Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2236 (starts 8/29/22)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/436513-pe-2236

    This week we bring you the full-length Woodstock Boogie (the version on the album Woodstock Two cut it from its original 28 and a half minutes down to slightly less than 14), along with artists sets from the Seeds, the Doors and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. And all that accounts for less than half the show! To find out what else is going on, read on...

Artist:     Harbinger Complex
Title:     I Think I'm Down
Source:     CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Writer:     Hockstaff/Hoyle
Label:     Rhino (original label: Brent)
Year:     1966
     Most garage/club bands never made it beyond a single or two for a relatively small independent label. The Harbinger Complex, from Freemont, California, however, benefitted from a talent search conducted by Bob Shad, owner of Mainstream Records. The band was one of about half a dozen acts from the Bay Area to be signed by Shad in July of 1966, with the single I Think I'm Down appearing on the Brent label later that year. The song was also included on Shad's Mainstream sampler LP, With Love-A Pot Of Flowers, in 1967.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    She Has Funny Cars
Source:    Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s):    Kaukonen/Balin
Label:    Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1967
    She Has Funny Cars, the opening track of Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow, was a reference to some unusual possessions belonging to new drummer Spencer Dryden's girlfriend. As was the case with many of the early Airplane tracks, the title has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song itself. The song was also released as the B side to the band's biggest hit single, Somebody To Love.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Roadblock
Source:    CD: Cheap Thrills (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Joplin/Albin
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 1999
    Although producer John Simon was convinced that the best way to record Big Brother And The Holding Company was live, he did have the band cut a few tracks in the studio as well. Some of these, such as Summertime and Piece Of My Heart, ended up on the 1968 album Cheap Thrills. Others, like Roadblock, ended up on the shelf, where they stayed until 1999, when a newly remastered CD of the album included them as bonus tracks. Although it's not a bad song by any means, it's hard to imagine any of the tracks that were used for the original album being cut to make room for it.

Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Too Many People
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pons/Rinehart
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1965
    The Leaves are a bit unusual in that in Los Angeles, a city known for drawing wannabes from across the world, this local band's members were all native Ellayins. Formed by members of a fraternity at Cal State Northridge, the Leaves had their greatest success when they took over as house band at Ciro's after the Byrds vacated the slot to go on tour. Like many bands of the time, they were given a song (Bob Dylan's Love Minus Zero) to record as a single by their producer and allowed to write their own B side. In this case the intended B side was Too Many People, written by bassist Jim Pons and  guitarist Bill Rhinehart. Before the record was released, however, the producers decided that Too Many People was the stronger track and designated it the A side. The song ended up getting more airplay on local radio stations than Love Minus Zero, making it their first regional hit. The Leaves had their only national hit the following year with their third attempt at recording the fast version of Hey Joe, the success of which led to their first LP, which included a watered down version of Too Many People. The version heard here is the 1965 original. Eventually Pons would leave the Leaves, hooking up first with the Turtles, then Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention.

Artist:    13th Floor Elevators
Title:    You're Gonna Miss Me
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators)
Writer(s):    Roky Erickson
Label:    Rhino (original label: International Artists)
Year:    1966
    If anyplace outside of California has a legitimate claim to being the birthplace of the psychedelic era, it's Austin, Texas. That's mainly due to the presence of the 13th Floor Elevators, a local band led by Roky Erickson that had the audacity to use an electric jug (played by Tommy Hall) onstage. Their debut album was the first to use the word psychedelic in the title (predating the Blues Magoos' Psychedelic Lollipop by mere weeks). Musically, their leanings were more toward garage-rock than acid-rock, at least on their first album (they got rather metaphysical on their follow-up album, Easter Everywhere). Their only charted hit was You're Gonna Miss Me, released in mid-1966, but their subsequent West Coast tour inspired many a California band to take up psychedelics.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Double Yellow Line
Source:    CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released as 45 RPM single; stereo version released on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer:    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Sundazed (original labels: Original Sound/ Warner Brothers)
Year:    1967
    After the success of Talk Talk, the Music Machine issued a series of unsuccessful singles on the Original Sound label. Band leader Sean Bonniwell attributed this lack of success to mismanagement by record company people and the band's own manager. Eventually those singles would be re-issued on Warner Brothers on an album called Bonniwell Music Machine, along with a handful of new songs. One of the best of these singles was Double Yellow Line, which Bonniwell said he wrote while driving to the studio on the back of a ticket he had just received for distracted driving (he even invited the traffic cop to the recording session). This seems to be a good place to mention the rest of the original Music Machine lineup, which consisted of Mark Landon on lead guitar, Ron Edgar on drums, Doug Rhodes on organ and Keith Olsen (who went on to be an extremely successful record producer) on bass. This lineup would dissolve before the release of the Bonniwell Music Machine album but was nonetheless featured on the majority of tracks on the LP.

Artist:    Them
Title:    Waltz Of The Flies
Source:    LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s):    Tom Lane
Label:    Tower
Year:    1968
    Once you get past the facts that 1) this a band best known as the starting place of a singer (Van Morrison) who was no longer with the group by the time this album was recorded, and 2) this album came out on Tower Records, the audio equilivant of AIP movie studios, you can appreciate the fact that Time Out! Time In! For Them is actually a pretty decent album.

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:    Pearls Before Swine
Title:    The Jeweler
Source:    CD: Creative Melancholy-30 Years Of Pearls Before Swine (originally released on LP: The Use Of Ashes)
Writer(s):    Tom Rapp
Label:    Birdman (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1970
    After completing his first LP for the Reprise label with what remained of his band, Pearls Before Swine, singer/songwriter Tom Rapp and his then-fiancee Elizabeth relocated to her native Netherlands for a few months, living in a small cottage and writing the songs that would become his next album, The Use Of Ashes. By this time, Rapp was working as a solo artist (supplemented by contributions from Elizabeth), but continued to use the name Pearls Before Swine on his recordings. In fact, The Use Of Ashes utilized the talents of various members of Nashville's Area Code 615, who had previously worked with Bob Dylan on his Blonde On Blonde album, among other projects. The LP's title actually comes from the lyrics of The Jeweler, one of Rapp's stronger compositions on the album.

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    Woodstock Boogie
Source:    CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm (originally released on LP: Woodstock 2)
Writer(s):    Canned Heat
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1969
    One of the highlights of any Canned Heat performance was Refried Boogie, an extended jam piece often lasting up to an hour in length. For the Woodstock festival the band shortened it to just under 30 minutes, including solos from every band member, including the recently recruited guitarist Harvey Mandel, who had replaced founding member Henry Vestine. The song was originally issued on the album Woodstock 2 in highly edited form, cutting the running time in half. This restored version was released in 2009 as part of Rhino's six-disc Woodstock anniversary box set.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    I Want To Be Loved
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Abkco (original UK label: Decca)
Year:    1963
    In their early days, the Rolling Stones almost exclusively played cover versions of American blues and R&B tunes. One of these was I Want To Be Loved, a Willie Dixon composition originally recorded by Muddy Waters in 1955. The Stones recorded the song in 1963, releasing it as the B side of their debut single for the british Decca label in June of that year.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Love Me Two Times
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    Although the second Doors album is sometimes dismissed as being chock full of tracks that didn't make the cut on the debut LP, the fact is that Strange Days contains some of the Doors best-known tunes. One of those is Love Me Two Times, which was the second single released from the album. The song continues to get heavy airplay on classic rock stations.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The Unknown Soldier
Source:    LP: 13 (originally released on LP: Waiting For The Sun)
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1968
    One of the oddest recordings to get played on top 40 radio was the Door's 1968 single The Unknown Soldier. The song is notable for having it's own promotional film made by keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who had been a film major at UCLA when the Doors were formed. It's not known whether the song was written with the film in mind (or vice versa), but the two have a much greater synergy than your average music video.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Moonlight Drive
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    Much of the second Doors album consisted of songs that were already in the band's repertoire when they signed with Elektra Records but for various reasons did not record for their debut LP. One of the earliest was Jim Morrison's Moonlight Ride. As was the case with all the Doors songs on their first three albums, the tune was credited to the entire band.
    
Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Here, There And Everywhere
Source:    CD: Revolver
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    In the early days the Beatles did a lot of doubling up of vocals to achieve a fuller sound. This meant that the lead vocalist (usually John Lennon or Paul McCartney) would have to record a vocal track and then go back and sing in unison with his own recorded voice. The process, which Lennon in particular found tedious, often took several attempts to get right, making for long and exhausting recording sessions. In the spring of 1966 engineer Ken Townsend invented a process he called automatic double tracking that applied a tape delay to a single vocal to create the same effect as manual double tracking. The Beatles used the process for the first time on the Revolver album, on tracks like I'm Only Sleeping and Doctor Robert. Oddly enough, the song that sounds most like it used the ADT system, McCartney's Here, There And Everywhere, was actually two separate vocal tracks, which becomes obvious toward the end of the last verse when one of the vocals drops down to harmonize on a couple notes.

Artist:    Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:    The Black Plague
Source:    British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s):    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: M-G-M)
Year:    1967
    One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a scroll against a black background, something that had never been done before (or since, to my knowledge) on an album cover.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    Ritual #1
Source:    CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Harris
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    Technically, Volume III is actually the fourth album by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. The first one was an early example of a practice that would become almost mandatory for a new band in the 1990s. The LP, titled Volume 1, was recorded at a home studio and issued on the tiny Fifa label. Many of the songs on that LP ended up being re-recorded for their major label debut, which they called Part One. That album was followed by Volume II, released in late 1967. The following year they released their final album for Reprise, which in addition to being called Volume III was subtitled A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. Included on that album were Ritual #1 and Ritual #2, neither of which sounds anything like the other.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Poorboy Shuffle/Feelin' Blue
Source:    LP: Willy And The Poor Boys
Writer(s):    John Fogerty
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1969
    Creedence Clearwater Revival's third (!) LP of 1969, Willy And The Poor Boys, started out as a concept album, with the band members pictured on the cover playing a washboard, a harmonica, a Kalamazoo Guitar, and a gut bass. The only track on the album that they actually play those instruments on is Poorboy Shuffle, which flows directly into Feelin' Blue, one of the most overlooked tunes in the entire CCR catalog.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    …And The Gods Made Love/Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)
Source:    CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    After assuming full production duties on the Electric Ladyland album following the departure of Chas Chandler, Jimi Hendrix made the decision to cross-fade the songs on the album's first and third sides into each other, making the two sides each play as a continuous piece. The album opens with ...And The Gods Made Love, an experimental work that expands on some of the studio techniques used on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's first two LPs to create a decidedly otherworldly effect. This leads into the album's title track, which owes more than a little bit to the work of Curtis Mayfield and his band, the Impressions. This in turn leads into the high-energy Crosstown Traffic, the first single released from the album and a recording that has been included on several Hendrix anthologies over the years.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix/Band Of Gypsys
Title:    Lover Man
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2018
    When the Jimi Hendrix Experience made their US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 they opened with a high-energy workup of the Muddy Waters classic Killing Floor. Hendrix' arrangement of the song was so radically different from the original that Hendrix eventually decided to write new lyrics for the song, calling it Lover Man. Several attempts were made to get the song recorded in the studio, including this one recorded on December 15, 1969 with bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. Two weeks later they recorded a series of performances at New York's Madison Square Garden that were used for the 1970 album Band Of Gypsys, although Lover Man was not among the songs selected for the LP.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Bad Part Of Town
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Saxon/Starr
Label:    Sundazed/M-G-M
Year:    1970
    By 1970 the Seeds were barely a memory to most of the record-buying public. It had been nearly a year since they had released any records, and those hadn't sold many copies. Nonetheless, their agent managed to get them a contract to record a new single for the M-G-M label. The tune they recorded for the A side, Bad Part Of Town, was actually one of their better songs in quite some time, but by then there was no market for Seeds records, and the song failed to chart.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Six Dreams
Source:    Mono British import CD: Singles As & Bs (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Sky Saxon
Label:    Big Beat (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1970
    The third Seeds album, Future, showed the band moving away from its garage-rock roots into more psychedelic territory. This change of direction is evident on tracks like Six Dreams, which was also released as the B side of the 1967 single The Wind Blows Your Hair.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Wish Me Up
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single B side (reissue)
Writer(s):    March/Saxon
Label:    Sundazed/M-G-M
Year:    1970
    By the time the 60s had come to an end, the Seeds, who had spearheaded the flower power movement in the middle of the decade, were on their last legs. Only Sky Saxon and Daryl Hooper were left from the original group, and they had lost their contract with GNP Crescendo. Their manager was able to secure a deal to record a pair of singles for M-G-M, but, as can be heard on the B side of the first single, Wish Me Up, the old energy just wasn't there anymore.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield/Barry Goldberg/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title:    Stop!
Source:    LP: Super Session
Writer(s):    Ragovoy/Shuman
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1968
    Al Kooper is one of those people who always seems to be in the right place at the right time, often because he was the one that made those times and places happen in the first place. At a Bob Dylan recording session in 1965, for instance, Kooper took it upon himself to sit in on organ, despite the fact that he was by no means proficient on the instrument at that time. The result was a series of classic tracks that made up the Highway 61 Revisited album. The following year Kooper happened to be in the studio when the Blues Project was auditioning for Columbia Records. Although the label passed on the band, Kooper ended up joining the group, making rock history in the process. In 1968 Kooper formed a new band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, but left them after just one LP. While working as an A&R man for Columbia, Kooper booked two days' worth of studio time later that same year, bringing in guitarist Mike Bloomfield, keyboardist Barry Goldberg, and bassist Harvey Brooks from the Electric Flag, as well as session drummer Eddie Hoh. When Bloomfield failed to show up on the second day, Stephen Stills (who had recently left Buffalo Springfield) was recruited to take his place. The result was an album called Super Session, which surprisingly went all the way to the #12 spot on the Billboard album charts. The popularity of Super Session inspired several more rock stars to make jam albums and gave birth to the idea of the rock supergroup as well. Among the mainly instrumental tracks that feature Bloomfield was a tune called Stop, written by the legendary songwriters Jerry Ragovoy and Doc Shuman and originally recorded by R&B singer/guitarist Howard Tate in 1967.
 
Artist:    Moby Grape
Title:    Murder In My Heart For The Judge
Source:    CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Wow)
Writer(s):    Miller/Stevenson
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    Moby Grape was one of those bands that probably should have been more successful than they were, but were thrown off-track by a series of bad decisions by their own support personnel. First, Columbia Records damaged their reputation by simultaneously releasing five singles from their debut LP in 1967, leading to accusations that the band was nothing but hype. Then their producer, David Rubinson, decided to add horns and strings to many of the tracks on their second album, Wow, alienating much of the band's core audience in the process. Still, Wow did have its share of fine tunes, including drummer Don Stevenson's Murder In My Heart For The Judge, probably the best-known song on the album. The song proved popular enough to warrant cover versions by such diverse talents as Lee Michaels, Chrissy Hynde and Three Dog Night.
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2236 (starts 8/29/22)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/436510-dc-2236

    Three sets this week. The first, from 1969, includes some rarities from well-known artists, while the second, from 1970, includes some old favorites. The final set is a mixed bag of lesser-known tunes from the early 1970s, in no particular order. Yes, that's how we roll on Rockin' in the Days of Confusion.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Gimme Shelter (alternate take)
Source:    unknown
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    none
Year:    1969
    Considered one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded, Gimme Shelter was released in 1969 as the opening track of the LP Let It Bleed. The original guitar riff was composed by Keith Richards, and reflects the tension the guitarist was feeling about his girlfriend possibly having a fling with his songwriting partner Mick Jagger while working on the film Performance together. This emotional tension is particularly evident in this alternate take of the song, which features Richards himself on lead vocals. This particular recording was sent to me by a listener, and I have no idea where it originally came from, or even if it has ever been officially released. Nonetheless, it is an interesting listening experience.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Midnight
Source:    CD: Voodoo Soup (originally released on LP: War Heroes)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 1972
    One of the last recordings made by the original Jimi Hendrix Experience, Midnight first appeared on the post-humous LP War Heroes in 1972. After War Heroes went out of print,  Midnight appeared on the CD album Voodoo Soup, Alan Douglas's 1995 attempt at creating a "fourth" Jimi Hendrix studio album. Less than two years later Experience Hendrix, the family business which ousted Douglas and took over control of the guitarist's recordings, released First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, which used Hendrix's own personal notes as a guide to track selection. Midnight, which was not included on First Rays, later appeared on the 1997 CD South Saturn Delta.

