https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/349500-pe-2050
This is the last "regular" episode of Stuck in the Psychedelic Era this year. Next week it's the annual Yule show, followed by an all-1970 year-end special. From there, for better or worse, it's onward into 2021. This week we have a couple artists' sets, a few sets from specific years, and a few sets that progress through the years one at a time. In other words, a typical show.
Artist: Love
Title: My Little Red Book
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s): Bacharach/David
Label: Rhino (original label: Elektra)
Year: 1966
The first rock record ever released by Elektra Records was a single by Love called My Little Red Book. The track itself (which also opens Love's debut LP), is a punked out version of a tune originally recorded by Manfred Mann for the What's New Pussycat movie soundtrack. Needless to say, Love's version was not exactly what Burt Bacharach and Hal David had in mind.
Artist: Shadows Of Knight
Title: You Can't Judge A Book (By The Cover)
Source: CD: Gloria
Writer(s): Willie Dixon
Label: Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year: 1966
Midway through recording their first album, Gloria, the Shadows Of Knight lead guitarist, Warren Rogers, and bassist, Joe Kelley, permanently switched roles. As a result there are relatively few songs in the Shadows catalog that reflect the configuration that made the band popular enough with Chicago area teens to get a recording contract with the local Dunwich label. One of those songs is a cover of Bo Diddley's minor 1962 hit You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover. The Shadows version features some outstanding bass work from Kelley, as well as some or Rogers' best guitar work in the rave-up instrumental break.
Artist: Cyrkle
Title: Why Can't You Give Me What I Want
Source: LP: Red Rubber Ball
Writer(s): Dawes/Friedland
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
The Cyrkle was originally a frat-rock band from Easton, Pennsylvania called the Rhondells consisting of Don Danneman on guitar, Tom Dawes on bass, Marty Freid on drums and Earl Pickens on keyboards. In 1965, while playing gigs in Atlantic City they hooked up with a new manager, Brian Epstein, who promptly renamed them the Cyrkle (the odd spelling provided by John Lennon, a member of another band managed by Epstein). Under the new name and management, the band soon found themselves opening for the Beatles (on their last North American tour) and scoring a top 5 hit with Red Rubber Ball in the summer of 1966. The hit single was soon followed by an album of the same name that included a mix of cover tunes and Cyrkle originals such as Why Can't You Give Me What I Want. It was a volatile time in the pop music world, however, and the Cyrkle soon found themselves sounding a bit dated, and by 1968, after one more LP and a series of singles, each of which did successively worse on the charts than the previous one, the band decided to throw in the towel and become commercial jingle writers. Well, a couple of them (Danneman and Dawes) did, at any rate. Remember "pop pop fizz fizz"? How about the original 7-Up theme? Both came from former members of the Cyrkle.
Artist: Chocolate Watchband
Title: Psychedelic Trip
Source: 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s): Loomis/Flores/Tolby/Aguilar/Andrijasevich
Label: Sundazed
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2012
Psychedelic Trip is essentially an early instrumental version of what would eventually become the title track for the Chocolate Watchband's debut album, No Way Out. Although Psychedelic Trip was a creation of the entire band, producer/manager Ed Cobb (the Ed Wood of psychedelic music) took sole writing credit for the song No Way Out.
Artist: Simon and Garfunkel
Title: The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Source: CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme)
Writer(s): Paul Simon
Label: Columbia
Year: 1966
After the surprise success of the Sound Of Silence single, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (who had disbanded their partnership after the seeming failure of their Wednesday Morning 3 AM album in 1964) hastily reunited to record a new LP, Sounds Of Silence. The album, released in early 1966, consisted mostly of electrified versions of songs previously written by Simon, many of which had appeared in the UK in acoustic form on his 1965 solo LP The Paul Simon Songbook. With their newfound success, the duo set about recording an album's worth of new material. This time around, however, Simon had the time (and knowledge of what was working for the duo) to compose songs that would play to both the strengths of himself and Garfunkel as vocalists, as well as take advantage of the additional instrumentation available to him. The result was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme, featuring tracks such as The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine, an energetic piece satirizing rampant consumerism and the advertising industry.
