Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1920 (starts 5/13/19)

    This week's show starts off with a set of tunes that touches on themes of freedom and imprisonment. From there we have a whole bunch of songs making their Rockin' in the Days of Confusion debut, followed by a classic Santana track to finish things off.

Artist:    Graham Nash
Title:    Prison Song
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Graham Nash
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1973
    Graham Nash's Prison Song is one of those songs that by all rights should have been a huge hit. It was by a name artist. It had a catchy opening harmonica riff and a haunting melody. I can only surmise that once again Bill Drake (the man who controlled top 40 radio in the 60s and early 70s) decided that the lyrics were too controversial for AM radio and had the song blacklisted, much as he had done with the Byrds Eight Miles High a few years earlier. Those lyrics center on a subject that is unfortunately still relevant today: the utter absurdity of drug laws and the unequal sentences for violation of those laws in the US and its various states.

Artist:     Jimi Hendrix
Title:     Freedom
Source:     LP: The Cry Of Love
Writer:     Jimi Hendrix
Label:     Experience Hendrix/Legacy (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 MCA (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.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Been Down So Long
Source:    LP: L.A. Woman
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1971
    L.A. Woman, the Doors' sixth and final studio album with vocalist Jim Morrison, is considered one of the band's best, due to its stripped down production and return to the group's blues-rock roots. Nowhere are both these trends more evident than on the song Been Down So Long, the third track on the LP. The song, written by Morrison, but credited (as were all the tracks on L.A. Woman) to the entire group, was reportedly inspired in part by Morrison's own brush with the possibility of incarceration due to his arrest on charges of indecency for allegedly exposing himself on stage in Florida.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    Gallows Pole
Source:    CD: Led Zeppelin III
Writer(s):    Traditional, arr. Page/Plant
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    Following a year of intensive touring to promote their first two albums, Led Zeppelin members Robert Plant and Jimmy Page decided to take some time off, cloistering themselves in a small Welsh cottage known as Bron-Yr-Aur for several weeks. The place had no electricity, and the pair used the time to write and/or adapt acoustic material for the band to record for their third LP. One of the best of these "new" songs was Gallows Pole, which Page adapted from a 1962 recording by Fred Gerlach, although the song's roots go back several centuries.

Artist:    Fairport Convention
Title:    The Deserter
Source:    LP: Liege & Lief
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Fairport
Label:    A&M
Year:    1969
    By the time Fairport Convention recorded Liege & Lief they had completely transitioned from their Jefferson Airplane inspired brand of folk-rock to a style that was uniquely English. Covers of songs by people like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen had given way to rock adaptations of traditional folk ballads such as The Deserter, which tells the story of a man who is conscripted into the army against his will, and makes his escape at the first opportunity, only to be recaptured.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    Fill Your Heart/Andy Warhol
Source:    CD: Hunky Dory
Writer(s): Rose/Williams/Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1971
    With one exception, every song on the first five David Bowie albums was written by Bowie himself. The exception was Fill Your Heart, a light dancehall style number included as the opener of the second side of 1971's Hunky Dory LP. There is evidence that a song called Bombers was originally intended to be the side opener, but that song remained unreleased until the 1990s. Why Bowie would choose to record a song like Fill Your Heart in the first place is a mystery, but given the Marlene Dietrich inspired pose Bowie took for the album cover itself, maybe he simply decided to record the song to tie into the same image. Without any break in the audio, the song segues into Bowie's own Andy Warhol, a song that can be interpreted as either a tribute to, or parody of, the avant-garde icon.

Artist:    Gentle Giant
Title:    The Boys In The Band
Source:    CD: Octopus
Writer(s):    Minnear/Shulman/Shulman/Shulman
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1972
    The Boys In The Band is the only instrumental piece on Gentle Giant's fourth LP, Octopus. As such, it is (as its title implies) a piece that showcases each of the six band members abilities on various instruments (all members being capable of playing more than one). Unlike most such tracks, however, The Boys In The Band gets it all done in less than five minutes.

Artist:    Grand Funk
Title:    Black Licorice
Source:    CD: We're An American Band
Writer(s):    Farner/Brewer
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1973
    By 1973 Grand Funk Railroad, the first true arena-rock band, was sounding a bit fatigued. The band had released six studio LPs, as well as a double disc live album, over a period of just four years, with guitarist Mark Farner writing virtually all the group's original material, as well as handling all the lead vocals. Having parted company with their original manager/producer, Terry Knight, just prior to recording their self-produced Phoenix album in 1972, the band was seeing a dropoff in sales as well. To get things back on track they brought in a new producer, Todd Rundgren, for their seventh LP, We're An American Band, as well as shortening the band's name to Grand Funk. The most noticable change, however, was the rise to prominence of drummer Don Brewer, both as a songwriter and a vocalist. In fact, Brewer took over lead vocal duties on fully half the album's songs, writing or co-writing several of them, including Black Licorice. The album was a huge success, changing the direction of Grand Funk's music forever.

Artist:    Black Sheep
Title:    Broken Promises
Source:    LP: Black Sheep
Writer(s):    Grammitico/Crozier/Turgan
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1975
    Black Sheep was a Rochester, NY band that released a pair of album on the Capitol label in the mid-1970s. The group was fronted by Louis Grammitico, who went on to greater fame after shortening his name to Lou Graham and becoming lead vocalist of Foreigner. Black Sheep's music was fairly typical of mid-70s rock, as can be heard on tunes like Broken Promises.

Artist:    Steely Dan
Title:    Rikki Don't Lose That Number
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Becker/Fagen
Label:    ABC
Year:    1974
    Contrary to what you may have heard, Rikki Don't Lose That Number, from the album Pretzel Logic, is not about using the US Postal Service to mail yourself weed. This is according to both Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who are generally known for being deliberately obscure. The fact that they both, on separate occasions, have addressed the issue leads me to take their version of the story, that the subject of the song was a young woman Fagen knew in college, as the correct one. What's not in dispute is this: Rikki Don't Lose That Number was Steely Dan's biggest hit single, deservedly so.

Artist:    Uriah Heep
Title:    Sweet Freedom
Source:    LP: Sweet Freedom
Writer(s):    Ken Hensley
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Uriah Heep hit their Apex in 1972 with the back-to-back LPs Demons And Wizards and The Magician's Birthday. They followed those up with a double-LP live album (pretty much a standard thing for rock bands at the time) and, in 1973, released the album Sweet Freedom. Sweet Freedom saw the band moving beyond their own fantasy-based image, both lyrically and musically, with mixed success. The title track, which closed the album, was probably the most stylistically similar song on the album to their earlier material, and with a six and a half minute running time is the longest track on the album itself.

Artist:    Santana
Title:    Se A Cabo
Source:    CD: Abraxas
Writer(s):    Chepito Areas
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1970
    Following their successful appearance at Woodstock in August of 1969, Santana returned to the studio to begin work on their second LP. Unlike their self-titled debut, Abraxas took several months to record, finally hitting the racks in September of 1970. Like the group's first album, Abraxas includes several instrumental tracks such as Se A Cabo, which opens side two of the original LP. The tune was written by percussionist José Octavio "Chepito" Areas, who played timbales for the band from 1969-1977, returning for a three-year stint in the late 1980s.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1919 (starts 5/6/19)

    This time around we have a couple of album sides, an artists' set, a British set and trips both up and down through the years. Read on...

Artist:    Dave Clark Five
Title:    You Know You're Lying
Source:    Mono LP: I Like It Like That
Writer(s):    Clark/Smith
Label:    Epic
Year:    1965
    It's a well-known fact that in the 1960s the British and American versions of albums by British Invasion bands often had different song lineups and sometimes even different album titles. In the case of the Dave Clark Five, however, their album catalogs in the two nations were mutually exclusive. In fact, the DC5 actually released twice as many LPs in the US between 1964 and 1967 as they did in their native UK. As a result, there are several DC5 songs that were never availble to British record buyers, unless they were willing to buy a US-only LP such as I Like It Like That, which came out in 1965. Although the band eschewed psychedelia as a general rule, some of their songs, such as You Know You're Lying, have a definite garage-rock feel to them. The band's American popularity is underscored by one other interesting bit of trivia: they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show a total of 18 times, by far the most appearances by a British Invasion band.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Bringing Me Down
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Balin/Kantner
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    One of several singles released mainly to San Francisco Bay area radio stations and record stores, Bringing Me Down is an early collaboration between vocalist Marty Balin and guitarist/vocalist Paul Kantner. Balin had invited Kantner into the band without having heard him play a single note. It turned out to be one of many right-on-the-money decisions by the young bandleader.

Artist:     Monkees
Title:     The Door Into Summer
Source:     CD: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.
Writer:     Douglas/Martin
Label:     Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:     1967
     After playing nearly all the instrumental tracks on their third album themselves, the Monkees came to the painful conclusion that they would not be able to repeat the effort and still have time to tape a weekly TV show. As a result, the fourth Monkees LP, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones LTD., used studio musicians extensively, albeit under the creative supervision of the Monkees themselves. The group also had the final say over what songs ended up on the album, including The door Into Summer, a tune by Bill Martin, a friend of band leader Michael Nesmith. For reasons that are too complicated to get into here (and probably wouldn't make much sense anyway), co-credit was given to the band's producer, Chip Douglas.

