Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2640 (starts 9/28/26)

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. 
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2640 (starts 9/28/26)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/636154

    This time around we have half a dozen tracks (seven if you count the Led Zeppelin as two) that have never been played on Rockin' in the Days of Confusion before this week, along with almost as many that we have played before. It starts with a set of tunes from 1969, jumping forward to 1974 and then back to the late '60s to finish up.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    Space Oddity
Source:    CD: David Bowie
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1969
    David Bowie's first major hit, Space Oddity, was originally recorded on Feb 2, 1969 for his promotional film, Love You till Tuesday. On June 20, 1969 Bowie re-recorded the song to be used as the lead single for his second self-titled LP. Producer Tony Visconti, however, did not like the song, calling it a "cheap shot" at the upcoming Apollo 11 mission, and delegated the song's production duties to Gus Dudgeon. The song was released as a single on July 11, 1969, five days before Apollo 11 launched. It quickly went into the top 5 in the UK, but did not become a hit in the US until 1973, when it was re-released by RCA Victor following the success of the 1972 album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Space Oddity has gone on to become one of the most revered songs in rock history.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    You Shook Me/Dazed And Confused
Source:    CD: Led Zeppelin
Writer:    Dixon/Page
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    I've heard it said that Willie Dixon sued Zeppelin over the use of You Shook Me, which is puzzling to me since Dixon is clearly credited as the songwriter on the label. Still, I don't know enough about copyright laws to say for sure whether this could have happened or not. Dazed & Confused, on the other hand, is a Jimmy Page composition that was performed by the Yardbirds (with different lyrics) as early as 1966. 

Artist:    Johnny Winter
Title:    Be Careful With A Fool
Source:    German import CD: Johnny Winter
Writer(s):    King/Josea
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    Johnny Winter's first album for Columbia (his second overall) is nothing less than a blues masterpiece. Accompanied by bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Uncle John Turner, Winter pours his soul into classics like B.B. King's Be Careful With A Fool, maybe even improving on the original (if such a thing is possible).

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Ain't Too Proud To Beg
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Whitfield/Holland
Label:    Rolling Stones
Year:    1974
    From the beginning, the Rolling Stones have had an affinity for songs written and/or recorded by American rhythm and blues artists such as the Temptations. Usually those songs appeared as album tracks, especially once Mick and Keith established themselves as songwriters, but in 1974 they had a hit with Ain't Too Proud To Beg, a song the Temptations first recorded in 1966.

Artist:    David Blue
Title:    Outlaw Man
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    David Blue
Label:    Asylum
Year:    1973
    Although all the members of the Eagles are known for the songwriting abilities, some of the earliest singles were actually cover songs, including Peaceful Easy Feeling (by Jack Tempchin) and Outlaw Man (by David Blue). Blue was a recent addition to the Asylum roster, making him labelmates with the Eagles, and Outlaw Man was an obvious choice for inclusion on an album meant to have a modernized wild west theme. The song itself is a first person account of the life of an outlaw, with ambiguous enough lyrics to make it applicable to current times as well as the obvious 19th century. Blue's own version of Outlaw Man came out around the same time as the Eagles' version, which unfortunately for Blue put him on the trail to obscurity.

Artist:    King Crimson
Title:    One More Red Nightmare
Source:    CD: Red
Writer(s):    Fripp/Wetton
Label:    Discipline Global Mobile
Year:    1974
    King Crimson's seventh album, Red, was also its least successful commercially, spending only one week on the British album charts. One reason for this is that the band, which at this point was a trio consisting of Robert Fripp (guitar), John Wetton (bass and vocals) and drums (Bill Bruford), split up a month before the album was released. With no band to go on tour, the record label chose not to promote the album. In retrospect, the album has done better, and continues to be a favorite among King Crimson fans, thanks to hard-driving tracks like One More Red Nightmare, which features multiple electric guitar overdubs on top of what Fripp refered to as "a flying brick wall" of sound provided by Bruford and Wetton. 

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Break On Through (To The Other Side)
Source:    LP: The Doors
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    The first Doors song to be released as a single was not, as usually assumed, Light My Fire. Rather, it was Break On Through (To The Other Side), the opening track from the band's debut LP, that was chosen to do introduce the band to top 40 radio. Although the single was not an immediate hit, it did eventually catch on with progressive FM radio listeners and still is heard on classic rock stations from time to time.

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    Fresh Garbage
Source:    CD: Spirit
Writer(s):    Jay Ferguson
Label:    Ode/Epic/Legacy 
Year:    1968
    Much of the material on the first Spirit album was composed by vocalist Jay Ferguson while the band was living in a big house in California's Topanga Canyon outside of Los Angeles. During their stay there was a garbage strike, which became the inspiration for the album's opening track, Fresh Garbage. The song starts off as a fairly hard rocker and suddenly breaks into a section that is pure jazz, showcasing the group's instrumental talents, before returning to the main theme to finish out the track.The group used a similar formula on about half the tracks on the LP, giving the album and the band a distinctive sound right out of the box.
 
Artist:    Collectors
Title:    Early Morning
Source:    Promo LP: Grass And Wild Strawberries
Writer(s):    The Collectors/George Ryga
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1969
    The Collectors made their debut in 1961 as the C-FUN Classics, the house band for CFUN radio in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1966 they changed their name to the Collectors and released a single, Looking At A Baby, on the Valiant label. This was followed by a self-titled album for Warner Brothers in 1967. Around this time the group was hired to provide the instrumental backing for the Electric Prunes album Mass In F Minor (after producer Dave Hassinger decided that the music written for the album by David Axelrod was too complex for the Prunes themselves to play). In 1969 the Collectors collaborated with Canadian playwrite George Ryga to create music for his play Grass And Wild Strawberries. The songs, including Early Morning, were released on an album of the same name in 1969. Not long after Grass And Wild Strawberries was released, original lead vocalist Howie Vickers left the band, which, now fronted by guitarist Bill Henderson, began calling itself Chilliwack.

Artist:    Allman Brothers Band
Title:    Don't Keep Me Wonderin'
Source:    CD: Idlewild South
Writer(s):    Gregg Allman
Label:    Mercury (original label: Atco)
Year:    1970
    It's hard to believe now, but it took a while for the Allman Brothers band to become popular outside of the southern US. It wasn't until their second LP, Idlewild South, that rock radio began to take notice of the band, which was at the time based in Macon, Georgia. The album title itself came from an inside joke that the band's house was so busy it was like New York's Idlewild airport (the original name of what is now Kennedy International), but further south. Don't Keep Me Wonderin' is probably the most R&B sounding track the band ever recorded, and in a sense harkens back to Gregg Allman's previous band, the Hour Glass.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    Shotgun
Source:    LP: Near The Beginning
Writer(s):    Autry DeWalt
Label:    Atco
Year:    1969
           For their fourth LP, Vanilla Fudge returned to the formula that they found their original success with for the album Near The Beginning. Whereas their third LP, Renaissance, contained mostly original material, Near The Beginning was dominated by an extended version of the Junior Walker hit Shotgun. The single version of the song, which the group performed on the Ed Sullivan show, was the group's last song to hit the Billboard top 100, peaking at # 68. According to drummer Carmine Appice, it was the Vanilla Fudge version of Shotgun that convinced Jeff Beck to later form a band with Appice and bassist Tim Bogert.
        
 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2639 (starts 9/21/26)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/635157

    This week we bid farewell to the summer of '26 and prepare to enter the final quarter of the year with a new Advanced Psych segment, a Who set and of course lots of singles, B sides and album tracks from the late 1960s. And what better way to start the week than with the Doors?

