https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/379590-pe-2132
This week's show includes our first Advanced Psych segment in several weeks, featuring a hard-to-find Stranglers B side from 1981 and a track from the 2014 Electric Prunes album WaS. It's also the first show in quite some time not to include any artists' sets. Probably just a coincidence.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Manic Depression
Source: Mono LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
My dad bought an Akai X-355 reel to reel tape recorder when we moved to Ramstein, Germany in early 1968. It was pretty much the state of the art in home audio technology at the time. The problem was that we did not have a stereo system to hook it into, so he bought a set of Koss headphones to go with it. One of my first purchases was a pre-recorded reel to reel tape of Are You Experienced. The Akai had an auto-reverse system and I would lie on the couch with the headphones on to go to sleep every night listening to songs like Manic Depression. Is it any wonder I turned out like I did?
Artist: Mad River
Title: Orange Fire
Source: Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released in US on EP: Mad River)
Writer(s): Lawrence Hammond
Label: Big Beat (original label: Wee)
Year: 1967
Mad River was formed in 1965 in Yellow Spings, Ohio, as the Mad River Blues Band. The group (after several personnel changes) relocated to the Berkeley, California in spring of 1967, and soon began appearing at local clubs, often alongside Country Joe And The Fish. Around this time the band came into contact with Lonnie Hewitt, a jazz musician who had started his own R&B-oriented label, Wee. After auditioning for Fantasy Records, the band decided instead to finance their own studio recordings, which were then issued as a three-song EP on Wee. From the start, Mad River's music was pretty far out there, even by Bay Area standards. Orange Fire, for instance, was an attempt by bandleader Lawrence Hammond to portray the horrors of war musically. Interestingly enough, all the tracks on the EP had been written and arranged before the band moved out to the West Coast. The group eventually signed with Capitol, releasing two decidedly non-commercial albums for the label before disbanding in 1969.
Artist: Doors
Title: End Of The Night
Source: CD: Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine (originally released on LP: The Doors)
Writer: The Doors
Label: Elektra/Rhino
Year: 1967
Sometimes you run across a song that seems to encapsulate what a band is all about. End Of The Night, from the first Doors album, is one of those songs. Apparently the band members felt the same way, as it was included on the anthology album Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine, despite never being released as a single.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source: LP: Bookends
Writer: Paul Simon
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1966
Originally released as a single in 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs intended for the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used in the film was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold.
Artist: Balloon Farm
Title: A Question Of Temperature
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Appel/Schnug/Henny
Label: Rhino (original label: Laurie)
Year: 1967
It's not entirely clear whether the Balloon Farm was an actual band or simply an East Coast studio concoction. Regardless, they did manage to successfully cross bubble gum and punk with A Question Of Temperature, originally released on the Laurie label in 1967. Band member Mike Appel went on to have greater success as Bruce Springsteen's first manager.
Artist: Monkees
Title: Supplicio/Can You Dig It
Source: LP: Head
Writer(s): Peter Tork
Label: Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year: 1968
Peter Tork only received two solo writing credits for Monkees recordings. The first, and most familiar, was For Pete's Sake, which was released on the Headquarters album in 1967 and used as the closing theme for the second season of their TV series. The second Tork solo piece was the more experimental Can You Dig It used in the movie Head and included on the 1968 movie soundtrack album. Not long after Head was completed, Tork left the group, not to return until the 1980s, when MTV ran a Monkees TV series marathon, introducing the band to a whole new generation and prompting a reunion tour and album. Supplicio, which precedes Can You Dig It on the LP, is a short bit of uncredited electronics and vocal effects that lead into the Tork tune.
Artist: Deep Purple
Title: Wring That Neck (BBC Top Gear session)
Source: CD: The Book Of Taleisyn (bonus track)
Writer(s): Blackmore/Lord/Simper/Paice
Label: Eagle
Year: Recorded 1969, released 2000
Wring That Neck is an instrumental piece by Deep Purple first recorded for their second LP, The Book Of Taleisyn. The piece served as the band's opening number for live performances, particularly when touring the US in 1968 and 1969. The title refers to the playing styles of guitarist Richie Blackmore and bassist Nicky Simper, who would "wring the neck" of their instruments to "squeeze out" the notes, according to Simper. The band's American label, Tetragrammaton, felt that the title was too violent, however, and had it changed to Hard Road for the album's US release. One of the stops on the band's American tour was San Francisco, home of a band called It's A Beautiful Day. Don And Dewey, the opening track of It's A Beautiful Day's second LP, Marrying Maiden (released in 1970), uses an almost identical signature riff to that of Hard Road. Perhaps not coincidentally, Child In Time, the best-known track on Deep Purple's 1970 LP Deep Purple In Rock, is built around a riff nearly identical to that of Bombay Calling, a popular concert piece from It's A Beautiful Day's 1969 debut album.
