Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2510 (starts 3/3/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/563838

    This time around we have a battle of the bands between a British group, the Rolling Stones, and a California band, the Association, featuring some of the earliest releases from each group. Also on tap, a Paul Revere and the Raiders rendition of a popular early 60s instrumental, a somewhat controversial song from a New York street band, and a set of tunes from Traffic.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    A Well Respected Man
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1965
    The Kinks were one of the original British Invasion bands, scoring huge R&B-influenced hits with You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night in 1964. The hits continued in 1965 with more melodic songs like Set Me Free and Tired Of Waiting For You. 1966 saw Ray Davies's songwriting take a satiric turn, as A Well Respected Man amply illustrates. Over the next few years the Kinks would continue to evolve, generally getting decent critical reviews and moderate record sales for their albums. The title of one of those later albums, Muswell Hillbillies, refers to the Davies brothers hometown of Muswell Hill, North London.

Artist:    Love
Title:    7&7 Is
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets vol. 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    The word "seven" does not appear anywhere in the song 7&7 Is. In fact, I have no idea where Arthur Lee got that title from. Nonetheless, the song is among the most intense tracks to ever make the top 40. 7&7 Is starts off with power chords played over a constant drum roll (possibly played by Lee himself), with cymbals crashing over equally manic semi-spoken lyrics. The song builds up to an explosive climax: an atomic bomb blast followed by a slow post-apocalyptic instrumental that quickly fades away.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    If 6 Was 9
Source:    CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Before 1967 stereo was little more than an excuse to charge a dollar more for an LP. That all changed in a hurry, as artists such as Jimi Hendrix began to explore the possibilities of the technology, in essence treating stereophonic sound as a multi-dimensional sonic palette. The result can be heard on songs such as If 6 Were 9 from the Axis: Bold As Love album, which is best listened to at high volume, preferably with headphones on.

Artist:    King Crimson
Title:    The Court Of The Crimson King
Source:    CD: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer:    MacDonald/Sinfield
Label:    Discipline Global Mobile (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1969
    Perhaps the most influential progressive rock album of all time was King Crimson's debut LP, In The Court Of The Crimson King. The band, in its original incarnation, included Robert Fripp on guitar, Ian MacDonald on keyboards and woodwinds, Greg Lake on vocals and bass, David Giles on drums and Peter Sinfield as a dedicated lyricist. The title track, which takes up the second half of side two of the LP, features music composed by MacDonald, who would leave the group after their second album, later resurfacing as a founding member of Foreigner. The album's distinctive cover art came from a painting by computer programmer Barry Godber, who died of a heart attack less than a year after the album was released. According to Fripp, the artwork on the inside is a portrait of the Crimson King, whose manic smile is in direct contrast to his sad eyes. The album, song and artwork were the inspiration for Stephen King's own Crimson King, the insane antagonist of his Dark Tower saga who is out to destroy all of reality, including our own.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    Until The Poorest People Have Money To Spend
Source:    CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Harris
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
            The final West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album for Reprise, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil, is generally considered the group's best album as well, despite the absence of founding member Danny Harris (who would return for their next LP on the Amos label). As always, Bob Markley provided the lyrics for all the band's original songs on the album, including Until The Poorest People Have Money To Spend, which Shaun Harris wrote the music for. Although the sentiment expressed in the song is a good one, the sincerity of Markley's lyrics is somewhat suspect, according to guitarist Ron Morgan, who said that Markley was notoriously miserly with his own money (of which he had inherited quite a lot).
     
Artist:    Mad River
Title:    A Gazelle
Source:    Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released in US on EP: Mad River)
Writer(s):    Lawrence Hammond
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Wee)
Year:    1967
    Mad River was formed in 1965 in Yellow Spings, Ohio, as the Mad River Blues Band. The group (after several personnel changes) relocated to the Berkeley, California in spring of 1967, and soon began appearing at local clubs, often alongside Country Joe And The Fish. Around this time the band came into contact with Lonnie Hewitt, a jazz musician who had started his own R&B-oriented label, Wee. After auditioning for Fantasy Records, the band decided instead to finance their own studio recordings, which were then issued as a three-song EP on Wee. With all their material having been written and arranged before the band left Ohio, and then perfected over a period of months, Mad River's EP was far more musically complex than what was generally being heard in the Bay Area at the time. The opening track, Amphetamine Gazell (the title having been temporarily shortened to A Gazelle for the EP) contains several starts and stops, as well as time changes. Bassist Lawrence Hammond's high pitched, almost operatic, vocal style actually enhances the lyrics, which drummer Greg Dewey described as "a teenager's idea of what it must be like to be hip and cool in California". The song was recut (with its original title restored and even more abrupt starts and stops), for Mad River's Capitol debut LP the following year.

Artist:    Sound Magics
Title:    Don't You Remember
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the Netherlands as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    van Waegeningh/Mouris
Label:    Rhino (original label: Philips)
Year:    1966
    Who were the Sound Magics? Good question. Here's what's known: they were a Dutch band, either from Doesburgse or Arnhem, that released two singles on the Philips label, the first of which was Don't You Remember, which hit the racks in 1966. The song was co-written by Rob van Waegeningh, who would resurface with a band called Moan (or the Moans) a couple of years later. One other thing: these guys seem to have been pretty well-financed, judging by the huge (for 1966) guitar amps they included on the picture sleeve of their Don't You Remember single.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Night Train
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Just Like Us
Writer(s):    Forrest/Simpkins/Washington
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    Like many US West Coast bands, Paul Revere And The Raiders started out as an instrumental group, adding vocals in the wake of the British invasion of 1964. Even after becoming the "house band" for Dick Clark's daily dance show, Where The Action Is, the group continued to play an occasional instrumental such as Night Train, a standard first recorded by Jimmy Forrest in 1951 and popularized for the baby boom generation by James Brown in 1963.

Artist:    Caravan
Title:    Grandma's Lawn
Source:    British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Caravan)
Writer(s):    Sinclair/Hastings/Coughlin/Sinclair
Label:    Polydor (original label: MGM-Verve)
Year:    1968
    From a business standpoint, the British and American record industries were worlds apart for the first several decades of their respective existences. In fact, some UK labels had the same names as US labels but were owned by different companies altogether. Columbia, for example, was the flagship label of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in the US. In the UK, however, Columbia was one of the major labels making up the EMI group. Even familiar trademarks such as the iconic dog and phonograph were associated with different companies in the two countries (RCA Victor in the US, His Master's Voice in the UK). Toward the end of the 1960s, however, this was beginning to change, with companies such as Polydor starting up their own US label (and signing the godfather of soul himself, James Brown, in the process), or acquiring a majority share of existing labels, as EMI did with Capitol Records. One major US label, M-G-M, decided to open their own British division, MGM/Verve, in 1968. The first band signed to the new label was Caravan, one of the most enduring progressive bands to emerge from the so-called Canterbury scene. A highlight of Caravan's debut LP was Grandma's Lawn. Unfortunately, MGM/Verve ceased operations the following year, leaving Caravan to sign with another British label with the same name as an unrelated US label: Decca.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Daily Nightly
Source:    LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn And Jones, LTD.
Writer(s):    Michael Nesmith
Label:    Colgems
Year:    1967
    One of the first rock songs to feature a Moog synthesizer was the Monkees' Daily Nightly from the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones LTD. Micky Dolenz, who had a reputation for nailing it on the first take but being unable to duplicate his success in subsequent attempts, was at the controls of the new technology for this recording of Michael Nesmith's most psychedelic song (Dolenz also sang lead on the tune).
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Artist:    Golden Earrings
Title:    Daddy Buy Me A Girl
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Holland as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Gerritson/Kooymans
Label:    Rhino (original label: Polydor)
Year:    1966
    Years before Radar Love made them international stars, Golden Earring had an 's' on the end of their name and was one of Holland's most popular beat bands, thanks to songs like Daddy Buy Me A Girl, which takes the usual "poor boy out to prove he's worthy of the rich girl" theme and turns it on its head, with the singer complaining that everyone just likes him for his money and not for himself. The song, released in 1966, was the group's fourth single for Polydor International.

Artist:    Them
Title:    Bent Over You
Source:    LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s):    Them/Lane/Pulley
Label:    Tower
Year:    1968
    While not an unlistenable track by any means, the most curious aspect of Bent Over You from Them's 1968 Time Out! Time In! For Them album is probably the fact that the entire band (but not the individual members) shares songwriting credit with Thomas Lane and Sharon Pulley, who in fact wrote most of the songs on the album itself. I have to wonder just how the royalties situation would have worked if the album had actually made any money.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Crossroads
Source:    CD: Best of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Wheels Of Fire)
Writer:    Robert Johnson
Label:    Priority (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    Robert Johnson's Crossroads has come to be regarded as a signature song for Eric Clapton, who's live version (recorded at the Fillmore East) was first released on the Cream album Wheels Of Fire.

Artist:    Small Faces
Title:    Me You And Us Too
Source:    British import 45 RPM single B side (originally released in box set: Here Come The Nice)
Writer(s):    Steve Marriott
Label:    Immediate (original label: Charly)
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 2014
    The Small Faces went into a recording studio together for the final time on September 11, 1968 to record two sides of a projected, but ultimately unreleased single. The A side, a Steve Marriott tune called The Autumn Stone, ended up being the title track of a double LP released a year later, after the group had officially disbanded. The B side, Me You And Us Too, is an early version of Wham Bam, Thank You Mam, remained unreleased until it was included in a British box set called Here Come The Nice. The song itself sounds more like early Humble Pie than late Small Faces to me.

Artist:    Hysterics
Title:    Everything's There
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    David Donaghue
Label:    Rhino (original label: Bing)
Year:    1965
    Much as San Jose, California had its own thriving teen-oriented music scene within the greater San Francisco media market, the San Bernardino/Riverside area of Southern California, sometimes called the Inland Empire, was home to several local bands that were able to score recording contracts with various small labels in the area. Among those were the Hysterics, who recorded four songs for two separate labels in 1965. The best of those was Everything's There, which appeared as the B side of the second single issued by the band. At some point, Everything's There was reissued (along with the A side of the first record, That's All She Wrote) on yet a third label, but this time credited to the Love Ins. Such was the state of the indy record business in 1965.