Artist:    Sons Of Champlin
Title:    Rooftop
Source:    British import CD: Loosen Up Naturally/Follow Your Heart/The Sons (originally released on LP: Loosen Up Naturally)
Writer(s):    Bill Champlin
Label:    BGO (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    While still in high school in Mill Valley, California in 1965, guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Bill Champlin hooked up with a band called the Opposite Six, one of the few blue-eyed soul bands on the West Coast. The group did pretty well until both the drummer and the bass player were drafted by the US Army, causing the Opposite Six to fall apart. Champlin, along with saxophone player Tim Cain, soon formed a new band, which after a brief flirtation with the name Masterbeats became the first incarnation of the Sons Of Champlin. The Opposite Six had always featured a horn section, a practice that Champlin continued with his new band. The group signed to Trident Records in 1967, recording an album that remained unreleased until 1999. The following year they got a deal with Capitol Records, and recorded their first album locally at Golden State Recorders.  One of the highlights of the double-LP, Loosen Up Naturally,  was a tune called Rooftop, which is fairly representative of the band's sound. The album did well enough to allow the band to record several more albums before Champlin left to replace Terry Kath in Chicago. Following his departure from that band a few years back, Champlin formed a new Sons Of Champlin band that is still performing regularly.

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

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    Space Child/When I Touch You
Source:    CD: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus
Writer(s):    Locke/Ferguson
Label:    Epic/Legacy
Year:    1970
    Spirit keyboardist John Locke used a combination of piano, organ and synthesizers (then a still-new technology) to set the mood for the entire Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus recording sessions with his instrumental piece Space Child. The tune starts with a rolling piano riff that gives bassist Mark Andes a rare opportunity to carry the melody line before switching to a jazzier tempo that manages to seamlessly transition from a waltz tempo to straight time without anyone noticing. After a short reprise of the tune's opening riff the track segues into Jay Ferguson's When I Touch You, a song that manages to be light and heavy at the same time.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Black Sabbath
Source:    LP: Black Sabbath
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    This track has to hold some kind of record for "firsts". Black Sabbath, by Black Sabbath, from the album Black Sabbath is, after all, the first song from the first album by the first true heavy metal band. The track starts off by immediately setting the mood with the sound of church bells in a rainstorm leading into the song's famous tri-tone (often referred to as the "devil's chord") intro, deliberately constructed to evoke the mood of classic Hollywood horror movies. Ozzy Osborne's vocals only add to the effect. Even the faster-paced final portion of the song has a certain dissonance that had never been heard in rock music before, in part thanks to Black Sabbath's deliberate use of a lower pitch in their basic tuning. The result is something that has sometimes been compared to a bad acid trip, but is unquestionably the foundation of what came to be called heavy metal.

Artist:    Uriah Heep
Title:    I'll Keep On Trying
Source:    LP:Uriah Heep
Writer(s):    Box/Byron
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1970
    The term "heavy metal" had not come into common usage in 1970. If it had, Uriah Heep's debut LP would have been hailed as an early example. Although their later albums, particularly Demons And Wizards and the Magician's Birthday, would take a more progressive turn and deal with fantasy themes, Uriah Heep's first LP was much more straight ahead hard rock. The album was originally released in the UK with the title Very 'eavy...Very 'umble and featured a picture of lead vocalist David Byron partially obscured by cobwebs. The US release of the LP was entitled simply Uriah Heep and had a wraparound cover featuring a silver dragon on a black background. With one exception the song lineup was the same for both albums. I'll Keep On Trying, a song written by Byron and guitarist Mick Box, was included on both versions. You can check out both album covers at the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era Facebook page.
 
Artist:    West, Bruce & Laing
Title:    The Doctor
Source:    CD: Why Dontcha
Writer(s):    West/Bruce/Laing/Palmer
Label:    Columbia/Windfall
Year:    1972
    If West, Bruce & Laing had anything resembling a signature song, it would be The Doctor, from their first LP, Why Dontcha. They performed the song pretty much every time they played live. In addition to the three band members, the song is credited to a Sandra Palmer. I tried using a search engine, but came up with absolutely nothing on her. Anyone?

Artist:    Doors
Title:    In The Eye Of The Sun
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Ray Manzarek
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1972
    When Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore began recording the instrumental tracks for what would become the 7th Doors studio album, Other Voices, they were expecting Jim Morrison to return from Paris to add vocals to the songs. Morrison's sudden death in July of 1971 forced a change of plans, and it fell to Manzarek and Krieger to provide the vocals themselves. The opening track of Other Voices was In The Eye Of The Sun, written and sung by Manzarek. The song was also chosen to be the B side of the second single released from the album.

Artist:    Stevie Wonder
Title:    Visions
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Stevie Wonder
Label:    Tamla
Year:    1973
    It's difficult to pick out songs to play from Stevie Wonder's Innvervisions album. This is because every song on the album crossfades into the next one. Luckily, they released a copy of the sort-of title track as the B side to Living In The City in 1973.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2235 (starts 8/22/22)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/435371-pe-2235 

    Doing 31 songs from 31 artists last week was so much fun we thought we'd do it again this week. But this time we're throwing in seven tracks that have never been heard on the show before. In fact, the last two songs this week are by artists making their Stuck in the Psychedelic Era debut.

Artist:    Dave Clark Five
Title:    Can't You See That She's Mine
Source:    LP: The Dave Clark Five
Writer(s):    Clark/Smith
Label:    Epic
Year:    1964
    Originally formed in 1958 as a backup band for north London vocalist Stan Saxon, the band that would become the Dave Clark Five split with the singer in 1962, eventually settling on a lineup that included Clark on drums, Mike Smith on lead vocals and keyboards, Rick Huxley on bass, Lenny Davidson on lead guitar, and Dennis Payton on saxophone, harmonica and rhythm guitar. Unlike most other British Invasion bands, the DC5 were self-produced, with Clark himself in control of the band's master tapes. Between 1964 and 1967 the group charted over a dozen top 40 singles in the US & UK, including some that were only released in North America. Although a few of those hits were cover songs, most, such as the US-only 1964 hit Can't You See That She's Mine, were written by Clark and Smith. By the end of 1967 the band's popularity had waned in the US, although they continued to chart top 40 songs in the UK through 1970, when they officially disbanded.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Colours
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Golden Days Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sire (original US label: Hickory)
Year:    1965
    On the heels of the success of his 1965 debut single, Catch The Wind (#4 UK, #23 US), Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch followed it up with the similarly styled Colours. Although not a hit in the US, Colours matched the success of Catch The Wind in the UK. Both songs were included on an EP, also called Colours, that was issued in Europe and the UK in December of 1965.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Spoonful
Source:    British import LP: Cream (released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
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 original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. Instead the song was released on two sides of a single in 1967, with 90 seconds removed from the song between parts one and two. The single never charted and now is somewhat difficult to find a copy of (not that anybody would want to). A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1969 compilation album Best Of Cream that the uncut studio version was finally released in the US.

Artist:    Status Quo
Title:    Pictures Of Matchstick Men
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Francis Rossi
Label:    Rhino (original label: Cadet Concept)
Year:    1967
    The band with the most charted singles in the UK is not the Beatles or even the Rolling Stones. It is, in fact, Status Quo, quite possibly the nearest thing to a real life version of Spinal Tap currently in existence. Except for Pictures of Matchstick Men, the group has never had a hit in the US. On the other hand, they remain popular in Scandanavia, playing to sellout crowds on a regular basis (yes, they are still together).

Artist:    Paul Jones
Title:    The Dog Presides
Source:    British import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Paul Jones
Label:    Zonophone (original UK label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    Like many frontmen in the mid-60s Manfred Mann's Paul Jones decided to leave the group for a solo career right at the height of the band's success. Also like many former frontmen, Jones's solo career, beginning in 1966, was less than stellar. Most of Jones's records were done in an almost lounge lizard style. One notable exception is The Dog Presides, the B side of a forgettable 1968 single called And The Sun Will Shine. In addition to Jones on vocals and harmonica, The Dog Presides features former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck and bassist Paul-Samwell Smith and some guy named Paul McCartney on drums. This bit of psychedelic insanity was officially credited to Jones himself, but in all likelihood was a collaborative effort by the four of them.

