https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/371493-pe-2123
You may have noticed that we've recently had a few battles of the bands on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era: entire segments made up of alternating cuts from two different artists. This time around we're taking it up a level and featuring a three-way battle of the bands in our second hour. Just to add to the fun we also have our first-ever Ultimate Spinach artists' set, plus a whole lot of fun stuff (like the original studio version of Whipping Post) in the first hour as well.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!)
Writer(s): Pete Seeger
Label: Cotillion (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1965
After their success covering Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, the Byrds turned to an even more revered songwriter: the legendary Pete Seeger. Turn! Turn! Turn!, with lyrics adapted from the book of Ecclesiastes, was first recorded by Seeger in the early 60s, nearly three years after he wrote the song.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: A Most Peculiar Man
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
You would think that a high school on a US military facility would be inclined to use the most staunchly traditional teaching methods known to mankind. Surprisingly, though, this was not the case at General H. H. Arnold High School in Weisbaden, Germany, in 1967. In fact, the English department was teaching some sort of new system that dispensed with terms such as verb and noun and replaced them with a more conceptual approach to language. What I best remember about my Freshman English class is the day that my rather Bohemian teacher (he wore sandals to class!), actually brought in a copy of the Sounds Of Silence and had us dissect two songs from the album, Richard Cory and A Most Peculiar Man. We spent several classes discussing the similarities (they both deal with a suicide by someone representing a particular archetype) and differences (the methods used and the archetypes themselves) between the songs. I have forgotten everything else about that class and its so-called revolutionary approach (and even the teacher's name), but those two songs have stayed with me my entire life. I guess that teacher was on to something.
Artist: Love
Title: The Daily Planet
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra/Rhino
Year: 1967
The closest Love ever got to a stable lineup was in early 1967, when the group consisted of multi-instrumentalist and band leader Arthur Lee, lead guitarist Johnny Echols, rhythm guitarist Bryan MacLean, bassist Ken Forssi and drummer Michael Stuart. This group, along with "Snoopy" Pfisterer on keyboards and Tjay Cantrelli on flute and saxophone, had completed the De Capo album in late 1966 and were firmly entrenched as the top-drawing band on the Sunset Strip. There were drawbacks, however. Then, as now, Los Angeles was the party capitol of the world, and the members of Love, as kings of the Strip, had easy access to every vice they could imagine. This became a serious problem when it was time to begin working on the band's third LP, Forever Changes. Both Lee and MacLean had new material ready to be recorded, but getting the other band members into the studio was proving to be impossible, so their producer took matters into his own hands and brought in some of L.A.'s top studio musicians to begin work on the album. The move turned out to be a wake up call for the rest of the band, who were able to get their act together in time to finish the album themselves. Lee and MacLean, however, chose to keep the two tracks that they had completed using studio musicians. One of those was a Lee composition, The Daily Planet. Ken Forssi later claimed that bassist Carol Kaye was having problems with the song and Forssi himself ended up playing on the track, but there is no way now to verify Forssi's claim.
Artist: Who
Title: Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Magic Bus: The Who On Tour (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): John Entwhistle
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1968
The Who were blessed with not one, but two top-notch songwriters: Pete Townshend and John Entwhistle. Whereas Townsend's songs ranged from tight pop songs to more serious works such as Tommy, Entwistle's tunes had a slightly twisted outlook, dealing with such topics as crawly critters (Boris the Spider), imaginary friends (Whiskey Man) and even outright perversion (Fiddle About). Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde was originally released in the US as the B side to Call Me Lightning. Both songs were included on the Magic Bus album.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Because (isolated vocal tracks)
Source: CD: Anthology 3 (promo EP)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple/Capitol
Year: 1969
The Beatles took full advantage of the new 8-track technology to record Because for the Abbey Road album. In addition to the instruments, the recording has three separate vocal tracks, each with John, Paul & George singing three-part harmony, making a total of nine voices. Here are those vocal tracks, presented without backing instruments on the 1996 Anthology 3 collection.
Artist: Allman Brothers Band
Title: Whipping Post
Source: CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: The Allman Brothers Band)
Writer(s): Gregg Allman
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1969
It's hard to believe now, but when it was released in 1969, the first Allman Brothers Band LP did not sell all that well. Even stranger, the critics were at best lukewarm in their reviews of the album. It wasn't until the band released a live album in 1971 that had been recorded during the final days of the Fillmore East that the Allman Brothers became a major force in rock. Not long after that Atco Records re-released both the Allman Brothers Band and its followup, Idlewild South, as a double-LP entitled Beginnings. One of the high points of the Fillmore East album was the band's rendition of Whipping Post, heard here in its original studio form.
