Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2303 (starts 1/16/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/457327-pe-2303

    This week's show has a bit of everything; an artists' set featuring a worldwide smash hit and a pair of B sides, an entire segment of tunes from 1967, several songs that were hits in some places and unknown in others, and even a soulful rendition of a Beatles tune that features a sideman who would soon become a major star in his own right. Plus, of course, plenty of album tracks and obscurities to balance it all out, starting with the opening track of the first Mothers Of Invention album.

Artist:     Mothers of Invention
Title:     Hungry Freaks, Daddy
Source:     CD: Freak Out
Writer:     Frank Zappa
Label:     Ryko (original label: Verve)
Year:     1966
     Hungry Freaks, Daddy is the opening track on the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out! This alone would make the track historically significant, but the truth of the matter is that Hungry Freaks, Daddy is an excellent song in its own right. Unlike most socially aware songs up to that point in time, Hungry Freaks, Daddy has a decidedly satirical edge that would become a trademark of Frank Zappa's songwriting for years to come.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    No Time
Source:    CD: Headquarters
Writer(s):    Hank Cicalo
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1967
    No Time is basically a Little Richard styled rock 'n' roll studio jam by the Monkees, with Micky Dolenz improvising on the lyrics. The band, who played their own instruments on the recording, decided to credit the song to recording engineer Hank Cicalo, in appreciation for the hard work he was putting in as de facto producer of their Headquarters album. This actually got Cicalo in trouble with the brass at RCA, who had strict rules about engineers soliciting songs to be recorded. On the other hand, the royalties from the song helped him buy a house.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jim Morrison
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1968
    I have to admit, when I first heard the Doors' Hello, I Love You I hated it, considering it only a half step away from the bubble gum hits like 1,2,3 Red Light and Chewy Chewy that were dominating the top 40 charts in 1968. It turns out that the song was originally recorded in 1965 as a demo by Rick And The Ravens (basically a Doors predecessor) using the title Hello, I Love You (Won't You Tell Me Your Name). The single pressing of the song is notable for being one of the first rock songs to be released as a stereo 45 RPM record. The song went to the top of the charts in the US and Canada and became the first Doors song to break into the British top 20 as well.

Artist:    Wilson Pickett
Title:    Hey Jude
Source:    LP: Duane Allman-An Anthology (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capricorn (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1968
    When Rick Hall, owner/operator of Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, got the opportunity to record Wilson Pickett, he went out of his way to get the best talent available for the session. Among those he picked was a young guitarist named Duane Allman. At the session itself, when Pickett was trying to decide what to record, Allman suggested they break into what was then the #1 song on the charts, the Beatles' Hey Jude. Wilson thought it was an absurd suggestion, but after Allman and the others started jamming on the tune Wilson joined in, and the resulting single was a million-seller in its own right. Pickett and Hall were so impressed by Allman's playing that they ended up using him on the entire album. Eric Clapton later called Allman's performance "the greatest guitar solo on a r&b song" he had ever heard.

Artist:     Cream
Title:     Deserted Cities Of The Heart
Source:     LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer:     Bruce/Brown
Label:     RSO (original label: Atco)
Year:     1968
     The most psychedelic of Cream's songs were penned by Jack Bruce and his songwriting partner Pete Brown. One of the best of these was chosen to close out the last studio side of the last Cream album released while the band was still in existence. Deserted Cities Of The Heart is a fitting epitaph to an unforgettable band.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Out Of The Question
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Future
Writer(s):    Saxon/Serpent
Label:    GNP Crescendo
Year:    1965
    Until 2014, one's chances of hearing, let alone posessing, a copy of the B side of the original pressing of the Seeds' Your Pushing Too Hard was, for most of us, Out Of The Question. A rechannelled stereo version of the song appeared two years later on the third Seeds album, Future, which sold poorly and is almost as hard to find as the original single.

Artist:     Kinks
Title:     Deadend Street
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Year:     1967
     The last major Kinks hit of the 1960s in the US was Sunny Afternoon in the summer of 1966. The November follow-up, Deadend Street, was in much the same style and made the top 5 in the UK, but did not achieve the same kind of success in the US, thanks in large part to a performance ban imposed by the American Federation of Musicians. Although the Kinks would get some minor airplay for subsequent singles such as Victoria, the would not have another major US hit until Lola was released in 1970.

Artist:     Barry McGuire
Title:     Eve of Destruction
Source:     CD: Songs Of Protest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     P.F. Sloan
Label:     Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:     1965
     P.F. Sloan had already established a reputation for writing songs that captured the anger of youth by the time he wrote Eve Of Destruction, which Barry McGuire took into the top 10 in 1965. It would be McGuire's only major hit, and represented folk-rock at the peak of its popularity.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star
Source:    Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    Hillman/McGuinn
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    By early 1967 there was a building resentment among musicians and rock press alike concerning the instant (and in many eyes unearned) success of the Monkees. One notable expression of this resentment was the Byrds' So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star, which takes a somewhat sarcastic look at what it takes to succeed in the music business. Unfortunately, much of what they talk about in the song continues to apply today (although the guitar has been somewhat supplanted by the computer as the instrument of choice).
    
Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    I'm A Man
Source:    Mono LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Miller
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1967
    The Spencer Davis Group, featuring Steve and Muff Winwood, was one of the UK's most successful white R&B bands of the sixties, cranking out a steady stream of hit singles. Two of them, the iconic Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man, were also major hits in the US, the latter being the last song to feature the Winwood brothers. Muff Winwood became a successful record producer, while his brother Steve went on to form the band Traffic. Then Blind Faith. Then Traffic again. And then a successful solo career. Meanwhile, the Spencer Davis Group continued on for several years with a series of replacement vocalists, but were never able to duplicate their earlier successes with the Winwoods.

Artist:    Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Title:    Ecstacy
Source:    CD: Is Spreading/The Great Conspiracy (originally released on LP: The Great Conspiracy)
Writer(s):    John Merrill
Label:    Collectables (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1967
    The members of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy were not able to play the way they really wanted to on their two LPs for Columbia Records. Much of the reason for this was because of Columbia itself, which had a history of being against just about everything that made psychedelic rock what it was. Immediately after signing the band, the label assigned Gary Usher, whose background was mainly in vocal surf music, to produce the group. Usher urged the band, who had already built up a sizable following playing Los Angeles clubs, to soften their sound and become more hit oriented. To do this he brought in several studio musicians he had previously worked with, including members of the Wrecking Crew, to fill out the band's sound. At first, it seemed to be a successful strategy, as the band's first single, It's A Happening Thing, sold fairly well in local record stores, but when the next two singles failed to generate any interest the band began to assert its right to play on their own records. As a result, all the instruments on the band's second LP, The Great Conspiracy, were played by members of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy itself, including new member Bill Wolff, who had previously played guitar with the Sound Machine. For the most part however, they were still not able to fully recreate the extended jams that they were known for in their live performances, although a couple of tracks, such as Ecstacy, come pretty close. Written by lead guitarist John Merrill, the piece is a classic psychedelic jam, running over six minutes in length. Around the same time as the album was released, Merrill began losing interest in the group, and did not contribute any songs to the band's final album, For Children Of All Ages, released on the Challenge label in 1969.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine
Source:    LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    While not as commercially successful as the Jefferson Airplane or as long-lived as the Grateful Dead (there's an oxymoron for ya), Country Joe and the Fish may well be the most accurate musical representation of what the whole Haight-Ashbury scene was about, which is itself ironic, since the band operated out of Berkeley on the other side of the bay. Of all the tracks on their first album, Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine probably got the most airplay on various underground radio stations that were popping up on the FM dial at the time (some of them even legally).

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    If 6 Was 9
Source:    CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Before 1967 stereo was little more than an excuse to charge a dollar more for an LP. That all changed in a hurry, as artists such as Jimi Hendrix began to explore the possibilities of the technology, in essence treating stereophonic sound as a multi-dimensional sonic palette. The result can be heard on songs such as If 6 Were 9 from the Axis: Bold As Love album, which is best listened to at high volume, preferably with headphones on.

Artist:    Vagrants
Title:    Respect
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Otis Redding
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Sounding a lot like the Rascals, the Vagrants were a popular Long Island band led by singer Peter Sabatino and best remembered for being the group that had guitarist Leslie Weinstein in it. Weinstein would change his last name to West and record a solo album called Mountain before forming the band of the same name. This version of Respect is fairly faithful to the original Otis Redding version. Unfortunately for the Vagrants, Aretha Franklin would release her radically rearranged version of the song just a few weeks after the Vagrants, relegating their version of the tune (and the Vagrants themselves) to footnote status.

Artist:    Amboy Dukes
Title:    Baby Please Don't Go (7" single version)
Source:    Mono British import CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released on LP: The Amboy Dukes and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Joe Williams
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1967
            The Amboy Dukes were a garage supergroup formed by guitarist Ted Nugent, a Chicago native who had heard that Bob Shad, head of jazz-oriented Mainstream Records, was looking for rock bands to sign to the label. Nugent relocated to Detroit in 1967, where he recruited vocalist John Drake, guitarist Steve Farmer, organist Rick Lober, bassist Bill White and drummer Dave Palmer, all of whom had been members of various local bands. The Dukes' self-titled debut LP was released in November of 1967. In addition to seven original pieces, the album included a handful of cover songs, the best of which was their rocked out version of the old Joe Williams tune Baby Please Don't Go. The song was released as a single in January of 1968, where it got a decent amount of airplay in the Detroit area, and was ultimately chosen by Lenny Kaye for inclusion on the original Nuggets compilation album. Unlike the other tracks on Nuggets, Kaye used the stereo album version of Baby Please Don't Go rather than the edited mono single version heard here.