Artist:    Open Mind
Title:    Magic Potion
Source:    CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Michael Brancaccio
Label:    Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year:    1969
    Originally known as the Drag Set, the Open Mind adopted their new name in late 1967. Not long after the change they signed a deal with Philips Records and recorded an album with producer Johnny Franz in 1968. Their greatest achievement, however, came the following year, when they released Magic Potion as a single. By that time, unfortunately, British psychedelia had run its course, and Open Mind soon closed up shop.

Artist:    Screaming Lord Sutch
Title:    Wailing Sounds
Source:    CD: Lord Sutch And Heavy Friends
Writer(s):    Sutch/Page
Label:    Wounded Bird (original label: Cotillion)
Year:    1970
    Named in a 1998 BBC poll as the worst album of all time, Lord Sutch And Heavy Friends was made under somewhat false pretenses, according to guitarist Jimmy Page, who later said of the album: "I just went down to have a laugh, playing some old rock 'n' roll, a bit of a send-up. The whole joke sort of reversed itself and became ugly." Apparently Page and the other musicians who played on the 1970 album, including drummer John Bonham and bassist Deniel Edwards, both of whom can be heard on Wailing Sounds, were under the impression that they were making demo recordings that would not be commercially released. Two years later Sutch would invite several prominent musicians, including members of Deep Purple, to perform with him at the Carshalton Park Rock 'n' Roll Festival, secretly taping the performance and releasing it on an album called Hand Of Jack The Ripper without the musicians' knowledge or consent. Sutch's reputation with the British musical community never recovered from the debacle.

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    Going Up The Country
Source:    Mono Italian import 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Alan Wilson
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1968
    Canned Heat built up a solid reputation as one of the best blues-rock bands in history, recording several critically-acclaimed albums over a period of years. What they did not have, however, was a top 10 single on the US charts. The nearest they got was Going Up The Country from their late 1968 LP Living The Blues, which peaked in the #11 spot in early 1969 (although it did hit #1 in several other countries). The song was written and sung by guitarist Alan "Blind Own" Wilson, who died at age 27 on September 3, 1970. This Italian pressing, for some reason, cuts off the song's 20 second-long coda.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Don't Slip Away
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Balin/Spence
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    Don't Slip Away, from the 1966 LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, could probably have been a hit if it had been released as a single. It wasn't, however, and the band remained mostly unknown outside of the immediate San Francisco Bay area for several months after the release of the album. This gave the group the opportunity to make a pair of key personnel changes that resulted in Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden becoming Airplane members in time to record the group's breakthrough LP, Surrealistic Pillow. On the strength of Slick's vocals in particular, the Jefferson Airplane became a national phenomena in 1967.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    The Masked Marauder
Source:    CD: 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 EPs 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:     Simon and Garfunkel
Title:     America
Source:     45 RPM single B side (song originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Year:     1968/1972
     Four years after the release of the album Bookends (and two years after the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel), Columbia decided to release the song For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her, from their final album Bridge Over Troubled Water, as a single, to coincide with the release of their Greatest Hits album. For the B side, they went even further back, pulling out the original tapes for the song America. The tracks on the Bookends album were deliberately overlapped to form a continuous audio montage, making this the first standalone version of America to be released by the duo.

Artist:    Glass Family
Title:    Agorn (Elements Of Complex Variables)
Source:    LP: Electric Band
Writer(s):    Glass Family
Label:    Maplewood (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:    1969
    The final track on the released version of Glass Family's Electric Band album is a track called Agorn (Elements Of Complex Variables). The song, credited to keyboardist/bassist David Capilouto and percussionist Gary Green, features a drum solo by Green.

Artist:    Frijid Pink
Title:    End Of The Line
Source:    German import CD: Frijid Pink
Writer:    Thompson/Beaudry
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: Parrot)
Year:    1970
    Frijid Pink was extremely popular in their native Detroit. So popular, in fact, that in 1969 Led Zeppelin was their warm-up act. Unfortunately for the band, their first single to become a national hit, a feedback-drenched version of House Of The Rising Sun, became a bit too popular on top 40 radio, causing the new progressive FM stations to avoid them like the plague. The band was never able to get airplay for their later records such as End Of The Line, the B side of their follow-up single Sing A Song Of Freedom.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    When I See That Girl Of Mine
Source:    LP: The Kink Kontroversy
Writer:    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1965
    Although the Rolling Stones had the reputation as the bad boys of rock, it was the Kinks that stirred up the most controversy with their rowdy behavior (and that of their fans) while touring in Europe. The situation got so bad that for several years, starting in 1965, the Kinks were actually banned from touring in the US. This led to the group's third studio LP being named The Kink Kontroversy. Up until that point record sales for the band had been good on both sides of the Atlantic. As was the case with many British bands, the Kinks had actually released more LPs in the US than in their native UK, due to US LPs having shorter running times and the UK policy of not including songs that had been released on 45 RPM vinyl (singles and EPs) on LPs. In fact, the two US-only LPs had actually outsold the two official studio albums in the US. The Kink Kontroversy, unlike the group's previous studio albums, was released in the US with the same track lineup as its UK counterpart. With the ban on touring in the US, however, the group was unable to fully promote the new LP and US sales suffered, despite the presence of some fine tunes like When I See That Girl Of Mine.
 
Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Kicks
Source:    Simulated stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released on 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Priority (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1966
    Kicks was not the first pop song with a strong anti-drug message, but it was the first one to be a major hit, making it to the number four spot on the US charts and hitting number one in Canada. It was also the biggest hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders until Indian Reservation went all the way to the top of the charts five years later.

Artist:    Every Mother's Son
Title:    The Proper Four Leaf Clover
Source:    Mono LP: Every Mother's Son's Back (promo copy)
Writer(s):    Milner/Larsen
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    For being the largest city in the world (at the time) New York had relatively few popular local bands. Perhaps this is because of the wealth of entertainment and cultural choices in the Big Apple. In fact, the only notable local music scene was in Greenwich Village, which was more into folk and blues than mainstream rock. In fact, it was in the Village where brothers Dennis and Larry Larden, who had been performing for several years as a folk duo, met keyboardist Bruce Milner, who had been sitting in with several folk bands but was looking for something a little more permanent. They soon recruited bass player Schuyler Larsen and drummer Christopher Augustine to form Every Mother's Son in 1966. Their first single, Come On Down To My Boat, was an international hit, giving the band an opportunity to record two LPs for the M-G-M label in 1967. Most of the material on both albums were written by band members, including The Proper Four Leaf Clover, a track from the second LP written by Milner and Larsen.

Artist:    Twilights
Title:    Cathy, Come Home
Source:    Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Australia as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Terry Britten
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1967
    The Twilights were originally formed as a vocal trio in 1964, performing with various backup musicians in the suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. By the end of the year they had joined forces with a local band called the Hurricanes. The now six-piece band soon signed with EMI's Columbia label and released several singles of the next two years, including the chart-topping Needle In A Haystack in September of 1966. At that time they won a national battle of the bands competition that offered a trip to England as first prize. Upon their return to Australia in early 1967 the Twilights recorded several new songs that showed the influence of their British trip, including Cathy, Come Home, which appeared as a B side that spring.

Artist:    Small Faces
Title:    I'm Only Dreaming
Source:    British import 45 RPM single B side (reissue)
Writer(s):    Marriott/Lane
Label:    Immediate/Charly
Year:    1967
    As was the usual custom in the UK, the single Itchycoo Park was not included on any Small Faces albums. In the US, however, both the hit single and its B side, I'm Only Dreaming were included on the LP There Are But Four Small Faces, along with about half the songs from the UK LP Small Faces. As stereo LPs were being phased out in the US by the time the album was released, the mono single version has always been a bit of a rarity, even after being re-released in limited quantity (2500 copies) in 2012 by Charly records.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose
Source:    CD: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s):    Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir/Constanten
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1968
    After completing their first album in three days, the Grateful Dead decided to take their time with the 1968 follow-up release. Anthem of the Sun was an attempt at mixing studio and live material into a coherent whole. That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose comprise most of the first side of that album. In order to increase the band's share of royalties for the album, That's It For The Other One was arbitrarily broken down into several parts on the album cover, although it is in reality one continuous piece.

