Artist: Mothers Of Invention
Title: Absolutely Free (1st in a series of underground oratorios)
Source: LP: Absolutely Free
Writer(s): Frank Zappa
Label: Verve
Year: 1967
In the liner notes of the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out, Frank Zappa included a long list of influences, both musical and conceptual. For the 1967 follow-up LP, Absolutely Free, Zappa seemingly drew on every one of those influences to create a complex musical tapestry that amazed, and often baffled, everyone who heard it. Zappa would continue to amaze and baffle critics and fans alike until his untimely death from cancer at age 47 in the early 1990s, leaving behind the most unique and varied body of work in musical history.
Artist: Spirit
Title: Dream Within A Dream
Source: LP: The Family That Plays Together
Writer(s): Jay Ferguson
Label: Epic (original label: Ode)
Year: 1968
Rock bands who work their way up from humble beginnings (as opposed to supergroups made up of established stars) tend to establish relationships within the group that parallel those found in a typical family. One of the best examples of this is Spirit. Not only did they all live in the same house, the oldest member, drummer Ed Cassidy, was the stepfather of lead guitarist Randy California. So it should come as no surprise that the band decided to call its second album The Family That Plays Together. Like Spirit's debut LP, The Family That Plays Together was a synthesis of rock, folk and jazz, although it did place more emphasis on rock elements in songs such as Dream Within A Dream than on the previous effort.
Artist: Guess Who
Title: Maple Fudge
Source: CD: Wheatfield Soul
Writer(s): Bachman/Cummings/Matheson
Label: Iconoclassic (original labels: Nimbus [Canada] RCA Victor [US])
Year: 1968 (Canada), 1969 (US)
Although they had only been writing songs together for about a year, Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings of the Guess Who had already come up with more than enough material to fill an entire album by late summer, 1968. Earlier in the year the band, which also included bassist Jim Kale and drummer Garry Peterson, had recorded a pair of tunes that had been released with moderate success in their native Canada; now they had an opportunity to record at Phil Ramone's A&R Studios in New York City. With the help of producer Jack Richardson, who had taken out a second mortgage on his house to finance the band's trip, the Guess Who managed to record and mix Wheatfield Soul in four days. The album was then released in Canada on the Nimbus label in late 1968. Meanwhile, Richardson began shopping the master tapes to US labels in hopes of getting the Guess Who an American record deal. Sure enough, when RCA A&R man Don Burkheimer heard the tapes he signed the band on the spot, noting that "nothing [about Wheatfield Soul] needed to be changed or altered in any way." Oddly enough, the harshest critics of the album were Bachman and Cummings, who felt that some of the songs they wrote, such as Maple Fudge, were ill-conceived. Personally I find it one of the more creative tracks on the album.
Artist: Donovan
Title: As I Recall It
Source: The Hurdy Gurdy Man
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: EMI
Year: 1968
In addition to being one of the first artists identified with the psychedelic era, Donovan Leitch was a fan of both traditional and modern jazz and incorporated elements of both on his late 60s recordings. One example is As I Recall It, from his 1968 LP The Hurdy Gurdy Man, which has a bit of a traditional jazz feel, yet remains firmly within the realm of British psychedelia. One oddity about As I Recall It is that the mix switches from mono to stereo and back again several times during the song, making for an unusual sonic experience.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Red House
Source: Mono LP: Are You Experienced (UK version)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original UK label: Track)
Year: 1967
One of the first songs recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Red House was omitted from the US version of Are You Experienced because, in the words of one recording company executive: "America does not like blues". At the time the song was recorded, Noel Redding was not yet comfortable using a bass guitar, and would work out his bass parts on a slightly-detuned hollow body six-string guitar with the tone controls on their muddiest setting (I learned to play bass the same way myself). The original recording of Red House that was included on the UK version of Are You Experienced features Redding doing exactly that. A second take of the song, with overdubs, was included on the 1969 Smash Hits album, but the original mono version heard here was not available in the US until the release of the Blues CD in 1994.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: 2000 Man
Source: LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
Setting any work of art in the relatively near future is always risky business (remember 1984?), but then again 33 years seems like forever when you yourself are still in your twenties. I mean who, including the Rolling Stones themselves, could have imagined that Mick, Keith, Charlie and company would still be performing well into the 21st century when they recorded 2000 Man for their 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request? It's actually kind of interesting to listen to the lyrics now and see just how much of the song turned out to be an accurate prediction of what was to come.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Lazy Old Sun
Source: CD: Something Else By The Kinks
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Although the Kinks had major hits on both sides of the ocean from 1964-66, by 1967 their success was limited to the UK, despite fine singles such as Dead End Street and Waterloo Sunset. Their 1967 LP, Something Else By The Kinks, continued the band's expansion into slightly satirical explorations of sociopolitical issues. At the same time, the album also shows a more experimental side musically, as Lazy Old Sun, with its staggered tempo and unusual chord progression, demonstrates. The song also shows a willingness to experiment with studio effects, as Something Else was the first Kinks album to be mixed in stereo.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Gloria
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Van Morrison
Label: Dunwich
Year: 1966
The original Them version of Van Morrison's Gloria found itself banned on the majority of US radio stations due to controversial lyrics. By changing one line (substituting "around here" for "up to my room") the suburban Chicago punk-blues band Shadows of Knight turned it into a huge hit and a garage band standard.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Help, I'm A Rock (single mix)
Source: Mono CD: Part One (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Frank Zappa
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Ya gotta hand it to the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. It takes cojones to record a cover of a Frank Zappa tune, especially within a year of the original Mothers of Invention version coming out. To top it off, the W.C.P.A.E.B. even released Help, I'm A Rock as a single.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: Your Head Is Reeling
Source: LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer: Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Ultimate Spinach was one of a group of bands signed by M-G-M in 1967 and marketed as being representative of the "Boss-town sound". Unfortunately for all involved, there really was no such thing as a "Boss-town sound" (for that matter there was no such thing as a "San Francisco sound" either, but that's another story). All the hype aside, Ultimate Spinach itself was the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Ian Bruce-Palmer, who wrote and arranged all the band's material. The opening track of side two of the band's debut album is a piece called Your Head Is Reeling, which, despite the somewhat cheesy spoken intro, is as good or better than any other raga styled song of the time.
Artist: Neil Young/Crazy Horse
Title: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Source: CD: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Reprise
Year: 1969
After releasing a fairly well produced debut solo album utilizing the talents of several well-known studio musicians in late 1968, Neil Young surprised everyone by recruiting an unknown L.A. bar band and rechristening them Crazy Horse for his second effort, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The album was raw and unpolished, with Young's lead vocals recorded using a talkback microphone normally used by engineers to communicate with people in the studio from the control room. In spite of, or more likely because of, these limitations, the resulting album has come to be regarded as one of the greatest in the history of rock, with Young sounding far more comfortable, both as a vocalist and guitarist, than on the previous effort. Although the album is best known for three songs he wrote while running a fever (Cinnamon Girl, Cowgirl In The Sand, and Down By The River), there are plenty of good other songs on the LP, including the title track heard here.
Artist: Ten Years After
Title: As The Sun Still Burns Away
Source: CD: Cricklewood Green
Writer(s): Alvin Lee
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Deram)
Year: 1970
Generally considered to be Ten Years After's best album, Cricklewood Green featured such FM radio staples as Me And My Baby, 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain and Love Like A Man. Another song to get airplay was As The Sun Still Burns Away, the final track on the album. Like Love Like A Man and other popular TYA tunes, As The Sun Still Burns Away is built on a repeating bass riff that is paralleled and sometimes embellished by Lee's guitar and Chick Churchill's keyboards.
Artist: Grand Funk Railroad
Title: Upsetter
Source: Canadian import CD: Heavy Hitters (originally released on LP: E Pluribus Funk and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mark Farner
Label: Capitol
Year: 1971
Grand Funk Railroad was something of an enigma. Due to universally negative reviews in the rock press, progressive FM stations avoided them like the plague. At the same time, top 40 radio was in the process of being supplanted as the voice of the mainstream by the Adult Contemporary (A/C) format, which tended to ignore hard rock. Nonetheless Grand Funk Railroad had a following. In fact, GFR was the first band to book (and sellout) entire sports arenas, setting attendance records wherever they played. This translated into major record sales, as they became the first band to have three LPs hit the million-seller mark in the same year (1970). That year they also had their first mainstream hit with I'm Your Captain (Closer To Home). From that point on the band would continue to release singles, although most, such as Upsetter, were still ignored by A/C radio (although they did get a fair amount of airplay from the remaining "true" top 40 stations). As the group's album sales were beginning to drop off, the singles became increasingly important to the band's continued success, and from 1973 on (starting with We're An American Band) Grand Funk became pretty much a singles-oriented group, cranking out tunes like Bad Time and Some Kind Of Wonderful.
Artist: Left Banke
Title: Lazy Day
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Brown/Martin
Label: Smash
Year: 1967
Although known mostly for being pioneers of baroque-rock, the Left Banke showed that they could, on occassion, rock out with the best of them on tracks like Lazy Day, which closed out their debut LP. The song was also issued as the B side of their second hit, Pretty Ballerina. Incidentally, after the success of their first single, Walk Away Renee, the band formed their own publishing company for their original material, a practice that was fairly common then and now. Interestingly enough, they called that company Lazy Day Music.
Artist: Love
Title: She Comes In Colors
Source: Mono CD: Love Story (originally released on LP: Da Capo)
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra/Rhino
Year: 1967
Arthur Lee was a bit of an enigma. His band, Love, was generally accepted as the top band on the Strip in L.A., yet Lee himself was a bit of a recluse living up on the hill overlooking the scene. With one notable exception, his songs were not hits, yet he was critically acknowledged (especially in the UK) as a musical genius on a par with his friend Jimi Hendrix. Stylistically, his songs varied from intensely hard rock (Stephanie Knows Who, 7&7 Is), to softer, almost jazzy tunes such as She Comes In Colors.
Artist: Lemon Pipers
Title: Green Tambourine
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Green Tambourine)
Writer(s): Leka/Pinz
Label: Priority (original label: Buddah)
Year: 1967
Oxford, Ohio's Lemon Pipers have the distinction of being the first band to score a number one hit for the Buddah label. Unfortunately for the band, it was their only hit. Making it even worse is the fact that, although the Lemon Pipers themselves were a real band, they ended up being grouped in with several "bands" who were in fact studio creations by the Kazenetz/Katz production team that supplied Buddah with a steady stream of bubble-gum hits throughout 1968.
Artist: Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
Title: Equestrian Statue
Source: British import CD: Insane Times (originally released on LP: Gorilla)
Writer(s): Neil Innes
Label: Zonophone (Original label: Liberty)
Year: 1967
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band occupies a unique place in British rock history. In fact, calling them a rock band is a bit of a stretch, as they incorporated a wide variety of elements in their music, including skiffle, dance hall and vaudeville. I personally see them as the 60s version of vaudeville, as can be seen in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film with their performance of a piece called Deathcab For Cutie. The Bonzos even had a tap dancer by the name of "Legs" Larry Larson in the band. Equestrian Statue, from their 1967 LP Gorilla, was the first serious attempt by the band's primary songwriter, Neil Innes, to write a hit record. As it turns out, the group would not get a single in the charts until Urban Spaceman made the British top 40 in 1968. Innes himself would go on to greater fame by working with Monty Python member Eric Idle on a Beatle parody called the Rutles. He also provided the soundtrack for the George Harrison-produced feature film Time Bandits.
Artist: Ventures
Title: The Twilight Zone
Source: LP: The Ventures In Space
Writer(s): Marty Manning
Label: Dolton/Sundazed
Year: 1964
Despite having only three top 10 singles to their credit (two of which were different versions of Walk-Don't Run), the Ventures managed to record over 200 albums, by far the most by an instrumental rock band. Most of these albums were based around a particular theme; indeed, the Ventures are generally acknowledged to have invented the concept album. One of their most unusual albums was The Ventures In Space, from 1964. Joining the band for this effort was noted session man Red Rhodes, who created many of the album's unusual sounds using a pedal steel guitar. In fact, all of the effects heard on tracks like The Twilight Zone were created using just guitars, rather than electronic devices such as a theramin. Quite an achievement for 1964, and one that holds up remarkably well nearly 50 years later.
Artist: Who
Title: It's Not True
Source: Mono Canadian import CD: The Who Sings My Generation
Writer: Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1965
Released in December, 1965, the first Who album (called simply My Generation in the UK) was recorded while the band was in their "maximum R&B" phase. The band members themselves were not happy with the album, feeling that they had been rushed through the entire recording process and did not have much say in how the final product sounded. Still, the album is considered one of the most influential debut albums of all time and has made several critics' top albums lists over the years. It's Not True, a song that critically addresses the ridiculousness of unfounded rumors, is fairly typical of the songs Pete Townshend was writing at the time.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Shapes Of Things
Source: Mono CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Samwell-Smith/Relf/McCarty
Label: Priority (original 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 the top 10 in the US, although it was a top 5 single in the UK.
Artist: Winston's Fumbs
Title: Real Crazy Apartment
Source: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969
Writer(s): Jimmy Winston
Label: Rhino
Year: 1967
Vocalist/guitarist Jimmy Winston was a child actor turned musician who was one of the original members of the Small Faces, where he played organ. In 1965 he was basically kicked out of the band for unknown reasons, but soon resurfaced with his own band, Winston's Reflection, which released one single on the British Decca label in 1966. By the following year the band had changed its name to Winston's Fumbs and signed with RCA Records, releasing Real Crazy Apartment before disbanding. By then Winston had switched from organ to guitar, and would next surface as a cast member of the London production of Hair. Meanwhile, Winston's Fumbs organist Tony Kaye had become a founding member of some obscure band called Yes.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Tin Can Beach
Source: Mono CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Sundazed (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1968
Phasing, a studio effect caused by playing two identical recordings milliseconds apart into a third recorder, hit its peak popularity in 1968. It's most famous use was in Britain, on the Small Faces song Itchycoo Park. Jimi Hendrix also used the effect on his Electric Ladyland album, as did Sean Bonniwell, with the second incarnation of his band the Music Machine on the 1968 B side Tin Can Beach. The song itself, a deliberately light and bouncy piece, is an example of just how far from the psychotic rock of his biggest hit, Talk Talk, Bonniwell was willing and able to stray.