Artist:     Left Banke
Title:     Pretty Ballerina
Source:     Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer:     Michael Brown
Label:     Smash
Year:     1967
     The Left Banke, taking advantage of bandleader Michael Brown's industry connections (his father ran a New York recording studio), ushered in what was considered to be the "next big thing" in popular music in early 1967: Baroque Pop. After their debut single, Walk Away Renee, became a huge bestseller, the band followed it up with Pretty Ballerina, which easily made the top 20 as well. Subsequent releases were sabotaged by a series of bad decisions by Brown and the other band members that left radio stations leery of playing any record with the words "Left Banke" on the label.

Artist:    Ban
Title:    Thinking Of Your Fate
Source:    Mono British import CD: With Love...A Pot Of Flowers (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Tony McGuire
Label:    Big Beat
Year:    Recorded 1965, released 2010
    One of the first garage bands signed to Bob Shad's Brent label was The Ban. Based in Lompoc, California, the Ban was led by guitarist/vocalist Tony McGuire, who also wrote the band's original material, and also included Oliver McKinney, whose wailing organ combined with Frank Straits distorted bass and Randy Gordon's driving drums to create Thinking Of Your Fate, a garage band classic that sat on the shelf for 35 years before finally being released on the expanded version of the Mainstream sampler With Love...A Pot Of Flowers.

Artist:     Rolling Stones
Title:     (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Source:     CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released on LP: Out Of Our Heads and as 45 RPM single )
Writer:     Jagger/Richards
Label:     Abkco (original label: London)
Year:     1965
     Singles released in the UK in the 60s tended to stay on the racks much longer than their American counterparts. This is because singles were generally not duplicated on LPs like they were in the US. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was a good example. In the US, the song was added to the Out Of Our Heads album, which had a considerably different song lineup than the original UK version. In the UK and Europe the song was unavailable as an LP track until Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) was released, yet the single remained available until at least late 1967, when I had the opportunity to listen to a copy of it in a German department store. All the store's singles were behind the counter, and you had to ask the store clerk to play the record for you, which you would then listen to on headphones.
     
Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Who's Driving Your Plane?
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1966
    By 1966 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were writing everything the Rolling Stones recorded. As their songwriting skills became more sophisticated the band began to lose touch with its R&B roots. To counteract this, Jagger and Richards would occasionally come up with tunes like Who's Driving Your Plane, a bluesy number that nonetheless is consistent with the band's cultivated image as the bad boys of rock. The song appeared as the B side (mistitled on the US version as Who's Driving My Plane) of their loudest single to date, the feedback-drenched Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Year (originally released on LP: Out Of Our Heads and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Nanker Phelge
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1965
    The Rolling Stones embraced the Los Angeles music scene probably more than any other British invasion band. They attended the clubs on Sunset Strip when they were in town, recorded a lot of their classic recordings at RCA's Burbank studios, and generally did a lot of schmoozing with people in the record industry. This latter was the inspiration for their 1965 track The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man. The song, which originally appeared only in the US as the B side of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and was later included on all versions of the LP Out Of Our Heads, was the last tune to be credited to the entire band using the pseudonym Nanker Phelge.

Artist:    Huns
Title:    Four Years Lost
Source:    Mono CD: The Huns Conquer Ithaca, NY 1966
Writer(s):    Rich La Bonte
Label:    Jargon
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2017
    In 1965, most bands in the upstate New York area were inspired mainly by the Beatles, and made their living doing cover songs of various British Invasion bands, particularly those with hits on the charts. And then along came the Huns, a group formed in Ithaca, NY by longtime schoolmates Frank Van Nostrand (bass) and John Sweeney (organ). The first member recruited for the new band was vocalist Rich La Bonte, who brought a Mick Jagger like swagger and his own material, including the introspective Four Years Lost. Filling out the band were Buz Warmkessel and drummer Dick Headley. The Huns, who by then had replaced Headley with Steve Dworetz and added rhythm guitarist Keith Ginsberg, made their only studio recordings on March 10, 1966 at Ithaca College's experimental TV studios in downtown Ithaca. Less than three months later the Huns were history, thanks in large part to Van Nostrand and Sweeney being asked by the college dean to pursue their academic careers elsewhere. Undoubtedly the dean made sure the local draft board was informed of their change in status as well.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Good Thing
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: The Spirit Of '67 and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lindsay/Melcher
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    From 1965 to 1967 Paul Revere And The Raiders were on a roll, with a string of six consecutive top 20 singles, four of which made the top 5. Among these was Good Thing, a tune written by lead vocalist Mark Lindsay and producer Terry Melcher (sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Raider"). The song first appeared on the Spirit Of  '67 LP in 1966, and was released as a single late that year. The song ended up being the Raiders' second biggest hit, peaking at # 4 in early 1967.

Artist:    Monks
Title:    Cuckoo
Source:    Mono German import CD: Black Monk Time (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Burger/Clark/Day/Johnson/Shaw
Label:    Repertoire (original label Polydor)
Year:    1966
    The Monks were formed in Germany by five American GIs stationed in Frankfurt. Right from the start, the Monks had a look and sound that was unlike anything that had come before. With military haircuts supplemented by shaved patches at the top and wearing black gowns with a hangman's noose for a necktie, the Monks spat out angry tunes centered on the dark side of human nature. Although they were enough of a curiosity to attract live audiences, their records did not sell particularly well, and for their second single, a song called I Can't Get Over You, they toned it down a touch. The B side, however, a track called Cuckoo, retains much of the energy that made the Monks true pioneers of punk-rock years before the term would come into common usage.

Artist:    Hearts And Flowers
Title:    Tin Angel (Will You Ever Come Down)
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Larry Murray
Label:    Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    Hearts and Flowers (featuring a pre-Eagles Bernie Leadon on lead guitar) is known as one of the pioneering country-rock bands, but in 1968 they recorded what could well be regarded as a lost psychedelic masterpiece. Producer Steve Venet reportedly had Sgt. Pepper in mind as he crafted out Larry Murray's Tin Angel over a period of weeks, paying attention to the minutest details of the recording process. The result speaks for itself.

Artist:    Moody Blues
Title:    Legend Of A Mind
Source:    CD: In Search Of The Lost Chord
Writer(s):    Ray Thomas
Label:    Deram
Year:    1968
    The Moody Blues started off as a fairly typical British beat band, scoring one major international hit, Go Now, in 1965, as well as several minor British hit singles. By 1967 lead vocalist Denny Laine was no longer with the group (he would later surface as a member of Paul McCartney's Wings), and the remaining members were not entirely sure of where to go next. At around that time their record label, Deram, was looking to make a rock version of a well-known classical piece (Horst's The Nine Planets), and the Moody Blues were tapped for the project. Somewhere along the way, however, the group decided to instead write their own music for rock band and symphony orchestra, and Days Of Future Passed was the result. The album, describing a somewhat typical day in the life of a somewhat typical Britisher, was successful enough to revitalize the band's career, and a follow-up LP, In Search Of The Lost Chord, was released in 1968. Instead of a full orchestra, however, the band members themselves provided all the instrumentation on the new album, using a relatively new keyboard instrument called the mellotron, a complicated contraption that utilized tape loops to simulate orchestral sounds. Like its predecessor, In Search Of The Lost Chord was a concept album, this time dealing with the universal search for the meaning of life through music. One of the standout tracks on the album is Legend Of A Mind, with its signature lines: "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, he's outside looking in." Although never released as a single, the track got a fair amount of airplay on college and progressive FM radio stations, and has long been considered a cult hit.
    
Artist:     Frumious Bandersnatch
Title:     Hearts To Cry
Source:     Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released on self-titled EP)
Writer:     Jack King
Label:     Big Beat (original label: Muggles Gramophone Works)
Year:     1968
     Rock music and the real estate business have something in common: location can make all the difference. Take the San Francisco Bay Area. You have one of the world's great Cosmopolitan cities at the north end of a peninsula. South of the city, along the peninsula itself you have mostly redwood forest land interspersed with fairly affluent communities along the way to Silicon Valley and the city of San Jose at the south end of the bay. The eastern side of the bay, on the other hand, spans a socio-economic range from blue collar to ghetto and is politically conservative; not exactly the most receptive environment for a hippy band calling itself Frumious Bandersnatch, which is a shame, since they had at least as much talent as any other band in the area. Unable to develop much of a following, they are one of the great "should have beens" of the psychedelic era, as evidenced by Hearts To Cry, the lead track of their 1968 untitled EP.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    I Wish You Would (expanded version)
Source:    Simulated stereo British import LP: Remember...The Yardbirds
Writer(s):    Billy Boy Arnold
Label:    EMI/Starline
Year:    Recorded 1964, released 1971
    The first Yardbirds record ever released was, predictably, a cover of an old blues song. I Wish You Would had originally been written and recorded by Billy Boy Arnold. Arnold's original version, released in 1955 on the Vee Jay label, featured a Bo-Diddley style beat; indeed, the song had originally been intended for Diddley himself and would have been his second single if not for the fact that Arnold got it into his head that Leonard Chess, whose Chess label Diddley recorded for, did not like him, so he ended up taking the song to Vee Jay and recording it himself. The Yardbirds version of the song, released in 1964, is missing the Bo Diddley beat, and is reportedly a much shorter version than the band performed live at the time. A few years later Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky released the first Yardbirds compilation album, with an expanded version of I Wish You Would that has not appeared anywhere else. Unfortunately, the LP used fake stereo, but is still worth hearing for Eric Clapton and Keith Relf's expanded solos on guitar and harmonica, respectively.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Wait
Source:    LP: Rubber Soul
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1965
    The oldest song on the Rubber Soul album, Wait was originally recorded for the British version of Help , but did not make the final cut. Six months later, when the band was putting the finishing touches on Rubber Soul, they realized they would not be able to come up with enough new material in time for a Christmas release, so they added some overdubs to Wait and included it on the new album. The song itself was a collaboration between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with the two sharing vocals throughout the tune.