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Five To One
Source:    CD: Waiting For The Sun
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1968
    Despite the fact that it was the Doors' only album to hit the top of the charts, Waiting For The Sun was actually a disappointment for many of the band's fans, who felt that the material lacked the edginess of the first two Doors LPs. One notable exception was the album's closing track, Five To One, which features one of Jim Morrison's most famous lines: "No one here gets out alive".

Artist:    Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title:    Pride Of Man
Source:    LP: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Writer(s):    Hamilton Camp
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1968
    There are differing opinions on just how serious legendary San Francisco singer/songwriter and all-around iconoclast Dino Valenti was being when, at a jam session with guitarist John Cippolina one night, he suggested that the two of them form a band. Since Valenti was busted for marijuana possession the very next day (and ended up spending the next two years in jail), we'll never know for sure. Cippolina, however, was motivated enough to begin finding members for the new band, including bassist David Freiberg (later to join Starship) and drummer Skip Spence. When Marty Balin stole Spence away to join his own new band (Jefferson Airplane), he tried to make up for it by introducing Cippolina to vocalist/guitarist Gary Duncan and drummer Greg Elmore, whose own band, the Brogues, had recently disbanded. Taking the name Quicksilver Messenger Service (so named for all the member's astrological connections with the planet Mercury), the new band soon became a fixture on the San Francisco scene. Inspired by the Blues Project, Cippolina and Duncan quickly established a reputation for their dual guitar improvisational abilities on songs like Hamilton Camp's Pride Of Man (which a reviewer from Rolling Stone magazine claimed was better than Camp's original). Unlike other San Francisco bands such as the Airplane, Moby Grape and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service did not jump at their first offer from a major record label, preferring to hold out for the best deal. This meant their debut album did not come out until 1968, missing out on the initial buzz surrounding the summer of love.

Artist:    Bob Seger System
Title:    2+2=?
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Bob Seger
Label:    Capitol/Starline
Year:    1968
    Bob Seger had a series of regional hits in his native Detroit in the mid-1960s, leading to a deal with Capitol Records in 1968. His first single for Capitol was 2+2=?, a powerful antiwar tune that was later included on his first LP for the label. 

Artist:    Janis Ian
Title:    Society's Child (Baby, I've Been Thinking)
Source:    Mono LP: Janis Ian
Writer(s):    Janis Ian
Label:    Verve Folkways
Year:    1966
    Janis Ian began writing Society's Child, using the title Baby I've Been Thinking, when she was 13 years old, finishing it shortly after her 14th birthday. She shopped it around to several record labels before finally finding one (Now Sounds) to take a chance on the controversial song about interracial dating. The record got picked up and re-issued in 1966 by M-G-M's experimental label Verve Folkways (soon to be renamed Verve Forecast), a label whose roster included Dave Van Ronk, Laura Nyro and the Blues Project, among others. Despite being banned on several radio stations the song became a major hit when re-released yet another time in early 1967. Ian had problems maintaining a balance between her performing career and being a student which ultimately led to her dropping out of high school. She would eventually get her career back on track in the mid-70s, scoring another major hit with At Seventeen, and becoming somewhat of a heroine to the feminist movement.
     
Artist:    Noel Harrison
Title:    Life Is A Dream
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Smith/Ray
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    The son of actor Rex Harrison, Noel Harrison was a Britisher with L.A. connections that he parlayed into a short musical career in the wake of the British invasion. Although he didn't score any major hits, he did turn out a rather interesting B side in 1967 with Life Is A Dream. Harrison also did some acting, appearing in a regular role on the TV series The Girl From Uncle.

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 spending a day or two. 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:    Love
Title:    August
Source:    Austrailan import CD: Comes In Colours (originally released in US on LP: Four Sail)
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Raven (original US label: Elektra)
Year:    1969
         Following the release of Forever Changes, the classic Love lineup made only one more trip to the studio, recording a single that was released in 1968. Not long after that the group disbanded, with a new incarnation of the band making its vinyl debut the following year. Arthur Lee was contractually obligated to provide Elektra Records with one more Love LP even as he began working on tracks for the band's first album for Blue Thumb. As a result, Elektra got the first pick of the songs Lee was working on with his new lineup, including August, which features, in addition to Lee, guitarist Jay Donnellan, bassist Frank Fayad and drummer George Suranovich on what is arguably the hardest rocking tune ever released by a band called Love.

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

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    You Can't Catch Me
Source:    LP: Tommy Flanders, Danny Kalb, Steve Katz, Al Kooper, Andy Kuhlberg, Roy Blumenfeld Of The Blues Project (promo copy) (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer:    Chuck Berry
Label:    Verve Forecast
Year:    1966
    One of the reasons for Chuck Berry's enduring popularity throughout the 1960s (despite a lack of major hits during the decade) was the fact that so many bands covered his 50s hits, often updating them for a 60s audience. Although not as well-known as Roll Over Beethoven or Johnny B. Goode, You Can't Catch Me nonetheless got its fair share of coverage, including versions by the Rolling Stones and the Blues Project (not to mention providing John Lennon an opening line for the song Come Together).

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission)
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    Paul Simon's sense of humor is on full display on A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission). The song first appeared, with slightly different lyrics on Simon's 1965 LP The Paul Simon Songbook, which was released only in the UK after Simon and Garfunkel had split following the disappointing sales of their first Columbia LP, Wednesday Morning 3AM. When the duo got back together following the surprise success of an electrified version of The Sound Of Silence, they re-recorded A Simple Desultory Philippic, including it on their third Columbia LP, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The song is a deliberate parody of/tribute to Bob Dylan, written in a style similar to It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), and is full of sly references to various well-known personages of the time as well as lesser-known acquaintances of Simon himself. 

Artist:     Grass Roots
Title:     Let's Live For Today
Source:     CD: Battle of the Bands-Vol. Two (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Julian/Mogull/Shapiro
Label:     Era (original label: Dunhill)
Year:     1967
     This well-known 1967 hit by the Grass Roots started off as a song by the Italian band the Rokes, Piangi Con Mi, released in 1966. The Rokes themselves were originally from Manchester, England, but had relocated to Italy in 1963. Piangi Con Mi was their biggest hit to date, and the band decided to re-record the tune in English for release in Britain (ironic, considering that the band originally specialized in translating popular US and UK hits into the Italian language). The original translation didn't sit right with the band's UK label, so a guy from the record company came up with new lyrics and the title Let's Live For Today. The song still didn't do much on the charts, but did get the attention of former Brill building songwriter Steve Barri, whose current project was writing and producing a band known as the Grass Roots with co-producer P.F. Sloan. Let's Live For Today became the first of many top 10 singles for the Grass Roots. 

Artist:    Beacon Street Union
Title:    Blue Avenue
Source:    LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s):    Wayne Ulaky
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1968
    One of Boston's most popular bands, the Beacon Street Union, had already migrated to New York City by the time their first album, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union (produced by the legendary Tom Wilson), made its debut in February of 1968. The band itself was made up of Boston University dropouts John Lincoln Wright (lead vocals), Paul Tartachny (guitar, vocals), Robert Rhodes (keyboards, brass), Richard Weisberg (drums), and Wayne Ulaky (bass). Ulaky wrote what was probably the band's best-known song, Blue Avenue. The tune was particular popular in the UK, where it was often heard on John Peel's Top Gear program. The Beacon Street Union, however, fell victim to hype; in this case the ill-advised attempt on the part of M-G-M records to market several disparate bands as being part of the "Boss-Town Sound". After a second LP, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens (produced by future Partridge Family impressario Wes Farrell) failed to equal the somewhat limited success of their debut LP, the Beacon Street Union decided to call it quits, with Wright going on to have a moderately successful career as a country singer.

Artist:    Third Bardo
Title:    I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time
Source:    Mono British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Evans/Pike
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Roulette)
Year:    1967
    The Third Bardo (the name coming from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) only released one single, but I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time has become, over a period of time, one of the most sought-after records of the psychedelic era. Not much is known of this New York band made up of Jeffrey Moon (vocals), Bruce Ginsberg (drums), Ricky Goldclang (lead guitar), Damian Kelly (bass) and Richy Seslowe (guitar).