Artist:     Moby Grape
Title:     Can't Be So Bad
Source:     LP: Wow
Writer:     Jerry Miller
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1968
     Although the second Moby Grape album, Wow, is generally considered inferior to the first, it does have its moments of brilliance. One of these is the Jerry Miller song Can't Be So Bad. I guarantee this one will get stuck in your head after only one listen.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    Some Velvet Morning
Source:    Mono CD: The Complete Atco Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lee Hazlewood
Label:    Real Gone/Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
    Most American listeners are probably unaware of Vanilla Fudge's 1969 cover of Lee Hazlewood's Some Velvet Morning, but the song actually made quite a big splash in the rest of the world, thanks to the band's live performance of the song at the International Music Festival in Venice that year. The performance, which led to the band becoming the first Americans to win the Golden Gondola award, was see by 40 million television viewers worldwide. In the US, the song was released as a mono single at a time when FM stereo was becoming the medium of choice for serious rock fans. That, taken with the fact that AM radio was not about to play a song that ran nearly eight minutes in length, pretty much doomed Some Velvet Morning as a potential US hit right from the start.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix
Title:    Valleys Of Neptune
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1970, released 2010
    Even before the breakup of the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1969, Hendrix was starting to work with other musicians, including keyboardist Steve Winwood and wind player Chris Wood from Traffic, bassist Jack Casidy from Jefferson Airplane and Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles among others. Still, he kept showing a tendency to return to the power trio configuration, first with Band of Gypsys, with Miles and bassist Billy Cox and, in 1970, a new trio that was sometimes referred to as the "new" Jimi Hendrix Experience. This trio, featuring Cox along with original Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell (with additional percussion added by Jumo Sultan), recorded extensively in the months leading up to Hendrix's death, leaving behind hours of tapes in various stages of completion. Among those recordings was a piece called Valleys Of Neptune that was finally released, both as a single and as the title track of a new CD, in 2010.

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    One Of These Days
Source:    CD: Meddle
Writer(s):    Waters/Wright/Gilmour/Mason
Label:    Pink Floyd Records (original label: Harvest)
Year:    1971
    In their early years Pink Floyd was a band that was talked about more than heard, at least in the US. That began to change with the release of their 1971 LP Meddle and its opening track, One Of These Days, which got a significant amount of airplay on progressive FM radio stations.
   
Artist:    Animals
Title:    I'm Crying
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of The Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Price/Burdon
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1964
    Like most groups in the early 1960s, the Animals started their studio career by recording a mixture of songs provided to their producer by professional songwriters and covers of tunes previously recorded by other artists. Their first self-penned single was I'm Crying, a tune by vocalist Eric Burdon and organist Alan Price that was released in September of 1964. The song made the top 10 in Canada and the UK, but stalled out in the lower reaches of the top 40 in the US, falling far short of their previous international hit, House Of The Rising Sun. Producer Mickie Most decided from then on that songs written by the band itself would only be released as album tracks and B sides, a policy that stayed in effect until the Animals changed producers in 1966.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Source:    CD: Big Hits (High Tides & Green Grass) (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    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 US counterparts. This is because singles were generally not duplicated on LPs like they were in the US. The Rolling Stones' 1965 hit (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was a good example. In the US the single had completely disappeared from most record racks by the end of the year, despite the fact that (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was the #1 song of the year. The song has, however, been continuously in print since its initial release due to it being added to the Out Of Our Heads album, which had a considerably different song lineup than the original UK version. On the other side of the Atlantic the song was unavailable as an LP track until Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) was released, but for several years the single could be found wherever records were sold throughout Europe.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Sunny Afternoon
Source:    Mono LP: Face To Face
Writer:    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1966
    My family got its first real stereo (a GE console model with a reel-to-reel recorder instead of a turntable) just in time for me to catch the Kinks' Sunny Afternoon at the peak of its popularity. My school had just gone into split sessions and all my classes were over by one o'clock, which gave me the chance to explore the world of top 40 radio for a couple hours every day without the rest of the family telling me to turn it down (or off). Of course, none of the few stereo FM stations were playing rock songs in 1966, but since the Kinks were still only mixing their songs in mono at that point it didn't really matter.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Baby, You're A Rich Man
Source:    LP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1967
    Baby, You're A Rich Man was one of the last collaborations between John Lennon and Paul McCartney and addresses the Beatles' longtime manager Brian Epstein, although not by name. Lennon came up with the basic question "how does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" (a popular term for the young and hip in late 60s London), which became the basis for the song's verses, which were combined with an existing, but unfinished, Paul McCartney chorus (Baby, You're A Rich Man, too). The finished piece was issued as the B side of the Beatles' second single of 1967, All You Need Is Love, and later remixed in stereo and included on the US-only LP version of Magical Mystery Tour.
         
Artist:     Status Quo
Title:     Pictures Of Matchstick Men
Source:     Simulated stereo CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Francis Rossi
Label:     K-Tel (original label: Cadet Concept)
Year:     1968
     The band with the most charted singles in the UK is not the Beatles or even the Rolling Stones. It is, in fact, Status Quo, quite possibly the nearest thing to a real life version of Spinal Tap. Except for Pictures of Matchstick Men, the group has never had a hit in the US. On the other hand, they remain popular in Scandanavia, playing to sellout crowds on a regular basis (yes, they are still together).

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Homeward Bound
Source:    LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1966
    Following the success of Sounds Of Silence, Paul Simon And Art Garfunkel set about making an album of all new material (Sounds Of Silence had featured several re-recorded versions of tunes from the 1965 British album The Paul Simon Songbook). The result was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, one of the finest folk-rock albums ever recorded. The album contained several successful singles, including Homeward Bound.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    Richard Cory
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds Of Silence)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    My ultra-cool 9th-grade English teacher brought in a copy of Simon And Garfunkel's Sounds Of Silence album one day. As a class, we deconstructed the lyrics of two of the songs on that album: A Most Peculiar Man and Richard Cory. Both songs deal with suicide, but under vastly different circumstances. Whereas A Most Peculiar Man is about a lonely man who lives an isolated existence as an anonymous resident of a boarding house, Richard Cory deals with a character who is at the center of society, known and envied by many. Too bad most high school English classes weren't that interesting.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    Scarborough Fair/Canticle
Source:    LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Simon/Garfunkel
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1966
    After the reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel following the surprise success of an electrified remix of The Sound Of Silence, the duo quickly recorded an album to support the hit single. Sounds Of Silence was, for the most part, a reworking of material that Simon had recorded for 1965 UK LP the Paul Simon Songbook. The pressure for a new album thus (temporarily) relieved, the duo got to work on their first album of truly new material since their unsuccessful 1964 effort Wednesday Morning 3AM (which had in fact been re-released and was now doing well on the charts). In October the new album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, hit the stands. The title track was a new arrangement of an old English folk ballad, Scarborough Fair, combined with a reworking of a song from the Paul Simon Songbook, The Side Of A Hill, retitled Canticle. The two melodies and sets of lyrics are set in counterpoint to each other, creating one of the most sophisticated folk song arrangements ever recorded. After being featured in the film The Graduate, Scarborough Fair/Canticle was released as a single in early 1968, going on to become one of the duo's most instantly recognizable songs.

Artist:    4 Seasons
Title:    Searching Wind
Source:    45 RPM single B side (originally released on LP: Born To Wander)
Writer(s):    Crewe/Gaudio
Label:    Philips
Year:    1964
    In 1964 the word "rock" was not considered a musical term. Rock 'n' Roll, which had flourished in the mid 1950s, had given way to what was generally known as "pop" music (short for popular, I assume). Stars like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis had been replaced by "safer" stars like Frankie Avalon and Chubby Checker. The original doo-wop groups, nearly all of which had been black, had been replaced as well by groups like New Jersey's 4 Seasons. Fronted by high tenor Frankie Valli and powered by the songwriting team of Bob Gaudio and producer Bob Crewe, the 4 Seasons were one of the most successful vocal groups of the mid-1960s, with hits like Sherry, Rag Doll and Big Girls Don't Cry being mainstays of top 40 radio. Like most pop stars, they concentrated mainly on singles, but, being as popular as they were, also recorded several albums. Not all of these albums were hit-oriented, however. Folk music was still going strong in 1964, and, in addition to the hard-core folk artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Phil Ochs, there were several "safer" folk-oriented groups like the Lamplighters and the New Christy Minstrels recording albums for a more mainstream audience. Additionally, an occasional pop star would do an album of "folky" material as well; on such album was Born To Wander, by the 4 Seasons. I have to admit that I have never heard Born To Wander, and would never go out of my way to find a copy of it. I did, however, pick up a copy of the 1965 hit Bye Bye Baby in what was known back in the day as a "grab bag": a random set of 45s, usually cut-outs that were no longer on the charts, the identity of which were obscured by the packaging itself; often just a brown paper bag, but sometimes displaying the first and/or last record in the set. The B side of Bye Bye Baby was Searching Wind, a Gaudio/Crewe composition from Born To Wander that grabbed me (sorry about the pun there) far more than Bye Bye Baby ever did. I recently found a pristine copy of that single, so here, in all its monoraul glory, is Searching Wind.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    I'm A Man
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Elias McDaniel
Label:    Epic
Year:    1965
    For many, the Yardbirds version of I'm a Man is the definitive version of the Bo Diddley classic. Oddly enough, the song was released as a single only in the US, where it made it into the top 10 in 1965.