Artist: Please
Title: Strange Ways
Source: British similulated stereo CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution
Writer(s): Peter Dunton
Label: Grapefruit
Year: Recorded 1969, released 2013
Please was a British four-piece band formed in 1968 by Peter Dunton when the band he had recently joined, the Flies, decided to call it quits. Dunton had previously led a band called Please, and his new band was, in essence, a continuation of that original group. Please recorded a handful of tunes, including Strange Ways, in 1969, but before any of these recordings could be issued Dunstan left the group to join the Gurvitz brothers in their band Gun. The remaining members of Please tried to make a go of it under the name Bulldog Breed, but nothing ever came of it.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Blues From An Airplane
Source: LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s): Balin/Spence
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1966
Blues From An Airplane was the opening song on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Although never released as a single, it was picked by the group to open their first anthology album, The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane, as well. The song is one of two tunes on Takes Off co-written by lead vocalist Marty Balin and drummer Skip Spence.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Paint It Black
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins/Jagger/Richards
Label: Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the highlights of the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 was the onstage debut of Eric Burdon's new Animals, a group much more in tune with the psychedelic happenings of the summer of love than its working class predecessor. The showstopper for the band's set was an extended version of the Rolling Stone's classic Paint It, Black. That summer saw the release of the group's first full LP, Winds Of Change, which included a studio version of Paint It, Black.
Artist: Tommy James And The Shondells
Title: Mony Mony
Source: CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1968 (originally released as45 RPM single)
Writer(s): James/Cordell/Gentry/Bloom
Label: Roulette
Year: 1968
Sometime around 1964, a kid named Tommy James took his band, the Shondells, into a recording studio to record a simple song called Hanky Panky. The song was released on the Roulette label and went absolutely nowhere. Two years later a Pittsburgh DJ, looking for something different to make his show stand out from the crowd, decided to dig out a copy of the record and play it as a sort of on-air audition. The audience loved it, and the DJ soon contacted James, inviting him and the Shondells to make a personal appearance. Unfortunately by this time there were no Shondells, so James hastily put together a new band to promote the record. It wasn't long before the word spread and Hanky Panky was a national hit. James and his new Shondells then commenced to pretty much single-handedly keep Roulette Records afloat for the next three or four years with songs like their 1968 jukebox favorite Mony Mony, one of many top 10 singles for the band.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Boogie Music
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Living The Blues and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): L.T.Tatman III
Label: United Artists (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1968
Canned Heat was formed in 1966 by a group of San Francisco Bay Area blues purists. Although a favorite on the rock scene, the band continued to remain true to the blues throughout their existence, even after relocating to the Laurel Canyon area near Los Angeles in 1968. The band's most popular single was Going Up the Country from the album Living the Blues. The B side of that single was another track from Living The Blues that actually had a longer running time on the single than on the album version. Although the single uses the same basic recording of Boogie Music as the album, it includes a short low-fidelity instrumental tacked onto the end of the song that sounds suspiciously like a 1920s recording of someone playing a melody similar to Going Up The Country on a fiddle. The only time this unique version of the song appeared in stereo was on a 1969 United Artists compilation called Progressive Heavies that also featured tracks from Johnny Winter, Traffic, the Spencer Davis Group and others.
Artist: Monkees
Title: For Pete's Sake
Source: CD: Headquarters
Writer(s): Tork/Richards
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1967
It didn't come as a surprise to anyone who knew him that first member of the Monkees to depart the band was Peter Tork. Of all the members of the "pre-fab four" Tork was the most serious about making the group into a real band, and was the most frustrated when things didn't work out that way. A talented multi-instrumentalist, Tork had been a part of the Greenwich Village scene since the early 60s, where he became close friends with Stephen Stills. Both Tork and Stills had relocated to the west coast when Stills auditioned for the Monkees and was asked if he had a "better looking" musician friend that might be interested in the part. Although Tork was, by all accounts, the best guitarist in the Monkees, he found himself cast as the "lovable dummy" bass player on the TV show and had a difficult time being taken seriously as a musician because of that. During the brief period in 1967 when the members of the band did play their own instruments on their recordings, Tork could be heard on guitar, bass, banjo, harpsichord and other keyboard instruments. He also co-wrote For Pete's Sake, a song on the Headquarters album that became the closing theme for the TV show during its second and final season. Until his passing in February of 2019 Tork was involved with a variety of projects, including an occasional Monkees reunion.
