Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1816 [B16] (starts (4/18/18)

    The focus this week is on music that's designed to be played loud, so get ready to crank it up.

Artist:    Ten Years After
Title:    Me And My Baby
Source:    CD: Cricklewood Green
Writer(s):    Alvin Lee
Label:    Chrysalis (original label: Deram)
Year:    1970
    Cricklewood Green, the fourth studio LP from Ten Years After, is generally considered to be the British blues rockers' best. All the tracks were written by guitarist/vocalist Alvin Lee, including Me And My Baby, which showcases the band's ability to emulate a Wes Montgomery-like 1950s jazz style. The track opens side two of the original LP.

Artist:    Zephyr
Title:    Boom-Ba-Boom/Somebody Listen
Source:    CD: Zephyr
Writer(s):    Givens/Givens/Bolin/Faris
Label:    MCA/One Way (original label: ABC Probe)
Year:    1969
    Hailing from Boulder, Colorado, Zephyr was a blues rock band that was formed in 1968 by members of various local bands. In the early days the focus was on vocalist Candy Givens, who had a range of several octaves and could easily have performed without a microphone. Once the band had recorded their self-titled debut LP, the attention began to shift to Tommy Bolin, a self-taught guitarist who would go on to become a member of the James Gang, and then Deep Purple, as well as pursuing a solo career. In addition to Bolin and Givens, the band included Candy's husband David Givens on bass, John Faris on keyboards, and Robbie Chamberlin on drums. Many of the tracks on the first Zephyr album were credited to the full membership of the band, although Boom-Ba-Boom, which segues into Somebody Listen, came from David Givens.

Artist:     Jo Jo Gunne
Title:     99 Days
Source:     LP: Jo Jo Gunne
Writer:     Jay Ferguson
Label:     Asylum
Year:     1972
     After the commercial disappointment of The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus in 1971, vocalist Jay Ferguson and bass player Mark Andes left Spirit to form a new band, Jo Jo Gunne. Lead guitarist Matt Andes provided a much heavier rock sound than Spirit's Randy California, who had strong jazz roots. The result was a band that sometimes sounded like a heavier version of Spirit, which was natural, since Ferguson had served as Spirit's primary songwriter throughout his tenure with the band. 99 Days, which opens side two of Jo Jo Gunne's first album, was selected as a follow up single to Run Run Run. Both songs got a decent amount of airplay on FM rock radio, which at the time had a more or less free-form format and did not report their playlists (which varied from station to station and even from DJ to DJ) to the national charts.

Artist:    Foghat
Title:    Highway (Killing Me)
Source:    LP: Foghat
Writer(s):    Price/Peverett
Label:    Bearsville
Year:    1972
    When bandleader Kim Simmonds decided to take Savoy Brown in a new direction following the Looking In album, he encountered resistance from the other band members, guitarist/vocalist Dave Peverett, bassist Tone Stevens and drummer Roger Earl, who were happy with the band's sound and didn't want to mess with success. Undaunted, Simmonds fired the lot of them and put together a new lineup for the next Savoy Brown album. Meanwhile, the three former members found a new lead guitarist, Rod Price, whose own band, Black Cat Bones, had recently disbanded. Calling their new band Foghat, they released their debut LP in 1972. Most of the material on the album was written by band members, including Highway (Killing Me), a tune that helped establish the new band's sound. Foghat would go on to become one of the top concert draws of the 1970s.

Artist:    Stray Dog
Title:    I Would
Source:    LP: While You're Down There
Writer(s):    Roberts/Sampson
Label:    Manticore
Year:    1974
    Originally called Aphrodite, Stray Dog started off in Texas, but soon migrated to Denver, Colorado, where they became one of the area's most popular bands. A move to London in 1973 led to the band signing with Emerson, Lake And Palmer's Manticore label. A change in personnel following their first album brought guitarist/vocalist Timmy Dulane and keyboardist Luis Cabaza into the band in time for the band's second LP,  While You're Down There. The new members brought a more commercial sound to the band, although I Would, written by bassist Alan Roberts and drummer Leslie Sampson, is more consistent with the band's original style.
   
Artist:    Mountain
Title:    Tired Angels (For J.M.H.)
Source:    LP: Nantucket Sleighride
Writer(s):    Pappalardi/Collins
Label:    Windfall
Year:    1971
    Throughout the history of popular music there have been artists whose influence on their fellow musicians outstripped their popularity with the general public. In a few cases, though, these "musicians' musicians" have managed to become popular themselves, while retaining the qualities that have earned them the respect of their fellow artists. One such artist, arguably the greatest of the psychedelic era, was James Marshall Hendrix, who revolutionalized the role of the lead guitarist in rock music. His death at the age of 27 in September of 1970 had a profound effect on his fellow musicians, especially those who were among the guitarist's own circle of friends. This circle included Felix Pappalardi, producer of Cream's 1967 album Disraeli Gears and later a member of Mountain, who, with his wife Janet Collins, wrote and sang lead on Tired Angels (For J.M.H.), a tune from the second Mountain LP, Nantucket Sleighride.

Artist:    Paul McCartney And Wings
Title:    Jet
Source:    Eupopean import LP: Band On The Run
Writer(s):    Paul and Linda McCartney
Label:    MPL
Year:    1973
    Jet was the first single from the 1973 Paul McCartney And Wings LP Band On The Run. The song, which reached the top 10 in several countries, including the US and Britain, was reportedly named after a black labrador puppy. Band On The Run ended up being McCartney's most successful album as a solo artist, both commercially and critically.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Wind Up
Source:    CD: Aqualung
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1971
    The first three Jethro Tull albums saw the group transition from a blues base to a more eclectic sound, defined by the songwriting of vocalist/flautist/acoustic guitarist Ian Anderson. The real breakthrough for the band, however, was their fourth LP, Aqualung, which for a while was the most-played album on progressive rock radio in the US. The second side of the album is a scathing condemnation of the hypocrisy of modern organized religion. The final track, Wind Up, takes its title from the closing line of the album: "I don't believe you, you've got the whole damn thing all wrong. He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday."

Artist:    Queen
Title:    Jesus
Source:    LP: Queen
Writer(s):    Freddie Mercury
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1973
    One of the most powerful songs on Queen's 1973 debut album, Jesus tells part of the story of Jesus of Nazareth. The song was written by Freddie Mercury, who was a devout Parsi Zoroastrian. Guitarist Brian May provided effects toward the end of the song that are reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix at his most creative.

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    No One Came
Source:    LP: Fireball
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1971
    The second album by the popular Deep Purple "Mk II" lineup (Richie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice), Fireball was an instant hit on both sides of the Atlantic, going to the top of the British charts and garnering significant airplay on FM rock radio stations in the US. One of the highlights of the album is the closing track, No One Came. Vocalist Gillan has said of Fireball that "The reason I liked that so much was because I thought, from a writing point of view, it was really the beginning of tremendous possibilities of expression. And some of the tracks on that album are really, really inventive." Deep Purple would release two more albums before once again undergoing a lineup change.

Artist:    Yes
Title:    Perpetual Change
Source:    The Yes Album
Writer(s):    Anderson/Squire
Label:    Elektra/Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1971
    Although Yes had already recorded two albums by 1971, The Yes Album marks the beginning of the band's most successful period. Probably the biggest reason for this newfound success was the addition of Steve Howe on guitar to a lineup that already included vocalist Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire and drummer Bill Bruford, as well as keyboardist Tony Kaye (who would soon be replaced by Rick Wakeman). Another factor in the album's success was the fact that all the tracks were written by members of the band, including Perpetual Change, which closes out side two of the LP.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1815 [B 15] (starts 4/11/18)

This week: a backup show recorded in 2015 and held back for an event like me breaking my right arm and being unable to record any new shows for awhile. Guess that makes me a bit of a prophet, eh?

Artist:    Cream
Title:    I Feel Free
Source:    LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown
Label:    Atco
Year:    1966
    After an unsuccessful debut single (Wrapping Paper), Cream scored a bona-fide hit in the UK with their follow-up, I Feel Free. As was the case with nearly every British single at the time, the song was not included on Fresh Cream, the band's debut LP. In the US, however, singles were commonly given a prominent place on albums, and the US version of Fresh Cream actually opens with I Feel Free. To my knowledge the song, being basically a studio creation, was never performed live.

