https://exchange.prx.org/p/636155
This time around we have artists' sets from Donovan, the Animals (both incarnations) and the Who. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Shapes Of Things
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Samwell-Smith/Relf/McCarty
Label: Epic
Year: 1966
Unlike earlier Yardbirds hits, 1966's Shapes Of Things was written by members of the band. The song, featuring one of guitarist Jeff Beck's most distinctive solos, just barely missed making it to the top 10 in the US, although it was a top 5 single in the UK.
Artist: Pride And Joy
Title: If You're Ready
Source: Canadian import CD: The Best Of Dunwich Records...Vol. 2) (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Dennis Dahlquist
Label: Sundazed/Here 'Tis (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1967
Formed in 1964 in Chicago's affluent Highland Park suburb, the Del-Vetts were one of the Windy City's most popular teen bands, playing places like The Cellar and The Rolling Stone nearly every night. After releasing one single for the Seeburg label (a cover of the Righteous Brothers' Little Latin Lupe Lu), they signed with Dunwich Records, cutting three singles for the label. The last of these came out after the band had changed its name to Pride And Joy in 1967, a decision made by, believe it or not, their own fan club. The B side of that final single was If You're Ready, written by Dennis Dahlquist, who had also written their best-known tune, Last Time Around.
Artist: Seeds
Title: Girl I Want You
Source: LP: The Seeds
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: GNP Crescendo
Year: 1966
Considering what else was available on vinyl in 1966, a listen to Girl I Want You, from the first Seeds LP, makes it easy to understand why some people in Los Angeles were convinced that the Seeds were actually visitors from another planet.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice
Source: German import 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Polydor
Year: 1967
The fourth single released in Europe and the UK by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was 1967's Burning Of The Midnight Lamp, which appeared in stereo the following year on the album Electric Ladyland. The B side of that single was a strange bit of psychedelia called The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice, which is also known in some circles as STP With LSD. The piece features Hendrix on guitar and vocals, with background sounds provided by a cast of at least dozens. Hendrix's vocals are, throughout much of the track, spoken rather than sung, and resemble nothing more than a cosmic travelogue with Hendrix himself as the tour guide. The original mono mix of the track has never been released in the US, which is a shame, since it is the only version where Jimi's vocals dominate the mix, allowing his somewhat whimsical sense of humor to shine through.
Artist: Guess Who
Title: It's My Pride
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Canada as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Randy Bachman
Label: Rhino (original label: Quality)
Year: 1967
The Guess Who were formed in 1962 in Winnipeg, Manitoba as Chad Allen and the Reflections, changing their name to Chad Allen and the Expression in 1964. The group recorded a cover of a Johnny Kidd song, Shakin' All Over, in 1965. The record was not released under the band's actual name, however; in a bid to get more airplay for the song, the record was credited to "Guess Who?". This was during the peak of the British Invasion, and the producers hoped that DJs might assume it was some well-known British band and give the record a shot. Of course, such a thing could never happen these days, as commercial radio DJs are not allowed to choose what music to play. The ploy worked so well (the song was a hit in both the US and Canada) that the band decided to keep the name Guess Who, and continued to crank out hit after hit in their native Canada, although they would not hit the US charts again until 1969. In 1966 the group picked up a second vocalist, Burton Cummings, and within a few months founder Allen left the band, leaving Cummings as the group's front man. One of their better songs was It's My Pride, a B side written by guitarist Randy Bachman and released as a single in 1967. Bachman would soon team up with Cummings to write a string of hits, including These Eyes and American Woman, before leaving the Guess Who in the early 70s to form his own band, Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Artist: The Ariel
Title: It Feels Like I'm Crying
Source: Mono British import CD: With Love- A Pot Of Flowers (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jack Walters
Label: Big Beat (original label: Brent)
Year: 1966
San Francisco occupies the north end of a peninsula, with the Pacific Ocean to the west and San Francisco Bay to the north and east. At the south end of the bay is the city of San Jose. In between the two, about halfway down the peninsula itself, is the city of San Mateo. The city serves as the western terminus of the only bridge across the bay south of San Francisco itself. For much of 1966 it was also the home of a band called The Ariel. The band, originally called the Banshees, was formed in 1965 by a group of high school students from the San Mateo suburbs. The renamed themselves The Ariel in 1966 (Ariel being the name of a female fan from Hayward, the city on the eastern end of the bridge). In July they cut some demos at Golden State Recorders, which got them an audition with Bob Shad, owner of Mainstream Records, who was doing some talent scouting in the Bay Area that summer. They passed the audition and headed south to L.A. (at their own expense) to make a record. Unfortunately, when they arrived they learned that Shad was no longer interested in recording them. Nevertheless, they persisted (sorry, couldn't resist) and eventually got Shad to book them a couple hours in a local studio, where they a pair of songs written by the band's vocalist/lead guitarist, Jack Walters. It Feels Like I'm Crying was issued as the A side of the band's only single in late summer, but by then some of the band members were attending college and were not able to support the record with live appearances with any kind of regularity. By the end of the year The Ariel was history.