Artist: McCoys
Title: Fever
Source: Canadian import CD: Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame Volume VII (Originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Writer: John Davenport
Label: Legacy
Year: 1965
The McCoys were originally from Indiana, but are best remembered as being an Ohio band. In fact their biggest hit, Hang On Sloopy is considered the unofficial state song there. The follow-up single, a cover of the Peggy Lee classic Fever was done in much the same style as Hang On Sloopy. In the long run this similarity probably hurt the band more than it helped, as the McCoys are generally considered to be a one-hit wonder, despite eventually becoming the band known as Johnny Winter And.
Artist: Who
Title: I'm A Boy (re-recorded stereo version)
Source: Simulated stereo LP: 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 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: 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 focus 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: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title: Piece Of My Heart
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer: Ragovoy/Burns
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1968
By 1968 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with their charismatic vocalist from Texas, Janis Joplin, had become as popular as fellow San Francisco bands Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Somehow, though, they were still without a major label record deal. That all changed with the release of Cheap Thrills, with cover art by the legendary underground comix artist R. Crumb. The album itself was a curious mixture of live performances and studio tracks, the latter being led by the band's powerful cover of the 1966 Barbara Lynn tune Piece Of My Heart. The song propelled the band, and Joplin, to stardom. That stardom would be short-lived for most of the band members, however, as well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed advice-givers convinced Joplin that Big Brother was holding her back. The reality was that the band was uniquely suited to support her better than anyone she would ever work with again.
Artist: Bob Seger System
Title: Tales Of Lucy Blue (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Source: LP: Ramblin' Gamblin' Man
Writer: Bob Seger
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
For many years the only Bob Seger record I owned was the single Ramblin' Gamblin' Man that I bought new in 1969 at the Base Exchange at Ramstein Air Force Base Germany for about 50 cents. The B side was the song Tales of Lucy Blue. After that single disappeared from my collection I never bought another Bob Seger record (although I did score a promo copy of Turn The Page from a radio station I was working at in the mid 90s). More recently I was allowed to pillage the WEOS vinyl archives (found on the Hobart and William Smith campus in a storage area in one of the dorms) and found this copy of the Ramblin' Gamblin' Man album. The cover features a young blond woman dressed in blue satin against a blue background. It turns out that the album (Seger's first) was originally going to be titled Tales of Lucy Blue but was changed at the last minute by the shirts at Capitol in order to capitalize on the popularity of the single that I had bought a copy of back in 1969. Luckily they didn't change the cover art as well, as a picture of Seger in blue satin probably wouldn't have worked.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
Source: Mono LP: Blonde On Blonde
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1966
Lightnin' Hopkins' Automobile Blues (originally released between 1946 and 1950 and found on the 1965 LP Early Recordings) served as the template for Bob Dylan's Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat on his 1966 album Blonde On Blonde. The Pill-Box hat had been made fashionable by Jacqueline Kennedy just a few years before (although I always associate it with Lois Lane for some reason). On the other hand, even in the mid-1960s the use of a leopard skin pattern was considered tacky by many people. Dylan merged the two concepts into a tune satirizing faddish fashion following, much as Ray Davies of the Kinks had done with his Dedicated Follower Of Fashion earlier the same year. In addition to Dylan, (who makes a rare appearance as a lead guitarist in the song's intro as well as playing rhythm guitar throughout the tune) the final take of Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, completed in Nashville early in the morning on Mar 10, 1966, includes Kenny Buttrey on drums, Henry Strzelecki on bass, and Robbie Robertson on lead guitar.