Artist:      Mothers of Invention
Title:     The M.O.I. American Pageant
Source:       LP: Absolutely Free
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:     Verve
Year:     1967
     Following up on their debut double-LP Freak Out, the Mothers came up with one of the first concept albums with Absolutely Free, which consisted of two "rock oratorios", each taking up one side of the album. Included in side two's M.O.I. American Pageant is Brown Shoes Don't Make It, which composer Frank Zappa described as a two-hour musical in condensed form (it runs slightly less than 7 minutes). The Pageant itself starts with Status Back Baby, which leads into Uncle Bernie's Farm, followed by Son Of Suzy Creamcheese before getting into Brown Shoes Don't Make It. As a coda, the piece ends with American Drinks And Goes Home. The entire oratoria runs about 18 and a half minutes total.

Artist:    Tommy James And The Shondells
Title:    Breakaway
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    James/Vail
Label:    Roulette
Year:    1969
    From a modern perspective it seems obvious that the only thing keeping Roulette Records going in the late 60s was the string of hits on the label by Tommy James and the Shondells. Oddly enough, Tommy James was one of many acts that initially tanked on the label. It was only when a Pittsburgh DJ began playing a two year old copy of Hanky Panky he had rescued from the throwaway pile in 1966 that the band's career took off. By then, however, the original Shondells had long-since disbanded and James found himself suddenly in demand with no band to back him up. He soon found a new group of Shondells and began cranking out an amazing streak of hits, including I Think We're Alone Now, Mony Mony, Crystal Blue Persuasion and Crimson and Clover. By 1969, however, the streak was coming to an end, with Sweet Cherry Wine being one of the group's last top 40 hits. The B side of that record was the decidedly psychedelic Breakaway. James would continue as a solo artist after the Shondells split up, scoring his last hit in 1971 with Draggin' The Line. Roulette Records pretty much faded away at that point, eventually to become part of EMI (which is now part of Universal, one of the three remaining major record conglomerates).

Artist:    Paul Rever And The Raiders
Title:    Let Me
Source:    CD: The Legend Of Paul Revere
Writer(s):    Mark Lindsay
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    In 1965-66, Paul Revere And The Raiders were at the peak of their popularity, cranking out major hit records and fronting a daily Dick Clark produced TV series called Action. Things started going downhill for the group, however, in 1967. For one thing, their audience was maturing too fast for the band to keep up with. For another, Mark Lindsay had become the focus of the group, and, along with producer Terry Melcher, had begun using studio musicians rather than band members on the Raiders' records. This led to most of the original members being gone by the end of 1967, along with Melcher himself, whose departure was, in retrospect, the final nail in the band's coffin, as he had been crucial to the group's success in the first place. Still, Lindsay and Revere, with new Raiders, carried on, releasing several singles and LPs in 1968 and 1969, none of which had any significant presence on the charts. Typical of this period is the tune Let Me, which was, in all honesty, a sexual tease song for teenyboppers. It went nowhere. Oddly enough, the Raiders would rise from the dead long enough to get their first and only #1 hit with a cover of Don Fardon's cover of J.D. Loudermilk's politically inaccurate Indian Reservation (The Lament Of The Cherokee Reservation Indian) in 1971.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    For Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me
Source:    CD: Benefit
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1970
    All three of Jethro Tull's early albums contained one track with the name Jeffrey in the song title. The reference was to Jeffrey Hammond, who was not yet a member of the band, but was closely associated with them. The Benefit track, For Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me, is probably the darkest of the three, reflecting the sound of the album itself. Hammond would soon replace Glenn Cornick on bass, while Michael Collins would remain an American astronaut for a few more years.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    St. Stephen/The Eleven
Source:    LP: Live Dead
Writer:    Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1969
    In 1969, after going way over budget on the LP Aoxomoxoa, the Grateful Dead decided to release a double-LP live album, essentially giving Warner Brothers three albums for the price of one. Unlike the studio LP, which attempted to combine live material with studio overdubs, Live Dead was a documentation of two nights' worth of recent performances at the Fillmore West. At the time the band pretty much stuck to the same setlist for each performance and the songs were generally played as one continuous piece in concert. For the album, the best performance of each song was chosen and then arranged in the same order that they had been performed. Side two picks up the first nights' performance of St. Stephen (which had also appeared on Aoxomoxoa) and continues into the second night's version of The Eleven, a performance that rock critic Robert Christian called at the time "the finest rock improvisation ever recorded." Within a couple years St. Stephen would be dropped from the band's setlist and a performance of the piece in the band's later decades was considered by fans to be a special treat.

Artist:     Traffic
Title:     Pearly Queen
Source:     CD: Traffic
Writer:     Winwood/Capaldi
Label:     Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:     1968
     The second Traffic LP was less overtly psychedelic than the Mr. Fantasy album, with songs like Pearly Queen taking the band in a more funky direction. When the band reformed in 1970 without Dave Mason (who had provided the most psychedelic elements) the songwriting team of Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi, who had written Pearly Queen, continued the trend.

Artist:    Spencer Davis Group
Title:    I'm A Man
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Winwood/Miller
Label:    United Artists
Year:    1967
    The Spencer Davis Group, featuring brothers 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. The group itself continued on for several years, but were never able to duplicate their earlier successes. As for Steve Winwood, he quickly faded off into obscurity, never to be heard from again. Except as the leader of Traffic. And a member of Blind Faith. And Traffic again. And some critically-acclaimed collaborations in the early 1980s with Asian musicians. Oh yeah, and a few major solo hits like Higher Love and Roll With It in the late 80s. Other than that, nothing.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1919 (starts 5/6/19)

    This time around we start with a live set (including two Woodstock recordings that were not included in the film), and then rock out with a whole bunch of tracks making their Rockin' in the Days of Confusion debut. We close it out with a rare non-album B side from the Doors. Rock on!

Artist:     Procol Harum
Title:     Conquistador
Source:     LP: The Best Of Procol Harum (originally released on LP: Live In Concert With The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra)
Writer:     Brooker/Reid
Label:     A&M
Year:     1972
     Procol Harum was formed in 1966 in Southend-on-sea, Essex, England. One of the songs on their 1967 debut album was Conquistador. Five years later the live version of the song, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, was released as a single, becoming the second-biggest hit for the group (after A Whiter Shade Of Pale).

Artist:    Mountain
Title:    Blood Of The Sun
Source:    CD: Woodstock 2
Writer(s):    West/Pappalardi/Collins
Label:    Atlantic (original label: Cotillion)
Year:    1969
    There are conflicting stories concerning this recording of Mountain's Blood Of The Sun. The producers of the anniversary edition of the Woodstock 2 album insist that it was indeed recorded at the legendary rock festival in the summer of 1969. The four-disc Rhino Records collection Back To Yasgur's Farm, however, contains a noticably different recording that, according to that collection's compilers was the actual Woodstock performance of the song. The liner notes for that collection go on to say that the performance used on Woodstock 2 was actually recorded somewhere else and used at the band's insistence rather than the actual Woodstock performance. As this version, which has a slightly slower tempo, giving it a "heavier" feel, is technically a stronger performance of the song, this second story is probably closer to the truth.

Artist:    Janis Joplin
Title:    Summertime
Source:    CD: I Got Dem 'Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama
Writer(s):    Gershwin/Heyward
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 1999
    Not long after the release of the breakthrough Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, vocalist Janis Joplin announced her attention to leave the band once their current bookings were played out. Within days she began putting together a new band. Unlike Big Brother, the Kozmic Blues Band, as it came to be known, was a large ensemble that included keyboards and a horn section. It was this group that took the stage at Woodstock in 1969 to perform a set of songs that include the Big Brother arrangement of George Gershwin's Summertime. Sam Andrew, one of the two lead guitarists from Big Brother And The Holding Company, recreates his original licks on this live recording that is included as a bonus track on the I Got Dem 'Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama CD edition, released in 1999.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    Achilles Last Stand
Source:    LP: Presence
Writer(s):    Page/Plant
Label:    Swan Song
Year:    1976
    When asked what his favorite Led Zeppelin track is, guitarist Jimmy Page, as often as not, picks Achilles Last Stand, from the 1976 album Presence. The track is one of the most complex recordings the band ever made, with something like six guitar overdub tracks and several changes throughout the ten-minute long piece. Robert Plant had suffered a severely broken ankle in a car accident prior to the sessions for Presence, and was in a wheelchair when he recorded his vocals for the album. The song itself was inspired by Page and Plant's international travels in 1975, although the song title itself is a wry reference to Plant's injury.