Artist:     Barry McGuire
Title:     Eve of Destruction
Source:     LP: 93 KHJ Boss Goldies  (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     P.F. Sloan
Label:     Original Sound (original label: Dunhill)
Year:     1965
     P.F. Sloan had already established a reputation for writing songs that captured the anger of youth by the time he wrote Eve Of Destruction, which Barry McGuire took into the top 10 in 1965. It would be McGuire's only major hit, and represented folk-rock at the peak of its popularity.

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:    Association
Title:    Along Comes Mary
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Tandyn Almer
Label:    Valiant
Year:    1966
    The Association are best known for a series of love ballads and light pop songs such as Cherish, Never My Love and Windy. Many of these records were a product of the L.A. studio scene and featured several members of the Wrecking Crew, the studio musicians who played on dozens of records in the late 60s and early 70s. The first major Association hit, however, featured the band members playing all the instruments themselves. Produced, and possibly co-written, by Curt Boettcher, who would soon join Gary Usher's studio project Sagittarius, Along Comes Mary shows that the Association was quite capable of recording a classic without any help from studio musicians.
        
Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Not Fade Away
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Hardin/Petty
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1964
    The Rolling Stones' first top 5 hit in the UK was an updated version of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away. The Stones put a greater emphasis on the Bo Diddley beat than Holly did and ended up with their first charted single in the US as well, establishing the Rolling Stones as the Yang of the British Invasion to the Beatles' Ying. It was a role that fit the top band from the city they call "The Smoke" well.

Artist:    Association
Title:    Your Own Love
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer:    Yester/Alexander
Label:    Valiant
Year:    1966
    After signing with the Valiant label, the Association brought in producer Curt Boettcher to help them establish a more mainstream pop sound. He brought with him a song called Along Comes Mary that he later claimed he had co-written by Tandyn Almer. For the B side, they went with an original tune called Your Own Love, which is probably a better indication of how the group sounded at that point in time.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    I Wanna Be Your Man
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    London
Year:    1964
    Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have written so many classic songs together that it's hard to imagine a time when they had yet to pen their first hit. That was precisely the case, however, in the early days of the Rolling Stones, when they were barely scratching the bottom of the British charts with covers of blues songs from the 1950s. A chance meeting with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, however, resulted in the Stones being given a song called I Wanna Be Your Man which became the band's first top 20 hit in the UK. The song was later released as the B side to the Stones' first US charted single, Not Fade Away.

Artist:    Association
Title:    Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies
Source:    Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released in US as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Renaissance)
Writer(s):    Gary Alexander
Label:    Warner Strategic Marketing (original US label: Valiant)
Year:    1966
    Following up on their monster hit Cherish, the Association released their most overtly psychedelic track, Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies, in late 1966, in advance of their second LP, Renaissance. The group had wanted to be more involved in the production process, and provided their own instrumental tracks for the tune, written by band member Gary Alexander. Unfortunately for the band, the single barely made the top 40, peaking at # 35, which ultimately led to the band relying more on outside songwriters and studio musicians for their later recordings such as Never My Love and Windy.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    I'm All Right
Source:    Mono CD: Out Of Our Heads
Writer(s):    Nanker Phelge
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1965
    Right from the beginning the Rolling Stones seemed to know that the key to their future was success in the US market. Many of their most memorable recordings were made in US studios (including the legendary Chess studios in Chicago). They sometimes even released records that seemed to be geared more toward an American audience. One such album was Out Of Our Heads, which included a pair of hit singles, Satisfaction and The Last Time, as well as songs like The West Coast Under Assistant Promotion Man, a rather topical song that didn't make a whole lot of sense to anyone not living in the United States. One of the songs on the album was I'm All Right, a track that had originally appeared on a British 45 RPM Extended Play record called Got Live If You Want It. I'm All Right is credited to Nanker Phelge, a pseudonym used for songs that were written (often as the result of spontaneous jams) by the entire band.

Artist:     Beatles
Title:     Blackbird
Source:     CD: The Beatles
Writer:     Lennon/McCartney
Label:     Parlophone
Year:     1968
     Blackbird is one of the many songs on the Beatles "White Album" that Charles Manson would interpret as having special meaning for his "family". In this case he saw it as a call for blacks to rise up and overthrow the whites that controlled the bulk of wealth in the US. I guess he forgot that the Beatles at the time were still based in the UK. Then again, he completely misread the tone of Revolution (also from the same album) as well.

Artist:    Merry-Go-Round
Title:    You're A Very Lovely Woman (originally released on Emitt Rhodes LP: The American Dream)
Source:    CD: More Nuggets
Writer:    Emmit Rhodes
Label:    Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1971
    Emitt Rhodes first got noticed in his mid-teens as the drummer for the Palace Guard, a Beatles-influenced L.A. band that had a minor hit with the song Like Falling Sugar in 1966. Rhodes would soon leave the Guard to front his own band, the Merry-Go-Round, scoring one of the most popular regional hits in L.A. history with the song Live. In 1969 Rhodes decided to try his hand as a solo artist. The problem was that he was, as a member of the Merry-Go-Round, contractually obligated to record one more album for A&M. The album itself, featuring a mixture of Rhodes solo tunes and leftover Merry-Go-Round tracks, sat on the shelf for two years until Rhodes had released a pair of well-received LPs for his new label, at which time A&M finally issued The American Dream as an Emitt Rhodes album. One of the best tracks on The American Dream was You're A Very Lovely Woman, a Merry-Go-Round recording from 1967 that shows influences from fellow L.A band Love's Forever Changes album.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    You Baby
Source:    CD: Battle Of The Bands Vol. Two (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sloan/Barri
Label:    Era (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1966
    After first hitting the charts with their version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles released yet another "angry young rebel" song, P.F. Sloan's Let Me Be. Realizing that they needed to vary their subject matter somewhat if they planned on having a career last longer than six months, the band formerly known as the Crossfires went with another Sloan tune, You Baby, for their first single of 1966. Although the music was in a similar style to Let Me Be, the lyrics, written by Steve Barri, were fairly typical of teen-oriented love songs of the era. Almost without exception the Turtles would continue to record songs from professional songwriters for single release for the remainder of their existence, with their original compositions showing up mostly as album tracks and B sides.
 
Artist:    Front Line
Title:    Got Love
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Lanigan/Philipet
Label:    Rhino (original label: York)
Year:    1965
    The Front Line was a band from San Rafael, California whose story in many ways was typical of their time. Marin County, being a fairly upscale place, had its share of clubs catering to the sons and daughters of its affluent residents. Of course, these teens wanted to hear live performances of their favorite top 40 tunes and bands like the Front Line made a decent enough living catering to their preferences. Like most bands of the time, the Front Line had one song that was of their own creation, albeit one that was somewhat derivative of the kinds of tunes they usually performed (not to mention unusually short in duration) so as not to scare off their audience. That song was Got Love, which was released on the York label in 1965.

Artist:    David Peel And The Lower East Side
Title:    I Like Marijuana
Source:    LP: Have A Marijuana
Writer(s):    Peel/Goldsmith/Smith/Barnum/Cooper
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1968
    One of the most controversial albums to be released on a major label in 1968 was Elektra's Have A Marijuana by David Peel And The Lower East Side. Described by Elektra publicist Danny Fields as "a collection of drinking songs for pot smokers" and recorded live on the streets of New York, the album features tunes like I Like Marijuana sung off key to slightly out of tune accompaniment. Unlike other late 1960s counter-culture figures who ended up becoming icons of mainstream rock in the 1970s, Peel remained a street musician until his death in 2017 as well as making regular appearances on Howard Stern's radio show.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Magic Carpet Ride
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf The Second)
Writer(s):    Moreve/Kay
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1968
    Steppenwolf's second top 10 single was Magic Carpet Ride, a song that combines feedback, prominent organ work by Goldy McJohn and an updated Bo Diddly beat with psychedelic lyrics. Along with Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride (co-written by vocalist John Kay and bassist Rushton Moreve) has become one of the defining songs of both Steppenwolf and the psychedelic era itself.

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:     Traffic
Title:     No Face, No Name, No Number
Source:     CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Mr. Fantasy, aka Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label:     Island (original US label: United Artists)
Year:     1967
     When the first Best of Traffic album was issued in 1969 (after the group first disbanded) it included No Face, No Name, No Number, a single only released in the UK and a couple European countries. Later Traffic anthologies tended to focus on songs recorded after the group reformed in 1970 and No Face, No Name, No Number was out of print for many years until the first Traffic album was reissued on CD. The song itself is a good example of Winwood's softer material.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    (Roamin' Thru' The Gloamin' With) 40,000 Headmen
Source:    LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM B side and on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s):    Capaldi/Winwood
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1968
    The second Traffic album saw the band taking in a broader set of influences, including traditional English folk music. (Roamin' Thro' The Gloamin' With) 40,000 Headmen, originally released in the UK as the B side to No Face, No Name, No Number, combines those influences with the Steve Winwood brand of British R&B to create a timeless classic.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Heaven Is In Your Mind
Source:    CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    Heaven Is In Your Mind was, for a short time, the title track of the first Traffic album released in the US. Although the album title was soon changed to Mr. Fantasy to match the European version, the song Heaven Is In Your Mind remained one of the band's most popular early tracks, and has been included on virtually every Traffic compilation ever released. The mono and stereo mixes are noticably different from each other, and even feature entirely different guitar breaks.
    
Artist:    Count Five
Title:    Psychotic Reaction
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ellner/Atkinson/Byrne/Chaney/Michalski
Label:    Double Shot
Year:    1966
    In late 1966 five guys from San Jose California managed to sound more like the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds that the Yardbirds themselves (a task probably made easier by the fact that by late 1966 Jeff Beck was no longer a member of the Yardbirds). One interesting note about this record is that as late as the mid-1980s the 45 RPM single on the original label was still available in record stores, complete with the original B side. Normally (in the US at least) songs more than a year or two old were only available on anthology LPs or on reissue singles with "back-to-back hits" on them. The complete takeover of the record racks by CDs in the late 1980s changed all that, as all 45s (except for indy releases) soon went the way of the 78 RPM record. The resurgence of vinyl in the 2010s has been almost exclusively limited to LP releases, making it look increasingly unlikely that we'll ever see (with the exception of Record Store Day special releases) 45 RPM singles on the racks ever again.
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2510 (starts 3/3/10)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/563835

    This week, after a little deja vu from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, we turn things around and work our way backward through the years, starting in 1975 and going all the way back to 1967 to end with an appropriate Doors song.

