Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2108 (starts 2/15/21)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/358310-dc-2108

    This week, after a leadup that starts with the Moody Blues and ends with John Lennon (and includes, among other things, the seldom-heard Rod Stewart version of Man Of Constant Sorrow), we present the entire second side of Pink Floyd's 1975 classic Wish You Were Here, including Have A Cigar (featuring guest vocalist Roy Harper) and the concluding segments of Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

Artist:    Moody Blues
Title:    Legend Of A Mind
Source:    CD: In Search Of The Lost Chord
Writer(s):    Ray Thomas
Label:    Deram
Year:    1968
    The Moody Blues started off as a fairly typical British beat band, scoring one major inteernational hit, Go Now, in 1965, as well as several minor British hit singles. By 1967 lead vocalist Denny Laine was no longer with the group (he would later surface as a member of Paul McCartney's Wings), and the remaining members were not entirely sure of where to go next. At around that time their record label, Deram, was looking to make a rock version of a well-known classical piece (The Nine Planets), and the Moody Blues were tapped for the project. Somewhere along the way, however, the group decided to instead write their own music for rock band and symphony orchestra, and Days Of Future Passed was the result. The album, describing a somewhat typical day in the life of a somewhat typical Britisher, was successful enough to revitalize the band's career, and a follow-up LP, In Search Of The Lost Chord, was released in 1968. Instead of a full orchestra, however, the band members themselves provided all the instrumentation on the new album, using a relatively new keyboard instrument called the mellotron (a complicated contraption that utilized tape loops) to simulate orchestral sounds. Like its predecessor, In Search Of The Lost Chord was a concept album, this time dealing with the universal search for the meaning of life through music. One of the standout tracks on the album is Legend Of A Mind, with its signature lines: "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, he's outside looking in." Although never released as a single, the track got a fair amount of airplay on college and progressive FM radio stations, and has long been considered a cult hit.

Artist:      Doors
Title:     Shaman's Blues
Source:      CD: Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine (originally released on LP: The Soft Parade)
Writer:    Jim Morrison
Label:    Elektra
Year:     1969
     Often dismissed as the weakest entry in the Doors catalogue, The Soft Parade nonetheless is significant in that for the first time songwriting credits were given to individual band members. Shaman's Blues, in my opinion one of the four redeeming tracks on the album, is Jim Morrison's.
 
Artist:    Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young
Title:    déjà vu
Source:    LP: So Far (originally released on LP: déjà vu)
Writer(s):    David Crosby
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    One of the biggest selling albums in the history of rock music, Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young's déjà vu was also one of the most difficult and time-consuming albums ever made. It is estimated that the album, which to date has sold over 8 million copies, took around 800 hours of studio time to create. Most of the tracks were recorded as solo tracks by their respective songwriters, with the other members making whatever contributions were called for. The album also features several guest musicians (including John Sebastian, who plays harmonica on the title track), as well as drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves, whose names appear in slightly smaller font on the front cover of the album.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Cross-Eyed Mary
Source:    CD: Aqualung
Writer:    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1971
    The fortunes of Jethro Tull improved drastically with the release of the Aqualung album in 1971. The group had done well in their native UK but were still considered a second-tier band in the US. Aqualung, however, propelled the group to star status, with several tracks, such as Cross-Eyed Mary, getting heavy airplay on FM rock radio.

Artist:    Rod Stewart
Title:    Man Of Constant Sorrow
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Rod Stewart
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1969
    Rod Stewart's debut solo album was not a major seller when it was first released in 1969, despite generally favorable reviews from the rock press. One of the stronger tracks on the album was his arrangement of the old folk song Man Of Constant Sorrow. The track was also issued as the B side of the album's second single three years after the LP itself had been released.

Artist:    John Lennon
Title:    Mind Games
Source:    CD: Lennon (box set) (originally released as 45PM single and included on LP: Mind Games)
Writer(s):    John Lennon
Label:    Apple
Year:    1973
    John Lennon's 1973 single Mind Games traces its origins back to the 1969 Let It Be sessions, where Lennon can be heard singing "Make love, not war" (a popular phrase at the time). Another unfinished song from around the same time, I Promise, provided the melody for Mind Games. The song's title, along with many of the lyrics, were inspired by a book called Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space by Robert Masters and Jean Houston, which was published in 1972. Yet another repeated line in the song, "Yes is the answer", refers to Yoko Ono's art piece that got Lennon interested in Yoko in the first place. Ironically, the song was recorded just as John and Yoko were splitting up, a period that Lennon later referred to as his "lost weekend."

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Have A Cigar/Wish You Were Here/Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI-IX)
Source:    CD: Wish You Were Here
Writer(s):    Waters/Gilmour/Wright
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1975
    One of the most recognizable songs in the entire Pink Floyd catalog, Have A Cigar is an indictment of the hypocrisy, greed and general sleaziness that drives the modern music industry. Recorded in Abby Road's studio 3, the song featured guest vocalist Roy Harper, who was working on an album of his own in studio 2 at the time. Both David Gilmour and Roger Waters attempted to sing the song (which was written by Waters), but were unhappy with the results. Gilmour had already contributed some guitar parts to Harper's album, and decided to ask Harper to return the favor. During the song's fadeout, the sound quality suddenly changes to resemble that of a cheap car radio speaker, and is followed by the sound of a radio dial being retuned to a new station playing the song Wish You Were Here. The song itself is often thought to be a tribute to Syd Barrett, but Waters, who wrote the lyrics, has since said that they were more self-directed. The final track on the album, however, is most definitely a tribute to Pink Floyd's original leader, who had been asked to leave the band in 1968 because of his mental health issues. In fact, Barrett himself showed up in the studio on July 5, 1975 when the band was putting the finishing touches on Shine On You Crazy Diamond. David Gilmour, who had known Barrett since childhood, was getting married later that day, and Barrett had come for the reception, showing up early to visit with his former bandmates. At first nobody knew who the overweight guy with shaved head and eyebrows was, and when Rick Wright, who was the first to recognize Barrett, identified him to the rest of the band, they were reportedly "shocked and horrified" to see the state he was in. Witnesses described Barrett as "not entirely sensible" and "not really there", adding that he didn't seem to realize that he himself was the subject of the song the band was working on. After the wedding reception Barrett left without saying goodbye; it was the last time most of the band members would see him alive.