Artist: Association
Title: Along Comes Mary
Source: LP: And Then...Along Comes The Association
Writer: Tandyn Almer
Label: Valiant
Year: 1966
The Association are best known for a series of love ballads and light pop songs such as Cherish, Never My Love and Windy. Many of these records were a product of the L.A. studio scene and featured several members of the Wrecking Crew, the studio musicians who played on dozens of records in the late 60s and early 70s. The first major Association hit, however, featured the band members playing all the instruments themselves. Produced by Curt Boettcher, who would soon join Gary Usher's studio project Sagittarius, Along Comes Mary shows that the Association was quite capable of recording a classic without any help from studio musicians.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: I Want To Be Your Driver
Source: CD: The Blues Project Anthology (originally released on LP: Live At The Cafe Au Go Go)
Writer(s): Chuck Berry
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Folkways)
Year: 1966
When Tommy Flanders abruptly quit the Blues Project in January of 1966, the rest of the band found themselves with an album's worth of material, most of which included Flanders's lead vocals, and a record company that had already scheduled the album's release date. Their solution was to take over New York's Cafe Au Go Go for several afternoons to record a revised set of tunes in front of an invited audience. Although some Flanders tracks ended up on the album Live At The Cafe Au Go Go, others, such as the band's cover of Chuck Berry's I Want To Be Your Driver, featured other band members on lead vocals (in this case, guitarist Danny Kalb).
Artist: Seeds
Title: Just Let Go
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Saxon/Hooper/Savage
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
After listening to Just Let Go, from the second Seeds album, A Web Of Sound, it's easy to see why there were some in Los Angeles that were convinced that the band was actually from another planet. An acid-rock classic.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Sunshine Superman
Source: CD: Donovan's Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Epic/Legacy
Year: 1966
Up until the early 1970s there was an unwritten rule that stated that in order to get played on top 40 radio a song could be no more than three and a half minutes long. There were exceptions, of course, such as Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone, but as a general rule the policy was strictly adhered to. Sometimes an artist would record a song that exceeded the limit but nonetheless was considered to have commercial potential. In cases like these the usual practice was for the record company (or sometimes the record's own producer) to create an edited version of the master recording for release as a single. Usually in these cases the original unedited version of the song would appear on an album. In the case of Donovan's Sunshine Superman, however, the mono single version was used for the album as well, possibly because the album itself was never issued in stereo. In fact, it wasn't until 1969 that the full-length original recording of Sunshine Superman was made available as a track on Donovan's first Greatest Hits collection. This was also the first time the song had appeared in stereo, having been newly mixed for that album.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Heart Full Of Soul
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Graham Gouldman
Label: Epic
Year: 1965
Heart Full Of Soul, the Yardbirds' follow-up single to For Your Love was a huge hit, making the top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic in 1965. The song, the first to feature guitarist Jeff Beck prominently, was written by Graham Gouldman, who was then a member of Wayne Fontana's Mindbenders and would later be a founding member of 10cc.
The next nine tunes make up our first 3-way Battle of the Bands. To begin with we have the reigning champions, the Rolling Stones, with California's Electric Prunes and London's Procol Harum providing the challenge. Whether or not we ever do this again is still up in the air.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: It's All Over Now
Source: CD: Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) (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: Electric Prunes
Title: I Happen To Love You
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Goffin/King
Label: Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Arguably the most commercial-sounding cut on the second Electric Prunes album, Underground, I Happen To Love You was inexplicably passed over as a potential single in favor of the bizarre Dr. Do-Good, which did nothing on the charts, and did more harm than good to the band's reputation. Written by the highly successful songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, I Happen To Love You may not have fit the psychedelic image that the band's promotional team was looking to push, but probably would have gotten a decent amount of airplay on top 40 radio.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Salad Days (Are Here Again)
Source: Mono British import 45 RPM EP: Homburg (originally released on LP: Procol Harum)
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Esoteric/Cherry Red (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
In 1967, in the midst of sessions for the first Procol Harum album, keyboardist Matthew Fisher took on the extra task of writing instrumental music for a film called Separation, written by and starring Jane Arden. To sweeten the deal, Fisher agreed to include Salad Days (Are Here Again), a new Procol Harum song from their forthcoming LP, in the soundtrack as well. The film, due to the usual post-production process, was not released until 1968. The Procol Harum album, however, was released in late 1967, making the back cover "From the film Separation" note a kind of reverse anachronism, as the film had not yet been released.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Ruby Tuesday
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
One of the most durable songs in the Rolling Stones catalog, Ruby Tuesday was originally intended to be the B side of their 1967 single Let's Spend The Night Together. Many stations, however, balked at the subject matter of the A side and began playing Ruby Tuesday instead, which is somewhat ironic considering speculations as to the subject matter of the song (usually considered to be about a groupie of the band's acquaintance, although Mick Jagger has said it was about Keith Richards' ex-girlfriend).
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence
Source: Mono British import 45 RPM EP: Homburg (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: Esoteric/Cherry Red (original US label: A&M)
Year: 1968
For their third single, Procol Harum released Quite Rightly So, from their Shine On Brightly LP, with a non-album track, In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence, as the B side. In the US, however, neither side was designated by A&M Records as the A side, and In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence ended up getting minor airplay in at least six US markets, while Quite Rightly So only made the chartbound list on one station in the entire country.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: The Electric Prunes and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
The Electric Prunes' biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in November of 1966. The record, initially released without much promotion from their record label, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation (and the second track on Rhino's first Nuggets LP).