Artist:    Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young
Title:    Woodstock
Source:    CD: déjà vu
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    It's somewhat ironic that the most famous song about the Woodstock Music and Art Festival was written by someone who was not even at the event. Joni Mitchell had been advised by her manager that she would be better off appearing on the Dick Cavett show that weekend, so she stayed in her New York City hotel room and watched televised reports of what was going on up at Max Yasgur's farm. Further inspiration came from her then-boyfried Graham Nash, who shared his firsthand experiences of the festival with Mitchell. The song was first released on the 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon, and was made famous the same year when it was chosen to be the first single released from the Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young album déjà vu. The CSNY version peaked just outside of the Billboard top 10 in the US, but did not chart at all in the UK, prompting Fairport Convention co-founder Iain Matthews to release his own version of the song with his band Matthews Southern Comfort later that year that ended up going all the way to the #1 spot on the British charts.

Artist:    Robin Trower
Title:    Shame The Devil
Source:    LP: From Earth Below
Writer(s):    Robin Trower
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1975
    For Earth Below was Robin Trower's third studio album, following up on the phenomenally successful Bridge Of Sighs LP. Structured along the same lines, the main difference between the two was the replacement of drummer Reg Isidore with Bill Lordan, a veteran of the Minnesota prog-rock band Gypsy, who would continue to work with Trower for the next half dozen years. Shame The Devil is the first track on For Earth Below.

Artist:    Black Sheep
Title:    Stick Around
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Grammatico/Turgon
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1974
    Before he shortened his stage name to Lou Gramm and became famous as Foreigner's front man, Louis Grammatico was a member of the Rochester, NY band Black Sheep, which released two LPs on the Capitol label in 1975. What a lot of his fans don't know, however, is that those two albums were not Black Sheep's only major label releases. In 1974, before signing to Capitol, Black Sheep released a single on the Chrysalis label. Stick Around was written by Graham and bassist Bruce Turgon, who would play on Gramm's solo albums in the late 1980s and eventually become a member of Foreigner itself in 1992.

Artist:    National Lampoon featuring John Belushi
Title:    Megadeath
Source:    LP: Lemmings
Writer(s):    Jacobs/Kelly
Label:    ABC/Blue Thumb
Year:    1973
    Lemmings was a stage production put on by National Lampoon magazine. The first act was a series of comedy sketches, similar to what had been heard on the National Lampoon Radio Hour and is considered the template for the later TV show NBC Saturday Night (later Saturday Night Live), while the second half was a musical parody of the Woodstock festival in which the main goal of both the performers and audience was to commit mass suicide. The various musical numbers in Lemmings were performed by a stage band that included Christopher Guest and Paul Jacobs on guitars, Chevy Chase on drums and John Belushi on bass guitar. Belushi also provided the stage announcements and lead vocals for several numbers, including Megadeath, a parody of heavy metal bands introduced by Megagroupie Alice Playten.

Artist:     Yes
Title:     America
Source:     CD: Yesterdays (originally released in UK on LP: The New Age of Atlantic)
Writer:     Paul Simon
Label:     Atlantic
Year:     1972
     Following the success of the Fragile album and the hit single Roundabout, Yes went into the studio to cut a ten and a half minute cover of Paul Simon's America for a UK-only sampler album called The New Age Of Atlantic. The track was then edited down to about four minutes for single release in the US as a followup to Roundabout. The original unedited track was finally released in the US on the 1974 album Yesterdays, which also included several tracks from two earlier Yes albums that featured an earlier lineup of the band that included guitarist Peter Banks and keyboardist Tony Kaye. Paul Simon's America was, in fact, the only track on Yesterdays that featured the most successful Yes lineup of Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squires, Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman.

Artist:    James Gang
Title:    Things I Could Be
Source:    LP: Thirds
Writer(s):    Jim Fox
Label:    ABC
Year:    1971
    Although James Gang is best known as the band that brought fame to guitarist/vocalist Joe Walsh, the band actually existed both before and after Walsh was in the group, with the only member to appear in all incarnations of the band being Jim Fox, who formed the band in 1966 after two stints as drummer for Cleveland's Outsiders (although he was on hiatus from the group when they recorded their big hit Time Won't Let Me). Fox wrote and sang lead on Things I Could Be, from the third James Gang album.

Artist:    Derek And The Dominos
Title:    Anyday
Source:    CD: Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
Writer(s):    Clapton/Whitlock
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1970
    Derek And The Dominos was originally an attempt by Eric Clapton to remove himself from the solo spotlight and work in a larger group setting than he had with his previous bands, Cream and Blind Faith. Such was Clapton's stature, however, that even among talents like Jim Gordon, Carl Radle and Bobby Whitlock, Clapton was still the star. However, there was one unofficial member of the group whose own star was in ascendancy. Duane Allman, who had chosen to stick with his own group the Allman Brothers Band, nonetheless played on eleven of the fourteen tracks on Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. His slide guitar work is especially noticeable on the title track and on the song Anyday, which remains one of the most popular songs on the album.

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 glows under a black light, even) around Christmastime.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Born To Be Wild
Source:    CD: Bron To Be Wild-A Retrospective (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf)
Writer(s):    Mars Bonfire
Label:    MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1968
    Born To Be Wild's status as a counter-cultural anthem was cemented when it was chosen for the soundtrack of the movie Easy Rider. The popularity of both the song and the movie resulted in Steppenwolf becoming the all-time favorite band of bikers all over the world.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    When The Music's Over
Source:    CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Strange Days)
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    I remember the first time I heard When The Music's Over. My girlfriend's older brother had the new Doors album on the stereo in his room and told us to get real close to the speakers so we could hear the sound of a butterfly while he turned the volume way up. What we got, of course, was a blast of "...we want the world and we want it now." Good times.

 

 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2509 (starts 2/24/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/562984

    This week we have a pair of artists' sets from time zones that are eight hour apart. From Scotland, we have singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch with three tracks never played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era before, and then from Tacoma, Washington, the band that practically invented punk rock itself, the Sonics. There are lots of other goodies this week as well, including a rare Ray Charles B side and a nearly seven minite long album track from possibly the last group you ever expected to hear on a show called Stuck in the Psychedelic Era.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Suzy Q
Source:    CD: Creedence Gold (originally released on LP: Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Writer(s):    Dale Hawkins
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1968
    Creedence Clearwater Revival is known mostly for their series of hit singles written by vocalist/guitarist John Fogerty; tight, relatively short songs like Green River, Proud Mary and Bad Moon Rising. The most popular track on their 1968 debut LP, however, was an eight and a half minute long rendition of a song that had originally hit the charts over ten years earlier. Suzy Q had been a top 30 single (and top 10 on the R&B charts) for Dale Hawkins in 1957, helping to launch a long career in the music business as an artist, producer and record company executive. CCR took the song to even greater heights, with the track, split over two sides of a 45 RPM single, barely missing the top 10 in 1968.

Artist:    Beacon Street Union
Title:    The Prophet
Source:    British import CD: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union/The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens (originally released in US on LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union)
Writer(s):    Ulaky/Wright
Label:    See For Miles (original US label: M-G-M)
Year:    1968
    The Beacon Street Union had already relocated to New York from their native Boston by the time their first LP, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union, appeared in early 1968. Unfortunately, they were grouped together with other Boston bands such as Ultimate Spinach by M-G-M Records as part of a fictional "Boss-Town Sound", which ultimately hurt the band's chances far more than it helped them. The album itself is actually one of the better psychedelic albums of the time, with tracks like The Prophet, which closes out side two of the original LP, combining somewhat esoteric music and lyrics effectively.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    Suite: Genesis Of Beauty (part 3)
Source:    LP: Behold And See
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1968
    In early 1968 M-G-M Records, a major label that had failed to sign any San Francisco bands, attempted to make up for this oversight by hiring a bunch of bands from Boston and promoting them as part of the "boss-town sound", despite there being no one particular sound peculiar to the bean city (except the obvious). Then again, there really was no such thing as a San Francisco sound either, but that didn't stop Matthew Katz from marketing the bands he managed (Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and others) as such. Anyway, the one thing all these bands on M-G-M had in common is that their debut albums did better in the charts than their follow-up efforts. This could well be due to the fact that by the time those follow-ups hit the racks, the public was onto the phoniness of the whole promotion, but I think it might also be because the albums themselves didn't measure up to the earlier recordings. A prime example is Behold And See by Ultimate Spinach. The album itself is hard to review, since by the time you've finished listening to side two you've probably forgotten entirely what side one sounded like. Also somewhat confusing is a piece called Suite: Genesis Of Beauty that seems to be divided into four completely unrelated parts, albeit listenable ones.

Artist:    Pretty Things
Title:    Midnight To Six Man
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Taylor/May
Label:    Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year:    1965
    Once upon a time in London there was a band called Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys. Well, it wasn't really so much a band as a bunch of schoolkids jamming in guitarist Dick Taylor's parents' garage on a semi-regular basis. In addition to Taylor, the group included classmate Mick Jagger and eventually another guitarist by the name of Keith Richards. When yet another guitarist, Brian Jones, entered the picture, the band, which was still an amateur outfit, began calling itself the Rollin' Stones. Taylor switched from guitar to bass to accomodate Jones, but when the Stones decided to add a "g" and go pro in late 1962, Taylor opted to stay in school. It wasn't long, however, before Taylor, now back on guitar, showed up on the scene with a new band called the Pretty Things. Fronted by vocalist Phil May, the Things were rock and roll bad boys like the Stones, except more so. Their fifth single, Midnight To Six Man, sums up the band's attitude and habits. Unfortunately, the song barely made the British top 50 and was totally ignored by US radio stations.            
        