Artist: Blind Faith
Title: Well, All Right
Source: British import LP: Blind Faith
Writer: Petty/Holly/Allison/Mauldin
Label: Polydor (original US label: Atco)
Year: 1969
Supergroup Blind Faith only recorded one LP, 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.
Artist: Bloodrock
Title: Gotta Find A Way
Source: CD: Bloodrock
Writer(s): Rutledge/Taylor/Pickens/Grundy/Cobb
Label: One Way (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1970
A friend of mine in Alamogordo, NM, went to El Paso for a Grand Funk Railroad concert in 1970 and was blown away by the opening band, a group from Dallas called Bloodrock. At the time Bloodrock has just released their first LP, and my friend immediately went out and bought a copy, playing it for the members of my own band, Friends, at the first opportunity. It wasn't long before we were learning to play the first track on the album, a song called Gotta Find A Way. We were so enthusiastic about the song we made it the first song on our own demo tape. Soon after that Bloodrock released their second album, which included their most famous track, DOA, and the band soon found itself in a rut. A shame, since that first album showed so much potential.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Death Sound Blues
Source: LP: 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: Chocolate Watchband
Title: I'm Not Like Everybody Else
Source: CD: The Inner Mystique
Writer: Ray Davies
Label: Sundazed (original label: Tower)
Year: 1968
The first Chocolate Watchband album, No Way Out, sold well enough to warrant a follow-up LP, The Inner Mystique. The only problem was that by the end of 1967 there was no Chocolate Watchband left to record it, although there were a few unreleased recordings in the vaults. Unfazed, producer Ed Cobb once again turned to studio musicians to fill out the album. One of the few actual Watchband recordings on The Inner Mystique was this cover of the Kinks' I'm Not Like Everybody Else, which had appeared as a B side a couple years earlier. This song, along with their cover of I Ain't No Miracle Worker, almost made the album worth buying. In fact, enough people did indeed buy The Inner Mystique to warrant a third and final Watchband album, but by then the group had reformed with almost entirely different personnel and the resulting album, One Step Beyond, actually sounds less like the original group than all those studio musicians did.
Artist: Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title: The Great Airplane Strike (originally released on LP: Spirit Of '67 and as 45 RPM single)
Source: CD: Greatest Hits
Writer: Revere/Melcher/Lindsay
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
In 1966 Paul Revere and the Raiders were at the peak of their popularity, scoring major hits that year with Hungry and Kicks. The last single the band released that year was The Great Airplane Strike from the Spirit Of '67 album. Written by band members Revere and Mark Lindsay, along with producer Terry Melcher, The Great Airplane Strike stands out as a classic example of Pacific Northwest rock, a style which would eventually culminate in the grunge movement of the 1990s.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1411 (starts 3/12/14)
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: All Along The Watchtower
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
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: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Before the release of Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience the emphasis in rock music (then called pop) was on the 45 RPM single, with albums seen as a luxury item that supplemented an artist's career rather than defined it. Are You Experience helped change all that. The album was not only highly influential, it was a major seller, despite getting virtually no airplay on US top 40 radio. The grand finale of the LP was the title track, which features an array of studio effects, including backwards masked guitar and tape loops. Interestingly enough, the album was originally issued only in a mono version in the UK, with European pressings using a simulated stereo mix. After Reprise bought the rights to release the LP in the US it hired its own engineers to create stereo mixes of the songs from the four-track master tapes.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Still Raining, Still Dreaming, from the third Jimi Hendrix Experience album Electric Ladyland, is the second half of a live studio recording featuring guest drummer Buddy Miles, who would later join Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Band Of Gypsys. The recording also features Mike Finnegan on organ, Freddie Smith on tenor sax and Larry Faucett on congas, as well as Experience member Noel Redding on bass.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast
Source: LP: Atom Heart Mother
Writer(s): Waters/Wright/Mason/Gilmour
Label: Harvest
Year: 1970
Side two of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother LP featured four tracks, one from each member of the band. Since drummer Nick Mason was not generally considered a songwriter, his track, Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, was credited to the entire band. The title refers to Pink Floyd roadie Alan Styles, and features a series of sound recordings of Styles making and eating (and occasionally talking about) breakfast insterspersed with a series of musical interludes. The recording starts and ends with the sound of a faucet dripping, and includes things like bacon frying, rice cereal snap crackle and popping, and plates being shuffled around. The group actually performed the piece live two or three times in 1970.
Artist: Crow
Title: Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me)
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Wagner/Weigand/Weigand
Label: Amaret
Year: 1969
Minneapolis has always had a more active local music scene than one might expect from a medium-sized city in the heart of the snow belt. Many of the city's artists have risen to national prominence, including a band called Crow, who's 1969 single Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me), hit close to the top of the charts in early 1970. The band had been formed in 1967 as South 40, changing its name to Crow right around the same time they signed to Amaret Records in 1969.
Artist: Matadors
Title: Get Down From The Tree
Source: CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Czechoslovakia on LP: Matadors)
Writer(s): Hladik/Sodoma
Label: Rhino (original label: Supraphon)
Year: 1968
When the words "Czechoslovakia" and "1968" come up in the same sentence it is usually in reference to an invasion by the Soviet Union to crack down on dissident elements in the Eastern Bloc satellite nation. No doubt the Matadors, formed in Prague in 1965 as the Fontanas, were among those elements, thanks to self-penned tracks such as Get Down From The Tree, a song that was originally released on an EP in 1967 and re-recorded for their self-titled debut LP. What happened to the Matadors following the Soviet invasion is unknown.
Artist: Vagrants
Title: Beside The Sea
Source: Mono LP: I Can't Make A Friend 1965-1968 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Collins/Pappalardi/Sommer
Label: Light In The Attic (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Although they did not achieve the same degree of national fame as their Long Island contemporaries the Young Rascals and Vanilla Fudge, the Vagrants were quite popular along the eastern seaboard, and ended up releasing several singles on the Atco label before guitarist Leslie Weinstein decided to change his name to West and embark on a solo career. The band had a sound midway between the two aforementioned bands, although, by some accounts, the Vagrants leaned more toward the latter when performing live. Indeed, there are some who claim that Vanilla Fudge actually lifted their sound directly from the Vagrants. In the studio, however, the Vagrants strove for a more commercial sound, as Beside The Sea (co-written by future Mountain member Felix Pappalardi and his wife Janet Collins along with future Woodstock performer Bert Sommer) demonstrates.
Artist: Mouse And The Traps
Title: Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice
Source: Mono British import CD: The Fraternity Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Henderson/Weiss
Label: Big Beat (original label: Fraternity)
Year: 1966
Mouse (Ronnie Weiss) was, for a time, the most popular guy in Tyler, Texas, at least among the local youth. His band, Mouse and the traps, had a series of regional hits that garnered airplay at stations all across the state (and a rather large state at that). Although Mouse's first big hit, A Public Execution, had a strong Dylan feel to it, the band's 1966 followup single Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice, has come to be considered a garage-rock classic.
rtist: Seeds
Title: Pushin' Too Hard
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: The Seeds and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1965
Pushin' Too Hard was originally released as a single in 1965 (under the title You're Pushin' Too Hard), but did not make an immediate impression. The following year the tune started getting some local airplay on Los Angeles area stations. This in turn led to the band recording their first album, The Seeds, which was released in spring of 1966. A second Seeds LP, A Web Of Sound, hit L.A. record stores in the fall of the same year. Meanwhile, Pushin' Too Hard started to get national airplay, hitting its peak position on the Billboard charts in February of 1967.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Hole In My Shoe
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s): Dave Mason
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
Since the 1970s Traffic has been known as Steve Winwood's (and to a lesser degree, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood's) band, but in the early days some of the group's most popular songs were written and sung by co-founder Dave Mason. Hole In My Shoe was a single that received considerable airplay in the UK, despite being disliked by the rest of the band members. As was common practice in the UK at the time, the song was not included on the band's debut album. In the US, however, both Hole In My Shoe and the other then-current Traffic single, Paper Sun, were added to the album, replacing (ironically) a couple of Mason's other tunes.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Empty Pages
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1970
Traffic was formed in 1967 by Steve Winwood, after ending his association with the Spencer Davis Group. The original group, also featuring Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood, put out two and a half albums before disbanding in early 1969. Shortly thereafter, following a successful live reunion album, Welcome to the Canteen, Winwood got to work on what was intended to be his first solo LP. For support Winwood called in Capaldi and Wood to back him up on the project. It soon became apparent, however, that what they were working on was actually a new Traffic album, John Barleycorn Must Die. Although Empty Pages was released as a single (with a mono mix heard here), it got most of its airplay on progressive FM stations, and as those stations were replaced by (or became) album rock stations, the song continued to get extensive airplay for many years.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
Heaven Is In Your Mind was, for a short time, the title track of the first Traffic album released in the US. Although the album title was soon changed to Mr. Fantasy to match the European version, the song Heaven Is In Your Mind remained one of the band's most popular early tracks, and has been included on virtually every Traffic compilation ever released. The mono and stereo mixes are noticably different from each other, and even feature entirely different guitar breaks.
Artist: Guess Who
Title: 969 (The Oldest Man)
Source: CD: American Woman
Writer(s): Randy Bachman
Label: Buddha/BMG (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1970
Although Burton Cummings was known primarily for his role as the Guess Who's lead vocalist, he got a chance to strut his stuff instrumentally as a flautist on 969 (The Oldest Man), an instrumental by Randy Bachman. Bachman himself showed a glimpse of the guitar prowess that he would become known for with his next band, Bachman Turner Overdrive, in the mid-1970s on the track.
Artist: John D. Loudermilk
Title: Goin' To Hell On A Sled
Source: LP: The Open Mind Of John D. Loudermilk
Writer(s): John D. Loudermilk
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1969
John D. Loudermilk was one of the most respected songwriters of the 1960s, best known for Tobacco Road, a hit for the Nashville Teens in 1964. In 1969 Loudermilk recorded an album for RCA Victor entitled The Open Mind Of John D. Loudermilk. The album featured songs in a variety of styles. Goin' To Hell On A Sled is a kind of ironic country song that paved the way for later artists such as Jerry Reed or David Allen Coe.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Mickey Newbury
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle wrote most of the songs on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In) (originally released on LP: No Way Out and as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk
Writer: McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in fact the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.
Artist: Spirit
Title: Free Spirit
Source: CD: Spirit (bonus track)
Writer: John Locke
Label: Ode/Epic/Legacy
Year: 1967
When Spirit entered the recording studio to work on their first album they recorded more music than they could fit on an LP. One of the tracks that got cut from the final lineup was Free Spirit, an instrumental piece written by keyboardist John Locke. Like most of Spirit's early material, Free Spirit incorporates jazz into the band's sound to a much greater degree than on later recordings.
Artist: Spirit
Title: 1984
Source: Mono CD: 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: Spirit
Title: Mechanical World
Source: CD: Spirit
Writer(s): Andes/Ferguson
Label: Ode/Epic/Legacy
Year: 1968
In 1967 the members of Spirit all lived in a large house in Topanga Canyon outside of Los Angeles. During their stay there, bassist Mark Andes came down with a bad case of the flu and was confined to his room for several weeks. During this time Andes was, according to guitarist Randy California, feeling "very depressed and mechanical". Toward the end of Andes's forced isolation, vocalist Jay Ferguson visited him often, and the two of them collaborated on what would become Mechanical World, one of the most sophisticated and complex tracks on Spirit's 1968 debut LP. The song was also included on the band's first "best of" collection a few years later.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Smell of Incense
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer: Markley/Morgan
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
One of the commercially strongest songs on the second West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album for Reprise was Smell of Incense. The length of the track, however, (over five minutes) meant it would never get airplay on AM radio, although England Dan Seals and John Ford Coley took it to the # 56 spot on the charts while still in high school in 1968 with their band Southwest F.O.B.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: I Won't Hurt You
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Part One)
Writer: Harris/Lloyd/Markley
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Unlike more famous L.A. groups like Love and the Doors, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was not a Sunset Strip club band. In fact, the WCPAEB really didn't play that many live performances in their career, although those they did play tended to be at high profile venues such as the Hollywood Bowl. The band was formed when the Harris brothers, sons of an accomplished classical musician, decided to record their own album and release it on the small Fifa label. Only a few copies of that album, Volume One, were made and finding one now is next to impossible. That might have been the end of the story except for the fact that they were acquaintances of Kim Fowley, the Zelig-like record producer and all-around Hollywood hustler. Fowley invited them to a party where the Yardbirds were playing; a party also attended by one Bob Markley. Markley, who was nearly ten years older than the Harris brothers, was a former TV show host from the midwest who had moved out to the coast to try his luck. Impressed by the flock of young girls surrounding the Yardbirds, Markley expressed to Fowley his desire to be a rock and roll star and have the girls flock around him, too. Fowley, ever the deal-maker, responded by introducing Markley to the Harris Brothers and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was born. With the addition of guitarist Michael Lloyd and the influence of Markley's not-inconsiderable family money, the group soon landed a contract with Reprise Records, where they proceeded to record the album Part One, which includes the turn I Won't Hurt You, which uses a simulated heartbeat to keep the...umm, beat.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Buddha
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer: Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Although Bob Markley's lyrics will never win any literary achievement awards, they are memorable in a campy sort of way. A perfect example is Buddha, a track from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album Volume II, which comes across as a childlike impression of a statue of a Buddha, with some adolescent innuendo thrown in.
Artist: Who
Title: I Can't Reach You
Source: 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, and still consider it one of the best Who albums ever made.
Artist: Firesign Theatre
Title: I Was A Cock Teaser For Roosterama
Source: LP: Dear Friends
Writer(s): Proctor/Bergman/Austin/Ossman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
When it comes to counterculture humor, nobody takes a back seat to the Firesign Theatre, who, in addition to recording several albums for the Columbia label, hosted their own radio show, Dear Friends, in 1970. A couple of years later Columbia put out a double-LP album collecting some of the best bits from the show, including I Was A Cock Teaser For Roosterama. Fun stuff.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Elenore
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): The Turtles
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 event that began Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman's eventually metamorphosis into rock parody act Flo and Eddie.
Artist: Black Sabbath
Title: Black Sabbath
Source: German import CD: Black Sabbath
Writer(s): Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label: Creative Sounds (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1970
This track has to hold some kind of record for "firsts". Black Sabbath, by Black Sabbath, from the album Black Sabbath is, after all, the first song from the first album by the first true heavy metal band. The track starts off by immediately setting the mood with the sound of church bells in a rainstorm leading into the song's famous tri-tone (often referred to as the "devil's chord") intro, deliberately constructed to evoke the mood of classic Hollywood horror movies. Ozzy Osborne's vocals only add to the effect. Even the faster-paced final portion of the song has a certain dissonance that had never been heard in rock music before, in part thanks to Black Sabbath's deliberate use of a lower pitch in their basic tuning. The result is something that has sometimes been compared to a bad acid trip, but is unquestionably the foundation of what came to be called heavy metal.