Artist:    Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:    When I Was Young
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    After the Animals disbanded in 1966, Eric Burdon set out to form a new band that would be far more psychedelic than the original group. The first release from these "New Animals" was When I Was Young. The song was credited to the entire band, a practice that would continue throughout the entire existence of the group that came to be called Eric Burdon And The Animals.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    Rack My Mind
Source:    Mono CD: Roger The Engineer (original US title: Over Under Sideways Down)
Writer(s):    Dreja/McCarty/Beck/Relf/Samwell-Smith
Label:    Great American (original label: Epic)
Year:    1966
            It may come as a surprise to some, but, despite their status as one of the most influential bands in rock history, the Yardbirds actually only recorded one studio album. The album, released in 1966, was originally titled The Yardbirds, but has since come to be known as Roger The Engineer, thanks to the distinctive cover drawn by band member Chris Dreja. In the US, the album was released under a different title (Over Under Sideways Down) and had an entirely different cover as well. To add to the confusion, a compilation of British singles and EP tracks had been released in the US under the title Having A Rave Up the previous year. Roger The Engineer was co-produced by Simon Napier-Bell and Yardbirds bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, and was made up entirely of original songs such as Rack My Mind. Samwell-Smith would leave the band to become a full-time producer not long after the album's release; his replacement would be a guitarist named Jimmy Page.
        
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.

Artist:     Standells
Title:     Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White
Source:     Mono CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Ed Cobb
Label:     Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:     1966
     The Standells were probably the most successful band to record for the Tower label (not counting Pink Floyd, whose first LP was issued, in modified form, on the label after being recorded in England). Besides their big hit Dirty Water, they hit the charts with other tunes such as Why Pick On Me, Try It, and the punk classic Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. All but Try It were written by producer Ed Cobb, who has to be considered the most prolific punk-rock songwriter of the 60s, having also written some of the Chocolate Watch Band's best stuff as well.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Down In Suburbia
Source:    Mono LP: You Baby
Writer(s):    Bob Lind
Label:    White Whale
Year:    1966
    Given his list of accomplishments over the past 60 years, Bob Lind should be a household name. He was one of the originators of folk-rock in the mid-1960s, and his single Elusive Butterfly was an international hit in 1966. Several of his songs, including the satirical Down In Suburbia, have been recorded by other artists such as the Turtles. Lind himself was the inspiration for the character Dinky Summers in the Charles Bukowski novel Women, and has written five novels of his own, as well as the award-winning play Refuge. Perhaps most signficantly, he was the co-creator of Bat Boy, sightings of whom (which?) were a regular feature of the Weekly World News, where he was an editor throughout the 1990s. Lind returned to music in 2004 at the urging of his friend Arlo Guthrie, with his most recent album, Something Worse Than Lonliness, being released in early 2022.

Artist:    Phil Ochs
Title:    I Ain't Marching Anymore
Source:    CD: Songs Of Protest (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Phil Ochs
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1965
    Phil Ochs' I Ain't Marching Anymore didn't get a whole lot of airplay when it was released in 1965 (unless you count a handful of closed-circuit student-run stations on various college campuses that could only be picked up by plugging a radio into a wall socket in a dorm room). Ochs was aware of this, and even commented that "the fact that you won't be hearing this song on the radio is more than enough justification for the writing of it." He went on to say that the song "borders between pacifism and treason, combining the best qualities of both." The following year Ochs recorded this folk-rock version of the song (backed up by members of the Blues Project) that was released as a single in the UK.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Luvin'
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer:    Lowe/Tulin
Label:     Reprise
Year:    1966
    Perhaps as a bit of overcompensation for his lack of control over the Grateful Dead, producer David Hassinger kept a tight rein on L.A.'s Electric Prunes, providing them with most of the material they recorded (from professional songwriters). One of the few exceptions is vocalist James Lowe and bassist Mark Tulin's Luvin', which was first released in November of 1966 as the B side of the Prunes' hit single I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night). The song was also included on the band's first LP the following year.
    
Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Blue Jay Way
Source:    British import stereo 45 RPM EP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone
Year:    1967
    One night in 1967, while staying at a rented house on Blue Jay Way in the Hollywood hills, Beatle George Harrison got a phone call. Some friends that he was waiting for had gotten lost in the fog and were trying to find their way to the house. Harrison gave them some directions and suggested they ask a police officer for help. To help keep himself awake while waiting for his friends to show up, Harrison wrote a song about the situation that eventually became his only musical contribution to the band's new project, a telefilm called Magical Mystery Tour. Some people consider it the best track in the movie.

Artist:    Syn
Title:    14 Hour Technicolour Dream
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Nardelli/Jackman
Label:    Rhino (original label: Deram)
Year:    1967
    Once upon a time there was an underground newspaper that got raided by the local police. In response, several local underground bands got together and staged a 14-hour long happening in support of the paper. As much as this sounds like a slice of San Francisco or maybe Los Angeles history, this actually happened in London, with such notable bands as Pink Floyd, the Pretty Things, the Creation, the Soft Machine, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and others contributing to what came to be called the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at the Alexandria Palace on April 29-30, 1967. Later that year, mod band the Syn (formerly known as the Selfs) recorded a song celebrating the event and released it as the B side of their second single for Deram. The group disbanded in 1968, with members Peter Banks and Chris Squire eventually going on to form Yes in the early 1970s.

Artist:     West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:     If You Want This Love
Source:     Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Part One)
Writer:     Baker Knight
Label:     Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1967
     The first West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album, Volume One, had a limited print run on Fifa, a small independent label based in Los Angeles. After landing a contract with Reprise, the band recut many of the songs (most of which were cover tunes) from Volume One and called the new album Part One. If You Want This Love, a song written and originally recorded by local L.A. legend Baker Knight, is one of those recut tracks.

Artist:    Knaves
Title:    Inside Outside
Source:    Mono CD: Oh Yeah! The Best Of Dunwich Records (possibly released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Berkman/Hulbert
Label:    Sundazed (possible original label: Dunwich)
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1991
    The Knaves, Howard Berkman, John Hulbert, Mark Feldman, Neil Pollack, and Gene Lubin, came from the northern suburbs of Chicago, and were one of the last bands to record for the Dunwich label before it converted itself to a production company. In fact, whether or not their second single, Inside Outside, actually got released is in doubt. According to the people at Sundazed, Dunwich had the single ready by summer of 1967, but shut down the label before it could get released. Other sources, however, list it as a legitimate single. Regardless, it's a great piece of garage rock.

Artist:    Grammy Fones
Title:    Now He's Gone
Source:    Mono British import CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Mike Butler
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Brent)
Year:    1967
    Once upon a time in Houston there was a band called the Druids, made up of Mike Butler, Charlie Knight, Jim Scalise and John Deer. They recorded a pair of tunes for the Brent label at a local studio, but for some reason were identified as the Spectacles on the tape box. When the single itself came out the band's name had changed once again, this time to the Grammy Fones. The somewhat forgettable A side was credited to Scott and Vivian Holtzman, who would go on to write and produce four Fever Tree albums, but the B side, the much stronger Now He's Gone, was written by Butler.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2235 (starts 8/22/22)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/435369-dc-2235

    This week it's another one of those roller coaster shows: the first set starts off rockin', then mellows out for a while, while the second set features tracks that start out quietly but build up to a high-energy conclusion.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Tombstone Shadow
Source:    LP: Green River
Writer(s):    John Fogerty
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1969
    Although Creedence Clearwater Revival was never known as a blues band, John Fogerty's lyrics for Tombstone Shadow, from the 1969 LP Green River, could give Willie Dixon himself
a run for his money. The music ain't half bad either.

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    South California Purples
Source:    CD: Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s):    Robert Lamm
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    Chicago never considered themselves a jazz-rock band, despite all the hype from the rock press and the publicity people at Columbia Records. Rather, the defined themselves as a rock band with a horn section. Songs like Robert Lamm's South California Purples, which is basically a blues progression, lend credence to this view. The track, which showcases the guitar work of Terry Kath, was one of the most popular songs on the band's debut album and continued to be a concert staple until Kath's death in 1978.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Cross-Eyed Mary
Source:    CD: Aqualung
Writer:    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1971
    The fortunes of Jethro Tull improved drastically with the release of the Aqualung album in 1971. The group had done well in their native UK but were still considered a second-tier band in the US. Aqualung, however, propelled the group to star status, with several tracks, such as Cross-Eyed Mary, getting heavy airplay on FM rock radio.