Artist:    Wishbone Ash
Title:    Lady Whiskey
Source:    CD: Wishbone Ash
Writer(s):    Turner/Turner/Powell/Upton
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1970
    In its own way, the first Wishbone Ash album rocks out as hard as any album released in 1970, and is certainly one of the better debut LPs in rock history. The band would actually soften their sound a touch for later albums, but on tunes like Lady Whiskey they showed that they could hold their own in a world that included bands like Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Led Zeppelin.

Artist:    Mott The Hoople
Title:    Jerkin' Crocus
Source:    45 RPM single B side (originally released on LP: All The Young Dudes
Writer(s):    Ian Hunter
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1972
    After releasing four albums over a period of three years to a lukewarm response at best, England's Mott The Hoople was on the verge of breaking up when David Bowie gave them the song All The Young Dudes. The song became the title track of their fifth LP, which also included several Mott originals such as Jerkin' Crocus. The song was selected to be issued as the B side of the third single released from the album as well.

Artist:    Cheech And Chong
Title:    Peter Rooter
Source:    LP: Los Cochinos
Writer(s):    Marin/Chong
Label:    Ode
Year:    1973
    The shortest track on the third Cheech And Chong LP, Los Cochinos, is Peter Rooter, a parody of the Rotor Rooter plumbing commercials that seemed to pop up several times a day on local TV stations across the nation. Although now mostly forgotten, the Rotor Rooter theme song itself was, at the time, as well known as "It's the real thing" or "stronger than dirt".

Artist:    Genesis
Title:    The Light Lies Down On Broadway/Riding The Scree
Source:    CD: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Writer(s):    Banks/Collins/Gabriel/Hackett/Rutherford
Label:    Rhino/Atlantic
Year:    1974
    Genesis, long before they became pop superstars, were a highly-respected progressive rock band in the early 1970s. That period in the band's history hit its peak in 1974, with the two-LP concept album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. It would, however, turn out to the final album to feature lead vocalist (and primary lyricist) Peter Gabriel, who, for various reasons, decided to embark on a solo career not long after the LP was released. Even while the album was being made, however, Gabriel was being drawn away from the project, first by an offer to pen a movie script, and then by his wife's difficulty pregnancy, which require his frequent absences from the studio. In fact, a few tracks, such as The Light Lies Down On Broadway, actually have lyrics written by other band members such as Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford.

Artist:    Renaissance
Title:    Black Flame
Source:    LP: Turn Of The Cards
Writer(s):    Dunford/Thatcher
Label:    Sire
Year:    1974
    Formed in 1969 by former Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, Renaissance was one of the first bands to merge rock, classical and jazz into a coherent whole. By 1974 the band was incorporating excerpts from classical pieces (mostly from the Romantic period) into what was otherwise progressive rock, with very few jazz elements remaining. The lineup had also changed, with a greater emphasis being placed on the vocals of Annie Haslam, who had joined the group in the early 1970s. Black Flame, from the band's fifth LP, Turn Of The Cards, is fairly representative of Renaissance at its most popular.

Artist:    New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Title:    Garden Of Eden
Source:    European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: New Riders Of The Purple Sage)
Writer(s):    John Dawson
Label:    Sony Music (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1971
    The first New Riders Of The Purple Sage album is, arguably, their best; it's also one of the best country-rock albums ever released. The band itself, closely associated with the Grateful Dead, consisted of guitarist John Dawson, who also wrote every song on the album (including Garden Of Eden), guitarist David Nelson, bassist Dave Torbert, pedal steel guitarist Jerry Garcia and drummer Spencer Dryden, although Garcia only appeared on the first NRPS LP. Stylistically, the album fits well with such Dead classics as Workingman's Dead and American Beauty and LPs such as the Byrds' Sweetheart Of The Rodeo and Poco's early work.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Who Scared You
Source:    CD: Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1969
    The Doors only released two non-album tracks while Jim Morrison was alive. The first of these was Who Scared You, which appeared as the B side of Wishful Sinful, a minor hit from the 1969 album The Soft Parade. Unlike the songs on that album, Who Scared You is credited to the entire band, rather than one or more of its individual members. The song made its album debut in 1972, when it was included in the double-LP compilation Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1918 (starts 4/29/19)

    This week's highlights include a set of Jimi Hendrix Experience tracks that remained unreleased until the 21st century, and a portion of Curt Boettcher's masterpiece: an album called Begin, by the Millennium. We also have the Turtles masquerading as a couple of other bands and Deep Purple with one of the best covers of a Beatles song ever recorded. And that's not even the half of it.

Artist:      Woolies  
Title:     Who Do You Love
Source:      CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Elias McDaniel
Label:     Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:     1966
     Lansing, Michigan was home to the Woolies, who scored a minor hit covering Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love, thanks in large part to the song being issued on Lou Adler's Dunhill Records, which was at that time one of the hottest new labels around.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Kicks
Source:    Rechanneled Stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released on 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Priority (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1966
    Kicks was not the first pop song with a strong anti-drug message, but it was the first one to be a certified hit, making it to the number four spot on the US charts and hitting number one in Canada. It was also the biggest hit for Paul Revere and the Raiders until Indian Reservation went all the way to the top of the charts five years later.

Artist:    13th Floor Elevators
Title:    Kingdom Of Heaven
Source:    CD: The Psychedelic Sounds Of the 13th Floor Elevators
Writer(s):    Powell St. John
Label:    Collectables (original label: International Artists)
Year:    1966
    Before moving out to San Francisco and co-forming Mother Earth with Tracy Nelson, Powell St. John wrote several songs for Austin's 13th Floor Elevators. Among the St. John compositions appearing on the first Elevators LP was Kingdom Of Heaven, a song that meshed well with the band's more spiritual leanings.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Strange Days
Source:    LP: Strange Days
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    One of the first rock albums to not picture the band members on the front cover was the Doors' second LP, Strange Days. Instead, the cover featured several circus performers doing various tricks on a city street, with the band's logo appearing on a poster on the wall of a building. The album itself contains some of the Doors' most memorable tracks, including the title song, which also appears on their greatest hits album despite never being released as a single.

Artist:    Drag Set
Title:    Day And Night
Source:    Mono British import CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Schindler/Brancaccio
Label:    Grapefruit (original label: Go)
Year:    1967
    For every British band to find international success in the mid-60s there were at least a dozen more that were never heard of outside their native land. Some of these bands (such as the Move and the Small Faces) were actually quite popular on their home turf, while others were barely able to scratch out a living and are for the most part long-forgotten. In between were the bands that had enough going for them to score a contract with one of the many new labels popping up, but were never able to get a record on the charts. Among those "in-betweeners" were a band called the Drag Set. They played gigs at the most popular London clubs in 1965 and 1966, which in turn led to them hooking up with Lionel Segal, who owned the Go label. The Drag Set released Day And Night in March of 1967, but the record went nowhere and the by the end of the year the band had renamed itself The Open Mind.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Blue Jay Way
Source:    British import stereo 45 RPM EP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone
Year:    1967
    One night in 1967, while staying at a rented house on Blue Jay Way in the Hollywood hills, Beatle George Harrison got a phone call. Some friends that he was waiting for had gotten lost in the fog and were trying to find their way to the house. Harrison gave them some directions and suggested they ask a police officer for help. To help keep himself awake while waiting for his friends to show up, Harrison wrote a song about the situation that eventually became his only musical contribution to the band's new project, a telefilm called Magical Mystery Tour. Some people consider it the best track in the movie.

Artist:    Status Quo
Title:    Pictures Of Matchstick Men
Source:    Simulated stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Francis Rossi
Label:    Priority (original label: Cadet Concept)
Year:    1967
    The band with the most charted singles in the UK is not the Beatles or even the Rolling Stones. It is, in fact, Status Quo, quite possibly the nearest thing to a real life version of Spinal Tap. Except for Pictures of Matchstick Men, the group has never had a hit in the US. On the other hand, they remain popular in Scandanavia, playing to sellout crowds on a regular basis (yes, they are still together).

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    The Ostrich
Source:    CD: Born To Be Wild-A Retrospective (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and included on LP: Steppenwolf)
Writer(s):    John Kay
Label:    MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1967
    Although John Kay's songwriting skills were still a work in progress on the first Steppenwolf album, there were some outstanding Kay songs on that LP, such as The Ostrich, a song that helped define Steppenwolf as one of the most politically savvy rock bands in history. An edited version of The Ostrich was released several weeks earlier than the album itself as the B side of Steppenwolf's first single, A Girl I Knew.