Artist: Easybeats
Title: Remember Sam
Source: Mono LP: Friday On My Mind
Writer(s): Vanda/Young
Label: United Artists
Year: 1967
Following up on their international hit Friday On My Mind, the Easybeats released their first album under their new contract with United Artists in early 1967. The album came out in Europe first under the title Good Friday, then appeared later the same month in North America, retitled Friday On My Mind and sporting a different cover. Although there were a couple of cover songs on the LP, the bulk of the album's material, including Remember Sam, was written by band members Harry Vanda and George Young, who had emerged the previous year as the band's primary songwriting team.
Artist: Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title: Good Times
Source: CD: The Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released as 45 RPM B side and on LP: Winds Of Change)
Writer: Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Label: Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year: 1967
By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.
Artist: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title: Manic Depression
Source: LP: Are You Experienced?
Writer: Jimi Hendrix
Label: Experience Hendrix/Legacy (original US label: Reprise)
Year: 1967
My dad bought an Akai X-355 reel to reel tape recorder when we moved to Ramstein, Germany in early 1968. It was pretty much the state of the art in home audio technology at the time. The problem was that we did not have a stereo system to hook it into, so he bought a set of Koss headphones to go with it. One of my first purchases was a pre-recorded reel to reel tape of Are You Experienced. The Akai had an auto-reverse system and I would lie on the couch with the headphones on to go to sleep every night listening to songs like Manic Depression. Is it any wonder I turned out like I did?
Artist: Third Bardo
Title: I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time
Source: Mono British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Evans/Pike
Label: Zonophone (original label: Roulette)
Year: 1967
The Third Bardo (the name coming from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) only released one single, but I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time has become, over a period of time, one of the most sought-after records of the psychedelic era. Not much is known of this New York band made up of Jeffrey Moon (vocals), Bruce Ginsberg (drums), Ricky Goldclang (lead guitar), Damian Kelly (bass) and Richy Seslowe (guitar).
Artist: Shy Limbs
Title: Love
Source: Mono British import CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s): John Dickenson
Label: Grapefruit (original label: CBS)
Year: 1969
The volatile nature of the late 60s British rock scene is clearly illustrated by a band called Shy Limbs. Formed by songwriter John Dickenson and vocalist Greg Lake, both former members of a band called Shame, the band also included guitarist/bassist Alan Bowery (from a band called the Actress) and drummer Andy McCulloch. The B side of the band's first single, a song called Love, featured guest guitarist Robert Fripp, who was in the process of forming his own band, King Crimson, at the time. Before the single was even released, Lake had left to join Fripp's band, and Shy Limbs released a second single without him before disbanding, at which time McCulloch replaced Michael Giles in King Crimson. By then, however, Lake had left King Crimson to co-found Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
Artist: Kak
Title: Disbelievin'
Source: British import CD: Kak-Ola (originally released on LP: Kak)
Writer(s): Gary Lee Yoder
Label: Big Beat (original label: Epic)
Year: 1969
Every band has its own unique story. Nonetheless, the story of Kak is more unique than most. The genesis of the group came in the summer of 1967 when guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Gary Lee Yoder, former member of the Oxford Circle, was approached by a guy named Gary Grelecki, who, after expressing regret that the Circle had broken up, asked Yoder if he would interested in recording for CBS. Two months later Grelecki, whose father was a CIA agent fronting as a Far East distributor for CBS Records, called back with the news that he had used his dad's contacts to secure Yoder a deal with Epic, a CBS label. In early 1968 Yoder began recruiting local musicians, including fellow Oxford Circle lead guitarist Dehner Patton, bassist Joe-Dave Damrell (Group 'B'), and drummer Chris Lockheed (the Majestics). What started off as a solo project soon turned into a group effort, and by June the band had worked up enough material to start recording. After only one session, however, the project was delayed and work on the album itself did not begin until September. During this time the band continued to work up new material written by Yoder, such as the upbeat Disbelievin', as well as a few songs co-written by Grelecki. The band had very little equipment of their own, however; as a result they did not do any live performances that summer. Once they were able to commence recording in earnest the entire album took about a week to record. In October, with the recording finished, the band was given $10,000 worth of new equipment to go on the road and promote the album, but soon discovered that they did not have the right kind of onstage chemistry. Without strong touring support, the album got lost among the many outstanding records released in 1969, and Kak disbanded soon after.