Artist: Syn
Title: 14 Hour Technicolour Dream
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Nardelli/Jackman
Label: Rhino (original label: Deram)
Year: 1967
Once upon a time there was an underground newspaper that got raided by the local police. In response, several local underground bands got together and staged a 14-hour long happening in support of the paper. As much as this sounds like a slice of San Francisco or maybe Los Angeles history, this actually happened in London, with such notable bands as Pink Floyd, the Pretty Things, the Creation, the Soft Machine, the Move, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and others contributing to what came to be called the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at the Alexandria Palace on April 29-30, 1967. Later that year, mod band the Syn (formerly known as the Selfs) recorded a song celebrating the event and released it as the B side of their second single for Deram. The group disbanded in 1968, with members Peter Banks and Chris Squire eventually going on to form Yes in the early 1970s.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict
Source: CD: Works (originally released on LP: Ummagumma)
Writer(s): Roger Waters
Label: Capitol (original label: Harvest)
Year: 1969
In 1971 I was in a band called Sunn that played mostly in theaters in western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle . To get the crowd in the right mood for our performance we would play a tape loop of Pink Floyd's Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict through the band's PA system while people were getting seated. We figured most everyone in the audience had not yet heard of Pink Floyd, since there were no progressive rock FM stations in that part of the country (and damned few AM stations playing anything but country for that matter). Composer Roger Waters later said of the piece: "It's not actually anything, it's a bit of concrete poetry. Those were sounds that I made, the voice and the hand slapping were all human generated - no musical instruments."
Artist: Traffic
Title: Feelin' Alright
Source: LP: Best Of Traffic (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer: Dave Mason
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
Dave Mason left Traffic after the band's first album, Mr. Fantasy, but returned in time to contribute several songs to the band's eponymous second album. Among those was his most memorable song, Feelin' Alright, which would become one of the most covered songs in rock history.
Artist: Sonics
Title: You Got Your Head On Backwards
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Gerald Roslie
Label: Sundazed/Jerden
Year: 1966
Like their former labelmates the Wailers, the Sonics had begun to commercialize their sound by 1966, but as can be heard on You Got Your Head On Backwards, they still had the rock 'n' roll attitude.
Artist: Sidewalk Sounds
Title: The Sunset Theme
Source: LP: Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack
Writer(s): Mike Curb
Label: Tower
Year: 1967
Like the Beatles movies, Hollywood teensploitation flicks had their share of incidental music in addition to actual rock songs. But where that music in films like help was credited specifically to George Martin, Mike Curb, who put together the soundtracks for films like Riot On Sunset Strip, preferred to invent band names like Sidewalk Sounds to take the credit for his compositions like The Sunset Theme that were in reality performed by studio orchestras.
Artist: Tommy James And The Shondells
Title: Mony Mony
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): James/Gentry/Cordell/Bloom
Label: Priority (original label: Roulette)
Year: 1968
Sometime around 1964, a kid named Tommy James took his band, the Shondells, into a recording studio to record a simple song called Hanky Panky. The song was released on the Roulette label and went absolutely nowhere. Two years later a Pittsburgh DJ, looking for something different to make his show stand out from the crowd, decided to dig out a copy of the record and play it as a sort of on-air audition. The audience loved it, and the DJ soon contacted James, inviting him and the Shondells to make a personal appearance. Unfortunately by this time there were no Shondells, so James hastily put together a new band to promote the record. It wasn't long before the word spread and Hanky Panky was a national hit. James and his new Shondells then commenced to pretty much single-handedly keep Roulette Records afloat for the next three or four years with songs like their 1968 jukebox favorite Mony Mony, one of many top 10 singles for the band.