Artist:    Rising Sons
Title:    Take A Giant Step
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD:The Rising Sons featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder)
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 1992
    Popular Los Angeles club band The Rising Sons were blessed with the talents of not one, but three musicians that would go on to become highly respected in the music business: vocalist Taj Mahal, guitarist Ry Cooder, and singer/songwriter Jesse Lee Kincaid. At the time, however, Columbia Records had no clue how to market an interracial country-blues/rock band. After an early single bombed the band attempted a more commercial sounding tune, the Gerry Goffin/ Carole King penned Take A Giant Step, but Columbia sat on it, as well as over an album's worth of other material. The song itself became well known when the Monkees released it as the B side of their debut single, Last Train To Clarksville. Taj Mahal, who liked the lyrics but not the fast tempo of the original version, re-recorded the song at a slower pace for his 1969 album Giant Step, making it one of his signature songs in the process.

Artist:    Kim Fowley
Title:    Strangers From The Sky
Source:    Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Fowley/Lloyd
Label:    Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    The 1960s Los Angeles music scene contained more than its share of colorful characters, so it takes quite a bit to stand out from even that group. Kim Fowley, however, definitely fits the bill, as he is more than willing to tell anyone who will listen. His first claim to fame is being a member of the Hollywood Argyles, a studio concoction that had a huge hit with the novelty song Alley Oop in the early 1960s. Fowley met prodigy Michael Lloyd when Lloyd was only 13, and immediately recognized his potential. In late 1966 he was instrumental in hooking Lloyd up with the Harris brothers and local hipster Bob Markley, who together formed the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. It was while a member of the WCPAEB that Lloyd produced Fowley's Strangers From The Sky, recorded in Lloyd's own home 4-track studio with Lloyd playing all the instruments himself. In it's own way, Strangers From The Sky is every bit as bizarre as Alley Oop, although nowhere near as successful on the charts. Lloyd went on to become a big-time record producer, working with teen idols like the Osmonds and Shaun Cassidy as well as supervising the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Fowley continued to make his presence felt in both L.A. and London in several roles, including songwriter, producer and being the MC at the Toronto Rock And Roll Revival in 1969 (where he successfully pushed to get the Plastic Ono Band on the playbill). He famously introduced Sandy West to Joan Jett in the mid-1970s, which eventually led to the formation of the Runaways. 

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2303 (starts 1/16/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/457325-dc-2303

    This week's show focuses mainly on the early 1970s, and features the title track of the first Pink Floyd album to top the British charts (it hit # 55 in the US). We also have a higher than normal percentage of tracks that were released as singles this time around (not sure how that happened, but it was probably the result of a subconscious desire to balance out the long Pink Floyd album track). We start with 13 questions, none of which actually get answered...

Artist:    Seatrain
Title:    13 Questions
Source:    British import CD: Seatrain/Marblehead Messenger (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Seatrain)
Writer(s):    Kulberg/Roberts
Label:    BGO (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1970
    Despite being formed by the remaining members of the Blues Project, Seatrain spent most of its four years under the radar, getting little attention from the rock press and even less from the record buying public. Some of this lack of popularity can be attributed to the band's basic instability. None of their four albums (for three different labels!) have the same lineup, making it hard to establish a fan base. The fact that they didn't fit neatly into any particular genre, having elements of folk, country and jazz as well as rock, didn't help either. Their most successful record was the 1970 single, 13 Questions. Anyone who bought the album Seatrain soon realized, however, that the punchy horn-heavy single was nothing like the rest of the LP.

Artist:     Traffic
Title:     Empty Pages
Source:     LP: John Barleycorn Must Die
Writer:     Winwood/Capaldi
Label:     Island
Year:     1970
     Traffic was formed in 1967 by guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Steve Winwood, who was looking for more artistic freedom after rising to stardom as a teenager with the Spencer Davis Group. The original band, also featuring guitarist/vocalist Dave Mason, drummer Jim Capaldi and woodwind player Chris Wood, released two and a half albums worth of studio tracks and one LP side of live performances before disbanding in early 1969, when Winwood left to form Blind Faith. Following the breakup of Blind Faith Winwood began working on a solo LP that soon turned into a Traffic reunion album (without Mason). John Barleycorn Must Die was released in 1970 and led to a second successful run for the band. Although Empty Pages was released as a single, it got most of its airplay on progressive FM stations, and as those stations were replaced by (or became) album rock stations, the song continued to get extensive airplay for many years. Modern classic rock stations, however, tend to ignore Traffic in favor of Winwood's later solo work, which is a shame, as Traffic put out some of the best rock albums ever made.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Love Her Madly
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1971   
    Released as a single in advance of the 1971 Doors album L.A. Woman, Love Her Madly was a major success, peaking just outside the top 10 in the US, and going all the way to the #3 spot in Canada. The album itself was a return to a more blues-based sound by the Doors, a change that did not sit well with producer Paul Rothchild, who left the project early on, leaving engineer Bruce Botnik to assume production duties. Rothchild's opinion aside, it was exactly what the Doors needed to end their run (in their original four man incarnation) on a positive note.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Supernaut
Source:    CD: Vol. 4
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers/Rhino
Year:    1972
    After a string of three outstanding albums, success started to take its toll on Black Sabbath. Their fourth LP was originally going to be called Snowblind, which accurately describes the state the band members were in most of the time while recording the album. Reportedly, entire speaker boxes full of cocaine were arriving at the studio on a regular basis; at the same time, the band was making their first attempt at producing themselves. Despite all this, the album, which ended up being called Vol. 4 after their label rejected Snowblind as the title, has some of Sabbath's strongest songs, including Supernaut, which closes out the LP's first side. Fans of the song included John Bonham, Frank Zappa and Beck (Hansen).

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Atom Heart Mother Suite
Source:    LP: Atom Heart Mother
Writer:    Mason/Gilmour/Waters/Wright/Geesin
Label:    Harvest
Year:    1970
    The longest continuous piece of music ever committed to vinyl by Pink Floyd was not something from the Wall or Dark Side of the Moon, but the 23 1/2 minute Atom Heart Mother Suite (Shine On You Crazy Diamond is actually longer, but was interrupted by being split across two sides of an LP with other tracks between the two parts). The suite was also the last Pink Floyd piece to credit anyone outside the band as a songwriter; in this case Scottish composer/arranger Ron Geesin, who was brought in to help orchestrate and tie together the various sections of the piece. Primarily an instrumental, the piece has several distinct sections, although on vinyl and most CDs it is treated as a single track. Indeed, the drum and bass parts, which were the first tracks recorded, were recorded as a continuous take, giving the entire piece a consistent tempo throughout. The title was taken from a newspaper headline about a pregnant woman who had been fitted with a pacemaker; the actual headline was "Atom Heart Mother Found". Pink Floyd originally performed the suite live with a full orchestra, but after losing money on the tour decided to perform a pared down version and after a couple of years stopped performing the piece altogether. In recent years none of the band members has had anything good to say about the Atom Heart Mother Suite. Nonetheless, the piece stands as an important step on Pink Floyd's journey to the Dark Side of the Moon.

Artist:     Guess Who
Title:     American Woman
Source:     European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: American Woman)
Writer:     Bachman/Cummings/Peterson/Kale
Label:     Sony Music (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:     1970
     American Woman is undoubtably the most political song ever recorded by the Guess Who, a generally non-political Canadian band. My family was living on Ramstein AFB, which was and is a huge base in Germany with enough Canadian personnel stationed there to justify their own on-base school. From early 1969 until mid-1970 (when we moved back to the States) I found myself hanging out with the Canadian kids most of the time and I gotta tell you, they absolutely loved this song. They also loved to throw it in my face as often as possible. I guess that's what I got for being the "token American" member of my peer group.
 
Artist:    Joe Cocker
Title:    The Letter
Source:    LP: Mad Dogs & Englishmen
Writer(s):    Wayne Carson
Label:    A&M
Year:    1970
    The Letter is one of a handful of songs that has been a major hit for more than one artist. The original 1967 version by the Box Tops was their first, and biggest hit, going to the top of the charts in both the US and Canada, as well as making the top 10 in several other parts of the world. Joe Cocker's 1970 version, from the live album (and concert film) Mad Dogs & Englishmen, became his first top 10 single in the US. The tour that gave Cocker's album its name featured a band with more than 20 members, including such notables as Leon Russell and Rita Coolidge. Not to be outdone by the likes of the Grateful Dead, the Mad Dogs & Englishmen band featured three drummers, one of whom later described the tour as "a big, wild party".

Artist:    Santana
Title:    Everybody's Everything
Source:    45 RPM single (promo)
Writer(s):    Santana/Moss/Brown
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1971
    Santana's third album, released in 1971, was called simply Santana. The problem is, their first album was also called Santana. The guitar solo on Everybody's Everything, by the way, is not by Carlos Santana. Rather it was performed by the then 17-year-old Neal Schon, who, along with keyboardist Greg Rolie would leave the band the following year to form Journey.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2302 (starts 1/9/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/456328-pe-2302

    This week we have a "cool and unusual" Advanced Psych segment that has tracks from three different decades, and three different continents. Speaking of cool and unusual, how about Dave Van Ronk's version of Alley Oop, possibly the coolest and most unusual version of that song ever to appear on vinyl. And then there's the early demo recording of an Electric Prunes song written by James Lowe and Mark Tulin that sat on the shelf for nearly 50 years before finally being released as a B side on Record Store Day in 2015. And there's lots more where those came from on this week's edition of Stuck in the Psychedelic Era.

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 and had shifted musical gears).

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Big Black Smoke
Source:    Mono British import CD: Face To Face (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Sanctuary (original US label: Reprise)
Year:    1966
    The Kinks had some of the best non-album sides of the 60s. Case in point: Big Black Smoke, which appeared as the B side of Dead End Street in November of 1966. The song deals with a familiar phenomenon of the 20th century: the small town girl that gets a rude awakening after moving to the big city. In this case the city was London, known colloquially as "the Smoke".