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Woman From Tokyo
Source:    LP: The Very Best Of Deep Purple (originally released on LP: Who Do We Think We Are)
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Deep Purple's most successful period came to an end with the band's seventh LP, Who Do We Think We Are. The album, released in 1973, was the last for vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, both of whom had joined the band three years earlier. Those three years saw the group go from semi-obscurity (especially in their home country) to one of the world's most popular rock bands. Songs like Smoke On The Water and Highway Star had become mainstays of FM rock radio worldwide, but tensions within the band itself were starting to tear it apart. Nonetheless, the final album by the classic lineup of Richie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice featured some of the band's best material, including the LP's opening track, My Woman From Tokyo, which is still heard with alarming regularity on classic rock radio stations.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2107 (starts 2/8/21)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/357348-pe-2107

    This week we have what amounts to two shows in one. The first is somewhat free-form, beginning and ending in 1966, while the second is all about artists, with sets from Country Joe And The Fish, the Rolling Stones and Cream, with an extra long Procol Harum track to finish things out.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    Back Door Man
Source:    LP: Tommy Flanders, Danny Kalb, Steve Katz, Al Kooper, Andy Kuhlberg, Roy Blumenfeld Of The Blues Project (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    Verve Forecast
Year:    1966
    By all accounts, Tommy Flanders, the original lead vocalist for the Blues Project, was quite a character. He was known to wear the latest London fashions while walking the streets of New York's Greenwich Village and would even occasionally affect a British accent. He was also the one, according to guitarist Danny Kalb, who came up with the band's name in the fall of 1965. It was around that time that the band made its first trip to the recording studio, recording a pair of tunes for Columbia that the label rejected, meeting studio keyboardist and subsequent band member Al Kooper in the process. Around that time the band landed a steady gig at a place called the Cafe-Au-Go-Go and the club owner, Howard Solomon, decided to put on a show for Thanksgiving weekend called the "Blues Bag", featuring a mix of established artists like John Lee Hooker and younger artists like Geoff Muldaur, with the Blues Project as one of the main attractions. Solomon managed to get Verve Folkways Records to record the whole thing, which led to the band getting a contract with the experimental Verve Forecast label. The band had been allowed to keep the master tapes of the Columbia session, and the two tracks, a folk song called Violets Of Dawn written by fellow Greenwich Village denizen Eric Anderson and a sped up cover of Howlin' Wolf's Back Door Man, were released as the first Blues Project single on the Verve Forecast label in January of 1966.  At around that same time, the people at Verve's parent company, M-G-M, decided that the Blues Project was America's answer to the Rolling Stones, and flew the entire band out to Los Angeles for a huge sales conference. After the conference, however, in a scene right out of Spinal Tap, Tommy Flanders's girlfriend had an all-out blowup with the rest of the band members that resulted in her announcing that Flanders was quitting the band to become a Star. The album was quickly reworked to minimize Flanders's contributions (although there were not enough non-Flanders songs available to leave him entirely off the LP) and hit the racks in March of 1966, leaving the Violets Of Dawn/Back Door Man single as the only record released by the Blues Project while Flanders was still a member of the band.

Artist:    We The People
Title:    Mirror Of Your Mind
Source:    Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Thomas Talton
Label:    Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year:    1966
    We The People was formed when an Orlando, Florida newspaper reporter talked members of two local bands to combine into a garage/punk supergroup. The result was one of the most successful regional bands in Florida history. After their first recording got airplay on a local station, they were signed to record in Nashville for Challenge Records (a label actually based in Los Angeles) and cranked out several regional hits over the next few years. The first of these was Mirror Of Your Mind. Written by lead vocalist Tom Talton, the song is an in-your-face rocker that got played on a number of local stations and has been covered by several bands since.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Mr. Farmer
Source:    CD: More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: A Web Of Sound)
Writer:    Sky Saxon
Label:    Rhino
Year:    1966
    With two tracks (Can't Seem To Make You Mine and Pushin' Too Hard) from their first album getting a decent amount of airplay on L.A. radio stations in 1966 the Seeds headed back to the studio to record a second LP, A Web Of Sound. The first single released from the album was Mr. Farmer, a song that once again did well locally. The only national hit for the Seeds came when Pushin' Too Hard was re-released in December of 1966, hitting its peak the following spring.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    For No One
Source:    European import LP: Revolver
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1966
    With the predominance of the keyboards and french horn (played by Alan Civil) in the mix, For No One (essentially a Paul McCartney solo number) shows just how far the Beatles had moved away from their original image as a "guitar band" by the time they recorded the Revolver album in 1966. John Lennon considered For No One to be one of Paul's best songs.

Artist:    Aretha Franklin
Title:    (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
Source:    CD: Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-1974, Volume 6 1966-1969 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Goffin/King/Wexler
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1967
    Producer Jerry Wexler didn't actually participate in the writing of Aretha Franklin's 1967 hit single (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, but he did receive a writing credit for it. This was not an uncommon practice in the 1960s; producers often gave themselves credit for songs so they could claim a share of the royalties for themselves. In this instance, however, that was not the case. Wexler himself was a major figure in the development of rhythm & blues. In fact, Wexler himself invented the term when working as an editor/writer/reporter for Billboard magazine in 1949. Before then, recordings aimed at an African-American audience had appeared on Billboard's Race Records chart; Wexler later said that the term had never sit well with him and he got them to change the name of the chart to Rhythm & Blues Records in June of 1949. In 1953 Wexler joined Atlantic Records, and, along with the Ertagan brothers, built it into a major record label. One day, while driving around the streets of New York ruminating about the cultural significance of the "natural man" he spotted Carole King walking on the sidewalk and shouted to her that he wanted a "natural woman" song for Aretha Franklin's next album. King told her husband Gerry Goffin about the encounter, and together they came up with (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, which was released in September of 1967 as a single ahead of the Lady Soul LP. Goffin and King themselves insisted that Wexler receive a writing credit for the song, which hit #8  on the Billboard singles chart and #2 on the Rhythm & Blues chart that Wexler himself had named so many years before.