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title: Green River
Source: 45 RPM single
Writer(s): John Fogerty
Label: Fantasy
Year: 1969
In 1969 I was living in Germany (on Ramstein AFB, where my father, a career NCO, was stationed), where the choices for radio listening consisted of Radio Luxembourg, which only came in after dark and faded in and out constantly, the American Forces Network (AFN), which had a limited amount of music programming, most of which was targeted to an older demographic, and an assortment of German language stations playing ethnic and classical music. As a result, I didn't listen much to the radio, instead relying on word of mouth from my fellow high school students and hearing songs played on the jukebox at the Ramstein teen club on base. Both Proud Mary and Bad Moon Rising had completely slipped under my radar, in fact, so Green River was the first Creedence Clearwater Revival song I was even aware of. I immediately went out and bought a copy of the single at the BX, and soon had my band covering the record's B side, Commotion. I'm afraid Green River itself was beyond our abilities, however. Nonetheless, I still think of that "garage" band I was in (actually, since we all lived in apartment buildings, we had to practice in the basement of one of them rather than an actual garage) whenever I hear Green River.
Artist: Beatles
Title: Tomorrow Never Knows
Source: CD: Revolver
Writer: Lennon/McCartney
Label: Capitol/EMI
Year: 1966
A few years ago I started to compile an (admittedly subjective) list of the top psychedelic songs ever recorded. Although I never finished ranking the songs, one of the top contenders for the number one spot was Tomorrow Never Knows. The recording is one of the first to use studio techniques such as backwards masking on the lead guitar track and has been hailed as a studio masterpiece.
Artist: Young Rascals
Title: It's Love
Source: CD: Groovin'
Writer(s): Cavaliere/Brigati
Label: Warner Special Products (original label: Atlantic)
Year: 1967
The Young Rascals, still riding high as the kings of "blue-eyed soul", gave us the first hint of their future, more jazz-influenced sound on the last track of the 1967 album Groovin'. It's Love, which was also released as the B side of A Girl Like You, features jazz flautist Hubert Laws, who would contribute to nearly every new Rascals album over the next five years.
Artist: Johnny Winter
Title: Rollin' And Tumblin'
Source: LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: The Progressive Blues Experiment)
Writer(s): McKinley Morganfield
Label: United Artists (original labels: Sonobeat/Imperial)
Year: 1968
Johnny Winter's first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment, was originally released in 1968 on the Texas-based Sonobeat label. A ctitical success, it was picked up and reissued on the Imperial label a year later. Most of the songs on the album are covers of blues classics such as Muddy Waters's Rollin' And Tumblin'.
Artist: Honeycombs
Title: Have I The Right?
Source: Simulated stereo LP: Golden Hits Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Howard/Blaikley
Label: Sire (original US label: Interphon)
Year: 1964
The Honeycombs were originally formed in 1963 as the Sheratons in London by a hairdresser (guitarist Martin Murray), his salon assistant (drummer Honey Lantree), her brother (bassist John Lantree) and two friends (lead guitarist Allan Ward and lead vocalist Denis D'Ell. In early 1964 they were approached by the budding songwriting team of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who were impressed by D'Ell's vocal style. The band was looking for songs they could record for an audition with the notorious record producer Joe Meek, and chose Have I The Right? The audition was successful, and Have I The Right became the third and final #1 hit recorded at Meek's home studio. The group was still calling themselves the Sheratons at that point, but an executive at Pye Records decided to rename the group the Honeycombs, a sort of pun involving the drummer's day job. None of the group's successive records did particularly well, however, and the group disbanded in 1967 following the news of Meek's perpetration of a murder/suicide at the same flat where Have I The Right? had been recorded three years before.