Artist:    Janis Ian
Title:    Society's Child (Baby I've Been Thinking)
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Janis Ian
Label:    Polydor (original label: Verve Folkways)
Year:    1966
    Janis Ian began writing Society's Child, using the title Baby I've Been Thinking, when she was 13 years old, finishing it shortly after her 14th birthday. She shopped it around to several record labels before finally finding one willing to take a chance on the controversial song about interracial dating. The record was released in September of 1966 by M-G-M subsidiary Verve Folkways, a label whose roster included Dave Van Ronk, Laura Nyro and the Blues Project, among others. Despite being banned on several radio stations the song became a major hit when re-released the following year after being featured on an April 1967 Leonard Bernstein TV special. Ian had problems maintaining a balance between her performing career and being a student which ultimately led to her dropping out of high school. She would eventually get her career back on track in the mid-70s, scoring another major hit with At Seventeen, and becoming somewhat of a heroine to the feminist movement.

Artist:     Buffalo Springfield
Title:     Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing
Source:     CD: Buffalo Springfield
Writer:    Neil Young
Label:     Atco
Year:     1966
     One of the most influential folk-rock bands to come out of the L.A. scene was the Buffalo Springfield. The Springfield had several quality songwriters, including Neil Young, whose voice was deemed "too weird" by certain record company people. Thus we have Richie Furay handling the lead vocals on Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing, the group's debut single. The track was just one of several Young songs sung by Furay on the band's first album. By the time the second Buffalo Springfield album was released things had changed somewhat, and Young got to do his own lead vocals on songs like Mr. Soul and Broken Arrow.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    Steve's Song
Source:    LP: Projections
Writer(s):    Steve Katz
Label:    Verve Forecast
Year:    1966
    The members of the Blues Project came from a variety of backgrounds, including jazz, rock, classical and of course, blues. Guitarist Steve Katz had the strongest connection to the Greenwich Village folk scene and was the lead vocalist on the Project's recording of Donovan's Catch The Wind on their first LP. For their second album Katz wrote his own song, entitled simply Steve's Song. The tune starts with a very old-English style repeated motif that gets increasing complicated as it repeats itself before segueing into a more conventional mode with Katz on the lead vocal. Katz would write and sing simlarly-styled tunes, such as Sometimes In Winter, as a member of Blood, Sweat and Tears.
 
Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    The People In Me
Source:    CD: The Very Best Of The Music Machine-Turn On (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    After Talk Talk soared into the upper reaches of the US charts the Music Machine's management made a tactical error. Instead of promoting the follow-up single, The People In Me, to the largest possible audience, the band's manager gave exclusive air rights to a relatively low-rated Burbank station at the far end of the Los Angeles AM radio dial. As local bands like the Music Machine depended on airplay in L.A. as a necessary step to getting national exposure, the move proved disastrous. Without any airplay on influential stations like KHJ and KRLA, The People In Me was unable to get any higher than the # 66 spot on the national charts. Even worse for the band, the big stations remembered the slight when subsequent singles by the Music Machine were released, and by mid-1967 the original lineup had disbanded.
 
Artist:    Dave Van Ronk
Title:    Alley Oop
Source:    LP: Dave Van Ronk And The Hudson Dusters
Writer(s):    Dallas Frazier
Label:    Verve Forecast
Year:    1967
    Alley Oop was a popular comic strip in the early 1960s and an even more popular song in 1960, with no less than three versions occupying the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. For my money, though, the absolute best version of the song was recorded by the "Mayor of McDougall Street", Dave Van Ronk on his 1967 LP Dave Van Ronk And The Hudson Dusters. The rest of the Hudson Dusters on this recording were guitarist Dave Woods, keyboardist Phillip "Pot" Namenworth, bassist Ed Gregory and drummer Rick Henderson.

Artist:    H.P. Lovecraft
Title:    It's About Time
Source:    Two Classic Albums from H. P. Lovecraft (originally released on LP: H.P. Lovecraft II)
Writer(s):    Terry Callier
Label:    Collector's Choice/Universal Music Special Markets (original label: Philips)
Year:    1968
    The second H.P. Lovecraft album, coming after a series of gigs opening for such acts as Pink Floyd, Donovan and Jefferson Airplane, was even more psychedelic than their first effort. Like the early Airplane, Lovecraft were at their best doing psychedelic arrangements of folks tunes from lesser-known songwriters such as Terrier Callier, whose fan base, according to rock critic Richie Unterberger, was small enough to make Fred Neil's seem huge by comparison. Lovecraft's treatment of Callier's It's About Time certainly has the same sort of vocal harmonies that characterized the San Francisco take on folk-rock, despite the fact that H.P. Lovecraft was actually from Chicago, a city not particularly known for its psychedelic scene.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    You Still Believe In Me
Source:    Mono LP: Pet Sounds
Writer(s):    Wilson/Asher
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    Although they were one of the first self-contained US rock bands, by 1966 the Beach Boys were using studio musicians almost exclusively on their recordings. At the same time Brian Wilson, who by then was writing all the band's music, had retired from performing with the band onstage. These factors combined to give Wilson the freedom to create the album that is often considered his and the band's artistic peak, Pet Sounds. Much of the material on the album, such as You Still Believe In Me, was written with the help of lyricist Tony Asher. Like many of the songs on Pet Sounds, You Still Believe In Me includes unusual instrumentation such as a theramin and even a bicycle bell.

Artist:    Hollies
Title:    Pay You Back With Interest
Source:    CD: The Best Of The Hollies
Writer(s):    Clarke/Hicks/Nash
Label:    Cema Special Products (original label: Imperial)
Year:    1967
    By 1967 the Hollies had actually achieved a level of popularity in the US that allowed them to issue singles that were not available in their native UK. One of these was Pay You Back With Interest, which made the US top 20 in 1967. The tune was written by the Hollies' usual songwriting partnership of Allan Clarke, Tony Hicks, and Graham Nash.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Summertime
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Gershwin/Heyward
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Janis Joplin, on the 1968 Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, sounds like she was born to sing Gershwin's Summertime. Maybe she was. Guitarist Sam Andrew later said that Summertime, as it appears on Cheap Thrills, was one of the hardest songs to duplicate in front of a live audience.

Artist:    Gandalf
Title:    Can You Travel In The Dark Alone
Source:    LP: Gandalf
Writer(s):    Peter Sando
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    What's in a name? Well, when you're a rock band and your name is the Rhagoos, apparently not enough to keep the producers happy. The name the producers suggested, however, was even worse. I mean, you really can't blame the band members for hating a name like the Knockrockers, right? It took a while, but after throwing around several possibilities, the band decided to go with Gandalf And The Wizards, a name suggested by drummer Davy Bauer that was later shortened to just Gandalf. Gandalf only recorded one album, which was released on the Capitol label in 1969. Most of the tracks on that album were cover songs, with only two originals, both of which were provided by guitarist Peter Sando. Of those, Can You Travel In The Dark Alone is the more notable. For the completists among you, the other two members of this New York band were Bob Muller (bass) and Frank Hubach (keyboards). I'm not sure who provided the vocals, although my guess would be Sando.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Stupid Girl
Source:    British import LP: Aftermath
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1966
    By 1966 the songwriting team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had hit its stride, turning out Rolling Stones classics like Mother's Little Helper and Paint It Black as a matter of course. Even B sides such as Stupid Girl were starting to get occasional airplay on top 40 stations, a trend that would continue to grow over the next year or so.

Artist:    Otis Redding
Title:    Shake
Source:    Mono CD: The Very Best Of Otis Redding (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sam Cooke
Label:    Rhino (original label: Volt)
Year:    1967
    At the beginning of his recording career Otis Redding told friends that his primary goal was to fill the gap left by his idol, Sam Cooke, who had been shot in his hotel room in late 1964.
Two years later he was electrifying crowds on both sides of the Atlantic with his energetic version of Cooke's Shake, which he used as a set opener at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. Earlier that year he had released another live version of the song, recorded in London, as a single that peaked at # 47 on the Hot 100 and # 16 on the R&B chart. The record also made the British top 30.

Artist:    Johnny Winter
Title:    Rollin' And Tumblin'
Source:    LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: The Progressive Blues Experiment)
Writer(s):    McKinley Morganfield
Label:    United Artists (original labels: Sonobeat/Imperial)
Year:    1968
    Johnny Winter's first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment, was originally released in 1968 on the Texas-based Sonobeat label. A ctitical success, it was picked up and reissued on the Imperial label a year later. Most of the songs on the album are covers of blues classics such as Muddy Waters's Rollin' And Tumblin'.

Artist:    Gods
Title:    Hey Bulldog
Source:    British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    EMI (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    Fans of Uriah Heep may recognize the names Ken Hensley, Joe Konas, John Glascock and Lee Kerslake as members of the legendary British rock band at various phases of its existence. What they may not realize is that these four members had already been bandmates since early 1968 as members of the Gods. The band made it's recording debut with a song called Baby's Rich, which led to a concept album called Genesis. 1969 saw the release of a powerful cover of the Beatles' Hey Bulldog, along with a second album, before the group morphed into a band called Toe Fat, with Hensley soon departing to form Uriah Heep. Glascock would later become a long time member of another British band, Jethro Tull.

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:    Sand Pebbles
Title:    Tennessee Says
Source:    Australian import CD: Ceduna
Writer(s):    Sand Pebbles
Label:    Sensory Projects
Year:    2008
    Neighbours is the longest-running drama series on Australian television, having aired its first episode in March of 1985. It is also the unlikely origin point for Sand Pebbles, a band formed in 2001 by three Neighbours screenwriters. Those three founding members, bassist Christopher Hollow, guitarist Ben Michael and drummer Piet Collins were soon joined by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Tanner. The band's fourth album, Ceduna, also featured guitarist/vocalist Tor Larsen. Although it starts off sounding somewhat like a mainstream pop song, Tennessee Says ends up having some nice guitar work featured later in the song.