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Highway Chile
Source:    French import 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Polydor (original UK label: Track)
Year:    1967
    The Jimi Hendrix Experience already had three hit singles in the UK and Europe before releasing their first LP, Are You Experienced, in May of 1967. The following month the band made its US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The gig went over so well that Reprise Records soon made arrangements to release Are You Experienced in the US. To maximize the commercial potential of the LP, Reprise decided to include the A sides of all three singles on the album, even though those songs had not been on the British version. The B sides of all three singles, however, were not included on the album. Among those missing tracks was Highway Chile, a possibly autobiographical song that was originally paired with The Wind Cries Mary. In April of 1968, prior to the release of the Electric Ladyland album, Polydor released an album called Smash Hits that collected all eight songs that had been released in single form up to that point, as well as a handful of tunes from the original UK version of Are You Experienced. Highway Chile was not included on the US version of Smash Hits, which was released the following year; in fact, Highway Chile was not released in the US at all during Hendrix's lifetime, finally appearing (in fake stereo) on the 1972 LP War Heroes.

Artist:    Cryan' Shames
Title:    I Was Lonely When
Source:    LP: A Scratch In The Sky
Writer(s):    Fairs/Kerley
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    If your entire exposure to Hinsdale, Illinois's Cryan' Shames was their 1966 cover version of the Searchers' Sugar And Spice, as I was, you might be surprised to hear their second album, A Scratch In The Sky. Although uneven, the album, written almost entirely by multi-instrumentalist Jim Fairs and bassist/guitarist Lenny Kerley, has some interesting tracks, including the final one, a song called I Was Lonely When.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Sold To The Highest Bidder
Source:    CD: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) (original album title: The Electric Prunes)
Writer(s):    Tucker/Mantz
Label:    Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Producer Dave Hassinger is a bit of an enigma. When working with the Rolling Stones as an engineer, he was involved in some of their best work and was thought of highly by the Stones themselves. As producer of the Grateful Dead, however, he obviously had no clue as to what the band was about, and bailed out midway through the production of the second album. As the producer of the first Electric Prunes LP he seems to have been trying to follow a formula that been established by Don Kirshner on the first two Monkees albums. That formula was to use professional songwriters (in this case mostly Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz) to provide a hit single and establish a particular sound, allowing the band members themselves to contribute only two songs to the album. Another part of the formula was to include a novelty number or two and at least one slow teenybopper-oriented ballad, the novelty number being a bit of Tucker/Mantz weirdness called Sold To The Highest Bidder. Perhaps in response to seeing how the Monkees had rebelled against Kirshner following the release of More Of The Monkees, Hassinger eased up on the band a bit for their second album, Underground. Unfortunately that freedom was short-lived, but that's a story for another time.

Artist:    Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:    San Franciscan Nights 
Source:    British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer:    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    Repertoire (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1967
    In late 1966, after losing several original members over a period of about a year, the original Animals disbanded. Eric Burdon, after releasing one single as a solo artist (but using the Animals name), decided to form a "new" Animals. After releasing a moderately successful single, When I Was Young, the new band appeared at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. While in the area, Burdon fell in love with the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, during what came to be called the Summer Of Love. The first single to be released from their debut album, Winds Of Change, was a tribute to the city by the bay called San Franciscan Nights. Because of the topicality of the song's subject matter, San Franciscan Nights was not released in the UK as a single. Instead, the song Good Times (which was the US B side of the record), became the new group's biggest UK hit to date (and one of the Animals' biggest UK hits overall). Eventually San Franciscan Nights was released as a single in the UK as well (with a different B side) and ended up doing quite well. 
    
Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Louie, Go Home
Source:    CD: Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Midnight Ride)
Writer(s):    Lindsay/Revere
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    Nobody knows for sure who recorded Louie Louie first: the Kingsmen or Paul Revere And The Raiders. Both bands recorded the song in April of 1963 in the same studio in Portland, Oregon, but nobody seems to remember which band played at which session. Regardless, the Kingsmen ended up with the national hit version of the song, while Paul Revere And The Raiders went on to become one of the most successful American rock bands of the mid-1960s, thanks in part to Dick Clark, who discovered them playing in Hawaii and chose them to be the house band on his new show Where The Action Is. By this time the band had been signed to Columbia Records, releasing their first single for the label, a kind of revenge song called Louie-Go Home, in 1964. By 1966 they were riding high on the charts, and re-recorded Louie, Go Home (different punctuation, same song, different arrangement) in stereo for their second of three albums released that year: Midnight Ride. 

Artist:    Lenny Kaye/Fleshtones
Title:    Lost On Xanadu
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Lenny Kaye
Label:    Yep Roc
Year:    2019
    In addition to being the original lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, Lenny Kaye was the guy who compiled the very first album dedicated to garage psych rock. So of course when I saw this 2019 single in a record store I had to buy it. The Fleshtones are a legendary New York garage band that was formed in Queens in 1976 and made its debut at the equally legendary CBGB that same year.

Artist:    Wooden Shjips
Title:    Fallin'
Source:    LP: Dos
Writer(s):    Wooden Ships
Label:    Holy Mountain
Year:    2009
    Based in San Francisco, experimental psychedelic rock band Wooden Shjips released their first LP in 2007, following it up with Dos two years later. They have since released three more albums, the most recent being V, which appeared on the racks in 2018. Led by guitarist Erik "Ripley" Johnson, the band also includes Dusty Jermier, Nash Whalen and Omar Ahsanuddin. 

Artist:    Ace Of Cups
Title:    Stones
Source:    CD: Ace Of Cups
Writer(s):    Mary Gannon
Label:    High Moon
Year:    2018
    Stones is one of the oldest songs in the Ace Of Cups repertoire, dating back to 1967. What makes the 2018 version of the track truly unique, however, is the fact that drummer Diane Vitalich puts some of the band's shared experience into her lead vocals on the tune, which was written, and originally sung, by the group's founder, Mary Gannon. It turns out that bandmate Denise Kaufman was present (and five months pregnant) at the infamous 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway that erupted into violence, and was in fact seriously injured when her skull was fractured by a thrown beer bottle. To make things worse, the Stones themselves refused to let their helicopter be used to transport her to a hospital, endangering both her and the baby. Although things turned out OK in the long run, Vitalich, for the studio version of Stones, replaced a line in the song's bridge about how the Ace Of Cups loved the Rolling Stones with the following: "You can rock like a Rolling Stone, but baby I ain't buyin' it." 

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Death Sound Blues
Source:    CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    I generally use the term "psychedelic" to describe a musical attitude that existed during a particular period of time rather than a specific style of music. On the other hand, the term "acid rock" is better suited for describing music that was composed and/or performed under the influence of certain mind-expanding substances. That said, the first album by Country Joe and the Fish is a classic example of acid rock. I mean, really, is there any other way to describe Death Sound Blues than "the blues on acid"?

Artist:    Who
Title:    Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands (US single version)
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Decca
Year:    1967
    There are at least three versions of Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands. The first was a monoraul-only electric version of the song released in the US on September 18, 1967 as the B side to I Can See For Miles. Two months later a second, slightly slower stereo version of the tune appeared under the title Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hand (singular) on The Who Sell Out. This more acoustic version of the song, which has a kind of calypso flavor to it, is the best known of the three, due to the album staying in circulation far longer than the 45. A third version of the song, also recorded in 1967 and featuring Al Kooper on organ, appeared as a bonus track on the 1995 CD release of Sell Out. The liner notes on the CD, however, erroneously state that it is the US single version, when in fact it is an entirely different recording (although it is entirely possible that Kooper played on the first version heard here). 