Artist: Animals
Title: Boom Boom
Source: Mono LP: The Animals On Tour
Writer(s): John Lee Hooker
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1964
One of the highlights of the Animals' first UK album was their energetic rendition of John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom. The performance was so strong, in fact, that M-G-M chose to release the song as a single in early 1965. This was followed by a US-only album called The Animals On Tour that featured the tune as its opening track. Despite the title, The Animals On Tour was not a live album. Rather, it was a collection of blues and R&B cover songs, many of which were learned from records acquired by the band members at local record stores during their 1964 US tour (thus the album title).
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BMG/RCA/Buddah (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 mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether M-G-M, which included Monterey on The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals Volume 2, used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the result is the same.
Artist: Animals
Title: Dimples
Source: Mono LP: The Animals On Tour
Writer(s): Hooker/Bracken
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1965
Of all the bands to come out of England as part of the British invasion of the mid-1960s, none were bigger fans of US blues and R&B artists than the Animals, from the industrial city of Newcastle on Tyne. The group reportedly spent all of their spare time checking out independent record stores looking for obscure old records while on the first US tour, and upon returning to the UK set about recording their own versions of several of these songs. Among the tracks recorded was Dimples, a John Lee Hooker tune that was included on the Animals second US LP, On Tour. A different version of Dimples was included on the British album The Animals.
Artist: Moby Grape
Title: 8:05
Source: LP: Moby Grape
Writer(s): Miller/Stevenson
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Moby Grape was formed out of the ashes of a band called the Frantics, which featured the songwriting team of guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson. The two continued to write songs together in the new band. One of those was 8:05, one of five songs on the first Moby Grape album to be released simultaneously as singles.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Retrospective (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Stephen Stills
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.
Artist: Sonny & Cher
Title: Baby Don't Go
Source: Simulated stereo LP: 93/KHJ Boss Goldies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sonny Bono
Label: Original Sound (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1964
Originally released in 1964 to a somewhat indifferent public, Baby Don't Go, the first song to be credited to Sonny and Cher, was re-released in 1965 following the success of I Got You Babe. By then the husband and wife duo had changed labels, resulting in competing songs being out at the same time.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Sand And Foam
Source: Mono British import CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer: Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
When Donovan Leitch, a young singer from Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland, first came to prominence, he was hailed as Britain's answer to Bob Dylan. By 1966 he was recognized as the most popular folk singer in the UK. But Donovan was already starting to stretch beyond the boundaries of folk music, and in the fall of that year he released his first major US hit, Sunshine Superman. From that point on he was no longer Donovan the folk singer; he was now Donovan the singer-songwriter. Donovan continued to expand his musical horizons in 1967 with the release of the Mellow Yellow album and singles such as There Is A Mountain. The B side of There Is A Mountain was Sand And Foam, an acoustic number from the Mellow Yellow album.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Sunny South Kensington
Source: British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI (original US label: Epic)
Year: 1966 (remixed 1998)
Donovan followed up his 1966 hit single Sunshine Superman with an album of the same name. He then repeated himself with the song and album Mellow Yellow. The B side of the Mellow Yellow single was Sunny South Kensington, a tune done in much the same style as Superman. The song was also included on the Mellow Yellow album, and in 1998 was mixed in stereo for the first time.
Artist: Donovan
Title: CD: Epistle To Dippy (alternative arrangement)
Source: CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
Following up on his successful Mellow Yellow album, Donovan released Epistle To Dippy in the spring of 1967. The song, utilizing the same kind of instrumentation as Mellow Yellow, was further proof that the Scottish singer was continuing to move beyond the restrictions of the "folk singer" label and was quickly becoming the model for what would come to be called "singer/songwriters" in the following decade. Due to an ongoing contractual dispute between the artist and his UK record label (Pye), Epistle To Dippy was only released in the US. This "alternative" arrangement of the song was recorded about 10 months after the single version and features a violin prominently, replacing the electric guitar used on the original and giving the song a kind of gypsy vibe.