Artist:    Residents
Title:    (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Ralph
Year:    1976
    Described by one prominent indy musician as "loose, belligerent, violent...a real stick in the eye of everything conventionally tasteful in 1976 America", the Residents unique version of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was not widely available when it was originally released. In fact, there were only 200 numbered copies pressed of the original single. Two years later, another 30,000 copies were pressed on translucent gold-colored vinyl. The Residents would later gain a cult following after their videos were featured prominently on the fledgling MTV in the early 1980s.

Artist:    Geiger Von Müller
Title:    Rebirth
Source:    CD: Ruby Red Run
Writer(s):    Geiger Von Müller
Label:    GVM
Year:    2018
    Geiger Von Müller is a London-based guitarist who has deconstructed the blues down to one of its most essential elements, slide guitar, and then explored from scratch what can be done with the instrument. His latest album, Ruby Red Run is full of tasty tunes such as Rebirth.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Getting Better
Source:    Mono LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1967
    Following their 1966 North American tour, the Beatles announced that they were giving up live performances to concentrate on their songwriting and studio work. Freed of the responsibilities of the road (and under the influence of mind-expanding substances), the band members found themselves discovering new sonic possibilities as never before (or since), hitting a creative peak with their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, often cited as the greatest album ever recorded. The individual Beatles were about to move in separate musical directions, but as of Sgt. Pepper's were still functioning mostly as a single unit, as is heard on the chorus of Getting Better, in which Paul McCartney's opening line, "I have to admit it's getting better", is immediately answered by John Lennon's playfully cynical "can't get no worse". The members continued to experiment with their instrumentation as well, such as George Harrison's use of sitar on the song's bridge, accompanied by Ringo Starr's bongos.

Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     How Suite It Is
Source:     LP: After Bathing At Baxters
Writer(s):     Kantner/Casady/Dryden/Kaukonen
Label:     RCA Victor
Year:     1967
     The second side of After Bathing At Baxters starts off fairly conventionally (for the Airplane), with Paul Kantner's Watch Her Ride, the first third or so of something called How Suite It Is. This leads (without a break in the audio) into Spare Chaynge, one of the coolest studio jams ever recorded, featuring intricate interplay between Jack Casady's bass and Jorma Kaukonen's guitar, with Spencer Dryden using his drum kit as enhancement rather than as a beat-setter. In particular, Casady's virtuoso performance helped redefine what could be done with an electric bass.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    You Baby
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Sloan/Barri
Label:    White Whale
Year:    1966
    After first hitting the charts with their version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles released yet another "angry young rebel" song, P.F. Sloan's Let Me Be. Realizing that they needed to vary their subject matter somewhat if they planned on having a career last longer than six months, the band formerly known as the Crossfires went with another Sloan tune, You Baby, for their first single of 1966. Although the music was in a similar style to Let Me Be, the lyrics, written by Steve Barri, were fairly typical of teen-oriented love songs of the era. The Turtles would continue to record songs from professional songwriters for single release for the remainder of their existence, with their original compositions showing up mostly as album tracks and B sides.
 
Artist:    Animals
Title:    See See Rider
Source:    Mono LP: Animalization
Writer(s):    Ma Rainey
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    One of the last singles released by the original incarnation of the Animals (and the first to use the name Eric Burdon And The Animals on the label), See See Rider traces its roots back to the 1920s, when it was first recorded by Ma Rainey. The Animals version is considerably faster than most other recordings of the song, and includes a signature opening rift by organist Dave Rowberry (who had replaced founder Alan Price prior to the recording of the Animalization album that the song first appeared on) that is unique to the Animals' take on the tune.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    World Of Darkness
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Lowe/Tulin
Label:    Sundazed/Reprise
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2015
    Electric Prunes vocalist James Lowe recalls that he and bassist Mark Tulin wrote World Of Darkness after seeing the Beatles on TV. The song was recorded in 1966 as a demo, but the band never returned to the recording to fix what he calls "timing" errors. The tune was released "as is" as a B side for Record Store Day 2015.

Artist:           Butterfield Blues Band
Title:       I Got a Mind To Give Up Living
Source:    CD: East-West
Writer(s):    Traditional
Label:     Elektra
Year:        1966
       The Butterfield Blues band in 1966 had a lot in common with British blues-rock group the Yardbirds.  Both bands were led by harmonica-playing vocalists (Butterfield and Keith Relf), and featured two top-quality lead guitarists (Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page for the Yardbirds, Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop for the Butterfields). Whereas the Yardbirds only managed to record three songs with both Beck and Page, the Butterfield outfit with Bloomfield and Bishop recorded an entire album: the classic East-West. Several songs on the album were credited to "traditional", meaning that they were in the public domain. Among these is I Got A Mind To Give Up Living, a song also recorded by B.B. King and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, although a casual search associates the song mainly with Butterfield.

Artist:    Winston's Fumbs
Title:    Real Crazy Apartment
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):    Jimmy Winston
Label:    Rhino (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1967
    Vocalist/guitarist Jimmy Winston was a child actor turned musician who was one of the original members of the Small Faces, where he played organ. In 1965 he was basically kicked out of the band for unknown reasons, but soon resurfaced with his own band, Winston's Reflection, which released one single on the British Decca label in 1966. By the following year the band had changed its name to Winston's Fumbs and signed with RCA Records, releasing Real Crazy Apartment before disbanding. By then Winston had switched from organ to guitar, and would next surface as a cast member of the London production of Hair. Meanwhile, Winston's Fumbs organist Tony Kaye had become a founding member of some obscure band called Yes.

Artist:    Paul Jones
Title:    The Dog Presides
Source:    British import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Paul Jones
Label:    Zonophone (original UK label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    Like many frontmen in the mid-60s Manfred Mann's Paul Jones decided to leave the group for a solo career right at the height of the band's success. Also like many former frontmen, Jones's solo career, beginning in 1966, was less than stellar. Most of Jones's records were done in an almost lounge lizard style. One notable exception is The Dog Presides, the B side of a forgettable 1968 single called And The Sun Will Shine. In addition to Jones on vocals and harmonica, The Dog Presides features former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck and bassist Paul-Samwell Smith and some guy named Paul McCartney on drums. This bit of psychedelic insanity was officially credited to Jones himself, but in all likelihood was a collaborative effort by the four of them.

Artist:    Neil Young/Crazy Horse
Title:    Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Source:    LP: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1969
    After releasing a fairly well produced debut solo album utilizing the talents of several well-respected studio musicians in late 1968, Neil Young surprised everyone by recruiting an unknown L.A. bar band and rechristening them Crazy Horse for his second effort, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The album was raw and unpolished, with Young's lead vocals recorded using a talkback microphone normally used by engineers to communicate with people in the studio from the control room. In spite of, or more likely because of, these limitations, the resulting album has come to be regarded as one of the greatest in the history of rock, with Young sounding far more comfortable, both as a vocalist and guitarist, than on the previous effort. Although the album is best known for three songs he wrote while running a fever (Cinnamon Girl, Cowgirl In The Sand, and Down By The River), there are plenty of good other songs on the LP, including the title track heard here.

Artist:     Jimi Hendrix
Title:     Freedom
Source:     CD: First Rays of the New Rising Sun (originally released on LP: Rainbow Bridge)
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     MCA/Experience Hendrix (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1970
     Jimi Hendrix was working on a new double album when he died, but nobody else seemed to be sure where he was going with it. As there were several tracks that were unfinished at the time, Reprise Records gathered what they could and put them together on an album called The Cry Of Love. Freedom, a nearly finished piece (the unfinished part being a short "placesetter" guitar solo that Hendrix never got around to replacing with a final take), is the opening track from the album. Soon after that, a new Hendrix concert film called Rainbow Bridge was released along with a soundtrack album containing most of the remaining tracks from the intended double album. Finally, in 1997 the Hendrix Family (with the help of original engineer Eddie Kramer and drummer Mitch Mitchell) pieced together what was essentially an educated guess about what would have been that album and released it under the name First Rays of the New Rising Sun. Although I'm not in total agreement with their song selection or sequencing, Freedom does seem to be the perfect opening track for the album.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2302 (starts 1/9/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/456326-dc-2302

    One of the most iconic live performances in the history of rock came on the morning of August 19, 1969, when Jimi Hendrix and the group he called Gypsy Sun and Rainbows broke into a feedback-laden rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in front of the remaining crowd of stragglers who had attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair over the previous three days. This performance was actually part of a medley of tunes that together ran nearly half an hour without a break, with an editied version of that performance featured in D.A. Pennebacker's film Woodstock and on its accompanying soundtrack album. This week, Rockin' in the Days of Confusion presents the entire medley, along with another live performance from the previous year by Ten Years After that was deemed, at the time, to be too long to be included on their 1968 album Undead. First, though, a couple of rockers to get things going...

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Nothing Is The Same
Source:    CD: Closer To Home
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1970
    Grand Funk Railroad's fans continued to defy the rock press by buying copies of the band's albums throughout 1970, despite universally negative reviews. In fact, the band was awarded no less than three gold records that year, including their third studio LP, Closer To Home. The album includes some of their best recordings, including Nothing Is The Same, a hard rocker that includes both tempo and key changes, as well as some of Mark Farner's best lead vocals.