Title: All Along The Watchtower
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
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: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Are You Experienced?
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Before the release of Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience the emphasis in rock music (then called pop) was on the 45 RPM single, with albums seen as a luxury item that supplemented an artist's career rather than defined it. Are You Experience helped change all that. The album was not only highly influential, it was a major seller, despite getting virtually no airplay on US top 40 radio. The grand finale of the LP was the title track, which features an array of studio effects, including backwards masked guitar and tape loops. Interestingly enough, the album was originally issued only in a mono version in the UK, with European pressings using a simulated stereo mix. After Reprise bought the rights to release the LP in the US it hired its own engineers to create stereo mixes of the songs from the four-track master tapes.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Still Raining, Still Dreaming, from the third Jimi Hendrix Experience album Electric Ladyland, is the second half of a live studio recording featuring guest drummer Buddy Miles, who would later join Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Band Of Gypsys. The recording also features Mike Finnegan on organ, Freddie Smith on tenor sax and Larry Faucett on congas, as well as Experience member Noel Redding on bass.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast
Source: LP: Atom Heart Mother
Writer(s): Waters/Wright/Mason/Gilmour
Label: Harvest
Year: 1970
Side two of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother LP featured four tracks, one from each member of the band. Since drummer Nick Mason was not generally considered a songwriter, his track, Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, was credited to the entire band. The title refers to Pink Floyd roadie Alan Styles, and features a series of sound recordings of Styles making and eating (and occasionally talking about) breakfast insterspersed with a series of musical interludes. The recording starts and ends with the sound of a faucet dripping, and includes things like bacon frying, rice cereal snap crackle and popping, and plates being shuffled around. The group actually performed the piece live two or three times in 1970.
Artist: Crow
Title: Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me)
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Wagner/Weigand/Weigand
Label: Amaret
Year: 1969
Minneapolis has always had a more active local music scene than one might expect from a medium-sized city in the heart of the snow belt. Many of the city's artists have risen to national prominence, including a band called Crow, who's 1969 single Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me), hit close to the top of the charts in early 1970. The band had been formed in 1967 as South 40, changing its name to Crow right around the same time they signed to Amaret Records in 1969.
Artist: Matadors
Title: Get Down From The Tree
Source: CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Czechoslovakia on LP: Matadors)
Writer(s): Hladik/Sodoma
Label: Rhino (original label: Supraphon)
Year: 1968
When the words "Czechoslovakia" and "1968" come up in the same sentence it is usually in reference to an invasion by the Soviet Union to crack down on dissident elements in the Eastern Bloc satellite nation. No doubt the Matadors, formed in Prague in 1965 as the Fontanas, were among those elements, thanks to self-penned tracks such as Get Down From The Tree, a song that was originally released on an EP in 1967 and re-recorded for their self-titled debut LP. What happened to the Matadors following the Soviet invasion is unknown.
Artist: Vagrants
Title: Beside The Sea
Source: Mono LP: I Can't Make A Friend 1965-1968 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Collins/Pappalardi/Sommer
Label: Light In The Attic (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Although they did not achieve the same degree of national fame as their Long Island contemporaries the Young Rascals and Vanilla Fudge, the Vagrants were quite popular along the eastern seaboard, and ended up releasing several singles on the Atco label before guitarist Leslie Weinstein decided to change his name to West and embark on a solo career. The band had a sound midway between the two aforementioned bands, although, by some accounts, the Vagrants leaned more toward the latter when performing live. Indeed, there are some who claim that Vanilla Fudge actually lifted their sound directly from the Vagrants. In the studio, however, the Vagrants strove for a more commercial sound, as Beside The Sea (co-written by future Mountain member Felix Pappalardi and his wife Janet Collins along with future Woodstock performer Bert Sommer) demonstrates.
Artist: Mouse And The Traps
Title: Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice
Source: Mono British import CD: The Fraternity Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Henderson/Weiss
Label: Big Beat (original label: Fraternity)
Year: 1966
Mouse (Ronnie Weiss) was, for a time, the most popular guy in Tyler, Texas, at least among the local youth. His band, Mouse and the traps, had a series of regional hits that garnered airplay at stations all across the state (and a rather large state at that). Although Mouse's first big hit, A Public Execution, had a strong Dylan feel to it, the band's 1966 followup single Maid Of Sugar-Maid Of Spice, has come to be considered a garage-rock classic.
rtist: Seeds
Title: Pushin' Too Hard
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: The Seeds and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sky Saxon
Label: Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year: 1965
Pushin' Too Hard was originally released as a single in 1965 (under the title You're Pushin' Too Hard), but did not make an immediate impression. The following year the tune started getting some local airplay on Los Angeles area stations. This in turn led to the band recording their first album, The Seeds, which was released in spring of 1966. A second Seeds LP, A Web Of Sound, hit L.A. record stores in the fall of the same year. Meanwhile, Pushin' Too Hard started to get national airplay, hitting its peak position on the Billboard charts in February of 1967.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Hole In My Shoe
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s): Dave Mason
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
Since the 1970s Traffic has been known as Steve Winwood's (and to a lesser degree, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood's) band, but in the early days some of the group's most popular songs were written and sung by co-founder Dave Mason. Hole In My Shoe was a single that received considerable airplay in the UK, despite being disliked by the rest of the band members. As was common practice in the UK at the time, the song was not included on the band's debut album. In the US, however, both Hole In My Shoe and the other then-current Traffic single, Paper Sun, were added to the album, replacing (ironically) a couple of Mason's other tunes.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Empty Pages
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1970
Traffic was formed in 1967 by Steve Winwood, after ending his association with the Spencer Davis Group. The original group, also featuring Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood, put out two and a half albums before disbanding in early 1969. Shortly thereafter, following a successful live reunion album, Welcome to the Canteen, Winwood got to work on what was intended to be his first solo LP. For support Winwood called in Capaldi and Wood to back him up on the project. It soon became apparent, however, that what they were working on was actually a new Traffic album, John Barleycorn Must Die. Although Empty Pages was released as a single (with a mono mix heard here), it got most of its airplay on progressive FM stations, and as those stations were replaced by (or became) album rock stations, the song continued to get extensive airplay for many years.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Source: CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s): Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label: Island (original label: United Artists)
Year: 1967
Heaven Is In Your Mind was, for a short time, the title track of the first Traffic album released in the US. Although the album title was soon changed to Mr. Fantasy to match the European version, the song Heaven Is In Your Mind remained one of the band's most popular early tracks, and has been included on virtually every Traffic compilation ever released. The mono and stereo mixes are noticably different from each other, and even feature entirely different guitar breaks.
Artist: Guess Who
Title: 969 (The Oldest Man)
Source: CD: American Woman
Writer(s): Randy Bachman
Label: Buddha/BMG (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1970
Although Burton Cummings was known primarily for his role as the Guess Who's lead vocalist, he got a chance to strut his stuff instrumentally as a flautist on 969 (The Oldest Man), an instrumental by Randy Bachman. Bachman himself showed a glimpse of the guitar prowess that he would become known for with his next band, Bachman Turner Overdrive, in the mid-1970s on the track.
Artist: John D. Loudermilk
Title: Goin' To Hell On A Sled
Source: LP: The Open Mind Of John D. Loudermilk
Writer(s): John D. Loudermilk
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1969
John D. Loudermilk was one of the most respected songwriters of the 1960s, best known for Tobacco Road, a hit for the Nashville Teens in 1964. In 1969 Loudermilk recorded an album for RCA Victor entitled The Open Mind Of John D. Loudermilk. The album featured songs in a variety of styles. Goin' To Hell On A Sled is a kind of ironic country song that paved the way for later artists such as Jerry Reed or David Allen Coe.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Mickey Newbury
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle wrote most of the songs on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In) (originally released on LP: No Way Out and as 45 RPM single)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk
Writer: McElroy/Bennett
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in fact the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teenspliotation flick the Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.
Artist: Spirit
Title: Free Spirit
Source: CD: Spirit (bonus track)
Writer: John Locke
Label: Ode/Epic/Legacy
Year: 1967
When Spirit entered the recording studio to work on their first album they recorded more music than they could fit on an LP. One of the tracks that got cut from the final lineup was Free Spirit, an instrumental piece written by keyboardist John Locke. Like most of Spirit's early material, Free Spirit incorporates jazz into the band's sound to a much greater degree than on later recordings.
Artist: Spirit
Title: 1984
Source: Mono CD: 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: Spirit
Title: Mechanical World
Source: CD: Spirit
Writer(s): Andes/Ferguson
Label: Ode/Epic/Legacy
Year: 1968
In 1967 the members of Spirit all lived in a large house in Topanga Canyon outside of Los Angeles. During their stay there, bassist Mark Andes came down with a bad case of the flu and was confined to his room for several weeks. During this time Andes was, according to guitarist Randy California, feeling "very depressed and mechanical". Toward the end of Andes's forced isolation, vocalist Jay Ferguson visited him often, and the two of them collaborated on what would become Mechanical World, one of the most sophisticated and complex tracks on Spirit's 1968 debut LP. The song was also included on the band's first "best of" collection a few years later.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Smell of Incense
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer: Markley/Morgan
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
One of the commercially strongest songs on the second West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album for Reprise was Smell of Incense. The length of the track, however, (over five minutes) meant it would never get airplay on AM radio, although England Dan Seals and John Ford Coley took it to the # 56 spot on the charts while still in high school in 1968 with their band Southwest F.O.B.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: I Won't Hurt You
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Part One)
Writer: Harris/Lloyd/Markley
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
Unlike more famous L.A. groups like Love and the Doors, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was not a Sunset Strip club band. In fact, the WCPAEB really didn't play that many live performances in their career, although those they did play tended to be at high profile venues such as the Hollywood Bowl. The band was formed when the Harris brothers, sons of an accomplished classical musician, decided to record their own album and release it on the small Fifa label. Only a few copies of that album, Volume One, were made and finding one now is next to impossible. That might have been the end of the story except for the fact that they were acquaintances of Kim Fowley, the Zelig-like record producer and all-around Hollywood hustler. Fowley invited them to a party where the Yardbirds were playing; a party also attended by one Bob Markley. Markley, who was nearly ten years older than the Harris brothers, was a former TV show host from the midwest who had moved out to the coast to try his luck. Impressed by the flock of young girls surrounding the Yardbirds, Markley expressed to Fowley his desire to be a rock and roll star and have the girls flock around him, too. Fowley, ever the deal-maker, responded by introducing Markley to the Harris Brothers and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band was born. With the addition of guitarist Michael Lloyd and the influence of Markley's not-inconsiderable family money, the group soon landed a contract with Reprise Records, where they proceeded to record the album Part One, which includes the turn I Won't Hurt You, which uses a simulated heartbeat to keep the...umm, beat.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Buddha
Source: LP: Volume II
Writer: Markley/Harris
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Although Bob Markley's lyrics will never win any literary achievement awards, they are memorable in a campy sort of way. A perfect example is Buddha, a track from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album Volume II, which comes across as a childlike impression of a statue of a Buddha, with some adolescent innuendo thrown in.
Artist: Who
Title: I Can't Reach You
Source: 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, and still consider it one of the best Who albums ever made.
Artist: Firesign Theatre
Title: I Was A Cock Teaser For Roosterama
Source: LP: Dear Friends
Writer(s): Proctor/Bergman/Austin/Ossman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
When it comes to counterculture humor, nobody takes a back seat to the Firesign Theatre, who, in addition to recording several albums for the Columbia label, hosted their own radio show, Dear Friends, in 1970. A couple of years later Columbia put out a double-LP album collecting some of the best bits from the show, including I Was A Cock Teaser For Roosterama. Fun stuff.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Elenore
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): The Turtles
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 event that began Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman's eventually metamorphosis into rock parody act Flo and Eddie.
Artist: Black Sabbath
Title: Black Sabbath
Source: German import CD: Black Sabbath
Writer(s): Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label: Creative Sounds (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1970
This track has to hold some kind of record for "firsts". Black Sabbath, by Black Sabbath, from the album Black Sabbath is, after all, the first song from the first album by the first true heavy metal band. The track starts off by immediately setting the mood with the sound of church bells in a rainstorm leading into the song's famous tri-tone (often referred to as the "devil's chord") intro, deliberately constructed to evoke the mood of classic Hollywood horror movies. Ozzy Osborne's vocals only add to the effect. Even the faster-paced final portion of the song has a certain dissonance that had never been heard in rock music before, in part thanks to Black Sabbath's deliberate use of a lower pitch in their basic tuning. The result is something that has sometimes been compared to a bad acid trip, but is unquestionably the foundation of what came to be called heavy metal.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1410 (starts 3/5/14)
I managed to get this one posted on time!
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Think About It
Source: Mono Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Relf/McCarty/Page
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1968
The final Yardbirds record was a single released in early 1968. Although the group made TV appearances in Europe to promote the A side, Good Night Josephine, it is the B side of that record, Think About It, that deserves to be considered the last Yardbirds song. Instrumentally the song sounds a lot like something off of Led Zeppelin's first couple of albums. Once Keith Relf's vocals come in, however, there is no doubt that this is vintage Yardbirds, and quite possibly the best track of the entire Jimmy Page era.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Page/McCarty
Label: Epic
Year: 1967
By 1967 the Yardbirds had moved far away from their blues roots and were on their fourth lead guitarist, studio whiz Jimmy Page. The band had recently picked up a new producer, Mickey Most, known mostly for his work with Herman's Hermits and the original Animals. Most had a tendency to concentrate solely on the band's single A sides, leaving Page an opportunity to develop his own songwriting and production skills on songs such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, a track that also shows signs of Page's innovative guitar style that would help define 70s rock.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Puzzles
Source: Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Page/McCarty/Relf
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
The 1967 single Little Games/Puzzles was typical of the late period Yardbirds releases in that the A side, produced by Mickey Most, was a somewhat poppish tune from outside songwriters, with the B side featuring a song composed by the band, and, in fact if not in name, produced by guitarist Jimmy Page. As such, Puzzles featured an almost Led Zeppelin sounding guitar break that does not entirely mesh with the rest of the song. By the 1969 debut of Zeppelin, Page had solved that by making the songs themselves heavier and more in tune with his guitar style.
