Artist: Byrds
Title: Have You Seen Her Face
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): Chris Hillman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Perhaps the greatest surprise on the fourth Byrds album, Younger Than Yesterday, was the emergence of bassist Chris Hillman as a quality songwriter, already on a par with David Crosby and the recently-departed Gene Clark, and even exceeding Roger McGuinn as a solo writer (most of McGuinn's contributions being as a collaborator rather than a solo songwriter). One of the many strong Hillman tracks on Younger Than Yesterday was Have You Seen Her Face, which eventually became the third single from the album.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
Gene Clark's final contribution to the Byrds was his collaboration with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Eight Miles High. Despite a newsletter from the most powerful man in top 40 radio, Bill Drake, advising stations not to play this "drug song", the song managed to hit the top 20 in 1966. The band members themselves claimed that Eight Miles High was not a drug song at all, but was instead referring to the experience of travelling by air. In fact, it was Gene Clark's fear of flying that in part led to his leaving the Byrds.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Why
Source: CD: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s): McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
One of the earliest collaborations between Byrds songwriters David Crosby and Roger McGuinn was the up-tempo raga rocker Why. The song was first recorded at RCA studios in Los Angeles in late 1965 as an intended B side for Eight Miles High, but due to the fact that the band's label, Columbia, refused to release recordings made at their main rival's studios, the band ended up having to re-record both songs at Columbia's own studios in early 1966. Although the band members felt the newer versions were inferior to the 1965 recordings, they were released as a single in March of 1966. Later that year, for reasons that are still unclear, Crosby insisted the band record a new version of Why, and that version was used for the band's next LP, Younger Than Yesterday.
Artist: It's A Beautiful Day
Title: White Bird
Source: CD: It's A Beautiful Day
Writer: David and Linda LaFlamme
Label: San Francisco Sound (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
It's A Beautiful Day is a good illustration of how a band can be a part of a trend without intending to be or even realizing that they are. In their case, they were actually tied to two different trends. The first one was a positive thing: it was now possible for a band to be considered successful without a top 40 hit, as long as their album sales were healthy. The second trend was not such a good thing; as was true for way too many bands, It's A Beautiful Day was sorely mistreated by its own management, in this case one Matthew Katz. Katz already represented both Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape when he signed up It's A Beautiful Day in 1967. What the members of It's A Beautiful Day did not know at the time was that both of the aforementioned bands were trying to get out of their contracts with Katz. The first thing Katz did after signing It's A Beautiful Day was to ship the band off to Seattle to become house band at a club Katz owned called the San Francisco Sound. Unfortunately for the band, Seattle already had a sound of its own and attendance at their gigs was sparse. Feeling downtrodden and caged (and having no means of transportation to boot) classically-trained 5-string violinist and lead vocalist David LaFlamme and his keyboardist wife Linda LaFlamme translated those feelings into a song that is at once sad and beautiful: the classic White Bird. As an aside, Linda LaFlamme was not the female vocalist heard on White Bird. Credit for those goes to one Pattie Santos, the other female band member. To this day Katz owns the rights to It's A Beautiful Day's recordings, which have been reissued on CD on Katz's San Francisco Sound label.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Have You Seen The Saucers
Source: LP: Early Flight
Writer(s): Paul Kantner
Label: Grunt
Year: 1970
Have You Seen The Saucers, a Paul Kantner composition, was first released as the B side to Mexico, the last single to include Jefferson Airplane founder Marty Balin. Unlike Mexico, which is basically a Grace Slick vehicle, Saucers features Balin, Kantner and Slick sharing vocal duties equally. After the single failed to chart, Have You Seen The Saucers was unavailable until 1974, when it was included on the LP Early Flight, a collection of tracks that had never been released on LP vinyl.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: My Baby
Source: LP: Pearl
Writer(s): Ragovoy/Schuman
Label: Columbia
Year: 1971
By far the most polished of Janis Joplin's albums was Pearl, recorded in 1970 and released in January of 1971. Much of the credit for the album's sound has to go to Paul Rothchild, who had already made his reputation producing the Doors. Another factor was the choice of material to record. In addition to some of Joplin's originals such as Mercedes Benz and Move Over, the LP featured several songs from songwriter Jerry Ragovoy, who had co-written (with the legendary Bert Berns) Joplin's first big hit with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Piece Of My Heart. Working with another legendary songwriter, Doc Schuman, Ragovoy provided some of Joplin's most memorable songs on the album, including My Baby, a song that suited Joplin's vocal style perfectly.
Artist: Al Kooper
Title: I Got A Woman
Source: LP: Al's Big Deal-Unclaimed Freight (originally released on LP: Easy Does It)
Writer(s): Ray Charles
Label: Columbia
Year: 1970
Ray Charles was a master of not one, but two distinct genres: the melancholy blues with lavish strings heard on songs like Georgia On My Mind, and the gospel influenced R&B of songs like What'd I Say. In 1970, Al Kooper paid a unique tribute to the master by performing one of Charles's best known R&B songs, I Got A Woman, in the trademark Charles melancholy blues style. The result can be heard on Kooper's third solo LP, Easy Does It.
Artist: Cream
Title: I'm So Glad
Source: LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Skip James
Label: Atco
Year: 1966
Unlike later albums, which featured psychedelic cover art and several Jack Bruce/Pete Brown collaborations that had a decidedly psychedelic sound, Fresh Cream was marketed as the first album by a British blues supergroup, and featured a greater number of blues standards than subsequent releases. One of those covers that became a concert staple for the band was the old Skip James tune I'm So Glad. The song has become so strongly associated with Cream that the group used it as the opening number for all three performances when they staged a series of reunion concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in 2004.
Artist: Who
Title: I Can See For Miles
Source: CD: Meaty, Beaty, Big And Bouncy (originally released on LP: The Who Sell Out)
Writer(s): Pete Townshend
Label: MCA (original label: Decca)
Year: 1967
I Can See For Miles continued a string of top 10 singles in the UK and was the Who's biggest US hit ever. Pete Townshend, however, was disappointed with the song's performance on the UK charts. He said that the song was the ultimate Who song and as such it should have charted even higher than it did. It certainly was one of the heaviest songs of its time and there is some evidence that it prompted Paul McCartney to come up with Helter Skelter in an effort to take the heaviest song ever title back for the Beatles. What makes the story even more bizarre is that at the time McCartney reportedly had never actually heard I Can See For Miles and was going purely by what he read in a record review.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You
Source: CD: Led Zeppelin
Writer(s): Trad. Arr. Page
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1968
It is the nature of folk music that a song often gets credited to one writer when in fact it is the work of another. This is due to the fact that folk singers tend to share their material liberally with other folk singers, who often make significant changes to the work before passing it along to others. Such is the case with Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You, which was originally conceived by EC-Berkeley student Anne Johannsen in the late 1950s and performed live on KPFA radio in 1960. Another performer on the same show, Janet Smith, developed the song further and performed it at Oberlin College, where it was heard by audience member Joan Baez. Baez asked Smith for a tape of her songs and began performing the song herself. Baez used it as the opening track on her album, Joan Baez In Concert, Part One, but it was credited as "traditional", presumably because Baez herself had no knowledge of who had actually written the song. Baez eventually discovered the true origins of the tune, and later pressings gave credit to Anne Bredon, who had divorced her first husband, Lee Johannsen and married Glen Bredon since writing the song. Jimmy Page had an early pressing of the Baez album, so when he reworked the song for inclusion on the first Led Zeppelin album, he went with "traditional, arranged Page" as the writer. Robert Plant, who worked with Page on the arrangement, was not originally given credits for contractual reasons, although later editions of the album give credit to Page, Plant and Bredon.
Artist: Savoy Brown
Title: Made Up My Mind
Source: British import CD: A Step Further
Writer: Chris Youlden
Label: Deram (original label: Parrot)
Year: 1969
To coincide with a US tour, the fourth Savoy Brown album, A Step Further, was actually released in North America several months before it was in the UK, with Made Up My Mind being simultaneously released as a single. Luckily for the band, 1969 was a year that continued the industry-wide trend away from hit singles and toward successful albums instead, at least among the more progressive groups, as the single itself tanked. Aided by a decent amount of airplay on progressive FM radio, however, the album (the last to feature lead vocalist Chris Youlden) peaked comfortably within the top 100.
Artist: Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title: Abba Zaba
Source: 45 RPM single (also included on LP: Safe As Milk)
Writer(s): Don Van Vliet
Label: Sundazed/Buddah
Year: 1967
After an aborted recording career with A&M Records, future avant-garde rock superstar Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) signed a contract with the newly formed Buddah record label. The first record ever released by Buddah was the album Safe As Milk, which included the single Abba Zaba. Although the Captain's music was at that time still somewhat blues-based, the album was not a commercial success, and Buddah cut Beefheart and his Magic Band from the label in favor of more pop oriented groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. Captain Beefheart then moved to yet another fledgling label, Blue Thumb, before finding a more permanent home with his old high school classmate Frank Zappa's Bizarre Records, where he released the classic Trout Mask Replica.
Artist: Doors
Title: Moonlight Drive
Source: CD: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Much of the second Doors album consisted of songs that were already in the band's repertoire when they signed with Elektra Records but for various reasons did not record for their debut LP. One of the earliest was Jim Morrison's Moonlight Ride. As was the case with all the Doors songs on their first three albums, the tune was credited to the entire band.
Artist: MC2
Title: My Mind Goes High
Source: Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Claugh/Crawly
Label: Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
MC2 (pronounced "em see squared") only released one single, the folk-pop tinged My Mind Goes High on the Reprise label in 1967, before disbanding following a dispute with their producer, Lenny Waronker. One member, however, drummer Jim Keltner, went on to make a name for himself playing on John Lennon's albums in the early 70s and doing studio work for a variety of well-known acts. He also toured with Booker T & the MGs in the 1990s, appearing onstage backing up Neil Young.
Artist: Ringo Starr
Title: Farm
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single B side
Year: 1971
The first gold record by an ex-Beatle did not come from John Lennon or Paul McCartney, as one would expect. Rather it was drummer Ringo Starr, who topped the charts in 1971 with It Don't Come Easy (co-written by an uncredited George Harrison). The B side of that single, Farm, is about as pure Ringo as it gets.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)
Source: CD: The Grateful Dead
Writer: McGannahan Skjellyfetti
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1967
I once knew someone from San Jose, California who had an original copy of the single version of The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion), the opening track from the first Grateful Dead album. It was totally worn out from being played a few hundred times, though.
Artist: Moby Grape
Title: Mr. Blues
Source: LP: Moby Grape
Writer(s): Bob Mosley
Label: Columbia
Year: 1967
Bassist Bob Mosley wrote and sang on Mr. Blues, one of ten songs released on 45 RPM vinyl from the first Moby Grape album. It was a marketing disaster that forever tainted a talented band.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Fireface
Source: CD: One Step Beyond
Writer(s): Sean Tolby
Label: Sundazed (original label: Tower)
Year: 1969
The third and final album the Chocolate Watchband released on Tower Records was both the most and least representative of the band's actual sound. On the plus side, all the tracks on 1969's One Step Beyond were played and sung by the band members themselves, a claim that nobody could make about either of the previous Watchband albums. However, the group heard on One Step Beyond sounded nothing like the Chocolate Watchband that audiences in the Bay Area had become familiar with from 1966-68. In fact, the lineup heard on One Step Beyond was a mixture of new and former Watchband members, some of whom had left the group prior to their first trip to the studio in 1966. The result was a more schizophrenic sounding band than the Watchband of old, with an odd mixture of folk and hard rock replacing the garage rock and studio psychedelia of the group's earlier efforts. The new lineup also wrote most of the tracks on the album, including Sean Tolby's Fireface. The group even went on tour to promote the new LP, but continued to go through frequent personnel changes even when on the road, finally disbanding in early 1970.
Artist: Donovan
Title: Bert's Blues
Source: Mono LP: Sunshine Superman
Writer(s): Donovan Leitch
Label: Epic/Sundazed
Year: 1966
In 1966 Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch got into a contractual dispute with his record label, Pye Records UK. Up to that point his records had appeared in the US on the independent Hickory label. Now, however, he was about to make his US major label debut (on Epic), and the dispute with Pye led to his newest album, Sunshine Superman, being released only in North America. Like Bob Dylan, Donovan was beginning to expand beyond his folk roots, but in addition to the usual rock instruments (guitar, bass, drums, organ) Donovan used older acoustic instruments such as strings and harpsichord as well as experimenting with modern jazz arrangements and instrumentation. Somehow he managed to combine all of these elements in one track, Bert's Blues. Surprisingly, it worked.
Artist: Circus Maximus
Title: Wind
Source: CD: Circus Maximus
Writer(s): Bob Bruno
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Circus Maximus was formed out of the chance meeting of multi-instrumentalist Bob Bruno and guitarist Jerry Jeff Walker in Greenwich Village in 1967. From the start the band was moving in different directions, with Bruno incorporating jazz elements into the band while Walker favored country-rock. Eventually the two would go their separate ways, but for the short time the band was together they made some of the best, if not best-known, psychedelic music on the East Coast. The band's most popular track was Wind, a Bruno tune from their debut album. The song got a considerable amount of airplay on the new "underground" radio stations that were popping up across the country at the time.
Artist: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title: Watch Yourself
Source: LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s): Robert Yeazel
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band usually wrote their own material, they occassionally drew from outside sources. One example is Watch Yourself, written by Robert Yeazel, who would go on to join Sugarloaf in time for their second LP, Spaceship Earth, writing many of the songs on that album.
Artist: Steve Cropper
Title: 99 1/2
Source: LP: With A Little Help From My Friends
Writer(s): Cropper/Floyd/Pickett
Label: Volt
Year: 1970
One of the most important figures in the formation of the Memphis sound was guitarist Steve Cropper. One of the founding members and defacto co-leader of Booker T. and the MGs, Cropper's guitar work is prominent on recordings by Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Sam and Dave and other top artists that recorded for the Stax label in the mid to late 60s. In addition to providing guitar parts Cropper co-wrote several hit songs, including Otis Redding's Dock Of The Bay. Preferring to stay out of the spotlight, Cropper only recorded one solo LP for Stax, the appropriately-titled With A Little Help From My Friends, released in 1970 on the Volt label. Most of the songs on the album were instrumental versions of songs Cropper had previously played on (and in many cases co-written). There is one track, however, that is a bit of a mystery. 99 1/2 was co-written by Eddie Floyd and Wilson Pickett, yet does not show up in the discographies of either of those artists. In fact, using an internet search engine, I was only able to find one instance of the song: the version heard here (which is one of the only tracks to feature Cropper using a fuzz tone). After Stax faded away Cropper stayed active, appearing as part of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi's Blues Brothers Band (and the subsequent Elwood Blues Band) and earning the distinction of being the only guitarist to occupy the stage for the entire Bob Dylan tribute concert in the early 1990s. Following that, he and the MGs toured as Neil Young's stage band. A longtime member of the Roll & Roll Hall Of Fame, Cropper continues to remain active, usually in a supporting role.