Artist:    Them
Title:    Square Room
Source:    British import CD: Now And Them
Writer(s):    Armstrong/Elliot/Harley/Henderson/McDowell
Label:    Rev-Ola (original label: Tower)
Year:    1968
    With new lead vocalist Kenny McDowell replacing the departed Van Morrison, Them relocated to the US and recorded a single for Sully Records, a label based in Amarillo, Texas and co-owned by Ray Ruff. The B side of that single was a three-minute long tune called Square Room. Not long after the single was released Ruff and the band all relocated to Los Angeles, where Ruff produced two Them albums for Capitol's Tower subsidiary. The first of these, Now And Them, features a nearly ten minute long version of Square Room that has come to be regarded as one of the finest examples of raga-rock to come out of the psychedelic era. Jim Armstrong in particular turns in a strong performance on lead guitar.
        
Artist:    Rabbit Habit
Title:    Angel, Angel, Down We Go
Source:    CD: A Deadly Dose Of Wylde Psych (originally released as stereo 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Mann/Weil
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Tower)
Year:    1969
    I don't have the slightest clue who plays on this record (although the fictional band that performs it on film is called Rabbit Habit). What I do know is that is was the title track of an American International Pictures film called Angel Angel Down We Go. The 1969 film is one of those movies that tends to show up on several "worst of" lists, despite having some interesting cast members, including Roddy McDowall, Lou Rawls, Jordan Christopher, and Davey Davison as the band itself. With a lineup like that you might expect Lou Rawls to sing on the title track (which has the distinction of being the last single ever released on the Tower label), but apparently all the vocals in the film are by Jordan Christopher, who had been a member of The Wild Ones, a band that released an album called The Arthur Sound for United Artists in 1965. Angel, Angel, Down We Go was written by the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who had also written songs for another AIP film, Wild In The Streets, that had provided Tower with the hit single Shape Of Things To Come the previous year.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    The Trip
Source:    Mono LP: Sunshine Superman
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sundazed/Epic
Year:    1966
    Donovan had already established a reputation in his native Scotland as the UK's answer to Bob Dylan, but had not had much success in the US, where his records were being released on the low-distribution Hickory label. That all changed in 1966, however, when he began to move beyond his folk roots and embrace a more electric sound. Unlike Dylan, who basically kept the same style as his acoustic songs, simply adding electic instruments, Donovan took a more holistic approach. The result was a body of music with a much broader range of sounds. The first of these new electric tunes was Sunshine Superman, sometimes cited as the first top 10 psychedelic hit. The B side of Sunshine Superman was a song called The Trip, which managed to be even more psychedelic than its A side. Both songs soon appeared on Donovan's major US label debut, an album that was not even released in the UK due to a contractual dispute between the singer/songwriter and Pye Records.

Artist:    Love
Title:    The Red Telephone
Source:    CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    Love's Forever Changes album, released in late 1967, is known for its dark imagery that contrasted with the utopian messages so prevalent in the music associated with the just-passed summer of love. One of the tracks that best illustrates Arthur Lee's take on the world at that time is The Red Telephone, which closes out side one of the album. The title, which refers to the famous cold war hotline between Washington and Moscow, does not actually appear in the song's lyrics. Instead, the most prominent line of the song is a chant repeated several times that refers to the repression of youth culture in the US, particularly in Los Angeles, where the city had enacted new ordinances that had virtually destroyed the vibrant club scene that had given rise to such bands as the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Doors and of course Love. The chant itself: "They're locking them up today, they're throwing away the key; I wonder who it'll be tomorrow, you or me?" expresses an idea that would be expanded on by Frank Zappa the following year on the landmark Mothers Of Invention album We're Only In It For The Money.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    Magic Carpet Ride
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released on LP: Steppenwolf The Second)
Writer(s):    Moreve/Kay
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1968
    Steppenwolf's second top 10 single was Magic Carpet Ride, a song that combines feedback, prominent organ work by Goldy McJohn and an updated Bo Diddly beat with psychedelic lyrics. Along with Born To Be Wild, Magic Carpet Ride (co-written by vocalist John Kay and bassist Rushton Moreve) has become one of the defining songs of both Steppenwolf and the psychedelic era itself.

Artist:    Standells
Title:    Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ed Cobb
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1966
     If ever a song could be considered a garage-punk anthem, it's Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White, the follow-up single to the classic Dirty Water. Both songs were written by Standells' manager/producer Ed Cobb, the record industry's answer to Ed Wood.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    (I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone
Source:    Mono LP: Midnight Ride
Writer(s):    Boyce/Hart
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    Before the Monkees, there was Paul Revere And The Raiders. Like the latter group, the Raiders found success on TV as well as vinyl, and scored several top 10 hits. Unlike the Monkees, however, Paul Revere And The Raiders had a long history as a performing group that predated their commercial success by several years. One more thing the two groups had in common, however, was a song by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart called (I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone. The Raiders recorded the song first, including it on their album Midnight Ride, released in May of 1966, and as the B side of their hit version of Kicks. The Monkees included the song on their debut LP later the same year, and released it as the B side of I'm A Believer as well. Although the original Raiders version was not originally included on the band's greatest hits album, it has been added to the CD reissue of Paul Revere And The Raiders' Greatest Hits as a bonus track.