Artist: Catfish Knight And The Blue Express
Title: Deathwish
Source: CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): J. Knight
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Verve)
Year: 1968
A fairly common practice in the mid-1960s was for a producer to sign a new band and assign them to record a song of his own choosing. In fact, the producer often already had the song in mind before finding a band to record it. That song would then be issued as a single, with the band itself being allowed to choose and record the B side. Such is the likely case with Deathwish, a truly manic B side form a group called Catfish Knight And The Blue Express. Virtually nothing is known about the band itself, and the A side of the record, from what I have heard, was pretty lame in comparison to Deathwish.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Good Times
Source: LP: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dreaming
Source: LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
Although Cream recorded several songs that bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce co-wrote with various lyricists (notably poet Pete Brown), there were relatively few that Bruce himself wrote words for. One of these is Dreaming, a song from the band's first LP that features both Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton on lead vocals. Dreaming is also one of the shortest Cream songs on record, clocking in at one second under two minutes in length.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Let Me Be
Source: CD: 20 Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: It Ain't Me Babe and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): P.F. Sloan
Label: Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1965
The Turtles were nothing if not able to redefine themselves when the need arose. Originally a surf band known as the Crossfires, the band quickly adopted an "angry young men" stance with their first single, Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, and the subsequent album of the same name. For the follow-up single the band chose a track from their album, Let Me Be, that, although written by a different writer, had the same general message as It Ain't Me Babe. The band would soon switch over to love songs like You Baby and Happy Together before taking their whole chameleon bit to its logical extreme with an album called Battle Of The Bands on which each track was meant to sound like it was done by an entirely different band.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Mother's Little Helper
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1966
By 1966 the Rolling Stones had already had a few brushes with the law over their use of illegal drugs. Mother's Little Helper, released in spring of 1966, is a scathing criticism of the parents of the Stones' fans for their habitual abuse of "legal" prescription drugs while simultaneously persecuting those same fans (and the band itself) for smoking pot. Perhaps more than any other song that year, Mother's Little Helper illustrates the increasingly hostile generation gap that had sprung up between the young baby boomers and the previous generation.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Purple Haze
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Purple Haze has one of the most convoluted release histories of any song ever recorded. Originally issued in the UK as a single, it scored high on the British charts. When Reprise got the rights to release the first Hendrix album, Are You Experienced?, they chose to replace the first track on the album with Purple Haze, moving the original opening track, Foxy Lady, to side two of the LP. The song next appeared on the Smash Hits album, which in Europe was on the Polydor label. This was the way things stayed until the early 1990s, when MCA acquired the rights to the Hendrix catalog and re-issued Are You Experienced? with the tracks restored to the UK ordering, but preceded by the six non-album sides (including Purple Haze) that had originally been released prior to the album. Most recently, the Hendrix Family Trust has again changed labels and the US version of Are You Experienced? is once again in print, this time on Sony's Legacy label. This means that Purple Haze (heard here in its original mono mix) has now been released by all three of the world's major record companies. That's right. There are only three major record companies left in the entire world, Sony (which owns Columbia and RCA, among others), Warner Brothers (which owns Elektra, Atlantic, Reprise and others) and Universal (which started off as MCA and now, as the world's largest record company, owns far too many current and former labels to list here). Don't you just love out of control corporate consolidation?
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: In The Country
Source: CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
By 1968, several bands, particularly in southern California, were starting to incorporate elements of country music into what were otherwise rock recordings. Some, like the Byrds and Poco, ended up being recognized as pioneers of what came to be known as country-rock. Others, such as L.A.'s West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, merely flirted with the idea on tracks such as In The Country on their fourth LP, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. By this point, conflicts within the band were starting to take their toll, and combined with a decided lack of commercial success, led to the band losing its contract with Reprise Records and falling into obscurity before finally calling it quits in 1970.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Reasons For Waiting
Source: LP: Stand Up
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
Strictly speaking, Reasons For Waiting, from the Stand Up album, is not a Jethro Tull piece. Rather, it is an Ian Anderson solo work with orchestration. This was quite a departure from the first Tull album, which was (like most debut albums) made up of songs already in the group's live performance repertoire (the exception being Mick Abrahams's Move On Along, which in addition to having Abrahams on lead vocals, added a horn section).
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Oh, Sweet Mary
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Albin/Andrew/Getz/Gurley/Joplin
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
The only song credited to the entire membership of Big Brother And The Holding Company on their Cheap Thrills album was Oh, Sweet Mary (although some copies credit Janis Joplin as sole writer). The tune bears a strong resemblance to Coo Coo, a non-album single the band had released on the Mainstream label before signing to Columbia. Oh, Sweet Mary, however, has new lyrics and a "dreamy" bridge section played at a slower tempo than the rest of the tune.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Today
Source: Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Balin/Kantner
Label: Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to Today, an early collaboration between rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and bandleader Marty Balin on Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow.
Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Light Bulb Blues
Source: CD: Gloria (also released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Kelley/Sohns/McGeorge
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Following the national success of their cover of Van Morrison's Gloria, Chicago's Shadows Of Knight returned to the studio to cut a cover of a Bo Diddley tune, Oh Yeah. For the B side of that record the band was allowed to record one of their own compositions. Light Bulb Blues captures the essence of the Shadows' style: hard-driving garage/punk that follows a traditional 12-bar blues progression. The result is a track that sounds a bit like a twisted variation on Muddy Waters's classic Rollin' And Tumblin'.
Artist: Byrds
Title: The Times They Are A-Changin' (first version)
Source: Mono CD: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1965
In their early days the Byrds established themselves as the premier interpreters of Bob Dylan songs, helping to popularize the folk-rock movement in the process. In fact, the band's first two singles were covers of Dylan songs, and the group fully intended on recording and releasing a third Dylan-penned single as late as mid-1965. On June 28th the band recorded two Dylan songs: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and The Times They Are A-Changin'. Neither recording was issued, although a later recording of The Times They Are A-Changin' appeared on the band's second LP, Turn! Turn! Turn!
Artist: Manfred Mann
Title: Do Wah Diddy Diddy
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Barry/Greenwich
Label: Silver Spotlight
Year: 1964
Manfred Mann started off as the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers and were part of the same London British blues scene as the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones. In 1964 they took a decidedly commercial turn with one of the silliest, yet memorable hits of the British invasion, Do Wah Diddy Diddy. The song was written by the husband and wife team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, who operated out of New York's Brill building under the supervision of Don Kirschner. Do Wah Diddy Diddy, with lead vocals by Paul Jones, topped the charts for several weeks and ended up among the top 10 songs of 1965.
Artist: Fire Birds
Title: No Tomorrows
Source: CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released on LP: Light My Fire)
Writer(s): Firebirds
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Crown)
Year: 1969
Throughout the 50s and 60s there were literally hundreds of budget labels that made their fortunes fooling record buyers into thinking they were getting hit records at a discounted price, when in reality they were getting cheap cover versions by uncredited and underpaid studio musicians. One of the most successful of these budget labels was Crown, a label created in 1953 by the Bahari Brothers which specialized in low-priced LPs spotlighting either a specific genre (polka, blues, gospel, etc.) or a particular artist via a tribute album that did not include any recordings by the actual artist. In 1969 Crown released a pair of hard psychedelic LPs: Hair, by 31 Flavors, and Light My Fire, by the Firebirds. In reality, they were both by the same band, rumored to be a local Los Angeles group that was not actually called either the Firebirds or 31 Flavors. Unlike most Crown releases, however, these two albums featured original material such as No Tomorrow that would not have been out of place beside albums by Blue Cheer or early Grand Funk Railroad.
Artist: Second Helping
Title: Floating Downstream On An Inflatable Rubber Raft
Source: Mono LP: Ain't It Hard (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Kenny Loggins
Label: Sundazed (original label: Viva)
Year: 1968
Among the handful of bands recording for Snuff Garrett's Viva label in 1967-68 was a group called the Second Helping. The band is best remembered as the support group for a teenaged Kenny Loggins, who wrote and sang all of the band's material, including Floating Downstream On An Inflatable Rubber Raft, which was released as a single in 1968.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: Heroes And Villains (alternate take)
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: Smiley Smile/Wild Honey)
Writer(s): Wilson/Parks
Label: Rhino
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1995
The last major Beach Boys hit of the 1960s was Heroes And Villains, released as a follow-up to Good Vibrations in early 1967. The song was intended to be part of the Smile album, but ended up being released as a single in an entirely different form than Brian Wilson originally intended. Eventually the entire Smile project was cancelled, and a considerably less sophisticated album called Smiley Smile was released in its place. Nearly 30 years later Smiley Smile and its follow-up album, Wild Honey, were released on compact disc as a set. One of the bonus tracks in that set was this alternate version of Heroes And Villains, which is now believed to be the version that would have been included on Smile had it been completed.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Bass Strings
Source: Simulated stereo LP: The Life And Times Of Country Joe And The Fish (originally released as EP included in Rag Baby newspaper # 2)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1966
One of the more original ways to get one's music heard is to publish an underground arts-oriented newspaper and include a pullout flexi-disc in it. Country Joe and the Fish did just that; not once, but twice. The first one was split with another artist and featured the original recording of the I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag. The second Rag Baby EP, released in 1966, was all Fish, and featured two tracks that would be re-recorded for their debut LP the following year. In addition to the instrumental Section 43, the EP included a four-minute version of Bass Strings, a track with decidedly psychedelic lyrics.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
While not as commercially successful as the Airplane or as long-lived as the Dead (there's an oxymoron for ya), Country Joe and the Fish may well be the most accurate musical representation of what the whole Haight-Ashbury scene was about, which is itself ironic, since the band operated out of Berkeley on the other side of the bay. Of all the tracks on their first album, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine probably got the most airplay on various underground radio stations that were popping up on the FM dial at the time (some of them even legally).
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Flying High
Source: LP: The Life And Times Of Country Joe And The Fish (originally released on LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Any guesses to what a song called Flying High from an album called Electric Music For The Mind And Body by Country Joe And The Fish released in 1967 might be about? I thought not.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Two Trains Running
Source: LP: Projections
Writer(s): McKinley Morganfield
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Possibly the most influential (yet least known outside of musicians' circles) band of the Psychedelic Era was the Blues Project. Formed in 1965 in Greenwich Village, the band worked its way from coast to coast playing mostly college campuses, in the process blazing a path that continues to be followed by underground/progressive/alternative artists. As if founding the whole college circuit wasn't enough, they were arguably the very first jam band, as their version of the Muddy Waters classic Two Trains Running shows. Among those drawing their inspiration from the Blues Project were the Warlocks, a group of young musicians who were traveling with Ken Kesey on the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test tour bus. The Warlocks would soon change their name to the Grateful Dead and take the jam band concept to a whole new level. Still, they may never have moved in that direction at all if it weren't for the Blues Project.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: From Here To There Eventually
Source: LP: Monster
Writer: Kay/McJohn/Edmonton
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1969
The final track of Steppenwolf's fourth LP, Monster, is a perfect example of the band's typical hard-driving beat and John Kay's distinctive vocal style. The album itself is generally considered to be Steppenwolf's most blatantly political.
Artist: Doors
Title: Five To One
Source: CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: 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: Adrian Pride
Title: Her Name Is Melody
Source: Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Schwartz/Slater
Label: Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1967
Seriously? You've never heard of Adrian Pride? How about Don Atello? Bernie Ballantine? The Comfortable Chair? No? These are all names used by Bernie Schwartz, either as a solo artist or with a band (you can probably figure out which one that was). After recording a few self-penned singles in the early 60s, Schwartz came to the attention of the Everly Brothers, who in turn got him signed to Warner Brothers Records, at that time a medium-sized label owned by a large Hollywood movie studio. Schwartz recorded a pair of singles, the second of which was Her Name Was Melody, before forming the Comfortable Chair. Interestingly, Schwartz later claimed that, although he received a songwriting credit for the tune, it was actually written by Don Everly and Terry Slater. Schwartz eventually retired from music and became an author of such self-help books as A Guide To Fashionable Psychological Disorders and Are You A Newrotic?
Artist: Standells
Title: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets
Writer: Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
The Standells were probably the most successful band to record for the Tower label (not counting Pink Floyd, whose first LP was issued, in modified form, on the label after being recorded in England). Besides their big hit Dirty Water, they hit the charts with other tunes such as Why Pick On Me, Try It, and the punk classic Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. All but Try It were written by producer Ed Cobb, who has to be considered the most prolific punk-rock songwriter of the 60s, having also written some of the Chocolate Watch Band's best stuff as well.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Flying On The Ground Is Wrong
Source: CD: Buffalo Springfield
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
It's a fact: the people at Atco Records thought Neil Young's voice was "too weird" to record, and insisted that fellow Buffalo Springfield member Richie Furay sing his songs instead of Young himself. Among the Young tunes sung by Furay on the first Buffalo Springfield album is Flying On The Ground Is Wrong. By the time the band got around to recording a second LP things had changed a bit and Young sang his own material.
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: Beacon Street Union
Title: Green Destroys The Gold
Source: CD: The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union
Writer: Wayne Ulaky
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
The Beacon Street Union found itself handicapped by being signed to M-G-M and being promoted as part of the "boss-town sound." The problem was that there was no "boss-town sound", any more than there was a San Francisco sound or an L.A sound (there is a Long Island Sound, but that has nothing to do with music). In fact, the only legitimate "sound" of the time was the "Motown Sound", and that was confined to a single record company that achieved a consistent sound through the use of the same studio musicians on virtually every recording. What made the situation even more ironic for the Beacon Street Union was that by the time their first LP came out they had relocated to New York City anyway. If there is a New York sound, it has more to do with traffic than music. None of which has anything to do specifically with the song Green Destroys The Gold, which was written by the band's bass player, Wayne Ulaky, and included on their debut album The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Think About It
Source: Mono Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Relf/McCarty/Page
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1968
The final Yardbirds record was a single released in early 1968. Although the group made TV appearances in Europe to promote the A side, Good Night Josephine, it is the B side of that record, Think About It, that deserves to be considered the last Yardbirds song. Instrumentally the song sounds a lot like something off of Led Zeppelin's first couple of albums. Once Keith Relf's vocals come in, however, there is no doubt that this is vintage Yardbirds, and quite possibly the best track of the entire Jimmy Page era.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Page/McCarty
Label: Epic
Year: 1967
By 1967 the Yardbirds had moved far away from their blues roots and were on their fourth lead guitarist, studio whiz Jimmy Page. The band had recently picked up a new producer, Mickey Most, known mostly for his work with Herman's Hermits and the original Animals. Most had a tendency to concentrate solely on the band's single A sides, leaving Page an opportunity to develop his own songwriting and production skills on songs such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, a track that also shows signs of Page's innovative guitar style that would help define 70s rock.