Artist: Beatles
Title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)
Source: British import LP: Abbey Road
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Apple
Year: 1969
With the exception of John Lennon's 1968 audio collage Revolution 9, the longest Beatle track ever recorded was I Want You (She's So Heavy), from the Abbey Road album. The track alternates between two distinct sections: the jazz-like I Want You, which contains most of the song's lyrical content, and the primal-scream based She's So Heavy, which repeats the same phrase endlessly in 6/8 time while an increasingly loud wall of white noise eventually leads to an abrupt cut-off at 7:47.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: Iron Butterfly Theme
Source: CD: Heavy
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1968
Although much of the material on the first Iron Butterfly album, Heavy, has a somewhat generic L.A. club sound to it, the final track, the Iron Butterfly Theme, sounds more in line with the style the band would become known for on their In-A-Gadda-Vida album a few months later.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: The Wind Cries Mary
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The US version of Are You Experienced was significantly different than its UK counterpart. For one thing, the original UK album was only available in mono. For the US version, engineers at Reprise Records, working from the original multi-track masters, created all new stereo mixes of about two-thirds of the album, along with all three of the singles that the Jimi Hendrix Experience had released in the UK. The third of these singles was The Wind Cries Mary, which had hit the British charts in February of 1967.
Artist: Blues Magoos
Title: (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book and as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Gilbert/Scala/Esposito/Thielhelm
Label: Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year: 1966
The Blues Magoos (original spelling: Bloos) were either the first or second band to use the word psychedelic in an album title. Both they and the 13th Floor Elevators released their debut albums in 1966 and it is unclear which one actually came out first. What's not in dispute is the fact that Psychedelic Lollipop far outsold The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. One major reason for this was the fact that (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet was a huge national hit in early 1967, which helped album sales considerably (of course the fact that they were on Mercury Records, one of the "big six" labels of the time, didn't hurt). Despite having a unique sound and a look to match (including electric suits), the Magoos were unable to duplicate the success of Nothin' Yet on subsequent releases, partially due to Mercury's pairing of two equally marketable songs on the band's next single without indicating to stations which one they were supposed to be playing.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Positively 4th Street
Source: LP: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
Recorded during the same 1965 sessions that produced the classic Highway 61 Revisited album, Positively 4th Street was deliberately held back for release as a single later that year. The stereo mix would not appear on an LP until the first Dylan Greatest Hits album was released in 1967.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1429 (starts 7/16/14)
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Blues From An Airplane
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane
Writer(s): Balin/Spence
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1966
Blues From An Airplane was the opening song on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Although never released as a single, it was picked by the group to open their first anthology album, The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane, as well.
Artist: Voice
Title: The Train To Disaster
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Hammill/Anderson
Label: Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year: 1966
Originally known as Karl Stuart and the Profiles, this London band changed their name to the Voice just in time for their third and final single for Mercury, an apocalyptic tune called The Train To Disaster that came out in April of 1966. The band members were reportedly associated with something called the Church of the Process. When the Church began to pressure lead guitarist Miller Anderson to divorce his wife, Anderson instead chose to divorce the Church (and the Voice). His replacement, Mick Ronson, had only been with the band a short time when the other members suddenly relocated to the Bahamas, leaving Ronson behind. Ronson, however, went on to become a member of David Bowie's band, the Spiders From Mars, while the rest of the Voice have not been heard from since.
Artist: Animals
Title: Cheating
Source: LP: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals Vol. II (originally released on LP: Animalization)
Writer(s): Burdon/Chandler
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1966
As a general rule, the original Animals wrote very little of their own material, preferring to record covers of their favorite blues songs to supplement the songs from professional songwriters that producer Mickie Most picked for single release. One notable exception is Cheating, a strong effort from vocalist Eric Burdon and bassist Chas Chandler that appeared on the Animalization album. The hard-driving song was also chosen for release as a B side in 1966.
Artist: Standells
Title: Why Did You Hurt Me
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Dodd/Valentine
Label: Tower
Year: 1966
Why Did You Hurt Me is a bit of a musical oddity. The song, which was released B side of their second single, Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White, starts off as a growling three-chord bit of classic garage rock, but then goes into a bridge that sounds more like flower pop, with flowing melodic harmonies. This leads into a short transitional section that has little in common with what had come before and finally (somewhat awkwardly) segues back into the three chord main section to finish the song. The important thing, however, is that the piece was written by band members Dick Dodd and Tony Valentine, thus generating royalties for the two.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dreaming
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Polydor (original 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: Third Bardo
Title: I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Evans/Pike
Label: Rhino (original label: Roulette)
Year: 1967
The Third Bardo (the name coming from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) only released one single, but I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time has become, over a period of time, one of the most sought-after records of the psychedelic era. Not much is known of this New York band made up of Jeffrey Moon (vocals), Bruce Ginsberg (drums), Ricky Goldclang (lead guitar), Damian Kelly (bass) and Richy Seslowe (guitar).
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Double Yellow Line
Source: Mono CD: Turn On The Music Machine (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1967
Sean Bonniwell was an early champion of bands that played their own original material as opposed to covering the hits of the day. His own group, the Music Machine, deliberately played tight, segued sets of originals so that nobody in the crowd would have time to yell out "Cherish" or "Last Train to Clarksville" or whatever else was popular on local radio stations at the time. Imagine his chagrin when he learned that his record label, Original Sound (!), had substituted a set of cover tunes that the Music Machine had recorded for a TV show for four of Bonniwell's originals on the band's 1966 debut LP Turn On. One of the four songs to be cut was Double Yellow Line, a tune that appeared the following year as a single.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: The Masked Marauder
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Perhaps more than any other band, Country Joe and the Fish capture the essence of the San Francisco scene in the late 60s. Their first two releases were floppy inserts included in Joe McDonald's self-published Rag Baby underground newspaper. In 1967 the band was signed to Vanguard Records, a primarily folk-oriented prestige label that also had Joan Baez on its roster. Their first LP, Electric Music For the Mind and Body had such classic cuts as Section 43, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, and the political parody Superbird on it, as well as the mostly-instrumental tune The Masked Marauder. Not for the unenlightened.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Are You Lovin' Me More (But Enjoying It Less)
Source: Mono CD: The Complete Reprise Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Real Gone Music/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
For a follow-up to the hit single I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), producer Dave Hassinger chose another Annette Tucker song (co-written by Jill Jones) called Get Me To The World On Time. This was probably the best choice from the album tracks available, but Hassinger may have made a mistake by choosing Are You Lovin' Me More (But Enjoying It Less) as the B side. That song, written by the same Tucker/Mantz team that wrote I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) could quite possibly been a hit single in its own right if it had been issued as an A side. I guess we'll never know for sure.
Artist: Peter Fonda
Title: November Night
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Gram Parsons
Label: Rhino (original label: Chisa)
Year: 1967
Once upon a time the son of actor Henry Fonda was hanging around the swimming pool with his friends Gram Parsons, Stewart Levine and Hugh Masakela and decided he wanted to be a rock star. Levine and Masakela had started their own record label, Chisa (based on a Zulu "exclamation"), and Parsons provided the song November Night for Fonda to record. Although the single did get released, it failed to make an impression with anyone, and young Fonda decided that instead of trying to be a singer he perhaps should follow in his father's footsteps and become an actor like his sister Jane had. It turned out to be the right career move, as Peter Fonda would become famous for the film Easy Rider just two years later.
Artist: Jan And Dean
Title: Surf City
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Wilson/Berry
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1963
Starting in 1963 I spent my summers with my grandparents in Geneva, NY. Up until this point my exposure to radio had been pretty much limited to furtive trips to my parents' bedroom to sneak a listen to their clock radio while they were in the living room watching TV. My grandfather, however, had a tabletop radio in his den that he used mostly for listening to baseball games from Auburn, about 30 miles away. Since he worked nights and slept during the day, I got to play the radio pretty much any time I wanted to. Geneva's only radio station, WGVA, played top 40 hits at the time. One of the most popular songs that summer was Jan And Dean's Surf City, which, I found out years later, was the first surf song ever to top the national charts. I will always associate that song with that radio, 51 summers ago.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Mrs. Robinson
Source: CD :Collected Works (originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
A shortened version of Mrs. Robinson first appeared on the soundtrack for the film The Graduate in 1967, but it wasn't until the Bookends album came out in 1968 that the full four minute version was released. The song shot right to the top of the charts, staying there for several weeks.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Anji
Source: LP: Sounds Of Silence
Writer(s): Davey Graham
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Paul Simon wrote nearly all the material that he and Art Garfunkel recorded. One notable exception is Davey Graham's instrumental Anji, which Simon played as a solo acoustic piece on the Sounds Of Silence. The song immediately follows a Simon composition, Somewhere They Can't Find Me, that is built around a similar-sounding guitar riff, making Anji sound somewhat like an instrumental reprise of the first tune.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission)
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Paul Simon's sense of humor is on full display on A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission). The song first appeared, with slightly different lyrics on Simon's 1965 LP The Paul Simon Songbook, which was released only in the UK after Simon and Garfunkel had split following the disappointing sales of their first Columbia LP, Wednesday Morning 3AM. When the duo got back together following the surprise success of an electrified version of The Sound Of Silence, the re-recorded the tune, releasing it on their third Columbia LP, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The song is a deliberate parody/tribute to Bob Dylan, written in a style similar to It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), and is full of sly references to various well-known personages of the time as well as lesser-known acquaintances of Simon himself.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Three For Love
Source: LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s): Joe Kelley
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1966
The Shadows Of Knight moved way out of their garage/punk comfort zone for the song Three For Love, a folk-rock piece laden with harmony vocals. The tune, from the second LP, Back Door Men, is the only Shadows song I know of written by guitarist Joe Kelley. Kelley himself had started out as the band's bass player, but midway through sessions for the band's first LP, Gloria, it became obvious that he was a much better guitarist than Warren Rogers. As a result, the two traded roles, with Kelley handling all the leads on Back Door Men. Kelly, however, did not sing the lead vocals on Three For Love, despite being the song's composer. That task fell to rhythm guitarist Jerry McGeorge. It was his only credit as lead vocalist on the album.
Artist: Doors
Title: Love Me Two Times
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Although the second Doors album is sometimes dismissed as being full of tracks that didn't make the cut on the band's debut LP, the fact is that Strange Days contains some of the Doors' best-known tunes. One of those is Love Me Two Times, which was the second single released from the album. The song continues to get heavy airplay on classic rock stations.
Artist: Elastik Band
Title: Spazz
Source: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): David Cortopassi
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Just plain weird, and probably politically incorrect as well, Spazz was the work of five young men from Belmont, California calling themselves the Elastik Band. For some odd reason, someone at Atco Records thought Spazz might be commercially viable, and released the track as a single in late 1967. They were wrong.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Piggies
Source: British import LP: The Beatles
Writer(s): George Harrison
Label: Apple
Year: 1968
Beatle George Harrison had first revealed an anti-establishment side with his song Taxman, released in 1966 on the Revolver album. This particular viewpoint remained dormant until the song Piggies came out on the 1968 double LP The Beatles (aka the White Album). Although the song was intended to be satirical in tone, at least one Californian, Charles Manson, took it seriously enough to justify "whacking" a few "piggies" of his own. It was not pretty.
Artist: Flock
Title: I Am The Tall Tree
Source: British import CD: The Flock
Writer(s): The Flock
Label: BGO (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
The Flock was one of the many progressive rock bands signed by Columbia by Clive Davis in 1968, several of which included either a violin (like It's A Beautiful Day) or horns (the Chicago Transit Authority, for one). As far as I can tell, however, the Flock was the only one to feature both a violin and horn section. They were also the most avant-garde of the bunch, as a listen to a track like I Am The Tall Tree from their self-titled debut album makes obvious. Although that album did fairly well, getting rave reviews from the rock press and hitting the upper 40s on the album charts, the follow-up LP, Dinosaur Swamps, fared considerably less well, barely cracking the top 100. Before a third album could be recorded, the Flock lost several key members (including violinist Jerry Goodman to the newly-formed Mahavishnu Orchestra) and was never able to recover their early momentum.
Artist: Balloon Farm
Title: A Question Of Temperature
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Appel/Schnug/Henny
Label: Rhino (original label: Laurie)
Year: 1967
Few, if any, bands managed to successfully cross bubble gum and punk like the Balloon Farm with A Question Of Temperature, originally released on the Laurie label in 1967. Band member Mike Appel went on to have greater success as Bruce Springsteen's first manager.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: Immigrant Song
Source: CD: Led Zeppelin III
Writer(s): Page/Plant
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1970
Although the third Led Zeppelin album is known mostly for its surprising turn toward a more acoustic sound than its predecessors, the first single from that album actually rocked out as hard, if not harder, than any previous Zeppelin track. In fact, it could be argued that Immigrant Song rocks out harder than anything on top 40 radio before or since. Starting with a tape echo deliberately feeding on itself the song breaks into a basic riff built on two notes an octave apart, with Robert Plant's wailing vocals sounding almost like a siren call. Guitarist Jimmy Page soon breaks into a series of power chords that continue to build in intensity for the next two minutes, until the song abruptly stops cold. The lyrics of Immigrant Song were inspired by the band's trip to Iceland in 1970.
Artist: Zephyr
Title: Boom-Ba-Boom/Somebody Listen
Source: CD: Zephyr
Writer(s): Givens/Givens/Bolin/Faris
Label: MCA/One Way (original label: ABC Probe)
Year: 1969
Hailing from Boulder, Colorado, Zephyr was a blues rock band that had formed in 1968 by members of various local bands. In the early days the focus was on vocalist Candy Givens, who had a range of several octaves and could easily have performed without a microphone. Once the band had recorded their self-titled debut LP, the attention began to shift to Tommy Bolin, a self-taught guitarist who would go on to become a member of the James Gang, and then Deep Purple, as well as pursuing a solo career. In addition to Bolin and Givens, the band included Candy's husband David Givens on bass, John Faris on keyboards, and Robbie Chamberlin on drums. Many of the tracks on the first Zephyr were credited to the full membership of the band, although Boom-Ba-Boom, which segues into Somebody Listen, came from David Givens.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Crosstown Traffic
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
By 1968 it didn't matter one bit whether the Jimi Hendrix Experience had any hit singles; their albums were guaranteed to be successful. Nonetheless the Electric Ladyland album had no less that three singles on it (although one was a new stereo mix of a 1967 single). The last of these was Crosstown Traffic, a song that has been included on several anthologies over the years.
Artist: Mystery Trend
Title: Johnny Was A Good Boy
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nagle/Cuff
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve)
Year: 1967
The Mystery Trend was a bit of an anomaly. Contemporaries of bands such as the Great! Society and the Charlatans, the Trend always stood a bit apart from the rest of the crowd, playing to an audience that was both a bit more affluent and a bit more "adult" (they were reportedly the house band at a Sausalito strip club). Although they played in the city itself as early as 1965, they did not release their first record until early 1967. The song, Johnny Was A Good Boy, tells the story of a seemingly normal middle-class kid who turns out to be a monster, surprising friends, family and neighbors. The same theme would be used by XTC in the early 1980s in the song No Thugs In Our House, one of the standout tracks from their landmark English Settlement album.
