tobacco Road on a Bob Hope TV special. The performance itself was a vintage piece of psychedelia, but the true appeal of the video is in Hope's reaction to the band immediately following the song. You can practically hear him thinking "Well, that's one act I'm not taking with me on my next USO tour."

Artist:    Zombies
Title:    Tell Her No
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Rod Argent
Label:    London (original label: Parrot)
Year:    1965
    Rod Argent was responsible for writing four well-known hit songs, which were spread out over a period of eight years (and two bands). The second of these was the Zombies' Tell Her No, released in 1965. The song got mixed reviews from critics, all of which measured the tune against Beatle songs of the same period.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Pushin' Too Hard
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: The Seeds and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sky Saxon
Label:    Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1965
    Pushin' Too Hard was originally released as a single in 1965 (under the title You're Pushin' Too Hard), but did not make an immediate impression. The following year, however, the tune started getting some local airplay on Los Angeles area stations. This in turn led to the band recording their first album, The Seeds, which was released in spring of 1966. A second Seeds LP, A Web Of Sound, hit L.A. record stores in the fall of the same year. Meanwhile, Pushin' Too Hard, which had been reissued with a different B side in mid-1966, started to get national airplay, hitting its peak position on the Billboard charts in February of 1967.