Artist:    Elton John
Title:    Friends
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    John/Taupin
Label:    Uni
Year:    1971
    Elton John and Bernie Taupin started work on the soundtrack for the film Friends before John hit it big in the US with Your Song, a tune from his self-titled second LP (his first to be released in the US). Although the film itself was a flop, John's album did respectively well, with the title track being released as a single in 1971. The album itself, however, is long out of print and has never been released on a CD.

Artist:    Melanie
Title:    The Actress
Source:    Canadian import LP: Madrugada
Writer(s):    Melanie Safka
Label:    Neighborhood
Year:    1974
    Melanie Safka expresses her feelings about her own career on The Actress, a six-minute long track from her 1974 album Madrugada. The song has a sense of weariness about it (particularly when it comes to how others perceive her songs), yet also reflects a desire to continue to write and sing for the rest of her life.
    
Artist:    Jeff Beck
Title:    Love Is Green
Source:    CD: Wired
Writer(s):    Narada Michael Walden
Label:    Epic
Year:    1976
    One of Jeff Beck's earliest releases was a cover of Paul Mauriat's Love Is Blue. The song, released as a single in 1968, ended up being a bit of an embarrassment for the guitarist, thanks in large part to producer Mickie Most's heavily orchestrated arrangement of the piece. Beck finally got the last word, however, when he recorded Love Is Green, an instrumental piece written by Narada Michael Walden (who plays piano on the track), for his 1976 album Wired.

Artist:    Premiata Forneria Marconi
Title:    Meridiani
Source:    LP: Jet Lag
Writer(s):    PFM
Label:    Asylum
Year:    1977
    By the late 1970s it was becoming obvious that the art-rock movement from earlier in the decade had pretty much run its course. The popularity of bands like Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer was on the decline, with fans of punk rock in particular singling them out as "dinosaurs" on the verge of extinction. Some groups managed to survive by moving in an entirely different direction. One of these was Italy's most popular "local" band, Premiata Forneria Marconi (The Award Winning Marconi Bakery), who found a niche among the jazz-rock fusion bands that were on the rise across the world. Luckily for them, their level of musicianship was such that they could easily handle to intricacies of their new style, although their later albums, such as Jet Lag, did not sell as well as their earlier art-rock material. Much of the music on Jet Lag is instrumental, such as Meridiani, arguably the most interesting track on the album.

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    Water Woman/The Great Canyon Fire In General
Source:    LP: Spirit
Writer(s):    Jay Ferguson
Label:    Ode
Year:    1968
     Among other things, Southern California is known for its periodic wildfires, which, fueled by hot Santa Ana winds, destroy everything in their path before they can be brought under control. In the summer of 1967, while the members of Spirit were living in L.A.'s Topanga Canyon, one of these wildfires took out about half of the canyon. Although the house the band was living in was spared, the entire area was evacuated and the members of Spirit (and their family) had to spend a week camped out at the beach. The incident inspired the band's vocalist Jay Ferguson to write The Great Canyon Fire In General for Spirit's 1968 debut LP. The tune is preceded on the album by Water Woman, another Ferguson composition that sounds like it could have been written by the demigod Pan himself but was more likely to have been conceived during the aforementioned stay at the beach.

Artist:    Ten Years After
Title:    My Baby Left Me
Source:    CD: Watt
Writer(s):    Alvin Lee
Label:    Chrysalis (original US label: Deram)
Year:    1970
    Although panned by the rock press, Ten Years After's sixth LP, Watt is, for my money, the last of their truly great albums, containing many tasty tunes, such as My Baby Left Me. Following the release of Watt on the Deram label, Ten Years After would switch to Columbia Records and enjoy greater commercial success. Personally, with the exception of a couple of songs, I find their Columbia material uninspired.

Artist:    America
Title:    Ventura Highway
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Dewey Bunnell
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1972
    The first thing you need to understand about the song Ventura Highway is that there is no such road as "Ventura Highway". There is a Ventura Freeway and a Ventura Boulevard, but no Ventura Highway. So where did Dewey Bunnell of the band America get the title? According to Bunnell himself, it goes back to his childhood, when the family car had a flat tire while traveling down the Pacific Coast Highway near Lompoc, California. As Dewey and his brother waited for their dad to finish changing the tire, Dewey noticed a road sign indicating how far it was to Ventura. The rest of the song's lyrics are mostly based on Bunnell's childhood memories as well.

Artist:    Lovecraft
Title:    The Dawn
Source:    LP: Superecord Contemporary (originally released on LP: Valley Of The Moon)
Writer(s):    Grebb/Wolfson
Label:    Warner Brothers (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1970
    The original H.P. Lovecraft disbanded in 1969, following the release of their second LP. Two of the band's members, singer/songwriter George Edwards and drummer Michael Tegza, then formed a new band called simply Lovecraft. This band also included members from other Chicago area bands, including Aorta (guitarist Jim Donlinger and bassist Michael Been) and the Buckinghams (keyboardist Marty Grebb). By the time their only LP, Valley Of The Moon, was released however, the band had split up following a stint touring with Boz Scaggs and Leon Russell. Grebb, who co-wrote The Dawn, went on to become a member of Bonnie Raitt's band for 25 years.

Artist:    Genesis
Title:    Inside And Out
Source:    Canadian import 12" 45 RPM blue vinyl EP: Spot The Pigeon
Writer(s):    Rutherford/Collins/Hackett/Banks
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1977
    After Genesis finished recording sessions for the Wind And Wuthering album the band members realized that they had more music than they could fit on a standard LP, and three tracks were left off the album. Those three tracks, including the five and a half minute long Inside And Out, were issued in May of 1977 on an EP called Spot The Pigeon. In North America the EP was only issued in Canada, on blue 12" vinyl that played at 45 RPM. Hey, whatever it takes to get it to sell, I guess.
 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2234 (starts 8/15/22)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/434526-pe-2234

    This week we concentrate on longer sets with fewer interruptions. No artists' sets this time around, either, but we do have a new Advanced Psych segment featuring a couple tracks from the 1980s and one from the first 21st century album by the Electric Prunes.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    I Don't Want To Spoil The Party
Source:    CD: Beatles For Sale (released in US as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: Beatles VI)
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    UK: 1964, US: 1965
    As early as 1964 the Beatles were starting to incorporate acoustic guitars into their music to supplement their basic electric sound. One example of this is I Don't Want To Spoil The Party from their LP Beatles For Sale. In the US the song appeared in 1965 as the B side of Eight Days A Week and on the LP Beatles VI.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    For Your Love
Source:    Mono CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Graham Gouldman
Label:    K-Tel (original label: Epic)
Year:    1965
    The last Yardbirds song to feature guitarist Eric Clapton, For Your Love was the group's first US hit, peaking in the #6 slot. The song did even better in the UK, peaking at #3. Following its release, Clapton left the Yardbirds, citing the band's move toward a more commercial sound and this song in particular as reasons for his departure (ironic when you consider songs like his mid-90s hit Change the World or his slowed down lounge lizard version of Layla). For Your Love was written by Graham Gouldman, who would end up as a member of Wayne Fontana's Mindbenders and later 10cc with Kevin Godley and Lol Creme.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    I Tell Myself
Source:    LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s):    Marcus Tybalt
Label:    GNP Crescendo
Year:    1966
    Sky Saxon was unquestionably responsible for the success of the Seeds, who hit the national charts in early 1967 with the classic Pushin' Too Hard. The song had actually first appeared as a 1965 single (as You're Pushin' Too Hard), but did not get much airplay at the time). By the time the song became a hit the band had already released a second album, A Web Of Sound. Nearly every Seeds song was either written or co-written by Saxon himself. The only exception I know of is I Tell Myself, a tune written by Hollywood songster Marcus Tybalt, which appears on the second LP, and the Seeds version almost sounds like a parody of a pop tune (which may well have been their intention for all I know).

