https://exchange.prx.org/p/622891
Regular listeners of Stuck in the Psychedelic Era know that, rather than trying to be totally psychedelic all the time, we tend to put the emphasis on the era itself. This means that, in addition to the acid rock, we have garage rock, folk-rock, British rock, sunshine pop, blues rock and even an occasional soul classic thrown into the mix from time to time. This week, however, the emphasis is definitely on the psychedelic, culminating with a pair of extended pieces from Procol Harum and Pink Floyd. But first, a set of tunes from bands that appeared on the playbill of the Monterey International Pop Festival, which happened 59 years ago this week.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Retrospective (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the single intro onto the main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. Most versions I have heard use the mono version of the short intro section, but this particular one, from a CD called Retrospective, has the entire song in true stereo.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Purple Haze
Source: British import LP: Smash Hits (originally released in the UK as a 45 RPM single)
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Polydor (original label:Track)
Year: 1967
Purple Haze has one of the most convoluted release histories of any song ever recorded. Originally issued in the UK on the Track label and in Europe on the Polydor label as a single, it scored high on the British charts. When Reprise got the rights to release the first Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Are You Experienced, in the US, they chose to replace the first track on the album with Purple Haze, moving the original opening track, Foxy Lady, to side two of the LP. Purple Haze next appeared on the Smash Hits album, which was released pretty much everywhere. Later releases included The Essential Jimi Hendrix in the US and a European double LP release on Polydor called The Singles, which collected all the tracks that had previously appeared on 7" vinyl anywhere, including posthumous releases. This was the way things stayed until the early 1990s, when MCA acquired the rights to the Hendrix catalog and re-issued Are You Experienced with the tracks restored to the UK ordering, but preceded by the six non-album sides (including Purple Haze) that had originally been released prior to the album. Most recently, the Hendrix Family Trust has again changed labels and the US version of Are You Experienced is once again in print, this time on Sony's Legacy label. This means that the song has now been released by all three currently existing major record conglomerates.
Artist: Country Joe and the Fish
Title: Section 43
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer: Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
In 1966 Country Joe and the Fish released their original mono version of an instrumental called Section 43. The song was included on a 7" EP inserted in Joe McDonald's underground arts newspaper called Rag Baby. In 1967 the group recorded an expanded stereo version of Section 43 and included it on their debut LP for Vanguard Records, Electric Music For The Mind And Body. It was this arrangement of the piece (and quite possibly this recording; even Country Joe himself wasn't sure) that was used in D. A. Pennebacker's film chronicle of the Monterey International Pop Festival that June.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Big Black Smoke
Source: Mono British import CD: Face To Face (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Sanctuary (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1966
The Kinks had some of the best non-album sides of the 60s. Case in point: Big Black Smoke, which appeared as the B side of Dead End Street in November of 1966. The song deals with a familiar phenomenon of the 20th century: the small town girl that gets a rude awakening after moving to the big city. In this case the city was London, known colloquially as "the Smoke".
Artist: Cream
Title: Strange Brew
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Clapton/Collins/Pappalardi
Label: Polydor.Polygram (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Strange Brew, the opening track from Cream's Disraeli Gears album, was also released as a single in early 1967. The song has proven popular enough over the years to be included on pretty much every Cream anthology album ever compiled, and even inspired a Hollywood movie of the same name.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: It's Breaking Me Up
Source: LP: This Was
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Jethro Tull originally was part of the British blues scene, but even in the early days the band's principal songwriter Ian Anderson made no secret of the fact that he wanted to expand beyond the confines of that particular genre. Ironically, It's Breaking Me Up, from Jethro Tull's first LP, is an Anderson composition that is rooted solidly in the British blues style.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Out Of The Question
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Future
Writer(s): Saxon/Serpent
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1965
Until 2014, one's chances of hearing, let alone posessing, a copy of the B side of the original pressing of the Seeds' You're Pushing Too Hard was, for most of us, Out Of The Question. A rechannelled stereo version of the song appeared two years later on the third Seeds album, Future, which sold poorly and is almost as hard to find as the original single.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Mr. Farmer
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: A Web Of Sound)
Writer: Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino
Year: 1966
With two tracks (Can't Seem To Make You Mine and Pushin' Too Hard) from their first album getting a decent amount of airplay on L.A. radio stations in 1966 the Seeds headed back to the studio to record a second LP, A Web Of Sound. The first single released from the album was Mr. Farmer, a song that once again did well locally. The only national hit for the Seeds came when Pushin' Too Hard was re-released in December of 1966, hitting its peak the following spring.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Fallin'
Source: LP: Future
Writer(s): Saxon/Hooper
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1967
After Pushin' Too Hard cracked the national charts nearly two years after its initial release, the Seeds went into the studio to record their third LP, Future. Unlike their first two albums, Future contains more than a few experimental tracks, including Fallin', a seven and a half minute long freakout that closes out the album's second side.