Artist:    Association
Title:    Along Comes Mary
Source:    LP: And Then...Along Comes The Association
Writer:    Tandyn Almer
Label:    Valiant
Year:    1966
    The Association are best known for a series of love ballads and light pop songs such as Cherish, Never My Love and Windy. Many of these records were a product of the L.A. studio scene and featured several members of the Wrecking Crew, the studio musicians who played on dozens of records in the late 60s and early 70s. The first major Association hit, however, featured the band members playing all the instruments themselves. Produced, and possibly co-written, by Curt Boettcher, who would soon join Gary Usher's studio project Sagittarius, Along Comes Mary shows that the Association was quite capable of recording a classic without any help from studio musicians.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    Help, I'm A Rock (single mix)
Source:    Mono CD: Part One (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Ya gotta hand it to the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. It takes cojones to record a cover of a Frank Zappa tune, especially within a year of the original Mothers of Invention version coming out. To top it off, the W.C.P.A.E.B. even prepared a single edit of Help, I'm A Rock, although to my knowledge it was never released as such.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
Source:    CD: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone
Year:    1968
    Sporting the longest title of any Beatles recording, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey is also one of the hardest-rocking late period Beatle tracks. There are two schools of thought concerning the subject matter of the lyrics. According to Lennon, the song is about himself and Yoko Ono, who was his constant companion during recording sessions for what would come to be known as the "White album". The other, more negative view, is that the one expressed by Paul McCartney that the Monkey was heroin, which both Lennon and Ono were getting into at the time. Since Lennon wrote the song, his version of things is the generally accepted one.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Trudi
Source:    LP: Barabajagal
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Epic
Year:    1969
    In May of 1969, Donovan recorded four tracks backed up by the Jeff Beck Group. Two of these, Barabajagal (Love Is Hot) and Trudi were released as a single in the UK of June 1969 and in the US two months later, concurrent with the release of the Barabajagal LP in both countries. The original UK pressings of the single give the title of the B side as Bed With Me, which actually fits the lyrics of the song better, but later pressings, including the LP, list it as Trudi.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Superlungs (second version)
Source:    British import CD: Mellow Yellow (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    EMI
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 2005
    Donovan first recorded Superlungs, My Supergirl in 1966 for his Sunshine Superman album, but chose not to include it on the LP. The following year he recorded a second version of Superlungs, but ultimately ended up going back to the original version for inclusion on his 1969 album Barabajagal.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Pamela Jo
Source:    LP: Barabajagal
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Epic
Year:    1969
    Although not the longest song on Donovan's Barabajagal album (Atlantis holds that honor), the LP's final track, Pamela Jo, is unquestionably the one with the most lyrics. Lots and lots of words in that one. Look it up.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Blues From An Airplane
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Balin/Spence
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    Blues From An Airplane was the opening song on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Although never released as a single, it was picked by the group to open their first anthology album, The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane, as well. The song is one of two tunes on Takes Off co-written by lead vocalist Marty Balin and drummer Skip Spence, who would soon leave the Airplane to co-found Moby Grape.

Artist:    Family Tree
Title:    Live Your Own Life
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Segarini/Dure
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1966
    The Family Tree was actually one of the first rock bands to play the Fillmore, but even then were seen as interlopers due to their propensity for dressing and sounding like the Beatles and other Mercybeat bands. Live Your Own Life was intended for release on San Francisco's premier local label, Autumn Records, but for some unknown reason ended up on Mira (the same label that released L.A. band the Leaves' first records). Live Your Own Life is sometimes known as The Airplane Song due to its perceived similarity to some early Jefferson Airplane recordings.

Artist:    Modern Folk Quintet
Title:    Night Time Girl
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Kooper/Levine
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1966
    The Modern Folk Quintet can be seen two ways: either as a group that constantly strived to be on the cutting edge or simply as fad followers. Starting off in the early 60s, the MFQ found themselves working with Phil Spector in the middle of the decade, complete with Spector's trademark "wall of sound" production techniques. When that didn't work out they signed with Lou Adler's Dunhill Records, cutting Night Time Girl, a tune that sounds like a psychedelicized version of the Mamas and the Papas.

Artist:    Procol Harum
Title:    Rambling On
Source:    CD: Shine On Brightly
Writer(s):    Brooker/Reid
Label:    A&M/Rebound
Year:    1968
    Procol Harum is generally considered to be one of the first progressive rock bands, thanks in part to their second LP, Shine On Brightly. In addition to the album's showpiece, the seventeen minute In Held Twas In I, the album has several memorable tracks, including Rambling On, which closes out side one of the original LP. The song's rambling first-person lyrics (none of which actually rhyme) tell the story of a guy who, inspired by a Batman movie, decides to jump off a roof and fly. Oddly enough, he succeeds.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    You're Lost Little Girl
Source:    Mono CD: Strange Days
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    The Doors second LP, Strange Days, was stylistically similar to the first, and served notice to the world that this band was going to be around for awhile. Songwriting credit for You're Lost Little Girl (a haunting number that's always been a personal favorite of mine) was given to the entire band, a practice that would continue until the release of The Soft Parade in 1969.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Obviously 5 Believers
Source:    Austrian import CD: Blonde On Blonde
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1966
    The earliest music recordings were made to be played through a single speaker (well, technically a big horn in the early days). Despite various advances in technology, this remained the case for half a century, until, in the 1950s, various engineers came up with a couple of ways to record in stereo (tape and stereo vinyl). Still, for a good ten years after stereo became commercially available, monoraul was still the industry standard for most recordings, with stereo mixes often created as an afterthought. This was literally the case with the 1966 Bob Dylan album Blonde On Blonde. Producer Bob Johnston says that they worked on the mono mix of the album for three or four days. At some point, one of the engineers reminded Johnston that they also needed to do a stereo mix. It took them about four hours. Nonetheless, for many years the only version of Blonde On Blonde available for sale was the stereo version, with the mono mix finally being reissued on vinyl in 2003. The album itself is considered one of Dylan's best, and has historical significance as the first double-LP to be released by a popular contemporary artist. One of the most overlooked songs on the album is Obviously 5 Believers, which closes out side three of the album. Dylan himself did not feel the need to spend much time on it, calling it "very easy", and the entire track was finished in four takes. Personally, I find it to be one of my favorite Dylan tracks. Oddly enough, Dylan does not play his own harmonica on the piece; it's actually the work of Charlie McCoy, with Robbie Robertson on guitar and Ken Buttrey on drums.

Artist:    Kingston Trio
Title:    Where Have All The Flowers Gone
Source:    CD: Songs Of Protest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pete Seeger
Label:    Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1961
    Protest songs did not start in the 1960s. Indeed, two of the genre's torchbearers, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, had been around since the 1930s. But McCarthyism in the early 1950s had squelched virtually all non-conformist voices in the US, and it wasn't until late 1961, when the clean-cut Kingston Trio recorded their own version of Seeger's Where Have All The Flowers Gone, that a protest song received enough national exposure to become a genuine hit, going to the #21 spot on the top 40 charts in early 1962. Peter, Paul And Mary included their own version of the song on their chart-topping (five weeks at #1) debut LP later that year.

Artist:    Sonics
Title:    Boss Hoss
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 8-The Northwest (originally released on LP: Here Are The Sonics)
Writer(s):    Gerald Roslie
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1965
    Surf music hit its peak of popularity in 1963, and by 1964 groups like the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean had shifted their focus from the surfboard to the means of getting that surfboard to the beach in the first place: the hot rod. But by 1965 the hot rod craze itself had run its course, and it took the Sonics, from Tacoma, Washington to put the final nail in the tires with Boss Hoss, a track from their debut LP that was also issued as a B side of a non-LP single called The Hustler. Like everything else they recorded, Boss Hoss was over the (rag) top, thanks to the songwriting talents of vocalist Gerald Roslie.

Artist:    Sonics
Title:    Strychnine
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released on LP: Here Are The Sonics)
Writer:    Gerald Roslie
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1965
    Like most rock albums from the mid-1960s, Here Are The Sonics was made up mostly of cover versions of popular songs like Good Golly Miss Molly and Roll Over Beethoven. The four original tunes on the album, including Strychnine, were all written by vocalist Gerry Roslie, who had joined the band in 1964.

Artist:    Sonics
Title:    He's Waitin'
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 8-The Northwest (originally released on LP: Boom)
Writer(s):    Gerald Roslie
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1966
    If you were to ask a punk rock musician about his or her influences, one name that would certainly be near the top of the list is the Sonics. Formed in Tacoma, Washington in 1960 by guitarist Larry Parypa, the group began to take off with the addition of keyboardist Gerry Roslie, who took over lead vocals in 1964. Their first single, The Witch, released in late 1964, became the biggest selling locally produced single in the history of the entire Northwestern US, despite a lack of airplay due to its controversial subject matter. An LP, Here Are The Sonics, soon followed, along with several more singles on the local Etiquette label. Throughout 1965 the band continued to record new material between gigs, releasing a second LP, Boom, in February on 1966. I highlight of the album was He's Waitin' a song written to an unfaithful girlfriend. The final lines of the song make it clear just who "he" is:       
"You think you are happy, I got news for you
Well, Satan found out, little girl, you're through"

Artist:    4 Seasons
Title:    American Crucifixion Resurrection
Source:    LP: Genuine Imitation Life Gazette
Writer(s):    Gaudio/Holmes
Label:    Philips
Year:    1969
    The 4 Seasons had one of the most recognizable sounds on 60s top 40 radio, thanks in large part to the lead vocals of Frankie Valli, who managed to hit impossibly high notes with regularity. They also had one of the most successful runs of any vocal group in history, with hits like Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry, Rag Doll and Let's Hang On, among many others. In the mid 70s they had a resurgence with a pair of dance hits, Who Loves You and December 1963. In 1969, however, the band was not doing so well, with no major hits since Valli's solo hit Can't Take My Eyes Off You two years earlier. Looking to attract new listeners, the group released their most ambitious album, the Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. The cover was done in the style of an old-style newspaper, with various faux articles about various social goings on interspersed with disguised information about the songs themselves. Musically, the album covered a lot of new ground, including the deep psychedelia of American Crucifixion Resurrection, which at nearly seven minutes is the longest track the 4 Seasons ever released.