Artist:    Millennium
Title:    The Know It All/Karmic Dream Sequence #1/There Is Nothing More To Say
Source:    LP: Begin
Writer(s):    Boettcher/Mallory/Fennelly
Label:    Columbia/Sundazed
Year:    1968
    Curt Boettcher, despite looking about 15 years old, was already at 24 an experienced record producer by early 1968, having worked with the Association on their first album, as well as co-producing Sagittarius with Gary Usher and producing his own group, the Ballroom, in 1967. Among the many people he had worked with were multi-instrumentalist Keith Olsen, drummer Ron Edgar and bassist Doug Rhodes, all of which had been members of Sean Bonniwell's Music Machine in 1966-67. Following the release of the debut Eternity's Children album, which Olsen and Boettcher co-produced, the two formed a new group called the Millennium. In addition to the aforementioned Music Machine members, the Millennium included singer/songwriter/guitarists Lee Mallory, Sandy Salisbury, and Michael Fennelly, all of who Boettcher had worked with on various studio projects, and Joey Spec, who would go on to form his own Sonic Past Music label many years later. Working on state-of-the-art 16 track equipment at Columbia's Los Angeles studios, they produced the album Begin, which, at that point in time, was the most expensive album ever made and only the second (after Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends) to use 16-track technology. The only problem was that by the time the album was released in mid-1968, public tastes had changed radically from just a year before, with top 40 listeners going for the simple bubble-gum tunes coming from the Buddah label and album fans getting into louder, heavier groups like Blue Cheer and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. There was no market for the lavishly produced Begin album, which failed to chart despite getting rave reviews from the press. A second Millennium album was shelved, and the members went their separate ways. In more recent years the album has attained legendary status as, in the words of one critic, "probably the single greatest 60s pop record produced in L.A. outside of the Beach Boys".

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Help!
Source:    LP: Shades Of Deep Purple
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Tetragrammaton
Year:    1968
    It takes brass for a band to include a Beatles cover on their debut LP, especially if they have chosen to completely rearrange the song, a la Vanilla Fudge. Nonetheless, that is exactly what happened on the album Shades Of Deep Purple, which hit the stands in 1968. The Beatles cover song in question is the classic Help! Deep Purple gives it a kind of slow, soft treatment that is both light years away from the original, and, in my opinion, quite an enjoyable listen.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    Think About It
Source:    Mono Australian import CD: Over, Under, Sideways, Down (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Relf/McCarty/Page
Label:    Raven (original label: Epic)
Year:    1968
    The final Yardbirds record was a single released in early 1968. Although the group made TV appearances in Europe to promote the A side, Good Night Josephine, it is the B side of that record, Think About It, that deserves to be considered the last Yardbirds song. Instrumentally the song sounds a lot like something off of Led Zeppelin's first couple of albums. Once Keith Relf's vocals come in, however, there is no doubt that this is vintage Yardbirds, and quite possibly the best track of the entire Jimmy Page era.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    It Won't Be Wrong
Source:    LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!
Writer(s):    McGuinn/Gerst
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    The Byrds' It Won't Be Wrong, by all rights, should have been a hit single, and it almost was, despite the failure of Columbia Records to properly promote the song. Written in 1964 by Jim (now Roger) McGuinn and his friend Harvey Gerst, the song was first released as the B side of a single by the Beefeaters, an early version of the Byrds, but was recut in late 1965 for inclusion on the Turn! Turn! Turn! album. Early in 1966, the song was also released as the B side of the single Set You Free This Time. That, as it turns out, was a mistake, as disc jockeys soon began playing It Won't Be Wrong instead. Columbia was slow to react to this move, however, and continued to promote Set You Free This Time, releasing it as a single on their CBS label in the UK. After finally noticing that It Won't Be Wrong was getting more airplay in the US, the label re-released the record in the UK with the sides officially reversed, but by then there was too much confusion associated with the single and neither side charted there. Meanwhile, despite the lack of promotion, It Won't Be Wrong managed to make it to the #63 spot in the US.

Artist:    Fleur De Lys
Title:    Circles
Source:    CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Rhino (original label: Immediate)
Year:    1966
    Circles was a song by the Who that was originally slated to be released in the UK on the Brunswick label as a follow-up to the highly successful My Generation. A dispute between the band and the label and their producer, Shel Talmy, led to the Who switching labels and releasing another song, Substitute, in its place, with Circles (retitled Instant Party) on the B side of the record. When Talmy slapped the band with a legal injunction, the single was withdrawn, and another band, the Fleur De Lys, took advantage of the situation, recording their own version of Circles and releasing it on the Immediate label. Just to make things more confusing Brunswick issued the Who's version of Circles as the B side of A Legal Matter later the same month.

Artist:     Stephen Stills
Title:     Love the One You're With
Source:     45 RPM single (stereo promo pressing)
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
     Depending on your point of view Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young) have either split up several times over the years or have never actually split up at all. It was during one of these maybe split-ups that Stills recorded Love the One You're With, one of his most popular tunes. Presumably he and singer Judy Collins were no longer an item at that point.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Lover Man
Source:    CD: Valleys Of Neptune
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2010
    Valleys Of Neptune is a collection of unreleased tracks featuring (mostly) members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Nearly all the tracks, including Lover Man, are credited to Hendrix, although there are a couple of blues covers on the disc as well. Although Valleys Of Neptune contains an album's worth of material, it all sounds like jams that were not intended to be heard by the general public. Whether some of these tracks may have developed into actual compositions is a question that will probably never be answered, as the group split up not long after these recordings were made and Hendrix himself changed musical directions over the next year.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Foxy Lady (live in studio)
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 2018
    In November of 1967 the Jimi Hendrix Experience was still very much an underground phenomenon in the US. Their June appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival had introduced the band to an audience that numbered in the thousands, and their records were being played heavily on college radio, but for the most part mainstream America was still unaware of them. In Europe, however, it was an entirely different story. Jimi Hendrix was the hottest thing on the London scene by the time 1967 started; it wasn't long before the word spread to the continent about the outrageously talented guitarist with an equally outrageous stage presence. Most of that year was spent touring Europe, including stops at various TV and radio studios in several countries. One of these was in the Netherlands, where the Experience performed Foxy Lady live in the studio in November of 1967. The recording of this performance has surfaced as the non-album B side of the Lover Man single released (in limited quantity) for Record Store Day 2018.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Sunshine Of Your Love
Source:    CD: Valleys Of Neptune
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown/Clapton
Label:    Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2010
    One of Cream's biggest hits, Sunshine Of Your Love was dedicated to Jimi Hendrix. In return, the Jimi Hendrix Experience often performed their own instrumental version of the song, adding an extended improvisational section to the piece. On February 16, 1969 the group recorded this studio version of the tune, which runs nearly seven minutes.

Artist:     Blues Magoos
Title:     (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet
Source:     LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer:     Esposito/Gilbert/Scala
Label:     Rhino (original label: Mercury)
Year:     1966
     The Blues Magoos (original spelling: Bloos, not surprising for a bunch of guys from the Bronx) were either the first or second band to use the word psychedelic in an album title. Both they and the 13th Floor Elevators released their debut albums in 1966 and it is unclear which one actually came out first. What's not in dispute is the fact that Psychedelic Lollipop far outsold The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. One major reason for this was the fact that (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet was a huge national hit in early 1967, which helped album sales considerably. Despite having a unique sound and a look to match (including electric suits), the Magoos were unable to duplicate the success of Nothin' Yet on subsequent releases, partially due to Mercury's pairing of two equally marketable songs on the band's next single without indicating to stations which one they were supposed to be playing.

Artist:     Moby Grape
Title:     Omaha
Source:     Mono European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Moby Grape)
Writer:     Skip Spence
Label:     Sony Music (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.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    White Room
Source:    LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Wheels Of Fire)
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown
Label:    United Artists (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    In order to get songs played on top 40 radio, record companies made it a practice to shorten album cuts by cutting out extended instrumental breaks and extra verses. This version of the Cream classic White Room, clocking in at just over three minutes, is a typical example.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    Ramble On
Source:    CD: Led Zeppelin II
Writer(s):    Page/Plant
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1969
    Some songs grab you the first time you hear them, but soon wear out their welcome. Others take a while to catch on, but tend to stay with you for a lifetime. Then there are those rare classics that manage to hook you from the start and yet never get old. One such song is Led Zeppelin's Ramble On, from their second LP. The song starts with a Jimmy Page acoustic guitar riff played high up on the neck with what sounds almost like footsteps keeping time (but turns out to be John Bonham playing bongo style on a guitar case). John Paul Jones soon adds one of the most melodic bass lines ever to appear in a rock song, followed closely by Robert Plant's Tolkien-influenced lyrics. For the chorus the band gets into electric mode, with guitar, bass and drums each contributing to a unique staggered rhythmic pattern. The song also contains one of Page's most memorable solos, that shares tonal qualities with Eric Clapton's work on Cream's Disraeli Gears album. Although I usually don't pay much attention to lyrics, one set of lines from Ramble On has stuck with me for a good many years:
"'Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor I met a girl so fair.
But Gollum and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her."
Fun stuff, that!