Artist:    Harbinger Complex
Title:    Sometimes I Wonder
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Hockstaff/Hoyle
Label:    Rhino (original label: Amber)
Year:    1966
    The city of San Francisco had a well-documented music scene in the 1960s that brought bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Santana to national prominence. Across the bay, however, was a more typical mid-60s scene centered around teen-oriented bands that would play high school dances, shopping center parking lots and of course participate in various "battle of the bands" competitions. Among the best of these was Fremont's Harbinger Complex. Formed in 1963 by guitarists Ron Rotarius and Bob Hoyle III, who had playing together since they were in the eighth grade, the group was first known as the Norsemen. When Hoyle was called to active duty in Vietnam in 1965 the band brought in vocalist Jim Hockstaff and soon changed its name to Harbinger Complex. Hoyle returned from 'Nam in 1966, and he and Hockstaff soon formed a writing partnership. The band's first single, Sometimes I Wonder, was recorded and released in April of 1966 on the local Amber label at around the same time that Harbinger Complex had one of their most high-profile gigs, opening for Paul Revere And The Raiders at Oakland Colisseum.
        
Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Dr. Stone
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Hey Joe)
Writer:    Beck/Pons
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1966
    The Leaves were a solid, if not particularly spectacular, example of a late 60s L.A. club band. They had one big hit (Hey Joe), signed a contract with a major label (Capitol), and even appeared in a Hollywood movie (the Cool Ones). This tune, from their first album for Mira Records, is best described as folk-rock with a Bo Diddly beat.

Artist:    Mungo Jerry
Title:    In The Summertime
Source:    LP: Golden Days Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ray Dorset
Label:    Sire (original label: Janus)
Year:    1970
    Mungo Jerry is not your typical rock band. Multi-instrumentalist Ray Dorset and and pianist Colin Earl were members of a group called the Good Earth that fell apart when their bassist quit to join another band. The Good Earth still had one booking to fulfill, the Oxford University Christmas Ball, in December 1968, so they recruited a new bassist and performed as a three-piece, playing a mixture of blues, skiffle and American-style folk and jug band music. The group, still known as the Good Earth, built up a following over the next year, eventually ending up with a lineup consisting of Dorset, Earl, Mike Cole, who played double bass, and Paul King, who played banjo and jug. The band soon got a contract with Pye Records and scored big with their first single, a song called In The Summertime that Dorset later said took about ten minutes to write. The song was an international smash, going to the #1 spot in sixteen countries (including the UK) and hitting #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. Although the group, with an ever-changing lineup, never again had a hit as big as In The Summertime they continued to perform and release records for decades, with the most recent being Cool Jesus, which was released in 2012.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Section 43 (EP version)
Source:    Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released on EP)
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Rag Baby)
Year:    1966
    Rag Baby was an underground journal published by Country Joe McDonald in mid-60s Berkeley, California. In 1965 McDonald decided to do a "talking issue" of the paper with an extended play (EP) record containing two songs by McDonald's band, Country Joe and the Fish and two by singer Peter Krug. In 1966 McDonald published a second Rag Baby EP, this time featuring three songs by Country Joe and the Fish. Among those was the original version of Section 43, a psychedelic instrumental that would appear in a re-recorded (and slightly changed) stereo form on the band's first LP, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, in early 1967.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Rock And Soul Music
Source:    LP: Woodstock
Writer(s):    McDonald/Melton/Cohen/Barthol/Hirsch
Label:    Cotillion
Year:    1969
    Country Joe and the Fish actually performed Rock and Soul Music twice at Woodstock. The first instance was a short intro that led directly into the next song. This is the piece used on the original Woodstock soundtrack album.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Bass Strings
Source:    Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released on EP)
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Rag Baby)
Year:    1966
    One of the more original ways to get one's music heard is to publish an underground arts-oriented newspaper and include a record in it. Country Joe and the Fish did just that; not once, but twice. The first one was split with another artist and featured the original recording of the I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag. The second Rag Baby EP, released in 1966, was all Fish, and featured two tracks that would be re-recorded for their debut LP the following year. In addition to the instrumental Section 43, the EP included a four-minute version of Bass Strings, a track with decidedly psychedelic lyrics.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Four Until Late
Source:    LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Robert Johnson
Label:    Atco
Year:    1966
    By the time Cream was formed, Eric Clapton had already established himself as one of the world's premier blues-rock guitarists. He had not, however, done much singing, as the bands he had worked with all had strong vocalists: Keith Relf with the Yardbirds and John Mayall with the Bluesbreakers. With Cream, however, Clapton finally got a chance to do some vocals of his own. Most of these are duets with bassist Jack Bruce, who handled the bulk of Cream's lead vocals. Clapton did get to sing lead on a few Cream songs, however. One of the earliest ones was the band's updated version of Robert Johnson's Four Until Late, from the Fresh Cream album.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Badge
Source:    CD: Goodbye Cream
Writer(s):    Clapton/Harrison
Label:    Polydor
Year:    1969
    Famously co-written by Eric Clapton and a psuedononomous George Harrison, Badge remains one of the best-loved songs in Clapton's repertoir. Both guitarists are featured prominently on this recording. Felix Pappaliardi (the unofficial 4th member of Cream and co-founder of Mountain) plays the tinkly piano.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Cat's Squirrel
Source:    LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. S. Splurge
Label:    Atco
Year:    1966
    One of the few instrumentals in the Cream repertoire, Cat's Squirrel was something of a blues standard whose origins are lost in antiquity. Unlike the 1968 Jethro Tull version, which emphasises Mick Abrahams's guitar work, Cream's Cat's Squirrel is heavy on the harmonica, played by bassist Jack Bruce.