Artist:    Davie Allan And The Arrows
Title:    Blue's Theme
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: The Wild Ones-soundtrack and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Curb/Allan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1966
    It is entirely possible that the Chocolate Watchband (or more accurately, the unknown producers of their first single) were indirectly responsible for giving the guitarist his biggest hit single. In 1966, movie producer Roger Corman hired Mike Curb to comeup with soundtrack music for his 1966 film The Wild Ones. Curb in turn contacted his longtime friend (and frequent collaborator) Allan to actually record the soundtrack with his band, the Arrows. The film was released in July of 1966, with the soundtrack album appearing soon after. The obvious high point of the album was the instrumental track Blue's Theme (which technically should have been Blues's Theme, since the film's main character, played by Peter Fonda, was named Heavenly Blues), but at first there were reportedly no plans to release the son as a single. However, late in the year the Chocolate Watchband were making their very first visit to a recording studio, and were asked to knock out a quick cover of Blues Theme, which was released (sans apostrophe) on the HBR label, credited to The Hogs. Curb must have heard about this as it was being prepared for release, as he managed to put out a single release of the original Davie Allan version of Blue's Theme before the HBR single hit the racks. Either that, or the HBR producers simply had bad info about Curb's intentions in the first place.

Artist:    Mothers Of Invention
Title:    Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder
Source:    LP: Freak Out!
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Verve
Year:    1966
    Frank Zappa showed his fondness for 50s doo-wop early on with songs like Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder, from the 1966 Mothers Of Invention album Freak Out! Two years later he would release Cruising with Ruben & the Jets as part of a four-album project called No Commercial Potential (the other three albums being Lumpy Gravy, We're Only in It for the Money and Uncle Meat).

Artist:    Tommy James And The Shondells
Title:    Hanky Panky
Source:    Mono CD: The Best of Tommy James And The Shondells (orginally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Barry/Greenwich
Label:    Rhino (original label: Snap)
Year:    1964
    Once upon a time there was a girl group called the Summits who released a song called Hanky Panky as the B side of their only single in 1963. The song, which was also released as a B side by Brill building songwriters Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich's studio creation The Raindrops a few months later, started getting played by cover bands in the midwesterm US, including a South Bend, Indiana band called the Spinners. A Niles, Michigan high school kid named Tommy Jackson heard the Spinners play the song and taught it to his own band, the Shondells, getting some of the lyrics wrong in the process. In early 1964 the Shondells recorded their own version of Hanky Panky at the studios of WNIL radio, releasing it on their second single for the local Snap label later that year and pressing 2000 copies of the record. It's not entirely clear whether that recording of Hanky-Panky, credited to Jackson, was intended to be an A or B side, but it did get a decent amount of local airplay before fading off into obscurity. The original Shondells broke up in 1965 following graduation from high school, but a local teenager managed to get his hands on several copies of the record, trading them to Ernie's Record Mart in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for store credit. A local DJ, Bob Mack, picked up a copy of the record and began playing it as part of his "dance party". The song became a local hit, but by then Snap Records was out of business, prompting local Pittsburgh entrepeneurs to press new copies of the single. Meanwhile, a search for Tommy Jackson eventually prompted the singer, who by then was calling himself Tommy James, to show up in Pittsburgh...with no band. This led to Tommy hiring a local band called the Racounteurs to become the new Shondells, who soon signed with the New York based Roulette label, which reissued the original Shondells' recording of Hanky Panky in 1966. The song went all the way to the top of the national charts, prompting a series of successful followup singles for Tommy James And The Shondells over the next three years or so. And that, my friends, was how one became a rock star in the mid-1960s.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    For Emily, Whenever I Might Find Her
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    Art Garfunkel's vocals were in the spotlight on For Emily, Whenever I Might Find Her, a track from the duo's third LP, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme. Other than the vocals, the only other instrument heard on the track is Paul Simon's guitar. Garfunkel has called the piece, which is still in his solo repertoire, "one of the most challenging" to perform, due to its somewhat free-form structure. A live version of the song was released as a single in 1972, making it to the # 53 spot on the charts. This was actually the second time the song appeared on 7" vinyl, as the studio version was used as the B side for the late 1966 single A Hazy Shade Of Winter.

Artist:    The Bush
Title:    To Die Alone
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Cartwright/Gondos/Henninger/Hoard/Hoard/Fowley
Label:    Rhino (original label: Hiback)
Year:    1966
    Originally known as the Bushmen, the Bush, from Rialto, California, were the most popular local band in the Inland Empire from 1965-66, even opening for their idols, the Rolling Stones, at one of their appearances at San Bernardino's Swing Auditorium. To Die Alone is a classic piece of garage-psych from the Bush, that appeared as the B side of their second single in 1966, with lyrics and song title provided by the Zelig-like Kim Fowley.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    She Has Funny Cars
Source:    Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s):    Kaukonen/Balin
Label:    Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1967
    She Has Funny Cars, the opening track of Jefferson Airplane's second LP, Surrealistic Pillow, was a reference to some unusual possessions belonging to new drummer Spencer Dryden's girlfriend. As was the case with many of the early Airplane tracks, the title has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song itself. The song was also released as the B side to the band's first top 10 single, Somebody To Love.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Come Up The Years
Source:    Mono LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Balin/Kantner
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    One of the most overused motifs in pop music is the "You're too young for me" song. This probably reflects, to a certain degree, a lifestyle that goes back to the beginnings of rock and roll (Chuck Berry did jail time for transporting a minor across state lines, Jerry Lee Lewis saw his career get derailed by his marraige to his 13-year-old cousin, etc.). Generally, the song's protagonist comes to a decision to put a stop to the relationship before it gets too serious. The Marty Balin/Paul Kantner tune Come Up The Years takes a more sophisticated look at the subject, although it still comes to the same conclusion (I can't do this because you're jailbait). In fact, the only rock songwriter I know of that came to any other conclusion on the matter was Bob Markley of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and that's what ultimately got him in trouble with the law.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Plastic Fantastic Lover
Source:    Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s):    Marty Balin
Label:    Sundazed/BMG (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1967
    Following the success of Somebody To Love, Jefferson Airplane quickly followed up with their third single from the Surrealistic Pillow album, White Rabbit. Although it didn't get the same amount of top 40 airplay, Marty Balin's Plastic Fantastic Lover, issued as the B side of White Rabbit, has proved just as enduring as the A side. So much so that, when the Airplane reunited in 1989 and issued their two-disc retrospective, 2400 Fulton Street, they issued a special pressing of both songs on white vinyl as a way of promoting the collection. More recently, Sundazed has reissued the entire Surrealistic Pillow album in its original mono mix, which differs considerably from the more familiar stereo version.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Foxy Lady
Source:    LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    The first track on the original UK release of Are You Experienced was Foxy Lady. The British custom of the time was to not include any songs on albums that had been previously released as singles. When Reprise Records got the rights to release the album in the US, it was decided to include three songs that had all been top 40 hits in the UK. One of those songs, Purple Haze, took over the opening spot on the album, and Foxy Lady was moved to the middle of side 2.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Museum
Source:    Mono LP: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Epic
Year:    1967   
    Museum is a song from one of Donovan's early albums that he re-recorded for his Mellow Yellow LP in 1967. The new arrangement, like many of the tracks on Mellow Yellow, uses electric guitar, violin and hand percussion (bongos, etc.) to supplement Donovan's acoustic guitar.

Artist:    13th Floor Elevators
Title:    (It's All Over Now) Baby Blue
Source:    CD: Easter Everywhere
Writer:    Bob Dylan
Label:    Charly (original label: International Artists)
Year:    1967
    When the 13th Floor Elevators left their native Texas to do a series of gigs on the West Coast, the local media's reaction was basically "good riddance". After the band's successful California appearances (and a hit record with You're Gonna Miss Me), they returned to a hero's welcome by that same media that had derided the Elevators as a bunch of degenerate drug addicts just weeks before. Buoyed by this new celebrity, the band set out to record its masterpiece, Easter Everywhere. Although much of the album featured original material, there were a couple of cover tunes. Most notable was the inclusion of (It's All Over Now) Baby Blue, a Bob Dylan tune that had been recently recorded by San Jose's Chocolate Watchband.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    2000 Man
Source:    LP: Their Satanic Majesties Request
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    Setting any work of art in the relatively near future is always risky business (remember 1984?), but then again 33 years seems like forever when you yourself are still in your twenties. I mean who, including the Rolling Stones themselves, could have imagined that Mick, Keith, Charlie and company would still be performing well into the 21st century when they recorded 2000 Man for their 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request? It's actually kind of interesting to listen to the lyrics now and see just how much of the song turned out to be an accurate prediction of what was to come.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The Crystal Ship
Source:    CD: The Doors
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    Ever feel like you've discovered something really special that nobody else (among your circle of friends at any rate) knows about? At first you kind of want to keep it to yourself, but soon you find yourself compelled to share it with everyone you know. Such was the case when, in the early summer of 1967, I used my weekly allowance to buy copies of a couple of songs I had heard on the American Forces Network (AFN). As usual, it wasn't long before I was flipping the records over to hear what was on the B sides. I liked the first one well enough (a song by Buffalo Springfield called Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It, the B side of For What It's Worth), but it was the second one, the B side of the Doors' Light My Fire, that really got to me. To this day I consider The Crystal Ship to be one of the finest slow rock songs ever recorded.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Savoy Truffle
Source:    LP: The Beatles
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    EMI/Apple
Year:    1968
    George Harrison's skills as a songwriter continued to develop in 1968. The double-LP The Beatles (aka the White Album) contained four Harrison compositions, including Savoy Truffle, a tongue-in-cheek song about Harrison's friend Eric Clapton's fondness for chocolate. John Lennon did not participate in the recording of Savoy Truffle. The keyboards were probably played by Chris Thomas, who, in addition to playing on all four Harrison songs on the album, served as de facto producer when George Martin decided to take a vacation in the middle of the album's recording sessions. 