Artist: Misunderstood
Title: Find Another Door
Source: Before The Dream Faded
Writer(s): Hill/Brown
Label: Cherry Red
Year: 1966
The story of the legendary band the Misunderstood actually started in 1963 when three teenagers from Riverside, California decided to form a band called the Blue Notes. Like most of the bands at the time, the group played a mixture of surf and 50s rock and roll cover songs, slowly developing a sound of their own as they went through a series of personnel changes, including the addition of lead vocalist Rick Brown. In 1965 the band changed their name to the Misunderstood and recorded six songs at a local recording studio. Although the recordings were not released, the band caught the attention of a San Bernardino disc jockey named John Ravencroft, and Englishman with an extensive knowledge of the British music scene. In June of 1966 the band, with Ravencroft's help, relocated to London, where they were joined by a local guitarist, Tony Hill. Ravencroft's brother Alan got the band a deal with Fontana Records, resulting in a single in late 1966, I Can Take You To The Sun, that took the British pop scene by storm. In addition to that single, the band recorded a handful of outstanding tracks that remained unreleased until the 1980s. Among those unreleased tracks was a masterpiece called Find Another Door, written (as were most of the songs the band recorded in London) by Brown and Hill. Problems having nothing to do with music soon derailed the Misunderstood, who soon found themselves being deported back to the US, and in one case, drafted into the US Army.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: 45 RPM single (simulated stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Ellner/Atkinson/Byrne/Chaney/Michalski
Label: Double Shot
Year: 1966
San Jose, California, was home to one of the most vibrant local music scenes in the late 60s, despite its relatively small, pre-silicon valley population. One of the most popular bands on that scene was Count Five, a group of five guys who dressed like Bela Lugosi's Dracula and sounded like the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds. Fortunately for Count Five, Jeff Beck had just left the Yardbirds when Psychotic Reaction came out, leaving a hole that the boys from San Jose were more than happy to fill.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Brave New World
Source: LP: Homer soundtrack (originally released on LP: Brave New World)
Writer(s): Steve Miller
Label: Cotillion (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1969
It took the Steve Miller Band half a dozen albums (plus appearances on a couple of movie soundtracks) to achieve star status in the early 1970s. Along the way they developed a cult following that added new members with each successive album. The fourth Miller album was Brave New World, the title track of which was used in the film Homer, a 1970 film that is better remembered for its soundtrack than for the film itself.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Cry Baby
Source: CD: The Pearl Sessions
Writer(s): Ragovoy/Berns
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1971
Janis Joplin's only hit single with Big Brother and the Holding Company was Piece Of My Heart, a song written by legendary songwriters Jerry Ragavoy and Bert Berns. For her 1971 album Pearl, Joplin went with an earlier collaboration between the two that had originally been a hit in the early 60s for Garnet Mimms. Within a few months Cry Baby had become so thoroughly identified with Joplin that few even remembered Mimms's version of the song.
Artist: Richie Havens
Title: Eyesight To The Blind
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Sonny Boy Williamson
Label: Ode
Year: 1972
The Who hit it big twice with the rock opera Tommy; first with the original version in 1969 and then again in the mid-1970s when the movie version came out. In between, however, there was a lesser-known 1972 orchestral version of the piece that, like the movie version, featured several guest artists. Among those was Richie Havens, who had just had a top 40 hit with a cover of George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun. Havens took the role of the Hawker, promising Eyesight To The Blind to the young Tommy. The song, originally recorded in the early 1960s by Sonny Boy Williamson, was the only non-original song to be incorporated into the rock opera itself. So what we have here is Richie Havens doing a cover of the Who's cover of Sonny Boy Williamson. Confusing, no?
Artist: Mojo Men
Title: Sit Down, I Think I Love You
Source: LP: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Stephen Stills
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Mojo Men started off in Rochester, NY in the early 60s. After a stint in south Florida playing mostly frat houses, the band moved to San Francisco, where they scored a contract with Reprise Records and recorded the garage-rock classic She's My Baby. Around late 1966-early 1967 the Mojo Men picked up a new drummer. Jan Errico, formerly of the Vejtables, brought with her a softer, more folky kind of sound, as well as the high vocal harmonies that are evident in this recording of the Buffalo Springfield tune Sit Down I Think I Love You, a minor hit during the summer of love.
Artist: Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title: Hungry
Source: LP: Spirit of '67
Writer: Mann/Weil
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
1966 was an incredibly successful year for Paul Revere and the Raiders. In addition to starting a gig as the host band for Dick Clark's new afternoon TV show, Where The Action Is, the band managed to crank out three consecutive top 10 singles. The second of these was Hungry, written by Brill building regulars Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Artist: Wallabys
Title: Old Man Of Time
Source: British import CD: Feeling High-The Psychedelic Sound Of Memphis
Writer(s): Gray/Palmore
Label: Big Beat
Year: 1967
The Wallabys were, by all accounts, the most eccentric rock band in mid-60s Jackson, Mississippi. They were also among the most influenced by the British invasion, particular the harder edged bands like the Kinks. The band was managed by Mitchell Maloof, a promoter who had bought into the Hullabaloo teen club chain. There were Hullabaloo clubs in Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and even California, giving the Wallabys a decent shot of buiding an audience base. Prior to their only trip to California, the group went up to Memphis to record a demo that included Old Man Of Time. Unfortunately, the California trip was a serious downer for the band, and by the end of 1967 the Wallabys had split up without any of their recordings having been released.
Artist: July
Title: Dandelion Seeds
Source: Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Tom Newman
Label: Zonophone (original label: Major Minor)
Year: 1968
Although he is best remembered as the co-founder (with Richard Branson) of Manor Studios, where Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells was produced, Tom Newman was actually a veteran of several London bands, the most successful of which was July, which recorded a pair of singles for the independent Major Minor label in 1968. The B side of the first single was Dandelion Seeds, which shows Newman's budding talents as a songwriter.
Artist: Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young
Title: Guinnevere
Source: CD: Woodstock Two
Writer(s): David Crosby
Label: Atlantic (original label: Cotillion)
Year: 1969
After the success of the movie Woodstock and its accompanying soundtrack album, Atlantic Records decided to release a sequel (on their Cotillion subsidiary label) called Woodstock Two. Although there were a handful of tunes used in the movie that had not been included on the first soundtrack album, the label decided to take a different approach with Woodstock Two. Rather than include just one or two songs per artist, Woodstock Two put the emphasis on longer sets from fewer artists, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who had, in the years following Woodstock, become genuine superstars. One of the standout tracks from Woodstock Two was David Crosby's Guinnevere, a song based on real people in Crosby's life.
Artist: Trade Winds
Title: I Believe In Her
Source: Mono LP:Excursions
Writer(s): Naumann/Calvert/Marzano
Label: Kama Sutra
Year: 1966
The Trade Winds were basically a front for the Anders/Poncia songwriting team that had two successful singles in the mid-60s. The first, New York Is A Lonely Town, was a melodic tune in the same vein as Brian Wilson's Surfer Girl, while the second, Mind Excursion, was as typical an example of flower pop as ever was recorded. The songs were considered successful enough to warrant the release of an album, Excursions, in 1966. One of the strongest tracks on the album was, ironically, not written by the Anders/Ponzia team. I Believe In Her was written by the Naumann/Calvert/Marzano team, which probably says something about the entire New York studio scene (but I'm not sure exactly what).
Title: Blues From An Airplane
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane
Writer(s): Balin/Spence
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1966
Blues From An Airplane was the opening song on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Although never released as a single, it was picked by the group to open their first anthology album, The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane, as well.
Artist: Voice
Title: The Train To Disaster
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Hammill/Anderson
Label: Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year: 1966
Originally known as Karl Stuart and the Profiles, this London band changed their name to the Voice just in time for their third and final single for Mercury, an apocalyptic tune called The Train To Disaster that came out in April of 1966. The band members were reportedly associated with something called the Church of the Process. When the Church began to pressure lead guitarist Miller Anderson to divorce his wife, Anderson instead chose to divorce the Church (and the Voice). His replacement, Mick Ronson, had only been with the band a short time when the other members suddenly relocated to the Bahamas, leaving Ronson behind. Ronson, however, went on to become a member of David Bowie's band, the Spiders From Mars, while the rest of the Voice have not been heard from since.
Artist: Animals
Title: Cheating
Source: LP: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals Vol. II (originally released on LP: Animalization)
Writer(s): Burdon/Chandler
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1966
As a general rule, the original Animals wrote very little of their own material, preferring to record covers of their favorite blues songs to supplement the songs from professional songwriters that producer Mickie Most picked for single release. One notable exception is Cheating, a strong effort from vocalist Eric Burdon and bassist Chas Chandler that appeared on the Animalization album. The hard-driving song was also chosen for release as a B side in 1966.
Artist: Standells
Title: Why Did You Hurt Me
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer: Dodd/Valentine
Label: Tower
Year: 1966
Why Did You Hurt Me is a bit of a musical oddity. The song, which was released B side of their second single, Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White, starts off as a growling three-chord bit of classic garage rock, but then goes into a bridge that sounds more like flower pop, with flowing melodic harmonies. This leads into a short transitional section that has little in common with what had come before and finally (somewhat awkwardly) segues back into the three chord main section to finish the song. The important thing, however, is that the piece was written by band members Dick Dodd and Tony Valentine, thus generating royalties for the two.
Artist: Cream
Title: Dreaming
Source: CD: Fresh Cream
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Polydor (original 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: Third Bardo
Title: I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Evans/Pike
Label: Rhino (original label: Roulette)
Year: 1967
The Third Bardo (the name coming from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) only released one single, but I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time has become, over a period of time, one of the most sought-after records of the psychedelic era. Not much is known of this New York band made up of Jeffrey Moon (vocals), Bruce Ginsberg (drums), Ricky Goldclang (lead guitar), Damian Kelly (bass) and Richy Seslowe (guitar).
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Double Yellow Line
Source: Mono CD: Turn On The Music Machine (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1967
Sean Bonniwell was an early champion of bands that played their own original material as opposed to covering the hits of the day. His own group, the Music Machine, deliberately played tight, segued sets of originals so that nobody in the crowd would have time to yell out "Cherish" or "Last Train to Clarksville" or whatever else was popular on local radio stations at the time. Imagine his chagrin when he learned that his record label, Original Sound (!), had substituted a set of cover tunes that the Music Machine had recorded for a TV show for four of Bonniwell's originals on the band's 1966 debut LP Turn On. One of the four songs to be cut was Double Yellow Line, a tune that appeared the following year as a single.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: The Masked Marauder
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): Joe McDonald
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
Perhaps more than any other band, Country Joe and the Fish capture the essence of the San Francisco scene in the late 60s. Their first two releases were floppy inserts included in Joe McDonald's self-published Rag Baby underground newspaper. In 1967 the band was signed to Vanguard Records, a primarily folk-oriented prestige label that also had Joan Baez on its roster. Their first LP, Electric Music For the Mind and Body had such classic cuts as Section 43, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine, and the political parody Superbird on it, as well as the mostly-instrumental tune The Masked Marauder. Not for the unenlightened.
Artist: Electric Prunes
Title: Are You Lovin' Me More (But Enjoying It Less)
Source: Mono CD: The Complete Reprise Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Tucker/Mantz
Label: Real Gone Music/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
For a follow-up to the hit single I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), producer Dave Hassinger chose another Annette Tucker song (co-written by Jill Jones) called Get Me To The World On Time. This was probably the best choice from the album tracks available, but Hassinger may have made a mistake by choosing Are You Lovin' Me More (But Enjoying It Less) as the B side. That song, written by the same Tucker/Mantz team that wrote I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) could quite possibly been a hit single in its own right if it had been issued as an A side. I guess we'll never know for sure.
Artist: Peter Fonda
Title: November Night
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Gram Parsons
Label: Rhino (original label: Chisa)
Year: 1967
Once upon a time the son of actor Henry Fonda was hanging around the swimming pool with his friends Gram Parsons, Stewart Levine and Hugh Masakela and decided he wanted to be a rock star. Levine and Masakela had started their own record label, Chisa (based on a Zulu "exclamation"), and Parsons provided the song November Night for Fonda to record. Although the single did get released, it failed to make an impression with anyone, and young Fonda decided that instead of trying to be a singer he perhaps should follow in his father's footsteps and become an actor like his sister Jane had. It turned out to be the right career move, as Peter Fonda would become famous for the film Easy Rider just two years later.
Artist: Jan And Dean
Title: Surf City
Source: 45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Wilson/Berry
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1963
Starting in 1963 I spent my summers with my grandparents in Geneva, NY. Up until this point my exposure to radio had been pretty much limited to furtive trips to my parents' bedroom to sneak a listen to their clock radio while they were in the living room watching TV. My grandfather, however, had a tabletop radio in his den that he used mostly for listening to baseball games from Auburn, about 30 miles away. Since he worked nights and slept during the day, I got to play the radio pretty much any time I wanted to. Geneva's only radio station, WGVA, played top 40 hits at the time. One of the most popular songs that summer was Jan And Dean's Surf City, which, I found out years later, was the first surf song ever to top the national charts. I will always associate that song with that radio, 51 summers ago.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Mrs. Robinson
Source: CD :Collected Works (originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
A shortened version of Mrs. Robinson first appeared on the soundtrack for the film The Graduate in 1967, but it wasn't until the Bookends album came out in 1968 that the full four minute version was released. The song shot right to the top of the charts, staying there for several weeks.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: Anji
Source: LP: Sounds Of Silence
Writer(s): Davey Graham
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Paul Simon wrote nearly all the material that he and Art Garfunkel recorded. One notable exception is Davey Graham's instrumental Anji, which Simon played as a solo acoustic piece on the Sounds Of Silence. The song immediately follows a Simon composition, Somewhere They Can't Find Me, that is built around a similar-sounding guitar riff, making Anji sound somewhat like an instrumental reprise of the first tune.
Artist: Simon And Garfunkel
Title: A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission)
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
Paul Simon's sense of humor is on full display on A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission). The song first appeared, with slightly different lyrics on Simon's 1965 LP The Paul Simon Songbook, which was released only in the UK after Simon and Garfunkel had split following the disappointing sales of their first Columbia LP, Wednesday Morning 3AM. When the duo got back together following the surprise success of an electrified version of The Sound Of Silence, the re-recorded the tune, releasing it on their third Columbia LP, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The song is a deliberate parody/tribute to Bob Dylan, written in a style similar to It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), and is full of sly references to various well-known personages of the time as well as lesser-known acquaintances of Simon himself.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: Three For Love
Source: LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s): Joe Kelley
Label: Sundazed
Year: 1966
The Shadows Of Knight moved way out of their garage/punk comfort zone for the song Three For Love, a folk-rock piece laden with harmony vocals. The tune, from the second LP, Back Door Men, is the only Shadows song I know of written by guitarist Joe Kelley. Kelley himself had started out as the band's bass player, but midway through sessions for the band's first LP, Gloria, it became obvious that he was a much better guitarist than Warren Rogers. As a result, the two traded roles, with Kelley handling all the leads on Back Door Men. Kelly, however, did not sing the lead vocals on Three For Love, despite being the song's composer. That task fell to rhythm guitarist Jerry McGeorge. It was his only credit as lead vocalist on the album.
Artist: Doors
Title: Love Me Two Times
Source: LP: Strange Days
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
Although the second Doors album is sometimes dismissed as being full of tracks that didn't make the cut on the band's debut LP, the fact is that Strange Days contains some of the Doors' best-known tunes. One of those is Love Me Two Times, which was the second single released from the album. The song continues to get heavy airplay on classic rock stations.
Artist: Elastik Band
Title: Spazz
Source: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): David Cortopassi
Label: Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Just plain weird, and probably politically incorrect as well, Spazz was the work of five young men from Belmont, California calling themselves the Elastik Band. For some odd reason, someone at Atco Records thought Spazz might be commercially viable, and released the track as a single in late 1967. They were wrong.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Piggies
Source: British import LP: The Beatles
Writer(s): George Harrison
Label: Apple
Year: 1968
Beatle George Harrison had first revealed an anti-establishment side with his song Taxman, released in 1966 on the Revolver album. This particular viewpoint remained dormant until the song Piggies came out on the 1968 double LP The Beatles (aka the White Album). Although the song was intended to be satirical in tone, at least one Californian, Charles Manson, took it seriously enough to justify "whacking" a few "piggies" of his own. It was not pretty.