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    Going Up The Country
Source:    Mono Italian import 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Alan Wilson
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1968
    Canned Heat built up a solid reputation as one of the best blues-rock bands in history, recording several critically-acclaimed albums over a period of years. What they did not have, however, was a top 10 single on the US charts. The nearest they got was Going Up The Country from their late 1968 LP Living The Blues, which peaked in the #11 spot in early 1969 (although it did hit #1 in several other countries). The song was written and sung by guitarist Alan "Blind Own" Wilson, who died at age 27 on September 3, 1970. This Italian pressing, for some reason, cuts off the song's 20 second-long coda.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Dear Doctor
Source:    LP: Beggar's Banquet
Writer:    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1968
    The term Anglophile is usually used to describe Americans with a fascination for all things British. Just what is the term for the opposite situation? Whatever it might be, the Stones have always been an example, from their open idolization of Chuck Berry and other Chess Records artists to songs like Dear Doctor, which sounds more like Appalachian folk music than anything British.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Prodigal Son
Source:    CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s):    Robert Wilkins
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    The Rolling Stones always had a fondness for American roots music, but by 1967 had largely abandoned the genre in favor of more modern sounds such as pychedelia. The 1968 album Beggar's Banquet, however, marked a return to the band's own roots and included such tunes as Prodigal Son, which at first was credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In reality the song was written by the Reverend Robert Wilkins, and has since been acknowledged as such.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Street Fighting Man
Source:    LP: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1968
    The Rolling Stones were at a low point in their career following their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, which came out in late 1967. As a response to charges in the rock press that they were no longer relevant the Stones released Jumpin' Jack Flash as a single in early 1968, following it up with the Beggar's Banquet album later in the year. The new album included the band's follow-up single, Street Fighting Man, a song that was almost as anthemic as Jumpin' Jack Flash itself and went a long ways toward insuring that the Rolling Stones would be making music on their own terms for as long as they chose to.

Artist:    Procol Harum
Title:    In Held Twas In I
Source:    CD: Shine On Brightly
Writer:    Brooker/Fisher/Reid
Label:    A&M/Rebound
Year:    1968
    Although the idea of grouping songs together as "suites" was first tried by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967 album After Bathing At Baxter's, Procol Harum's 17-minute long In Held Twas In I, from their 1968 album Shine On Brightly, is usually cited as the first progressive rock suite. The title comes from the first word of each section of the piece that contains vocals (several sections are purely instrumental). The work contains some of the best early work from guitarist Robin Trower, who would leave the group a few years later for a solo career. Shine On Brightly was the last Procol Harum album to include organist Matthew Fisher, who came up with the famous opening riff for the group's first hit, A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2107 (starts 2/8/21)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/357347-dc-2107 

    None of the songs on this week's show got played in 2020 on Rockin' in the Days of Confusion. I mean, who needs any kind of reminder of that particular year, right? Actually, out of a dozen tunes, seven have never been played on the show at all. Stylistically, it's a musical variety pack that gets rockier as the hour goes on and finishes up with a pair of melodic guitar-based instrumentals.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    Suffragette City
Source:    CD: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Ryko (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1972
    Arguably the most popular song from David Bowie's 1972 breakthrough album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Suffragette City was originally released as a B side a month and a half ahead of the album itself. The song had originally been offered to Mott The Hoople, who decided to instead record All The Young Dudes. Showing the influences of such diverse sources as Little Richard and the Velvet Underground, as well as the novel A Clockwork Orange, Suffragette City was one of the last songs recorded for the album by Bowie's band, the Spiders From Mars, which included Mick Ronson on electric guitar, piano, synthesizer and backing vocals, Trevor Bolder on bass and Mick Woodmansey on drums. Bowie himself, in addition to providing lead vocals on Suffragette City, also played an acoustic 12-string guitar on the track.

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:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash
Source:    LP: The Joker
Writer(s):    Charles Calhoun
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1973
    Fans of early rock 'n' roll may be familiar with the name Jesse Stone. Although not a major recording star, he wrote some of the top songs of the 50s, including Flip, Flop and Fly, Money Honey, and his most famous song Shake, Rattle and Roll. He also, for reasons having to do with publishing contracts, wrote and performed as Charles Calhoun. One of the songs he published as Calhoun was Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash. The song was covered by the Steve Miller Band on the 1973 LP The Joker and released the following year as a single.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Thick As A Brick (part two)
Source:    CD: Thick As A Brick
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1972
    By the early 1970s, concept albums from progressive rock bands were becoming a bit of a cliche. In a few cases, such as Jethro Tull's Aqualung, the label was applied without the permission, or even the intention, of the artist making the album. In late 1971 Tull's Ian Anderson decided, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, that if the critics wanted a concept album so badly he would give them the "mother of all concept albums". In the early 1970s a type of humor known as parody was in vogue, thanks to magazines like National Lampoon and television shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus. Anderson, taking his cue from Monty Python in particular, decided that the next Jethro Tull album would combine complex music with wry humor targeting critics, audiences and even the band itself. To begin with, all the album's lyrics were credited to a fictional eight-year-old schoolboy named Gerald Bostock, whose epic poem was stirring up controversy in the small village of St. Cleve. Anderson created an elaborate backstory for the piece, fleshing it out with a 12 page newspaper parody, complete with local news, TV listings, and a sports section (among other things) that folded out when the album cover was opened. Thick As A Brick itself is one continuous musical work consisting of several sections that tie together thematically to lampoon modern life, religion and politics in particular. The piece, which lasts nearly 44 minutes, goes through several tempo and key changes, resembling classical music in terms of sheer complexity. The band also utilized a much greater variety of instruments on Thick As A Brick than they had on previous albums, including harpsichord, xylophone, timpani, violin, lute, trumpet, saxophone, and a string section. Recording took about three weeks in late December, with another month spent putting together the newspaper itself. The entire package was so well presented that many record buyers were under the impression that Gerald Bostock was indeed a real person. Although the album initially received mixed reviews from the rock press, it has since come to be regarded as a progressive rock classic. Indeed, many (including me) feel that Thick As A Brick is Jethro Tull's greatest accomplishment.

Artist:    Paul And Linda McCartney
Title:    Dear Boy
Source:    LP: Ram
Writer(s):    Paul and Linda McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1971
    Although John Lennon at one point said he thought Paul McCartney's Dear Boy, from the Ram album, was about himself and Yoko, McCartney himself stated in a 1971 interview that the song is an autobiographical song about his relationship with his own wife Linda. Thirty years later McCartney admitted that is was also a subtle jab at Linda's ex, who didn't realize what a good thing he had given up on.