Artist:    Cross Fires (Turtles)
Title:    Surfer Dan
Source:    CD: The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands
Writer:    The Turtles
Label:   Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1968
    In 1968 the Turtles decided to self-produce four recordings without the knowledge of their record label, White Whale. When company executives heard the tapes they rejected all but one of the recordings. That lone exception was Surfer Dan, which was included on the band's 1968 concept album Battle of the Bands. The idea was that each track (or band, as the divisions on LPs were sometimes called) would sound like it was recorded by a different group. As the Turtles had originally evolved out of a surf band called the Crossfires, the name Cross Fires was the obvious choice for the Surfer Dan track. The song was also chosen to be the B side of Elenore, the Turtles biggest hit of 1968.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    She's My Girl
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Bonner/Gordon
Label:    Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1967
    A favorite among the Turtles' members themselves, She's My Girl is full of hidden studio tricks that are barely (if at all) audible on the final recording. Written by Gary Bonner and Al Gordon, the same team that came up with Happy Together, the song is a worthy follow up to that monster hit.

Artist:    Quad City Ramblers (Turtles)
Title:    Too Much Heartsick Feeling
Source:    CD: The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands
Writer(s):    The Turtles
Label:    Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1968
    Fans of modern country music probably have no idea what country music sounded like in the 1960s. It was not entirely unlike this 1968 recording of Too Much Heartsick Feeling by the Quad City Ramblers, who were actually the Turtles on the album The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands. I have no idea which band member is actually doing the vocals on this track, nor do I care to know, truth be told.

Artist:    Sonics
Title:    Strychnine
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released on LP: Here Are The Sonics)
Writer:    Gerry Roslie
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1965
    From 1965 we have a band that maintains a cult following to this day: the legendary Sonics, generally considered one of the foundation stones of the Seattle music scene. Although the majority of the songs on their albums were cover tunes, virtually all of their originals are now considered punk classics; indeed, the Sonics are often cited as the first true punk rock band.

Artist:     Young Rascals
Title:     What Is The Reason
Source:     LP: Collections
Writer:     Cavaliere/Brigati
Label:     Warner Special Products/Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:     1967
     My first high school dance was a Sadie Hawkins Day dance held at the General H. H. Arnold High School gym in Weisbaden, Germany. Onstage was a band of military brats calling themselves the Collections, so called because they covered every tune on the second Young Rascals album. That night (probably the best night of my entire freshman year, thanks to a sophomore whose name I've long since forgotten but who looked a lot like Cindy Williams in American Graffiti) inspired me to A): talk my parents into buying a cheap guitar and amp so I could join up with other guys who lived in our housing area to form "The Abundance Of Love", aka "The Haze And Shades Of Yesterday", aka "The Shades", and B) find and buy a copy of the Collections album (which ended up taking over 40 years to do).

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Coloured Rain
Source:    CD: Smiling Phases (originally released on LP: Heaven Is In Your Mind)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    Traffic, in its early days, was a band with an almost schizophrenic identity. On the one hand there was Steve Winwood, who was equally adept at guitar, keyboards and vocals and was generally seen as the band's leader, despite being its youngest member. His opposite number in the band was Dave Mason, an early example of the type of singer/songwriter that would be a major force in popular music in the mid-1970s. The remaining members of the band, drummer/vocalist Jim Capaldi and flautist/saxophonist Chris Wood, tended to fall somewhere between the two, although they more often sided with Winwood in his frequent creative disputes with Mason. One of these disputes involved the choice of the band's second single. Mason wanted to follow up the successful Paper Sun with his own composition, Hole In My Shoe, while the rest of the band preferred the group composition, Coloured Rain. Mason won that battle, but would end up leaving the band before the release of the group's first LP, Mr. Fantasy. This in turn led to the album being revised considerably for its US release, which was issued under a completely different title, Heaven Is In Your Mind, with most of Mason's contributions, along with his picture, being excised from the album (although, oddly enough, Hole In My Shoe, which was not on the original LP, was included on the US album). One final example of the band's schizophrenic nature was in the way the group was marketed. In the US, Traffic was, from the beginning, perceived as a serious rock band along the lines of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In their native land, however, they were, thanks in part to the top 40 success of both Paper Sun and Hole In My Shoe as well as Winwood's fame as lead vocalist for the Spencer Davis Group, dismissed as a mere pop group. Mason would rejoin and leave the group a couple more times before achieving solo success in the mid-70s with the hit We Just Disagree, while Traffic would go on to become a staple of progressive FM rock radio in the US.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Chauffeur Blues
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Lester Melrose (disputed, may have been Lizzie Douglas)
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    The Jefferson Airplane's original female vocalist was Signe Toly Anderson. Unlike Grace Slick, who basically shared lead vocals with founder Marty Balin, Anderson mostly functioned as a backup singer. The only Airplane recording to feature Anderson as a lead vocalist was Chauffeur Blues, a cover of an old Memphis Minnie tune. The song was featured on the band's first LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    I've Got A Way Of My Own
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    L. Ransford
Label:    Sundazed/Reprise
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 2016
    Not all of the songs the Electric Prunes recorded during sessions for their debut LP, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), ended up being included on the album itself. Among the unused tracks was a cover of a Hollies B side called I've Got A Way Of My Own. The song was actually one of the first tunes that the band recorded, while they were still, in the words of vocalist James Lowe, "searching for a sound and style we could capture on a record." Following the sessions the band decided that harmonies were better left to other groups, and I've Got A Way Of My Own remained unreleased until the 21st century.

Artist:    Outsiders   
Title:    Lost In My World
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 4-Pop pt. 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    King/Kelley
Label:    Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1966
    Once upon a time, in the legendary city called Cleveland, Ohio, there was a (mostly) instrumental R&B cover band called the Starfires. Formed in 1958 by a then-15-year-old Tom King, the Starfires cut an early single for the local Pama label, which was owned by King's uncle. The Starfires remained a popular local act for several years, gradually modifying their sound to suit changing tastes. The most significant change was the addition of lead vocalist Sonny Geraci, who sang on their late 1965 recording of Time Won't Let Me, a tune co-written by King and his cousin, Chet Kelley. Someone from Capitol Records heard the recording and the Starfires were signed to the label in early 1966, changing their name to the Outsiders at the same time. Time Won't Let Me became a top 5 hit in spring of 1966. The band's third single for the label was a cover of the Isley Brothers tune Respectable that made it into the top 20 in late summer of the same year. The B side of Respectable, Lost In My World, is stylistically similar to Time Won't Let Me, and was composed by the same songwriting team. The Outsiders ended up releasing four albums for Capitol before splintering off into two separate groups, both of which used the name Outsiders. King, as founder, ultimately won the rights to the name. Sonny Geraci, leader of the rival group, ended up rechristening his band Climax, scoring a top 10 hit with a song called Precious And Few a couple of years later.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 1918 (starts 4/29/19)

    This week's show includes a whole bunch of tunes from 1969, including an entire LP side from San Francisco's It's A Beautiful Day. We end on a more regional note, with album tracks from Detroit's Frijid Pink and Denver's Sugarloaf.

Artist:    Joni Mitchell
Title:    Conversation
Source:    LP: Ladies Of The Canyon
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1970   
    Ladies Of The Canyon, the third Joni Mitchell album, is considered to be the beginning of her transition from guitar-oriented folk music to a piano dominated jazzier style. Her folky side is well represented on the album, however, by songs like Conversation. Howard Kaylan, in his book Shell Shocked, later said that Conversation's lyrics referred to Turtles bandmate Mark Volman, who was in a bad marraige at the time.

Artist:    It's A Beautiful Day
Title:    Bombay Calling/Bulgaria/Time Is
Source:    CD: It's A Beautiful Day
Writer:    LaFlamme/Wallace
Label:    San Francisco Sound (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    The story of It's A Beautiful Day shows a dark side of late 60s San Francisco. In mid 1967 It's A Beautiful Day, formed by former Utah Symphony violinist David LaFlamme and his wife, keyboardist Linda LaFlamme, caught the attention of Matthew Katz, who was managing both Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. The LaFlammes were not aware of the fact that both of the other bands were trying desperately to get out of their contracts with Katz, and were more than happy to sign a contract with him. Katz immediately shipped It's A Beautiful Day off to Seattle, where they became the house band at a club called the San Francisco Sound that was owned by Katz himself. The band lived upstairs from the club and had no transportation; their only money was a meager food allowance provided by Katz. It was in this environment, during the rainy Seattle winter, that the band composed the music that would become their first LP. Side one was highlighted by the songs White Bird and Hot Summer Day, while the second side was a continuous piece of music that was banded as three separate tracks, Bombay Calling, Bulgaria and Time Is (probably to increase royalties). Deep Purple used the opening riff from Bombay Calling for Child In Time on their 1970 album Deep Purple In Rock. Conversely, It's A Beautiful Day "borrowed" the main riff and much of the arrangement of Deep Purple's Hard Road (from their 1968 LP The Book Of Taleisyn) for Don And Dewey, the opening track of their own 1970 LP, Marrying Maiden.

