https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/374176-pe-2126
This week we have a Jimi Hendrix set that emphasizes his unique sense of humor. We also have a set of 1996 tunes from L.A.'s most popular underground club band (Love), an avant-garde track built around a poem written by a San Francisco radio station contest winner and one of the longest singles ever released, along with lots of other goodies.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Somewhere They Can't Find Me
Source: LP: Sounds Of Silence
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
The first Simon And Garfunkel album, Wednesday Morning 3AM, was a fairly traditional type of folk LP. The album was originally released in late 1964, but due to lackluster sales was soon deleted from the Columbia catalog. In 1965 Paul Simon relocated to London, releasing a solo LP called the Paul Simon Songbook there. Before leaving the country, however, he and Art Garfunkel recorded two new songs in a more upbeat style. One of those two, We've Got A Groovey Thing Goin', was used as the B side for an electrified version of The Sound Of Silence, a tune from Wednesday Morning 3AM that was issued without the knowledge of either Simon or Garfunkel. The other song, Somewhere They Can't Find Me, was, lyrically, a reworking of the title track of Wednesday Morning 3AM, but with entirely new music inspired by a Davey Graham tune called Anji. It remained unreleased until 1966, when the duo reunited in early 1966 and quickly put together a new album, Sounds of Silence, to capitalize on the success of the unauthorized (but happily accepted) single. On the album itself, Somewhere They Can't Find Me is followed by Simon's cover of Anji.
Artist: Byrds
Title: The Girl With No Name
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Chris Hillman
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
A failed relationship was the inspiration for The Girl With No Name, one of five songs written or co-written by Byrds bassist Chris Hillman for the group's fourth LP, Younger Than Yesterday. The tune has a strong country feel to it, presaging Hillman's future career as a member of the Desert Rose Band in the 1980s. Guitarist Clarence White, who would soon become a member of the band, makes an early appearance on the track.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: No Expectations
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released on LP: Beggar's Banquet and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
The first single to be released from Beggar's Banquet was Street Fighting Man, which was also the first Rolling Stones track to be produced by Jimmy Miller, who had already established a reputation working with Steve Winwood, both with the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. Brian Jones's slide guitar work on The B side of the single, No Expectations, is sometimes considered his last important contribution to the band he founded.
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 15 seconds or so from the original recording.
Artist: Oxford Circle
Title: Foolish Woman
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Yoder/Patton
Label: Rhino (original label: World United)
Year: 1966
The Oxford Circle was one of those bands that had a reputation for being the opening band that blew the headliners off the stage, yet never was able to make it big itself. Originally from Sacramento, California, the group appeared frequently in and around San Francisco in 1965 and 1966, but disbanded before the scene started getting national attention, with many of the members moving on to greater fame with other bands. Drummer Paul Whaley was the first to get national attention as a founding member of Blue Cheer. Oxford Circle leader Gary Lee Yoder would eventually join Blue Cheer as well, after a short stint with his own band, Kak. Also of note was bassist Jim Keylor, who was in an early incarnation of Roxy and went on to form BSU studios, where the Dead Kennedys recorded. For all that, the Oxford Circle made only one single, Foolish Woman, which was released on the independent World United label in 1966.
Artist: Who
Title: I'm A Boy (re-recorded stereo version)
Source: CD: Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1966
The Who's1966 hit I'm A Boy was originally intended to be part of a rock mini-opera set in a future where parents choose the sex of their children ahead of time. The family of the protagonist orders four girls, but instead gets three girls and a boy. Refusing to acknowledge the truth, the mother insists on dressing the boy in girl's clothing and forces him to do "feminine" things. OK, it's a pretty absurd idea, but the song, recorded in early August of 1966 and released about two weeks later, ended up going all the way to the #2 spot on the British charts. The stereo version of the song on the album Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy is slightly slower and a bit longer than the original hit single, and was recorded about two months later, on October 3rd.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Blue Avenue
Source: LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s): Wayne Ulaky
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
One of Boston's most popular bands, the Beacon Street Union, had already migrated to New York City by the time their first album, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union (produced by the legendary Tom Wilson), made its debut in February of 1968. The band itself was made up of Boston University dropouts John Lincoln Wright (lead vocals), Paul Tartachny (guitar, vocals), Robert Rhodes (keyboards, brass), Richard Weisberg (drums), and Wayne Ulaky (bass). Ulaky wrote what was probably the band's best-known song, Blue Avenue. The tune was particular popular in the UK, where it was often heard on John Peel's Top Gear program. The Beacon Street Union, however, fell victim to hype; in this case the ill-advised attempt on the part of M-G-M records to market several disparate bands as being part of the "Boss-Town Sound". After a second LP, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens (produced by future Partridge Family impressario Wes Farrell) failed to equal the somewhat limited success of their debut LP, the Beacon Street Union decided to call it quits, with Wright going on to have a moderately successful career as a country singer.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: The Trap
Source: CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1968
The Trap is one of those songs whose meaning is conveyed as much by the music as it is the words. In fact, the lyrics of The Trap are somewhat sparse, with lines like "Somewhere in the darkness is a light we almost find" and "reality is a prison for the mind" alternating with "The trap, the trap, the trap". Once the slightly-creepy organ heavy music is added, however, the entire piece takes on sinister overtones of a society that oppresses its own members.
