https://exchange.prx.org/p/561338
This week we manage to squeeze in a Pink Floyd artists' set, a battle between a singer/songwriter and a band featuring three songwriters, the full-length album version of the Chambers Brothers' Time Has Come Today, and as a special bonus, Dave Van Ronk goes psychedelic. And that's only about half the show...
Artist: Kinks
Title: All Day And All Of The Night
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Eric (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1964
Following up on their worldwide hit You Really Got Me, the Kinks proved that lightning could indeed strike twice with All Day And All Of The Night. Although there have been rumors over the years that the guitar solo on the track may have been played by studio guitarist Jimmy Page, reliable sources insist that it was solely the work of Dave Davies, who reportedly slashed his speakers to achieve the desired sound.
Artist: Standells
Title: Rari
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Tower
Year: 1965
The Standells had already recorded several singles for various labels when they met up with producer Ed Cobb, whose Green Grass Productions had a distribution deal with Capitol's Tower Records subsidiary. Cobb had the band record a pair of tunes that he had written himself at engineer Armin Steiner's garage studio in Los Angeles. Both Dirty Water and its B side, Rari, were recorded on 3-track tape, which meant that the instrumental tracks were recorded first, with overdubs and vocals added later. According to band leader Larry Tamblyn, this makes the Dirty Water/Rari single, released in November of 1965, one of the first (if not THE first) garage-rock records.
Artist: Modern Folk Quintet
Title: Night Time Girl
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 10-Folk-Rock (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: Hollies
Title: All The World Is Love
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Clarke/Hicks/Nash
Label: Imperial
Year: 1967
The Hollies are not exactly the first band that comes to mind when you mention the British version of the psychedelia. In fact, they prided themselves for being about as blue-collar as it gets. Still, thanks to Graham Nash, they did do just a tiny bit of psychedelic experimentation (music-wise) on their two 1967 LPs, Evolution and Butterfly, with Nash providing lead vocals on more songs than on the band's previous albums. These two albums were preceded by a single, On A Carousel, that also featured Nash as lead vocalist. The B side, All The World Is Love, is even more interesting, as it features some pretty wild vocal harmonies from Nash at the end of each chorus.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Affirmative No
Source: Mono CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1968
Unlike many of their fellow L.A. bands, who preferred to stay close to home, the Music Machine toured extensively after scoring their big national hit Talk Talk. While on the road the band worked on new material for a second album, booking studio time wherever they happened to be. One of those places was Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which had emerged as a rival to Memphis's Stax Studios as a hotbed of southern soul music. The Machine recorded two tracks there in early 1967, including Affirmative No, a song that manages to have a southern soul vibe without sacrificing any of the Music Machine's trademark garage/punk sound. Although the original group disbanded shortly after the songs were recorded, both tunes were included on the 1968 LP Bonniwell Music Machine, joining a couple of previously released Original Sound singles and several tracks recorded later in the year by a new Music Machine lineup.
Artist: Santana
Title: Shades Of Time/Savor/Jingo
Source: LP: Santana
Writer(s): Santana/Rolie/Areas/Brown/Carabello/Shrieve/Olatunji
Label: Columbia
Year: 1969
Santana started out as a jam band, but after taking on Bill Graham as manager began to work out more structured pieces. Both of these elements can be heard on their first self-titled LP, released in 1969. Shades Of Time is one of the more structured tunes, written by guitarist Carlos Santana and keyboardist/vocalist Gregg Rolie, which leads into the instrumental Savor, credited to the entire band. This is turn leads into Jingo, a song written by Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji and featured on his first album Drums of Passion in 1959.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Mother's Little Helper
Source: Mono CD: Flowers
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966
By 1966 the Rolling Stones had already had a few brushes with the law over their use of illegal drugs. Mother's Little Helper, released in Spring of '66, is a scathing criticism of the abuse of legal prescription drugs by the parents of the Stones' fans. Perhaps more than any other song of the time, Mother's Little Helper illustrates the increasingly hostile generation gap that had sprung up between the young baby boomers and the previous generation.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: You Go, And I'll Go With You
Source: Mono LP: Live At The Cafe Au Go Go
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Verve Folkways
Year: 1966