Artist: Cream
Title: Politician
Source: CD: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
Although the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown are best known for providing Cream with its more psychedelic songs such as White Room and SWLABR, they did occasionally come up with bluesier numbers such as Politician from the Wheels Of Fire album. The song quickly became a staple of Cream's live performances.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: Heroes And Villains
Source: Mono LP: The Smile Sessions
Writer(s): Wilson/Parks
Label: Capitol/EMI
Year: 1967
With the 1966 hit Good Vibrations, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys developed a "modular" approach to producing a recorded work. Rather than record a performance in one take, he would tape each segment separately, often in different studios, and later assemble the pieces in the order he wanted them. The problem with such an approach became evident, however, with his next project, an album to be called Smile. Wilson soon found that the vast number of ways that multiple segments could be put together was overwhelming him to the point where he couldn't make a final decision. As a result, Smile was shelved indefinitely in May of 1967. By then, however, several segments had been recorded for the album, including many intended for Smile's centerpiece, Heroes And Villains. Wilson ended up hastily putting together a version of Heroes And Villains that, according to fellow band member Al Jardine, fell far short of Wilson's original vision, releasing it as the first single on the band's new Brother Records label. In the years that followed, several other versions of the song (different ways of assembling the existing pieces, actually) were released, the most recent being the version heard on The Smile Sessions, released in 2013. By most accounts, this is the closest version we will ever hear to what Brian Wilson originally intended (in fact, Wilson served as a consultant on The Smile Sessions).
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Masculine Intuition
Source: CD: The Very Best Of The Music Machine-Turn On (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer: Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
If you take out the cover songs that Original Sound Records added to the album without the band's knowledge or approval, Turn On The Music Machine has to be considered one of the best LPs of 1966. Not that the covers were badly done, but they were intended to be used for lip synching on a local TV show and were included without the knowledge or approval of the band, and that's never a good thing. Every one of the Sean Bonniwell originals on the other hand, combines strong musical structure and intelligent lyrics with musicianship far surpassing the average garage band. This is especially true in the case of Masculine Intuition, which was also issued as the B side of the band's second single.
Artist: Lothar And The Hand People
Title: Milkweed Love
Source: LP: Also Dug-Its (originally released on LP: Presenting…Lothar And The Hand People)
Writer(s): Conly/Emelin/Ford/Flye/King
Label: Elektra (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1968
Originally from Denver, Colorado, Lothar and the Hand People found themselves relocating to New York City in 1967, releasing a series of singles that ranged from blue-eyed soul to pop. By 1968, however, the band had fully incorporated the Moog synthesizer and the theramine into their sound. Lothar was, in fact, the name of the theramine itself, essentially a black box with an audio modulater that was activated by waving one's hands above it. As for this week's track, Milkweed Love (from the band's debut LP)...well, you can decide for yourself what to think of it.
Artist: Who
Title: Silas Stingy
Source: Mono LP: The Who Sell Out
Writer(s): John Entwistle
Label: Decca
Year: 1967
John Alec Entwistle did not write average songs. For example, his best known song, Boris The Spider, was about, well, a spider. Whiskey Man dealt with a drunk's imaginary friend. And then there was Silas Stingy, from The Who Sell Out. The song tells the story of a man who was so miserly he spent his entire fortune on protecting his money, thus ending up with nothing at all. One of my all-time favorite Who tracks.
Artist: Who
Title: Instant Party
Source: British import 45 RPM single B side (reissue)
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: Reaction/Polydor
Year: 1966
As was the case with many British bands, the song lineups on the early Who albums were not exactly the same in the US and the UK. In the case of the My Generation album, the only difference was actually due to censorship by Decca Records in the US, who felt that the band's version of Bo Diddley's I'm A Man was too risque for American teenagers. To replace it, Decca chose a song that had not yet been released in either the US or UK called Instant Party (Circles). The song was released in the UK as Instant Party a few months later when the band's original British label, Brunswick, issued it as the B side to A Legal Matter without the band's permission (the Who had changed labels to Reaction/Polydor after the My Generation LP was released). Making it even more confusing was the fact that the Who had released their latest single, Substitute, three days before the Brunswick single, with the song Circles (Instant Party) as the B side. And just to make things a tiny bit more confusing, in 2015 Polydor reissued a box set of the four Who singles that were released on the Reaction label, but used the title Instant Party rather than Circles for the B side of Substitute.