Artist:    Who
Title:    Substitute
Source:    British import 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Reaction/Polydor
Year:    1966
    In the spring of 1967 my dad, a career military man, got word that he was being transferred from Denver, Colorado to Weisbaden, Germany. By the end of  summer, our entire family had relocated to a converted WWII Panzer barracks that was serving as a housing area for married US military personnel and their families. The Kastel housing area, which was just outside of the village of Mainz-Kastel, which in turn was located directly across the Rhine from the city of Mainz itself, was probably the smallest US housing area in all of Europe, consisting of only eight buildings. Needless to say, there were not many other American kids my age living there, a fact that ended up working to my advantage. You see, in Denver I had been playing first chair violin in the Smiley Junior High School orchestra; a position that looked good to the adults in the room but was the kiss of death to a 14-year-old boy trying desperately to fit in with his peers and impress the girls. So, naturally, as one of only half a dozen or so teenaged boys in the Kastel Housing Area, I jumped at the chance to learn how to play the guitar, a much cooler instrument than the violin in the eyes of  a 14-year-old boy trying desperately to fit in with his peers and impress the girls. There were two guys at Kastel who a) had guitars and b) were willing to put up with an obnoxious 14-year-old boy trying desperately to fit in with his peers and impress the girls long enough to teach him a few chords. The first was was a 10th-grader named Darrell Combs, who went by the nickname Butch (his older sister Darlene being responsible for that one). The other was an 11th-grader named Mike Davenport, who had been in Germany longer than the rest of us and had his own Fender amplifier. Mike also had a collection of records that had been popular on Radio Luxembourg, a powerful AM and shortwave station that broadcast an American styled top 40 format aimed at a British audience, playing hits from the UK singles charts. Among those records were several singles by the Who, including their chart-topping 1966 UK hit Substitute. Mike and Butch had been trying to figure out the chords to Substitute, but had not been able to get beyond the intro of the song. After listening to the record once or twice (yes, I'm bragging) I was able to figure out the rest of the song. Not long after that I was able to talk my parents into buying me a guitar and a small amp as an early Christmas present (that ended up doubling as my 15th birthday present as well). With three guitarists, two amps, and a drummer named Zachary Long in our arsenal, we formed a band called The Abundance Of Love (hey, it was 1967, OK?), which soon got changed to the Haze And Shades Of Yesterday and finally just The Shades. One of the first songs we learned to play was (you guessed it), Substitute by the Who. The Shades ended up lasting until the summer of 1968, at which time my dad got transferred again, this time to Ramstein Air Base. 

Artist:     Who
Title:     I Can See For Miles
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer:     Pete Townshend
Label:     Decca
Year:     1967
     I Can See For Miles continued a string of top 10 singles in the UK and was the Who's biggest US hit ever. Pete Townshend, however, was disappointed with the song's performance on the UK charts. He said that the song was the ultimate Who song and as such it should have charted even higher than it did. It certainly was one of the heaviest songs of its time and there is some evidence that it prompted Paul McCartney to come up with Helter Skelter in an effort to take the heaviest song ever title back for the Beatles. What makes the story even more bizarre is that at the time McCartney reportedly had never actually heard I Can See For Miles and was going purely by what he read in a record review. The single mix heard here is preferred by many Who fans, as it is brighter and more energetic sounding than the stereo version of the song on the album The Who Sell Out.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    I'm Waiting For The Day
Source:    Mono CD: Pet Sounds
Writer(s):    Wilson/Love
Label:    Capitol/UMe
Year:    1966
    Although it was originally copyrighted in 1964 (words and music by Brian Wilson), I'm Waiting For The Day did not get recorded or released until 1966, when it appeared on the Pet Sounds album. Mike Love shares writing credit on the finished version of the song.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Eight Miles High
Source:    LP: The Byrds' Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s):    Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    By all rights, the Byrds' Eight Miles High should have been a huge hit. Unfortunately, the highly influential Gavin Report labelled the tune as a drug song and recommended that stations avoid playing it, despite band's insistence that it was about a transatlantic plane trip. The band's version actually makes sense, as Gene Clark had just quit the group due to his fear of flying (he is listed as a co-writer of the song), and the subject was probably a hot topic of discussion among the remaining members. The song is notable for Roger McGuinn's attempt to emulate John Coltrane on a 12-string guitar.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    She Said She Said
Source:    Mono CD: Revolver
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    The last song to be recorded for the Beatles' Revolver album was She Said She Said, a John Lennon song inspired by an acid trip taken by members of the band (with the exception of Paul McCartney) during a break from touring in August of 1965. The band's manager, Brian Epstein, had rented a large house in Beverly Hills, but word had gotten out and the Beatles found it difficult to come and go at will. Instead, they invited several people, including the original members of the Byrds and actor Peter Fonda, to come over and hang out with them. At some point, Fonda brought up the fact that he had nearly died as a child from an accidental gunshot wound, and used the phrase "I know what it's like to be dead." Lennon was creeped out by the things Fonda was saying and told him to "shut up about that stuff. You're making me feel like I've never been born." The song itself took nine hours to record and mix, and is one of the few Beatle tracks that does not have Paul McCartney on it (George Harrison played bass). Perhaps not all that coincidentally, Fonda himself would star in a Roger Corman film called The Trip (written by Jack Nicholson and co-starring Dennis Hopper) the following year. 

Artist:    Butterfield Blues Band
Title:    Work Song
Source:    LP: East-West
Writer(s):    Adderly/Brown
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    Although technically not a rock album, the Butterfield Blues Band's East-West was nonetheless a major influence on many up and coming rock musicians that desired to transcend the limitations of top 40 radio. Both the title track and the band's reworking of Nat Adderly's Work Song feature extended solos from all the band members, with Work Song in particular showing Butterfield's prowess on harmonica, as well as helping cement Michael Bloomfield's reputation as the nation's top electric guitarist (before the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, at any rate). Elvin Bishop's guitar work on the song is not too shabby either.
 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2639 (starts 9/21/26)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/635156

    This week's show is centered on 1970, with a few tracks from 1969 and a couple from 1971 thrown in for good measure. We even finish out with a Mahogany Rush track from their 1972 debut LP, just for something different.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Time Machine
Source:    CD: On Time
Writer:    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    Universally panned by the rock press, the first Grand Funk Railroad album, On Time, was at best a moderate success when it was first released. Thanks to the band's extensive touring, however, GFR had built up a sizable following by the time their self-titled follow up LP (aka the Red Album) was released in 1970. That year, Grand Funk Railroad became the first rock band to chalk up four gold albums in the same year, with Closer To Home and their double-LP live album joining the first two studio albums. One of the most popular tracks from On Time was Time Machine, which captures the essence of the band's early years. 

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    To Cry You A Song
Source:    CD: Benefit
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Capitol/Chrysalis
Year:    1970
    Jethro Tull's third LP, Benefit, saw the band, er, benefiting from the success of their previous two albums, and being allowed more artistic freedom by their label, Chrysalis. The songs tended to be a bit longer than those on either This Was or Stand Up, and more closely represents Ian Anderson's musical vision, which had been turning increasingly darker over the previous year due to a growing disillusionment with the record industry itself. One of the best examples of these trends is the opening track of side two of the LP, To Cry You A Song. According to guitarist Martin Barre the song, which runs over six minutes in length, was a response to Blind Faith's Had To Cry Today. Unlike later Jethro Tull works, the song was basically recorded live in the studio, with only a couple of overdubs (including Barre's guitar solo) added later.