It was a common practice among bluesmen to "borrow" from earlier songs when writing their latest tune. Sometimes it was lyrics, sometimes a guitar or sax riff, and sometimes entire chord structures would be lifted from older songs. This was in part because of the perception of blues records as being "throwaway" items that only had value as long as they were available on the record racks (early rock and roll records would be percieved this way as well). As such, it was perfectly acceptable to reuse old ideas, since otherwise those ideas would be gone forever. Sometimes a writer would even plagiarize himself, as in the case of the Willie Dixon tune You Go And I'll Go With You. The song has the same melody and chord structure as My Babe, a 1955 hit for Little Walter that was the only Willie Dixon-penned song to top the R&B charts. My Babe itself was a secular adaptation of a gospel song, This Train (Is Bound For Glory), which was a 1939 hit for Sister Rosetta Tharp. Years later the Blues Project chose to cover the later tune on their debut album, Live At The Cafe Au Go Go.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Renaissance Fair
Source: Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Crosby/McGuinn
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Younger Than Yesterday was David Crosby's last official album with the Byrds (he was fired midway through the recording of The Notorious Byrd Brothers) and the last one containing any collaborations between Crosby and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn. Renaissance Fair is one of those collaborations. The song was inspired by a free concert given in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park by the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, among others.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Catch The Wind
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Golden Days Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sire (original label: Hickory)
Year: 1965
Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch released his first single, Catch The Wind, in March of 1965. The record was an instant hit, going to the #4 spot on the British charts and later hitting #23 in the US. He ended up re-recording the song twice; first for his debut LP, What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, and then again for his 1969 greatest hits album, when Epic Records was unable to secure the rights to either of the original versions. Although reprocessed for stereo, the version heard here is from the original single, which had background strings that were not present on the LP version.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Thoughts And Words
Source: Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Chris Hillman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
In addition to recording the most commercially successful Dylan cover songs, the Byrds had a wealth of original material over the course of several albums. On their first album, these came primarily from guitarists Gene Clark and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn, with David Crosby emerging as the group's third songwriter on the band's second album. After Clark's departure, bassist Chris Hillman began writing as well, and had three credits as solo songwriter on the group's fourth LP, Younger Than Yesterday. Hillman credits McGuinn, however, for coming up with the distinctive reverse-guitar break midway through Thoughts And Words.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Superlungs (My Supergirl)
Source: CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released on LP: Barabajabal)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony Music Special Products (original label: Epic)
Year: 1969
Donovan originally recorded a song called Supergirl for his 1966 album Sunshine Superman album, but ultimately chose not to use the track. Over two years later he recorded an entirely new version of the song, retitling it Superlungs (My Supergirl) for the 1969 Barabajagal album. Or was it really not entirely new? When you listen to it on headphones much of the track sounds like an "electronically rechanneled for stereo" recording (the Sunshine Superman sessions were originally mixed only in mono), with only the background vocals toward the end of the piece actually being mixed in true stereo.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Why (RCA Studios version)
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1965
One of the highlights of the Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday album, released in early 1967, was a song co-written by David Crosby and Jim (Roger) McGuinn called Why. Many of the band's fans already knew that a different version of the song had already been released as the B side of Eight Miles High the previous year. What was not as well-known, however, was that both songs had been first recorded at the RCA Studios in Burbank in December of 1965, but rejected by Columbia due to their being produced at studios owned by a hated competitor. Crosby later said that he preferred the RCA recording to the later ones made at Columbia's own studios, calling it "stronger...with a lot more flow to it".
Artist: Donovan
Title: Bert's Blues
Source: Mono CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Sony (original label: Epic)
Year: 1966
In 1966 Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch got into a contractual dispute with his record label, Pye Records UK. Up to that point his records had appeared in the US on the independent Hickory label. Now, however, he was about to make his US major label debut (on Epic), and the dispute with Pye led to his newest album, Sunshine Superman, being released only in North America. Like Bob Dylan, Donovan was beginning to expand beyond his folk roots, but in addition to the usual rock instruments (guitar, bass, drums, organ) Donovan used older acoustic instruments such as strings and harpsichord as well as experimenting with modern jazz arrangements and instrumentation. Somehow he managed to combine all of these elements in one track, Bert's Blues. Surprisingly, it worked.