Artist: Who
Title: I Can't Reach You
Source: Mono LP: The Who Sell Out
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: Decca
Year: 1967
One day during my freshman year of high school my friend Bill invited a bunch of us over to his place to listen to the new console stereo his family had bought recently. Like most console stereos, this one had a wooden top that could be lifted up to operate the turntable and radio, then closed to make it look more like a piece of furniture. When we arrived there was already music playing on the stereo, and Bill soon had us convinced that this new stereo was somehow picking up the British pirate radio station Radio London. This was pretty amazing since we were in Weisbaden, Germany, several hundred miles from England or its coastal waters that Radio London broadcast from. Even more amazing was the fact that the broadcast itself seemed to be in stereo, and Radio London was an AM station. Yet there it was, coming in more clearly than the much closer Radio Luxembourg, the powerhouse station that we listened to every evening, when they broadcast in a British top 40 format. Although a couple of us were a bit suspicious about what was going on, even we skeptics were convinced when we heard jingles, stingers, and even commercials for stuff like the Charles Atlas bodybuilding course interspersed with songs we had never heard, such as I Can't Reach You, that were every bit as good as any song being played on Radio Luxembourg. Well, as it turned out, we were indeed being hoaxed by Bill and his older brother, who had put on his brand new copy of The Who Sell Out when he saw us approaching the apartment building they lived in. I eventually picked up a copy of the album for myself (the first of many), and still consider it one of the best Who albums ever made.
Artist: lyme And cybelle
Title: Follow Me
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 4- Pop Part Two (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Zevon/Santagelo
Label: Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1966
Before coming to the realization that he could become famous using his own name, Warren Zevon (along with Violet Santangelo) recorded a single called Follow Me as lyme and cybelle (deliberately not capitalized). They also wrote the song using their real names, presumably because nobody wants to see their potential royalties diverted to a fictitious stage name.
Artist: Soft Machine
Title: Feelin', Reelin', Squealin'
Source: Mono British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Kevin Ayers
Label: Polydor
Year: 1967
The Soft Machine is best known for being at the forefront of the jazz-rock fusion movement of the 1970s. The bands roots were in the city of Canterbury, a sort of British equivalent of New York's Greenwich Village. Led by drummer Robert Wyatt, the band was first formed as the Wilde Flowers in 1963 with Kevin Ayers as lead vocalist. Heavily influenced by modern jazz, beat poetry and dadaist art, the Wilde Flowers were less a band than a group of friends getting together to make music from time to time. Things got more serious when Ayers and his Australian beatnik friend Daevid Allen made a trip to Ibiza, where they met Wes Brunson, an American who was heir to a fortune. Brunson provided financial backing for a new band called Mister Head, which included Ayers, Wyatt, Allen and Larry Nolan. By late 1966 the group had added Mike Rutledge and changed its name to Soft Machine (after Allen had secured permission to use the name from author William Burroughs), performing regularly at London's legendary UFO club. After the departure of Nolan, the band recorded its first single for Polydor in early 1967. Both sides were written by Ayers, who by then was playing bass and sharing the vocals with Wright. The B side of that single was Feelin', Reelin', Sqealin', a track that helped define British psychedelic music.
Artist: Beacon Street Union
Title: Blue Avenue
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): Wayne Ulaky
Label: See For Miles (original US label: M-G-M)
Year: 1968
Although never issued as a single in the US, Blue Avenue, from The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union, was the band's most popular song among UK radio listeners. This is due to the fact that the song was played by England's most influential DJ, John Peel, on his "Top Gear" show. One of the many garage bands I was in learned the song and played it at a failed audition for the Ramstein AFB Airman's club, although all five guys in the audience seemed to get a kick out of seeing and hearing me strum my guitar's strings on the wrong side of the bridge.
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.
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