Artist: Flock
Title: I Am The Tall Tree
Source: British import CD: The Flock
Writer(s): The Flock
Label: BGO (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1969
The Flock was one of the many progressive rock bands signed by Columbia by Clive Davis in 1968, several of which included either a violin (like It's A Beautiful Day) or horns (the Chicago Transit Authority, for one). As far as I can tell, however, the Flock was the only one to feature both a violin and horn section. They were also the most avant-garde of the bunch, as a listen to a track like I Am The Tall Tree from their self-titled debut album makes obvious. Although that album did fairly well, getting rave reviews from the rock press and hitting the upper 40s on the album charts, the follow-up LP, Dinosaur Swamps, fared considerably less well, barely cracking the top 100. Before a third album could be recorded, the Flock lost several key members (including violinist Jerry Goodman to the newly-formed Mahavishnu Orchestra) and was never able to recover their early momentum.
Artist: Balloon Farm
Title: A Question Of Temperature
Source: Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Appel/Schnug/Henny
Label: Rhino (original label: Laurie)
Year: 1967
Few, if any, bands managed to successfully cross bubble gum and punk like the Balloon Farm with A Question Of Temperature, originally released on the Laurie label in 1967. Band member Mike Appel went on to have greater success as Bruce Springsteen's first manager.
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Title: Immigrant Song
Source: CD: Led Zeppelin III
Writer(s): Page/Plant
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1970
Although the third Led Zeppelin album is known mostly for its surprising turn toward a more acoustic sound than its predecessors, the first single from that album actually rocked out as hard, if not harder, than any previous Zeppelin track. In fact, it could be argued that Immigrant Song rocks out harder than anything on top 40 radio before or since. Starting with a tape echo deliberately feeding on itself the song breaks into a basic riff built on two notes an octave apart, with Robert Plant's wailing vocals sounding almost like a siren call. Guitarist Jimmy Page soon breaks into a series of power chords that continue to build in intensity for the next two minutes, until the song abruptly stops cold. The lyrics of Immigrant Song were inspired by the band's trip to Iceland in 1970.
Artist: Zephyr
Title: Boom-Ba-Boom/Somebody Listen
Source: CD: Zephyr
Writer(s): Givens/Givens/Bolin/Faris
Label: MCA/One Way (original label: ABC Probe)
Year: 1969
Hailing from Boulder, Colorado, Zephyr was a blues rock band that had formed in 1968 by members of various local bands. In the early days the focus was on vocalist Candy Givens, who had a range of several octaves and could easily have performed without a microphone. Once the band had recorded their self-titled debut LP, the attention began to shift to Tommy Bolin, a self-taught guitarist who would go on to become a member of the James Gang, and then Deep Purple, as well as pursuing a solo career. In addition to Bolin and Givens, the band included Candy's husband David Givens on bass, John Faris on keyboards, and Robbie Chamberlin on drums. Many of the tracks on the first Zephyr were credited to the full membership of the band, although Boom-Ba-Boom, which segues into Somebody Listen, came from David Givens.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Crosstown Traffic
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
By 1968 it didn't matter one bit whether the Jimi Hendrix Experience had any hit singles; their albums were guaranteed to be successful. Nonetheless the Electric Ladyland album had no less that three singles on it (although one was a new stereo mix of a 1967 single). The last of these was Crosstown Traffic, a song that has been included on several anthologies over the years.
Artist: Mystery Trend
Title: Johnny Was A Good Boy
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Nagle/Cuff
Label: Rhino (original label: Verve)
Year: 1967
The Mystery Trend was a bit of an anomaly. Contemporaries of bands such as the Great! Society and the Charlatans, the Trend always stood a bit apart from the rest of the crowd, playing to an audience that was both a bit more affluent and a bit more "adult" (they were reportedly the house band at a Sausalito strip club). Although they played in the city itself as early as 1965, they did not release their first record until early 1967. The song, Johnny Was A Good Boy, tells the story of a seemingly normal middle-class kid who turns out to be a monster, surprising friends, family and neighbors. The same theme would be used by XTC in the early 1980s in the song No Thugs In Our House, one of the standout tracks from their landmark English Settlement album.
Artist: Misunderstood
Title: Find Another Door
Source: Before The Dream Faded
Writer(s): Hill/Brown
Label: Cherry Red
Year: 1966
The story of the legendary band the Misunderstood actually started in 1963 when three teenagers from Riverside, California decided to form a band called the Blue Notes. Like most of the bands at the time, the group played a mixture of surf and 50s rock and roll cover songs, slowly developing a sound of their own as they went through a series of personnel changes, including the addition of lead vocalist Rick Brown. In 1965 the band changed their name to the Misunderstood and recorded six songs at a local recording studio. Although the recordings were not released, the band caught the attention of a San Bernardino disc jockey named John Ravencroft, and Englishman with an extensive knowledge of the British music scene. In June of 1966 the band, with Ravencroft's help, relocated to London, where they were joined by a local guitarist, Tony Hill. Ravencroft's brother Alan got the band a deal with Fontana Records, resulting in a single in late 1966, I Can Take You To The Sun, that took the British pop scene by storm. In addition to that single, the band recorded a handful of outstanding tracks that remained unreleased until the 1980s. Among those unreleased tracks was a masterpiece called Find Another Door, written (as were most of the songs the band recorded in London) by Brown and Hill. Problems having nothing to do with music soon derailed the Misunderstood, who soon found themselves being deported back to the US, and in one case, drafted into the US Army.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: 45 RPM single (simulated stereo reissue)
Writer(s): Ellner/Atkinson/Byrne/Chaney/Michalski
Label: Double Shot
Year: 1966
San Jose, California, was home to one of the most vibrant local music scenes in the late 60s, despite its relatively small, pre-silicon valley population. One of the most popular bands on that scene was Count Five, a group of five guys who dressed like Bela Lugosi's Dracula and sounded like the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds. Fortunately for Count Five, Jeff Beck had just left the Yardbirds when Psychotic Reaction came out, leaving a hole that the boys from San Jose were more than happy to fill.
Artist: Steve Miller Band
Title: Brave New World
Source: LP: Homer soundtrack (originally released on LP: Brave New World)
Writer(s): Steve Miller
Label: Cotillion (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1969
It took the Steve Miller Band half a dozen albums (plus appearances on a couple of movie soundtracks) to achieve star status in the early 1970s. Along the way they developed a cult following that added new members with each successive album. The fourth Miller album was Brave New World, the title track of which was used in the film Homer, a 1970 film that is better remembered for its soundtrack than for the film itself.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Cry Baby
Source: CD: The Pearl Sessions
Writer(s): Ragovoy/Berns
Label: Columbia/Legacy
Year: 1971
Janis Joplin's only hit single with Big Brother and the Holding Company was Piece Of My Heart, a song written by legendary songwriters Jerry Ragavoy and Bert Berns. For her 1971 album Pearl, Joplin went with an earlier collaboration between the two that had originally been a hit in the early 60s for Garnet Mimms. Within a few months Cry Baby had become so thoroughly identified with Joplin that few even remembered Mimms's version of the song.
Artist: Richie Havens
Title: Eyesight To The Blind
Source: Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Sonny Boy Williamson
Label: Ode
Year: 1972
The Who hit it big twice with the rock opera Tommy; first with the original version in 1969 and then again in the mid-1970s when the movie version came out. In between, however, there was a lesser-known 1972 orchestral version of the piece that, like the movie version, featured several guest artists. Among those was Richie Havens, who had just had a top 40 hit with a cover of George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun. Havens took the role of the Hawker, promising Eyesight To The Blind to the young Tommy. The song, originally recorded in the early 1960s by Sonny Boy Williamson, was the only non-original song to be incorporated into the rock opera itself. So what we have here is Richie Havens doing a cover of the Who's cover of Sonny Boy Williamson. Confusing, no?
Artist: Mojo Men
Title: Sit Down, I Think I Love You
Source: LP: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Stephen Stills
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
The Mojo Men started off in Rochester, NY in the early 60s. After a stint in south Florida playing mostly frat houses, the band moved to San Francisco, where they scored a contract with Reprise Records and recorded the garage-rock classic She's My Baby. Around late 1966-early 1967 the Mojo Men picked up a new drummer. Jan Errico, formerly of the Vejtables, brought with her a softer, more folky kind of sound, as well as the high vocal harmonies that are evident in this recording of the Buffalo Springfield tune Sit Down I Think I Love You, a minor hit during the summer of love.
Artist: Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title: Hungry
Source: LP: Spirit of '67
Writer: Mann/Weil
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
1966 was an incredibly successful year for Paul Revere and the Raiders. In addition to starting a gig as the host band for Dick Clark's new afternoon TV show, Where The Action Is, the band managed to crank out three consecutive top 10 singles. The second of these was Hungry, written by Brill building regulars Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Artist: Wallabys
Title: Old Man Of Time
Source: British import CD: Feeling High-The Psychedelic Sound Of Memphis
Writer(s): Gray/Palmore
Label: Big Beat
Year: 1967
The Wallabys were, by all accounts, the most eccentric rock band in mid-60s Jackson, Mississippi. They were also among the most influenced by the British invasion, particular the harder edged bands like the Kinks. The band was managed by Mitchell Maloof, a promoter who had bought into the Hullabaloo teen club chain. There were Hullabaloo clubs in Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and even California, giving the Wallabys a decent shot of buiding an audience base. Prior to their only trip to California, the group went up to Memphis to record a demo that included Old Man Of Time. Unfortunately, the California trip was a serious downer for the band, and by the end of 1967 the Wallabys had split up without any of their recordings having been released.
Artist: July
Title: Dandelion Seeds
Source: Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): Tom Newman
Label: Zonophone (original label: Major Minor)
Year: 1968
Although he is best remembered as the co-founder (with Richard Branson) of Manor Studios, where Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells was produced, Tom Newman was actually a veteran of several London bands, the most successful of which was July, which recorded a pair of singles for the independent Major Minor label in 1968. The B side of the first single was Dandelion Seeds, which shows Newman's budding talents as a songwriter.
Artist: Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young
Title: Guinnevere
Source: CD: Woodstock Two
Writer(s): David Crosby
Label: Atlantic (original label: Cotillion)
Year: 1969
After the success of the movie Woodstock and its accompanying soundtrack album, Atlantic Records decided to release a sequel (on their Cotillion subsidiary label) called Woodstock Two. Although there were a handful of tunes used in the movie that had not been included on the first soundtrack album, the label decided to take a different approach with Woodstock Two. Rather than include just one or two songs per artist, Woodstock Two put the emphasis on longer sets from fewer artists, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who had, in the years following Woodstock, become genuine superstars. One of the standout tracks from Woodstock Two was David Crosby's Guinnevere, a song based on real people in Crosby's life.
Artist: Trade Winds
Title: I Believe In Her
Source: Mono LP:Excursions
Writer(s): Naumann/Calvert/Marzano
Label: Kama Sutra
Year: 1966
The Trade Winds were basically a front for the Anders/Poncia songwriting team that had two successful singles in the mid-60s. The first, New York Is A Lonely Town, was a melodic tune in the same vein as Brian Wilson's Surfer Girl, while the second, Mind Excursion, was as typical an example of flower pop as ever was recorded. The songs were considered successful enough to warrant the release of an album, Excursions, in 1966. One of the strongest tracks on the album was, ironically, not written by the Anders/Ponzia team. I Believe In Her was written by the Naumann/Calvert/Marzano team, which probably says something about the entire New York studio scene (but I'm not sure exactly what).
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1428 (starts 7/9/14)
Artist: Grand Funk Railroad
Title: Mr. Limousine Driver (extended version)
Source: CD: Grand Funk (bonus track)
Writer(s): Mark Farner
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
With the advent of eight-track technology, artists sometimes found themselves with more recording space than they actually needed. Bands like Grand Funk Railroad, who only had three members, were generally able to lay down the basic instrumentals on only four tracks (two for drums and one each for bass and guitar), adding vocals on one or two of the remaining tracks. This left extra room for multiple takes of the lead guitar solos and fills. This extended version of one of their most popular tunes, Mr. Limousine Driver, (which was originally released on the band's second LP, Grand Funk (aka The Red Album)), uses the same basic instrumental and vocal tracks as the LP version, but features an unused alternate lead guitar track and does not fade out early like the version heard on the album Grand Funk.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: My Mirage
Source: LP: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
One thing about Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida album is that almost nobody remembers any of the songs from the other side of the album. That's a bit of a shame, because there are a couple of really good tunes on there, such as My Mirage, a Doug Ingle composition that helped lay the groundwork for the progressive rock movement of the 1970s.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Cool, Calm And Collected
Source: LP: Between The Buttons
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
The Rolling Stones were beginning to experiment with psychedelia on their first album of 1967, Between The Buttons. Cool, Calm and Collected, which closes side one of the LP, features pianist Nicky Hopkins prominently. Hopkins, one of the most respected British session players (and the inspiration for the Kinks song Session Man) would soon start showing up on albums by American artists, and even became a member of one of them (Quicksilver Messenger Service) for a time.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
Gene Clark's final contribution to the Byrds was his collaboration with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Eight Miles High. Despite a newsletter from the most powerful man in top 40 radio, Bill Drake, advising stations not to play this "drug song", the song managed to hit the top 20 in 1966. The band members themselves claimed that Eight Miles High was not a drug song at all, but was instead referring to the experience of travelling by air. In fact, it was Gene Clark's fear of flying that in part led to his leaving the Byrds.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Subterranean Homesick Blues
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
1965 was the year Bob Dylan went electric, and got his first top 40 hit, Subterranean Homesick Blues, in the process. Although the song, which also led off his Bringing It All Back Home album, stalled out in the lower 30s, it did pave the way for electrified cover versions of Dylan songs by the Byrds and Turtles and Dylan's own Like A Rolling Stone, which would revolutionize top 40 radio. A line from the song itself, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", became the inspiration for a radical offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that called itself the Weathermen (later the Weather Underground).
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
The first time I heard Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit was on Denver's first FM rock station, KLZ-FM, in the spring of 1967. The station branded itself as having a top 100 (as opposed to local ratings leader KIMN's top 60), and prided itself on being the first station in town to play new releases and album tracks. It wasn't long before White Rabbit was officially released as a single, and went on to become a top 10 hit, the last for the Airplane.
Artist: Bubble Puppy
Title: Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: A Gathering Or Promises)
Writer(s): Prince/Cox/Potter/Fore
Label: Priority (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1968
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 in early 1969 with Hot Smoke and Sassafras, a song that was originally released the previous year as a B side. Not long after the release of their first LP, A Gathering Of 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: Beatles
Title: She's Leaving Home
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
One of the striking things about the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the sheer variety of styles on the album. Never before had a rock band gone so far beyond its roots in so many directions at once. One of Paul McCartney's most poignant songs on the album was She's Leaving Home. The song tells the story of a young girl who has decided that her stable homelife is just too unfulling to bear and heads for the big city. Giving the song added depth is the somewhat clueless response of her parents, who can't seem to understand what went wrong.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Michelle
Source: LP: Rubber Soul
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
1965 was the year it became obvious that John Lennon and Paul McCartney, while officially still a songwriting team, were moving in different directions. By the time the Rubber Soul album was released in December, it had become relatively easy to tell which of the two wrote which songs (or in some cases sections of songs). One obvious McCartney tune from Rubber Soul was Michelle, a song covered by my high school madrigal choir a few years later. The recording deliberately evokes a Parisian atmosphere, both in musical style and in the use of the French language on one of the verses.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Fixing A Hole
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
Until 1967 every Beatle album released in the US had at least one hit single included that was not on the British version of the album (or was never released as a single in the UK). With the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, however, the track lineup became universal, making it the first Beatle album released in the US to not have a hit single on it. Nonetheless, the importance (and popularity) of the album was such that virtually every song on it got top 40 airplay at one time or another, although some tracks got more exposure than others. One of the many tracks that falls in between these extremes is Fixing A Hole, a tune by Paul McCartney that features the harpsichord prominently.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Feelin' Alright
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s): Dave Mason
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
Although Traffic is generally known as an early underground rock band heard mostly on progressive FM stations in the US, the band had its share of hit singles in its native England as well. Many of these early hits were written by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mason, who would leave the band in 1968, only to return for the live Welcome To The Canteen album before leaving again, this time for good. One of Mason's most memorable songs was Feelin' Alright, from Traffic's self-titled second LP. The song very quickly became a rock standard when Joe Cocker sped it up and made it his own signature song. Grand Funk Railroad slowed it back down and scored a hit with their version in 1971, and Mason himself got some airplay with a new solo recording of the song later in the decade. Even comedian John Belushi got into the act with his dead-on cover of Cocker's version of the song on the Saturday Night Live TV show.