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    On The Road Again
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jones/Wilson
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1968
    Canned Heat was formed by a group of blues record collectors in San Francisco. Although their first album consisted entirely of cover songs, by their 1968 album Boogie With Canned Heat they were starting to compose their own material, albeit in a style that remained consistent with their blues roots. On The Road Again, the band's second and most successful single (peaking at # 16) from that album, is actually an updated version of a 1953 recording by Chicago bluesman Floyd Jones (which was in turn adapted from delta bluesman Tommy Johnson's 1928 recording of a song called Big Road Blues) that guitarist/vocalist Al "Blind Owl" Wilson reworked, adding a tambura drone to give the track a more psychedelic feel. Wilson actually had to retune the sixth hole of his harmonica for his solo on the track. I didn't even know a harmonica could BE retuned!

Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Incense And Peppermints
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label:    Uni (original label: All-American)
Year:    1967
    Incense and Peppermints is one of the iconic songs of the psychedelic era, yet when it was originally released to Los Angeles area radio stations on the local All-American label it was intended to be the B side of The Birdman of Alkatrash. Somewhere along the line a DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) picked up the Strawberry Alarm Clock's contract and reissued the record nationally with Incense And Peppermints as the A side.

Artist:    Zipps
Title:    Kicks And Chicks
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the Netherlands as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nuyten/Katerberg
Label:    Rhino (original label: Relax)
Year:    1966
    In 1966 various people in the US music industry were obsessed with what they called "drug songs" such as the Byrds' classic Eight Miles High. In reality, the real drug song action was in the Netherlands, where the Zipps (from a place called Dordrecht) were handing out publicity stickers that read "Be Stoned: Dig Zipps: Psychedelic Sound" and performing a song called LSD-25 on national television. The group was formed in 1965 by members of the Beattown Skifflers and the Moving Strings and quickly caught on with the local Beat crowd and early hippies. Their second single, Kicks And Chicks, was a documentation of the band's own way of life, with lines like "I read only books of Jack Kerouac, he's the only priest in my life" cementing the group's beat credentials. Although the Zipps never recorded a full-length LP, they remained a popular band on the local underground scene until they disbanded in 1971.
        
Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Turn! Turn! Turn!
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Pete Seeger
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    After their success covering Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, the Byrds turned to an even more revered songwriter: the legendary Pete Seeger. Turn! Turn! Turn!, with lyrics adapted from the book of Ecclesiastes, was first recorded by Seeger in the early 60s, nearly three years after he wrote the song.
    
Artist:    Cream
Title:    Spoonful
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released in UK on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Reaction)
Year:    1966
    When the album Fresh Cream was released by Atco in the US it was missing one track that was on the original UK version of the album: the band's original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1970 soundtrack album for the movie Homer that the studio version was finally released in the US. Unfortunately the compilers of that album left out the last 15 seconds or so from the original recording.

Artist:    Things To Come (Illinois band)
Title:    I'm Not Talkin'
Source:    Mono CD: If You're Ready! The Best Of Dunwich Records...Volume 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mose Allison
Label:    Sundazed/Here 'Tis (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    Not to be confused with the California band Things To Come, this Illinois group released one single on the Dunwich label in 1966, a cover of the Yardbirds cover version of an old Mose Allison tune called I'm Not Talkin'. Other than that, absolutely nothing is known about this band, so if you have some info you'd like to pass along, you know where to send it, right?

Artist:    Ray Charles
Title:    The Train
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Ray Charles
Label:    ABC
Year:    1966
    Irony: the first single released by Ray Charles after getting out of rehab following a 16-year-long bout with heroin addiction was a song called Let's Go Get Stoned. But that's not what I'm playing this week. Instead, we have the pretty much forgotten B side of that 1966 single, a Charles composition called The Train. On the surface it seems to be a fairly typical call to try out a new dance called the Train, but then again "a train" was known in some circles as a euphemism for gang bang, and it's entirely possible Charles heard the phrase while in rehab.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    At The Zoo
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    Simon and Garfunkel did not release any new albums in 1967, instead concentrating on their live performances. They did, however, issue several singles over the course of the year, most of which ended up being included on 1968's Bookends LP. At The Zoo was one of the first of those 1967 singles. It's B side ended up being a hit as well, but by Harper's Bizarre, which took The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) to the top 10 early in the year.

Artist:    Luke & The Apostles
Title:    Been Burnt
Source:    Mono LP: Also Dug-Its (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ray Bennett
Label:    Elektra (original label: Bounty)
Year:    1967
    Just as New York had its Greenwich Village music scene, with groups like the Blues Project, Lovin' Spoonful and Paul Butterfield Blues Band playing small clubs like the Cafe au Go Go, so did Toronto have Yorkville Village, home of artists like Buffy Sainte Marie, Gordon Lightfoot and the Paupers, and a coffee house known as the Purple Onion. Elektra Records had opened a Canadian division in 1965 and Paul Rothchild, who was serving as a talent scout for the label, caught a local blues band called Luke & The Apostles at the Purple Onion one evening in late 1965. He was so taken with the group that he had their lead vocalist, Dave "Luke" Gibson, audition for label head Jac Holzman...over the phone. The band flew down to New York to record a pair of songs, including Been Burnt, but then Rothchild got busted for marijuana possession and did a year at Sing Sing (or some other NY state facility). The band continued to build a following in the Toronto area, going through a series of personnel changes in the process. In April of 1967, still waiting for their single to be released, the band returned to New York for a week-long engagement at the Cafe au Go Go, which led to a return engagement at the same club in May. While in New York the band spent an entire day at the Elektra studios, recording an album's worth of material. During their May gig, the band was offered a management contract by Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan's manager) and Bill Graham, with Graham offering a slot at the Fillmore West that summer. In between the two Cafe au Go Go gigs, Elektra released Been Burnt/Don't Know Why as a single, which ended up putting a strain on relations within the band itself, with some members wanting to go with Grossman and Graham while others wanted to stay with Rothchild and Holzman. Three months later, Gibson left the band to join another Canadian group, Kensington Market, and the rest of the band quickly fragmented, only to reunite briefly in 1970, releasing their second and final single on Canada's True North label. Since then the band has occasionally gotten back together and finally released their first (and only) LP, Luke & The Apostles, in 2017, 50 years after the first appearance of Been Burnt on vinyl.

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:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Dandelion
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco
Year:    1967
    When the Rolling Stones' most expensive single to date, We Love You, got only a lukewarm response from American radio listeners stations began to flip the record over and play the B side, Dandelion, instead. The song ended up being one of the band's biggest US hits of 1967.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Salesman
Source:    CD: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.
Writer(s):    Craig Vincent Smith
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1967
    The first song on the Monkees' fourth LP, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn And Jones, LTD. was also the most controversial. Michael Nesmith, as a side project, had been producing songs for a group led by Craig Vincent Smith called the Penny Arkade. One song in particular, Salesman, impressed Nesmith so much that he decided to produce a Monkees version of the song as well. The track was then used in a Monkees TV episode called The Devil And Peter Tork. NBC-TV at first refused to air the episode, claiming that the line "Salesman with your secret goods that you push while you talk" was a veiled drug reference (although producer Bert Schnieder was convinced the real reason was the liberal use of the word "hell" in the show's script).
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2509 (starts 2/24/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/562983 

    This week we manage to fit 16 pieces into the puzzle that is Rockin' in the Days of Confusion, ranging from 1967 to 1974 and including half a dozen that have never been played on the show before.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Preservation
Source:    45 RPM single (promo)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1974
    The Kinks' Preservation was a song that served as a summation of the band's 1974 concept album, Preservation-Act 1. Oddly enough, the song itself was not included on either that album or its followup, Preservation-Act 2, instead being released as a non-album single in 1974. There were two versions of the song, the longer of which is heard here. My copy is a bit on the scratchy side, but given the fact that the single failed to chart, I consider myself lucky to have a copy of it at all.

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

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Commotion
Source:    CD: Chronicles (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Green River)
Writer(s):    John Fogerty
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1969
    When I co-founded Ramstein Air Base's first power trio in 1969 one of the first songs we learned to play was Creedence Clearwater Revival's Commotion, which we learned by listening to the B side of Green River over and over. Who needs sheet music, anyway?

Artist:    Johnny Winter
Title:    Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
Source:    European import CD: Johnny Winter
Writer(s):    Sonny Boy Williamson
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    In December of 1968 Johnny Winter was invited by fellow guitarist Mike Bloomfied to join himself and keyboardist Al Kooper onstage at the Fillmore East. His appearance so impressed representatives of Columbia Records that they signed him in less than a week to what was then the largest advance in the history of recorded music ($600,000). His first LP for Columbia included a mix of original tunes and cover versions of blues classics such as Sonny Boy Williamson's Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, which was miscredited on the label to  Don Level and Bob Love, who had recorded a completely different song with the same name in 1961 that was later covered by the Yardbirds as their first single.

Artist:    Gypsy
Title:    Late December
Source:    LP: Gypsy
Writer(s):    Enrico Rosenbaum
Label:    Metromedia
Year:    1970
    Originally formed as the Underbeats in 1962, Gypsy had its greatest success after changing their name and moving to L.A. in 1969. They became the house band at the legendary Whisky-A-Go-Go for about eight months, starting in September of 1969, and during that time signed with Metromedia Records, a company owned by what would eventually become the Fox Television Network. The band made their recording debut with a double LP that included the single Gypsy Queen. Most of the band's material was written by guitarist/vocalist Enrico Rosenbaum, including Late December, a song best described as a vengeance ballad (using the word ballad in its original sense). After one more LP for Metromedia, the band started going through a series of personnel changes, eventually (after Rosenbaum's departure) changing their name to the James Walsh Gypsy Band (Walsh being the keyboardist of the group). Drummer Bill Lordan, after a short stint with Sly and the Family Stone, joined up with Robin Trower, an association that lasted many years.