Artist: Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels
Title: Little Latin Lupe Lu
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Bill Medley
Label: Eric (original label: DynaVoice)
Year: 1966
For many years Detroit had one of the most vibrant music scenes in the nation. In addition to the many artists associated with Motown Records, there were several local bands that ended up getting national attention, including the Bob Seger System and the Amboy Dukes. The most successful of these, however, was Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, who made a name for themselves by reworking tunes originally recorded by other artists, generally increasing the energy level in the process. Among their many mid-60s hits was an updated version of an early Righteous Brothers tune, Little Latin Lupe Lu, which the Wheels took to the # 17 spot in 1966, surpassing the success of the original.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Surrealistic Pillow)
Writer: Grace Slick
Label: Sony Music (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1967
The first time I heard Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit was on Denver's first FM rock station, KLZ-FM. The station branded itself as having a top 100 (as opposed to local ratings leader KIMN's top 60), and prided itself on being the first station in town to play new releases and album tracks. It wasn't long before White Rabbit was officially released as a single, and went on to become a top 10 hit, the last for the Airplane. Not that the Airplane ever suffered from lack of exposure...
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Parachute Woman
Source: CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
The last Rolling Stones album with the original lineup was Beggar's Banquet, released in 1968. The album itself was a conscious effort on the part of the band to get back to their roots after the psychedelic excesses of Their Satanic Majesties Request. Sadly, Brian Jones was fast deteriorating at the time and his contributions to the album are minimal compared to the band's earlier efforts. As a result, Keith Richards was responsible for most of the guitar work on Beggar's Banquet, including both lead and rhythm parts on Parachute Woman.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
Paul McCartney wrote Why Don't We Do It In The Road while the band was in India meditating. Just in case you're one of those people who ask authors and composers "where do you get your ideas?", McCartney later said he was inspired to write the song after seeing a pair of monkeys doing it in the road.
Artist: Stranglers
Title: Vietnamerica
Source: British import 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): The Stranglers
Label: Liberty
Year: 1981
The Stranglers have always been difficult to pigeonhole, which may ultimately account for their longevity. Originally formed in 1974 as the Guildford Stranglers, the band soon became one of the first groups to be identified with Britain's punk-rock movement of the mid-1970s. They soon began to experiment with other musical styles, however, and ended up outlasting most of their contemporaries. By the early 1980s, punk-rock was waning in popularity, and the shirts at EMI hooked them up with producer Tony Visconti in an attempt at coming up with a more commercially viable sound. The result was La Folie, released in November of 1981. The lead single from the album was a song called Let Me Introduce You To The Family. The non-LP B side was Vietnamerica, a moody piece that reflects the influence on the Stranglers of 60s psychedelic bands like the Music Machine and the Doors.
Artist: 27 Devils Joking
Title: Indian Joe
Source: LP: Actual Toons
Writer(s): Brian S. Curley
Label: Live Wire
Year: 1986
This seems like a good place to talk about Craig Ellis. Craig was a talented, if somewhat troubled songwriter/guitarist/vocalist whom I first heard of in the early 1980s when I ran across a single by a group called Cosmic Grackles at KUNM radio at the University of New Mexico. I finally met Craig in late1986, when both of us were recording at Bottomline Studios in southeast Albuquerque. I was working on something called Civilian Joe ("a real American zero"), while Craig was putting together a project called Uproar At The Zoo involving guitarist Larry Otis and drummer John Henry Smith, among others. Around that same time I interviewed a guy from Santa Fe named Brian S. Curley, who was appearing on my Rock Nouveaux radio show to promote his new group, 27 Devils Joking. During the interview Brian mentioned that he had until recently been working with Craig Ellis, and that 27 Devils Joking was actually a result of a falling out between the two. Which brings us to Indian Joe, a track from the first 27 Devils Joking LP, Actual Toons. You see, in early 1987 Craig gave me a cassette tape of some of his most recent work, including a song called Indian Joe. It's the same song, using an almost identical arrangement, yet on the LP the song is listed as being the sole work of Brian Curley. One of these days I'll find that old cassette tape Craig gave me and try to figure out once and for all whose song it is.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Like Getting High
Source: CD: WaS
Writer(s): Lowe/Tulin
Label: PruneTwang
Year: 2014
WaS, the final Electric Prunes album, was released in 2014, two years after the passing of bassist Mark Tulin, who, along with James Lowe, had written most of the band's material since the group reformed in 1999. According to Lowe "Usually Mark and I would send each other song ideas back and forth until we had the rough story line and music in hand, then we would meet and pound everything into submission. This CD is a collection of those final ideas and messages between us and that is all we set out to present here; but a funny thing happened on the way to the recording studio. A new idea emerged behind a gig in Tokyo in an unusual snowstorm, and then someone sneezed on a girl in the subway, and a frozen winter chilled the planet; suddenly there were new thoughts, fresh ideas and new places to sketch our story in song." Like Getting High, a tune that basically compares sex and drugs in a rock and roll song, is from that album, WaS.