Artist:    Yes
Title:    Yours Is No Disgrace
Source:    CD: The Yes Album
Writer(s):    Anderson/Squire/Howe/Kaye/Bruford
Label:    Elektra/Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1971
    1970 was a transition year for the progressive rock band known as Yes. Their first two albums, Yes and Time And A Word, had not sold well, and their label, Atlantic, was considering dropping them from their roster. Internally, creative differences between guitarist Peter Banks and the rest of the band led to Banks leaving the group, eventually forming his own band, Flash. The remaining members quickly recruited Steve Howe, who was making a name for himself as a studio musician following the breakup of Tomorrow a couple of years earlier. Howe proved to be a more than suitable replacement, as his versatility served the band's experimental style well. With Howe firmly in place, the group got to work on their third LP, The Yes Album. Unlike Yes's previous albums, which had each included a pair of highly rearranged cover songs (following a pattern set by such bands as Vanilla Fudge and Deep Purple), The Yes Album was made up entirely of original material, mostly written by vocalist Jon Anderson and bassist Chris Squire. Yours Is No Disgrace, however, which opens the album, is credited to the entire band, and gives each member a chance to shine without detracting from the band as a whole. The membership of Yes would continue to fluctuate, however, with keyboardist Tony Kaye, who did not share the rest of the band's enthusiam for the new synthesizers hitting the market, leaving shortly after the album was released, and drummer Bill Bruford following suit following the release of the band's fifth album, Close To The Edge. Eventually even Anderson and Squire would depart the group, leaving Steve Howe currently at the helm of a band containing none of its original members.     

Artist:    Firesign Theatre
Title:    (Newscast from) Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers
Source:    LP: Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers
Writer(s):    Proctor/Bergman/Austin/Ossman
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1970
    The first thing you need to know about the Firesign Theatre is that they were oriented to sound rather than vision. Their use of special effects parallels that of World War II era radio programs, which they often payed tribute to on their albums. They were also pioneers of "concept humor", dedicating an entire album to a single theme, such as the life of George Leroy Tirebiter on the album Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers. Released in 1970 the album focuses on Tirebiter (played by David Ossman), a former child actor who spends his time watching his old movies on TV. The album also unintentionally predicts the rise of digital cable with literally hundreds of channels to choose from, an idea considered absurd in 1970 (and still considered absurd by some of us over 50 years later). Even a guy watching his own old movies occasionally changes the channel, and among the shows he runs across is a newscast that helps define the bizarre future world the album is set in. The album title itself is somewhat ambiguous: one interpretation is that the "dwarf" is a roach from a marijuana joint and the "pliers" are actually a roach clip. Another view is that the title was inspired by a photograph on the cover of Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde album showing Dylan holding a small picture of a person in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other. Regardless of the title's origins, Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers has been called "the greatest comedy album ever made" by the New Rolling Stone Record Guide, and has been enshrined by the Library Of Congress in their National Recording Registry.

Artist:    Box Tops
Title:    I Must Be The Devil
Source:    Mono 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Alex Chilton
Label:    Mala
Year:    1969
    An all too common scenario in the late 1960s was a band or individual musician that was perceived by record company people as little more than a source of hit record income. This kind of thinking came from a time when the only measure of success in the world of popular music was a hit single. Albums, until 1967 or so were, for the most part, little more than supplemental income unless your name was the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or maybe even Bob Dylan. But by the end of the decade things were changing, and the musicians themselves were among the first to realize and take advantage of the changes. Unfortunately, record company people were among the last to acknowledge these changes, and this made for considerable tension within the recording industry. The Box Tops are a good illustration of all this. An overnight success with The Letter, which spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard chart, the group was fed song after song by their producer, Dan Penn, many of which were written by Penn and songwriter Spooner Oldham, with instrumental tracks performed by studio musicians rather than the band itself. This didn't sit well with the band's frontman, guitarist Alex Chilton, whose contributions as a songwriter were limited to just three tunes over the course of the band's recording career. One of those tunes was I Must Be The Devil, a blues number that appeared on the band's final album, Dimensions, and as the B side of the group's cover version of Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released. The Box Tops disbanded in 1970, with Chilton going on to form Big Star in 1971.

Artist:    Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
Title:    Helpless
Source:    CD: Decade (originally released on LP: déjà vu)
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1970
    Many of the songs on the second Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album, Deja Vu, sound as if they could have been on solo albums by the various band members, particularly Neil Young, whose style really didn't mesh well with the others. A prime example of this is Helpless. Despite this (or maybe because of it) Helpless got more radio airplay than most of the other songs on the album.

Artist:     Blind Faith
Title:     Well, All Right
Source:     CD: Blind Faith
Writer:     Petty/Holly/Allison/Mauldin
Label:     Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:     1969
     Supergroup Blind Faith was made up of members of Cream (Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker), Family (Rick Grech) and Traffic (Steve Winwood). The group only recorded one LP before disbanding, and almost all of the material on that album was written by members of the band. The lone exception was a heavily-modified arrangement of Buddy Holly's Well All Right, which sounds more like a Traffic song than any other track on the LP. 
 
Artist:     Miles Davis
Title:     John McLaughlin
Source:    European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Bitches Brew)
Writer:     Miles Davis
Label:     Sony Music (original US label: Columbia)
Year:     1970
     By 1970 Miles Davis had already virtually invented at least one jazz subgenre (cool jazz), and with the Bitches Brew album he did it again, this time inventing both jazz-rock fusion and acid jazz at the same time. Bitches Brew is also notable as the first jazz album to use recording technology extensively, to the point of actually altering the performances. This followed in the footsteps of Jimi Hendrix, who was also known for using the studio as a creative tool. With only one exception, every piece on the four-sided LP exceeds the ten minute mark. That exception was a piece called John McLaughlin that Davis himself composed, but did not  play on. Guitarist John McLaughlin, however, did participate in the recording, along with Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul and others.

Artist:    Aphrodite's Child
Title:    Magic Mirror
Source:    CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released in Europe as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Papathanassiou/Fiddy
Label:    Polydor (original European label: Mercury) (released in UK on Polydor)
Year:    1969
    Aphrodite's Child was formed in Greece in 1967, but left following a right-wing military coup that severely curtailed both political and artistic freedoms in that country. The band had been invited by Mercury Records to come to London and record, but were refused entry to the UK due to problems with their work permits and found themselves in Paris instead. Mercury's parent label, Philips, soon signed the band to a contract to record in France. Their first single for the label, Rain And Tears, was a top 10 single in several European countries and led to an equally popular album, End Of The World, that established Aphrodite's Child as one of the continent's most popular acts. That popularity did not extend to the UK, however, and subsequent records failed to make a dent on the British charts. One 1969 single was recorded in London, but was not even released in the UK by the band's regular label, Mercury, and was instead issued independently by the Polydor label. The B side of that single, Magic Mirror, shows a band just beginning to transition from their early psychedelic sound to the more experimental one that would characterize their best known work, a two-disc concept album based on the biblical book of Revelation called 666. After Aphrodite's Child disbanded in 1972 the band's leader, Evangahlos Papathanassiou (generally known as Vangelis), would go on to become one of the world's top electronic music pioneers (can anyone say Chariots Of Fire?).

Artist:            Flock
Title:        Crabfoot
Source:    British Import CD: The Flock/Dinosaur Swamps (originally released on LP: Dinosaur Swamps)
Writer(s):    the Flock
Label:     BGO (original US label: Columbia)
Year:        1970
        Chicago is a town known for its horn players, and the Flock had one of the best horn sections ever to come out of the windy city. On top of that they had Jerry Goodman playing a mean electric violin. Nonetheless, they never seemed to be able to connect up with a large audience, and after a couple critically well-received but poor selling albums, the members moved on, with Goodman in particular gaining fame as an original member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The Flock had a flair for (almost an obsession with, really) doing things differently than anyone else. Crabfoot, from the band's second LP, Dinosaur Swamps, starts off sounding like a high-powered jazz-rock tune along the lines of Chase's Get It On, leading into an equally high-energy drum solo that all of a sudden, right in the middle, turns into...well, I really don't know how to describe it.
    
Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    When The Levee Breaks
Source:    CD: Led Zeppelin IV
Writer(s):    Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones/Douglas
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    Although it sounds like it could have been written about Hurricane Katrina, When The Levee Breaks, the last song on the fourth Led Zeppelin LP, was actually inspired by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, that saw levees along the river break in over 145 places, leaving over 700,000 people homeless. 29-year-old Lizzie Douglas was living with her family near Walls, Mississippi, when the levee there broke, and two years later, using her stage name of Memphis Minnie recorded the original version of When The Levee Breaks with her then-partner Kansas Joe McCoy. In 1971 Led Zeppelin used Douglas's lyrics as the basis for their own, musically different version of When The Levee Breaks. The track is instantly identifiable by John Bonham's distinctive opening drum beat, which has been heavily sampled by various hip-hop artists over the years.

Artist:    Mahogany Rush
Title:    All In Your Mind
Source:    LP: Maxoom
Writer(s):    Frank Marino
Label:    20th Century
Year:    1972
    Canadian Frank Marino wrote, played guitar, sang lead vocals on and produced the first Mahogany Rush album, Maxoom...at age 17. The LP, released in 1972, was dedicated to the memory of Jimi Hendrix. Indeed, Marino's music in many ways represented possible directions that Hendrix himself may have taken had he lived past the age of 27. All In Your Mind is an example of one such direction.
 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2638 (starts 9/14/26)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/634272

    Our second hour usually features something long, like an Advanced Psych segment or an entire album side, so this week we are doing just the opposite and doing an entire half hour's worth of songs that clock in under the three minute mark, including an artists' set from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Then we make up for it by featuring a Bob Dylan set from the Highway 61 Revisited album that lasts over fifteen minutes. The first hour, as always, features a mix of singles, B sides and album tracks, this time ranging from 1965 to 1969.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    She'll Return It
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals-Vol. II (originally released on LP: Animalization and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Rowberry/Burdon
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    As a general rule the Animals, in their original incarnation, recorded two kinds of songs: hit singles from professional songwriters such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and covers of blues and R&B tunes, the more obscure the better. What they did not record a lot of was original tunes from the band members themselves. This started to change in 1966 when the band began to experience a series of personnel changes that would ultimately lead to what amounted to an entirely new group, Eric Burdon And The Animals, the following year. One of the earliest songs to carry a byline from band members was She'll Return It, an Eric Burdon/Dave Rowberry composition that was erroneously credited to the entire band. She'll Return It was released as the B side of See See Rider in August of 1966 and included on the Animalization album. In retrospect, it is one of the strongest tracks on one of their strongest LPs. 
 
Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Everydays
Source:    Taiwanese import LP: Buffalo Springfield Again
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Large World (Original US label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Everydays has the distinction of being both the first song recorded for the album Buffalo Springfield Again and the last one to be released as a single, albeit a B side. Such was the quality of Stephen Stills's songwriting at this point in his career that a decent song like Everydays has gone completely overlooked in the years since it was released.

Artist:    Fever Tree
Title:    Man Who Paints The Pictures
Source:    LP: Fever Tree
Writer(s):    Hlotzman/Holtzman/Michaels
Label:    Uni
Year:    1968
    Fever Tree is one of those bands that bridges the gap from the psychedelic rock of the late 60s to the progressive rock of the early 70s without being a part of either. Formed in Houston, the band recorded a couple of singles for Bob Shad's Mainstream label, both of which were successful enough for their producers, the husband and wife team of Scott and Vivian Holtzman, to move the band to Los Angeles, where they signed with Uni Records (later to become known as MCA). Fever Tree's 1968 debut LP for Uni featured arrangements by David Angel, who had provided string and horn arrangements for the critically-acclaimed Love album, Forever Changes, the previous year. Overall, side one is the stronger side of the LP, featuring the band's best-known song, San Francisco Girls (Return Of The Native), and the hard-rocking Man Who Paints The Pictures, among others. 
    
Artist:    James Gang
Title:    Bluebird
Source:    CD: Yer' Album
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    MCA (original label: Bluesway)
Year:    1969
    One of the highlights of the first James Gang album was a six-minute-long cover version of Bluebird, a Stephen Stills song that had originally appeared on the second Buffalo Springfield album. The James Gang version of the tune opens with a new instrumental intro written by drummer Jim Fox (playing piano), which leads into a short second intro featuring Joe Walsh on backwards-masked guitar. This in turn segues directly into the body of the song itself, which is played at a considerably slower tempo than the Springfield original (sort of a Vanilla Fudge approach, you might say). Yer' Album (so named in response to friends of the band always asking "when is yer album gonna come out?") was the only album by a rock band ever released on ABC's Bluesway subsidiary. The next four James Gang LPs would all appear on the ABC label itself.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    The Inner Light
Source:    Mono LP: Rarities (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1968
    Prior to 1968, no George Harrison song had ever appeared on 45 RPM vinyl in the US (a couple had shown up in other parts of the world as EP tracks, however). His first was The Inner Light, issued as the B side of Lady Madonna in March of 1968. The Inner Light is the only Beatles studio recording made outside of Europe. Harrison recorded the instrumental tracks in Bombay in January of 1968, while he was putting together tracks for his Wonderwall Music solo album. The lyrics come from the Tao Te Ching, a Taoist poem that had been translated from Sanskrit in 1958.

Artist:    Young Rascals
Title:    It's Wonderful
Source:    Mono CD: The Rascals Anthology (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Cavaliere/Brigati
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1967
    Psychedelic rock is generally considered to have begun on the West Coast (although Austin, Texas has a legitimate claim as well). By the time of the Summer of Love, however, psychedelic rock was a national trend. New York had always been one of the major centers of the music industry, so it's not surprising that on the East Coast 1967 was the year of the psychedelic single. One of the most popular New York bands of the time was the Young Rascals, generally considered to be the greatest blue-eyed soul band of the era, if not of all time. Still, the times being what they were, the Rascals departed from their usual style more than once in '67, first with the smash hit How Can I Be Sure, and then with their own psychedelic single, It's Wonderful, released in November.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    I'm So Glad
Source:    Mono British import LP: Cream (originally released on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s):    Skip James
Label:    Polydor (original US label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    Unlike later albums, which featured psychedelic cover art and several Jack Bruce/Pete Brown collaborations that had a decidedly psychedelic sound, Fresh Cream was marketed as the first album by a British blues supergroup, and featured a greater number of blues standards than subsequent releases. One of those covers that became a concert staple for the band was the old Skip James tune I'm So Glad. The song has become so strongly associated with Cream that the group used it as the opening number for all three performances when they staged a series of reunion concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in 2004. Unlike the rest of the songs on Fresh Cream, I'm So Glad was never mixed in stereo.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Just Like Me
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets vol. 8-The Northwest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Dey/Brown
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1965
    Just Like Me was the first top 10 single from Paul Revere And The Raiders, a band that deserves much more credit than they are generally given. The group started in the early part of the decade in Boise, Idaho, when Revere (his real name) hooked up with saxophonist Mark Lindsay. Like most bands at the time, the Raiders' repertoire consisted mostly of instrumentals, as PA systems were a luxury that required more space than was generally allotted to a small town band. It wasn't long before the Raiders relocated to Portland, Oregon, where they became a popular attraction at various clubs. After a hiatus caused by Revere's stint in the military, the band resumed its place as one of the founding bands of the Portland music scene. They soon made their first visit to a recording studio, recording Richard Berry's Louie Louie at around the same time as another popular Portland band, the Kingsmen. The Kingsmen's version ended up being a huge national hit while the popularity of the Raiders' version was mostly restricted to the West Coast, thanks in large part to the active lack of support from Columbia Records, whose head of Artists and Repertoire (A&R), Mitch Miller, was an outspoken critic of rock 'n' roll. Undeterred, the band continued to grow in popularity, recording another single in 1964 (Like Long Hair) and going on tour. It was while playing in Hawaii that the band was noticed by none other than Dick Clark, who hired them to be the house band on his new afternoon TV show, Where The Action Is. Under the leadership of Mitch Miller Columbia Records had done their best to ignore the existence of rock 'n' roll (an effort that was somewhat undermined by one of their most popular artists, Bob Dylan, in 1965, when he went electric). Columbia had, however, a more open-minded West Coast division that included producer Terry Melcher, son of singer Doris Day and co-producer of the Rip Chords' hot rod hit Hey Little Cobra. With the Raiders now being seen daily on a national TV show, the label assigned Melcher to produce the band's records. It was a partnership that would lead to a string of hits, starting with Steppin' Out in 1965. The next record, Just Like Me, was the first of a string of top 10 singles that would last until early 1967, when rapidly changing public tastes made the band seem antiquated compared to up and coming groups like Jefferson Airplane. Just Like Me, which was actually a cover of a song first recorded by another Pacific Northwest band, the Wilde Knights, still holds up well after all these years. Much of the credit for that has to go to Drake Levin, whose innovative double-tracked guitar solo rocked out harder than anything else on top 40 radio at the time (with the possible exception of a couple of well-known Kinks songs).