Artist:    Uriah Heep
Title:    Tears In My Eyes (extended version)
Source:    European Import CD: Look At Yourself
Writer(s):    Ken Hensley
Label:    Sanctuary
Year:    Recorded 1971, released 2003
    Most people who heard Uriah Heep's first album agreed that the band had potential. That potential was realized with the 1971 album Look At Yourself. One of the more popular songs on the album was Tears In My Eyes, which opened side two of the original LP. The version on the album was actually edited down from the original tapes. This version is a slightly longer edit, with an extended acoustic section in the middle of the piece.

Artist:    Edgar Winter Group
Title:    Free Ride
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Dan Hartman
Label:    Epic
Year:    1972
    Some songs released in the 1960s and 1970s were mixed differently for single release than their LP counterparts. This may have been because, until around 1978 or so, most top 40 stations operated on the AM band, which had different audio dynamics than FM radio. For instance, Free Ride, from the Edgar Winter Band's LP They Only Come Out At Night, had a significantly brighter guitar track, added harmonics, a fuzz bass added to the bridge, and other enhancements on the 45 RPM single that were not present on the original LP version of the song. The tune, written by bassist Dan Hartman, ended up being one of the band's biggest hits, so they must have been on to something.

Artist:    Lily Tomlin
Title:    Peeved
Source:    LP: This Is A Recording
Writer(s):    Jim Rusk
Label:    Polydor
Year:    1971
    The first thing that struck me about Lily Tomlin's debut album, This Is A Recording, even before I put it on the turntable, was the fact that each of the LP's 17 tracks had its own writing credit. As it is usually left to the listener to assume that the artist also wrote all the material, I found this to be a particularly generous act on the part of Tomlin. The LP itself documents Tomlin's one-woman show recorded live at the Ice House in Pasadena, California, and features one-sided telephone conversations from Ernestine, Tomlin's most famous character from her days as a regular on the television show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, along with a short piece called Peeved in which Tomlin temporarily steps out of character to address the audience directly. The album went to the #15 spot on the Billboard Hot 200 albums chart, the highest chart position ever achieved by a solo comedy album from a woman.

Artist:    Joni Mitchell
Title:    Cactus Tree
Source:    LP: Miles Of Aisles
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Asylum
Year:    1974
    Joni Mitchell's first live album, Miles Of Aisles, was one of her most commercially successful LPs, going all the way to the #2 spot on the Billboard album charts in 1974. The album, which features Tom Scott and the L.A. Express as her stage band, includes some of her best-known tunes from her first six studio LPs. Cactus Tree is the only song on Miles Of Aisles that dates back to her 1968 debut album, Song To A Seagull.

Artist:    David Crosby
Title:    Laughing
Source:    CD: If I Could Only Remember My Name
Writer(s):    David Crosby
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    David Crosby brought in a few friends for his first solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name. Laughing, the final track on side one of the 1971 LP,  features Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar, Phil Lesh on bass, Bill Kreutzmann on drums and Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell on backup vocals. Guitar parts were provided by Crosby himself.

Artist:    Five Man Electrical Band
Title:    Absolutely Right
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Les Emmerson
Label:    Lionel
Year:    1971
    Formed in Ottawa in 1963, the Staccatos had a string of Canadian hits from 1963 throught 1968. After their producer, Nick Venet, told the band that the name Staccatos sounded dated, the band rechristened themselves The Five Man Electric Band, releasing their first album under that name (including several tracks originally released as Staccatos singles) in 1969. The band switched labels and released the album Good-byes and Butterflies in 1970. The following year, the opening track from Good-byes and Butterflies became an international hit. Originally issued as a B side in October of 1970, Signs was re-released in February of 1971, and by summer was in the top 5 in both the US and Canada, as well as spending two weeks at #1 in Australia. The band followed it up with a song called Absolutely Right. Although the song made the top 10 in several US and Canadian cities, it only peaked at a disappointing #26 on the Billboard charts. After two more albums and several more singles, the Five Man Electrical Band finally disbanded in 1975.

Artist:    Sugarloaf
Title:    Mother Nature's Wine
Source:    LP: Spaceship Earth
Writer:    Corbetta/Phillips/Reardon
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1971
    Despite being a better album overall than Sugarloaf's first LP, Spaceship Earth did not sell particularly well, only making it to the #111 spot on the Billboard albums chart. This is probably due to the lack of a hit single on a par with Green-Eyed Lady. Of the two singles that were released from Spaceship Earth, the one more similar in style to Green-Eyed Lady was Mother Nature's Wine. The song stalled out in the # 88 spot however, and Sugarloaf did not have another charted single until 1974, when the semi-novelty tune Don't Call Us, We'll Call You made the top 10.

Artist:     Janis Joplin
Title:     Mercedes Benz
Source:     CD: Pearl
Writer:     Janis Joplin
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1970
     I have mixed feelings about Paul Rothchild. On the one hand, he was instrumental in making the Doors famous, and produced their first half dozen or so albums. However, he also was responsible for the horns and strings that made much of The Soft Parade unlistenable, and he strongly opposed (to the point of resigning as the Doors' producer) the band's back-to-basics approach that resulted in L.A. Woman, their best album since 1967 (in fact, he had nothing good to say about Riders On The Storm in particular, calling the track "boring" and "a step backwards"). So, when it comes to Janis Joplin and her relationship to Rothchild, I find myself skeptical of anything Rothchild himself had to say on the matter. According to Rothchild, Janis was finally getting the support she deserved once Rothchild signed on as her producer. He has stated that she was happy to finally be working with musicians that she was completely in synch with (the Full-Tilt Boogie Band) and was at her creative peak. He has also said that he loved Janis deeply. So, I have to ask, if she was so happy and loved, why did she go out and OD on heroin right after recording Mercedes Benz? From what I know of Joplin, it is more likely she was feeling trapped, and took what she saw as the only way out. The last thing a free spirit like Janis Joplin needed was to be around a control freak who had somewhat warped ideas of what was good for people (strings and horns on a Doors album? Come on, really??). All this is, of course, conjecture on my part, but it sure feels like a pretty accurate assessment of the situation to me.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Iron Man
Source:    LP: Heavy Metal (originally released on LP: Paranoid)
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Special Products
Year:    1970
    Black Sabbath tended to write songs as a group, with Tony Iommi coming up with a guitar riff, Ozzy Osbourne figuring out a melody, Geezer Butler writing lyrics and Bill Ward adding the finishing touches with his drum set. One of their most famous tracks, Iron Man, started off exactly that way. When Ozzy Osbourne heard Tony Iommi's riff he remarked that it sounded "like a big iron bloke walking about". Butler took the idea and ran with it, coming up with a song about a man who travels to the future, sees the devastation and returns to his own time to try to change things. Unfortunately he gets caught in a magnetic field that turns him into living steel, mute and unable to verbally express himself. His efforts to communicate are met with indifference and even mockery, angering him to the point that he himself becomes the cause of the destruction he had witnessed. The song is considered one of foundation stones of what came to be called heavy metal. It's continued popularity is evidenced by the fact that it was used in the Iron Man movies, despite having no real connection to the film, other than being the title character's favorite song.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Aimless Lady
Source:    CD: Closer To Home
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1970
    Despite being universally panned by the rock press, Grand Funk Railroad managed to achieve gold record status three times in the year 1970. The first two of these were actually released the previous year, but it was the massive success of their third LP, Closer To Home, that spurred sales of the band's albums overall. All of the songs on Closer To Home were written and sung by guitarist Mark Farner, including Aimless Lady, probably the best example on the album of a "typical" Grand Funk Railroad song.

Artist:    Buoys
Title:    Timothy
Source:    Mono 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Rupert Holmes
Label:    Scepter
Year:    1970
    Rupert Holmes wrote the 1970 song Timothy, dealing with cannibalism, specifically to get banned from top 40 radio, thus giving him a measure of notoriety. What he didn't bargain for, however, was the song becoming a hit single anyway, despite the best efforts of the shirts at Scepter Records to convince everyone that "Timothy" was in fact, a mule, and not one of the miners caught in a cave-in. Holmes himself set the record straight in an interview, but by that time the song had hit the #17 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Holmes had intended the song to be recorded by a band called the Glass Prism, who had released an album of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry set to music the previous year. The Glass Prism, however, was under contract to RCA Victor, and was unavailable to record the song. Instead, Holmes chose the Buoys, a band from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who had been signed to, and then virtually ignored by, the New York-based Scepter Records. Holmes, who played keyboards on the song, went on to write several more songs for the Buoys, all of which were from the point of view of someone who had committed some sort of crime. Holmes ended up becoming more famous, in the long run, for a song called Escape (The Piña Colada Song) that he released under his own name in 1979.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2508 (starts 2/17/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/562190

    We're keeping things on an even keel this week, with each segment containing exactly eight songs, one of which exceeds the five minute mark. We do have one artists' set, however, and the show itself starts with what might actually qualify as an early rap song...

Artist:    Plastic Ono Band
Title:    Give Peace A Chance
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1969
    The future of the Beatles was very much in doubt in 1969. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were feuding, Ringo Starr had briefly quit the band during the making of the White Album and George Harrison was spending more time with friends like Eric Clapton than his own bandmates. One notable event that year was the marraige of John Lennon to performance artist Yoko Ono. The two of them did some world traveling that eventually led them to Toronto, where they staged a giant slumber party to promote world peace (don't ask). While in bed they recorded Give Peace A Chance, accompanied by as many people as they could fit in their hotel suite. The record was the first single released under the name Plastic Ono Band, a name that Lennon would continue to use after the Beatles disbanded in 1970.

Artist:    Amboy Dukes
Title:    Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nugent/Farmer
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Detroit was one of the major centers of pop music in the late 60s. In addition to the myriad Motown acts, the area boasted the popular retro-rock&roll band Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the harder rocking Bob Seger System, the non-Motown R&B band the Capitols, and Ted Nugent's outfit, the Amboy Dukes, who scored big in 1968 with Journey To The Center Of The Mind.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Strange Days
Source:    CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: Strange Days)
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    One of the first rock albums to not picture the band members on the front cover was the Doors' second LP, Strange Days. Instead, the cover featured several circus performers doing various tricks on a city street, with the band's logo appearing on a poster on the wall of a building. The album itself contains some of the Doors' most memorable tracks, including the title song, which also appears on their greatest hits album (which has Jim Morrison's picture on the cover) despite never being released as a single.

Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Billy Roberts
Label:    Elektra (original label: Mira)
Year:    1966
    In 1966 there were certain songs you had to know how to play if you had any aspirations of being in a band. Among those were Louie Louie, Gloria and Hey Joe. The Byrds' David Crosby claims to have discovered Hey Joe, but was not able to convince his bandmates to record it before their third album. In the meantime, several other bands had recorded the song, including Love (on their first album) and the Leaves. The version of Hey Joe heard here is actually the third recording the Leaves made of the tune. After the first two versions tanked, guitarist Bobby Arlin, who had recently replaced founding member Bill Rinehart on lead guitar, came up with the idea of adding fuzz guitar to the song. It was the missing element that transformed a rather bland song into a hit record (the only national hit the Leaves would have). As a side note, the Leaves credited Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti) as the writer of Hey Joe, but California-based folk singer Billy Roberts had copyrighted the song in 1962 and had reportedly been heard playing the tune as early as 1958.

Artist:    Grass Roots
Title:    Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man)
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 6-Punk, Part Two (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1965
    In late 1965 songwriters/producers P.F. Sloan (Eve of Destruction) and Steve Barri decided to create a series of records by a band called the Grass Roots. The problem was that the existing L.A. band calling itself the Grass Roots had no interest in recording for Sloan and Barri. Angered by being treated rudely by one of the band members, Sloan and Barri did a little research and came to the realization that the existing Grass Roots had not legally copyrighted the name, so Sloan and Barri did so themselves and then found another band to record as the Grass Roots. This of course forced the existing band to come up with a new name, but that's a story for another time. Meanwhile, the band Sloan and Barri recruited was the Bedouins, one of the early San Francisco bands. As the rush to sign SF bands was still months away, the Bedouins were more than happy to record the songs Sloan and Barri picked out for them. The first single by the newly-named Grass Roots was a cover of Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man). The band soon got to work promoting the single to Southern California radio stations, but with both the Byrds and the Turtles already on the charts with Dylan covers it soon became obvious that the market was becoming saturated with folk-rock. After a period of months the band, who wanted more freedom to write and record their own material, had a falling out with Sloan and Barri and it wasn't long before they moved back to San Francisco, leaving drummer Joel Larson in L.A. The group, with another drummer, continued to perform as the Grass Roots until Dunhill Records ordered them to stop. Eventually Dunhill would hire a local L.A. band called the 13th Floor (not to be confused with Austin, Texas's 13th Floor Elevators) to be the final incarnation of the Grass Roots; that group would crank out a series of top 40 hits in the early 70s. The Bedouins never had the opportunity to record again.

Artist:    Crosby, Stills And Nash
Title:    Wooden Ships
Source:    LP: So Far (originally released on LP: Crosby, Stills And Nash)
Writer(s):    Crosby/Stills/Kantner
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    Among the various legendary characters on the late 60s San Francisco music scene, none is more reviled than Matthew Katz. His mistreatment of It's A Beautiful Day is legendary. Just about every band he managed was desperate to get out of their contract with him, including Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane. In fact, it was because of the Airplane's fight to get out from under Katz's thumb that Paul Kantner did not get a writing credit for Wooden Ships on the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album. David Crosby had this to say on the matter: "Paul called me up and said that he was having this major duke-out with this horrible guy who was managing the band, and he was freezing everything their names were on. 'He might injunct the release of your record,' he told me. So we didn’t put Paul’s name on it for a while. In later versions, we made it very certain that he wrote it with us. Of course, we evened things up with him with a whole mess of cash when the record went huge." Although Jefferson Airplane eventually won their battle with Katz, others weren't so fortunate. Katz's San Francisco Sound still owns the rights to recordings by Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day, which explains why it's so hard to find quality copies of those recordings these days. Anyone want to take a guess how much the surviving members of those bands receive in royalties from the CD reissues of their albums?

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Back To The Family
Source:    CD: Stand Up
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol
Year:    1969
    The second Jethro Tull album, Stand Up, shows a band in transition from its roots in the British blues-rock scene to a group entirely dominated by the musical vision of vocalist/flautist/composer Ian Anderson. Back To The Family is sometimes cited as an early example of the style that the band would be come to known for on later albums such as Aqualung or Thick As A Brick.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Brainwashed
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1970
    Starting in 1966, Ray Davies started taking satirical potshots at a variety of targets, with songs like A Well Respected Man, Dedicated Follower of Fashion and the classic tax-protest song Sunny Afternoon. This trend continued over the next few years, although few new Kinks songs were heard on US radio stations until the band released the international hit Lola in 1970. One single that got some minor airplay in the US was the song Victoria, from the album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire). The B side of that track was Brainwashed, one of the hardest rocking Kinks tunes since their early 1964 hits like You Really Got Me.

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:    Chocolate Watch Band
Title:    No Way Out
Source:    CD: No Way Out
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Tower)
Year:    1967
    The Chocolate Watch Band, from the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area (specifically Foothills Junior College in Los Altos Hills), was fairly typical of the South Bay music scene, centered in San Jose. Although they were generally known for lead vocalist Dave Aguilar's ability to channel Mick Jagger with uncanny accuracy, producer Ed Cobb gave them a more psychedelic sound in the studio with the use of studio effects and other enhancements (including additional songs on their albums that were performed entire by studio musicians). The title track of No Way Out, released as the band's debut LP in 1967, is credited to Cobb, but in reality is a fleshing out of a jam the band had previously recorded, but had not released. That original jam, known as Psychedelic Trip, is now available as a mono bonus track on the No Way Out CD and as a limited edition Record Store Day single B side from a few years back.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Combination Of The Two
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Sam Andrew
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
     Everything about Big Brother And The Holding Company can be summed up by the title of the opening track for their Cheap Thrills album (and their usual show opener as well): Combination Of The Two. A classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, Big Brother, with Janis Joplin on lead vocals, had an energy that neither Joplin or the band itself was able to duplicate once they parted company. On the song itself, the actual lead vocals for the verses are the work of Combination Of The Two's writer, bassist Sam Houston Andrew III, but those vocals are eclipsed by the layered non-verbal chorus that starts with Joplin then repeats itself with Andrew providing a harmony line which leads to Joplin's promise to "rock you, sock you, gonna give it to you now". It was a promise that the group seldom failed to deliver on.

Artist:     Sly and the Family Stone
Title:     Everyday People
Source:     CD: The Essential Sly & The Family Stone (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Sylvester Stewart
Label:     Epic/Legacy
Year:     1968
     Sylvester Stewart, aka Sly Stone, is of course known for his band, the Family Stone, that is recognized as one of the first "funk" bands. But Sly Stone was far more influential on the San Francisco music scene than most people realize. As a staff producer for Autumn Records, he worked with a variety of up and coming artists, including the Beau Brummels, Bobby Freeman and a group called Great Society that featured a fashion model turned vocalist named Grace Slick. He was also a popular disc jockey on KSOL (which he identified as "K-Soul"), where he acted as sort of a reverse Allan Freed, bringing the music of white bands like the Beatles and Rolling Stones to a black audience. He also played keyboards behind a variety of touring artists (a common practice of the time being to hire local musicians to back up pop stars rather than have them bring their own band on the road), including Dionne Warwick, Marvin Gaye, the Righteous Brothers, Freddy Cannon and a host of others. In 1966 Stewart formed his own band, the Stoners, which evolved into Sly And The Family Stone the following year. The band's first three albums were moderate successes at best, but they sold well enough for the band to continue to develop its sound. In November of 1968, Sly And The Family Stone had their commercial breakthrough with the release of Everyday People, a song that topped both the mainstream and R&B charts in early 1969, going on to become the fifth most popular song of the entire year. The song's repeated line "Different strokes for different folks" became a catchphrase of the younger generation and eventually inspired a popular TV show. For that matter, so did the line "And so on, and so on and scooby dooby doo".

Artist:    Spanky And Our Gang
Title:    Sunday Will Never Be The Same
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Pistilli/Cashman
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1967
    The terms "rock star" and, for that matter "rock music", did not come into common usage until the late 1960s. Prior to that we had "pop stars" singing "pop songs", which included virtually everything that made it into the top 40, from Dean Martin ballads like Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes to funky James Brown tunes like Papa's Got A Brand New Bag. One of the last of the true pop groups was Spanky And Our Gang. Actually more artistically oriented than they are generally given credit for, Spanky And Our Gang were saddled with a producer who was more concerned with getting an album out quickly to cash in on a hit single than making a quality record. The hit single in question was Sunday Will Never Be The Same, which, despite the band achieving success with other tunes as well, came to define the band in the minds of record buyers, and actually hobbled their efforts to be seen as more than just a Mamas and Papas clone. Not long after the death of multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Hale (from either bronchial pneumonia or carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heating system, depending on whose account you read), who had been the group's primary arranger and de facto leader, Spanky And Our Gang disbanded, with lead vocalist Spanky McFarlane going on to a solo career and eventual membership in the Mamas And The Papas as Cass Elliot's replacement.

Artist:    New Dawn
Title:    Slave Of Desire
Source:    British import CD: With Love-A Pot Of Flowers (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Leonti/Supnet
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1967
    New Dawn, from the small town of Morgan Hill, California (a few miles south of San Jose), was not really a band. Rather, it was a trio of singer/songwriters who utilized the services of various local bands for live performances and studio musicians for their recordings. Schoolmates Tony Supnet, who also played guitar, Mike Leonti and Donnie Hill formed the group in 1961, originally calling themselves the Countdowns. They released a pair of singles on the local Link label, the second of which was recorded at San Francisco's Golden State Recorders. It was around that time that Bob Shad, owner of Mainstream Records, was in the Bay Area on a talent search. Shad was holding his auditions at Golden State, giving bands that had already recorded there an automatic in. Shad was impressed enough to offer the trio a contract, which resulted in a pair of singles using the name New Dawn. Although most of the group's material could best be described as light pop, the B side of the second single, a tune called Slave Of Desire, was much grittier. Leonti is the lead vocalist on the track, which, like the group's other recordings, utilized the talents of local studio musicians.