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: Quite Rightly So
Source: CD: Shine On Brightly
Writer(s): Brooker/Reid
Label: A&M/Rebound
Year: 1968
In 1969, while living on Ramstein AFB in Germany, my dad managed to get use of one of the basement storage rooms in building 913, the 18-unit apartment building we resided in. For a few months (until getting in trouble for having overnight guests and making too much noise...hey I was 16, whaddaya expect?) I got to use that room as a bedroom. I had a small record player that shut itself off when it got to the end of the record, which meant I got to go to sleep every night to the album of my choice. As often as not that album was Shine On Brightly, a copy of which I had gotten in trade for another album (the Best of the Beach Boys I think) from a guy who was expecting A Whiter Shade of Pale and was disappointed to discover it was not on this album. I always thought I got the better end of that deal, despite the fact that there was a skip during the fade of Quite Rightly So, causing the words "one was me" to repeat over and over until I scooted the needle over a bit. Luckily Quite Rightly So is the first song on the album, so I was usually awake enough to do that.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: The Great Banana Hoax
Source: CD: Underground
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The second Electric Prunes LP, Underground, saw the band gaining greater creative control over the recording process than at any other time in their career (until their reformation in the late 1990s). The album's opening track, The Great Banana Hoax, is notable for two reasons: first, it was composed by band members and second, it has nothing to do with bananas. The title probably refers to the rumor circulating at the time that Donovan's Mellow Yellow was really about smoking banana peels to get high. The song itself is an indication of the musical direction the band itself wanted to go in before it got sidetracked (some would say derailed) by producer David Hassinger, who would assert control to the point of eventually replacing all the original members of the band by their fourth album (yes, some producers had that kind of power in those days).
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Think
Source: CD: Aftermath
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original US label: London)
Year: 1966
The 1966 album Aftermath marked a turning point for the Rolling Stones, as it was the first Stones album to be entirely made up of songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Although, as with all the early Stones releases, there were differences between the US and UK versions of the album, both releases included Think, a song that is fairly representative of the mid-60s Rolling Stones sound.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Jazz Thing
Source: LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Although the second Ultimate Spinach album, Behold And See, is generally considered inferior to the group's debut effort, there are a few high points that are among the best tracks the band ever recorded. Perhaps the strongest track on the album is Jazz Thing, which almost sounds like a Bob Bruno Circus Maximus track.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Baroque # 1
Source: LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
Of the six major US record labels of the time, only two, Decca and M-G-M, failed to sign any San Francisco bands in the late 1960s. Decca, which had been bought by MCA in the early 60s, was fast fading as a major force in the industry (ironic considering that Universal, the direct descendant of MCA, is now the world's largest record company). M-G-M, on the other hand, had a strong presence on the Greenwich Village scene thanks to Jerry Schoenbaum at the Verve Forecast label, who had signed such critically-acclaimed artists as Dave Van Ronk, Tim Hardin and the Blues Project. Taking this as an inspiration, the parent label decided to create interest in the Boston music scene, aggressively promoting (some would say hyping) the "Boss-Town Sound". One of the bands signed was Ultimate Spinach, which was led by keyboardist Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote all the band's material, including the instrumental Baroque # 1.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Fifth Horseman Of The Apocalypse
Source: LP: Behold And See
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
To say Ian Bruce-Douglas was not a happy camper by the time sessions for the second Ultimate Spinach LP, Behold And See, got underway is an understatement, to say the least. Producer Alan Lorber's infamous hyping of the "Boss-Town Sound" was taking its toll on the band, whose members weren't even speaking to each other due to personality conflicts (Bruce-Douglas was a firm believer in psychedelics, while the other band members, with the exception of vocalist Barbara Jean Hudson, were heavily into alcohol). Bruce-Douglas had formed the band in the first place because "I started hearing all these strange little tunes in my head. I had a couple of acoustic guitars but what I was hearing was much larger than a simple guitar. So, I decided to put together an original band so I could hear my tunes live as I heard them in my head." But then Lorber "screwed me over because, before we had signed with him, he had promised me that I would be involved with the mixes, which was VERY important to me, since I knew how I heard the finished product in my head. But, when we were done recording, he told me to go back to Boston. Period." To make things worse, Bruce-Douglas was suffering from bronchitis and pneumonia during sessions for the band's second LP, Behold And See. Nonetheless, when questioned about songs on the album such as Fifth Horseman Of The Apocalypse he had this to say: "This one has a nice melody line and with the harmonica, it almost sounds like it could have been the soundtrack to a Western movie. Except for the lame guitar solos, I like this one."
And on that note, we fade into our closing theme, appropriately titled Love Theme For The Apocalypse.
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