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Because
Source:    LP: Abbey Road
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1969
    Take Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Turn a few notes around, add some variations and write some lyrics. Add the Beatles' trademark multi-part harmonies and you have John Lennon's Because, from the Abbey Road album. A simply beautiful recording.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Glass Onion
Source:    LP: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1968
    John Lennon decided to have a little fun with Beatles fans when he wrote the lyrics to Glass Onion, the third song on the 1968 album The Beatles (aka the White Album). The song contains references to many earlier Beatles tunes, such as Strawberry Fields Forever, The Fool On The Hill and Lady Madonna. Glass Onion even contains a tongue-in-cheek reference to the whole "Paul is dead" rumor with the lines "Here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul". The track is notable for being the first song on the album to feature the entire band, as Paul played drums on Back In The USSR and Dear Prudence, which precede Glass Onion on the album's first side.

Artist:    Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Title:    Dirty Blue Gene
Source:    European import CD: Safe As Milk (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Don Van Vliet
Label:    Rev-Ola
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1999
    After the release of their debut LP for the Buddah label, Safe As Milk, in 1967, Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) and his Magic Band began work on a proposed double-LP to be called It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper. The project was never finished, and the band ended up changing labels before releasing any more material. Among the unfinished pieces is an instrumental track called Dirty Blue Gene that shows the first signs of the experimental direction the band would take after signing with Frank Zappa's Bizarre Productions a couple years later.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    She'd Rather Be With Me
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Bonner/Gordon
Label:    White Whale
Year:    1967
    The Turtles knew a good thing when they found it, and in 1967 that good thing was Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon, a pair of New York songwriters who had been members of a band called the Magicians. The first Bonner/Gordon song to be recorded by the Turtles was Happy Together, a huge hit that knocked the Beatles' Penny Lane off the top of the charts. The next Turtles single was another Bonner/Gordon composition called She'd Rather Be With Me. That one peaked at #3. Before the year was over the Turtles would take two more Bonner/Gordon tunes into the top 20.

Artist:    Shadows Of Knight
Title:    Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day
Source:    LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s):    Tommy Boyce
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    Tommy Boyce actually had a songwriting career separate from his many collaborations with Bobby Hart. One of his early songs was Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, which was first recorded as a single by the Colorado-based Astronauts (which gave producer Steve Venet co-writing credit) before getting included on the first Monkees album. Along the way the song got recorded by a handful of garage bands, including Chicago's Shadows Of Knight, whose version closely parallels the Astronauts' original.

Artist:    Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:    When I Was Young
Source:    Mono LP: The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals-Vol. II (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    After the Animals disbanded in 1966, Eric Burdon set out to form a new band that would be far more psychedelic than the original group. The first release from these "New Animals" was When I Was Young. The song was credited to the entire band, a practice that would continue throughout the entire existence of the group that came to be called Eric Burdon And The Animals.

Artist:    Love Sculpture
Title:    3 O'Clock Blues
Source:    CD: Blues Helping
Writer(s):    King/Taub
Label:    EMI (original US label: Rare Earth)
Year:    1968
    Founded in Cardiff, Wales in 1966 by guitarist Dave Edmunds, bassist John David and drummer Rob "Congo" Jones, Love Sculpture, a power trio from South Wales, was one of the hottest bands on the British blues-rock scene. Their first album, Blues Helping, consisted mainly of charged up covers of blues classics such as B.B. King's 3 O'Clock Blues. Following the group's breakup in 1970, Edmunds went on to have a successful career, both as a solo artist and as co-founder of the band Rockpile.

Artist:    Kak
Title:    Trieulogy
Source:    British import CD: Kak-Ola (originally released in US on LP: Kak)
Writer(s):    Yoder/Grelecki
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Epic)
Year:    1969
    The story of Kak is one of the strangest in rock history. Guitarists Gary Yoder and Dehner Patton had both been members of the Oxford Circle, the legendary East (San Francisco) Bay area band that broke up in early summer of 1967. Not long the breakup Yoder was approached by a guy named Gary Grelecki, who introduced himself as a fan of the band and offered to get Yoder a deal with Columbia, then the second largest record label in the country. Yoder figured that he didn't have anything to lose by saying yes; sure enough, two months later he got a call from Grelecki saying the contract was a done deal. Yoder got into contact with Dehner, who had been playing in a band called Cherry Jam since the Oxford breakup, performing original material in the Davis area. One of the other members of Cherry Jam was percussionist/harpsichordist Chris Lockheed, who had previously played in a band called the Majestics. The lineup was completed with the addition of bassist Joe-Dave Damrill, who had been playing with another Davis band called Group B. It turned out that Grelicki's father was with the CIA and had been using Columbia as a front for agency activities in East Asia, and actually had legitimate contacts at the label. The new band, Kak, was signed to Columbia's Epic subsidiary, releasing their only LP in 1969. Although neither the band (which played fewer than a dozen gigs in its entire existence) or the album was not a commercial success at the time, Kak gained a cult following that exists to this day. The most ambitious track on the album, Trieulogy, is made up of three originally unrelated pieces, Golgotha, Mirage and Rain, that Yoder later said "blended well together", adding that "it's a logical pattern, lyrically and musically."

Artist:        Vanilla Fudge
Title:        Season of the Witch (pt. 1)
Source:    Mono CD: The Complete Atco Singles (originally released on LP: Renaissance and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:        Donovan Leitch
Label:        Real Gone/Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    The Vanilla Fudge are generally best remembered for their acid rock rearrangements of hit songs such as You Keep Me Hangin' On, Ticket To Ride and Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). Their third album, Renaissance, while actually featuring more original material that their previous albums, still included a couple of these cover songs. The best-known of these was this rather spooky (and a little over-the-top) version of Donovan's Season Of The Witch, a song that was also covered by Al Kooper and Stephen Stills the same year on the first Super Session album. A mono single version of the song saw the track broken up into two pieces, one on each side of the 45 RPM record.

Artist:    Move
Title:    Fire Brigade
Source:    Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Roy Wood
Label:    Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year:    1968
    The Move scored their fourth consecutive British top 5 single with Fire Brigade, released in January of 1968. It would be the last single released by the group's original lineup.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) 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 the 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:    Byrds
Title:    C.T.A.-102
Source:    Mono LP: Younger Than Yesterday
Writer(s):    McGuinn/Hippard
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    Roger McGuinn of the Byrds always exhibited an interest in the subject of extraterrestrial life. C.T.A.-102, from the Younger Than Yesterday album, addresses this subject from the angle of aliens tuning in to earth broadcasts to learn our language and culture and finding themselves exposed to rock and roll (and apparently liking it).

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Combination Of The Two
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Sam Andrew
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
     Everything about Big Brother And The Holding Company can be summed up by the title of the opening track for their Cheap Thrills album (and their usual show opener as well): Combination Of The Two. A classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, Big Brother, with Janis Joplin on lead vocals, had an energy that neither Joplin or the band itself was able to duplicate once they parted company. On the song itself, the actual lead vocals for the verses are the work of Combination Of The Two's writer, bassist Sam Houston Andrew III, but those vocals are eclipsed by the layered non-verbal chorus that starts with Joplin then repeats itself with Andrew providing a harmony line which leads to Joplin's promise to "rock you, sock you, gonna give it to you now". It was a promise that the group seldom failed to deliver on.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Citizen Fear
Source:    Mono CD: Ignition
Writer(s):    Bonniwell/Buff
Label:    Sundazed
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2000
    Citizen Fear was one of the final, if not the very last, recording made by Sean Bonniwell's Music Machine. A collaboration between Bonniwell and engineer Paul Buff, the piece utilizes Buff's 10-track recording process to its fullest potential. Before the song could be released, however, the Music Machine had disbanded and Bonniwell had quit the music business in disillusionment, disappointment and/or disgust.