Artist: Sonics
Title: Strychnine
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: Here Are The Sonics)
Writer(s): Gerald 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 songs on their albums were cover tunes, virtually all of their originals, such as Strychnine from their debut LP, are now considered punk classics; indeed, the Sonics, along with their labelmates the Wailers, are often cited as the first true punk rock bands.
Artist: Syndicate Of Sound
Title: Little Girl
Source: CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Baskin/Gonzalez
Label: Rhino (original labels: Hush & Bell)
Year: 1966
San Jose California, despite being a relatively small city in the pre-silicon valley days, was home to a thriving music scene in the mid 60s that produced more than its share of hit records from 1966-68. One of the earliest and biggest of these hits was the Syndicate Of Sound hit Little Girl, which has come to be recognized as one of the top garage-rock songs of all time. Little Girl was originally released regionally in mid 1966 on the Hush label, and reissued nationally by Bell Records a couple months later.
Artist: Tim Buckley
Title: Once Upon A Time
Source: Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68
Writer(s): Buckley/Beckett
Label: Rhino
Year: Recorded 1967, released 2009
Tim Buckley was one of those people whose style it is almost impossible to define. His first album, consisting of songs he and his friend Bob Beckett had written while still attending high school, was released in 1966 on Elektra Records, and was considered folk music. Before recording a follow-up, Buckley switched gears, recording Once Upon A Time in a deliberate effort to achieve commercial success. Elektra Records chose not to release the song, however, and Buckley soon eased into a more eclectic vein, writing songs that incorporated elements of several genres, including folk, rock and even jazz.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Yesterday's Papers
Source: LP: Between The Buttons
Writer: Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
Between The Buttons was the Rolling Stones first album of 1967 and included their first forays into psychedelic music, a trend that would dominate their next LP, Their Satanic Majesties Request. The opening track of Between The Buttons was Yesterday's Papers, a song written in the wake of Mick Jagger's breakup with his girlfriend Chrissie Shrimpton (who, after the album was released, tried to commit suicide). The impact of the somewhat cynical song was considerably less in the US, where it was moved to the # 2 slot on side one to make room for Let's Spend The Night Together, a song that had only been released as a single in their native UK.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: Under My Thumb
Source: CD: Aftermath
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: Abkco (original label: London)
Year: 1966
With the exception of certain Beatle tracks, pretty much every popular song from the beginning of recorded music through the year 1966 had been released as a single either on 45 or 78 RPM records (and for a while in the 1950s, on both). With Under My Thumb, from the Aftermath album, the Rolling Stones proved that someone besides the fab four could record a classic that was available only as a 33 1/3 RPM LP track. In a sense, then, Aftermath can be considered the very foundation of album rock, as more and groups put their most creative energy into making albums rather than singles in the ensuing years. Thanks, Stones.
Artist: Rolling Stones
Title: All Sold Out
Source: LP: Between The Buttons
Writer(s): Jagger/Richards
Label: London
Year: 1967
The Rolling Stones were on the verge of a transition period when they recorded Between The Buttons in August and September of 1966. Much of the album, including tracks like All Sold Out, were pretty much in the same vein as the songs on their previous album, Aftermath, yet Between The Buttons also marked the beginning of the band's brief flirtation with psychedelia as well. From a production standpoint the album suffered from the limitations of 4-track technology, which necessitated the use of "bouncing" (pre-mixing multiple tracks down to a single track to make room for overdubs on the original tracks), a process that often resulted in a loss of audio fidelity. In fact, Mick Jagger later referred to most of Between The Buttons as "more of less rubbish" because of the overall sound quality.