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Puzzles
Source: Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Page/McCarty/Relf
Label: Raven (original label: Epic)
Year: 1967
The 1967 single Little Games/Puzzles was typical of the late period Yardbirds releases in that the A side, produced by Mickey Most, was a somewhat poppish tune from outside songwriters, with the B side featuring a song composed by the band, and, in fact if not in name, produced by guitarist Jimmy Page. As such, Puzzles featured an almost Led Zeppelin sounding guitar break that does not entirely mesh with the rest of the song. By the 1969 debut of Zeppelin, Page had solved that by making the songs themselves heavier and more in tune with his guitar style.
Artist: Catfish Knight And The Blue Express
Title: Deathwish
Source: CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): J. Knight
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Verve)
Year: 1968
A fairly common practice in the mid-1960s was for a producer to sign a new band and assign them to record a song of his own choosing. In fact, the producer often already had the song in mind before finding a band to record it. That song would then be issued as a single, with the band itself being allowed to choose and record the B side. Such is the likely case with Deathwish, a truly manic B side form a group called Catfish Knight And The Blue Express. Virtually nothing is known about the band itself, and the A side of the record, from what I have heard, was pretty lame in comparison to Deathwish.
Artist: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Good Times
Source: LP: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1967
By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dreaming
Source: LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
Although Cream recorded several songs that bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce co-wrote with various lyricists (notably poet Pete Brown), there were relatively few that Bruce himself wrote words for. One of these is Dreaming, a song from the band's first LP that features both Bruce and guitarist Eric Clapton on lead vocals. Dreaming is also one of the shortest Cream songs on record, clocking in at one second under two minutes in length.
Artist: Turtles
Title: Let Me Be
Source: CD: 20 Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: It Ain't Me Babe and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): P.F. Sloan
Label: Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year: 1965
The Turtles were nothing if not able to redefine themselves when the need arose. Originally a surf band known as the Crossfires, the band quickly adopted an "angry young men" stance with their first single, Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, and the subsequent album of the same name. For the follow-up single the band chose a track from their album, Let Me Be, that, although written by a different writer, had the same general message as It Ain't Me Babe. The band would soon switch over to love songs like You Baby and Happy Together before taking their whole chameleon bit to its logical extreme with an album called Battle Of The Bands on which each track was meant to sound like it was done by an entirely different band.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Mother's Little Helper
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1966
By 1966 the Rolling Stones had already had a few brushes with the law over their use of illegal drugs. Mother's Little Helper, released in spring of 1966, is a scathing criticism of the parents of the Stones' fans for their habitual abuse of "legal" prescription drugs while simultaneously persecuting those same fans (and the band itself) for smoking pot. Perhaps more than any other song that year, Mother's Little Helper illustrates the increasingly hostile generation gap that had sprung up between the young baby boomers and the previous generation.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Purple Haze
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
Purple Haze has one of the most convoluted release histories of any song ever recorded. Originally issued in the UK as a single, it scored high on the British charts. When Reprise got the rights to release the first Hendrix album, Are You Experienced?, they chose to replace the first track on the album with Purple Haze, moving the original opening track, Foxy Lady, to side two of the LP. The song next appeared on the Smash Hits album, which in Europe was on the Polydor label. This was the way things stayed until the early 1990s, when MCA acquired the rights to the Hendrix catalog and re-issued Are You Experienced? with the tracks restored to the UK ordering, but preceded by the six non-album sides (including Purple Haze) that had originally been released prior to the album. Most recently, the Hendrix Family Trust has again changed labels and the US version of Are You Experienced? is once again in print, this time on Sony's Legacy label. This means that Purple Haze (heard here in its original mono mix) has now been released by all three of the world's major record companies. That's right. There are only three major record companies left in the entire world, Sony (which owns Columbia and RCA, among others), Warner Brothers (which owns Elektra, Atlantic, Reprise and others) and Universal (which started off as MCA and now, as the world's largest record company, owns far too many current and former labels to list here). Don't you just love out of control corporate consolidation?
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: In The Country
Source: CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Markley/Harris
Label: Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
By 1968, several bands, particularly in southern California, were starting to incorporate elements of country music into what were otherwise rock recordings. Some, like the Byrds and Poco, ended up being recognized as pioneers of what came to be known as country-rock. Others, such as L.A.'s West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, merely flirted with the idea on tracks such as In The Country on their fourth LP, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil. By this point, conflicts within the band were starting to take their toll, and combined with a decided lack of commercial success, led to the band losing its contract with Reprise Records and falling into obscurity before finally calling it quits in 1970.
Artist: Jethro Tull
Title: Reasons For Waiting
Source: LP: Stand Up
Writer(s): Ian Anderson
Label: Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
Strictly speaking, Reasons For Waiting, from the Stand Up album, is not a Jethro Tull piece. Rather, it is an Ian Anderson solo work with orchestration. This was quite a departure from the first Tull album, which was (like most debut albums) made up of songs already in the group's live performance repertoire (the exception being Mick Abrahams's Move On Along, which in addition to having Abrahams on lead vocals, added a horn section).
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Oh, Sweet Mary
Source: CD: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Albin/Andrew/Getz/Gurley/Joplin
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
The only song credited to the entire membership of Big Brother And The Holding Company on their Cheap Thrills album was Oh, Sweet Mary (although some copies credit Janis Joplin as sole writer). The tune bears a strong resemblance to Coo Coo, a non-album single the band had released on the Mainstream label before signing to Columbia. Oh, Sweet Mary, however, has new lyrics and a "dreamy" bridge section played at a slower tempo than the rest of the tune.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Today
Source: Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Balin/Kantner
Label: Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year: 1967
Uncredited guest guitarist Jerry Garcia adds a simple, but memorable recurring fill riff to Today, an early collaboration between rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and bandleader Marty Balin on Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow.
Artist: Shadows of Knight
Title: Light Bulb Blues
Source: CD: Gloria (also released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Kelley/Sohns/McGeorge
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Following the national success of their cover of Van Morrison's Gloria, Chicago's Shadows Of Knight returned to the studio to cut a cover of a Bo Diddley tune, Oh Yeah. For the B side of that record the band was allowed to record one of their own compositions. Light Bulb Blues captures the essence of the Shadows' style: hard-driving garage/punk that follows a traditional 12-bar blues progression. The result is a track that sounds a bit like a twisted variation on Muddy Waters's classic Rollin' And Tumblin'.
Artist: Byrds
Title: The Times They Are A-Changin' (first version)
Source: Mono CD: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1965
In their early days the Byrds established themselves as the premier interpreters of Bob Dylan songs, helping to popularize the folk-rock movement in the process. In fact, the band's first two singles were covers of Dylan songs, and the group fully intended on recording and releasing a third Dylan-penned single as late as mid-1965. On June 28th the band recorded two Dylan songs: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and The Times They Are A-Changin'. Neither recording was issued, although a later recording of The Times They Are A-Changin' appeared on the band's second LP, Turn! Turn! Turn!
Artist: Manfred Mann
Title: Do Wah Diddy Diddy
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Barry/Greenwich
Label: Silver Spotlight
Year: 1964
Manfred Mann started off as the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers and were part of the same London British blues scene as the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones. In 1964 they took a decidedly commercial turn with one of the silliest, yet memorable hits of the British invasion, Do Wah Diddy Diddy. The song was written by the husband and wife team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, who operated out of New York's Brill building under the supervision of Don Kirschner. Do Wah Diddy Diddy, with lead vocals by Paul Jones, topped the charts for several weeks and ended up among the top 10 songs of 1965.
Artist: Fire Birds
Title: No Tomorrows
Source: CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released on LP: Light My Fire)
Writer(s): Firebirds
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Crown)
Year: 1969
Throughout the 50s and 60s there were literally hundreds of budget labels that made their fortunes fooling record buyers into thinking they were getting hit records at a discounted price, when in reality they were getting cheap cover versions by uncredited and underpaid studio musicians. One of the most successful of these budget labels was Crown, a label created in 1953 by the Bahari Brothers which specialized in low-priced LPs spotlighting either a specific genre (polka, blues, gospel, etc.) or a particular artist via a tribute album that did not include any recordings by the actual artist. In 1969 Crown released a pair of hard psychedelic LPs: Hair, by 31 Flavors, and Light My Fire, by the Firebirds. In reality, they were both by the same band, rumored to be a local Los Angeles group that was not actually called either the Firebirds or 31 Flavors. Unlike most Crown releases, however, these two albums featured original material such as No Tomorrow that would not have been out of place beside albums by Blue Cheer or early Grand Funk Railroad.
Artist: Second Helping
Title: Floating Downstream On An Inflatable Rubber Raft
Source: Mono LP: Ain't It Hard (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Kenny Loggins
Label: Sundazed (original label: Viva)
Year: 1968
Among the handful of bands recording for Snuff Garrett's Viva label in 1967-68 was a group called the Second Helping. The band is best remembered as the support group for a teenaged Kenny Loggins, who wrote and sang all of the band's material, including Floating Downstream On An Inflatable Rubber Raft, which was released as a single in 1968.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: Heroes And Villains (alternate take)
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: Smiley Smile/Wild Honey)
Writer(s): Wilson/Parks
Label: Rhino
Year: Recorded 1967, released 1995
The last major Beach Boys hit of the 1960s was Heroes And Villains, released as a follow-up to Good Vibrations in early 1967. The song was intended to be part of the Smile album, but ended up being released as a single in an entirely different form than Brian Wilson originally intended. Eventually the entire Smile project was cancelled, and a considerably less sophisticated album called Smiley Smile was released in its place. Nearly 30 years later Smiley Smile and its follow-up album, Wild Honey, were released on compact disc as a set. One of the bonus tracks in that set was this alternate version of Heroes And Villains, which is now believed to be the version that would have been included on Smile had it been completed.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Bass Strings
Source: Simulated stereo LP: The Life And Times Of Country Joe And The Fish (originally released as EP included in Rag Baby newspaper # 2)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1966
One of the more original ways to get one's music heard is to publish an underground arts-oriented newspaper and include a pullout flexi-disc in it. Country Joe and the Fish did just that; not once, but twice. The first one was split with another artist and featured the original recording of the I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag. The second Rag Baby EP, released in 1966, was all Fish, and featured two tracks that would be re-recorded for their debut LP the following year. In addition to the instrumental Section 43, the EP included a four-minute version of Bass Strings, a track with decidedly psychedelic lyrics.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Source: CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
While not as commercially successful as the Airplane or as long-lived as the Dead (there's an oxymoron for ya), Country Joe and the Fish may well be the most accurate musical representation of what the whole Haight-Ashbury scene was about, which is itself ironic, since the band operated out of Berkeley on the other side of the bay. Of all the tracks on their first album, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine probably got the most airplay on various underground radio stations that were popping up on the FM dial at the time (some of them even legally).
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Flying High
Source: LP: The Life And Times Of Country Joe And The Fish (originally released on LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body)
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Any guesses to what a song called Flying High from an album called Electric Music For The Mind And Body by Country Joe And The Fish released in 1967 might be about? I thought not.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Two Trains Running
Source: LP: Projections
Writer(s): McKinley Morganfield
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Possibly the most influential (yet least known outside of musicians' circles) band of the Psychedelic Era was the Blues Project. Formed in 1965 in Greenwich Village, the band worked its way from coast to coast playing mostly college campuses, in the process blazing a path that continues to be followed by underground/progressive/alternative artists. As if founding the whole college circuit wasn't enough, they were arguably the very first jam band, as their version of the Muddy Waters classic Two Trains Running shows. Among those drawing their inspiration from the Blues Project were the Warlocks, a group of young musicians who were traveling with Ken Kesey on the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test tour bus. The Warlocks would soon change their name to the Grateful Dead and take the jam band concept to a whole new level. Still, they may never have moved in that direction at all if it weren't for the Blues Project.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: From Here To There Eventually
Source: LP: Monster
Writer: Kay/McJohn/Edmonton
Label: Dunhill
Year: 1969
The final track of Steppenwolf's fourth LP, Monster, is a perfect example of the band's typical hard-driving beat and John Kay's distinctive vocal style. The album itself is generally considered to be Steppenwolf's most blatantly political.
Artist: Doors
Title: Five To One
Source: CD: The Best Of The Doors (originally released on LP: 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: Adrian Pride
Title: Her Name Is Melody
Source: Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Schwartz/Slater
Label: Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year: 1967
Seriously? You've never heard of Adrian Pride? How about Don Atello? Bernie Ballantine? The Comfortable Chair? No? These are all names used by Bernie Schwartz, either as a solo artist or with a band (you can probably figure out which one that was). After recording a few self-penned singles in the early 60s, Schwartz came to the attention of the Everly Brothers, who in turn got him signed to Warner Brothers Records, at that time a medium-sized label owned by a large Hollywood movie studio. Schwartz recorded a pair of singles, the second of which was Her Name Was Melody, before forming the Comfortable Chair. Interestingly, Schwartz later claimed that, although he received a songwriting credit for the tune, it was actually written by Don Everly and Terry Slater. Schwartz eventually retired from music and became an author of such self-help books as A Guide To Fashionable Psychological Disorders and Are You A Newrotic?
Artist: Standells
Title: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Source: Mono CD: More Nuggets
Writer: Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
The Standells were probably the most successful band to record for the Tower label (not counting Pink Floyd, whose first LP was issued, in modified form, on the label after being recorded in England). Besides their big hit Dirty Water, they hit the charts with other tunes such as Why Pick On Me, Try It, and the punk classic Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White. All but Try It were written by producer Ed Cobb, who has to be considered the most prolific punk-rock songwriter of the 60s, having also written some of the Chocolate Watch Band's best stuff as well.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Flying On The Ground Is Wrong
Source: CD: Buffalo Springfield
Writer(s): Neil Young
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
It's a fact: the people at Atco Records thought Neil Young's voice was "too weird" to record, and insisted that fellow Buffalo Springfield member Richie Furay sing his songs instead of Young himself. Among the Young tunes sung by Furay on the first Buffalo Springfield album is Flying On The Ground Is Wrong. By the time the band got around to recording a second LP things had changed a bit and Young sang his own material.