Artist: Fairport Convention
Title: Portfolio
Source: British import CD: Fairport Convention
Writer(s): Dyble/Hutchings
Label: Polydor
Year: 1968
Fairport Convention are well known as one of the premier British folk bands of the 1970s. They did not, however, start off that way. The original lineup, consisting of Ian McDonald (lead vocals), Judy Dyble (lead vocals, autoharp, recorder, piano) Richard Thompson (guitars, vocals, mandolin), Simon Nicol (guitars, vocals), Ashley Hutchings (bass), and Martin Lamble (percussion, violin), were an eclectic bunch with eclectic tastes that included the written works of Spike Milligan and James Joyce and the music of John Coltrane, Doc Watson, and the Butterfield Blues Band, among others. Their own music was a synthesis of folk, rock, jazz, blues and the avant-garde, and was hailed as Britain's answer to the Jefferson Airplane. The first self-titled Fairport Convention album was only released in the UK (which in later years would lead to some confusion, since the band's next LP, 1969's What We Did On Our Holidays, was released in the US in 1970 with no other name than Fairport Convention). Not every track on the original Fairport Convention LP had vocals. One of the strongest tracks, in fact, was an instrumental written by Dyble and Hutchings called Portfolio that manages, in just two minutes, to give a strong impression of where the band was at musically in 1968. As much as I like the much better known Sandy Denny version of Fairport Convention, I would have loved to hear more from this original lineup of the band.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Turtle Blues
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Janis Joplin
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Sometimes I do play favorites. Turtle Blues, from the Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, is certainly one of them. Besides vocalist Janis Joplin, who wrote the tune, the only other band member heard on the track is guitarist Peter Albin. Legendary producer John Simon provides the piano playing.
Artist: Bloodrock
Title: D.O.A.
Source: CD: Bloodrock 2
Writer(s): Cobb/Grundy/Hill/Pickens/Rutledge
Label: One Way (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1970
Bloodrock gained infamy in 1970 with the inclusion of D.O.A. on their second LP, a song reputed to be the cause of more bad acid trips than any other track ever recorded. Although the origins of the song are popularly attributed to a plane crash that killed several student atheletes in October of 1970, the fact that the album was already in the hands of record reviewers within a week of that event makes it unlikely that the two are related. The more likely story is that it was inspired by band member Lee Pickens's witnessing of a friend crashing his light plane a couple years before. Regardless of the song's origins, D.O.A. has to be considered one of the creepiest recordings ever made.
Artist: Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs
Title: Wooly Bully
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Domingo Samudio
Label: Rhino (original label: XL)
Year: 1964
Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs were pioneers of what has come to be called Tex-Mex, a style that can best described as straight ahead rock and roll seasoned with traditional Mexican forms such as salsa and ranchero. The Pharaohs were already a popular band in their native Texas when they recorded Wooly Bully for the regional XL label in 1964. The song proved so popular that it (and the band's contract) was bought outright by M-G-M Records, at the time one of the largest labels in the country. Wooly Bully was re-released nationally on M-G-M in 1965 and ended up among the top 10 records of the year.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
When it came time for Sean Bonniwell's band, the Music Machine, to go into the studio to record an album, the group decided to go for the best sound possible. This meant signing with tiny Original Sound Records, despite having offers from bigger labels, due to Original Sound having their own state-of-the-art eight-track studios. Unfortunately for the band, they soon discovered that having great equipment did not mean Original Sound made great decisions. One of the first, in fact, was to include a handful of cover songs on the Music Machine's first LP that were recorded for use on a local TV show. Bonniwell was livid when he found out, as he had envisioned an album made up entirely of his own compositions (although he reportedly did plan to use a slowed-down version of Hey Joe that he and Tim Rose had worked up together). From that point on it was only a matter of time until the Music Machine and Original Sound parted company, but not until after they scored a big national hit (# 15) with Talk Talk (which had been recorded at the four-track RCA Studios) in 1966.
Artist: Cream
Title: SWLABR
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
I distinctly remember this song getting played on the local jukebox just as much as the single's A side, Sunshine Of Your Love (maybe even more). Like most of Cream's more psychedelic material, SWLABR (an anagram for She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow) was written by the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. Brown had originally been brought in as a co-writer for Ginger Baker, but soon realized that he and Bruce had better songwriting chemistry.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although never released as a single, Voodoo Child (Slight Return), has become a staple of classic rock radio over the years. The song was originally an outgrowth of a jam session at New York's Record Plant, which itself takes up most of side one of the Electric Ladyland LP. This more familiar studio reworking of the piece has been covered by a variety of artists over the years.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose
Source: CD: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s): Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir/Constanten
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1968
After completing their first album in three days, the Grateful Dead decided to take their time with the 1968 follow-up release. Anthem of the Sun was an attempt at mixing studio and live material into a coherent whole. That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose comprise most of the first side of that album. In order to increase the band's share of royalties for the album, That's It For The Other One was arbitrarily broken down into several parts on the album cover, although it is one continuous piece. The entire album was remixed by band members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh in the early 1970s, due to their feeling that much of the music was literally lost in the original mix. It is the remixed version that is now available on CD, although a limited pressing vinyl edition of the original mix (on high-quality 180g vinyl) has been released as well.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: The Black Plague
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BGO (original US label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.
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: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Poem By The Sea/Paint It, Black
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Label: BGO (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the highlights of the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 was the onstage debut of Eric Burdon's new Animals, a group much more in tune with the psychedelic happenings of the summer of love than its working class predecessor. The showstopper for the band's set was an extended version of the Rolling Stone's classic Paint It, Black. That summer saw the release of the group's first full LP, Winds Of Change, which included a studio version of Paint It, Black preceded by a slow piece called Poem By The Sea.
Artist: Jan And Dean
Title: Dead Man's Curve
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Berry/Christian/Kornfeld/Wilson
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1964
As I talk about in a really long scholarly article elsewhere on the web site, one of the many contributing factors to the temporary democratization of the US popular music industry was the surf music craze of 1962 and '63, which morphed into the hot rod music craze of 1964 and '65. Although the style was created by instrumentalists such as Dick Dale and the Ventures, it was the vocal groups such as the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean that found the greatest commercial success with it. One of the biggest hits was the eerily predictive Dead Man's Curve, about a car wreck along a particularly nasty stretch of Sunset Blvd. in the vicinity of Beverly Hills. About two years after this song topped the charts, Jan Berry was involved in a near-fatal collision just a few blocks from the infamous curve; an accident he never fully recovered from.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Things Are Getting Better
Source: LP: Kinks-Size (originally released in UK as an EP track(
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise (original UK label: Pye)
Year: UK: 1964, US: 1965
As was the case with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Kinks released several songs in their native England that did not appear on any of the band's British LPs. Instead, those songs were released either as singles or on 45 RPM extended play (EP) records. In the US, on the other hand, hit singles were routinely included on LPs, and the American record companies often replaced songs that were included on the original versions of albums with single tracks. This created a backlog of material that had been released in the UK, but not in the US. Every so often, these US labels would compile these leftover tracks on entirely new albums that had no British counterparts. Such is the case with Kinks-Size, which included songs like Things Are Getting Better, which originally an EP track. This practice continued until 1967, at which time the British and American versions of albums began to look the same.
Artist: Love
Title: Colored Balls Falling
Source: Mono LP: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
The first Love album is rooted solidly in the garage rock genre. A solid example of this is Colored Balls Falling, written by Arthur Lee. To my knowledge, Colored Balls Falling has never been included on any anthology albums, making this mono mix of the song somewhat of a rarity.
Title: Mr. Limousine Driver (extended version)
Source: CD: Grand Funk (bonus track)
Writer(s): Mark Farner
Label: Capitol
Year: 1969
With the advent of eight-track technology, artists sometimes found themselves with more recording space than they actually needed. Bands like Grand Funk Railroad, who only had three members, were generally able to lay down the basic instrumentals on only four tracks (two for drums and one each for bass and guitar), adding vocals on one or two of the remaining tracks. This left extra room for multiple takes of the lead guitar solos and fills. This extended version of one of their most popular tunes, Mr. Limousine Driver, (which was originally released on the band's second LP, Grand Funk (aka The Red Album)), uses the same basic instrumental and vocal tracks as the LP version, but features an unused alternate lead guitar track and does not fade out early like the version heard on the album Grand Funk.
Artist: Iron Butterfly
Title: My Mirage
Source: LP: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Writer(s): Doug Ingle
Label: Atco
Year: 1968
One thing about Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida album is that almost nobody remembers any of the songs from the other side of the album. That's a bit of a shame, because there are a couple of really good tunes on there, such as My Mirage, a Doug Ingle composition that helped lay the groundwork for the progressive rock movement of the 1970s.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Cool, Calm And Collected
Source: LP: Between The Buttons
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
The Rolling Stones were beginning to experiment with psychedelia on their first album of 1967, Between The Buttons. Cool, Calm and Collected, which closes side one of the LP, features pianist Nicky Hopkins prominently. Hopkins, one of the most respected British session players (and the inspiration for the Kinks song Session Man) would soon start showing up on albums by American artists, and even became a member of one of them (Quicksilver Messenger Service) for a time.
Artist: Byrds
Title: Eight Miles High
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s): Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1966
Gene Clark's final contribution to the Byrds was his collaboration with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Eight Miles High. Despite a newsletter from the most powerful man in top 40 radio, Bill Drake, advising stations not to play this "drug song", the song managed to hit the top 20 in 1966. The band members themselves claimed that Eight Miles High was not a drug song at all, but was instead referring to the experience of travelling by air. In fact, it was Gene Clark's fear of flying that in part led to his leaving the Byrds.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Subterranean Homesick Blues
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
1965 was the year Bob Dylan went electric, and got his first top 40 hit, Subterranean Homesick Blues, in the process. Although the song, which also led off his Bringing It All Back Home album, stalled out in the lower 30s, it did pave the way for electrified cover versions of Dylan songs by the Byrds and Turtles and Dylan's own Like A Rolling Stone, which would revolutionize top 40 radio. A line from the song itself, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", became the inspiration for a radical offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that called itself the Weathermen (later the Weather Underground).
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: White Rabbit
Source: CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s): Grace Slick
Label: RCA
Year: 1967
The first time I heard Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit was on Denver's first FM rock station, KLZ-FM, in the spring of 1967. The station branded itself as having a top 100 (as opposed to local ratings leader KIMN's top 60), and prided itself on being the first station in town to play new releases and album tracks. It wasn't long before White Rabbit was officially released as a single, and went on to become a top 10 hit, the last for the Airplane.
Artist: Bubble Puppy
Title: Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source: CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: A Gathering Or Promises)
Writer(s): Prince/Cox/Potter/Fore
Label: Priority (original label: International Artists)
Year: 1968
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 in early 1969 with Hot Smoke and Sassafras, a song that was originally released the previous year as a B side. Not long after the release of their first LP, A Gathering Of 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: Beatles
Title: She's Leaving Home
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
One of the striking things about the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the sheer variety of styles on the album. Never before had a rock band gone so far beyond its roots in so many directions at once. One of Paul McCartney's most poignant songs on the album was She's Leaving Home. The song tells the story of a young girl who has decided that her stable homelife is just too unfulling to bear and heads for the big city. Giving the song added depth is the somewhat clueless response of her parents, who can't seem to understand what went wrong.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Michelle
Source: LP: Rubber Soul
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
1965 was the year it became obvious that John Lennon and Paul McCartney, while officially still a songwriting team, were moving in different directions. By the time the Rubber Soul album was released in December, it had become relatively easy to tell which of the two wrote which songs (or in some cases sections of songs). One obvious McCartney tune from Rubber Soul was Michelle, a song covered by my high school madrigal choir a few years later. The recording deliberately evokes a Parisian atmosphere, both in musical style and in the use of the French language on one of the verses.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Fixing A Hole
Source: CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1967
Until 1967 every Beatle album released in the US had at least one hit single included that was not on the British version of the album (or was never released as a single in the UK). With the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, however, the track lineup became universal, making it the first Beatle album released in the US to not have a hit single on it. Nonetheless, the importance (and popularity) of the album was such that virtually every song on it got top 40 airplay at one time or another, although some tracks got more exposure than others. One of the many tracks that falls in between these extremes is Fixing A Hole, a tune by Paul McCartney that features the harpsichord prominently.
Artist: Traffic
Title: Feelin' Alright
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s): Dave Mason
Label: United Artists
Year: 1968
Although Traffic is generally known as an early underground rock band heard mostly on progressive FM stations in the US, the band had its share of hit singles in its native England as well. Many of these early hits were written by guitarist/vocalist Dave Mason, who would leave the band in 1968, only to return for the live Welcome To The Canteen album before leaving again, this time for good. One of Mason's most memorable songs was Feelin' Alright, from Traffic's self-titled second LP. The song very quickly became a rock standard when Joe Cocker sped it up and made it his own signature song. Grand Funk Railroad slowed it back down and scored a hit with their version in 1971, and Mason himself got some airplay with a new solo recording of the song later in the decade. Even comedian John Belushi got into the act with his dead-on cover of Cocker's version of the song on the Saturday Night Live TV show.
Artist: Fairport Convention
Title: Portfolio
Source: British import CD: Fairport Convention
Writer(s): Dyble/Hutchings
Label: Polydor
Year: 1968
Fairport Convention are well known as one of the premier British folk bands of the 1970s. They did not, however, start off that way. The original lineup, consisting of Ian McDonald (lead vocals), Judy Dyble (lead vocals, autoharp, recorder, piano) Richard Thompson (guitars, vocals, mandolin), Simon Nicol (guitars, vocals), Ashley Hutchings (bass), and Martin Lamble (percussion, violin), were an eclectic bunch with eclectic tastes that included the written works of Spike Milligan and James Joyce and the music of John Coltrane, Doc Watson, and the Butterfield Blues Band, among others. Their own music was a synthesis of folk, rock, jazz, blues and the avant-garde, and was hailed as Britain's answer to the Jefferson Airplane. The first self-titled Fairport Convention album was only released in the UK (which in later years would lead to some confusion, since the band's next LP, 1969's What We Did On Our Holidays, was released in the US in 1970 with no other name than Fairport Convention). Not every track on the original Fairport Convention LP had vocals. One of the strongest tracks, in fact, was an instrumental written by Dyble and Hutchings called Portfolio that manages, in just two minutes, to give a strong impression of where the band was at musically in 1968. As much as I like the much better known Sandy Denny version of Fairport Convention, I would have loved to hear more from this original lineup of the band.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Turtle Blues
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Janis Joplin
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Sometimes I do play favorites. Turtle Blues, from the Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, is certainly one of them. Besides vocalist Janis Joplin, who wrote the tune, the only other band member heard on the track is guitarist Peter Albin. Legendary producer John Simon provides the piano playing.