Artist:     James Gang
Title:     Funk # 48
Source:     CD: Yer Album
Writer:     Walsh/Fox/Kriss
Label:     MCA (original label: Bluesway)
Year:     1969
    Cleveland's James Gang was one of the original power trios of the seventies. Although generally known as the starting place of Joe Walsh, the band was actually led by Jim Fox, one of the most underrated drummers in the history of rock. Fox, who was the only member to stay with the group through its many personnel changes over the years, shares lead vocals with Walsh on Funk # 48 from the band's debut album on ABC's Bluesway label (they moved over to the parent label for subsequent releases). Yer Album, incidentally, was the only rock LP ever issued on Bluesway .

Artist:    MC5
Title:    Tonight
Source:    LP: Back In The USA
Writer(s):    MC5
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    Described by one critic as one of the ultimate teenage anthems, Tonight is the second track on the second MC5 album, Back In The USA. The song was released as the album's lead single, but failed to make an impression on the charts.

Artist:     Savoy Brown
Title:     Made Up My Mind
Source:     British import CD: A Step Further
Writer:     Chris Youlden
Label:     Polygram/Deram (original US label: Parrot)
Year:     1969
     To coincide with a US tour, the fourth Savoy Brown album, A Step Further, was actually released in North America several months before it was in the UK, with Made Up My Mind being simultaneously released as a single. Luckily for the band, 1969 was a year that continued the industry-wide trend away from hit singles and toward successful albums instead, at least among the more progressive groups, as the single itself tanked. Aided by a decent amount of airplay on progressive FM radio, however, the album (the last to feature lead vocalist Chris Youlden) peaked comfortably within the top 100.
 
Artist:    Love Sculpture
Title:    Shake Your Hips
Source:    British import CD: Blues Helping
Writer(s):    James Moore
Label:    EMI (original label: Parlophone; original US label: Rare Earth)
Year:    1968
    Formed in Cardiff, Wales, in 1966, Love Sculpture is best known as the band that launched the career of guitarist Dave Edmunds, who went on to have an international #1 hit with his cover of I Hear You Knockin' and later co-founded the influential band Rockpile with Nick Lowe. The first Love Sculpture LP, Blues Helping, consists almost entirely of blues covers such as Slim Harpo's Shake Your Hips, with Edmunds's blistering guitar work dominating the entire album.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Bitch
Source:    LP: Sticky Fingers
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Rolling Stones
Year:    1971
    The teen club I hung out at during my senior year at Alamogordo Senior High School had a jukebox. The record that got the most play on that jukebox during the second semester of that school year was the latest single from the Rolling Stones. Brown Sugar got a lot of radio airplay that spring, but on the jukebox it was the B side of the record, Bitch, that was heard most often. Both tunes were from the album Sticky Fingers, generally considered to be one of the best Rolling Stones albums ever made.

Artist:    Genesis
Title:    Horizons
Source:    CD: Foxtrot
Writer(s):    Banks/Collins/Gabriel/Hackett/Rutherford
Label:    Rhino/Atlantic (original label: Charisma)
Year:    1972
    Although credited to the entire band, Horizons is a short acoustic guitar instrumental written by Steve Hackett, who is the only member of Genesis to actually play on the track. The tune, based on a piece by J.S. Bach, opens side two of the 1972 LP Foxtrot.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix/Band Of Gypsys
Title:    Villanova Junction Blues
Source:    Mono LP: People, Hell And Angels
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2013
    Usually known as the untitled instrumental that finishes out the Woodstock movie, Villanova Junction Blues was first performed in the studio by Band Of Gypsys (Hendrix, Billy Cox and Buddy Miles) prior to their live performances at Madison Square Garden at the end of 1969. The studio version remained unreleased until 2013, when it was included on the album People, Hell And Angels.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2106 (starts 2/1/21)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/356535-pe-2106 

    This time around we have a total of 33 tunes, including artists' sets from Jefferson Airplane and the Beatles, as well as an all New Mexico Advanced Psych segment.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Let's Spend The Night Together
Source:    CD: Flowers (originally released on LP: Between The Buttons)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1967
    The Rolling Stones second LP of 1967 was Flowers, one of a series of US-only albums made up of songs that had been released in various forms in the UK but not in the US. In the case of Flowers, though, there were a couple songs that had already been released in the US-but not in true stereo. One of those was Let's Spend The Night Together, a song intended to be the A side of a single, but that was soon banned on a majority of US radio stations because of its suggestive lyrics. Those stations instead flipped the record over and began playing the B side. That B side, a song called Ruby Tuesday, ended up in the top 5, while Let's Spend The Night Together barely cracked the top 40. The Stones did get to perform the tune on the Ed Sullivan Show, but only after promising to change the lyrics to "let's spend some time together." Later  the same year the Doors made a similar promise to the Sullivan show to modify the lyrics of Light My Fire, but when it came time to actually perform the song Jim Morrison defiantly sang the lyrics as written. The Doors were subsequently banned from making any more appearances on the Sullivan show.
 
Artist:    Cream
Title:    SWLABR
Source:    LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown
Label:    RSO (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
     I distinctly remember this song getting played on the local jukebox just as much as the single's A side, Sunshine Of Your Love (maybe even more). Like most of Cream's more psychedelic material, SWLABR (the title being an anagram for She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow) was written by the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. Brown had originally been brought in as a co-writer for Ginger Baker, but soon realized that he and Bruce had better songwriting chemistry.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Hampstead Incident
Source:    Mono British import CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    EMI (original US label: Epic)
Year:    1967
    The Beatles started a trend (one of many) when they used a harpsichord on the Rubber Soul album, released in December of 1965. By early 1967 it seemed that just about everyone had a song or two with the antique instrument featured on it. Unlike some of the recordings of the time, Hampstead Incident manages to use the harpsichord effectively without overdoing it.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Bringing Me Down
Source:    CD: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (also released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Balin/Kantner
Label:    RCA/BMG Heritage
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 savvy decisions by the young bandleader.
    
Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Greasy Heart
Source:    LP: Crown Of Creation
Writer(s):    Grace Slick
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1968
    The Jefferson Airplane released their fourth LP, Crown of Creation, in the summer of '68. Greasy Heart, a Grace Slick composition, was chosen for single release to AM top 40 radio, but by then the group was getting far more airplay on album-oriented FM stations with tunes like Lather and Triad and the mysteriously named House at Pooniel Corners. As a result, Greasy Heart, despite being a more commercial tune, is far less familiar to most people than any of those other songs.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Run Around (original uncensored version)
Source:    Mono CD: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Balin/Kantner
Label:    RCA/BMG Heritage
Year:    1966
    The first Jefferson Airplane album was released three times. The first (extremely rare) version had 12 songs, including Running Round This World, which was also issued as the B side of the band's first single, It's No Secret. Someone at RCA, however, decided Running Round This World was an invitation to take LSD, and the album was quickly withdrawn and reissued with only the remaining eleven tracks on it. RCA wasn't quite done messing with the album, however, and had the group go back into the studio to change the lyrics on two more songs that they considered "sexually suggestive". One of those two songs was Run Around, with the line "Blinded by colors come flashing from flowers that sway as you lay under me" altered to "...that sway as you stay here by me". The album was once again withdrawn, with the third, "censored" version appearing on the shelves in late 1966. Luckily, the remastered CD version includes the uncensored version of Run Around as a bonus track

Artist:    New Colony Six
Title:    Dawn Is Breaking
Source:    Mono CD: Breakthrough (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Pat McBride
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Centaur)
Year:    1965
    Due to my dad being in the Air Force and stationed in Denver while our extended family all lived in NY state we did a lot of traveling across the country in the early to mid-1960s. As unofficial "navigator" for both my father and grandfather, I had access to the car radio on those days long road trips, and would spend much of the time searching the dial for local stations. This had the unexpected benefit of exposing me to songs that I would never hear if I had been at home or grandparents' house. This was because many local stations played records made by locally popular bands. Sometimes those records would end up making the national charts as well, but that was not always the case. One example is a Chicago area group called the New Colony Six. Their debut single, released in November of 1965 on the local Centaur label, was a song called I Confessed, with Dawn Is Breaking on the record's B side. The single ended up going all the way to the #2 spot on Chicago's WLS, which, as a 50,000 watt clear channel station, had a huge listening area, especially at night. That same record actually did make it onto the Billboard Top 100, but never made it above the #80 spot. The New Colony Six finally did achieve national prominence a few years later with a pair of top 40 hits, but by then the band bore little resemblance to the brash rockers heard on Dawn Is Breaking.

Artist:    Al Kooper
Title:    I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes
Source:    CD: Blues Project Anthology (originally released on LP: What's Shakin')
Writer(s):    Blind Willie Johnson
Label:    Polydor (original label: Elektra)
Year:    1966
    In early 1966 Elektra Records, then a New York based folk and blues label, decided to put together an album called What's Shakin'. The LP featured some of the top talent appearing in and around the city's Greenwich Village area, including the Lovin' Spoonful and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. In addition to already recorded material, the album included a handful of tracks recorded specifically for the collection, including one by Al Kooper of the Blues Project, who brought along drummer Roy Blumenfeld and bassist Andy Kuhlberg for the session. The song Kooper chose to record was I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, an old Blind Willie Johnson tune that was already in the Blues Project's repertoire but had not yet been recorded by the band. While the Blues Project version of the song recorded later that year for the Projections album is a classic piece of guitar-based blues-rock, the earlier version for What's Shakin' is built around Kooper's piano playing and has more of a Ramsey Lewis feel to it.
 
Artist:    Who
Title:    Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands (US single version)
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Decca
Year:    1967
    There are at least three versions of Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hands. The first was a monoraul-only electric version of the song released in the US on September 18, 1967 as the B side to I Can See For Miles. Two months later a second, slightly slower stereo version of the tune appeared under the title Mary-Anne With The Shaky Hand (singular) on The Who Sell Out. This more acoustic version of the song, which has a kind of calypso flavor to it, is the best known of the three, due to the album staying in circulation far longer than the 45. A third version of the song, also recorded in 1967 and featuring Al Kooper on organ, appeared as a bonus track on the 1995 CD release of Sell Out. The liner notes on the CD, however, erroneously state that it is the US single version, when in fact it is an entirely different recording.
    
Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Dedicated Follower Of Fashion
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1966
    By 1966 Ray Davies's songwriting had taken a satirical turn with songs like Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, which lampooned the flamboyant lifestyle embraced by the Mods, a group of young fashionable Londoners who bought all their clothes on Carnaby Street. The Kinks, at this point, were having greater success in the UK than in the US, where they had been denied visas and were thus unable to tour to promote their records. That condition would only worsen until 1970, when the song Lola became an international smash, reviving the band's flagging fortunes.