Artist: Moby Grape
Title: The Lake
Source: LP: Grape Jam
Writer(s): Michael Hayworth/Moby Grape
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
In the mid-1960s top 40 radio stations were often heavily involved with promoting the local music scene. Stations like Chicago's WLS and WCFL gave a generous amount of airplay to local bands like the Shadows of Knight, the New Colony Six and the Buckinghams long before they became nationally famous. All across the country local stations would sponsor and promote battles of the bands, with the winners often being given the opportunity to cut a record at a local studio. They also ran all kinds of contests that would tie in to the local music scene. In 1967, San Francisco's KFRC, the region's dominant top 40 station, ran a poetry contest, with the winner getting his poem recorded by a local rock band, in this case Moby Grape. Whether this was done in conjunction with the band's label, Columbia, or their manager, Matthew Katz, is not clear, but the result was that the winning poem, The Lake by Michael Hayworth, ended up appearing as the last track on the 1968 album Grape Jam, set to a background of sound effects that can best be described as an example of "Musique concrète". The album itself was made up of jam sessions featuring most of the band members (along with guest musicians Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield, who would themselves release an album called Super Session later the same year). Grape Jam was released as part of a specially priced two-LP set, along with the studio album Wow, and ended up being Moby Grape's highest charting release, peaking in the #20 spot nationally.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Apeman
Source: Canadia import CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection. (originally released on LP: Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneyground Part One)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Polygram/Polytel (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1970
The Kinks, whose commercial success had been on the decline for a number of years, scored a huge international hit in 1970 with the title track from their album Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneyground Part One. They followed it up with the 1971 single Apeman, taken from the same album. The song was a top 10 single in the UK, although it was only moderately successful elsewhere.
Artist: Wet Paint
Title: Glass Road
Source: CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wild Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Wet Paint
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Onyx)
Year: 1968
Although most of the bands recording in the state of Massachusetts used studios in Boston, there were some exceptions. One such case was a band called Wet Paint, who recorded at Eastern Sounds Recordings in Metheun. Eastern even had its own in-house record label, Onyx, which is where Glass Road was released in 1968.
Artist: Free
Title: All Right Now
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Fraser/Rodgers
Label: A&M
Year: 1970
Led by Andy Fraser and Paul Rodgers, Free was one of the first "70s" rock bands. They made their biggest splash with All Right Now, a huge hit in 1970.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as EP)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Rhino (original label: Rag Baby)
Year: 1965
A relatively new arrival on the highly politicized Berkeley folk music scene in 1965, Country Joe McDonald had already organized a loose group of musicians to play at "teach-ins" designed to educate the public about what was really going on in Vietnam. He was also attempting to put together a newspaper with a similar focus, but found himself short of usable copy. His solution was to create a "talking issue" by inserting a 7" 33 1/3 RPM record into the paper. His own contribution to the record was the first recorded version of a song that would later become one of the best-known antiwar tunes ever penned: the iconic I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag. The actual makeup of the band called Country Joe And The Fish on this recording is not quite clear, other than the fact that both McDonald and Barry Melton played on it. An early video made of the group performing the song shows several people I don't recognize alternating on the vocals.