Artist:     Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:     Down On Me
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer:     Trad. Arr. Joplin
Label:     Mainstream
Year:     1967
     Big Brother And The Holding Company's first album, featuring the single Down On Me, was recorded in 1967 at the studios of Mainstream Records, a medium-sized Chicago label known for its jazz recordings. At the time, Mainstream's engineers had no experience with a rock band, particularly a loud one like Big Brother, and vainly attempted to clean up the band's sound as best they could. The result was an album full of relatively sterile recordings sucked dry of the energy that made Big Brother and the Holding Company one of the top live attractions of its time. Probably the stongest track on the album was lead vocalist Janis Joplin's arrangement of Down On Me, a "freedom song" dating back at least to the 1920s that Mainstream issued as a single during the Summer of Love. The song almost made the top 40 charts, peaking at #42.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    Baroque # 1
Source:    LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    Of the half dozen or so 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:    Spirit
Title:    New Dope In Town
Source:    German import LP: Underground '70 (originally released on LP: Clear)
Writer(s):    Andes/California/Cassidy/Ferguson/Locke
Label:    CBS (original US label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    The third Spirit album, Clear, is generally considered the weakest of the four albums released by the band's original lineup. The main reason for this is fatigue. The group had released two albums in 1968, along with providing the soundtrack for the film Model Shop in early 1969 and constantly touring throughout the entire period. This left them little time to develop the material that would be included on Clear. There are a few strong tracks on the LP, however, among them New Dope In Town, which closes out the original LP. Like Elijah, from their debut album, New Dope In Town is credited to the entire band, and was included on a CBS Records sampler album called Underground '70 that was released in Germany (on purple vinyl that glowed under a black light) around Christmastime.

Artist:      Blues Image
Title:     Pay My Dues
Source:      CD: Open
Writer(s):    Blues Image
Label:     Sundazed (original label: Atco)
Year:     1970
     When I first heard Blues Image's Ride Captain Ride on the radio I wasn't all that impressed with it. Then the local club I hung out at got it on the jukebox and people started playing the B side, a song called Pay My Dues. Then I went out and bought the album, Open. Yes, Pay My Dues is that good. As it turns out, so is the rest of the album. Even Ride Captain Ride sounds better now. Shows the latent power of a B side, doesn't it?

Artist:     Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys
Title:     Good Old Rock and Roll
Source:     CD: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-Vol. 1 (originally released on 45 RPM vinyl)
Writer(s):    Michaels/Smith/Equine/Chin/Packer
Label:    Polydor
Year:     1969
     By 1969, folk-rock had morphed into what would come to be called country-rock. One of the early country-rock bands that is usually overlooked is Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys. This is probably because their only hit, the '50s tribute song Good Old Rock and Roll, was not at all typical of the band's sound.

Artist:    Fleetwood Mac
Title:    My Heart Beat Like A Hammer
Source:    Australian import CD: The Essential Fleetwood Mac (originally released in UK on LP: Fleetwood Mac)
Writer(s):    Jeremy Spencer
Label:    Columbia/Sony Music (original UK label: Blue Horizon)
Year:    1968
    Fleetwood Mac was formed in 1967 when John Mayall gave guitarist Peter Green free studio time as a gift. Green used that time to record five tunes with his Bluesbreakers bandmates Mick Fleeetwood and John McVie. Green and drummer Fleetwood were so enthused by the sessions that they decided to form a new band. Green, hoping to entice bassist McVie to join them, decided to call the new band Fleetwood Mac, recruiting slide specialist Jeremy Spencer as the group's second guitarist. McVie, not wanting to lose his steady income, declined at first, but after the band's well-received live debut at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, also featuring Jeremy Spencer, McVie joined up as well. Spencer provided the lead vocals on half of the songs on the band's first self-titled LP, released in 1968, including the opening track, My Heart Beat Like A Hammer, one of three Elmore James styled Spencer compositions on the LP. Spencer was a member of Fleetwood Mac until February of 1971, when he left the band's hotel room in the middle of a US tour to visit a Hollywood bookshop, only to resurface a few days later to inform the rest of the band that he was leaving for good, having joined the Children Of God. Somebody needs to make a movie about Fleetwood Mac (and I mean a dramatization, not a bio pic).

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Get Thy Bearings
Source:    British import CD: The Hurdy Gurdy Man
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    EMI (original US label: Epic)
Year:    1968
    Donovan's 1968 album, The Hurdy Gurdy Man, saw the Scottish singer/songwriter stretching further from his folk roots with tracks like Get Thy Bearings, which uses 50s style jazz instrumentation to create a Beatnik atmosphere.

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Shades Of Deep Purple
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Tetragrammaton
Year:    1968
    My first impression of Deep Purple was that they were Britain's answer to the Vanilla Fudge. After all, both bands had a big hit in 1968 with a rearranged version of someone else's song from 1967 (Vanilla Fudge with the Supremes' You Keep Me Hangin' On and Deep Purple with Billy Joe Royal's Hush). Additionally, both groups included a Beatles cover on their debut LP (Fudge: Ticket To Ride, Purple: Help). Finally, both albums included a depressing Cher cover song. In the Vanilla Fudge case it was one of her biggest hits, Bang Bang. Deep Purple, on the other hand, went with a song that was actually more closely associated with the Jimi Hendrix Experience (although Cher did record it as well): Hey Joe. The Deep Purple version of the Billy Roberts classic (originally credited to the band on the label itself), is probably the most elaborate of the dozens of recorded versions of the song (which is up there with Louie Louie in terms of quantity), incorporating sections of the Miller's Dance (by Italian classical composer Manuel de Falla), as well as an extended instrumental section, making the finished track over seven and a half minutes long.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    I Won't Hurt You
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Part One)
Writer:    Harris/Lloyd/Markley
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Unlike more famous L.A. groups like Love and the Doors, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was not a Sunset Strip club band. In fact, the WCPAEB really didn't play that many live performances in their career, although those they did tended to be at high profile venues such as the Hollywood Bowl. The band was formed when the Harris brothers, sons of an accomplished classical musician, decided to record their own album and release it on the small Fifa label. Only a few copies of that album, Volume One, were made and finding one now is next to impossible. That might have been the end of the story except for the fact that they were acquaintances of Kim Fowley, the Zelig-like record producer and all-around Hollywood (and sometimes London) hustler. Fowley invited them to a party where the Yardbirds were playing; a party also attended by one Bob Markley. Markley, who was nearly ten years older than the Harris brothers, was a former TV show host from the midwest who had moved out to the coast to try his luck in Hollywood. Impressed by the flock of young girls surrounding the Yardbirds, Markley expressed to Fowley his desire to be a rock and roll star and have the girls flock around him, too. Fowley, ever the deal-maker, responded by introducing Markley to the Harris Brothers and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was born. With the addition of guitarist Michael Lloyd and the influence of Markley's not-inconsiderable family money, the group soon landed a contract with Reprise Records, where they proceeded to record the album Part One, which includes the tune I Won't Hurt You, which uses a simulated heartbeat to keep the...umm, beat.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Porpoise Mouth
Source:    LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    The songs on the first Country Joe And The Fish album ranged from silly satire (Super Bird) to downright spacey. One of the spaciest tracks on the album is Porpoise Mouth, both lyrically and musically.

Artist:    Status Quo
Title:    Pictures Of Matchstick Men
Source:    Mono CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Francis Rossi
Label:    BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: Cadet Concept)
Year:    1967
    If you have ever seen the film This Is Spinal Tap, the story of Britain's Status Quo might seem a bit familiar. Signed to Pye Records in 1967 the group scored a huge international hit with their first single, Pictures Of Matchstick Men, but were unable to duplicate that success with subsequent releases. In the early 1970s the band totally reinvented itself as a boogie band and began a run in the UK that resulted in them scoring more charted singles than any other band in history, including the Beatles and Rolling Stones. For all that, however, they never again charted in the US, where they are generally remembered as one-hit wonders. In addition to their UK success, Status Quo remains immensely popular in the Scandanavian countries, where they continue to play to sellout crowds on a regular basis.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    White Rabbit
Source:    LP: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: Surrealistic Pillow)
Writer:    Grace Slick
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1967
    A few years back a co-worker asked me about what kind of music I played on the show. When I told him the show was called Stuck in the Psychedelic Era he immediately said "Oh, I bet you play White Rabbit a lot, huh?" As a matter of fact, I do, although not as much as some songs.

Artist:    Chocolate Watchband
Title:    Misty Lane
Source:    Mono British import CD: Melts In Your Brain, Not On Your Wrist (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Martin Siegel
Label:    Big Beat (original US label: Uptown)
Year:    1967
    The third Chocolate Watchband single, Misty Lane, was made, according to rock historian Alec Paleo, "under duress". Reportedly, the band hated the single so much that they took turns tossing copies in the air and using them for target practice. Written by British songwriter Martin Siegel, the song sounds nothing like the garage-punk club band that lived to outstage the big name acts they often opened for. The song was provided to the band by producer Ed Cobb, who later admitted that he didn't really know what to do with them in the studio.