Artist:    Swingin' Medallions
Title:    Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Vetter/Smith
Label:    Rhino (original label: 4-Sale)
Year:    1965
    The Swingin' Medallions, from tiny Greenwood, South Carolina, scored a hit that was almost as popular in frat houses as Louie Louie. The song, Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love), was recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and was released locally on the 4-Sale label. The song was re-released nationally in 1966 on Mercury's subsidiary label, Smash Records, becoming a national hit.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Smiling Phases
Source:    CD: Smiling Phases (originally released in UK as 45 RPM B side and in US on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind, aka Mr. Fantasy)
Writer(s):    Capaldi/Wood/Winwood
Label:    Island (original US label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    The standard practice in the UK during the 60s was to not include songs that had been released as singles on LPs. This left several songs, such as the 1967 B side Smiling Phases, only available on 45 RPM vinyl until the group's first greatest hits anthology was released. In the US the song was more widely circulated, having been included on the American version of Traffic's debut LP. Smiling Phases has since come to be recognized as one of Traffic's most iconic tunes, and has been covered by such bands as Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    All Along The Watchtower
Source:    French import stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Polydor
Year:    1968
    Although there have been countless covers of Bob Dylan songs recorded by a variety of artists, very few of them have become better known than the original Dylan versions. Probably the most notable exception is the Jimi Hendrix Experience version of All Along The Watchtower on the Electric Ladyland album. Hendrix's arrangement of the song has been adopted by several other musicians over the years, including Neil Young (at the massive Bob Dylan tribute concert) and even Dylan himself. 

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    1984
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of Spirit (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Randy California
Label:    Epic 
Year:    1969
    One of Spirit's best known songs is 1984, a non-album single released in 1969 in between the band's second and third LPs. Unlike the Rolling Stones' 2000 Man, 1984 was not so much a predictive piece as an interpretation of concepts first expressed in George Orwell's book of the same name. Of course, by the time the actual year 1984 arrived it had become obvious that politics had moved in an entirely different direction than predicted, although some of the mind control techniques described in both the book and song were already being used, while others had to wait until the 21st century to come to pass. 

Artist:    Vanity Fare
Title:    Hitchin' A Ride
Source:    Simulated stereo LP:History Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Murray/Callender
Label:    Sire (original label: Page One)
Year:    1969
    Formed in Kent, England as the Avengers in 1966 and releasing a US-only single as the Sages later that year, Vanity Fare signed with Larry Page's Page One Records, scoring a British hit with their first single, a cover of the Sunrays' I Live For The Sun, in 1968. In August of that year they had their biggest British hit with a song called Early In The Morning, which also made it to the #12 spot in the US and #10 in Canada. Their next single, however, was an international smash hit, charting in much of the English-speaking world, including South Africa, where it went to #2, and the US, where it made the top 5. Vanity Fare continued to release records well into the 1970s and still exists as a performing unit.

Artist:    World Column
Title:    Lantern Gospel
Source:    Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Kaplan/Meyer
Label:    Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    World Column was actually an R&B band from the midwest that, for some unknown reason, decided to change styles and record a song which has since become a psychedelic classic. Lantern Gospel, released in the summer of 1968, appeared on a dozen bootleg compilation albums before finally being officially released on the Rhino Handmade CD My Mind Goes High, which is now available in the UK through Warner Strategic Marketing.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    People Get Ready
Source:    LP: Vanilla Fudge
Writer:    Curtis Mayfield
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967    
    The first Vanilla Fudge LP was all cover songs, done in the slowed-down Vanilla Fudge style that some say was inspired by fellow Long Islanders The Vagrants. People Get Ready, originally recorded by Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, is one of the better ones.

Artist:    Roger Nichols Trio
Title:    Montage Mirror
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released in UK on LP: The Parade-Sunshine Girl: The Complete Recordings)
Writer(s):    Nichols/Roberds
Label:    Rhino
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 2008
    The Parade was an L.A. studio group made up of actors and studio musicians that had a top 20 hit with Sunshine Girl in early 1967. Montage Mirror, recorded later the same year is pretty much the same group but credited to the Roger Nichols Trio instead. An attempt to subvert an unpleasant contract with another label perhaps? I guess we'll never know, as the song sat on the shelf for 41(!) years before being included on a British Parade anthology.

Artist:     Seatrain
Title:     Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Lady
Source:     CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Sea Train)
Writer(s):    Gregory/Roberts
Label:     Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year:     1969
     Following the breakup of the Blues Project, two of the members, bassist/flautist Andy Kulberg and drummer Roy Blumenthal, relocated to San Francisco. They hooked up with Richard Greene (violin, keyboards, viola, vocals), John Gregory (guitar, vocals), Don Kretmar (bass, saxophone) and dedicated lyricist Jim Roberts to form Seatrain. Greene had been a member of Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, while Gregory was from the Mystery Trend. After releasing an album called Planned Obsolescence as the Blues Project to fullfill contractual obligations, the band made their official debut in 1969 with the album Sea Train. By the time their next album, Seatrain, came out in 1970, only Kulberg and Greene remained from the band's original lineup.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    Eighteen Is Over The Hill
Source:    LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Morgan
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1968
    The contributions of guitarist Ron Morgan to the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band are often overlooked, possibly due to the fact that Morgan himself often tried to distance himself from the band. Nonetheless, he did write some of the group's most memorable tunes, including their best-known song, Smell Of Incense (covered by the Texas band Southwest F.O.B.) and the opening track of what is generally considered their best album, A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. Unfortunately, the somewhat senseless lyrics on Eighteen Is Over The Hill (not to mention the title itself) added by Bob Markley detract from what is actually a very tasty piece of music. 