Artist: Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title: Kicks
Source: CD: Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mann/Weil
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
It may not have been the first pop song with a strong anti-drug message, but Kicks, as recorded by Paul Revere And The Raiders, was the first to be a certified hit, making it to the number four spot on the US charts and hitting number one in Canada. The song, written by Brill building husband and wife team Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, was also the biggest hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders until Indian Reservation made it all the way to the top five years later.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Dear Mr. Fantasy
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s): Capaldi/Winwood/Wood
Label: United Artists
Year: 1967
Steve Winwood is one of those artists that has multiple signature songs, having a career that has spanned decades (so far). Still, if there is any one song that is most closely associated with the guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist, it's the title track of Traffic's Mr. Fantasy album.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: The Nile Song
Source: Simulated stereo CD: Relics (originally released on LP: Soundtrack From The Film More)
Writer(s): Roger Waters
Label: Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year: 1969
After the replacement of Syd Barrett by his childhood friend David Gilmore midway through the making of the second Pink Floyd album, the new lineup got to work on a new project: a soundtrack for a film by Luxembourg director Barbet Schroeder called More. The soundtrack album contains more acoustic numbers than any other Pink Floyd LP, but is better known for a pair of tunes that are among the hardest rocking tracks the band ever recorded. One of those, the Nile Song, was released as a single, but only in France, Japan and New Zealand. Composer Roger Waters once said that The Nile Song is probably the closest to heavy metal that Pink Floyd ever got.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: EXP
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The second Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Axis: Bold As Love, is very much a studio creation. Hendrix had been taking a growing interest in what could be done with multiple tracks to work with, and came up with a masterpiece. What makes the achievement even more remarkable is the fact that he actually only had four tracks to work with (compared to the virtually unlimited number available with modern digital equipment). EXP, which opens the album, is an exercise in creative feedback moving from left to right and back again, fading in and out to create the illusion of circling the listener (this is particularly effective if you're wearing headphones). The intro to the piece is a faux interview of a slowed-down Hendrix (posing as his friend Paul Caruso) by bassist Noel Redding.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice
Source: German import 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Polydor
Year: 1967
The fourth single released in Europe and the UK by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was 1967's Burning Of The Midnight Lamp, which appeared in stereo the following year on the album Electric Ladyland. The B side of that single was a strange bit of psychedelia called The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice, which is also known in some circles as STP With LSD. The piece features Hendrix on guitar and vocals, with background sounds provided by a cast of at least dozens. Hendrix's vocals are, throughout much of the track, spoken rather than sung, and resemble nothing more than a cosmic travelogue with Hendrix himself as the tour guide. The original mono mix of the track has never been released in the US, which is a shame, since it is the only version where Jimi's vocals dominate the mix, allowing his somewhat whimsical sense of humor to shine through.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Wait Until Tomorrow
Source: CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Jimi Hendrix shows his sense of humor on Wait Until Tomorrow, a track from his second Jimi Hendrix Experience LP, Axis: Bold As Love. The song tells a story of a young man standing outside his girlfriend's window trying to convince her to run away from him. He gets continually rebuffed by the girl, who keeps telling him to Wait Until Tomorrow. Ultimately the girl's father resolves the issue by shooting the young man. The entire story is punctuated by outstanding distortion-free guitar work that showcases just how gifted Hendrix was on his chosen instrument.
Artist: Vanilla Fudge
Title: Some Velvet Morning
Source: Mono CD: The Complete Atco Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Lee Hazlewood
Label: Real Gone/Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1969
Most American listeners are probably unaware of Vanilla Fudge's 1969 cover of Lee Hazlewood's Some Velvet Morning, but the song actually made quite a big splash in the rest of the world, thanks to the band's live performance of the song at the International Music Festival in Venice that year. The performance, which led to the band becoming the first Americans to win the Golden Gondola award, was see by 40 million television viewers worldwide. In the US, the song was released as a mono single at a time when FM stereo was becoming the medium of choice for serious rock fans. That, taken with the fact that AM radio was not about to play a song that ran nearly eight minutes in length, pretty much doomed Some Velvet Morning as a potential US hit right from the start.
Artist: Mad River
Title: Wind Chimes
Source: LP: Mad River
Writer(s): Mad River
Label: Sundazed/EMI (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
When Mad River's debut LP was released, the San Francisco rock press hailed it as "taking rock music as far as it could go." Indeed, songs like Wind Chimes certainly pushed the envelope in 1968, when bubble gum was king of top 40 radio and progressive FM stations were still in the process of finding an audience. One thing that helped was the band members' friendship with avant-garde poet Richard Brautigan, who pulled whatever strings he could to get attention for his favorite local band. Still, the time was not yet right for such a band as Mad River, who had quietly faded away by the early 1970s.