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    Prologue, August 29, 1968/Someday (August 29, 1968)
Source:    LP: The Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s):    Pankow/Lamm
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    In the months leading up to the 1968 Democratic Convention the phrase "come to Chicago" was often heard among members of the counter-culture that had grown up around various anti-establishment causes. As the summer wore on it became clear that something was going to happen at the Convention that August. Sure enough, on August 28, with the crowd chanting "the whole world's watching", police began pulling demonstraters into paddy wagons, with a full-blown riot erupting the following day. Around that same time a local Chicago band calling itself the Big Thing hooked up with producer James William Guercio, who convinced them to change their name to the Chicago Transit Authority (later shortened to Chicago). It's only natural then that the band would include a song referencing the events of August 29th on their debut LP. The tracks begins with an actual recording of the chant itself, which leads into a tune written by James Pankow and Robert Lamm called Someday (August 29, 1968). The chant itself makes a short reappearance midway through the song as well.
        
Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Last Night I Had A Dream
Source:    British import LP: Artifact
Writer(s):    Randy Newman
Label:    Heartbeat
Year:    2001
    More than thirty years after being squeezed out of their own band, most of the original members of the Electric Prunes reformed the group in the late 1990s, working up new material for what would become the album Artifact. Self-released in 2000 and then reissued in slightly shorter form in the UK by Heartbeat Productions the following year, Artifact contains mostly original material written by vocalist James Lowe and bassist Mark Tulin. The two cover songs on the album were chosen by the band members themselves, unlike during their original late 1960s run, where they recorded what their producer told them to record. One of the two is a cover of the obscure 1968 Randy Newman single Last Night I Had A Dream, that not only captures, but enhances, the dark humor of Newman's original version.

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:    King Crimson
Title:    Man With An Open Heart
Source:    LP: Three Of A Perfect Pair
Writer(s):    King Crimson
Label:    Warner Brothers/EG
Year:    1984
    Man With An Open Heart is the shortest track on King Crimson's 1984 LP Three Of A Perfect Pair. Like the other songs on the first side of the LP, it is primarily an Adrian Belew composition, although officially credited to the entire band.

Artist:    Butterfield Blues Band
Title:    All These Blues
Source:    CD: East-West
Writer(s):    Traditional
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    The second Butterfield Blues Band album, East-West, saw the group starting to experiment with variations on the Chicago blues style that characterized their debut LP. There were still plenty of more traditional tracks on the album, however, such as All These Blues, which some sources credit to Walter Johnson.

Artist:    Easybeats
Title:    Heaven And Hell
Source:    CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Vanda/Young
Label:    Rhino (original US label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    Throughout the mid-60s Australia's most popular band was a group of immigrants calling themselves the Easybeats. Often referred to as the "Australian Beatles", their early material sounded like slightly dated British Beat music (Australia had a reputation for cultural lag, and besides, half the members were English). By late 1966 guitarist Harry Vanda (one of the two Dutch members of the group) had learned enough English to be able to replace vocalist Stevie Wright as George Young's writing partner. The new team was much more adventurous in their compositions than the Wright/Young team had been, and were responsible for the band's first international hit, Friday On My Mind. By then the Easybeats had relocated to England, and continued to produce fine singles such as Heaven And Hell.

Artist:    Stone Poneys
Title:    Stoney End
Source:    LP: Stoney End (originally released on LP: Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poneys And Friends)
Writer(s):    Laura Nyro
Label:    Pickwick (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    Better known as the title track for Barbra Streisand's breakthrough LP in 1970, Laura Nyro's Stoney End was first covered by the Stone Poneys on their 1968 LP, Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poneys And Friends. As the album title suggests, Ronstadt had come to dominate the group by the release of this, their final LP. After Ronstadt's solo recording career for the Asylum label took off in the early 1970s the Stone Poneys' original label tried to Capitol-ize (ugh) on her success with several compilations, including one called Stoney End, released in 1972 and later re-issued on the low-budget Pickwick label.

Artist:    Fat Mattress
Title:    Iridescent Butterfly
Source:    CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Neil Landon
Label:    Grapefruit (original label: Polydor)
Year:    1969
    Fat Mattress was, in a sense, a sort of second (or maybe third) tier supergroup formed by Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding, first as a side project and then as his primary band. Other members included vocalist Neil Landon (Flower Pot Men) and bassist Jim Leverton (Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens), with Redding on guitar. Iridescent Butterfly was a song written by Landon that was recorded at the same time as the band's debut LP but was not released until 1969, when it appeared as a B side.
 
Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    How Many More Times
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Led Zeppelin)
Writer(s):    Page/Jones/Bonham
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1969
    Like many early Led Zeppelin songs, How Many More Times was originally credited to the band members (except, for contractual reasons, singer Robert Plant). More recent releases of the song, however, list Chester Burnett (Howlin' Wolf) as a co-writer, despite the fact that he and the members of Led Zeppelin had never met. This is because of the similarity, especially in the lyrics, to a 1951 Howlin' Wolf record called How Many More Years. The band reportedly tried to trick radio programmers into playing the eight and a half minute song by listing it on the album cover as being three minutes and thirty seconds long. I doubt anyone was fooled.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Fortunate Son
Source:    LP: Willy And The Poor Boys
Writer(s):    John Fogerty
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1969
    John Fogerty says it only took him 20 minutes to write what has become one of the iconic antiwar songs of the late 1960s. But Fortunate Son is not so much a condemnation of war as it is an indictment of the political elite who send the less fortunate off to die in wars without any risk to themselves. In addition to being a major hit single upon its release in late 1969 (peaking at #3 as half of a double-A sided single), Fortunate Son has made several "best of" lists over the years, including Rolling Stone magazine's all-time top 100. Additionally, in 2014 the song was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Artist:    Crow
Title:    Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me)
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Wagner/Weigand/Weigand
Label:    Amaret
Year:    1969
    Minneapolis has always had a more active local music scene than one might expect from a medium-sized city in the heart of the snow belt. Many of the city's artists have risen to national prominence, including a band called Crow, who's 1969 single Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me), hit close to the top of the charts in early 1970. The band had been formed in 1967 as South 40, changing its name to Crow right around the same time they signed to Amaret Records in 1969.

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    Gimme Some Lovin'
Source:    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:    Monks
Title:    Drunken Maria
Source:    German import CD: Black Monk Time
Writer(s):    Burger/Spangler/Havlicek/Johnston/Shaw
Label:    Repertoire (original label: Polydor International)
Year:    1966
    The Monks were ahead of their time. In fact they were so far ahead of their time that only in the next century did people start to realize just how powerful the music on their first and only LP actually was. Released in West Germany in 1966, Black Monk Time both delighted and confused record buyers with songs like Drunken Maria, which has an intro section that's about twice as long as the actual song, which itself is just one line repeated over and over. The Monks were a group of five American GIs (probably draftees) who, while stationed at Frankfurt, managed to come up with the idea of a rock band that looked and dressed like Monks (including the shaved patch on the top of each member's head) and sounded like nothing else in the world at that time. Of course, such a phenomenon can't sustain itself indefinitely, and the group disappeared in early 1967, never to be seen or heard from again.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    I Am A Rock
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds of Silence)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    The success of I Am A Rock, when released as a single in 1966, showed that the first Simon And Garfunkel hit, The Sound Of Silence, was no fluke. The two songs served as bookends to a very successful LP, Sounds Of Silence, and would lead to several more hit records before the two singers went their separate ways in 1970. This was actually the second time I Am A Rock had been issued as a single. An earlier version, from the Paul Simon Songbook, had been released in 1965. Both the single and the LP were only available for a short time and only in the UK, and were deleted at Simon's request.

Artist:    Saturday's Children
Title:    Born On Saturday
Source:    Mono CD: If You're Ready! The Best Of Dunwich Records...Volume 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Bryan/Holder
Label:    Sundazed/Here 'Tis (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    Despite being one of the most popular local bands in the Chicago area, Saturday's Children were never able to sell enough copies of their singles to be able to record an entire LP. Nonetheless, they did record some fine tunes such as Born On Saturday, which appeared as the B side of their first single for Dunwich Records. Bassist Jeff Bryan later went on to join H.P. Lovecraft, while guitarist Dave Carter ended up with the Cryan' Shames.