Artist: Bob Dylan
Title: Subterranean Homesick Blues
Source: LP: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Bringing It All Back Home)
Writer(s): Bob Dylan
Label: Columbia
Year: 1965
1965 was the year Bob Dylan went electric, and got his first top 40 hit, Subterranean Homesick Blues, in the process. Although the song, which also led off his Bringing It All Back Home album, stalled out in the lower 30s, it did pave the way for electrified cover versions of Dylan songs by the Byrds and Turtles and Dylan's own Like A Rolling Stone, which would revolutionize top 40 radio. A line from the song itself, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", became the inspiration for a radical offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that called itself the Weathermen (later the Weather Underground).
Artist: Davie Allan And The Arrows
Title: Blue's Theme
Source: Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released on LP: The Wild Ones-soundtrack and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Curb/Allan
Label: Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year: 1966
It is entirely possible that the Chocolate Watchband (or more accurately, the unknown producers of their first recording) were indirectly responsible for giving guitarist Davie Allan his biggest hit single. In 1966, movie producer Roger Corman hired Mike Curb to comeup with soundtrack music for his 1966 film The Wild Ones. Curb in turn contacted his longtime friend (and frequent collaborator) Davie Allan to actually record the soundtrack with his band, the Arrows. The film was released in July of 1966, with the soundtrack album appearing soon after. The obvious high point of the album was the instrumental track Blue's Theme (which technically should have been Blues's Theme, since the film's main character, played by Peter Fonda, was named Heavenly Blues), but at first there were reportedly no plans to release the song as a single. However, late in the year the Chocolate Watch Band were making their very first visit to a recording studio, and were asked to knock out a quick cover of Blues Theme, which was released (sans apostrophe) on the HBR label, credited to The Hogs. Curb must have heard about this as it was being prepared for release, as he managed to put out a single release of the original Davie Allan version of Blue's Theme before the HBR single hit the racks. Either that, or (more likely) the HBR producers simply had bad info about Curb's intentions in the first place.
Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Title: Streetmasse
Source: LP: After Bathing At Baxter's
Writer(s): Kantner/Dryden/Blackman/Thompson/Balin
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1967
After Bathing At Baxter's is generally considered the most pyschedelic of all the Jefferson Airplane albums. For one thing, the members were reportedly all on LSD through most of the creative process and were involved in the entire package, right down to the decision to divide the album up into five suites and press the vinyl in such a way that the spaces normally found between songs were only present between the suites themselves, making it almost impossible to set the needle down at the beginning of the second or third song of a suite (there is a slight overlap between most of the songs as well). The first suite on After Bathing At Baxter's is called Streetmasse. It consists of three compositions: Paul Kantner's The Ballad of You and Me and Pooniel; A Small Package of Value Will Come To You Shortly (a free-form jazz piece led by drummer Spencer Dryden); and the Paul Kantner/Marty Balin composition Young Girl Sunday Blues.
Artist: Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title: Piece Of My Heart
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer: Ragovoy/Burns
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
By 1968 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with their charismatic vocalist from Texas, Janis Joplin, had become as popular as fellow San Francisco bands Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Somehow, though, they were still without a major label record deal. That all changed with the release of Cheap Thrills, with cover art by the legendary underground comix artist R. Crumb. The album itself was a curious mixture of live performances and studio tracks, the latter being led by the band's powerful cover of the 1966 Barbara Lynn tune Piece Of My Heart. The song propelled the band, and Joplin, to stardom. That stardom would be short-lived for most of the band members, however, as well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed advice-givers convinced Joplin that Big Brother was holding her back. The reality was that the band was uniquely suited to support her better than anyone she would ever work with again.
Artist: Janis Joplin
Title: Mercedes Benz
Source: CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Pearl)
Writer(s): Joplin/Neuwirth/McClure
Label: Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year: Recorded 1970, released 1971
Mercedes Benz was the last song recorded by Janis Joplin in October of 1970. After laying down this vocal track she went home and OD'd on Heroin.