Artist: Bloodrock
Title: D.O.A.
Source: CD: Bloodrock 2
Writer(s): Cobb/Grundy/Hill/Pickens/Rutledge
Label: One Way (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1970
Bloodrock gained infamy in 1970 with the inclusion of D.O.A. on their second LP, a song reputed to be the cause of more bad acid trips than any other track ever recorded. Although the origins of the song are popularly attributed to a plane crash that killed several student atheletes in October of 1970, the fact that the album was already in the hands of record reviewers within a week of that event makes it unlikely that the two are related. The more likely story is that it was inspired by band member Lee Pickens's witnessing of a friend crashing his light plane a couple years before. Regardless of the song's origins, D.O.A. has to be considered one of the creepiest recordings ever made.
Artist: Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs
Title: Wooly Bully
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Domingo Samudio
Label: Rhino (original label: XL)
Year: 1964
Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs were pioneers of what has come to be called Tex-Mex, a style that can best described as straight ahead rock and roll seasoned with traditional Mexican forms such as salsa and ranchero. The Pharaohs were already a popular band in their native Texas when they recorded Wooly Bully for the regional XL label in 1964. The song proved so popular that it (and the band's contract) was bought outright by M-G-M Records, at the time one of the largest labels in the country. Wooly Bully was re-released nationally on M-G-M in 1965 and ended up among the top 10 records of the year.
Artist: Music Machine
Title: Talk Talk
Source: CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s): Sean Bonniwell
Label: Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year: 1966
When it came time for Sean Bonniwell's band, the Music Machine, to go into the studio to record an album, the group decided to go for the best sound possible. This meant signing with tiny Original Sound Records, despite having offers from bigger labels, due to Original Sound having their own state-of-the-art eight-track studios. Unfortunately for the band, they soon discovered that having great equipment did not mean Original Sound made great decisions. One of the first, in fact, was to include a handful of cover songs on the Music Machine's first LP that were recorded for use on a local TV show. Bonniwell was livid when he found out, as he had envisioned an album made up entirely of his own compositions (although he reportedly did plan to use a slowed-down version of Hey Joe that he and Tim Rose had worked up together). From that point on it was only a matter of time until the Music Machine and Original Sound parted company, but not until after they scored a big national hit (# 15) with Talk Talk (which had been recorded at the four-track RCA Studios) in 1966.
Artist: Cream
Title: SWLABR
Source: LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Bruce/Brown
Label: Atco
Year: 1967
I distinctly remember this song getting played on the local jukebox just as much as the single's A side, Sunshine Of Your Love (maybe even more). Like most of Cream's more psychedelic material, SWLABR (an anagram for She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow) was written by the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. Brown had originally been brought in as a co-writer for Ginger Baker, but soon realized that he and Bruce had better songwriting chemistry.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Source: LP: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Reprise
Year: 1968
Although never released as a single, Voodoo Child (Slight Return), has become a staple of classic rock radio over the years. The song was originally an outgrowth of a jam session at New York's Record Plant, which itself takes up most of side one of the Electric Ladyland LP. This more familiar studio reworking of the piece has been covered by a variety of artists over the years.
Artist: Grateful Dead
Title: That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose
Source: CD: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s): Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir/Constanten
Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1968
After completing their first album in three days, the Grateful Dead decided to take their time with the 1968 follow-up release. Anthem of the Sun was an attempt at mixing studio and live material into a coherent whole. That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose comprise most of the first side of that album. In order to increase the band's share of royalties for the album, That's It For The Other One was arbitrarily broken down into several parts on the album cover, although it is one continuous piece. The entire album was remixed by band members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh in the early 1970s, due to their feeling that much of the music was literally lost in the original mix. It is the remixed version that is now available on CD, although a limited pressing vinyl edition of the original mix (on high-quality 180g vinyl) has been released as well.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: The Black Plague
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label: BGO (original US label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.
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: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title: Poem By The Sea/Paint It, Black
Source: British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s): Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Label: BGO (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
One of the highlights of the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 was the onstage debut of Eric Burdon's new Animals, a group much more in tune with the psychedelic happenings of the summer of love than its working class predecessor. The showstopper for the band's set was an extended version of the Rolling Stone's classic Paint It, Black. That summer saw the release of the group's first full LP, Winds Of Change, which included a studio version of Paint It, Black preceded by a slow piece called Poem By The Sea.
Artist: Jan And Dean
Title: Dead Man's Curve
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s): Berry/Christian/Kornfeld/Wilson
Label: Silver Spotlight (original label: Liberty)
Year: 1964
As I talk about in a really long scholarly article elsewhere on the web site, one of the many contributing factors to the temporary democratization of the US popular music industry was the surf music craze of 1962 and '63, which morphed into the hot rod music craze of 1964 and '65. Although the style was created by instrumentalists such as Dick Dale and the Ventures, it was the vocal groups such as the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean that found the greatest commercial success with it. One of the biggest hits was the eerily predictive Dead Man's Curve, about a car wreck along a particularly nasty stretch of Sunset Blvd. in the vicinity of Beverly Hills. About two years after this song topped the charts, Jan Berry was involved in a near-fatal collision just a few blocks from the infamous curve; an accident he never fully recovered from.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Things Are Getting Better
Source: LP: Kinks-Size (originally released in UK as an EP track(
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise (original UK label: Pye)
Year: UK: 1964, US: 1965
As was the case with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Kinks released several songs in their native England that did not appear on any of the band's British LPs. Instead, those songs were released either as singles or on 45 RPM extended play (EP) records. In the US, on the other hand, hit singles were routinely included on LPs, and the American record companies often replaced songs that were included on the original versions of albums with single tracks. This created a backlog of material that had been released in the UK, but not in the US. Every so often, these US labels would compile these leftover tracks on entirely new albums that had no British counterparts. Such is the case with Kinks-Size, which included songs like Things Are Getting Better, which originally an EP track. This practice continued until 1967, at which time the British and American versions of albums began to look the same.
Artist: Love
Title: Colored Balls Falling
Source: Mono LP: Love
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra
Year: 1966
The first Love album is rooted solidly in the garage rock genre. A solid example of this is Colored Balls Falling, written by Arthur Lee. To my knowledge, Colored Balls Falling has never been included on any anthology albums, making this mono mix of the song somewhat of a rarity.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1427 (starts 7/2/14)
Artist: Yardbirds
Title: Shapes Of Things
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer: Samwell-Smith/Relf/McCarty
Label: Epic
Year: 1966
The earliest Yardbirds singles were either covers of blues classics or new tunes written by outside songwriters such as Graham Gouldman. The first hit song for the group that was actually composed by band members was Shapes Of Things, which made the top 5 in the UK and the top 10 stateside. The song was officially credited to vocalist Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, who later said that Jeff Beck deserved a songwriting credit as well for his distinctive lead guitar solo that was a major factor in the record's success.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Flashback (The Rhythm Thing)
Source: CD: All The Good That's Happening
Writer(s): Arlin/Pons/Beck/Ray)
Label: One Way (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
The Leaves were already falling as they went to work on their second LP, All The Good That's Happening (their first for a major label). Many of the tracks on the album featured only one or two members of the band, while others, such as Flashback (The Rhythm Thing), were probably just warm-up jams that were done with the tape rolling and used to make up for the lack of actual recorded songs.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: (Ballad Of The) Hip Death Goddess
Source: LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Ultimate Spinach was the brainchild of Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote and arranged all the band's material. Although the group had no hit singles, some tracks, such as (Ballad of the) Hip Death Goddess received a significant amount of airplay on progressive "underground" FM stations. The recording has in more recent years been used by movie producers looking to invoke a late 60s atmosphere.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Helter Skelter
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
Possibly the most controversial song in the entire Beatles catalog, Helter Skelter was Paul McCartney's response to an article in a British trade paper about the Who's latest single, I Can See For Miles. The author of the article referred to the Who song as the heaviest song ever recorded, and McCartney, without benefit of having actually heard I Can See For Miles, decided to go the Who one better. The lyrics of song are innocent enough, as they describe the sensation of repeatedly riding a slide in a playground, yet were vague enough to be open to interpretation by one Charles Manson. It was Manson's use of the words "Helter Skelter" (painted in blood) in his campaign to incite a race war in the US that gave the song its initial notoriety; a notoriety that was cemented when it was used as a title of a book by the L.A. District Attorney who brought Manson's group to justice.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Come On (Part 1)
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Earl King
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Despite being rated by many as the number one rock guitarist of all time, Jimi Hendrix's roots were in the blues. One of his most performed songs was Red House (a track that was left off the US release of Are You Experienced?), and the Experience's debut US performance at Monterey featured amped-up versions of both Rock Me Baby and Killing Floor. For the Electric Ladyland album Hendrix chose a relatively obscure tune from Earl King, originally recorded in 1960. Come On (Pt. 1) was one of only two cover songs on Electric Ladyland (the other being Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower).
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Street Fighting Man
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Beggar's Banquet)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
The Rolling Stones were at a low point in their career following their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, which came out in late 1967. As a response to charges in the rock press that they were no longer relevant the Stones parted company with their longtime producer, Andrew Loog Oldham and began an equally long association with Jimmy Miller, who had already established himself as a top producer working with Steve Winwood of the Spencer Davis Group and later Traffic. The first song Miller produced with the Stones was Street Fighting Man, which appeared on the 1968 LP Beggar's Banquet. Before that LP was released, however, the band recorded an even more iconic single, Jumpin' Jack Flash, which was the first Miller/Stones production to be heard by the general public.
Artist: Small Faces
Title: My Way Of Giving
Source: British import CD: Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (originally released on LP: There Are But Four Small Faces)
Writer(s): Marriott/Lane
Label: Charly (original label: Immediate)
Year: 1967
The Small Faces were sometimes considered the London East Side's answer to the Who (who were initially identified with the Mod movement centered in the western part of the city). The group initially signed with Decca Records (the UK company, not the American one owned by MCA), but in 1967 were enticed into switching to Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate label. The group's first LP for Immediate was a self-titled effort that was released almost simultaneously with an anthology of the group's earlier material on Decca. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the band's first Decca album was also eponymously titled. To avoid similar problems on the other side of the Atlantic, the album was retitled There Are But Four Small Faces for its US release in 1967. Although it has long been overshadowed by the band's next LP, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, There Are But Four Small Faces did have some strong material such as My Way Of Giving, a song that was first released (in mono only) by Decca but was re-recorded in stereo for the Immediate album. More recently, the stereo recording of My Way Of Giving has been included as a bonus track on the Charly CD version of Ogden's.
Artist: Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title: Abba Zaba
Source: 45 RPM single (also included on LP: Safe As Milk)
Writer(s): Don Van Vliet
Label: Sundazed/Buddah
Year: 1967
After an aborted recording career with A&M Records, future avant-garde rock superstar Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) signed a contract with the newly formed Buddah record label. The first record ever released by Buddah was the album Safe As Milk, which included the single Abba Zaba. Although the Captain's music was at that time still somewhat blues-based, the album was not a commercial success, and Buddah cut Beefheart and his Magic Band from the label in favor of more pop oriented groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. Captain Beefheart then moved to yet another fledgling label, Blue Thumb, before finding a more permanent home with his old high school classmate Frank Zappa's Bizarre Records, where he released the classic Trout Mask Replica.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Two Sisters
Source: LP: Something Else
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The Kinks have had a long, productive recording career since their vinyl debut in 1964, but not all of their records have been major commercial successes. Among the least successful saleswise, yet one of the best in terms of pure quality, was the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks. It was the band's first LP to be mixed in stereo, and contained several of Ray Davies's finest tunes, as well as strong contributions by his brother Dave. 1966 had seen Ray Davies perfect his slice-of-life songwriting with a satirical edge style with songs like A Well Respected Man, Dedicated Follower Of Fashion and Sunny Afternoon. The compositions on Something Else, while still rooted in daily life, were not quite as satirical, as can be heard on Two Sisters. The song manages, in just two minutes, to tell the story of a married woman coming to terms with her feelings of envy for her single sister.
Artist: Love
Artist: Love
Title: Live And Let Live
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra/Rhino
Year: 1967
In late spring of 1967 L.A.'s most popular local band, Love, was falling apart, mostly due to constant partying on the part of some of the band members. This became a real issue for producer Bruce Botnick when it came time to begin sessions for the band's third LP, Forever Changes. Botnick had already lost his co-producer on the project, Neil Young, when Young's own band, Buffalo Springfield, found themselves hugely popular in the wake of the success of the single For What It's Worth, and Botnick was now faced with a heavier-than-expected workload. Botnick's solution to the problem became evident when the band entered Sunset Sound Recorders on June 9th, only to find a group of studio musicians already set up and ready to record. Two new Arthur Lee songs were recorded that day, and the rest of the band was literally shocked in sobriety, returning to the studio the next day to record overdubs on the tracks to make them sound more like the work of the band itself. After two month's worth of intensive practice, the band was ready to return to the studio, recording the first track for the album performed entirely by the band itself, Live And Let Live. The unusual first line of the song was reportedly the result of Lee falling asleep in a chair with his nose running during practice sessions.
Artist: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title: Down On Me
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Joplin In Concert)
Writer: Trad. Arr. Joplin
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
Big Brother And The Holding Company's first album, featuring the single Down On Me, was recorded in 1967 at the studios of Mainstream Records, a medium-sized Chicago label known for its jazz recordings. At the time, Mainstream's engineers had no experience with a rock band, particularly a loud one like Big Brother, and vainly attempted to clean up the band's sound as best they could. The result was an album full of bland recordings sucked dry of the energy that made Big Brother and the Holding Company one of the top live attractions of its time. Luckily we have this live recording made in early 1968 and released in 1972 that captures the band at their peak, before powerful people with questionable motives convinced singer Janis Joplin that the rest of the group was holding her back.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Love
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): McDonald/Melton/Cohen/Barthol/Gunning/Hirsch
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
It is a little known fact that, for a short time in early 1967, Country Joe McDonald and Janis Joplin were lovers. This could very well explain why Joe sounds just a bit like Janis on the song Love, from the first Country Joe And The Fish album, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, which was released in May of that year.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Back Door Man
Source: Mono CD: The Blues Project Anthology (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dixon/Burnett
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1966
By all accounts, Tommy Flanders, the original lead vocalist for the Blues Project, was quite a character. He was known to wear the latest London fashions while walking the streets of New York's Greenwich Village and would even occasionally affect a British accent. He was also the one, according to guitarist Danny Kalb, who came up with the band's name in the fall of 1965. It was around that time that the band made its first trip to the recording studio, recording a pair of tunes for Columbia that the label rejected, meeting studio keyboardist and subsequent band member Al Kooper in the process. Around that time the band landed a steady gig at a place called the Cafe-Au-Go-Go and the club owner, Howard Solomon, decided to put on a show for Thanksgiving weekend called the "Blues Bag", featuring a mix of established artists like John Lee Hooker and younger artists like Geoff Muldaur, with the Blues Project as one of the main attractions. Solomon managed to get Verve Folkways Records to record the whole thing, which led to the band getting a contract with the experimental Verve Forecast label. The band had been allowed to keep the master tapes of the Columbia session, and one of the songs, a sped up cover of Howlin' Wolf's Back Door Man, was released as the first Blues Project single on the Verve Forecast label in January of 1966. At around that same time, the people at Verve's parent company, M-G-M, decided that the Blues Project was America's answer to the Rolling Stones, and flew the entire band out to Los Angeles for a huge sales conference. After the conference, however, in a scene right out of Spinal Tap, Tommy Flanders's girlfriend had an all-out blowup with the rest of the band members that resulted in her announcing that Flanders was quitting the band to become a Star. The album was quickly reworked to minimize Flanders's contributions (although there were not enough non-Flanders songs available to leave him entirely off the LP) and hit the racks in March of 1966, leaving the Back Door Man single as the only record released by the Blues Project while Flanders was still a member of the band.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label: Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year: 1965
San Jose, California, had a vibrant teen music scene in the late 60s, despite the fact that the relatively small (at the time) city was overshadowed by San Francisco at the other end of the bay (both cities were then, as now, considered part of the same metropolitan market). One of the more popular bands in town was Count Five, a group of five individuals who chose to dress up like Bela Lugosi's Dracula, capes and all. Musically, they idolized the Yardbirds (Jeff Beck era), and for slightly more than three minutes managed to sound more like their idols than the Yardbirds themselves (who by then had replaced Beck with Jimmy Page).