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

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    The Great Canyon Fire In General
Source:    CD: Spirit
Writer(s):    Jay Ferguson
Label:    Ode/Epic/Legacy
Year:    1968
    Among other things, Southern California is known for its periodic wildfires, which, fueled by hot Santa Ana winds, destroy everything in their path before they can be brought under control. In the summer of 1967, while the members of Spirit were living in L.A.'s Topanga Canyon and working on their first album, one of these wildfires took out about half of the canyon. Although the house the band was living in was spared, the entire area was evacuated and the members of Spirit (and their family) had to spend a week camped out at the beach. Now that's what I call roughing it!

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    House For Everyone
Source:    CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind (aka Mr. Fantasy)
Writer(s):    Dave Mason
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    Although Traffic is now known mostly as a Steve Winwood band, many of their earliest songs were the creation of guitarist Dave Mason, whose songs tended to be a bit more psychedelic than Winwood's. One example is House For Everyone from the band's 1967 debut LP, which creatively uses tape edits to simulate a music box being wound up with short snippets of song sneaking through between turns of the key at the beginning of the track.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Everybody's Wrong
Source:    LP: Buffalo Springfield
Writer:    Stephen Stills
Label:    Atco
Year:    1966
    Buffalo Springfield is one of those rare cases of a band that actually sold more records after disbanding than while they were still an active group. This is due mostly to the fact that several members, including Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay and Jim Messina, went on to greater success in the 1970s, either with new bands or as solo artists. In the early days of Buffalo Springfield Stephen Stills was the group's most successful songwriter. The band's only major hit, For What It's Worth, was a Stills composition that was originally released shortly after the group's debut LP, and was subsequently added to later pressings of the album. Another, earlier, Stills composition from that first album was Everybody's Wrong, a somewhat heavy piece of folk-rock.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1815 [B 15] (starts 4/11/18)

    This week: political statements from Black Sabbath (including a rather long personal anecdote connected with my own band's performance of the piece in 1971) and Chicago, a dedication to Duane Allman and a half dozen other tasty tunes.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Minstrel In The Gallery
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1975
    Following the back-to-back album-length works Thick As A Brick and A Passion Play, Jethro Tull returned to recording shorter tunes for the next couple of years' worth of albums. In late 1975, however, they recorded the eight minute long Mistrel In The Gallery for the album of the same name. The song (and album) was a return to the mix of electric and acoustic music that had characterized the band in its earlier years, particularly on the Aqualung and Benefit albums. A shorter version of Minstrel In The Gallery was released as a single and did reasonably well on the charts.

Artist:    Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Title:    Free Wheelin' (Dedicated To Duane)
Source:    LP: Not Fragile
Writer(s):    Blair Thornton
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1974
    Following the departure of original rhythm guitarist Tim Bachman, Vancouver native Blair Thornton joined Bachman-Turner Overdrive as the band's second lead guitarist, giving the band the ability to perform dual leads in a style inspired by the Allman Brothers band. This influence is evident on Free Wheelin' (Dedicated To Duane), the only instrumental track on the third BTO LP, Not Fragile. The tune, one of two Thornton compositions on the album, also appeared as the B side of the hit single You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

Artist:    Steely Dan
Title:    Reeling In The Years
Source:    45 RPM single (stereo reissue)
Writer(s):    Becker/Fagen
Label:    MCA (original label: ABC)
Year:    1972
    My first radio gig (sort of), was volunteering at the Voice Of Holloman, a closed-circuit station that served a handful of locations on Holloman AFB, about 10 miles from Alamogordo, NM. I had been taking broadcasting courses through a community college program that was taught by Sgt. Tim Daniels, who was the NCO in charge of the base Information Office, which ran the station, as well as a free weekly newspaper that was distributed on base. After completing the classes, Tim gave me the opportunity to do a daily two-hour show on the VOH, using records that had been sent to the station by various record labels. We got excellent singles service from some labels (Warner Brothers and Capitol in particular), but virtually nothing from others, such as ABC. This was unfortunate, as one of the best songs out at the time was Steely Dan's Reeling In The Years, from their 1972 Can't Buy A Thrill album. Tim, whose previous gig was with the Armed Forces Vietnam Network, was a big rock fan, however, and went out and bought his own copy of the album, making a copy of Reeling In The Years on reel to reel tape, which we then played extensively until the song had run its course on the charts. Thus the Voice Of Holloman, with its audience consisting mostly of guys working out at the base gym, was playing the longer album version of a song that was also getting airplay on Alamogordo's daytime-only top 40 AM station, KINN, in its edited single form. It was just about the nearest the Voice Of Holloman ever got to being an underground rock station (although I did manage to sneak in some Procol Harum, Little Feat and Deep Purple from time to time from the aformentioned Warner Brothers singles).


Artist:    Uriah Heep
Title:    Easy Livin'
Source:    CD: Electric Seventies (originally released on LP: Demons And Wizards and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ken Hensley
Label:    JCI/Warner Special Products
Year:    1972
    Uriah Heep's biggest hit. 'nuff said.

Artist:    Who   
Title:    Baba O'Reilly
Source:    LP: Who's Next
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Decca
Year:    1971
    Following the success of the Who's rock opera Tommy, composer Pete Townshend immediate got to work on a project to be called Lifehouse. Like Tommy, Lifehouse was to be a rock opera taking up four album sides. The project, however, was ultimately scrapped, and several of the songs were instead used on the 1971 album Who's Next. Although originally meant to be sung from the point of view of a Scottish farmer gathering up his wife and children for a move to London, Baba O'Reilly, according to Townshend, is about the "absolute desolation" of teenagers at Woodstock, many of whom were "wasted". Baba O'Reilly has proved to be one of the most popular Who songs ever recorded, despite not being released as a single in most markets, including the US and Britain, and has been used in several movie and TV soundtracks over the years, as well as being heard frequently at sporting events.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    War Pigs
Source:    LP: Black Sabbath
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osborne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    In the summer of 1971 I moved to the small town of Mangum, Oklahoma, along with guitarist Doug Phillips. We had both just graduated from high school and had spent most of our senior year playing in a band called Friends. The last half of the school year had been complicated by a surprise visit from yet another guitarist named Dave Mason (no, not THAT Dave Mason), whom I had been bandmates with in 1969-70, when both our dads had been stationed at Ramstein AFB, Germany. My dad had been transferred to Holloman AFB, New Mexico in July of 1970, while Dave's had retired to his native Oklahoma a couple of months later. The problem was that Dave, who was a bit of a free spirit, had not fit in well in Mangum; in fact, he had just been kicked out of the local high school for refusing to cut his hair. Dave had formed a new band (using the same band name, Sunn, that we had used in Germany) in Oklahoma, and had made enough money to buy a bus ticket for Vacaville, California (where his longtime girlfriend Jeannie was now living, her dad having been transferred to Travis AFB that fall)...or so he thought. It turned that the band's bass player Jim, who was also acting as their financial manager, had absconded with most of the band's earnings, leaving a total of $48.60 in the band's bank account. It turned out that $48.60 was the price of a bus ticket from Mangum, OK to Alamogordo, NM, and so, following a phone call sometime around New Year's, Dave showed up at my doorstep. My parents, being basically good people, allowed him to stay with us until he could either a) get enough money to buy a bus ticket to Vacaville, CA, or b) find a place of his own in Alamogordo. He ended up choosing option b) for awhile, eventually buying a return ticket to Mangum, after exacting a promise from me that I would join him there following graduation.
    About a week after he left New Mexico Dave called me to say "bring Doug, too", which was kind of a surprise, as I had always considered the two of them to be sort of rivals (although maybe that was only in my head, since Doug was the lead guitarist for Friends, while Dave had asked me to join yet another incarnation of Sunn in Alamogordo, which didn't go over so well with the other members of Friends; I ended up playing in both bands, as they had vastly different styles and there really was no conflict, since gigs were few and far between for both groups). Anyway, a week after graduation Doug and I boarded a Greyhound, arriving in Elk City, OK (the nearest town to Mangum with a bus station) at about 3 in the morning. Of couse, the Elk City bus station was closed at 3AM, so we had to stand outside in a thunderstorm waiting for a ride from a friend of Dave's who had forgotten that he was supposed to be picking us up at the Elk City bus station, which was about a half hour's drive north of Mangum.
    A couple months later we were all members of yet another version of Sunn (#5 by my count) when we got an offer from a local theater owner wanting to be our manager. As we were musically ready to take over the world, but were pretty clueless as to how to line up gigs, we accepted, and found ourselves booked for a Saturday night gig at the only theater in Wellington, Texas, a town about the same size of Mangum known mostly as the scene of Bonnie and Clyde's first nationally reported crime spree (which apparently involved wrecking their car, terrorizing a local family, kidnapping two law enforcement officers and tieing them to a tree with barbed wire cut from a fence, according to the New York Times). Wellington is also the county seat of Collingsworth County, which was, at the time, a "dry" county, which meant that local residents had to make the hour-long round trip to Mangum if they wanted to buy any alcoholic beverages. Not exactly the kind of place where you'd expect to hear a heavy metal cover band (although the term "heavy metal" was not part of the rock vocabulary at that point, so I guess '"underground rockers" would probably be a more appropriate label).
    The gig itself went pretty well, with only a couple dicey moments. One of those involved our cover of Black Sabbath's War Pigs, which we had learned by listening to the Paranoid album over and over (see, there was a connection to the song in all of this after all). We actually did a pretty kickass version of War Pigs, with Doug and I doing the sirens at the beginning in harmony and me channeling Ozzy quite credibly (or so it seemed at the time while tripping my brains out) throughout the performance. The problem was with Doug's dedication of the song (by title) to the local police force, a move that actually confused me at the time, since the song has nothing to do with cops. The second dicey moment is when I decided to take off the cowboy hat I had been wearing for the first of our two sets, letting my freak flag fly, so to speak, and eliciting an audible gasp from the audience. Still, the gig itself was a success, in fact, probably our best gig ever. We made a decent amount of money and got a great crowd response. Plus, due to a leaky transmission seal in our equipment van (a '54 Ford panel truck missing its front grill that was affectionately known as "The Glump"), we didn't have to pack up our stuff that night, allowing us to take a trip to Altus, OK, the nearest place with an all-night restaurant.
    Since there were no businesses open in Mangum on Sunday (of any type, including gas stations), we did not return to Wellington until Monday evening, after a friend of the band, J.D., gave us a ride in his black '57 Chevy after work. Following a mildly interesting ride that included cresting one of a series of hills only to see a bunch of cows in the road (we didn't hit any) and then noticing shortly thereafter that the headlights in the rear view mirror that had been making us paranoid every time we crested a hill were no longer there, we arrived in Wellington well after dark. As we were loading equipment into The Glump we noticed that a car was blocking our only exit from the alley behind the theater. A closer look revealed various lights and decals indicating that the car might just be the property of the Wellington Police Department. Confirmation soon came in the form of a guy in his mid-50s wearing a badge on his khaki-colored uniform. He  demanded to speak to the guy who "called us pigs". Gary Dowdy (the owner of The Glump) and I were confused at first, until the guy in the khaki-colored uniform with the badge asked which one of us had dedicated a song to the local police force. At about that time I realized what he was talking about, and attempted to explain that Doug, who was the only band member with a local girlfriend, had chosen to spend time with said girlfriend rather than to help with the loading of equipment (come to think of it, I may have been the only band member present). The guy with the badge cut me off at the word "Doug", however. In fact, as I recall, his exact words were "Another word out of you and I'll take you down to the station and cut off all of your hair". Luckily Gary Dowdy, who could Good 'Ol Boy with the best of 'em when it was called for, was able to pacify the officer with a promise to pack up quickly, get out of town and never come back. To this day, I have never again set foot in Wellington, Texas.
   