Artist: David Bowie
Title: Space Oddity
Source: CD: David Bowie
Writer(s): David Bowie
Label: Parlophone (original label: Mercury)
Year: 1969
David Bowie's first major hit, Space Oddity, was originally recorded on Feb 2, 1969 for his promotional film, Love You till Tuesday. On June 20, 1969 Bowie re-recorded the song to be used as the lead single for his second self-titled LP. Producer Tony Visconti, however, did not like the song, calling it a "cheap shot" at the upcoming Apollo 11 mission, and delegated the song's production duties to Gus Dudgeon. The song was released as a single on July 11, 1969, five days before Apollo 11 launched. It quickly went into the top 5 in the UK, but did not become a hit in the US until 1973, when it was re-released by RCA Victor following the success of the 1972 album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Space Oddity has gone on to become one of the most revered songs in rock history.
Artist: Pleasure (featuring Billy Elder)
Title: Poor Old Organ Grinder
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Tandyn Almer
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1969
Tandyn Almer had one of the most innovative minds in late 60s L.A., both in and out of the recording studio (he was the inventor of the dual-chamber bong, for instance). Poor Old Organ Grinder was a song originally intended for Tommy Flanders, the original lead vocalist for the Blues Project. Flanders, however, was not able to hit the high notes. As Almers was about to cancel the entire project one of the recording engineers, Billy Elder, convinced Almer to let him take a shot at the song, and the result is the recording heard here.
Artist: Santana
Title: Persuasion
Source: CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On-Back To Yasgur's Farm
Writer(s): Santana (band)
Label: Rhino
Year: Recorded 1969, released 2009
Carlos Santana took a bunch of acid before going on stage at Woodstock, or so the story goes. He himself has said that he only truly got it togther just as the band broke into Soul Sacrifice. That may well be, but their performance of Persuasion sure sounds pretty together to me.
Artist: Spencer Davis Group
Title: Gimme Some Lovin'
Source: Mono British import 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Steve Winwood
Label: Fontana
Year: 1966
It only took the Spencer Davis Group about an hour to write and arrange what would become their biggest hit, Gimme Some Lovin'. It was June of 1966, and the band's most recent single, a Jackie Edwards tune called When I Come Home, had not performed as well as expected on the British charts, and the group was under pressure to come up with a hit. The day before they were scheduled to begin recording, their manager, Chris Blackwell, brought the band to a rehearsal room with instructions to come up with a new song. According to bassist Muff Winwood "We started to mess about with riffs, and it must have been eleven o'clock in the morning. We hadn't been there half an hour, and this idea just came. We thought, bloody hell, this sounds really good. We fitted it all together and by about twelve o'clock, we had the whole song. Steve had been singing 'Gimme, gimme some loving' - you know, just yelling anything, so we decided to call it that. We worked out the middle eight and then went to a cafe that's still on the corner down the road. Blackwell came to see how we were going on, to find our equipment set up and us not there, and he storms into the cafe, absolutely screaming, 'How can you do this?' he screams. Don't worry, we said. We were all really confident. We took him back, and said, how's this for half an hour's work, and we knocked off 'Gimme Some Lovin' and he couldn't believe it. We cut it the following day and everything about it worked." The original British single did not have backup vocals, and Steve Winwood's organ is more prominent in the mix than on the more familiar US version. This version also lacks the reverb that producer Jimmy Miller added for the song's US release to give it more "punch" and, due to a minor error in the mastering process, the first note on the record "bends" upward in pitch. Nearly every reissue of the song uses the US mix, making this British single version of Gimme Some Lovin' a bit of a rarity.
Artist: Seeds
Title: The Wind Blows Your Hair
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Saxon/Bigelow
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1967
The Wind Blows Your Hair is actually one of the Seeds' better tracks. Unfortunately, by the time it was released as a single in October of 1967 the whole idea of Flower Power (which the Seeds were intimately tied to) had become yesterday's news (at least in ultra-hip L.A.) and the single went nowhere.