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: Beacon Street Union
Title: Green Destroys The Gold
Source: CD: The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union
Writer: Wayne Ulaky
Label: See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
The Beacon Street Union found itself handicapped by being signed to M-G-M and being promoted as part of the "boss-town sound." The problem was that there was no "boss-town sound", any more than there was a San Francisco sound or an L.A sound (there is a Long Island Sound, but that has nothing to do with music). In fact, the only legitimate "sound" of the time was the "Motown Sound", and that was confined to a single record company that achieved a consistent sound through the use of the same studio musicians on virtually every recording. What made the situation even more ironic for the Beacon Street Union was that by the time their first LP came out they had relocated to New York City anyway. If there is a New York sound, it has more to do with traffic than music. None of which has anything to do specifically with the song Green Destroys The Gold, which was written by the band's bass player, Wayne Ulaky, and included on their debut album The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1409 (starts 2/26/14)
Apologies for the late posting this week. Before getting into this week's playlist I thought it might be time to once again explain the mono/stereo thing in the "source" category. Simply put, LPs and CDs used for Stuck in the Psychedelic Era are in stereo unless otherwise noted. 45s, on the other hand, are mono unless otherwise noted. This is because, until the early 1970s virtually all 45s were only available in mono. Hope that's not too confusing.
Artist: Otis Redding
Title: Respect
Source: Mono CD: The Very Best Of Otis Redding (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Otis Redding
Label: Rhino (original label: Volt)
Year: 1965
Although there have been literally hundreds of cover songs recorded over the years, relatively few have held up under comparison to the original versions. Even rarer are covers that actually surpass the originals. Most unique, however, is the song with not one, but two truly outstanding recordings by different artists. Such is the case with Otis Redding's Respect. Aretha Franklin's 1967 version of the song is rightly considered to be one of the most important recordings ever made, both as a rallying cry for the women's movement and as the recording that established Franklin as the undisputed queen of soul. But Otis Redding's original 1965 version of Respect, judged strictly on its own merits, has to be considered one of the best Rhythm and Blues records ever made. In addition to Redding's outstanding vocals, the track features the classic Memphis Group rhythm section (Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Phil Jackson and Booker T. Jones) along with the Bar-Kays on horns.
Artist: Hollies
Title: Look Through Any Window
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Gouldman/Silverman
Label: Imperial
Year: 1965
Although the Hollies were far more popular in their native England than in the US, they did have their fair share of North American hits. The first Hollies tune to crack the US top 40 was Look Through Any Window, released in December of 1965 and peaking at #33 in early 1966. The song did even better in Canada, going all the way to the #3 spot.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Let's Spend The Night Together
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
Most people today can't even imagine how much power Ed Sullivan had in the early to mid 1960s. Case in point. The Rolling Stones were scheduled to make an appearance on Sullivan's Sunday Evening variety show in early 1967. The band's current hit at the time was Let's Spend The Night Together. Sullivan, however, objected to the song's title and asked Mick Jagger to change the lyrics to "Let's Spend Some Time Together." Jagger complied with Sullivan's request. Can you imagine anyone telling Jagger to change his lyrics now?
Artist: Love Sculpture
Title: Blues Helping
Source: British import CD: Blues Helping
Writer(s): Williams/Edmunds/Jones
Label: EMI (original label: Parlophone)
Year: 1968
When the name Dave Edmunds comes up, it is usually in association with an early 70s remake of the classic Fats Domino tune I Hear You Knockin'. What many people are not aware of, however, is that Edmunds was a major force on the late 60s British blues scene with his band Love Sculpture. The title track of that band's debut LP, Blues Helping, showcases Edmunds's prowess as a guitarist (as does the rest of the album).
Artist: Bubble Puppy
Title: Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source: European import CD: A Gathering Of Promises
Writer(s): Prince/Cox/Potter/Fore
Label: Charly (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1969
Bubble Puppy was a band from San Antonio, Texas that relocated to nearby Austin and signed a contract with International Artists, a label already known as the home of legendary Texas psychedelic bands 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola. The group hit the national top 20 with Hot Smoke and Sassafras, a song that was originally intended to be a B side, in 1969. Not long after the release of their first LP, A Gathering Or Promises, the band relocated to California and changed their name to Demian, at least in part to disassociate themselves with the then-popular "bubble gum" style (but also because of problems with International Artists).
Artist: Wet Paint
Title: Glass Road
Source: CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wild Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Wet Paint
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Onyx)
Year: 1968
Although most of the bands recording in the state of Massachusetts used studios in Boston, there were some exceptions. One such case was a band called Wet Paint, who recorded at Eastern Sounds Recordings in Metheun. Eastern even had its own in-house record label, Onyx, which is where Glass Road was released in 1968.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Somebody To Love
Source: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Darby Slick
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
Jefferson Airplane's Somebody To Love is, of course, the monster hit that put the San Francisco Bay area on the musical map in early 1967, touching off an exodus of young hippie wannabees from all over the country that converged on the city's Haight-Ashbury district that summer. Interestingly enough, Somebody To Love was not the first single released from the band's Surrealistic Pillow album. That honor goes to My Best Friend, a song written by the band's former drummer Skip Spence.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: May This Be Love
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The original UK version of Are You Experienced featured May This Be Love as the opening track of side two of the album. In the US, the UK single The Wind Cries Mary was substituted for it, with May This Be Love buried deep on side one.
It's obvious that Hendrix thought more highly of the song than the people at Reprise who picked the track order for the US album.
Artist: Butterfield Blues Band
Title: Lovin' Cup
Source: Mono LP: What's Shakin'
Writer(s): Paul Butterfield
Label: Sundazed (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
The path to the first Butterfield Blues Band album was anything but an easy one. The band made its first attempt at recording in the studio in 1964, but nobody was happy with the results and the tapes were shelved. The band then tried recording a live performance at a local New York City club, but, although the gig did wonders for the band's reputation the band was still not satisfied with the recording, and that, too, was scrapped. Finally, in early 1965, the group went back into the studio to record what became the album called The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Meanwhile, Elektra Records president Jac Holzman had released an anthology album called Folk Song '65 that included one of the songs from the first Butterfield studio sessions. The success of Folk Song '65 (due in large part to the inclusion of the Butterfield track) prompted Holzman to create a follow-up LP, What's Shakin', that was more blues oriented than the first anthology. What's Shakin' included five more Butterfield tracks from the 1964 sessions, including a Paul Butterfield original composition called Lovin' Cup.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: She's Coming Home
Source: CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer: Atkins/Miller
Label: Mercury
Year: 1966
Generally speaking, cheatin' songs in 1966 were considered the province of country music. The few exceptions, such as Paul Revere and the Raiders' Steppin' Out, were all told from the victim's point of view. The Blues Magoos, however, turned the entire thing upside down with She's Coming Home, a song about having to break up with one's new girlfriend in the face of the old one returning from...(prison, military duty? The lyrics never make that clear). The unusual nature of the song is in keeping
with the cutting edge image of a band that was among the first to use the word psychedelic in an album title and almost certainly was the first to wear electric suits onstage.
Artist: Chris And Craig
Title: Isha
Source: Mono import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Chris Ducey
Label: Zonophone UK (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
Before the Monkees, there were the Happeners...almost. In 1965, college student Chris Ducey and singer/songwriter Craig Smith were chosen to play a folk-rock duo on a TV show. Although the show itself never made it past pre-production, the two did record a single for Capitol Records, the Ducey-penned Isha, before going their separate ways. Craig Smith auditioned for yet another TV show the following year, but was not one of the four young men chosen to become the Monkees. He did, however, strike up a friendship with fellow applicant Michael Nesmith, who would end up recording one of Smith's songs, Salesman, and later produce Smith's new band, Penny Arkade. Ducey, meanwhile, became a bizarre early victim of identity theft. Folk singer Bobby Jameson, for reasons unknown, recorded an entire album using not only Ducey's name, but his song titles as well. The real Ducey hasn't been heard from since.
Artist: Mother Earth
Title: Ruler Of My Heart
Source: LP: Satisfied
Writer(s): N. Levell
Label: Mercury
Year: 1970
Despite never being a major commercial success, the band Mother Earth, led by vocalist/guitarist Tracy Nelson, was highly regarded by musicians and progressive FM radio people alike, resulting in the band getting just enough airplay to keep recording albums throughout the late 60s and early 70s. Ruler Of My Heart, from the 1970 LP Satisfied, is fairly typical of the Mother Earth approach to the blues.
Artist: Norman Greenbaum
Title: Spirit In The Sky
Source: CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1970 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Spirit In The Sky)
Writer(s): Norman Greenbaum
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
I spent most of the 1990s working at commercial radio stations, most of which had a weekly oldies show (and in one case played nothing but oldies). At that time "oldies" included rock and roll and rhythm and blues hits from about the mid-1950s through the early 1970s. One of the most valuable resources for the oldies format was a series of 10-song CDs from Rhino showcasing the top songs of each year. The criteria for inclusion on each disc was based on when a song hit its peak on the top 40 charts. As it turns out, four of the ten songs on the 1970 disc were actually released in 1969. Among those four songs was Norman Greenbaum's Spirit In The Sky, a song that took seven months to fully catch on following its release in September of 1969.
Artist: Bob Seger System
Title: 2+2=?
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Seger
Label: Capitol
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. The first single for Capitol was 2+2=?, a powerful anti-Vietnam War tune that was later included on his first LP for the label. The mono single version of the song heard here has a guitar chord near the end of the track that was not on the original recording (on which the song simply stops cold for a few seconds). It was inserted because, according to Seger, radio stations were "afraid of dead air".
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and 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 Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.
Artist: Palace Guard
Title: Falling Sugar
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Rush/Leka
Label: Rhino (original label: Orange-Empire and Verve)
Year: 1966
Whereas most garage bands favored a Rolling Stones approach to rock 'n' roll, the Palace Guard tried hard to emulate the Beatles. Unfortunately, they didn't have the talent to really pull it off, despite the presence of drummer Emmet Rhodes, who would soon leave the Guard to front his own band, the Merry-Go-Round, then embark on a moderately successful solo career.
Artist: Johnny Rivers
Title: Walkin' The Dog
Source: LP: Johnny Rivers At The Whisky a Go Go
Writer(s): Rufus Thomas
Label: Imperial
Year: 1964
Although not exactly a psychedelic album, Johnny Rivers At The Whisky-A-Go-Go is nonetheless an important milestone in the history of psychedelic music in America. Released in 1964, it was the first album recorded at what was then a brand new venue on Los Angeles' Sunset Boulevard (in fact, Rivers was the club's first headliner). Although Rivers himself would go on to become part of the music industry establishment (starting Soul City Records in 1966), the Whisky soon became the epicenter of L.A.'s own underground rock scene, with such notables as Gypsy, Love and the Doors serving as house band at various times. Rivers, in the early part of his career, was a rock and roll purist, reviving such notable songs as Chuck Berry's Memphis. Another classic from the album was Rivers' cover of Rufus Thomas's signature song, Walkin' The Dog. Unlike later versions such as the early 70s Aerosmith cover of the song, Rivers's version of Walkin' The Dog is faithful to the original.
Artist: Gods
Title: Hey Bulldog
Source: CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: EMI
Year: 1969
Fans of Uriah Heep may recognize the names Ken Hensley, Joe Konas, John Glascock and Lee Kerslake as members of the legendary 70s British rock band at various phases of its existence. What they may not realize is that these four members had already been bandmates since early 1968 as members of the Gods. The band made it's recording debut with a song called Baby's Rich, which led to a concept album called Genesis. 1969 saw the release of a powerful cover of the Beatles' Hey Bulldog, along with a second album, before the group morphed into a band called Toe Fat, with Hensley soon departing to form Uriah Heep.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Magic Carpet Ride
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf The Second)
Writer(s): Moreve/Kay
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Steppenwolf's second top 10 single was Magic Carpet Ride, a song that combines feedback, prominent organ work by Goldy McJohn and an updated Bo Diddly beat with psychedelic lyrics. Along with Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride (co-written by vocalist John Kay and bassist Rushton Moreve) has become one of the defining songs of both Steppenwolf and the late 60s.
Artist: Serpent Power
Title: Up And Down
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: The Serpent Power)
Writer: David Meltzer
Label: Rhino (original label: Vanguard)
Year: 1967
David Meltzer was a beat poet who by the late 60s had already spent several years in the San Francisco Bay area, recording a spoken word album in 1959. For reasons having something to do with yoga, Meltzer and his wife Tina decided to form a band in 1967, calling it the Serpent Power. The group cut one LP for Vanguard. Up and Down is one of the shorter tracks from that album.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Some of the best rock and roll songs of 1966 were banned on a number of stations for being about either sex or drugs. Most artists that recorded those songs claimed they were about something else altogether. In the case of Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35, "stoned" refers to a rather unpleasant form of execution (at least according to Dylan). On the other hand, Dylan himself was reportedly quite stoned while recording the song, having passed a few doobies around before starting the tape rolling. Sometimes I think ambiguities like this are why English has become the dominant language of commerce on the planet.
Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man)
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1965
In late 1965 songwriters/producers P.F. Sloan (Eve of Destruction) and Steve Barri decided to create a series of records by a band called the Grass Roots. The problem was that there was no band called the Grass Roots (at least not that they knew of), so Sloan and Barri decided to recruit an existing band and talk them into changing their name. The band they found was the Bedouins, one of the early San Francisco bands. As the rush to sign SF bands was still months away, the Bedouins were more than happy to record the songs Sloan and Barri picked out for them. The first single by the newly-named Grass Roots was a cover of Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man). The band soon got to work promoting the single to Southern California radio stations, but with both the Byrds and the Turtles already on the charts with Dylan covers it soon became obvious that the market was becoming saturated with folk-rock. After a period of months the band, who wanted more freedom to write and record their own material, had a falling out with Sloan and Barri and it wasn't long before they moved back to San Francisco, leaving drummer Joel Larson in L.A. The group, with another drummer, continued to perform as the Grass Roots until Dunhill Records ordered them to stop. Eventually Dunhill would hire a local L.A. band called the 13th Floor (not to be confused with Austin, Texas's 13th Floor Elevators) to be the final incarnation of the Grass Roots; that group would crank out a series of top 40 hits in the early 70s. Meanwhile the original lineup changed their name but never had the opportunity to make records again.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: We've Got A Groovy Thing Going
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
In late 1965, producer Tom Wilson decided to preform an experiment. He took the original recording of a song from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's 1964 album, Wednesday Morning 6AM, and added electric instruments to it (using the same musicians that had played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album), essentially creating a whole new version of the song and, for that matter, a whole new genre: folk-rock. The Sound of Silence, backed by We've Got a Groovy Thing Going, became a huge national hit, going all the way to #1 on the top 40 charts. The only problem was that by the time all this happened, Simon and Garfunkel had gone their separate ways, briefly reuniting to record We've Got a Groovy Thing Going in 1965, but not releasing it at the time. Paul Simon, who was by then living in England, returned to the states in early 1966, got back together with Art Garfunkel and quickly recorded a new album, Sounds Of Silence. Many of the tracks on Sounds Of Silence had been previously recorded by Simon and released on an album called The Paul Simon Songbook, which was only available in the UK. Also included on Sounds Of Silence was a new stereo mix of We've Got A Groovy Thing Going.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Fly Away
Source: LP: special DJ record (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer: Al Kooper
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Al Kooper was a guitarist with some talent (but no professional experience) on keyboards who was already sufficiently connected enough to be allowed in the studio when Bob Dylan was recording his Highway 61 Revisited album. Not content to be merely a spectator (Mike Bloomfield was already there as a guitarist), Kooper noticed that there was an organ in the studio and immediately sat down and started playing on the sessions. Dylan was impressed enough with Kooper's playing to not only include him on the album, but to invite him to perform with him at the upcoming Newport Jazz Festival as well. The gig became probably Dylan's most notorious moment in his career, as several folk purists voiced their displeasure with Dylan's use of electric instruments. Some of them even stormed the stage, knocking over Kooper's keyboards in the process. After the gig Kooper became an in-demand studio musician. It was in this capacity (brought in to play piano by producer Tom Wilson) that he first met Danny Kalb, Andy Kuhlberg, Tommy Flanders, Roy Blumenthal and Steve Katz, who had recently formed the Blues Project and were making their first recordings for Columbia Records at their New York studios. Kooper had been looking for an opportunity to improve his skills on the keyboards (most of his gigs as a studio musician were for producers hoping to cash in on the "Dylan sound", which he found limiting), and soon joined the band as their full-time keyboardist. In addition to his instrumental contributions to the band, he provided some of their best original material as well. One such tune is Fly Away, from the Projections album (generally considered to be the apex of the Blues Project's career).
Artist: Deepest Blue
Title: Pretty Little Thing
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Shackelford/Johnson
Label: Rhino (original label: Blue Fin)
Year: 1966
Los Angeles, California has long been known for its urban sprawl, and in the mid-1960s it seemed like every one of its dozens of suburbs had at least one semi-professional garage band playing at various parties, bowling alleys, teen clubs and of course, high school gymnasiums. One such band was Deepest Blue, from Pomona, a suburb on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County best known for its race car track. Led by vocalist Earl Shackleford and guitarist Russell Johnson, the group performed locally as the Doves, but for reasons now forgotten recorded first under the name Egyptian Candy and then as Deepest Blue. Both records were released on labels that are considered obscure even by garage-rock standards, and by the end of the decade, the Doves/Egyptian Candy/Deepest Blue were naught but a footnote in L.A. music history.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: CD: Fifth Dimension
Writer(s): McGuinn/Crosby/Clark
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
By all rights, the Byrds' Eight Miles High should have been a huge hit. Unfortunately, Bill Drake, the most influential man in the history of Top 40 radio, got it into his head that this was a drug song, despite the 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. Despite all this Eight Miles High still managed to crack the top 20 in late 1966.
Artist: Masters Apprentices
Title: War Or Hands Of Time
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Australia as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Mick Bower
Label: Rhino (original label: Astor)
Year: 1966
Formed in 1963 as the Mustangs, Masters Apprentices started off the same way as many local bands of the time, playing mostly instrumental versions of popular rock and roll songs. In 1964, no doubt influenced by such British bands as the Animals and Rolling Stones, the adopted their new name, explaining that they considered themselves disciples of such first wave rock and roll stars as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Thanks to rhythm guitarist Mike Bower, the band soon developed a sound of their own, and by 1966 were ready to record a demo tape and submit it to the local Astor label. The people at Astor were so impressed they issued the tapes in their raw form as the group's first single, Undecided. By early 1967 Undecided was on all the Australian top 10 lists, with the B side, an antiwar song called War Or The Hands Of Time, getting its share of attention as well. Things were looking good for the band, with two more hit singles and an album, before Bower suffered a nervous breakdown and dropped out of music altogether. The group continued on until 1972, but never had the same magic as the original lineup.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Drive My Car
Source: CD: Rubber Soul (originally released in US on LP: Yesterday...And Today)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1965 (not released in US until 1966)
Capitol Records repeatedly got the ire of the Beatles by omitting, adding and rearranging songs on the US versions of their albums, especially in 1966, when the band was starting to put considerable time and effort into presenting the songs as a coherent package. At the root of the problem were two facts: albums in the UK had longer running times than US albums, and thus more songs, and UK singles stayed in print longer than their US counterparts and were generally not included on albums at all. This resulted in albums like Yesterday and Today that didn't even have a British counterpart. Drive My Car, for example, was released in the US in 1966 on the Yesterday...And Today LP. It had appeared six months earlier in the UK as the opening track of the Rubber Soul album. Oddly enough, despite being one of the group's most recognizable songs, Drive My Car was never issued as a single.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Blue Jay Way
Source: LP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s): George Harrison
Label: Capitol
Year: 1967
The Beatles' psychedelic period hit its peak with the late 1967 release of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack. As originally conceived there were only six songs on the album, too few for a standard LP. The band's solution was to present Magical Mystery Tour as two Extended Play (EP) 45 RPM records in a gatefold sleeve with a 23 page booklet featuring lyrics and scenes from the telefilm of the same name (as well as the general storyline in prose form). As EPs were out of vogue in the US, Capitol Records, against the band's wishes, added five songs that had been issued as single A or B sides in 1967 to create a standard LP. The actual Magical Mystery Tour material made up side one of the LP, while the single sides were on side two. The lone George Harrison contribution to the project was Blue Jay Way, named for a street in the Hollywood Hills that Harrison had rented that summer. As all five of the extra tracks were credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team, this meant that each of the band's 1967 albums had only one Harrison composition on them. This became a point of contention within the band, and on the Beatles' next album (the white album), Harrison's share of the songwriting had doubled.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Norwegian Wood
Source: CD: Rubber Soul
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone
Year: 1965
The first Beatle song to feature a sitar, Norwegian Wood, perhaps more than any other song, has come to typify the new direction songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney began to take with the release of the Rubber Soul album in December of 1965. Whereas their earlier material was written to be performed as well as recorded, songs like Norwegian Wood were first and foremost studio creations. The song itself was reportedly based on a true story and was no doubt a contributing factor to the disintegration of Lennon's first marraige.
Artist: Southwest F.O.B.
Title: Downtown Woman/Nadine
Source: LP: Smell of Incense
Writer(s): Colley/Seals/Berry
Label: Hip
Year: 1968
The members of Dallas-based Southwest F.O.B. had already gained enough of a local following to open for bands like the Who and Led Zeppelin when they recorded their debut LP, Smell Of Incense, in 1968. What's even more amazing is that all of the members of Southwest F.O.B. (which stands for Freight On Board), were still in high school when the album was released. Although the album itself was definitely in the psychedelic vein, as evidenced by tracks such as Downtown Woman paired with Chuck Berry's Nadine, it also showed the beginnings of the soft-rock sound that would make stars out of members England Dan Seals and John Ford Coley in the early 1970s. Seals, whose brother Jim was half of Seals and Crofts, would himself become one of the top country acts of the 1980s, with several # 1 country hits to his credit.
Artist: Otis Redding
Title: Respect
Source: Mono CD: The Very Best Of Otis Redding (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Otis Redding
Label: Rhino (original label: Volt)
Year: 1965
Although there have been literally hundreds of cover songs recorded over the years, relatively few have held up under comparison to the original versions. Even rarer are covers that actually surpass the originals. Most unique, however, is the song with not one, but two truly outstanding recordings by different artists. Such is the case with Otis Redding's Respect. Aretha Franklin's 1967 version of the song is rightly considered to be one of the most important recordings ever made, both as a rallying cry for the women's movement and as the recording that established Franklin as the undisputed queen of soul. But Otis Redding's original 1965 version of Respect, judged strictly on its own merits, has to be considered one of the best Rhythm and Blues records ever made. In addition to Redding's outstanding vocals, the track features the classic Memphis Group rhythm section (Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Phil Jackson and Booker T. Jones) along with the Bar-Kays on horns.
Artist: Hollies
Title: Look Through Any Window
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer: Gouldman/Silverman
Label: Imperial
Year: 1965
Although the Hollies were far more popular in their native England than in the US, they did have their fair share of North American hits. The first Hollies tune to crack the US top 40 was Look Through Any Window, released in December of 1965 and peaking at #33 in early 1966. The song did even better in Canada, going all the way to the #3 spot.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Let's Spend The Night Together
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1967
Most people today can't even imagine how much power Ed Sullivan had in the early to mid 1960s. Case in point. The Rolling Stones were scheduled to make an appearance on Sullivan's Sunday Evening variety show in early 1967. The band's current hit at the time was Let's Spend The Night Together. Sullivan, however, objected to the song's title and asked Mick Jagger to change the lyrics to "Let's Spend Some Time Together." Jagger complied with Sullivan's request. Can you imagine anyone telling Jagger to change his lyrics now?
Artist: Love Sculpture
Title: Blues Helping
Source: British import CD: Blues Helping
Writer(s): Williams/Edmunds/Jones
Label: EMI (original label: Parlophone)
Year: 1968
When the name Dave Edmunds comes up, it is usually in association with an early 70s remake of the classic Fats Domino tune I Hear You Knockin'. What many people are not aware of, however, is that Edmunds was a major force on the late 60s British blues scene with his band Love Sculpture. The title track of that band's debut LP, Blues Helping, showcases Edmunds's prowess as a guitarist (as does the rest of the album).
Artist: Bubble Puppy
Title: Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source: European import CD: A Gathering Of Promises
Writer(s): Prince/Cox/Potter/Fore
Label: Charly (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1969
Bubble Puppy was a band from San Antonio, Texas that relocated to nearby Austin and signed a contract with International Artists, a label already known as the home of legendary Texas psychedelic bands 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola. The group hit the national top 20 with Hot Smoke and Sassafras, a song that was originally intended to be a B side, in 1969. Not long after the release of their first LP, A Gathering Or Promises, the band relocated to California and changed their name to Demian, at least in part to disassociate themselves with the then-popular "bubble gum" style (but also because of problems with International Artists).
Artist: Wet Paint
Title: Glass Road
Source: CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wild Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Wet Paint
Label: Arf! Arf! (original label: Onyx)
Year: 1968
Although most of the bands recording in the state of Massachusetts used studios in Boston, there were some exceptions. One such case was a band called Wet Paint, who recorded at Eastern Sounds Recordings in Metheun. Eastern even had its own in-house record label, Onyx, which is where Glass Road was released in 1968.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Somebody To Love
Source: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Darby Slick
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
Jefferson Airplane's Somebody To Love is, of course, the monster hit that put the San Francisco Bay area on the musical map in early 1967, touching off an exodus of young hippie wannabees from all over the country that converged on the city's Haight-Ashbury district that summer. Interestingly enough, Somebody To Love was not the first single released from the band's Surrealistic Pillow album. That honor goes to My Best Friend, a song written by the band's former drummer Skip Spence.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: May This Be Love
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The original UK version of Are You Experienced featured May This Be Love as the opening track of side two of the album. In the US, the UK single The Wind Cries Mary was substituted for it, with May This Be Love buried deep on side one.
It's obvious that Hendrix thought more highly of the song than the people at Reprise who picked the track order for the US album.
Artist: Butterfield Blues Band
Title: Lovin' Cup
Source: Mono LP: What's Shakin'
Writer(s): Paul Butterfield
Label: Sundazed (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
The path to the first Butterfield Blues Band album was anything but an easy one. The band made its first attempt at recording in the studio in 1964, but nobody was happy with the results and the tapes were shelved. The band then tried recording a live performance at a local New York City club, but, although the gig did wonders for the band's reputation the band was still not satisfied with the recording, and that, too, was scrapped. Finally, in early 1965, the group went back into the studio to record what became the album called The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Meanwhile, Elektra Records president Jac Holzman had released an anthology album called Folk Song '65 that included one of the songs from the first Butterfield studio sessions. The success of Folk Song '65 (due in large part to the inclusion of the Butterfield track) prompted Holzman to create a follow-up LP, What's Shakin', that was more blues oriented than the first anthology. What's Shakin' included five more Butterfield tracks from the 1964 sessions, including a Paul Butterfield original composition called Lovin' Cup.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: She's Coming Home
Source: CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer: Atkins/Miller
Label: Mercury
Year: 1966
Generally speaking, cheatin' songs in 1966 were considered the province of country music. The few exceptions, such as Paul Revere and the Raiders' Steppin' Out, were all told from the victim's point of view. The Blues Magoos, however, turned the entire thing upside down with She's Coming Home, a song about having to break up with one's new girlfriend in the face of the old one returning from...(prison, military duty? The lyrics never make that clear). The unusual nature of the song is in keeping
with the cutting edge image of a band that was among the first to use the word psychedelic in an album title and almost certainly was the first to wear electric suits onstage.
Artist: Chris And Craig
Title: Isha
Source: Mono import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Chris Ducey
Label: Zonophone UK (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
Before the Monkees, there were the Happeners...almost. In 1965, college student Chris Ducey and singer/songwriter Craig Smith were chosen to play a folk-rock duo on a TV show. Although the show itself never made it past pre-production, the two did record a single for Capitol Records, the Ducey-penned Isha, before going their separate ways. Craig Smith auditioned for yet another TV show the following year, but was not one of the four young men chosen to become the Monkees. He did, however, strike up a friendship with fellow applicant Michael Nesmith, who would end up recording one of Smith's songs, Salesman, and later produce Smith's new band, Penny Arkade. Ducey, meanwhile, became a bizarre early victim of identity theft. Folk singer Bobby Jameson, for reasons unknown, recorded an entire album using not only Ducey's name, but his song titles as well. The real Ducey hasn't been heard from since.