Artist:     Blind Faith
Title:     Well, All Right
Source:     CD: Blind Faith
Writer:     Petty/Holly/Allison/Mauldin
Label:     Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:     1969
     Supergroup Blind Faith was made up of members of Cream (Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker), Family (Rick Grech) and Traffic (Steve Winwood). The group only recorded one LP before disbanding, and almost all of the material on that album was written by members of the band. The lone exception was a heavily-modified arrangement of Buddy Holly's Well All Right, which sounds more like a Traffic song than any other track on the LP.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Graveyard Train
Source:    LP: Bayou Country
Writer(s):    John Fogerty
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1969
    The influence of Chess-era bluemen like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters is evident on Graveyard Train, from Creedence Clearwater Revival's second LP, Bayou Country. The lyrics are reminiscent of an even earlier time, when such subjects as death (with supernatural overtones) were often dealt with by members of chain gangs in song.

Artist:    Arlo Guthrie
Title:    Motorcycle Song (Significance Of The Pickle)
Source:    The Best Of Arlo Guthrie
Writer(s):    Arlo Guthrie
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1968
    To be honest, I am not sure when this particular recording was made. Arlo Guthrie originally recorded the Motorcycle Song for his 1967 debut album, Alice's Restaurant. The first live recording of the song was released the following year on the LP Arlo. However, his reference to having been performing the song for twelve years makes me think this is a mid-seventies performance. It's even possible that the greatest hits album, issued in 1977, was the first time this particular performance was released.

Artist:     Who
Title:     Behind Blue Eyes
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer:     Pete Townshend
Label:     Decca
Year:     1971
     One of the most iconic Who songs ever, Behind Blue Eyes continues to get played on commercial FM stations, both in its original form and the more recent cover version by Limp Bizkit. Well, I might be wrong about that last part. I mean, I've never heard the Limp Bizkit version played on the radio. Does anyone play Limp Bizkit at all anymore, for that matter?

Artist:    Frijid Pink
Title:    Boozin' Blues
Source:    German import CD: Frijid Pink
Writer(s):    Thompson/Beaudry
Label:    Repertoire (original label: Parrot)
Year:    1970
    Although never considered a first-tier band, Frijid Pink was a solid component in Detroit's "second-wave" of rock bands in the late 1960s. Formed in 1967, when fellow Detroiters Mitch Ryder and ? And The Mysterians were already riding high, Frijid Pink came up around the same time as the Amboy Dukes and The Stooges, among others. Despite releasing some of the hardest rocking singles of the time, they experience limited commercial success until their cover of House Of The Rising Sun became an international smash hit in 1970. A self-titled album soon followed which included several of their earlier singles, as well as originals like the sultry Boozin' Blues. Subsequent efforts by the band failed to equal the success of House Of The Rising Sun, however, and within a couple of years Frijid Pink had melted back into the shadows.

Artist:    Sugarloaf
Title:    Rollin' Hills
Source:    LP: Spaceship Earth
Writer(s):    Robert Yeazel
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1970
    Following the success of their first LP and its hit single Green Eyed Lady, Denver's Sugarloaf opted to add a second guitarist, Robert Yeazel, for their second album, Spaceship Earth. The result was an album that was much more developed musically than the band's first effort, although it did not have a huge hit single to help it out in the sales department. Yeazel was the credited songwriter on some of the album's stronger tracks, including Rollin' Hills, which closes out the first side of the LP.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 1917 (starts 4/22/19)

    We haven't had all that many artists' sets lately, so this week we have three of 'em. We also have sets from 1965, 1967 and 1968 (the last of which takes up the entire final segment of the show), and, to start things off, a set that starts in 1964 with the Kinks.

Artist:     Kinks
Title:     All Day And All Of The Night
Source:     45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer:     Ray Davies
Label:     Eric (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1964
     Following up on their worldwide hit You Really Got Me, the Kinks proved that lightning could indeed strike twice with All Day And All Of The Night. Although there have been rumors over the years that the guitar solo on the track may have been played by studio guitarist Jimmy Page, reliable sources insist that it was solely the work of Dave Davies, who reportedly slashed his speakers to achieve the desired sound.

Artist:    Hollies
Title:    Look Through Any Window
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Gouldman/Silverman
Label:    Imperial
Year:    1965
    Although the Hollies were far more popular in their native England than in the US, they did have their fair share of North American hits. The first Hollies tune to crack the US top 40 was Look Through Any Window, released in December of 1965 and peaking at #33 in early 1966. The song did even better in Canada, going all the way to the #3 spot.

Artist:      Opus 1
Title:     Back Seat '38 Dodge
Source:      Mono CD: Where the Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Christensen/Becker/Becker/Parker
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mustang)
Year:     1966
     Long Beach, California was home to Opus 1, who released the high-powered surf-tinged Back Seat '38 Dodge on L.A.'s Mustang label in 1966. The title refers to a controversial sculpture that suburbanites were talking about at the time.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Everydays
Source:    LP: Buffalo Springfield Again
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967
    Everydays has the distinction of being both the first song recorded for the album Buffalo Springfield Again and the last one to be released as a single, albeit a B side. Such was the quality of Stephen Stills's songwriting at this point in his career that a strong song like Everydays has gone completely overlooked in the years since it was released.

Artist:    George Harrison
Title:    Ski-ing
Source:    CD: Wonderwall Music
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Apple
Year:    1968
    Starting in 1966 George Harrison showed an intense interest in the music of sitarist Ravi Shankar, and in Indian classical music in general, even to the point of learning to play the sitar himself. His first composition along those lines was Love You To, from the Revolver album, followed in 1967 by Within You Without You from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1968 Harrison took it a step further by composing and performing music for the soundtrack of a film by director Joe Massot called called Wonderwall. The film itself dealt with a wall separating two apartments occupied by individuals from extremely different backgrounds (a lonely college professor and a Vogue model), and a small gap in the wall itself creating a bridge between the two. Harrison used the film as a springboard to fuse music from Eastern (Indian classical) and Western (rock) traditions, introducing Western audiences to various Indian instruments in the process. The album, Wonderwall Music, was Harrison's first solo project as well as the first album released on the Apple label (predating the White album by several weeks). The album featured several guest musicians, including Eric Clapton, who is probably the lead guitarist on Ski-ing, the shortest track on the album. Although Wonderwall Music was not a commercial success at the time of its release, it has since come to be highly regarded as a forerunner of both electronica and world music.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:        Fag
Source:    LP: Monster
Writer(s):    Byron/St. Nicholas/Edmonton
Label:     Dunhill
Year:        1969
       Fag, from the album Monster is, to my knowledge, the only blues instrumental Steppenwolf ever recorded. Thanks to Associate Producer Greg Cotterill for the donation of this LP to the show from his personal collection.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Snowblind Friend
Source:    LP: Abc Collection (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf 7)
Writer(s):    Hoyt Axton
Label:    ABC (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1970
    One of the most popular tracks from the first Steppenwolf album was a Hoyt Axton tune called The Pusher. For their next few albums the group wrote most of their own material, but included another Axton tune, Snowblind Friend, on their seventh LP. Although not released as a single, the tune did well on progressive rock radio stations, and is generally considered one of their better tunes from 1970. The band had gone through a few personnel changes by that point, and the song features new members Larry Byrom (guitar) and George Biondo (bass), both of which had been members of a band called T.I.M.E. before replacing Michael Monarch and Nick St. Nicholas in Steppenwolf.
  
Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    From Here To There Eventually
Source:    LP: Monster
Writer:    Kay/McJohn/Edmonton
Label:    Dunhill
Year:    1969
    The final track of Steppenwolf's fourth LP, Monster, is a perfect example of the band's typical hard-driving beat and John Kay's distinctive vocal style. The album itself is generally considered to be Steppenwolf's most blatantly political.

Artist:     Human Beinz
Title:     Nobody But Me
Source:     Mono CD: Battle Of The Bands-Vol. Two (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Ron, Rudy and O'Kelley Isley
Label:     Rhino (original label: Capitol)
Year:     1967
     The Human Beinz were a band that had been around since 1964 doing mostly club gigs in the Youngstown, Ohio area as the Premiers. In the late 60s they decided to update their image with a name more in tune with the times and came up with the Human Beingz. Unfortunately someone at Capitol misspelled their name on the label of Nobody But Me, and after the song became a national hit the band was stuck with the new spelling. The band split up in 1969, but after Nobody But Me was featured in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill: Vol.1, original leader Ting Markulin reformed the band with a new lineup that has appeared in the Northeastern US in recent years.

Artist:    Move
Title:    I Can Hear The Grass Grow
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969
Writer(s):    Roy Wood
Label:    Rhino (original label: Deram)
Year:    1967
    One of the most popular British bands from 1966-1969 was the Move. Formed by members of various beat bands, the Move consisted of Carl Wayne (vocals), Trevor Burton (guitar, vocals), Roy Wood (guitar, vocals), "Ace" Kefford (bass, vocals) and Bev Bevan, the group scored hit after hit on the British charts, yet never broke the US top 40. Why this should be is a mystery, considering the sheer quality of tunes like I Can Hear The Grass Grow. Written, as were most of the Move's hits, by Roy Wood, I Can Hear The Grass Grow was the band's second single, and ended up in the #5 spot on the British charts. Eventually the Move would add Jeff Lynne to the lineup and form, as a side project, a new band called the Electric Light Orchestra, which became an internationally successful band in the 1970s.