Artist: Dave Van Ronk And The Hudson Dusters
Title: Mr. Middle
Source: LP: Dave Van Ronk And The Hudson Dusters
Writer(s): Bogardus/Woods
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1967
Probably the closest that the legendary Dave Van Ronk ever got to psychedelia was an album called Dave Van Ronk And The Hudson Dusters, released on the Verve Forecast label in 1967. The Hudson Dusters themselves have been described as an eclectic combination of electric jugband, folk orchestra and bubblegum band. All these elements can be heard on Mr. Middle, a song that really can't be described any other way.
Artist: Lee Michaels
Title: My Friends
Source: LP: Carnival Of Life
Writer(s): Lee Michaels
Label: A&M
Year: 1968
Originally from Los Angeles, organist/vocalist/songwriter Lee Michaels migrated to San Francisco in the mid-1960s, becoming a member of Bob Segarini's band, the Family Tree. As a solo artist he made a name for himself by appearing on stage with his Hammond organ accompanied only by a drummer, a practice he generally continued in the recording studio. For his first album, Carnival Of Life, however, he went with a more conventional lineup including bassist John Keski, guitarist Hamilton W. Watt, and second organist Gary Davis, along with himself and drummer Eddie Hoh, who played on the LP's final track, My Friend.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Wait
Source: LP: Rubber Soul
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol/EMI
Year: 1965
The oldest song on the Rubber Soul album, Wait was originally recorded for the British version of Help , but did not make the final cut. Six months later, when the band was putting the finishing touches on Rubber Soul, they realized they would not be able to come up with enough new material in time for a Christmas release, so they added some overdubs to Wait and included it on the new album. The song itself was a collaboration between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with the two sharing vocals throughout the tune.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Astronomy Domine
Source: CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (originally released in UK and Canada)
Writer(s): Syd Barrett
Label: Capitol (original label: EMI Columbia)
Year: 1967
When the US version of the first Pink Floyd LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, was released on the Tower label, it was missing several tracks that had appeared on the original British version of the album. Among the most notable omissions was the original album's opening track, Astronomy Domine, which was replaced by the non-LP single See Emily Play. Astronomy Domine is a Syd Barrett composition that was a popular part of the band's stage repertoire for several years. The piece is considered one of the earliest examples of "space rock", in part because of the spoken intro (by the band's manager Peter Jenner) reciting the names of the planets (and some moons) of the solar system through a megaphone.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: See Emily Play
Source: Mono CD: Relics (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Syd Barrett
Label: Capitol (original US label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Following up on their first single, Arnold Layne, Pink Floyd found even greater chart success (at least in their native England) with See Emily Play. Released in June of 1967, the song went all the way to the #6 spot on the British charts. In the US the song failed to chart as a single, although it was included on the US version of Pink Floyd's debut LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. The "Emily" in question is reportedly the sculptor Emily Young, who in those days was known as the "psychedelic schoolgirl" at London's legendary UFO club.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Pow R. Toc H.
Source: CD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s): Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason
Label: Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
British psychedelic music was always more avant-garde than its US counterpart, and Pink Floyd was at the forefront of the British psychedelic scene. Pow R. Toc H., one of the few tracks on their first LP that was written by the entire group (most of The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn was written by Syd Barrett), was a hint of things to come. Some of the effects heard at the beginning or Pow R. Toc H. were "borrowed" from the Beatles, who were using them in the song Lovely Rita on the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was being recorded at EMI Studios (now known as Abbey Road Studios) at the same time as The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.
Artist: Chambers Brothers
Title: CD: Time Has Come Today
Source: The Time Has Come
Writer(s): Joe and Willie Chambers
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1967
The Chambers Brothers were an eclectic band with a gospel music background that dated back to the mid-50s, when oldest brother George finished his tour of duty with the US Army and settled down in the L.A. area. His three brothers soon followed him out to the coast from their native Mississippi, and began playing the Southern California gospel circuit before going after a more secular audience in the early 60s. Their best-known recording was Time Has Come Today, considered to be one of the defining tracks of the psychedelic era. The song, written by brothers Joe and Willie Chambers, was originally recorded in 1966 and released as a single, but went largely unnoticed by radio and the record-buying public. In 1967 the band recorded a new, eleven-minute version of Time Has Come Today for their album The Time Has Come. This version got considerable airplay on the handful of so-called "underground" FM stations that were starting to pop up across the US in college towns and major metropolitan areas, but was considered way too long for commercial radio. The following year two edited versions of the track were released. The second, longer edit ended up getting enough airplay to make the top 40; as a result the full-length version has become somewhat of a rarity on the radio, especially since the shorter version was made available in stereo in the mid-1980s. This week Stuck in the Psychedelic Era presents, for your enjoyment, the full-length album version of Time Has Come Today.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Love
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): McDonald/Melton/Cohen/Barthol/Gunning/Hirsch
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Most of the songs on the first Country Joe And The Fish album, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, were written and sung by Country Joe McDonald. An exception was the song Love, which was written by the entire band and sung by Barry Melton, aka The Fish.