Artist: ? And The Mysterians
Title: I Need Somebody
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Rudy Martinez
Label: Cameo
Year: 1966
? And The Mysterians, although formed in 1962, didn't enter a recording studio until April 15, 1966,, when they recorded 96 Tears at Art Schiell's Recording Studio in Bay City, Michigan. The song was released on the local Pa-Go-Go label and got a strong response in Michigan and Ontario, prompting the owner of Cameo Records to buy the rights to the song and distribute it nationally. The song went all the way to the top of the charts in the US and Canada, making the top 40 in several other countries, including the UK, as well. They followed up this success with an LP, also called 96 Tears. The first single from that album was I Need Somebody, which charted only in the US, peaking at #22. It was the last ? And The Mysterians song to hit the top 40 anywhere.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Here's Where You Belong
Source: CD: Part One
Writer(s): P.F. Sloan
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
If Here's Where You Belong sounds like it might have been a Turtles song, there's good reason for it. Many of the early Turtles hits were written by L.A. songwriter P.F. Sloan, who also wrote Barry McGuire's Eve Of Destruction and, with partner Steve Barri, was the driving force behind the Grass Roots in the early 1970s. A chance meeting between Sloan and the members of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band at a taping for the Ed Sullivan show led to the band recording Here's Where You Belong for their first major label album, Part One, released in early 1967. It was, as it turned out, the band's most commercial sounding release, although, oddly enough, it was never issued as a single.
Artist: Merrell Fankhauser And (His Trusty) HMS Bounty
Title: A Visit With Ayshia
Source: CD: Things
Writer(s): Merrell Fankhauser
Label: Sundazed (original label: Shamley)
Year: 1968
Merrill Fankhauser first started playing guitar shortly after moving to San Luis Obispo, California in his teens. By 1960 he had become proficient enough to join a local band, the Impacts, as lead guitarist. In 1962 the Impacts got what they thought was a lucky break, but that turned out to be a classic example of people in the music business taking advantage of young, naive musicians. Following a successful gig at a place called the Rose Garden Ballroom they were approached by a guy named Norman Knowles, who played saxophone with a band called the Revels. Knowles convinced the Impacts to record an album's worth of material for Tony Hilder at Hilder's backyard studio in the Hollywood area. The two of them then took the recordings to Bob Keene, who issued them on his own Del-Fi label. It is not known how much money Knowles and Hilder made on the deal, but the Impacts never saw a penny of it, having signed a contract giving the band the grand total of one US dollar. Not long after the incident Fankhauser left the Impacts to move to Lancaster, Calfornia, where he formed a new band, the Exiles, in 1964. The Exiles had some regional success with a song called Can't We Get Along before breaking up, with Fankhauser returning to the coast to form his own band, Merrell and the Xiles. This band had a minor hit with a song called Tomorrow's Girl in 1967, leading to an album issued under the name Fapardokly (a mashup of band members' Fankhauser, Parrish, Dodd and Lee's last names). Fankhauser and Dodd then formed another band called Merrell Fankhauser And (His Trusty) HMS Bounty, which landed a contract with Uni Records (the label that would became MCA), issuing a self-titled album in 1968. This album was even more psychedelic than Fapardokly, as can be heard on A Visit With Ayshia. Fankhauser has been involved with several other projects since then, including a band called Mu in the early 1970s and, more recently the Fankhauser Cassidy band with drummer Ed Cassidy from Spirit. His latest project is an MP3 album called Signals From Malibu, released in 2015.