Artist:    Coloured Balls
Title:    Love You Babe
Source:    Australian import CD: Heavy Metal Kid (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lobby Lloyd
Label:    Aztec (original label: EMI)
Year:    1974
    Lobby Loyde, although a guitar legend in Australia, is virtually unknown in the US. This is a shame, since he, in the words of former bandmate Angry Anderson, "helped create the Australian guitar sound, long before Angus [Young]. Lobby inspired Australian bands to step forward and play as loud and aggressively as they could." Born in 1941, Loyde had hit singles in Australia as a member of Purple Hearts and later Wild Cherries, and was a major force on the Australian pub rock scene in the 1970s. Loyde released two albums as a member of Coloured Balls, which also featured Andrew Fordham on guitar and vocals, Janis Miglans on bass guitar and Trevor Young on drums. In addition, the band released several non-LP single tracks that have been included as bonus tracks on the CD reissue of their second album, Heavy Metal Kid. The most popular of these was Love You Babe, released in 1974.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix/Gypsy Sun And Rainbows
Title:    Foxy Lady
Source:    CD: Live At Woodstock
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy
Year:    1969
    Jimi Hendrix's new ensemble, Gypsy Sun And Rainbows, had only had time for a couple of rehearsals when they took the stage at Woodstock on the morning of August 18,1969, and had spent that time trying to develop new material rather than work on songs that had already been previously recorded by the original Jimi Hendrix Experience. After performing a mixture of new material and some rather sloppy renditions of older classics such as Foxy Lady, the group launched into a nearly 30-minute long medley of tunes that began with a thirteen minute long version of Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and ended with the relatively quiet instrumental piece that is now known as Villanova Junction. In between, Hendrix broke into the wildest version of the Star Spangled Banner ever recorded, as well as a credible performance of Purple Haze and a four minute long untitled guitar solo. Joining Hendrix onstage were his old friend Billy Cox, whom he had known from the early 60s while playing as a backup musician on the "Chitlin' Circuit", on bass, and Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell. The rest of Gypsy Sun and Roses was made up of guitarist Larry Lee and percussionists Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez, but due as much to technical issues as anything else, their parts are mostly inaudible on the recording.

Artist:    Ten Years After
Title:    I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes/Extension On One Chord/I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes Medley
Source:    CD: Undead (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Johnson/Lee/Lyons/Churchill/Lee
Label:    Deram
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 2002
    Although not a major hit in the US, the first Ten Years After album, released in 1967, was heard and liked by at least one highly influential person: Bill Graham, owner of the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Graham was so impressed, in fact, that he invited the band to come play at his soon-to-be-opened Fillmore East in New York. The problem was that the band wanted to have a new record to promote when they made their US debut, and there wasn't enough time to record a proper studio LP (although attempts were made). Finally, in order to meet the deadline, it was decided that the band's second LP would be a live album, something generally not done by bands in 1968 (although it had been more common earlier in the decade). Not all of the live material was used on the new album, however. One notable track was a live extended version of the Blind Willie Johnson tune I Can't Keep From Crying Sometime. The reasons this track was not included on the Undead album probably were a combination of the track's length (17 minutes) and the fact that a studio version of the song had been included on the first Ten Years After LP (erroneously credited to Al Kooper, who had arranged the song for his own solo recording heard on the 1966 multi-artist LP What's Shakin').

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2301 (starts 1/2/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/455024-pe-2301 

    This week it's once again Beatles vs. Stones on a show recorded in June of 2018 but never broadcast before this week. We also have quite a bit of psychedelic blues this time around, including a 20-minute long Canned Heat piece featuring special guests John Mayall and John Fahey. That still leaves lots of room for the usual mixture of A sides, B sides, album tracks and alternate takes as well.

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 M-G-M, which included Monterey on The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals Volume 2, used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the result is the same.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Moonlight Drive
Source:    LP: 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:    Beach Boys
Title:    Heroes And Villains (alternate take)
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on CD: Smiley Smile/Wild Honey)
Writer(s):    Wilson/Parks
Label:    Rhino
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1995
    The last major Beach Boys hit of the 1960s was Heroes And Villains, released as a follow-up to Good Vibrations in early 1967. The song was intended to be part of the Smile album, but ended up being released as a single in an entirely different form than Brian Wilson originally intended. Eventually the entire Smile project was canned, and a considerably less sophisticated album called Smiley Smile was released in its place. Nearly 30 years later Smiley Smile and its follow-up album, Wild Honey, were released on compact disc as a set.  One of the bonus tracks in that set was this alternate version of Heroes And Villains, which was also included in the box set Good Vibrations-Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys. Finally, in 2004, Brian Wilson's Smile, featuring all new stereo recordings, was released, with an arrangement of Heroes And Villains that was quite similar to the one heard here.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    See My Friends
Source:    LP: Kinkdom
Writer:    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1965
    Possibly the most psychedelic recording ever made by the Kinks, See My Friends was originally released as a single in the UK in 1965, making the top 10. Ray Davies has been heard to say the song is about the death of his older sister Rene, who had given him his first guitar for his 13th birthday shortly before her death from an undiagnosed hole in her heart. Like many of the Kinks' UK singles, See My Friends was not released as a single in the US, appearing instead on the US-only LP Kinkdom.

Artist:    Butterfield Blues Band
Title:    Mary Mary
Source:    CD: East-West
Writer(s):    Michael Nesmith
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    Poor Mike Nesmith. One of his first compositions to get recorded was Mary Mary, which appeared on the classic 1966 Butterfield Blues Band album East-West. Unfortunately for Mr. Nesmith, his name was inadvertently left out of the credits, leading Butterfield fans to assume it was a band original. Not long after East-West was released Nesmith successfully auditioned for a new TV show about the adventures of an up-and-coming band called the Monkees. The TV show was an instant success, spawning a hit single and album in late 1966, making Nesmith quite famous. When a second Monkees album appeared in January of 1967 with their own version of Mary Mary on it, a lot of people assumed that Nesmith had ripped off the Butterfield Blues Band. In reality, it was the Monkees themselves that were getting screwed, as the album, featuring studio musicians under the supervision of Don Kirschner playing on all the tracks, was released without the knowledge or consent of the band itself.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    1906 (mono single mix)
Source:    CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Markley/Morgan
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    A few years back I was in contact with Robert Morgan, brother of the late Ron Morgan, guitarist for the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. I asked him if his brother had ever received royalties from songs like 1906, which was essentially a Morgan composition with spoken lyrics tacked on by bandleader/vocalist Bob Markley. He replied that Ron had received a check for something like eight dollars shortly before his death, but that he had always felt that Markley had paid him fairly for his services. He then went on to say that Ron Morgan was more interested in making his mark than in getting any financial compensation. Attitudes like that are a big part of why I do this show. It's hard to imagine many of today's pop stars making a statement like that and meaning it.

Artist:    Savage Resurrection
Title:    Thing In "E"
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    John Palmer
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1968
    Like many areas across the US during the mid-1960s, Contra Costa County, California (say that a few times fast) was home to a thriving local music scene, particularly in the city of Richmond. In 1967 members of several local bands got together to form a sort of garage supergroup, calling themselves Savage Resurrection. The band, consisting of lead vocalist Bill Harper, lead guitarist Randy Hammon, rhythm guitarist John Palmer, bassist Steve Lage and drummer Jeff Myer, was quite popular locally despite the relative youth of its members (Hammon, for instance, was all of 16 years old), and soon signed a management contract with Matthew Katz, who also managed such well-known San Francisco bands as Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day. Katz got the band a contract with Mercury records, and their first and only LP came out in 1968. Thing In "E" was the single from that album, which is still considered one of the best examples of psychedelic garage rock ever recorded. Touring soon took its toll, however, and Harper and Lage left the band soon after the album was released. The rest of the band continued with new members for a few months, but by the end of 1968 Savage Resurrection was little more than a footnote to the San Francisco music story.

Artist:    Janis Joplin/Kozmic Blues Band
Title:    Summertime
Source:    EP box set: Move Over
Writer(s):    Hayward/Gershwin/Gershwin
Label:    Columbia
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2011
    One of the most popular tracks on the 1968 album Cheap Thrills by Big Brother And The Holding Company was George Gershwin's Summertime, from  Porgy And Bess. After leaving Big Brother, vocalist Janis Joplin continued to perform the song with her new Kozmic Blues Band. The performance heard here was recorded in Amsterdam, Holland, on April 1, 1969.

Artist:    Sugarloaf
Title:    Gold And The Blues
Source:    LP: Sugarloaf
Writer(s):    Corbetta/Pollock/Raymond/Webber
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1970
    There don't seem to be very many tracks highlighting instrumental work in rock radio these days, and virtually none in what passes for top 40. Perhaps that's just a natural consequence of the emergence of a "front" person as the center of attention in the 70s. There was a time, however, that every member of a band played an instrument, and many albums included at least one instrumental track. Gold And The Blues, from the debut Sugarloaf album, is basically a blues jam that shows that Jerry Corbetta was far more than just the guy who sang Green-Eyed Lady and Don't Call Us, We'll Call You; he was quite possibly the best rock organist ever. Bob Webber's guitar work on the tune ain't half bad, either.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Viola Lee Blues
Source:    CD: Birth Of The Dead
Writer(s):    Noah Lewis
Label:    Rhino
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2003
    The Grateful Dead established a reputation over the years for playing long extended jams. One of the earliest was their version of Viola Lee Blues, recorded in 1966 before they had their first album deal with Warner Brothers.
    
Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Season Of The Witch
Source:    CD: Donovan's Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer:    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sony (original label: Epic)
Year:    1966 (stereo version, 1969)
     Season Of The Witch has proved to be one of the most popular and enduring tracks on Donovan's Sunshine Superman album. Due to a contract dispute with Pye Records, the album was not released in the UK until late 1967, and then only as an LP combining tracks from both the Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow albums. Like all tracks from both Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, Season Of The Witch was only available in a mono mix until 1969, when a new stereo mix was created from the original multi-track masters for the singer/songwriter's first greatest hits compilation. Season of the Witch has since been covered by an impressive array of artists, including Al Kooper and Stephen Stills (on the Super Session album) and Vanilla Fudge.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: The Electric Prunes and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Tucker/Mantz
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1966
    The Electric Prunes' biggest hit was I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), released in November of 1966. The record, initially released without much promotion from their record label, was championed by Seattle DJ Pat O'Day of KJR radio, and was already popular in that area when it hit the national charts (thus explaining why so many people assumed the band was from Seattle). I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) has come to be one of the defining songs of the psychedelic era and was the opening track on the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets compilation (and the second track on Rhino's first Nuggets LP).

Artist:    Hollies
Title:    King Midas In Reverse
Source:    British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Clarke/Hicks/Nash
Label:    EMI (original label: Parlophone)
Year:    1967
    One of the last Hollies singles to include original member Graham Nash, King Midas In Reverse combines pop and psychedelia in a purely British way. The problem was that, with the exception of Nash, the Hollies had no desire to embrace psychedelia, and Nash soon found himself banding with Americans David Crosby and Stephen Stills instead.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    It Ain't Me Babe
Source:    Mono LP: It Ain't Me Babe
Writer:    Bob Dylan
Label:    White Whale
Year:    1965
    The Turtles started out as a local high school surf band called the Crossfires. In 1965 they were signed to a record label that technically didn't exist yet. That did not deter the people at the label (which would come to be known as White Whale) from convincing the band to change its name and direction. Realizing that surf music was indeed on the way out, the band, now called the Turtles, went into the studio and recorded four songs. One of those was Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe. The Byrds had just scored big with their version of Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man and the Turtles took a similar approach with It Ain't Me Babe. The song was a solid hit, going to the #8 spot on the national charts and leading to the first of many Turtles albums on the White Whale label.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Ticket To Ride
Source:    CD: Help!
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1965
    Trying to figure out the Beatles' catalog can be a bit confusing, as Capitol Records, which had the rights to release the band's recordings in the US, had their own ideas about what should be on a Beatles album, which was often at odds with the wishes of the band members themselves. Some US albums, such as Beatles '65, had no British counterpart at all, while others had different track lineups than the original UK versions. Probably the most radically altered of the original LPs was the soundtrack album to the film Help! In the UK, side one of the album contained songs from the film itself, while side two contained a collection of unrelated studio recordings, some of which had been intended for, but not used in, the film. In the US, however, the Help album included incidental orchestral pieces heard throughout the movie interspersed with the songs heard on side one of the UK album. Among the tracks heard on both versions was Ticket To Ride, which was also issued as a single in the US (using one of the songs from side two of the UK Help album as a B side). The tune has gone on to become one of the most recognizable Beatle songs ever recorded.
 
Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Under My Thumb
Source:    CD: Aftermath
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1966
    With the exception of certain Beatle tracks, pretty much every popular song from the beginning of recorded music through the year 1966 had been released as a single either on 45 or 78 RPM records (and for a while in the 1950s, on both). With Under My Thumb, from the Aftermath album, the Rolling Stones proved that someone besides the fab four could record a classic that was available only as a 33 1/3 RPM LP track. In a sense, then, Aftermath can be considered the very foundation of album rock, as more and groups put their most creative energy into making albums rather than singles in the ensuing years. Thanks, Stones.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    I Need You
Source:    CD: Help!
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1965
    Conventional thought is that George Harrison's songwriting ability didn't really blossom until 1968, when the song While My Guitar Gently Weeps became a hit with the counter-culture. I say BS. Songs like I Need You, from the soundtrack of the film Help, are every bit as good, if not better, than most of what was being played on the radio in 1965. The problem, of course, is that the Lennon-McCartney compositions coming from the same band overshadowed not only Harrison's material, but just about everything else that was being released that year.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Gomper
Source:    LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    Probably the most overtly psychedelic track ever recorded by the Rolling Stones, Gomper might best be described as a hippy love song with its references to nature, innocence and, of course, pyschedelic substances. Brian Jones makes one of his last significant contributions as a member of the band he founded, playing the dulcimer, as well as tablas, organ, pan flutes and various percussion instruments on the song.

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:    Rolling Stones
Title:    She's A Rainbow
Source:    LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    The only song from the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request album to get significant airplay in the US was She's A Rainbow, released as a single in the fall of '67.  Oddly enough it was the single's B side, 2,000 Light Years From Home, that charted in Germany. Another song from the album, In Another Land, had been released in the US a week before the album came out and was marketed as the first Bill Wyman solo song (with a Rolling Stones B side), but only made it to the #87 spot on the Billboard singles chart. This perhaps is a reflection of the uncertainty surrounding the Rolling Stones' role in the world of rock at the time. That uncertainty would soon be dispelled when the band hired a new producer, Jimmy Miller, the following year and released Jumpin' Jack Flash, an undisputed classic that helped define the band for years to come.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    We've Got A Groovey Thing Goin'
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM B side and included on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    In late 1965, a New York based Columbia Records staff producer, Tom Wilson, decided to perform an experiment. He had just put the finishing touches on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album, and was high on the potential of integrating electric rock instruments into folk music. Around this same time, The Sound Of Silence, a song by the folk duo Simon & Garfunkel that Wilson had produced the previous year, had begun to get airplay on radio stations in Boston and throughout the state of Florida. Without the knowledge of the duo (who had by then split up) Wilson remixed the song, adding electric guitar, bass and drums, essentially creating a whole new version of the song and, for that matter, a whole new genre: folk-rock. The new electric version of The Sound of Silence, backed by We've Got a Groovey Thing Goin', was released in September of 1965, and it soon became obvious that it was going to be a hit. The only problem was that by the time all this happened, Simon and Garfunkel had gone their separate ways, briefly reuniting in April of 1965 to record We've Got a Groovey Thing Going, but not releasing it at the time. Simon had relocated to London and recorded a UK-only LP called the Paul Simon Songbook in June of 1965, releasing it two months later. By mid-November The Sound Of Silence was the #1 song in Boston, and had entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Simon returned to the states, got back together with Art Garfunkel and, on December 13, 1965 began recording tracks for a new album. On January 1, 1966 The Sound Of Silence hit the #1 spot on the Hot 100. Two weeks later the LP Sounds Of Silence, which included a new stereo mix of We've Got A Groovey Thing Going made from the original 4-track master tape, was released. By the way, this song is the only instance I know of of the word "groovy" being spelled "groovey".

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    Parthenogenesis
Source:    British import CD: Living The Blues
Writer(s):    Canned Heat
Label:    BGO (original label: Liberty)
Year:    1968
    It is extremely unlikely that the members of Canned Heat had the literal meaning of the word parthenogenesis (a natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization by sperm) in mind when they decided to use it as the title for perhaps the most experiment piece in the history of recorded blues. Parthenogenesis (the Canned Heat track) runs nearly 20 minutes and takes up most of side two of their 1968 double LP Living The Blues. It begins with Nebulosity, featuring Al "Blind Owl" Wilson on jaw-harp, accompanied by guest guitarist John Fahey, which eases into Wilson's solo interpretation of Muddy Waters's Rollin' And Tumblin', also on jaw-harp. From there, Parthenogenesis continues with another Wilson solo piece, this one featuring a multi-tracked Owl on four harmonicas and one guitar. Next, it's Robert "The Bear" Hite's turn with a tune called Bear Wires, a tribute to his friend John Mayall, who plays piano on the piece. The next part of Parthogenesis is Snooky Flowers, basically a drum solo from Fito de la Parre, with additional congas provided by Larry "The Mole" Taylor, the band's bassist. Guitarist Henry Vestine then takes center stage with Sunflower Power, which features five multitracked guitars. Wilson returns, this time on chromatic harp with Raga Kafi, which leads into Vestine's Icebag. Parthenogenesis concludes with a reprise of Nebulosity, this time titled Childhood's End. As strange as it may sound, Parthenogenesis is not the longest track on Living The Blues, as the entire third and fourth side of the original album are taken up by a live performance of Refried Boogie that runs 41 minutes total.

Artist:    Beacon Street Union
Title:    Angus Of Aberdeen
Source:    LP: The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer(s):    Ulaky/Weisberg
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1968
    After releasing their first LP in early 1968, Boston's Beacon Street Union relocated to New York to record their follow-up album, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens. Whereas the first album, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union, was produced by Tom Wilson and is now considered a classic piece of late 60s psychedelia, The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens was produced by Wes Farrell, who would go on to greater success as producer of the Partridge Family. Unlike Wilson, who favored a stripped down approach consistent with the band's live sound, Farrell was a big fan of using strings to enhance his recordings. These can be heard on tracks like Angus Of Aberdeen, which otherwise resembles a Procol Harum kind of song. The "clown" on the album cover, incidentally, was photographer Joel Brodsky's assistant, who also appeared as the juggler on the cover of the second Doors album, Strange Days.

Artist:    Paraphernalia
Title:    Watch Out
Source:    CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Zanniel/Sirio
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: St. George International)
Year:    1968
    Virtually nothing is known about the band called Paraphernalia other than the fact that they released a single called Watch Out on the St. George International label in 1968. The song itself features some killer guitar work from the band that is rumored to be from somewhere in New England.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Born To Be Wild
Source:    CD: Steppenwolf
Writer(s):    Mars Bonfire
Label:    MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1968
    Born To Be Wild's status as a counter-cultural anthem was cemented when it was chosen for the soundtrack of the movie Easy Rider. The popularity of both the song and the movie resulted in Steppenwolf becoming the all-time favorite band of bikers all over the world.
       