Artist:    Serendipity
Title:    Castles (full version)
Source:    British import CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution (originally released in edited form inUK as 45RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Pat O'Nion
Label:    Grapefruit (original label: CBS)
Year:    Edited version: 1969, full version: 2013
    Serendipity was one of many British bands to spend time in Germany (including, in Serendipity's case, a four-month residency at Hamburg's infamous Star-Club) before retutning home to make records. They released two singles on the CBS label, the second of which featured an original tune called Castles on its B side. The record company chose to edit the original recording, which was finally issued in its full-length form on a collection called Love, Poetry And Revolution in 2013.

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    It Better End Soon
Source:    CD: Chicago
Writer(s):    Lamm/Parazaider/Kath
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1970
    It may come as a surprise to those familiar with the many "safe" hits cranked out by Chicago from the mid-70s  through the late 80s, that Chicago was originally one of the most political (and hard rocking) bands on the national rock scene. For example, most of the fourth side of the second Chicago LP, released in 1970, is taken up by the hard-hitting It Better End Soon. Written by keyboardist Robert Lamm, the four-movement continuous piece features vocals by guitarist Terry Kath (who shares writing credit on the third movement), and includes an outstanding flute solo from Walter Parazaider, earning him a co-writing credit on the piece's second movement. The lyrics of It Better End Soon appeared on the inner gatefold cover of the double-LP' along with a "Producer's note", stating "This endeavor should be experienced sequentially", and a declaration written by Robert Lamm: "With this album, we dedicate ourselves, our futures and our energies to the people of the revolution. And the revolution in all of its forms."

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Dear Mr. Fantasy
Source:    LP: Welcome To The Canteen
Writer:    Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1971
    After disbanding in early 1969, three of the original members of Traffic, Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood, reunited in 1970 to work on what was meant to be a Winwood solo album. That album, John Barleycorn Must Die, ended up being the first in a series of new Traffic albums. Later that year bassist Rick Grech (who had been in Blind Faith with Winwood) joined the band, followed a few months later by drummer Jim Gordon (of Derek and the Dominos), percussionist Reebop Kwaku Baah and, for the third time, Dave Mason. The new lineup released a live album in 1971 called Welcome To The Canteen.  Most of the songs on the album were live versions of earlier Traffic tunes such as Dear Mr. Fantasy, which, at over ten minutes in length, runs about twice as long as the original studio version.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era #1814 (starts 4/4/18)

    Once again, most of the sets this week are from specific years, although we do vary it a bit in the first half hour. We also have artists sets from the Airplane, the Stones and Simon & Garfunkel.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Wait Until Tomorrow
Source:    CD: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Jimi Hendrix showed a whimsical side with Wait Until Tomorrow, a track from his second Jimi Hendrix Experience LP, Axis: Bold As Love. The song tells a story of a young man standing outside his girlfriend's window trying to convince her to run away from him. He gets continually rebuffed by the girl, who keeps telling him to Wait Until Tomorrow. Ultimately the girl's father resolves the issue by shooting the young man. The entire story is punctuated by outstanding distortion-free guitar work that showcases just how gifted Hendrix was on his chosen instrument.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Absolutely Positively
Source:    CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer:    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1967
    I'm going to use Sean Bonniwell's own words to describe Absolutely Positively: "Demanding that you get what you don't have without knowing what you want is the same as wanting what you haven't got, then not wanting it after you get it." Heady stuff that describes a very American attitude that has only become even more prevalent in the years since the song was written.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    I Happen To Love You
Source:    CD: Underground
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Arguably the most commercial-sounding cut on the second Electric Prunes album, Underground, I Happen To Love You was inexplicably passed over as a potential single in favor of the bizarre Dr. Do-Good, which did nothing on the charts, and did more harm than good to the band's reputation. Written by the highly successful songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, I Happen To Love You may not have fit the psychedelic image that the band's promotional team was looking to push, but probably would have gotten a decent amount of airplay on top 40 radio.

Artist:    Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title:    Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You
Source:    CD: Quicksilver Messenger Service (originally released on LP: Revolution soundtrack)
Writer(s):    Darling/Bennett/Bradon
Label:    Rock Beat (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1968
            Revolution was a 1968 documentary film following the adventures of a young hippie woman named Daria Halprin in 1967 San Francisco. The movie featured music from several notable Bay Area bands, including the already popular Country Joe And The Fish, the newly formed Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks and the all-female Ace Of Cups. Three unsigned bands (Mother Earth, the Steve Miller Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service) appeared in the film as well, and were included on the movie soundtrack album. Of the three, the most popular was Quicksilver Messenger Service, who had already had offers from major record labels, but were holding out for the best deal (a move that probably backfired, since they were unable to take advantage of the massive media buzz surrounding the summer of love). The band's considerable talents were on display on the song Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You. Quicksilver's arrangement of the tune is considerably different than the 1969 Led Zeppelin version, to the point of sounding like an entirely different song, however, the similarity of the lyrics is pretty hard to miss.
       