Artist: Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title: Summertime
Source: LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s): Gershwin/Heyward
Label: Columbia
Year: 1968
Janis Joplin, on the 1968 Big Brother And The Holding Company album Cheap Thrills, sounds like she was born to sing Gershwin's Summertime. Maybe she was.
Artist: Cream
Title: We're Going Wrong
Source: CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s): Jack Bruce
Label: Polydor/Polygram (original label: Atco)
Year: 1967
On Fresh Cream the slowest-paced tracks were bluesy numbers like Sleepy Time Time. For the group's second LP, bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce came up with We're Going Wrong, a song with a haunting melody supplemented by some of Eric Clapton's best guitar fills. Even Ginger Baker set aside his drumsticks in favor of mallets, giving the song an otherworldly feel.
Artist: Mad River
Title: Wind Chimes
Source: Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released as 7" 33 1/3 RPM Extended Play mini-album)
Writer(s): Mad River
Label: Big Beat (original label: Wee)
Year: 1967
Unlike most San Francisco Bay Area bands of the mid to late 1960s, Mad River was already a functioning band when they arrived on the scene from their native Ohio in 1967. The group, consisting of Lawrence Hammond (vocals, bass), David Robinson (guitar), Rick Bockner (guitar) and Greg Dewey (drums, vocals), had been formed in 1965 as the Mad River Blues Band in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where all of the members were attending college. By the time they relocated to Berkeley in early 1967 they had developed a unique style of their own. Once in Berkeley, the band quickly established themselves as one of the most "underground" bands in the area, often appearing on the bill with Country Joe And The Fish. In fact, it was the latter band that inspired Mad River to record an EP later that year. Following an unsuccessful audition for Fantasy Records, Mad River cut a three-song EP for the small Wee label. The entire second side of the disc was a six and a half minute long piece called Wind Chimes. The band later recut the track for their first full-length album the following year.
Artist: First Edition
Title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)
Source: LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: The First Edition and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s): Mickey Newbury
Label: Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year: 1968
In 1968, former New Christy Mistrels members Kenny Rogers and Mike Settle decided to form a psychedelic rock band, the First Edition. Although Settle was the official leader on the first album, it was Rogers who would emerge as the star of the band, even to the point of eventually changing the band's name to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. That change reflected a shift from psychedelic to country flavored pop that would eventually propel Rogers to superstar status.
Artist: Doors
Title: End Of The Night
Source: CD: The Doors
Writer(s): The Doors
Label: Elektra
Year: 1967
The Doors first big break came when they opened for Love at L.A.'s most famous club, the Whisky-A-Go-Go, and became friends with the members of the more established popular local band. Love was already recording for Elektra Records, and enthusiastically recommended that the label sign the Doors as well. Elektra did, and the Doors went on to become one of the most successful and influential bands in rock history. Although not as well-known as Light My Fire or The End, the dark and moody End Of The Night is a classic early Doors tune, from the opening bent chords from guitarist Robby Krieger to the spooky keyboard work of Ray Manzarek and of course Jim Morrison's distinctive vocals, all backed up by John Densmore's tastefully understated drumming.
Artist: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton
Title: Hideaway
Source: Mono British import EP
Writer(s): Freddie King
Label: R&B
Year: Recorded 1966, released 2016
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers included several talented musicians over the years, many of whom went on to become stars in their own right. Not every Bluesbreakers lineup saw the inside of a recording studio, however. In fact, this recording of Mayall's cover of Freddie King's Hideaway (a song that is often referred to as the quintessential blues break song), which includes Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass and Hughie Flint on drums, is from a live radio broadcast in 1966 (presumably for the BBC since they were the only legal radio broadcaster in the UK at the time). The recording sat on the shelf for 50 years before finally being released on a four song EP in the UK.