Artist: Family
Title: The Weaver's Answer
Source: British import CD: Music In A Doll's House/Family Entertainment (originally released on LP: Family Entertainment)
Writer(s): Whitney/Chapman
Label: See For Miles (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
Family was one of those bands that is more heard about than actually heard, mainly due to the presence of Ric Grech, the bassist/violinist who left the group in 1969 to become a member of Blind Faith and later was the bassist for Traffic. The band was originally formed in 1966, and consisted of Roger Chapman (lead vocals) John "Charlie" Whitney (guitar, organ, piano), Jim King (saxophone), Ric Grech (bass, violin) and Harry Ovenall (drums). Following an unsuccessful 1967 single on the Liberty label Ovenall left the group, to be replaced by Rob Townsend. It was this lineup that recorded the band's first two albums for the Reprise label, Music In A Doll's House and Family Entertainment. The Weaver's Answer, the opening track from Family Entertainment, was the band's signature song in concert. On the album the song, about an old man's request to the Weaver of Life to see "the patterns of my life gone by upon your tapestry", is fairly subdued, but both Whitney and Chapman, who wrote the tune, were unhappy with the studio arrangement. As a result, the piece was reworked considerably for live performances, becoming a louder, much harder rocking tune that was often used as the band's show closer.
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: Turtles
Title: Let Me Be
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): P.F. Sloan
Label: FloEdCo (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1965
The Turtles were nothing if not able to redefine themselves when the need arose. Originally a surf band known as the Crossfires, the band quickly adopted an "angry young men" stance with their first single, Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, and the subsequent album of the same name. For the follow-up single the band chose a track from their album, Let Me Be, that, although written by a different writer, had the same general message as It Ain't Me Babe. The band would soon switch over to love songs like Happy Together and She'd Rather Be With Me before taking their whole chameleon bit to its logical extreme with an album called Battle Of The Bands on which each track was meant to sound like it was done by an entirely different group.
Artist: Turtles
Title: All My Problems
Source: LP: You Baby
Writer(s): Lasseff/Feigin
Label: White Whale
Year: 1966
Songwriting credits for All My Problems, an album track on the second Turtles album, You Baby, went to "Dwight Tunji". The "Dwight Tunji Trio" was also credited on the album with supplying percussion and special effects. The problem is that there was no such person as "Dwight Tunji". It turns out that the name was actually a pseudonym used by Lee Laseff and Ted Feigin, owners of the White Whale label. Apparently there were royalty issues associated with the owners of a record label also getting paid for writing a song on the LP. Or, more likely, the band was coerced into recording All My Problems (a not particularly notable track) in the first place specifically so that the owners of the label could double dip. If that is indeed the case, I apologize for inadvertantly sanctioning such a sleazy move by playing the song and thus creating potential royalty money for those involved (then again that was 60 years ago, so they may not even be around to collect).
Artist: Turtles
Title: Love In The City
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Kaylan/Volman/Nichol/Pons/Seiter
Label: FloEdCo (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1969
One of the most overlooked songs in the Turtles catalog, Love In The City, produced by Ray Davies, was the last single released from the album Turtle Soup in 1969. At this point the band had gone through various personnel changes, although the group's creative core of Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman and Al Nichol remained intact. Still, as good as Love In The City was, it had become clear that the Turtles had run their last race. After releasing one more single (a rather forgettable balled called Lady-O), the band called it quits. Kaylan and Volman would end up joining the Mothers of Invention, appearing on the legendary Live At Fillmore East album before striking out on their own as the Phlorescent Leech (later shortened to Flo) And Eddie.