Artist:    Fifty Foot Hose
Title:    Red The Sign Post
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Cauldron)
Writer(s):    Roswicky/Blossom
Label:    Rhino (original label: Limelight)
Year:    1968
    Although most of the more avant-garde bands of the psychedelic era were headquarted in New York, there were some exceptions, such as San Francisco's Fifty Foot Hose. The core members of the band were founder and bassist Louis "Cork" Marcheschi, guitarist David Blossom, and his wife, vocalist Nancy Blossom. The group used a lot of unusual instruments, such as theramin, Moog synthesizer and prepared guitar and piano. Probably their most commercial song was Red The Sign Post from the LP Cauldron. After that album the group called it quits, with most of the members joining the cast of Hair. In fact, Nancy Blossom played lead character Sheila in the San Francisco production of the musical.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Stephen Stills/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title:    You Don't Love Me
Source:    LP: Super Session
Writer(s):    Willie Cobb
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1968
    You Don't Love Me was originally recorded and released as a single by Willie Cobbs in 1960. Although the song is credited solely to Cobbs, it strongly resembles a 1955 Bo Diddley B side, She's Fine She's Mine, in its melody, lyrics and repeated guitar riff. The Cobbs single was a regional hit on the Mojo label in Memphis, but stalled out nationally after being reissued on Vee-Jay Records, due to the label pulling promotional support from the song due to copyright issues. A 1965 version by Junior Wells with Buddy Guy saw some minor changes in the lyrics to the song; it was this version that was covered by Al Kooper and Stephen Stills for the 1968 Super Session album. The recording extensively uses an effect called flanging, a type of phase-shifting that was first used in stereo on the Jimi Hendrix Experience track Bold As Love.

Artist:     Cream
Title:     Deserted Cities Of The Heart
Source:     CD: Wheels Of Fire
Writer:     Bruce/Brown
Label:     Polydor (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:    Traffic
Title:    Vagabond Virgin
Source:    CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s):    Mason/Capaldi
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1968
    Many, if not most, of Traffic's best-known songs were collaborations between guitarist/keyboardist Steve Winwood and drummer Jim Capaldi, who supplied the lyrics. One song on the second Traffic album, featured music by guitarist Dave Mason with lyrics by Capaldi. Sounding a lot like a Mason solo effort (as most of his songs did), Vagabond Virgin is a bit of an anomaly in that respect. Still, it's worth a listen.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    A Hazy Shade Of Winter
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bookends)
Writer:    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966 (first stereo release: 1968)
    Originally released as a single in late 1966, A Hazy Shade Of Winter was one of several songs slated to be used in the film The Graduate. The only one of these actually used was Mrs. Robinson. The remaining songs eventually made up side two of the 1968 album Bookends, although several of them were also released as singles throughout 1967. A Hazy Shade Of Winter, being the first of these singles (and the only one released in 1966), was also the highest charting, peaking at # 13 just as the weather was turning cold.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    A Most Peculiar Man
Source:    LP: Sounds Of Silence
Writer:    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    You would think that a high school on a US military facility would be inclined to use the most staunchly traditional teaching methods known to man. Surprisingly, though, this was not the case at General H. H. Arnold High School in Weisbaden, Germany. In fact, the English department was teaching some sort of new system that dispensed with terms such as verb and noun and replaced them with a more conceptual approach to language. What I best remember about my Freshman English class is the day that my rather Bohemian teacher (he wore sandals to class!), actually brought in a copy of the Sounds Of Silence and had us dissect two songs from the album, Richard Cory and A Most Peculiar Man. We spent several classes discussing the similarities (they both deal with a suicide by someone representing a particular archetype) and differences (the methods used and the archetypes themselves) between the songs. I have forgotten everything else about that class and its so-called revolutionary approach, but those two songs have stayed with me my entire life. I guess that teacher (whose name I have forgotten) was on to something.

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

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    This Hammer
Source:    Mono LP: Gimme Some Lovin' (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side and on LP: The Second Album)
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Winwood/Winwood/York/Davis
Label:    United Artists (original UK label: Fontana)
Year:    1965
    I could swear I've heard This Hammer before. Maybe under the title The Hammer Song. Gov't Mule, maybe?

Artist:    John Mayall's Bluesbreakers
Title:    Parchman Farm
Source:    Mono British import 45 RPM EP
Writer(s):    Mose Allison
Label:    R&B
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2016
    John Mayall's Bluesbreakers included several talented musicians over the years, many of whom went on to become stars in their own right. Not every Bluesbreakers lineup saw the inside of a recording studio, however. In fact, the only known recording of Mayall's cover of Mose Allison's Parchman Farm, which includes Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass and Hughie Flint on drums, is from a live radio broadcast in 1966 (presumably for the BBC since they were the only legal radio broadcaster in the UK at the time). The recording sat on the shelf for 50 years before finally being released on a four song EP in the UK.

Artist:     Moby Grape
Title:     Omaha
Source:     Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 promo sampler (originally released on LP: Moby Grape)
Writer:     Skip Spence
Label:     Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:     1967
     As an ill-advised promotional gimmick, Columbia Records released five separate singles concurrently with the first Moby Grape album. Of the five singles, only one, Omaha, actually charted, and it only got to the #86 spot. Meanwhile, the heavy promotion by the label led to Moby Grape getting the reputation of being over-hyped, much to the detriment of the band's career. Oddly enough, although the stereo version of Omaha is included on the Rhino box set Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70, the promo sampler taken from the set uses the rare mono mix of the song.

Artist:    Bubble Puppy
Title:    Hot Smoke And Sassafras
Source:    CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: A Gathering Or Promises)
Writer(s):    Prince/Cox/Potter/Fore
Label:    Priority (original label: International Artists)
Year:    1968
    Bubble Puppy was a band from San Antonio, Texas that relocated to nearby Austin and signed a contract with International Artists, a label already known as the home of legendary Texas psychedelic bands 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola. The group hit the national top 20 in early 1969 with Hot Smoke and Sassafras, a song that was originally released the previous year as a B side. Not long after the release of their first LP, A Gathering Of Promises, the band relocated to California and changed their name to Demian, at least in part to disassociate themselves with the then-popular "bubble gum" style (but also because of problems with International Artists).

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Porpoise Song
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Head soundtrack)
Writer(s):    Goffin/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1968
    In 1968 the Monkees, trying desperately to shed a teeny-bopper image, enlisted Jack Nicholson to co-write a feature film that was a 180-degree departure from their recently-cancelled TV show. This made sense, since the original fans of the show were by then already outgrowing the group. Unfortunately, by 1968 the Monkees brand was irrevocably tainted by the fact that the Monkees had not been allowed to play their own instruments on their first two albums. The movie Head itself was the type of film that was best suited to being shown in theaters that specialized in "art" films, but that audience was among the most hostile to the Monkees and the movie bombed. It is now considered a cult classic.

Artist:    Janis Ian
Title:    Lover Be Kindly
Source:    LP: Janis Ian
Writer(s):    Janis Ian
Label:    Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year:    1967
    Thirty years before young female singer/songwriters such as Jewel and Alanis Morissette took the music world by storm there was a 15-year-old Janis Ian making music that was largely overlooked at the time, but has come to be regarded as groundbreaking in the years since the release of Ian's first LP in 1967. The album itself was commissioned by Atlantic Records, but after hearing some of Ian's controversial lyrics the shirts at the label decided not to release it. After several more labels rejected the album M-G-M subsidiary Verve decided to release one song from the album, Society's Child, as a single on its experimental Verve Forecast label. Famed conductor Leonard Bernstein featured the song on his prime-time TV special called Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, which led to the song hitting the top 40 charts, eventually peaking at #14 (although it went all the way to the top of the charts in many key cities). This in turn led to the album being released in early 1967. Among the many outstanding tracks on the LP (as far as I'm concerned EVERY track on the album is outstanding) is a tune called Lover Be Kindly. Showing a mix of influences ranging from folk music to the Beatles, the song has a catchy melody and strong lyrics, quite an accomplishment for a virtually unkown artist who was 14 years old at the time the record was produced.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    All Summer Long
Source:    Mono CD: Good Vibrations-Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys (originally released on LP: All Summer Long)
Writer(s):    Brian Wilson
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1964
    From 1963 to 1967 (with one exception), the best part of my year began in early June with the arrival of my grandparents, who would travel across country to visit us in Denver. They would generally stay with us for a week or two, after which my mom, brother and I would hop in my grandfather's Rambler and head back east for the next few weeks. Back in those days it was perfectly OK for a kid my age to ride in the front seat, which is exactly where I was whenever my grandfather was behind the wheel. I even got to play with the radio, which was a big deal considering the only radio in our house was a little clock radio in my parents' bedroom, where I seldom got to listen to it. Like any kid, I would spend a lot of time changing stations until finding a song I really liked. In 1964, one of those songs was All Summer Long by the Beach Boys. Although I did not know it, I was actually hearing something highly unusual: a non-single album track by someone other than the Beatles being played on top 40 radio. To this day All Summer Long is among my favorite Beach Boys songs.