Artist: Dave Clark Five
Title: Catch Us If You Can
Source: Mono CD: 5 By Five (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Clark/Davidson
Label: Hollywood (original label: Epic)
Year: 1965
One of the few bands able to get the Beatles a legitimate run for their money at the height of their popularity was the Dave Clark Five. Formed originally as a way for Clark to raise funds for his football (soccer) team, the band cranked out hit after hit from 1964 on. One of the biggest was Catch Us If You Can from 1965.
Artist: Them
Title: Baby, Please Don't Go
Source: Mono 12" single (reissue)
Writer: Joe Williams
Label: A&M
Year: 1964
Belfast, Northern Ireland was home to one of the first bands that could be legitimately described as punk rock. Led by Van Morrison, the band quickly got a reputation for being rude and obnoxious, particularly to members of the English press (although it was actually a fellow Irishman who labeled them as "boorish"). Their first single was what has come to be considered the definitive rock and roll version of the 1923 Joe Williams tune Baby, Please Don't Go. Despite its UK success, the single was never issued in the US. Oddly enough, the song's B side ended up being the song most people associate with Them: the classic Gloria, which was released as Them's US debut single in 1965 but promptly found itself banned on most US radio stations due to suggestive lyrics. Them's recording of Baby, Please Don't Go gained renewed popularity in the 1980s when it was used in the film Good Morning Vietnam.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: California Girls
Source: Simulated stereo LP: California Girls (originally titled Summer Days (And Summer Nights))
Writer(s): Brian Wilson
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
The Beach Boys are virtually synonymous with the fun-in-the-sun-partying-on-the-beach lifestyle that many people associate with Southern California, despite the fact that only drummer Dennis Wilson ever really participated in that lifestyle. This can be attributed mainly to the genius of Brian Wilson, who wrote nearly all the group's material, such as the iconic California Girls, which was all over the radio dial coast to coast in the summer of 1965. The song was featured on an album called Summer Days (And Summer Nights), which in addition to the original mono mix was also available on Capitol's Duophonic "electronically rechannelled for stereo" vinyl for a dollar more. In the 1980s, riding a wave of renewed popularity for the band, Capitol released abridged versions many of the group's albums at a budget price, often under new titles such as California Girls. Rather than use the mono mixes Capitol chose to go with the Duophonic mixes for these reissues This was the last time these "fake stereo" mixes were released, as Beach Boys now insist that only the original mono mixes be used for the band's 1960s recordings on CD.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Scarborough Fair/Canticle
Source: LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1966
After the reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel following the surprise success of an electrified remix of The Sound Of Silence, the duo quickly recorded an album to support the hit single. Sounds Of Silence was, for the most part, a reworking of material that Simon had recorded for 1965 UK LP the Paul Simon Songbook. The pressure for a new album thus (temporarily) relieved, the duo got to work on their first album of truly new material since their unsuccessful 1964 effort Wednesday Morning 3AM (which had in fact been re-released and was now doing well on the charts). In October the new album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, hit the stands. The title track was a new arrangement of an old English folk ballad, Scarborough Fair, combined with a reworking of a song from the Paul Simon Songbook, The Side Of A Hill, retitled Canticle. The two melodies and sets of lyrics are set in counterpoint to each other, creating one of the most sophisticated folk song arrangements ever recorded. After being featured in the film The Graduate, Scarborough Fair/Canticle was released as a single in early 1968, going on to become one of the duo's most instantly recognizable songs.
Artist: Standells
Title: Try It
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Levine/Bellack
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
After a series of singles written by producer Ed Cobb had resulted in diminishing returns, the Standells recorded Try It, a tune co-written by Joey Levine, who would rise to semi-anonymous notoriety as lead vocalist for the Ohio Express, a group that was essentially a vehicle for the Kazenetz/Katz production team, purveyors of what came to be called "bubble gum" music. The song itself was quickly banned on most radio stations under the assumption that the phrase "try it" was a call for teenage girls to abandon their virginity. The fact is that nowhere in the song does the word "teenage" appear, but nonetheless the song failed to make a dent in the charts, despite its catchy melody and danceable beat, which should have garnered it at least a 65 rating on American Bandstand.
Artist: Standells
Title: Riot On Sunset Strip
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack)
Writer(s): Fleck/Valentino
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Anyone who doubts just how much influence bands like the Standells had on the punk-rock movement of the late 1970s need only listen to the 1967 title track from the movie Riot On Sunset Strip. The song, written by bandmembers Tony Valentino and John Fleck, sounds like it could have been an early Ramones recording. The song itself (and the movie) were based on a real life event. Local L.A. business owners had been complaining about the unruliness and rampant drug use among the teens hanging out in front of the various underage clubs that had been springing up on Sunset Strip in the wake of the success of the Whisky a Go Go, and in late 1966 the Los Angeles Police Department was called in to do something about the problem. What followed was a full-blown riot which ultimately led to local laws being passed that put many of the clubs out of business and severely curtailed the ability of the rest to make a profit. By 1968 the entire scene was a thing of the past, with the few remaining clubs converting to a more traditional over-21 approach. The unruliness and rampant drug use, meanwhile, seems to have migrated up the coast to San Francisco, where it managed to undo everything positive that had been previously accomplished in the Haight-Ashbury district.
Artist: Standells
Title: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
If ever a song could be considered a garage-punk anthem, it's Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White, the follow-up single to the classic Dirty Water. Both songs were written by Standells' manager/producer Ed Cobb, the record industry's answer to Ed Wood.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: In The Midnight Hour
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Pickett/Cropper
Label: Tower
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2012
Among the many Chocolate Watchband recordings that were subjected to major changes by producer Ed Cobb was a cover of Wilson Pickett's R&B classic In The Midnight Hour, a song that was also covered by the Young Rascals. The biggest change Cobb made to the recording was to replace Dave Aguilar's original lead vocals with those of studio vocalist Don Bennett. Once Sundazed got the rights to the Watchband's recordings they included both versions on their CD version of the No Way Out album and in 2012 issued the mono mix of the Aguilar version for the first time as a single.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Sweet Young Thing
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Uptown)
Year: 1967
There is actually very little on vinyl that captures the flavor of how the Chocolate Watchband actually sounded when left to their own devices, as most of their recorded work was heavily influenced by producer Ed Cobb. One of the few recordings that does accurately represent the Watchband sound is Sweet Young Thing, the first single released under the band's real name (Blues Theme, an instrumental Watchband recording credited to the Hoggs, had been released in 1966 by Hanna-Barbera records).
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Psychedelic Trip
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Loomis/Flores/Tolby/Aguilar/Andrijasevich
Label: Tower/Sundazed
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2012
Psychedelic Trip is essentially an early instrumental version of what would eventually become the title track for the Chocolate Watchband's debut album, No Way Out. Although Psychedelic Trip was written by the entire band, producer/manager Ed Cobb (the Ed Wood of psychedelic music) took sole credit for the song No Way Out.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
"Everybody must get stoned." 'Nuff said.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.
Artist: Amboy Dukes
Title: Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind)
Writer(s): Nugent/Farmer
Label: Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year: 1968
The title track of the second Amboy Dukes album, Journey To The Center Of The Mind, is by far their best known recording, going all the way to the #16 spot on the top 40 in 1968. The song features the lead guitar work of Ted Nugent, who co-wrote the song with guitarist/vocalist Steve Farmer. Journey To The Center Of The Mind would be the last album to feature lead vocalist John Drake, who left the band for creative reasons shortly after the album's release.
Artist: Earth Opera
Title: Roast Beef Love
Source: LP: The Great American Eagle Tragedy
Writer(s): Peter Rowan
Label: Elektra
Year: 1969
Formed in 1967 in Boston, Earth Opera is probably best remembered as the band that launched the career of guitar and mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, who is well known both as a solo artist and as a frequent collaborator with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia in the band Old And In The Way (he also wrote and played on the theme to NPR's long-running Car Talk program). In addition to Grisman, Earth Opera featured Peter Rowan, who wrote nearly all the band's material, including Roast Beef Love, a tongue-in-cheek rocker from the band's second (and final) album, The Great American Eagle Tragedy.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Plastic Fantastic Lover
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: Bless Its Pointed Little Head)
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1969
Marty Balin's Plastic Fantastic Lover first appeared on the album Surrealistic Pillow and was issued as the B side of White Rabbit. For the band's 1969 live album, Bless Its Pointed Little Head, the band upped the tempo considerably, making what was already a solid rocker even more solid.
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: Monkees
Title: Cuddly Toy/Words
Source: LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.
Writer(s): Nilsson/Boyce/Hart
Label: Colgems
Year: 1967
Although the Monkees had returned to allowing studio musicians to provide the bulk of the instrumental tracks for the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD., those tracks were now being recorded under the direct supervision of the Monkees themselves. Additionally, the Monkees were only recording songs that the Monkees themselves picked out. One of those songs was a tune written by Harry Nilsson (who had not yet achieved fame as a singer, songwriter and John Lennon's drinking partner) called Cuddly Toy. Reportedly Mike Nesmith heard a demo of the song and immediately wanted to record it. The group did, and on the LP let it overlap the next track, A Tommy Boyce/Bobby Hart tune called Words that the Leaves had recorded for their Hey Joe album the previous year. It was only after the album was on the charts that the shirts at Colgems Records, Columbia Pictures and RCA Victor realized that the subject matter of Cuddly Toy was a gang bang, having been based on a real life incident at a Hell's Angels party that Nilsson had attended.
Title: Shapes Of Things
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer: Samwell-Smith/Relf/McCarty
Label: Epic
Year: 1966
The earliest Yardbirds singles were either covers of blues classics or new tunes written by outside songwriters such as Graham Gouldman. The first hit song for the group that was actually composed by band members was Shapes Of Things, which made the top 5 in the UK and the top 10 stateside. The song was officially credited to vocalist Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, who later said that Jeff Beck deserved a songwriting credit as well for his distinctive lead guitar solo that was a major factor in the record's success.
Artist: Leaves
Title: Flashback (The Rhythm Thing)
Source: CD: All The Good That's Happening
Writer(s): Arlin/Pons/Beck/Ray)
Label: One Way (original label: Capitol)
Year: 1966
The Leaves were already falling as they went to work on their second LP, All The Good That's Happening (their first for a major label). Many of the tracks on the album featured only one or two members of the band, while others, such as Flashback (The Rhythm Thing), were probably just warm-up jams that were done with the tape rolling and used to make up for the lack of actual recorded songs.
Artist: Ultimate Spinach
Title: (Ballad Of The) Hip Death Goddess
Source: LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer(s): Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label: M-G-M
Year: 1968
Ultimate Spinach was the brainchild of Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote and arranged all the band's material. Although the group had no hit singles, some tracks, such as (Ballad of the) Hip Death Goddess received a significant amount of airplay on progressive "underground" FM stations. The recording has in more recent years been used by movie producers looking to invoke a late 60s atmosphere.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Helter Skelter
Source: CD: The Beatles
Writer(s): Lennon/McCartney
Label: Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year: 1968
Possibly the most controversial song in the entire Beatles catalog, Helter Skelter was Paul McCartney's response to an article in a British trade paper about the Who's latest single, I Can See For Miles. The author of the article referred to the Who song as the heaviest song ever recorded, and McCartney, without benefit of having actually heard I Can See For Miles, decided to go the Who one better. The lyrics of song are innocent enough, as they describe the sensation of repeatedly riding a slide in a playground, yet were vague enough to be open to interpretation by one Charles Manson. It was Manson's use of the words "Helter Skelter" (painted in blood) in his campaign to incite a race war in the US that gave the song its initial notoriety; a notoriety that was cemented when it was used as a title of a book by the L.A. District Attorney who brought Manson's group to justice.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Come On (Part 1)
Source: CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer: Earl King
Label: Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
Despite being rated by many as the number one rock guitarist of all time, Jimi Hendrix's roots were in the blues. One of his most performed songs was Red House (a track that was left off the US release of Are You Experienced?), and the Experience's debut US performance at Monterey featured amped-up versions of both Rock Me Baby and Killing Floor. For the Electric Ladyland album Hendrix chose a relatively obscure tune from Earl King, originally recorded in 1960. Come On (Pt. 1) was one of only two cover songs on Electric Ladyland (the other being Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower).
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Street Fighting Man
Source: Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Beggar's Banquet)
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1968
The Rolling Stones were at a low point in their career following their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, which came out in late 1967. As a response to charges in the rock press that they were no longer relevant the Stones parted company with their longtime producer, Andrew Loog Oldham and began an equally long association with Jimmy Miller, who had already established himself as a top producer working with Steve Winwood of the Spencer Davis Group and later Traffic. The first song Miller produced with the Stones was Street Fighting Man, which appeared on the 1968 LP Beggar's Banquet. Before that LP was released, however, the band recorded an even more iconic single, Jumpin' Jack Flash, which was the first Miller/Stones production to be heard by the general public.
Artist: Small Faces
Title: My Way Of Giving
Source: British import CD: Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (originally released on LP: There Are But Four Small Faces)
Writer(s): Marriott/Lane
Label: Charly (original label: Immediate)
Year: 1967
The Small Faces were sometimes considered the London East Side's answer to the Who (who were initially identified with the Mod movement centered in the western part of the city). The group initially signed with Decca Records (the UK company, not the American one owned by MCA), but in 1967 were enticed into switching to Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate label. The group's first LP for Immediate was a self-titled effort that was released almost simultaneously with an anthology of the group's earlier material on Decca. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the band's first Decca album was also eponymously titled. To avoid similar problems on the other side of the Atlantic, the album was retitled There Are But Four Small Faces for its US release in 1967. Although it has long been overshadowed by the band's next LP, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, There Are But Four Small Faces did have some strong material such as My Way Of Giving, a song that was first released (in mono only) by Decca but was re-recorded in stereo for the Immediate album. More recently, the stereo recording of My Way Of Giving has been included as a bonus track on the Charly CD version of Ogden's.
Artist: Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title: Abba Zaba
Source: 45 RPM single (also included on LP: Safe As Milk)
Writer(s): Don Van Vliet
Label: Sundazed/Buddah
Year: 1967
After an aborted recording career with A&M Records, future avant-garde rock superstar Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) signed a contract with the newly formed Buddah record label. The first record ever released by Buddah was the album Safe As Milk, which included the single Abba Zaba. Although the Captain's music was at that time still somewhat blues-based, the album was not a commercial success, and Buddah cut Beefheart and his Magic Band from the label in favor of more pop oriented groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. Captain Beefheart then moved to yet another fledgling label, Blue Thumb, before finding a more permanent home with his old high school classmate Frank Zappa's Bizarre Records, where he released the classic Trout Mask Replica.