Artist: Association
Title: Looking Glass
Source: LP: Renaissance
Writer(s): Jules Alexander
Label: Valiant
Year: 1966
The Association was formed in 1965 after the breakup of the 13-member group known as the Men. Their first single was a cover of the folk song Babe I'm Gonna Leave You that was issued on the independent Jubilee label. In 1966 they signed with the slightly larger Valiant label, which had a distribution deal with Warner Brothers Records, and recorded their first album Along Comes...The Association. The album spawned two hit singles, Along Comes Mary and Cherish, and the Association soon got to work on their second LP, Renaissance. Unlike the first album, Renaissance was made up entirely of songs written by band members, including Jules Alexander's Looking Gllass. Alexander, who was going by the name Gary Alexander on those two albums, would leave the group soon after the release of Renaissance, only to return to the band he helped found in 1969.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Short-Haired Fathers
Source: CD: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed in Greenwich Village by guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in 1967. The group originally wanted to call itself the Lost Sea Dreamers, but changed it after the Vanguard Records expressed reservations about signing a group with the initials LSD. Of the eleven tracks on the band's debut LP, only four were written by Walker, and those were in more of a folk-rock vein. Bruno's seven tracks, on the other hand, are true gems of psychedelia, ranging from the jazz-influenced Wind to the proto-punk rocker Short-Haired Fathers. The group fell apart after only two albums, mostly due to the growing musical differences between Walker and Bruno. Walker, of course, went on to become one of the most successful songwriters of the country-rock genre. As for Bruno, he's still in New York City, concentrating more on the visual arts in recent years.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: The Ostrich
Source: Canadian CD: Steppenwolf
Writer(s): John Kay
Label: MCA (original label: Dunhill/ABC)
Year: 1968
Although John Kay's songwriting skills were still a work in progress on the first Steppenwolf album, there were some outstanding Kay songs on that LP, such as The Ostrich, a song that helped define Steppenwolf as one of the most politically savvy rock bands in history.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
Paul McCartney wrote Why Don't We Do It In The Road while the band was in India meditating. Just in case you're one of those people who ask authors and composers "where do you get your ideas?", McCartney later said he was inspired to write the song after seeing a pair of monkeys doing it in the road.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: Life Is Just A Cher O'Bowlies
Source: CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book)
Writer: Gilbert/Scala/Theilhelm
Label: Mercury
Year: 1967
Although not as big a seller as their first LP (probably due to a lack of a major hit single), Electric Comic Book is nonetheless one of the great psychedelic albums. Life Is Just a Cher-O'-Bowlies, with its tongue in cheek approach, is about as typical a Blues Magoos song as anything this New York band ever recorded.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Interstellar Overdrive
Source: LP: A Nice Pair (originally released in on LP: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Writer(s): Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason
Label: Harvest (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Syd Barrett was still very much at the helm for Pink Floyd's first LP, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, released in 1967. The group had already released a pair of Barrett-penned singles, Arnold Layne (which was banned by the BBC) and See Emily Play. Piper, though, was the first full album for the group, and some tracks, notably the nine-minute psychedelic masterpiece Interstellar Overdrive, were entirely group efforts. On the original UK version of the LP Overdrive tracks directly into a Barrett piece, the Gnome. The US version, issued on Tower records, truncated Overdrive and re-arranged the song order. The original UK track order was restored for the international release of A Nice Pair in the mid-1970s, which coupled Piper At The Gates Of Dawn with the band's second LP, A Saucerful Of Secrets.
Artist: Procol Harum
Title: In Held Twas In I
Source: CD: Shine On Brightly
Writer: Brooker/Fisher/Reid
Label: A&M/Rebound
Year: 1968
Although the idea of grouping songs together as "suites" was first tried by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967 album After Bathing At Baxter's, Procol Harum's 17-minute long In Held Twas In I, from their 1968 album Shine On Brightly, is usually cited as the first progressive rock suite. The title comes from the first word of each section of the piece that contains vocals (several sections are purely instrumental). The work contains some of the best early work from guitarist Robin Trower, who would leave the group a few years later for a solo career. Shine On Brightly was the last Procol Harum album to include organist Matthew Fisher, who came up with the famous opening riff for the group's first hit, A Whiter Shade Of Pale.
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