Artist:     Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:     Manic Depression
Source:     LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original US label: Reprise)
Year:     1967
    My dad bought an Akai X-355 reel to reel tape recorder when we moved to Ramstein, Germany in early 1968. It was pretty much the state of the art in home audio technology at the time. The problem was that we did not have a stereo system to hook it into, so he bought a set of Koss headphones to go with it. One of my first purchases was a pre-recorded reel to reel tape of Are You Experienced. The Akai had an auto-reverse system and I would lie on the couch with the headphones on to go to sleep every night listening to songs like Manic Depression. Is it any wonder I turned out like I did?

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Ruby Tuesday
Source:    LP: Between The Buttons
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    One of the most durable songs in the Rolling Stones catalog, Ruby Tuesday was originally intended to be the B side of their 1967 single Let's Spend The Night Together. Many stations, however, balked at the subject matter of the A side and began playing Ruby Tuesday instead, taking it to the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Although credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, there is evidence that Ruby Tuesday was actually written by Richards with considerable help from Brian Jones.

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:    Monkees
Title:    (Theme From) The Monkees
Source:    CD: The Monkees)
Writer(s):    Boyce/Hart
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1966
            Fun facts about the Monkees: Songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart got involved in the whole Monkees thing thinking that a) The Monkees would be an actual performing band that happened to be stars of their own TV show, and b) they (Boyce and Hart) would be core members of the band itself. They even recorded a demo of the Monkees theme song. The powers that be, however, decided (after briefly considering making the show about the Lovin' Spoonful) that using four guys from entirely different backgrounds who were almost complete strangers was a better idea [shrugs]. Everyone knows that the Monkees did not play their own instruments on their first two albums, but did you know that there is not a single song on the first LP that features all four members on it, even as vocalists? Most of the backup vocals, in fact, were provided by studio musicians.
        
Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Porpoise Song
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1968
    In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Last Train To Clarksville
Source:    CD: The Monkees
Writer(s):    Boyce/Hart
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1966
    The song that introduced the world to the Monkees, Last Train To Clarksville, was actually a bit of an anomaly for the group. For one thing, most of the early Monkees recordings utilized the services of various Los Angeles based studio musicians known collectively as the Wrecking Crew. Last Train To Clarksville, however, was recorded by the Candy Store Prophets, a local band that included Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who wrote and produced the song (Boyce and Hart originally had hopes of being members of the Monkees themselves, but had to wait until the 1980s to see that happen). The song was released as a single on August 16, 1966,  two months in advance of the first Monkees album, and hit the #1 spot on the charts in early November. Last Train To Clarksville was also included in seven episodes of the Monkees TV show, the most of any song.

Artist:    Hollies
Title:    Bus Stop
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Graham Gouldman
Label:    Imperial
Year:    1966
    The Hollies already had a string of British hit singles when they recorded Bus Stop in 1966. The song, written by Graham Gouldman (later of 10cc), was their first song to make the US top 10, peaking at #5. Gouldman later said the idea for the song came to him as he was riding on a bus. His father, playwrite Hyme Gouldman, provided the song's opening line "Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say please share my umbrella" and Graham built the rest of the song around it.

Artist:    Phil Ochs
Title:    Flower Lady
Source:    CD: The Best Of Phil Ochs (originally released on LP: Pleasures Of The Harbor)
Writer(s):    Phil Ochs
Label:    A&M
Year:    1967
    Singer/songwriter Phil Ochs first started making a name for himself in 1962 playing protest songs (although he preferred to call them "topical songs") in the coffee houses and folk clubs of New York's Greenwich Village. By the summer of 1963 he was well-enough known to secure a spot in the Newport Folk Festival. The following year he recorded his first of three albums for Elektra Records, then a small New York based folk and blues label. By 1967, however, Ochs decided to make some drastic changes in his life, moving from New York to Los Angeles and from Elektra to the more commercially-oriented A&M label co-owned by trumpet player Herb Alpert. His music underwent radical changes as well. Whereas his Elektra material was mainly Ochs accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, his A&M material was much more lavishly produced. For example Flower Lady, from his LP Pleasures Of The Harbor, runs over six minutes in length and features a chamber orchestra. Ochs himself later said that he had gone overboard with the song's production techniques (knowing Ochs, the pun was probably intentional). Nonetheless, hearing Flower Lady now is as unique an experience as it was in 1967.

Artist:    H.P. Lovecraft
Title:    At The Mountains Of Madness
Source:    CD: Two Classic Albums From H.P. Lovecraft (originally released on LP: H.P. Lovecraft II)
Writer(s):    Edwards/Michaels/Cavallari
Label:    Collector's Choice/Universal Music Special Products (original label: Philips)
Year:    1968
    The second H.P. Lovecraft album was even more psychedelic than the first, and had more original compositions as well. Lovecraft's Chicago-based psychedelia, however, was much closer to British bands such as Pink Floyd than what was being heard out on the West Coast, as can be heard on the five minute long track At The Mountains Of Madness.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Octopus's Garden
Source:    CD: Abbey Road
Writer:    Richard Starkey
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year:    1969
    In the Beatles's early years, guitarist George Harrison was generally allotted one song per album as a songwriter. Around 1966 this began to change, as Harrison's songwriting began to be featured more prominently. In 1968 drummer Ringo Starr stepped into the role of one song per album songwriter, with his first recorded song, Don't Pass Me By, being included on the so-called White Album. The band's finally LP, Abbey Road, included another Starr song, Octopus's Garden, which, unlike the former tune, actually got occassional airplay on both AM and FM stations.
    
Artist:    Crow
Title:    Cottage Cheese (long version)
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Weigand/Waggoner
Label:    Sundazed
Year:    Recorded 1970, released 2013
    In late 1970 I found myself living in Alamogordo, NM, which was at the time one of those places that still didn't have an FM station (in fact, the only FM station we could receive was a classical station in Las Cruces, 70 miles away). To make it worse, there were only two AM stations in town, and the only one that played current songs went off the air at sunset. As a result the only way to hear current music at night (besides buying albums without hearing them first) was to "DX" distant AM radio stations. Of these, the one that came in most clearly and consistently was KOMA in Oklahoma City. My friends and I spent many a night driving around with KOMA cranked up, fading in and out as long-distance AM stations always do. One of those nights we were all blown away by a new Crow song called Cottage Cheese, which, due to the conservative nature of the local daytime-only station, was not getting any local airplay. Years later I was lucky enough to find a copy in a thrift store in Albuquerque. More recently I picked up a copy of The Best Of Crow, a 2013 CD collection that includes the original unissued long version of the song as it was usually performed live, including a drum solo from Denny Craswell.

Artist:    Santana
Title:    Evil Ways
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Santana)
Writer(s):    Clarence Henry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    Evil Ways was originally released in 1968 by jazz percussionist Willie Bobo on an album of the same name. When Carlos Santana took his new band into the studio to record their first LP, they made the song their own, taking it into the top 10 in 1969.

Artist:     Bob Seger System
Title:     Death Row
Source:     Simulated stereo LP: Noah (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer:     Bob Seger
Label:     Capitol
Year:     1968
     I like to play Bob Seger's Death Row, written from the perspective of a convicted murderer waiting to be executed, for fans of the Silver Bullet Band who think that Turn the Page is about as intense as it gets. The song was originally released as the B side of the first Bob Seger System single, 2+2=?, but was not included on the band's debut LP. Later in 1969 a fake stereo mix of the song was tacked onto the end of the group's second LP, Noah, an album which Seger himself has disavowed and has never appeared on CD.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    We're Going Wrong
Source:    Mono European import LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer:    Jack Bruce
Label:    Lilith (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    On Fresh Cream the slowest-paced tracks were bluesy numbers like Sleepy Time Time. For the group's second LP, bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce came up with We're Going Wrong, a song with a haunting melody supplemented by some of Eric Clapton's best guitar fills. Ginger Baker put away his drumsticks in favor of mallets, giving the song an otherworldly feel.

Artist:     Troggs
Title:     Wild Thing
Source:     Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From the Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Chip Taylor
Label:     Rhino (original label: Fontana)
Year:     1966
    I have a DVD copy of a music video (although back then they were called promotional films) for the Troggs' Wild Thing in which the members of the band are walking through what looks like a train station while being mobbed by girls at every turn. Every time I watch it I imagine singer Reg Presley saying giggity-giggity as he bobs his head.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Pushin' Too Hard
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: The Seeds)
Writer(s):    Sky Saxon
Label:    Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1965
    The Seeds originally released their biggest hit in late 1965 under the title You're Pushin' Too Hard. It wasn't until the song was re-released in 1966 under the more familiar title Pushin' Too Hard that it became a local L.A. hit, and it wasn't until spring of 1967 that the tune took off nationally. The timing was perfect for me, as the new FM station (KLZ-FM Denver) I was listening to before we moved to Germany was all over it that spring.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    The People In Me
Source:    45 RPM single (promo)
Writer:    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Original Sound
Year:    1966
    After Talk Talk soared into the upper reaches of the US charts the Music Machine's management made a tactical error. Instead of promoting the follow-up single, The People In Me, to the largest possible audience, the band's manager gave exclusive air rights to a relatively low-rated Burbank station at the far end of the Los Angeles AM radio dial. As local bands like the Music Machine depended on airplay in L.A. as a necessary step to getting national exposure, the move proved disastrous. Without any airplay on influential stations like KHJ and KRLA, The People In Me was unable to get any higher than the # 66 spot on the national charts. Even worse for the band, the big stations remembered the slight when subsequent singles by the Music Machine were released, and by mid-1967 the original lineup had disbanded, although Bonniwell continued to tour with a new Music Machine for another year.
 
Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Double Yellow Line
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Rhino (original label: Original Sound, stereo LP version released on Warner Brothers)
Year:    1967
    One of the Original Sound singles that also appeared on the Warner Brothers LP Bonniwell Music Machine, Double Yellow Line features lyrics that were literally written by Bonniwell on the way to the recording studio. In fact, his inability to stay in his lane while driving with one hand and writing with the other resulted in a traffic ticket. The ever resourceful Bonniwell wrote the rest of the lyrics on the back of the ticket and even invited the officer in to watch the recording session. He declined.