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:    Who
Title:    Much Too Much
Source:    Mono CD: The Who Sings My Generation
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1965
    The Who's "maximum R&B" period is on full display on Much Too Much, from the band's 1965 debut LP, My Generation. Although the band later said that they felt rushed in the studio while making the album, it is now considered one of the essential albums of British rock.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Excuse, Excuse
Source:    Mono British import CD: Singles As & Bs (originally released on LP: The Seeds and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Sky Saxon
Label:    GNP Crescendo/Big Beat
Year:    1966
    Although their management branded them as the original flower power band, the Seeds have a legitimate claim to being one of the first punk-rock bands as well. A prime example is Excuse, Excuse, from their 1966 debut LP, The Seeds. Whereas a more conventional song of the time might have been an angst-ridden tale of worry that perhaps the girl in question did not return the singer's feelings, Sky Saxon's lyrics (delivered with a sneer that would do Johnny Rotten proud) are instead a scathing condemnation of said girl for not being straight up honest about the whole thing.
 
Artist:    Animals
Title:    Worried Life Blues
Source:    Mono LP: The Animals On Tour
Writer(s):    Maceo Merriweather
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1965
    With House Of The Rising Sun riding high on the US charts, the Animals made their first visit to the US in late 1964, taking every opportunity to visit local record shops in search of vintage R&B records that were virtually impossible to find in their native England. They then returned home and recorded their 1965 LP The Animals On Tour, doing cover versions of many of the records they had scored on their tour. Among those tunes was Worried Life Blues, originally recorded by Big Maceo Merriweather in 1941.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Spoonful
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released in UK on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Reaction)
Year:    1966
    When the album Fresh Cream was released by Atco in the US it was missing one track that was on the original UK version of the album: the band's original studio version of Willie Dixon's Spoonful. A live version of Spoonful was included on the LP Wheels of Fire, but it wasn't until the 1970 soundtrack album for the movie Homer that the studio version was finally released in the US. Unfortunately the compilers of that album left out the last 25 seconds or so from the original recording.

Artist:    Ten Years After
Title:    Love Until I Die
Source:    CD: Ten Years After
Writer(s):    Alvin Lee
Label:    Deram
Year:    1967
    Alvin Lee takes the classic Crossroads riff and runs with it in an entirely unexpected direction on Love Until I Die, from the first Ten Years After album. The song also features Lee on harmonica, an instrument he seldom returned to after 1967.

Artist:    Gong
Title:    Tropical Fish: Selene
Source:    European import CD: Camembert Electrique (originally released on LP in France)
Writer(s):    Daevid Allen
Label:    Charly/Snapper (original label: BYG Actuel)
Year:    1971
    It's almost impossible to describe Gong. They had their roots in British psychedelia, founder Daevid Allen having been a member of Soft Machine, but are also known as pioneers of space-rock. The Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, from 1973-74, is considered a landmark of the genre, telling the story of such characters as Zero the Hero and the Pot Head Pixies from Planet Gong. The groundwork for the trilogy was actually laid in 1971, when the album Camembert Electrique was recorded (and released) in France on the BYG Actuel label. The final full-length track on that album, Tropical Fish: Selene, is fairly indicative of the state of Gong at that time.

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 the highly listenable D.C.B.A.-25 from Surrealistic Pillow. Kantner said later that the title simply referred 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:    Run Around
Source:    Mono LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Balin/Kantner
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    The first Jefferson Airplane album was dominated by the songwriting of the band's founder, Marty Balin, both as a solo writer and as a collaborator with other band members. Run Around, from Balin and rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner, is fairly typical of the early Jefferson Airplane sound.

Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     Somebody To Love
Source:     Mono 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 Project
Title:     Love Will Endure
Source:     CD: Anthology (originally released on LP: Live At Town Hall with ambient live audience overdubs)
Writer:     Patrick Sky
Label:     Polydor (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year:     Recorded 1966; released 1967
     Steve Katz had more of a folk background than the other members of the Blues Project, as evidenced by this cover of the Patrick Sky tune Love Will Endure. The song was actually recorded between the first and second Blues Project albums, but was not released until the third album, Live At Town Hall, which was a mixture of actual live recordings and studio tracks with the sounds of a live audience overdubbed onto them to make them sound like live recordings. Why anyone would want to do that is beyond me, but it probably has something to do with the fact that by the time the album was released Al Kooper was no longer a member and the label wanted the album to include as much Kooper as possible.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    No Time Like The Right Time
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Al Kooper
Label:    Rhino (original label: Verve Forecast)
Year:    1967
    The Blues Project were ahead of their time. They were the first jam band. They virtually created the college circuit for touring rock bands. Unfortunately, they also existed at a time when having a hit single was the considered a necessity. The closest the Blues Project ever got to a hit single was No Time Like The Right Time, which peaked at # 97 and stayed on the charts for all of two weeks. Personally, I rate it among the top 5 best songs of the psychedelic era.

Artist:     Blues Project
Title:     Two Trains Running
Source:     CD: The Blues Project Anthology (originally released on LP: Projections)
Writer:     McKinley Morganfield
Label:     Polydor (original label: Verve Folkways)
Year:     1966
     My first two years as a student at the University of New Mexico were spent living off-campus in a large house shared by five other people (a varying number of which were also students). One day while rummaging through the basement I ran across a couple boxes full of reel-to-reel tapes. As I was the only person living there with a reel-to-reel machine and nobody seemed to know where the tapes had come from, I appropriated them for my own use. Unfortunately, many of the tapes were unlabeled, so all I could do was make a guess as to artists and titles of the music on them. One of those tapes was labelled simply "Love Sculpture". It wasn't until a fortuitous trip to a local thrift store a couple of years later that I realized that the slow version of Two Trains Running on the tape was not Love Sculpture at all, but was in fact the Blues Project, from their Projections album. This slowed down version of the Muddy Waters classic has what is considered to be one of the great accidental moments in recording history. About 2/3 of the way through Two Trains Running, Danny Kalb realized that one of the strings on his guitar had gone out of tune, and managed to retune it on the fly in such a way that it sounded like he had planned the whole thing.

Artist:     Them
Title:     Time Out For Time In
Source:     LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s):    Lane/Pulley
Label:     Tower
Year:     1968
     After Van Morrison left Them to embark on a successful solo career, the rest of the band continued to make records. The first effort was an offshoot group made up of former members of the band (who had left while Morrison was still fronting the group) calling themselves the Belfast Gypsys, who released one LP in 1967. The current band, meanwhile, had returned to their native Ireland and recruited Kenny McDowell as their new lead vocalist. They soon relocated to California, recording two LPs for Tower Records in 1968. The second of these was a collaborative effort between Them and the songwriting team of Tom Pulley and Vivian Lane. The opening track of the LP, Time Out For Time In, is a good example of the direction the band was moving in at that time.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    As The World Rises And Falls
Source:    CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Morgan
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's third album for Reprise, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil, is generally considered their best, and for good reason. The album includes some of guitarist Ron Morgan's finest contributions, including the gently flowing As The World Rises And Falls. Even Bob Markley's lyrics, which could run the range from inane to somewhat disturbing, here come across as poetic and original. Unfortunately for the band, Morgan was by this time quite disenchanted with the whole thing, and would often not even show up to record. Nonetheless, the band continued on for a couple more years (and two more albums) before finally calling it quits in 1970.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Jigsaw Puzzle
Source:    CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    Jigsaw Puzzle, the longest track on the Beggar's Banquet album, comes across as a wry look at the inner workings of a rock and roll band like, say, the Rolling Stones. Founder Brian Jones's only contribution to the recording is some soaring mellotron work toward the end of the song. Not long after the track was recorded, Jones was fired from the band.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Fanny Mae
Source:    Czech Republic import LP: Children Of The Future
Writer(s):    Buster Brown
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1968
    The 1968 album Children Of The Future, by the Steve Miller Band, contains a much more eclectic mix of songs than the debut albums of other San Francisco bands of the same era. Perhaps it was because of Miller's own background, which included influences from Texas and Chicago. Or it could have been the influence of producer Glyn Johns, and the fact that the album was recorded in London rather than at a California studio. Whatever the reason, the more psychedelic first side of the LP is balanced out by songs like Fanny Mae, a #1 R&B hit for Buster Brown in 1960.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Gypsy Eyes
Source:    CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released on LP: Electric Ladyland)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    Electric Ladyland, the last album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was a double LP mixture of studio recordings and live jams in the studio with an array of guest musicians. Gypsy Eyes is a good example of Hendrix's prowess at the mixing board as well as on guitar.