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    Ritual # 2
Source:    CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Harris
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    There's a reason music like that of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band is sometimes called Acid Rock, and Ritual #2, from the band's last album for Reprise, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil, is as good an example as you'll find. Best listened to with headphones on.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Source:    LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Harris
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1968
    If there was ever a band that illustrated just how bizarre the late 60s could be, it was the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Formed at a party (hosted by the ubiquitous Kim Fowley) by the sons of a noted orchestra conductor and a borderline pedophile with lots of money to burn, the band also included a talented but troubled lead guitarist from Denver and a multi-instrumentalist who would go on to become a highly successful record producer. As would be expected with such a disparate group, several members ended up quitting during the band's run; strangely enough, they all ended up returning to the band at one time or another. Their music was just as strange as their story, as the title track of their fourth album, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil, illustrates vividly. Musically the song is powerful, almost anthemic, creating a mood that is immediately destroyed by a spoken bit (I hesitate to use the term "poetry") by the aforementioned borderline pedophile, Bob Markley, against a backdrop of a more subdued musical bed with background vocals somewhat resembling Gregorian chant. And just what words of wisdom does Markley have to share with us? Let me give you a small sample: "a vampire bat will suck blood from our hands, a dog with rabies will bite us, rats will run up your legs, but nothing will matter." Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the whole thing is that the piece was created without benefit of drugs, as all the members of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (except for lead guitarist Ron Morgan) were notoriously drug-free, itself the exception rather than the rule in late 60s Hollywood. Oddly enough, in spite of this (or maybe because of it), the track is actually quite fun to listen to. Besides, it only lasts two minutes and twenty seconds.

Artist:    Jon
Title:    Is It Love
Source:    Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Leopold/Mills
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1967
    Despite the name, Jon was actually a group, not an individual with only one name (although one of the members had formerly been with a band that existed solely to back up Lulu, who was indeed an individual with only one name). Jon recorded two singles for EMI, the second being Is It Love, released in 1967. 

Artist:    Who
Title:    Someone's Coming
Source:    Mono LP: Magic Bus-The Who On Tour (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer:    John Entwhistle
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1967
    Some songs just get no respect. First released in 1967 in the UK as the B side of I Can See For Miles, John Alec Entwistle's Someone's Coming got left off the US release entirely. It wasn't until the release of the Magic Bus single (and subsequent LP) in 1968 that the tune appeared on US vinyl, and then, once again as a B side. The Magic Bus album, however, was never issued on CD in the US, although it has been available as a Canadian import for several years. Finally, in 1995 the song found a home on a US CD as a bonus track on The Who Sell Out.

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

Artist:     Crosby, Stills and Nash
Title:     You Don't Have To Cry
Source:     CD: Crosby, Stills and Nash
Writer:    Stephen Stills
Label:     Atlantic
Year:     1969
     After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield in 1968, Stephen Stills spent some time in the studio cutting demo tapes as well as pitching in to help his friend Al Kooper complete the Super Session album when guitarist Mike Bloomfield became incapacitated by his heroin addiction. He then started hanging out at David Crosby's place in Laurel Canyon. Joined by Graham Nash, who had recently left the Hollies, they recorded the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album. Several of the tunes Stills had penned since the Springfield breakup were included on the album, including You Don't Have To Cry. The song addresses his own breakup with singer Judy Collins.
 
Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Elenore
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    The Turtles
Label:    FloEdCo (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1968
    In 1968 White Whale Records was not particularly happy with the recent activities of their primary money makers, the Turtles. The band had been asserting its independence, even going so far as to self-produce a set of recordings that the label in turn rejected as having no commercial potential. The label wanted another Happy Together. The band responded by creating a facetious new song called Elenore. The song had deliberately silly lyrics such as "Elenore gee I think you're swell" and "you're my pride and joy etcetera" and gave production credit to former Turtles bassist Chip Douglas for the "Douglas F. Hatelid Foundation", which was in itself an in-joke referring to the pseudonym Douglas was forced to use as producer for the Monkees in 1967. Then a strange thing happened: the record became a hit. I suspect this was the series of events that began Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman's eventually metamorphosis into the most successful parody duo in rock history, Flo and Eddie.

Artist:    Jelly Bean Bandits
Title:    Tapestries
Source:    British Import CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released on LP: The Jelly Bean Bandits)
Writer(s):    Buck/Donald/Dougherty/Raab/Scalfari
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Of the various albums released on Bob Shad's Mainstream label from 1966-1969, one of the most fully realized was the first (and only) album by the Jelly Bean Bandits. Formed as the Mirror in 1966, the Bandits built up a following in the native Newburgh, NY and surrounding areas over a period on months. The particularly brash move of tearing pages out of the yellow pages and showing up unannounced at the offices of various record labels led them to a meeting with Shad at Mainstream's New York offices. After listening to the band's demos Shad offered the Jelly Bean Bandits a contract to record three albums, but, sadly, only one was released. One of the highlights of that album was Tapestries, sung by drummer Joe Scalfari. The Bandits immediately got to work on a second album, but a combination of internal and financial difficulties, coupled with lack of promotional support from their label, led to the group's early demise. 

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Ballad Of A Thin Man
Source:    CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    Bob Dylan himself plays piano on Ballad Of A Thin Man, from his controversial 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. Up to that point in his career, Dylan had recorded mostly acoustic material, usually accompanying himself on guitar with little or no other instrumentation. On Highway 61 Revisited, however, he was joined by a full complement of electric musicians, including guitarist Mike Bloomfield (of the Butterfield Blues Band) and Al Kooper (who would go on to be a star in his own right as a member of the Blues Project and later as the founder of Blood, Sweat And Tears). Ballad Of A Thin Man itself was, according to Dylan, based on a real person, or an amalgam of real people who had crossed Dylan's path. The subject of the song, Mr. Jones, as referred to in the song's refrain "Something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mr Jones?" was based on the various establishment types who were virtually clueless when it came to understanding the youthful counter-culture that was developing in the mid-1960s. The following year the Grass Roots scored a regional hit in Southern California with their cover of the song, retitled Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man).

Artist:        Bob Dylan
Title:        Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Source:       LP: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume II (originally released on LP: Highway 61 Revisited)
Writer:        Bob Dylan
Label:        Columbia
Year:        1965
        Although Bob Dylan is not usually thought of as a psychedelic artist, he was the first major folk artist to go electric and was instrumental in introducing several of his fellow musicians to mind-expanding substances. 1965's Highway 61 Revisited album is generally regarded as being among the most influential of Dylan's albums, thanks to tracks like Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Tombstone Blues
Source:    CD: Highway 61 Revisited
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    One of the most influential albums in rock history was Bob Dylan's 1965 LP Highway 61 Revisited. Although he had experimented with adding electric guitar, bass and drums to some of the songs on his previous album, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited was his first LP to feature electric instruments on every track (except the last one). Of these, the most notable was probably the guitar work of Michael Bloomfield, who would soon come to prominence as lead guitarist for the Butterfield Blues Band. Bloomfield's work is most prominent on blues-based tracks such as Tombstone Blues, which follows the classic Like A Rolling Stone on side one of the original LP.

Artist:    Love
Title:    ¡Que Vida!
Source:    German import CD: Da Capo
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    The first Love album was pretty much a cross between folk rock and garage rock. Their second effort, however, showed off the rapidly maturing songwriting skills of both Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean. ¡Que Vida! is a good example of Lee moving into territory usually associated with middle-of-the-road singers such as Johnny Mathis. Lee would continue to defy convention throughout his career, leading to a noticable lack of commercial success even as he overwhelmingly won the respect of his musical peers.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Stephen Stills/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title:    Harvey's Tune
Source:    CD: Super Session
Writer(s):    Harvey Brooks
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1968
    Probably the most overlooked track on the classic Super Session LP is the album's closer, a two-minute instrumental called Harvey's Tune. The piece was written by bassist Harvey Brooks, who, along with Mike Bloomfield, had been a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and later, the Electric Flag. Although Stephen Stills is credited as guitarist on the track, I don't actually hear any guitar on Harvey's Tune, even with headphones on.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    I Can't See Your Face In My Mind
Source:    LP: Strange Days
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    One of the most haunting Doors ever recorded is I Can't See Your Face In My Mind, from their second 1967 LP, Strange Days. It also ranks among the most sadness-evoking song titles I've ever run across. Such is the power of poetry, I guess. Frankly I'm surprised that the Alzheimer's Association hasn't purchased the rights to the song to use on one of their TV fundraising spots.