Artist:      Rolling Stones
Title:     The Last Time
Source:      Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):     Jagger/Richards
Label:     Abkco (original label: London)
Year:     1965
     Released in late winter of 1965, The Last Time was the first single to hit the top 10 in both the US and the UK (being their third consecutive #1 hit in England) and the first one written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Despite that, it would be overshadowed by their next release: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, which went to the top of the charts everywhere and ended up being the #1 song of 1965.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    19th Nervous Breakdown
Source:    Mono CD: Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1966
    19th Nervous Breakdown is one of the Rolling Stones' best known songs from their first decade. Recorded in 1965 and released in early 1966, it was their first single of what would be one of their best years. The song starts with a signature guitar riff from Keith Richards and is known for Billy Wyman's repeated descending bass line near the end of the song. At nearly four minutes in length, 19th Nervous Breakdown brazenly exceeded the three and a half minute limit that was unofficially in effect for top 40 radio of the time. Stephen King made the song part of his "19" mystique in the last few books in his Dark Tower series, as one major character hears the song played on a transistor radio on the streets of New York City in the moments leading up to his "death".

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Dear Doctor
Source:    CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer:    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    In late 1968 four new albums by four different bands were competing for space on the record racks: The Beatles (white album), Cream's Wheels Of Fire, the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland and the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet. I can't imagine four albums that influential (or even that good) ever being released at the same time again. Just to further illustrate the point we have the song Dear Doctor. Compared to most of the songs on these four albums, the country-styled Dear Doctor is, at best, a novelty number. Yet taken on its own merits the song compares favorably with probably 90% of what's been recorded by any rock band (and a lot of country artists as well) in the years since.

Artist:     Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title:     The Great Airplane Strike
Source:     LP: Spirit of '67
Writer:     Revere/Melcher/Lindsay
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1966
      Often dismissed for their Revolutionary War costumes and frequent TV appearances, Paul Revere and the Raiders were actually one of the first great rock bands to emerge from the Pacific Northwest. Their accomplishments include recording Louie Louie BEFORE the Kingsmen did and being the first rock band signed to industry giant Columbia Records. The Great Airplane Strike is a good example of just how good a band they really were.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    She'll Return It
Source:    LP: Animalization
Writer(s):    Jenkins/Rowberry/Burdon/Chandler/Valentine
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    As a general rule the Animals, in their original incarnation, recorded two kinds of songs: hit singles from professional songwriters such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and covers of blues and R&B tunes, the more obscure the better. What they did not record a lot of was original tunes from the band members themselves. This began to change in 1966 when the band began to experience a series of personnel changes that would ultimately lead to what amounted to an entirely new group, Eric Burdon And The Animals, in 1967. One of the earliest songs to be credited to the entire band was She'll Return It, from the Animalization album. In retrospect, it is one of the strongest tracks on one of their strongest LPs.

Artist:    Zipps
Title:    Kicks And Chicks
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in the Netherlands as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nuyten/Katerberg
Label:    Rhino (original label: Relax)
Year:    1966
    In 1966 various people in the US music industry were obsessed with what they called "drug songs" such as the Byrds' classic Eight Miles High. In reality, the real drug song action was in the Netherlands, where the Zipps (from a place called Dordrecht) were handing out publicity stickers that read "Be Stoned: Dig Zipps: Psychedelic Sound" and performing a song called LSD-25 on national television. The group was formed in 1965 by members of the Beattown Skifflers and the Moving Strings and quickly caught on with the local Beat crowd and early hippies. Their second single, Kicks And Chicks, was a documentation of the band's own way of life, with lines like "I read only books of Jack Kerouac, he's the only priest in my life" cementing the group's beat credentials. Although the Zipps never recorded a full-length LP, they remained a popular band on the local underground scene until they disbanded in 1971.
       
Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    The Last Wombat In Mecca
Source:    LP: Your Saving Grace
Writer(s):    Lonnie Turner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    I'll be honest here. The Last Wombat In Mecca, by bassist Lonnie Turner of the Steve Miller Band, is not the best song on the album Your Saving Grace. It does have, however, one of the coolest song titles ever conceived. For that alone, it deserves to be heard (and it's really not all that bad of a song).

Artist:    Young-Holt Unlimited
Title:    Soulful Strut
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Record/Sanders
Label:    Brunswick
Year:    1969
    Despite all kinds of shadiness associated with it, Soulful Strut is one of the coolest instrumentals ever to grace the top 40 charts. What kinds of shadiness, you ask? Well, for starters we have the fact that it was supposed to be a vocal track by Barbara Acklin, but the producer, Carl Davis, decided to delete her original vocal track and replace it with a piano track played by Floyd Morris. This despite the fact that the song was actually co-written by Ackin's husband at the time, Eugene Record (great name there, by the way, especially for a songwriter in the late 1960s). Furthering the shade factor we have the fact that although the single is credited to Young-Holt Unlimited, neither Eldee Young nor Red Holt actually played on the recording!

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    D.C.B.A.-25
Source:    CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer(s):    Paul Kantner
Label:    RCA/BMG Heritage
Year:    1967
    One of the first songs written by Paul Kantner without a collaborator was this highly listenable tune from Surrealistic Pillow. Kantner says the title simply refers to the basic chord structure of the song, which is built on a two chord verse (D and C) and a two chord bridge (B and A). That actually fits, but what about the 25 part? [insert enigmatic smile here]

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Share A Little Joke
Source:    LP: Crown Of Creation
Writer(s):    Marty Balin
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1968
    Jeffeerson Airplane's fourth LP, Crown Of Creation, is generally considered to be the pinnacle of the group's psychedelic period. The album's songs deal with a variety of subjects, including politics, hippy sociology, and even a touch of science fiction. Founder Marty Balin, who had written much of the material on the band's first two albums, only contributed one solo effort to the album, the whimsical Share A Little Joke.

Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     Somebody To Love
Source:     CD: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer:     Darby Slick
Label:     RCA/BMG Heritage
Year:     1967
     Jefferson Airplane's version of Somebody To Love (a song that had been previously recorded by Grace Slick's former band, the Great! Society) put the San Francisco Bay area on the musical map in early 1967. Somebody To Love was actually the second single released from Surrealistic Pillow, the first being My Best Friend, a song written by the Airplane's original drummer, Skip Spence.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Rush Hour
Source:    Mono LP: Electric Comic Book
Writer(s):    Gilbert/Scala/Daking/Theilhelm/Esposito
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1967
    One of the best examples of music and subject matter supporting each other ever recorded is the Blues Magoos' Rush Hour from their Electric Comic Book album. From the overdriven opening chord through the crash and burn ending, the track maintains a frantic pace that resembles nothing more than a musical traffic jam. Rush Hour is also the only Blues Magoos track I know of to include writing credits for the entire band, including drummer Geoff Daking's only official songwriting credit.

Artist:    Chocolate Watchband
Title:    Don't Need Your Lovin'
Source:    Mono CD: One Step Beyond (originally released on LP: Riot On Sunset Strip soundtrack album)
Writer(s):    Dave Aguilar
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Tower)
Year:    1967
    The Chocolate Watchband was famously unprepared virtually every time they entered a recording studio (although it might be more accurate to say they just didn't give a damn). Their appearance on the set of the film Riot On Sunset Strip was no exception. The band actually did have one song prepared for the film, a Dave Aguilar original called Don't Need Your Lovin'. The track was recorded live on the Paramount soundstage and is a better representation of what the band was all about than any of their studio tracks.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The End
Source:    LP: The Doors
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    Prior to recording their first album the Doors' honed their craft at various Sunset Strip clubs, working up live versions of the songs they would soon record, including their show-stopper, The End. Originally written as a breakup song by singer/lyricist Jim Morrison, The End runs nearly twelve minutes and includes a controversial spoken "Oedipus section". My own take on the famous "blue bus" line is that Morrison, being a military brat, was probably familiar with the blue shuttle buses used on military bases for a variety of purposes, including taking kids to school, and simply incorporated his experiences with them into his lyrics.  The End got its greatest exposure in 1979, when Oliver Stone used it in his film Apocalypse Now.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1814 (starts 4/3/18)

    This week's show comes in three categories: Where You Belong, Ballads and Mellowing Out. As to which is which, just listen.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Love Or Confusion
Source:    LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    A little-known fact is that the original European version of Are You Experienced, in addition to having a different song lineup, consisted entirely of mono recordings. When Reprise got the rights to release the album in North America, its own engineers created new stereo mixes from the 4-track master tapes. As most of the instrumental tracks had already been mixed down to single tracks, the engineers found themselves doing things like putting the vocals all the way on one side of the mix, with reverb effects and guitar solos occupying the other side and the rhythm section dead center. Such is the case with Love Or Confusion, with some really bizarre stereo panning thrown in at the end of the track. It's actually kind of fun to listen to with headphones on, as I did when I bought my first copy of the album on reel-to-reel tape (the tape deck was in the same room as the TV).