Artist: Kinks
Title: Two Sisters
Source: LP: Something Else
Writer(s): Ray Davies
Label: Reprise
Year: 1967
The Kinks have had a long, productive recording career since their vinyl debut in 1964, but not all of their records have been major commercial successes. Among the least successful saleswise, yet one of the best in terms of pure quality, was the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks. It was the band's first LP to be mixed in stereo, and contained several of Ray Davies's finest tunes, as well as strong contributions by his brother Dave. 1966 had seen Ray Davies perfect his slice-of-life songwriting with a satirical edge style with songs like A Well Respected Man, Dedicated Follower Of Fashion and Sunny Afternoon. The compositions on Something Else, while still rooted in daily life, were not quite as satirical, as can be heard on Two Sisters. The song manages, in just two minutes, to tell the story of a married woman coming to terms with her feelings of envy for her single sister.
Artist: Love
Artist: Love
Title: Live And Let Live
Source: CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s): Arthur Lee
Label: Elektra/Rhino
Year: 1967
In late spring of 1967 L.A.'s most popular local band, Love, was falling apart, mostly due to constant partying on the part of some of the band members. This became a real issue for producer Bruce Botnick when it came time to begin sessions for the band's third LP, Forever Changes. Botnick had already lost his co-producer on the project, Neil Young, when Young's own band, Buffalo Springfield, found themselves hugely popular in the wake of the success of the single For What It's Worth, and Botnick was now faced with a heavier-than-expected workload. Botnick's solution to the problem became evident when the band entered Sunset Sound Recorders on June 9th, only to find a group of studio musicians already set up and ready to record. Two new Arthur Lee songs were recorded that day, and the rest of the band was literally shocked in sobriety, returning to the studio the next day to record overdubs on the tracks to make them sound more like the work of the band itself. After two month's worth of intensive practice, the band was ready to return to the studio, recording the first track for the album performed entirely by the band itself, Live And Let Live. The unusual first line of the song was reportedly the result of Lee falling asleep in a chair with his nose running during practice sessions.
Artist: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title: Down On Me
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Joplin In Concert)
Writer: Trad. Arr. Joplin
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: 1968
Big Brother And The Holding Company's first album, featuring the single Down On Me, was recorded in 1967 at the studios of Mainstream Records, a medium-sized Chicago label known for its jazz recordings. At the time, Mainstream's engineers had no experience with a rock band, particularly a loud one like Big Brother, and vainly attempted to clean up the band's sound as best they could. The result was an album full of bland recordings sucked dry of the energy that made Big Brother and the Holding Company one of the top live attractions of its time. Luckily we have this live recording made in early 1968 and released in 1972 that captures the band at their peak, before powerful people with questionable motives convinced singer Janis Joplin that the rest of the group was holding her back.
Artist: Country Joe And The Fish
Title: Love
Source: LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s): McDonald/Melton/Cohen/Barthol/Gunning/Hirsch
Label: Vanguard
Year: 1967
It is a little known fact that, for a short time in early 1967, Country Joe McDonald and Janis Joplin were lovers. This could very well explain why Joe sounds just a bit like Janis on the song Love, from the first Country Joe And The Fish album, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, which was released in May of that year.
Artist: Blues Project
Title: Back Door Man
Source: Mono CD: The Blues Project Anthology (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Dixon/Burnett
Label: Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year: 1966
By all accounts, Tommy Flanders, the original lead vocalist for the Blues Project, was quite a character. He was known to wear the latest London fashions while walking the streets of New York's Greenwich Village and would even occasionally affect a British accent. He was also the one, according to guitarist Danny Kalb, who came up with the band's name in the fall of 1965. It was around that time that the band made its first trip to the recording studio, recording a pair of tunes for Columbia that the label rejected, meeting studio keyboardist and subsequent band member Al Kooper in the process. Around that time the band landed a steady gig at a place called the Cafe-Au-Go-Go and the club owner, Howard Solomon, decided to put on a show for Thanksgiving weekend called the "Blues Bag", featuring a mix of established artists like John Lee Hooker and younger artists like Geoff Muldaur, with the Blues Project as one of the main attractions. Solomon managed to get Verve Folkways Records to record the whole thing, which led to the band getting a contract with the experimental Verve Forecast label. The band had been allowed to keep the master tapes of the Columbia session, and one of the songs, a sped up cover of Howlin' Wolf's Back Door Man, was released as the first Blues Project single on the Verve Forecast label in January of 1966. At around that same time, the people at Verve's parent company, M-G-M, decided that the Blues Project was America's answer to the Rolling Stones, and flew the entire band out to Los Angeles for a huge sales conference. After the conference, however, in a scene right out of Spinal Tap, Tommy Flanders's girlfriend had an all-out blowup with the rest of the band members that resulted in her announcing that Flanders was quitting the band to become a Star. The album was quickly reworked to minimize Flanders's contributions (although there were not enough non-Flanders songs available to leave him entirely off the LP) and hit the racks in March of 1966, leaving the Back Door Man single as the only record released by the Blues Project while Flanders was still a member of the band.
Artist: Count Five
Title: Psychotic Reaction
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label: Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year: 1965
San Jose, California, had a vibrant teen music scene in the late 60s, despite the fact that the relatively small (at the time) city was overshadowed by San Francisco at the other end of the bay (both cities were then, as now, considered part of the same metropolitan market). One of the more popular bands in town was Count Five, a group of five individuals who chose to dress up like Bela Lugosi's Dracula, capes and all. Musically, they idolized the Yardbirds (Jeff Beck era), and for slightly more than three minutes managed to sound more like their idols than the Yardbirds themselves (who by then had replaced Beck with Jimmy Page).
Artist: Dave Clark Five
Title: Catch Us If You Can
Source: Mono CD: 5 By Five (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Clark/Davidson
Label: Hollywood (original label: Epic)
Year: 1965
One of the few bands able to get the Beatles a legitimate run for their money at the height of their popularity was the Dave Clark Five. Formed originally as a way for Clark to raise funds for his football (soccer) team, the band cranked out hit after hit from 1964 on. One of the biggest was Catch Us If You Can from 1965.
Artist: Them
Title: Baby, Please Don't Go
Source: Mono 12" single (reissue)
Writer: Joe Williams
Label: A&M
Year: 1964
Belfast, Northern Ireland was home to one of the first bands that could be legitimately described as punk rock. Led by Van Morrison, the band quickly got a reputation for being rude and obnoxious, particularly to members of the English press (although it was actually a fellow Irishman who labeled them as "boorish"). Their first single was what has come to be considered the definitive rock and roll version of the 1923 Joe Williams tune Baby, Please Don't Go. Despite its UK success, the single was never issued in the US. Oddly enough, the song's B side ended up being the song most people associate with Them: the classic Gloria, which was released as Them's US debut single in 1965 but promptly found itself banned on most US radio stations due to suggestive lyrics. Them's recording of Baby, Please Don't Go gained renewed popularity in the 1980s when it was used in the film Good Morning Vietnam.
Artist: Beach Boys
Title: California Girls
Source: Simulated stereo LP: California Girls (originally titled Summer Days (And Summer Nights))
Writer(s): Brian Wilson
Label: Capitol
Year: 1965
The Beach Boys are virtually synonymous with the fun-in-the-sun-partying-on-the-beach lifestyle that many people associate with Southern California, despite the fact that only drummer Dennis Wilson ever really participated in that lifestyle. This can be attributed mainly to the genius of Brian Wilson, who wrote nearly all the group's material, such as the iconic California Girls, which was all over the radio dial coast to coast in the summer of 1965. The song was featured on an album called Summer Days (And Summer Nights), which in addition to the original mono mix was also available on Capitol's Duophonic "electronically rechannelled for stereo" vinyl for a dollar more. In the 1980s, riding a wave of renewed popularity for the band, Capitol released abridged versions many of the group's albums at a budget price, often under new titles such as California Girls. Rather than use the mono mixes Capitol chose to go with the Duophonic mixes for these reissues This was the last time these "fake stereo" mixes were released, as Beach Boys now insist that only the original mono mixes be used for the band's 1960s recordings on CD.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: Scarborough Fair/Canticle
Source: LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Sundazed/Columbia
Year: 1966
After the reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel following the surprise success of an electrified remix of The Sound Of Silence, the duo quickly recorded an album to support the hit single. Sounds Of Silence was, for the most part, a reworking of material that Simon had recorded for 1965 UK LP the Paul Simon Songbook. The pressure for a new album thus (temporarily) relieved, the duo got to work on their first album of truly new material since their unsuccessful 1964 effort Wednesday Morning 3AM (which had in fact been re-released and was now doing well on the charts). In October the new album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, hit the stands. The title track was a new arrangement of an old English folk ballad, Scarborough Fair, combined with a reworking of a song from the Paul Simon Songbook, The Side Of A Hill, retitled Canticle. The two melodies and sets of lyrics are set in counterpoint to each other, creating one of the most sophisticated folk song arrangements ever recorded. After being featured in the film The Graduate, Scarborough Fair/Canticle was released as a single in early 1968, going on to become one of the duo's most instantly recognizable songs.
Artist: Standells
Title: Try It
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer: Levine/Bellack
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
After a series of singles written by producer Ed Cobb had resulted in diminishing returns, the Standells recorded Try It, a tune co-written by Joey Levine, who would rise to semi-anonymous notoriety as lead vocalist for the Ohio Express, a group that was essentially a vehicle for the Kazenetz/Katz production team, purveyors of what came to be called "bubble gum" music. The song itself was quickly banned on most radio stations under the assumption that the phrase "try it" was a call for teenage girls to abandon their virginity. The fact is that nowhere in the song does the word "teenage" appear, but nonetheless the song failed to make a dent in the charts, despite its catchy melody and danceable beat, which should have garnered it at least a 65 rating on American Bandstand.
Artist: Standells
Title: Riot On Sunset Strip
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack)
Writer(s): Fleck/Valentino
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1967
Anyone who doubts just how much influence bands like the Standells had on the punk-rock movement of the late 1970s need only listen to the 1967 title track from the movie Riot On Sunset Strip. The song, written by bandmembers Tony Valentino and John Fleck, sounds like it could have been an early Ramones recording. The song itself (and the movie) were based on a real life event. Local L.A. business owners had been complaining about the unruliness and rampant drug use among the teens hanging out in front of the various underage clubs that had been springing up on Sunset Strip in the wake of the success of the Whisky a Go Go, and in late 1966 the Los Angeles Police Department was called in to do something about the problem. What followed was a full-blown riot which ultimately led to local laws being passed that put many of the clubs out of business and severely curtailed the ability of the rest to make a profit. By 1968 the entire scene was a thing of the past, with the few remaining clubs converting to a more traditional over-21 approach. The unruliness and rampant drug use, meanwhile, seems to have migrated up the coast to San Francisco, where it managed to undo everything positive that had been previously accomplished in the Haight-Ashbury district.
Artist: Standells
Title: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
If ever a song could be considered a garage-punk anthem, it's Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White, the follow-up single to the classic Dirty Water. Both songs were written by Standells' manager/producer Ed Cobb, the record industry's answer to Ed Wood.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: In The Midnight Hour
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): Pickett/Cropper
Label: Tower
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2012
Among the many Chocolate Watchband recordings that were subjected to major changes by producer Ed Cobb was a cover of Wilson Pickett's R&B classic In The Midnight Hour, a song that was also covered by the Young Rascals. The biggest change Cobb made to the recording was to replace Dave Aguilar's original lead vocals with those of studio vocalist Don Bennett. Once Sundazed got the rights to the Watchband's recordings they included both versions on their CD version of the No Way Out album and in 2012 issued the mono mix of the Aguilar version for the first time as a single.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Sweet Young Thing
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Ed Cobb
Label: Rhino (original label: Uptown)
Year: 1967
There is actually very little on vinyl that captures the flavor of how the Chocolate Watchband actually sounded when left to their own devices, as most of their recorded work was heavily influenced by producer Ed Cobb. One of the few recordings that does accurately represent the Watchband sound is Sweet Young Thing, the first single released under the band's real name (Blues Theme, an instrumental Watchband recording credited to the Hoggs, had been released in 1966 by Hanna-Barbera records).
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Psychedelic Trip
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Loomis/Flores/Tolby/Aguilar/Andrijasevich
Label: Tower/Sundazed
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2012
Psychedelic Trip is essentially an early instrumental version of what would eventually become the title track for the Chocolate Watchband's debut album, No Way Out. Although Psychedelic Trip was written by the entire band, producer/manager Ed Cobb (the Ed Wood of psychedelic music) took sole credit for the song No Way Out.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source: 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer: Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
"Everybody must get stoned." 'Nuff said.
Artist: Buffalo Springfield
Title: Rock And Roll Woman
Source: LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Stephen Stills
Label: Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth). Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Neil Young, Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Stephen Stills. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock and Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 40 years after it was recorded.
Artist: Amboy Dukes
Title: Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source: CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind)
Writer(s): Nugent/Farmer
Label: Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year: 1968
The title track of the second Amboy Dukes album, Journey To The Center Of The Mind, is by far their best known recording, going all the way to the #16 spot on the top 40 in 1968. The song features the lead guitar work of Ted Nugent, who co-wrote the song with guitarist/vocalist Steve Farmer. Journey To The Center Of The Mind would be the last album to feature lead vocalist John Drake, who left the band for creative reasons shortly after the album's release.
Artist: Earth Opera
Title: Roast Beef Love
Source: LP: The Great American Eagle Tragedy
Writer(s): Peter Rowan
Label: Elektra
Year: 1969
Formed in 1967 in Boston, Earth Opera is probably best remembered as the band that launched the career of guitar and mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, who is well known both as a solo artist and as a frequent collaborator with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia in the band Old And In The Way (he also wrote and played on the theme to NPR's long-running Car Talk program). In addition to Grisman, Earth Opera featured Peter Rowan, who wrote nearly all the band's material, including Roast Beef Love, a tongue-in-cheek rocker from the band's second (and final) album, The Great American Eagle Tragedy.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Plastic Fantastic Lover
Source: CD: The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane (originally released on LP: Bless Its Pointed Little Head)
Writer(s): Marty Balin
Label: BMG/RCA
Year: 1969
Marty Balin's Plastic Fantastic Lover first appeared on the album Surrealistic Pillow and was issued as the B side of White Rabbit. For the band's 1969 live album, Bless Its Pointed Little Head, the band upped the tempo considerably, making what was already a solid rocker even more solid.
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: Monkees
Title: Cuddly Toy/Words
Source: LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.
Writer(s): Nilsson/Boyce/Hart
Label: Colgems
Year: 1967
Although the Monkees had returned to allowing studio musicians to provide the bulk of the instrumental tracks for the album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD., those tracks were now being recorded under the direct supervision of the Monkees themselves. Additionally, the Monkees were only recording songs that the Monkees themselves picked out. One of those songs was a tune written by Harry Nilsson (who had not yet achieved fame as a singer, songwriter and John Lennon's drinking partner) called Cuddly Toy. Reportedly Mike Nesmith heard a demo of the song and immediately wanted to record it. The group did, and on the LP let it overlap the next track, A Tommy Boyce/Bobby Hart tune called Words that the Leaves had recorded for their Hey Joe album the previous year. It was only after the album was on the charts that the shirts at Colgems Records, Columbia Pictures and RCA Victor realized that the subject matter of Cuddly Toy was a gang bang, having been based on a real life incident at a Hell's Angels party that Nilsson had attended.
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