Artist: Cream
Title: Crossroads
Source: LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer: Robert Johnson
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
Robert Johnson's Crossroads has come to be regarded as a signature song for Eric Clapton, who's live version (recorded at the Fillmore East) was first released on the Cream album Wheels Of Fire, and later became one of the group's highest charting singles.
Artist: Craig
Title: I Must Be Mad
Source: CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Geoff Brown
Label: Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year: 1966
The Craig hailed from Birmingham, the UK's second-largest city. Led by vocalist/songwriter Geoff Brown, the band also included guitarist Richard Pannell, bassist Len Cox and drummer Carl Palmer. They signed with Fontana in 1966 and released two singles. The first was a beat version of the 1961 Jarmels hit A Little Bit Of Soap, but it is the second one that the group is best remembered for. The band had gone into the studio with a Brown original called Suspense that was intended to be the A side. Their producer, Larry Page, asked the band if they had any other songs they could record, and they responded by playing a song that Brown had recently written called I Must Be Mad. Page had the tape running and ended up making it the A side. The song features some thunderous drum work from the then 16-year-old Palmer, who would go on to greater fame as one third of the prog-rock trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Arnold Layne
Source: Simulated stereo CD: Works (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Syd Barrett
Label: Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Like most bands in the 60s, Pink Floyd made their vinyl debut with a 45 RPM single: in this case the song Arnold Layne. As was the case with all the band's 1967 singles, the song was written by original bandleader Syd Barrett. Arnold Layne went quickly into the UK top 20 but then hit a roadblock when it was banned by the BBC due to its subject matter (it's about a guy who steals women's garments off of clotheslines and then wears them himself). The song was eventually included on the album Relics and has been included on several other compilations over the years.
Artist: Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title: Sit With The Guru
Source: LP: The Best Of The Strawberry Alarm Clock (originally released on LP: Wake Up...It's Tomorrow and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Weitz/King/Freeman
Label: Sundazed/Uni
Year: 1968
Sit With The Guru is the second single from the second Strawberry Alarm Clock album, Wake Up...It's Tomorrow. The song addresses the subject of polytheism, which might explain the fact that it only peaked at #65 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Artist: Misunderstood
Title: Children Of The Sun
Source: British import CD: Before The Dream Faded (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Hill/Brown
Label: Cherry Red (original label: Fontana)
Year: Recorded 1966, released 1969
Formed in Riverside, California in 1965, the Misunderstood relocated to London in 1966, where they soon became one of the top bands on the local underground scene. Unfortunately, the band was plagued by issues involving draft eligibility, resulting in original rhythm guitarist and primary songwriter Greg Treadwell returning to the states soon after arriving in the UK. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as his replacement, Londoner Tony Hill, teamed up with vocalist Rick Brown to write even better songs, augmented by the talents of Glenn Ross Campbell, who played his leads on a pedal steel guitar. The band soon signed with Fontana, releasing a single in December of 1966 before once again running into problems with the draft board, this time concerning Brown. With their frontman gone, the Misunderstood soon disbanded, with the remaining American members returning to California. Two years later Fontana released a second single by the Misunderstood, Children Of The Sun, which has since come to be regarded as a classic example of garage-flavored psychedelic rock (or is it psychedelic-flavored garage rock?).
Artist: Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Title: Prelude/Nightmare
Source: British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown)
Writer(s): Arthur Brown
Label: Polydor (original label: Atlantic)
Year: 1968
One of rock's first "theatrical" performers, Arthur Brown first began to get noticed in Paris, where he spent a year developing his stage show and unique vocal style with his band the Arthur Brown Set, which was formed in 1965. On his return to England he joined up with keyboardist Vincent Crane. By 1967 the Vincent Crane Combo had changed its name to The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown and was becoming a major force on London's underground music scene. In late 1967 the band went to work on their self-titled debut LP, which was released in the UK on the Track label in June of 1968. Spurred by the success of the single Fire, the album was picked up for American distribution by Atlantic Records that same year. The people at Atlantic, however, felt that the drums were a bit off and insisted on adding horns and strings to cover the deficiency. The result can be heard on tracks like Prelude/Nightmare, which opens the album.
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