Artist: Doors
Title: Twentieth Century Fox
Source: LP: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
There's no getting around it: there are no bad songs on the first two Doors albums. Pick one at random, say Twentieth Century Fox. Great song. They all are.
Artist: Lemon Pipers
Title: Green Tambourine
Source: European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Leka/Pinz
Label: Sony Music (original label: Buddah)
Year: 1967
After a promising start in early 1967 signing and releasing albums by respected artists like Johnny Winter and Captain Beefheart, Buddah Records acquired a reputation as the "bubble gum" label the following year with a string of hits by groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. In between, there was a nice little piece of psychedelia called Green Tambourine by a band called the Lemon Pipers. Because of Buddah's reputation and subsequent history, however, the song is often mistakenly thought of as the first bubble gum hit.
Artist: Kaleidoscope (US)
Title: Pulsating Dream
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Side Trips)
Writer: Chris Darrow
Label: Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
From Los Angeles we have the Kaleidoscope, a band that had more in common with the folk-rock bands up in San Francisco than its contemporaries on the L.A. club scene. Pulsating Dream is a somewhat typical example of what the group sounded like on its only album for Epic, Side Trips, released in 1967.
Artist: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Title: I'll Search The Sky
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Ricochet)
Writer(s): David Hanna
Label: Rhino (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released two albums in 1967, about four to five months apart. Part of the reason for this may have been that their label, Liberty Records, was finding it difficult to get any of their releases to show up on the Billboard album charts; in fact, the first Dirt Band album was one of only two LPs on the label to accomplish that feat that year. The second LP by the group, Ricochet, was not able to duplicate the success of the first one, however, despite fine tracks like I'll Search The Sky and the band was in danger of fading off into obscurity by the end of the year. The group persisted, however, and eventually hit it big with their version of Jerry Jeff Walker's Mr. Bojangles. The band continued to gravitate toward country music over the next decade, eventually emerging as one of the top country acts of the 1980s.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Good Times
Source: CD: The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals 1966-1968 (originally released as 45 RPM B side and on LP: Winds Of Change)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Highway 61 Revisited
Source: CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
US Highway 61 is part of the original US Federal highway system that was developed in the 1920s and 30s and has since been largely supplanted by the Interstate highway system. It was at a crossroads along this route that legendary bluesman Robert Johnson is said to sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a successful career. In 1965 Bob Dylan decided to revisit the legend and add to it for his landmark album on which he invented an electrified version of the folk music he had become famous for. His backup musicians included some of the top talent in the New York area, including guitarist Michael Bloomfield of the Butterfield Blues Band and organist Al Kooper, who also plays the police whistle heard at strategic points in the title track of Highway 61 Revisited.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Rollin' Machine
Source: LP: A Web Of Sound
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
Is there anyone out there that really thinks this is a song about a car? Yeah, me either.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Third Stone From The Sun
Source: CD: Are You Experienced?
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Jimi Hendrix once stated that he was far more comfortable as a guitarist than as a vocalist, at least in the early days of the Experience. In that case, he was certainly in his element for his classic instrumental from the Are You Experienced album, Third Stone From The Sun. The train sequence at the end of the track, incidentally, was done entirely on guitar.
Artist: Canned Heat
Title: Going Up The Country
Source: Italian import 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Alan Wilson
Label: Liberty
Year: 1968
Canned Heat built up a solid reputation as one of the best blues-rock bands in history, recording several critically-acclaimed albums over a period of years. What they did not have, however, was a top 10 single on the US charts. The nearest they got was Going Up The Country from their late 1968 LP Living The Blues, which peaked in the #11 spot in early 1969 (although it did hit #1 in several other countries). The song was written and sung by guitarist Alan "Blind Own" Wilson, who died at age 27 on September 3, 1970. This Italian pressing, for some reason, abruptly cuts off the song's 20 second-long coda.
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