Artist: Mother Earth
Title: Ruler Of My Heart
Source: LP: Satisfied
Writer(s): N. Levell
Label: Mercury
Year: 1970
Despite never being a major commercial success, the band Mother Earth, led by vocalist/guitarist Tracy Nelson, was highly regarded by musicians and progressive FM radio people alike, resulting in the band getting just enough airplay to keep recording albums throughout the late 60s and early 70s. Ruler Of My Heart, from the 1970 LP Satisfied, is fairly typical of the Mother Earth approach to the blues.
Artist: Norman Greenbaum
Title: Spirit In The Sky
Source: CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1970 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Spirit In The Sky)
Writer(s): Norman Greenbaum
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1969
I spent most of the 1990s working at commercial radio stations, most of which had a weekly oldies show (and in one case played nothing but oldies). At that time "oldies" included rock and roll and rhythm and blues hits from about the mid-1950s through the early 1970s. One of the most valuable resources for the oldies format was a series of 10-song CDs from Rhino showcasing the top songs of each year. The criteria for inclusion on each disc was based on when a song hit its peak on the top 40 charts. As it turns out, four of the ten songs on the 1970 disc were actually released in 1969. Among those four songs was Norman Greenbaum's Spirit In The Sky, a song that took seven months to fully catch on following its release in September of 1969.
Artist: Bob Seger System
Title: 2+2=?
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Seger
Label: Capitol
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. The first single for Capitol was 2+2=?, a powerful anti-Vietnam War tune that was later included on his first LP for the label. The mono single version of the song heard here has a guitar chord near the end of the track that was not on the original recording (on which the song simply stops cold for a few seconds). It was inserted because, according to Seger, radio stations were "afraid of dead air".
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Monterey
Source: CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and 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 Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.
Artist: Palace Guard
Title: Falling Sugar
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Rush/Leka
Label: Rhino (original label: Orange-Empire and Verve)
Year: 1966
Whereas most garage bands favored a Rolling Stones approach to rock 'n' roll, the Palace Guard tried hard to emulate the Beatles. Unfortunately, they didn't have the talent to really pull it off, despite the presence of drummer Emmet Rhodes, who would soon leave the Guard to front his own band, the Merry-Go-Round, then embark on a moderately successful solo career.
Artist: Johnny Rivers
Title: Walkin' The Dog
Source: LP: Johnny Rivers At The Whisky a Go Go
Writer(s): Rufus Thomas
Label: Imperial
Year: 1964
Although not exactly a psychedelic album, Johnny Rivers At The Whisky-A-Go-Go is nonetheless an important milestone in the history of psychedelic music in America. Released in 1964, it was the first album recorded at what was then a brand new venue on Los Angeles' Sunset Boulevard (in fact, Rivers was the club's first headliner). Although Rivers himself would go on to become part of the music industry establishment (starting Soul City Records in 1966), the Whisky soon became the epicenter of L.A.'s own underground rock scene, with such notables as Gypsy, Love and the Doors serving as house band at various times. Rivers, in the early part of his career, was a rock and roll purist, reviving such notable songs as Chuck Berry's Memphis. Another classic from the album was Rivers' cover of Rufus Thomas's signature song, Walkin' The Dog. Unlike later versions such as the early 70s Aerosmith cover of the song, Rivers's version of Walkin' The Dog is faithful to the original.
Artist: Gods
Title: Hey Bulldog
Source: CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: EMI
Year: 1969
Fans of Uriah Heep may recognize the names Ken Hensley, Joe Konas, John Glascock and Lee Kerslake as members of the legendary 70s British rock band at various phases of its existence. What they may not realize is that these four members had already been bandmates since early 1968 as members of the Gods. The band made it's recording debut with a song called Baby's Rich, which led to a concept album called Genesis. 1969 saw the release of a powerful cover of the Beatles' Hey Bulldog, along with a second album, before the group morphed into a band called Toe Fat, with Hensley soon departing to form Uriah Heep.
Artist: Steppenwolf
Title: Magic Carpet Ride
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf The Second)
Writer(s): Moreve/Kay
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1968
Steppenwolf's second top 10 single was Magic Carpet Ride, a song that combines feedback, prominent organ work by Goldy McJohn and an updated Bo Diddly beat with psychedelic lyrics. Along with Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride (co-written by vocalist John Kay and bassist Rushton Moreve) has become one of the defining songs of both Steppenwolf and the late 60s.
Artist: Serpent Power
Title: Up And Down
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: The Serpent Power)
Writer: David Meltzer
Label: Rhino (original label: Vanguard)
Year: 1967
David Meltzer was a beat poet who by the late 60s had already spent several years in the San Francisco Bay area, recording a spoken word album in 1959. For reasons having something to do with yoga, Meltzer and his wife Tina decided to form a band in 1967, calling it the Serpent Power. The group cut one LP for Vanguard. Up and Down is one of the shorter tracks from that album.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Some of the best rock and roll songs of 1966 were banned on a number of stations for being about either sex or drugs. Most artists that recorded those songs claimed they were about something else altogether. In the case of Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35, "stoned" refers to a rather unpleasant form of execution (at least according to Dylan). On the other hand, Dylan himself was reportedly quite stoned while recording the song, having passed a few doobies around before starting the tape rolling. Sometimes I think ambiguities like this are why English has become the dominant language of commerce on the planet.
Artist: Grass Roots
Title: Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man)
Source: Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year: 1965
In late 1965 songwriters/producers P.F. Sloan (Eve of Destruction) and Steve Barri decided to create a series of records by a band called the Grass Roots. The problem was that there was no band called the Grass Roots (at least not that they knew of), so Sloan and Barri decided to recruit an existing band and talk them into changing their name. The band they found was the Bedouins, one of the early San Francisco bands. As the rush to sign SF bands was still months away, the Bedouins were more than happy to record the songs Sloan and Barri picked out for them. The first single by the newly-named Grass Roots was a cover of Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of A Thin Man). The band soon got to work promoting the single to Southern California radio stations, but with both the Byrds and the Turtles already on the charts with Dylan covers it soon became obvious that the market was becoming saturated with folk-rock. After a period of months the band, who wanted more freedom to write and record their own material, had a falling out with Sloan and Barri and it wasn't long before they moved back to San Francisco, leaving drummer Joel Larson in L.A. The group, with another drummer, continued to perform as the Grass Roots until Dunhill Records ordered them to stop. Eventually Dunhill would hire a local L.A. band called the 13th Floor (not to be confused with Austin, Texas's 13th Floor Elevators) to be the final incarnation of the Grass Roots; that group would crank out a series of top 40 hits in the early 70s. Meanwhile the original lineup changed their name but never had the opportunity to make records again.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: We've Got A Groovy Thing Going
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
In late 1965, producer Tom Wilson decided to preform an experiment. He took the original recording of a song from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's 1964 album, Wednesday Morning 6AM, and added electric instruments to it (using the same musicians that had played on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album), essentially creating a whole new version of the song and, for that matter, a whole new genre: folk-rock. The Sound of Silence, backed by We've Got a Groovy Thing Going, became a huge national hit, going all the way to #1 on the top 40 charts. The only problem was that by the time all this happened, Simon and Garfunkel had gone their separate ways, briefly reuniting to record We've Got a Groovy Thing Going in 1965, but not releasing it at the time. Paul Simon, who was by then living in England, returned to the states in early 1966, got back together with Art Garfunkel and quickly recorded a new album, Sounds Of Silence. Many of the tracks on Sounds Of Silence had been previously recorded by Simon and released on an album called The Paul Simon Songbook, which was only available in the UK. Also included on Sounds Of Silence was a new stereo mix of We've Got A Groovy Thing Going.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Fly Away
Source: LP: special DJ record (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer: Al Kooper
Label: Verve Forecast
Year: 1966
Al Kooper was a guitarist with some talent (but no professional experience) on keyboards who was already sufficiently connected enough to be allowed in the studio when Bob Dylan was recording his Highway 61 Revisited album. Not content to be merely a spectator (Mike Bloomfield was already there as a guitarist), Kooper noticed that there was an organ in the studio and immediately sat down and started playing on the sessions. Dylan was impressed enough with Kooper's playing to not only include him on the album, but to invite him to perform with him at the upcoming Newport Jazz Festival as well. The gig became probably Dylan's most notorious moment in his career, as several folk purists voiced their displeasure with Dylan's use of electric instruments. Some of them even stormed the stage, knocking over Kooper's keyboards in the process. After the gig Kooper became an in-demand studio musician. It was in this capacity (brought in to play piano by producer Tom Wilson) that he first met Danny Kalb, Andy Kuhlberg, Tommy Flanders, Roy Blumenthal and Steve Katz, who had recently formed the Blues Project and were making their first recordings for Columbia Records at their New York studios. Kooper had been looking for an opportunity to improve his skills on the keyboards (most of his gigs as a studio musician were for producers hoping to cash in on the "Dylan sound", which he found limiting), and soon joined the band as their full-time keyboardist. In addition to his instrumental contributions to the band, he provided some of their best original material as well. One such tune is Fly Away, from the Projections album (generally considered to be the apex of the Blues Project's career).
Artist: Deepest Blue
Title: Pretty Little Thing
Source: CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Shackelford/Johnson
Label: Rhino (original label: Blue Fin)
Year: 1966
Los Angeles, California has long been known for its urban sprawl, and in the mid-1960s it seemed like every one of its dozens of suburbs had at least one semi-professional garage band playing at various parties, bowling alleys, teen clubs and of course, high school gymnasiums. One such band was Deepest Blue, from Pomona, a suburb on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County best known for its race car track. Led by vocalist Earl Shackleford and guitarist Russell Johnson, the group performed locally as the Doves, but for reasons now forgotten recorded first under the name Egyptian Candy and then as Deepest Blue. Both records were released on labels that are considered obscure even by garage-rock standards, and by the end of the decade, the Doves/Egyptian Candy/Deepest Blue were naught but a footnote in L.A. music history.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: CD: Fifth Dimension
Writer(s): McGuinn/Crosby/Clark
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1966
By all rights, the Byrds' Eight Miles High should have been a huge hit. Unfortunately, Bill Drake, the most influential man in the history of Top 40 radio, got it into his head that this was a drug song, despite the 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. Despite all this Eight Miles High still managed to crack the top 20 in late 1966.
Artist: Masters Apprentices
Title: War Or Hands Of Time
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Australia as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Mick Bower
Label: Rhino (original label: Astor)
Year: 1966
Formed in 1963 as the Mustangs, Masters Apprentices started off the same way as many local bands of the time, playing mostly instrumental versions of popular rock and roll songs. In 1964, no doubt influenced by such British bands as the Animals and Rolling Stones, the adopted their new name, explaining that they considered themselves disciples of such first wave rock and roll stars as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Thanks to rhythm guitarist Mike Bower, the band soon developed a sound of their own, and by 1966 were ready to record a demo tape and submit it to the local Astor label. The people at Astor were so impressed they issued the tapes in their raw form as the group's first single, Undecided. By early 1967 Undecided was on all the Australian top 10 lists, with the B side, an antiwar song called War Or The Hands Of Time, getting its share of attention as well. Things were looking good for the band, with two more hit singles and an album, before Bower suffered a nervous breakdown and dropped out of music altogether. The group continued on until 1972, but never had the same magic as the original lineup.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Drive My Car
Source: CD: Rubber Soul (originally released in US on LP: Yesterday...And Today)
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year: 1965 (not released in US until 1966)
Capitol Records repeatedly got the ire of the Beatles by omitting, adding and rearranging songs on the US versions of their albums, especially in 1966, when the band was starting to put considerable time and effort into presenting the songs as a coherent package. At the root of the problem were two facts: albums in the UK had longer running times than US albums, and thus more songs, and UK singles stayed in print longer than their US counterparts and were generally not included on albums at all. This resulted in albums like Yesterday and Today that didn't even have a British counterpart. Drive My Car, for example, was released in the US in 1966 on the Yesterday...And Today LP. It had appeared six months earlier in the UK as the opening track of the Rubber Soul album. Oddly enough, despite being one of the group's most recognizable songs, Drive My Car was never issued as a single.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Blue Jay Way
Source: LP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s): George Harrison
Label: Capitol
Year: 1967
The Beatles' psychedelic period hit its peak with the late 1967 release of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack. As originally conceived there were only six songs on the album, too few for a standard LP. The band's solution was to present Magical Mystery Tour as two Extended Play (EP) 45 RPM records in a gatefold sleeve with a 23 page booklet featuring lyrics and scenes from the telefilm of the same name (as well as the general storyline in prose form). As EPs were out of vogue in the US, Capitol Records, against the band's wishes, added five songs that had been issued as single A or B sides in 1967 to create a standard LP. The actual Magical Mystery Tour material made up side one of the LP, while the single sides were on side two. The lone George Harrison contribution to the project was Blue Jay Way, named for a street in the Hollywood Hills that Harrison had rented that summer. As all five of the extra tracks were credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team, this meant that each of the band's 1967 albums had only one Harrison composition on them. This became a point of contention within the band, and on the Beatles' next album (the white album), Harrison's share of the songwriting had doubled.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Norwegian Wood
Source: CD: Rubber Soul
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone
Year: 1965
The first Beatle song to feature a sitar, Norwegian Wood, perhaps more than any other song, has come to typify the new direction songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney began to take with the release of the Rubber Soul album in December of 1965. Whereas their earlier material was written to be performed as well as recorded, songs like Norwegian Wood were first and foremost studio creations. The song itself was reportedly based on a true story and was no doubt a contributing factor to the disintegration of Lennon's first marraige.
Artist: Southwest F.O.B.
Title: Downtown Woman/Nadine
Source: LP: Smell of Incense
Writer(s): Colley/Seals/Berry
Label: Hip
Year: 1968
The members of Dallas-based Southwest F.O.B. had already gained enough of a local following to open for bands like the Who and Led Zeppelin when they recorded their debut LP, Smell Of Incense, in 1968. What's even more amazing is that all of the members of Southwest F.O.B. (which stands for Freight On Board), were still in high school when the album was released. Although the album itself was definitely in the psychedelic vein, as evidenced by tracks such as Downtown Woman paired with Chuck Berry's Nadine, it also showed the beginnings of the soft-rock sound that would make stars out of members England Dan Seals and John Ford Coley in the early 1970s. Seals, whose brother Jim was half of Seals and Crofts, would himself become one of the top country acts of the 1980s, with several # 1 country hits to his credit.
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