Artist:    Janis Joplin
Title:    One Good Man
Source:    LP: I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama
Writer(s):    Janis Joplin
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    Janis Joplin's first solo album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama, got a lukewarm reception, both from the rock press and from fans of the singer who had been listening to her since her days with Big Brother And The Holding Company. The main problem seems to be that, while musically more proficient than the members of Big Brother, Joplin's new group (sometimes called the Kozmic Blues Band) never seemed to gel as a group. The fact that all but two of the tracks on the LP were cover songs didn't help matters, either. The two Joplin originals, however, are among the album's best tracks. I suspect that a few more tracks like One Good Man (featuring some nice guitar work by Big Brother's Sam Andrew) would have helped the album immensely.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    The Lemon Song
Source:    German import LP: Led Zeppelin II
Writer(s):    Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones/Burnett
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    If I had to choose just one Led Zeppelin song as representative of the band's early work it would have to be The Lemon Song, from their second album. The track has all the elements that made the Zep's reputation: Jimmy Page's distinctive guitar work, John Bonham's stuttered (but always timely) drum fills, John Paul Jones's funky bass line and Robert Plant's gutsy vocals (with lyrics famously derived from classic blues tunes). Squeeze my lemon, baby indeed!

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    South California Purples
Source:    CD: Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s):    Robert Lamm
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    Chicago never considered themselves a jazz-rock band, despite all the hype from the rock press and the publicity people at Columbia Records. Rather, the defined themselves as a rock band with a horn section. Songs like Robert Lamm's South California Purples, which is basically a blues progression, lend credence to this view. The track, which showcases the guitar work of Terry Kath, was one of the most popular songs on the band's debut album and continued to be a concert staple until Kath's death in 1978.

Artist:    Mountain
Title:    Boys In The Band
Source:    LP: Climbing!
Writer(s):    Pappalardi/Collins
Label:    Windfall
Year:    1970
    After the breakup of Cream in early 1969, producer Felix Pappalardi and his wife Janet Collins relocated to New York and began working with guitarist Leslie West, who was beginning a solo career following the breakup of his own band, the Vagrants. After producing the first West solo LP, Mountain, Pappalardi decided to form a new band with himself on bass, piano and vocals, West on guitar and vocals, Steve Knight on organ, and Corky Laing on drums. To preserve a sense of continuity they decided to call the new band Mountain, releasing their debut LP, Mountain Climbing! in 1970. As a songwriting team, Pappalardi and Collins provided songs like Boys In The Band, which closed out the original LP.

Artist:    Black Sheep
Title:    A Little Or A Lot
Source:    LP: Black Sheep
Writer(s):    Grammatico/Mancuso/Turgon
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1975
    Rochester, NY, has produced its share of stars over the years, including Steve Alaimo (the original host of Dick Clark's weekday series Where The Action Is), alternative garage rockers The Chesterfield Kings and flugelhornist Chuck Mangione, one of the principal architects of the smooth jazz movement of the 1980s. Possibly the biggest name to emerge from the Rochester scene, however, is Louis Grammatico, known better as Lou Gramm, vocalist for 80s supergroup Foreigner. Before Foreigner, Grammatico fronted a band called Black Sheep, with guitarist Don Mancuso, keyboardist Larry Crozier, bassist Bruce Turgon, and drummer Ron Rocco. After recording a one-off single for the Chrysalis label, Black Sheep signed with Capitol in 1975, releasing two LPs on the label. Fairly typical of the band's sound is A Little Or A Lot, a track from Black Sheep's debut LP. Gramm still occasionally performs with the former Black Sheep members.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Heartbreaker
Source:    CD: Heavy Hitters (originally released on LP: On Time)
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    The second single released from the first Grand Funk Railroad album, Heartbreaker was a concert staple for the band. Unlike most of Grand Funk's early material, Heartbreaker is a slow ballad that speeds up toward the end, building to a typical Spinal Tap, er, Grand Funk, finish.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    Quicksand
Source:    CD: Hunky Dory
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1971
    After rocking out pretty hard with his third studio LP, The Man Who Sold The World, David Bowie mellowed out a bit with his first album for his new label, RCA. Hunky Dory, released in 1971 was actually  recorded at a time when Bowie had no record contract, and features the same lineup that would be heard on his classic Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars album the following year. Unlike the albums that precede and follow it, Hunky Dory puts the emphasis more on Bowie's lyrics on tunes like Quicksand, which reflects Bowie's interest in the occult, as well as the work of Franz Nietzsche.

Artist:    America
Title:    Head And Heart
Source:    LP: Homecoming
Writer(s):    John Martin
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1972
    Although not a household name by any means, singer-songwriter/guitarist John Martin nonetheless had a long and prolific career, releasing 22 albums over a 40-year period, starting in the late 1960s. By 1972 he was well-established enough to get the attention of the band America, who recorded a cover of his Head And Heart for their second LP, Homecoming.

Artist:    Steely Dan
Title:    Only A Fool Would Say That
Source:    CD: Can't Buy A Thrill
Writer(s):    Becker/Fagan
Label:    MCA (original label: ABC)
Year:    1972
    Steely Dan's first album, Can't Buy A Thrill, is best known for its two hit singles, Do It Again and Reeling In The Years. The album, however, has plenty more good tracks, including Only A Fool Would Say That, which also appeared as a B side.

Artist:    Crosby, Stills And Nash
Title:    Dark Star
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1977
    It may come as a surprise that the second Crosby, Stills And Nash LP, CSN, came out eight years after the first one, even if you consider that the deja vu and Four-Way Street albums, released in 1970-71, were only one band member (Neil Young) away from being by the same group. Then again, if you were around at the time, and had heard about the horrendous backstage fights in dressing rooms around the country, it might not all that much surprising. Whatever the reason, the album CSN did not appear until 1977. CSN did include a few songs that got airplay on several radio formats, however. Stephen Stills's Dark Star, which also appeared as the B side of the album's first single, got heard quite a bit on FM rock radio (which by 1977 was already morphing into the more commercial album-oriented rock format), while the A side of the single, Just A Song Before I Go, became a Contemporary Hit Radio staple.

Artist:    Earth Disciples
Title:    Getaway Train
Source:    LP: Getaway Train
Writer(s):    Jimmy Holloway
Label:    Solid State
Year:    1970
    There is no question that 1970 was a year of experimentation in music. The surface implication of such a statement might lead you to think of bands like Tangerine Dream, who were trying out all kinds of new electronic effects, or Renaissance, who were taking a classical approach to rock. But there were other types of experiments going on as well. New radio formats were developing. Artists were looking at new hybrid genres to explore, such as jazz-rock and soul-funk. One band that went that route was Earth Disciples from the Chicago area. co-led by guitarist Jimmy Holloway (who also did some keyboard work), Earth Disciples were fond of jazz experimentation, yet included elements of rock and soul that sometimes actually overpowered the band's jazz elements on tracks such as Getaway Train (also the title of their album). As to what happened to the band, your guess is as good as mine.

Artist:    John Lennon
Title:    Bless You
Source:    CD: Lennon (box set) (originally released on LP: Walls And Bridges)
Writer(s):    John Lennon
Label:    Capitol (original label: Apple)
Year:    1974
    In June of 1973, as John Lennon was getting started on his third LP, Mind Games, his wife Yoko Ono decided that the two of them should separate. This led to Lennon relocating from New York to California and getting into a relationship with Ono's personal assistant May Pang. This relationship (reportedly instigated by Yoko herself) lasted eighteen months, a period that Lennon would later refer to as his "lost weekend". During this time Lennon began hanging out (i.e. getting drunk) with fellow songwriter Harry Nilsson and making his first attempt at recording an album of cover songs with producer Phil Spector. For obvious reasons (see above) those sessions didn't work out, and Lennon returned to New York the following year. In July of 1974 Lennon began working on what would be his last album of original material for nearly five years: Walls And Bridges. The album yielded two top 10 singles (including his only #1 solo hit during his lifetime, Whatever Gets You Through The Night), as well as several noteworthy album tracks. One of the most overlooked tracks on the LP is Bless You, a tune that Lennon himself described as "best piece of work on the album".