Artist: Love
Title: Softly To Me
Source: Mono German import CD: Love
Writer: Bryan McLean
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
Bryan McLean's role as a songwriter in Love was similar to George Harrison's as a Beatle. He didn't have more than one or two songs on any particular LP, but those songs were often among the best tracks on the album. The first of these was Softly To Me from the band's debut LP.
Artist: Love
Title: 7&7 Is
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single. Stereo version released on LP: Da Capo)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1967
The word "seven" does not appear anywhere in the song 7&7 Is. In fact, I have no idea where Arthur Lee got that title from. Nonetheless, the song is among the most intense tracks to ever make the top 40. 7&7 Is starts off with power chords played over a constant drum roll (possibly played by Lee himself, although Lee was always quick to credit original Love drummer "Snoopy" Pfisterer for the performance), with cymbals crashing over equally manic semi-spoken lyrics. The song builds up to an explosive climax: an atomic bomb blast followed by a slow post-apocalyptic quasi-surf instrumental that fades out after just a few seconds.
Artist: Love
Title: Mushroom Clouds
Source: German import CD: Love
Writer(s): Lee/Echols/Forssi/MacLean
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
Mushroom Clouds is a bit of an anomaly. For one thing, writing credit on the tune, from Love's first album, is shared by Arthur Lee, guitarist Johnny Echols, bassist Ken Forssi and guitarist Bryan MacLean, despite being a purely acoustical piece. In fact, it is probably the closest thing to a pure folk song the band ever recorded, complete with obligatory 60s antiwar sentiment. Personally I like the piece, despite the fact that it seems to have been left off every Love retrospective I have ever seen or heard.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Girl From The City
Source: 45 RPM single (promo)
Writer: P. Marshall
Label: Uni
Year: 1970
The Strawberry Alarm Clock have the distinction of being one of the most referred to bands of the psychedelic era, despite only having one real hit record. How this came to be is a bit of a mystery. I suspect it's probably because they had a cool name that people tend to remember. The fact that they appeared in at least one Hollywood movie probably didn't hurt, either. Regardless, they cranked out a series of singles from 1967 to 1970, but were unable to equal the success of their first hit, Incense and Peppermints. The last of these singles was 1970's Girl From The City, a song that sounds a bit like the Band could have recorded it.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square
Source: CD: Stand Up
Writer: Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
Jethro Tull incorporated traditional Indian instruments on Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square, one of a pair of tunes named for future Tull bassist Jeffrey Hammond by the band's primary songwriter, Ian Anderson.
Artist: Monkees
Title: P.O. Box 9847
Source: LP: The Birds, The Bees, And The Monkees
Writer: Boyce/Hart
Label: Colgems
Year: 1968
After four consecutive number one albums, the Monkees streak was broken in 1968 with the Birds, The Bees, And The Monkees, which still managed to peak in the number three spot. The album included two hit singles, Daydream Believer and Valleri, as well as several tracks that had appeared on the Monkees TV show, which had ceased production (at the request of the Monkees themselves) at the end of its second season. One of the tunes on that album came from the same writing team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart that had provided the bulk of the group's material for their first two albums, including their first hit, Last Train To Clarksville (in fact, as originally conceived, the Monkees would have had Boyce and Hart as its Lennon and McCartney analogs). As it turns out, P.O. Box 9847 is one of the Monkee's most psychedelic songs.
Artist: Them
Title: Walking In The Quees Garden
Source: Mono British import CD: Now and Them
Writer: Them
Label: Rev-Ola (original US label: Tower)
Year: 1967
After the departure of original lead vocalist Van Morrison, the remaining members of Them returned to their native Belfast, where they recruited Kenny McDowell to be Morrison's replacement. They soon came to the attention of producer Ray Ruff, who invited Them to relocate to the US, where they cut a pair of singles. The second of these was a band original called Walking In The Queens Garden (sic), which was released on Ruff's own label in November of 1967 and then picked up by Capitol's Tower subsidiary for national distribution. This in turn led to Ruff producing two Them albums for Tower, the first of which included a slightly longer stereo version of Walking In The Queen's Garden (that mysteriously gained an apostrophe in the process).
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: Beatles
Title: Think For Yourself
Source: CD: Rubber Soul
Writer: George Harrison
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1965
By the end of 1965 George Harrison was writing two songs per Beatles album. On Rubber Soul, however, one of his two songs was deleted from the US version of the album and appeared on 1966's Yesterday...And Today LP instead. The remaining Harrison song on Rubber Soul was Think For Yourself. Harrison later said that he was still developing his songwriting skills at this point and that bandmate John Lennon had helped write Think For Yourself.
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