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2301 (starts 1/2/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/455022-dc-2301

    This week's edition of Rockin' in the Days of Confusion comes in three parts; the first (following a short introductory piece from the Doors) is a continuation of last week's sampling of tracks from 1972, while the second takes us from 1968 to 1971, one year at a time. From there we go into total free-form mode for the remainder of the show.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Ship Of Fools
Source:    CD: Morrison Hotel
Writer(s):    Morrison/Krieger
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1970
    1969 was, if nothing else, a turbulent year for the Doors. The band had made headlines for a March 1st performance in Miami that resulted in lead vocalist Jim Morrison's arrest for indecent exposure. In July, the group released their fourth album, The Soft Parade, which was heavily criticized for its use of strings and horns and an overall more commercial sound that the band had previously exhibited. That same month Morrison gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine in which he stressed the importance of country and blues to American culture. It was not a big surprise then, that the band's next album, Morrison Hotel, featured a more stripped down sound, perhaps even more so than their first LP. Side one of the album, subtitled Hard Rock Cafe, starts off strong with one of the band's most iconic songs, Roadhouse Blues, and ends on a similar note with Ship Of Fools. The group would continue in this direction and even improve on it on their next LP, L.A. Woman. Sadly, L.A. Woman would be the last Doors studio album before Morrison's death.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    Hang Onto Yourself
Source:    CD: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Ryko (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1972
    David Bowie proved that he was quite capable of writing a straight up power pop tune with Hang Onto Yourself from The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. The album itself, as the title implies, documents the short career of pop star Ziggy Stardust against a backdrop of the imminent destruction of the world. While most of the songs on the album are about Ziggy Stardust, I've always imagined Hang Onto Yourself as being one of Ziggy's own songs, a hit single along the same lines as Grand Funk Railroad's We're An American Band or Mountain's Mississippi Queen. Interestingly enough, Bowie had released an earlier version of Hang Onto Yourself as a 1971 single under the name Arnold Corns. Was "Arnold Corns" a dry run for Ziggy Stardust?

Artist:    Foghat
Title:    Leavin' Again (Again)
Source:    LP: Foghat
Writer(s):    Peverett/Stevens
Label:    Bearsville
Year:    1972
    The longest track on Savoy Brown's sixth album, Looking In, was the jam tune Leavin' Again, written by vocalist/guitarist Lonesome Dave Peverett and lead guitarist and bandleader Kim Simmonds. Not long after the album was released, Peverett, along with drummer Roger Earl and bassist Tone Stevens parted company with Simmonds and formed the band Foghat with guitarist Rod Price. One of the songs recorded for the first Foghat album was a remake of Leavin' Again, with an extra "Again (in parentheses) to differentiate it from the much longer original. Foghat went on to become one of the more successful bands of the late 1970s.

Artist:    Uriah Heep
Title:    Circle Of Hands
Source:    LP: Demons And Wizards
Writer(s):    Ken Hensley
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1972
    The addition of New Zealand born bassist Gary Thain and former Gods drummer Lee Kerslake to a Uriah Heep lineup that already included vocalist David Byron, guitarist Mick Box and keyboardist Ken Hensley took the band to a whole new level for its fourth LP, Demons And Wizards. With this album, Hensley emerged as the band's primary songwriter, writing or co-writing all but two of the tracks on the LP. His solo compositions on Demons And Wizards include Uriah Heep's biggest hit, Easy Livin' and Circle Of Hands, a six and a half minute long power ballad that closes out the LP's first side.

Artist:    Love Sculpture
Title:    So Unkind
Source:    British import CD: Blues Helping
Writer(s):    James/Sehom
Label:    EMI (original US label: Rare Earth)
Year:    1968
    Before scoring an international hit with his early 70s remake of Fats Domino's I Hear You Knockin', Dave Edmunds fronted one of the best of the late 60s British blues-rock bands, Love Scupture. Their debut LP was made up mostly of electrifying versions of blues standards, such as the Elmore James tune So Unkind. 50 years later, it still rocks!

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Nothing Is Easy
Source:    CD: Stand Up
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol (original US label: Reprise)
Year:    1969
    Not long after the release of the first Jethro Tull album, guitarist Mick Abrahams, who was a blues enthusiast, left the group due to musical differences with lead vocalist/flautist Ian Anderson, who favored a more eclectic approach to songwriting. Abrahams's replacement was Martin Barre, who remains a member of the group to this day. One of the first songs recorded with Barre is Nothing Is Easy, a blues rocker that opens side two of the band's second LP, Stand Up. More than any other track on Stand Up, Nothing Is Easy sounds like it could have been an outtake from This Was, the band's debut LP.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Who Needs Ya
Source:    45 RPM single (promo copy)
Writer(s):    Byrom/Kay
Label:    Dunhill
Year:    1970
    It's no secret that there are often clashes between members of talented bands. Sometimes these clashes turn pretty ugly, as was the case between Steppenwolf guitarist Michael Monarch and lead vocalist John Kay. On at least one occasion Monarch got so angry with Kay that he stopped playing in the middle of a performance. Finally it got to the point where one of them had to go. Since Steppenwolf was basically Kay's band, Monarch was the one to leave. He was replaced by Larry Byrom, who was a member of the Los Angeles band T.I.M.E. Byrom stayed with with the band for the next two years, co-writing the tune Who Needs Ya, which was released as a single in October of 1970 and appeared on the album Steppenwolf 7.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Into The Void
Source:    LP: Master Of Reality
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1971
    In addition to being James Hetfield's favorite Black Sabbath track, Into The Void was, according to guitarist Tony Iommi, the most difficult song to record for the group's third LP, Master Of Reality. Both vocalist Ozzy Osbourne and drummer Bill Ward had problems with the song's sudden stops and starts and tempo changes. Iommi went on to say that they even tried to record Into The Void in two different studios in an effort to get Ward on track. Eventually everything came together, and Into The Void is now considered a classic example of Black Sabbath in their prime.

Artist:    King Crimson
Title:    The Great Deceiver/Lament
Source:    LP: Starless And Bible Black
Writer(s):    Fripp/Wetton/Palmer-James
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1974
    Much of the material on the sixth King Crimson album, Starless And Bible Black, was recorded live and then supplemented with overdubs in the studio. The only purely studio recordings, in fact, were the album's opening tracks, The Great Deceiver and Lament, which play as one continuous piece on the LP itself. Both pieces were composed by guitarist Robert Fripp and bassist/vocalist John Wetton (who would go on to greater infamy as the frontman for Asia), with lyrics provided by former Supertramp guitarist Richard Palmer-James. Palmer-James's lyrics for The Great Deceiver were inspired by his seeing souveniers being sold in Vatican City, while Lament addresses the dark side of fame. Rounding out the band at that time were drummer/percussionist Bill Bruford and violinist/keyboardist David Cross, who had also appeared on King Crimson's previous album, Lark's Tongues In Aspic.

Artist:    Guess Who
Title:    No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature
Source:    CD: American Woman
Writer(s):    Bachman/Cummings
Label:    Buddha/BMG
Year:    1970
    Randy Bachman's No Sugar Tonight was not intended to be a hit single. In fact, when he first unveiled the song he was told by his bandmates that it was too short. So, to flesh it out he and Burton Cummings combined No Sugar Tonight with a Cumming tune, New Mother Nature, that was still a work in progress. The resulting medley was included on the 1970 LP American Woman. Additionally, No Sugar Tonight itself, in its short form, was also released as the B side of the American Woman single. It proved so popular that it made the top 40 in its own right. Meanwhile, FM rock stations began playing the full medley, and the shorter single version was soon abandoned by top 40 stations as well. Bachman says the song itself was inspired by an incident that transpired on a California street in which a "tough looking biker" type got publicly dressed down by a five foot tall woman for neglecting his household chores to hang out with his friends. The last words heard before they drove off in her car were "and one more thing, you ain't getting no sugar tonight".

Artist:    Jackson Browne
Title:    Redneck Friend
Source:    LP: For Everyman
Writer(s):    Jackson Browne
Label:    Asylum
Year:    1973
    Although the Eagles are often thought of as the originators of the "California Sound" of the mid-1970s, those in the know actually credit Jackson Browne as creating the laid-back slightly country style. Not that he didn't have help. Joining him on the song Redneck Friend, the first single released from his second LP, For Everyman, are vocalist Glenn Frey and pianist Elton John (credited as Rockaday Johnnie). Redneck Friend also marks the first appearance of slide guitarist David Lindley on a Jackson Browne record.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Cry Baby Cry
Source:    LP: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1968
    Unlike many of the songs on The Beatles (white album), Cry Baby Cry features the entire band playing on the recording. After a full day of rehearsal, recording commenced on July 16, 1968, with John Lennon's guitar and piano, Paul McCartney's bass and Ringo Starr's drum tracks all being laid down on the first day. The remaining overdubs, including most of the vocals and George Harrison's guitar work (played on a Les Paul borrowed from Eric Clapton) were added a couple of days later.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Got This Thing On The Move
Source:    CD: Grand Funk
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    From summer of 1967 to summer of 1970 I lived in Germany as a military dependent (my dad was an NCO in the USAF). This gave me a bit of a different perspective on the state of rock music during those years. For example, the Who, a band I had only barely heard of in the US, was huge overseas. On the other hand, bands like the Grateful Dead were little more than a distant legend in Europe at that time. On my return to the States in summer of 1970, I learned of the existence of a power trio from Flint, Michigan called Grand Funk Railroad.  In the US they were universally hated by rock music critics, yet managed to set all kinds of attendance records throughout 1969 and 1970, pretty much single-handedly inventing arena rock in the process. They also managed to get no less than three albums certified gold in 1970 alone. Despite this, GFR was totally unknown in Europe, leading me to believe that the people who ordered albums for the BX were paying too much attention to the Village Voice and Rolling Stone magazine and not enough attention to actual record sales and concert attendance figures. Anyway, I soon got my hands on the album Grand Funk (aka the Red Album) and was totally blown away by the opening track, Got This Thing On The Move. There's a valuable lesson in there somewhere.