Artist:    Association
Title:    Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies
Source:    Mono British import CD: My Mind Goes High (originally released in US as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Renaissance)
Writer(s):    Gary Alexander
Label:    Warner Strategic Marketing (original label: Valiant)
Year:    1966
    Following up on their monster hit Cherish, the Association released their most overtly psychedelic track, Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies, in late 1966, in advance of their second LP, Renaissance. The group had wanted to be more involved in the production process, and provided their own instrumental tracks for the tune, written by band member Gary Alexander. Unfortunately for the band, the single barely made the top 40, peaking at # 35, which ultimately led to the band relying more on outside songwriters and studio musicians for their later recordings such as Never My Love and Windy.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Good Vibrations
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Wilson/Love
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1966
    Although I had originally discovered top 40 radio in 1963 (when I received a small Sony transistor radio for my birthday), it wasn't until 1966 that I really got into it in a big way. This way due to a combination of a couple of things: first, my dad bought a console stereo, and second, my junior high school went onto split sessions, meaning that I was home by one o'clock every day. This gave me unprecedented access to Denver's two big top 40 AM stations, as well as an FM station that was experimenting with a Top 100 format for a few hours each day. At first I was content to just listen to the music, but soon realized that the DJs were making a point of mentioning each song's chart position just about every time that song would play. Naturally I began writing all this stuff down in my notebook (when I was supposed to be doing my homework), until I realized that both KIMN and KBTR actually published weekly charts, which I began to diligently hunt down at various local stores. In addition to the songs occupying numbered positions on the charts, both stations included songs at the bottom of the list that they called "pick hits". These were new releases that had not been around long enough to achieve a chart position. The one that most stands out in my memory was the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, a song I liked so much that I went out to the nearest Woolco and bought it the afternoon I heard it. Within a few weeks Good Vibrations had gone all the way to the top of the charts, and I always felt that some of the credit should go to me for buying the record when it first came out (hey I was 13, OK?). Over the next couple of years I bought plenty more singles, but to this day Good Vibrations stands out as the most important 45 RPM record purchase I ever made.
    
Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Pushin' Too Hard
Source:    Mono British import CD: Singles As & Bs (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sky Saxon
Label:    Big Beat (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1965
    The Seeds' Pushin' Too Hard is generally included on every collection of psychedelic hits ever compiled. And for good reason. The song is an undisputed classic. Originally released under the title You're Pushin' Too Hard, the song got minor airplay on some Los Angeles radio stations, but it wasn't until it was included on the band's first LP and then re-released as a single in late 1966 that the song really took off, ultimately climbing to the #36 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and, perhaps more importantly, hitting #1 on Chicago's WLS on February 17, 1967.

Artist:     Yardbirds
Title:     Jeff's Boogie
Source:     45 RPM single B side
Writer:     Dreja/Relf/Samwell-Smith/McCarty/Beck
Label:     Epic
Year:     1966
     Jeff's Boogie is an instrumental track from the Yardbirds that originally appeared on the album Over Under Sideways Down in the US. That LP, with a different track lineup and cover, was issued in the UK under the name Yardbirds, although it has since come to be known as Roger The Engineer due to its cover art. The song was also chosen to be the B side of the Over Under Sideways Down single, released in 1966. Although credited to the entire band, the tune is actually based on Chuck Berry's guitar boogie, and features some outstanding guitar work by Jeff Beck.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Hideaway
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Underground)
Writer(s):    Lowe/Tulin
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    After the moderately successful first Electric Prunes album, producer David Hassinger loosened the reigns a bit for the followup, Underground. Among the original tunes on Underground was Hideaway, a song written by vocalist James Lowe and bassist Mark Tulin that probably would have been a better choice as a single than what actually got released: a novelty tune called Dr. Feelgood written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz, who had also written the band's first hit, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night).

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    As The World Rises And Falls
Source:    LP: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Morgan
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:    John Mayall's Bluesbreakers
Title:    Stand Back Baby
Source:    LP: Crusade
Writer(s):    John Mayall
Label:    London
Year:    1967
    Following the departure from the Bluesbreakers of guitarist Peter Green to form Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall recorded his first solo LP, The Blues Alone, on which he wrote every song and played every instrument except for drums. That same year he recruited 18-year-old Mick Taylor to become the new Bluesbreakers guitarist for the album Crusade. Rounding out the band was Keef Hartley, who had provided drum parts for The Blues Alone and bassist John McVie, who had been invited to join Fleetwood Mac but had not yet accepted the invitation. The band also featured saxophonists Chris Mercer and Rip Kant, replading John Almond and Alan Skidmore in the group. As was the case with previous Bluesbreakers albums, Crusade was made up primarily of blues covers, with only a handful of Mayall originals, including Stand Back Baby, the shortest track on the LP. Mayall would release one more Bluesbreakers album (Bare Wires) before retiring the name permanently in 1968.

Artist:     Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Title:     Fire
Source:     CD: The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Writer:     Brown/Crane/Finesilver/Ker
Label:     Polydor (original label: Atlantic)
Year:     1968
     The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was unusual for their time in that they were much more theatrical than most of their contemporaries, who were generally more into audio experimentation than visual. I have a video of Fire being performed (or maybe just lip-synched). In it, all the members are wearing some sort of mask, and Brown himself is wearing special headgear that was literally on fire. There is no doubt that The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown sowed the seeds of what was to become the glitter-rock movement in the early to mid 70s.

Artist:    27 Devils Joking
Title:    Indian Joe
Source:    LP: Actual Toons
Writer(s):    Brian S. Curley
Label:    Live Wire
Year:    1986
    This seems like a good place to talk about Craig Ellis. Craig was a talented, if somewhat troubled songwriter/guitarist/vocalist whom I first heard of in the early 1980s when I ran across a single by a group called Cosmic Grackles at KUNM radio at the University of New Mexico. I finally met Craig in late1986, when both of us were recording at Bottomline Studios in southeast Albuquerque. I was working on something called Civilian Joe ("a real American zero"), while Craig was putting together a project called Uproar At The Zoo involving guitarist Larry Otis and drummer John Henry Smith, among others. Around that same time I interviewed a guy from Santa Fe named Brian S. Curley, who was appearing on my Rock Nouveaux radio show to promote his new group, 27 Devils Joking. During the interview Brian mentioned that he had until recently been working with Craig Ellis, and that 27 Devils Joking was actually a result of a falling out between the two. Which brings us to Indian Joe, a track from the first 27 Devils Joking LP, Actual Toons. You see, in early 1987 Craig gave me a cassette tape of some of his most recent work, including a song called Indian Joe. It's the same song, using an almost identical arrangement, yet on the LP the song is listed as being the sole work of Brian Curley. One of these days I'll find that old cassette tape Craig gave me and you can decide for youself whose song it is.
        
Artist:    Mumphries
Title:    Bad Dream
Source:    CD: Thank You, Bonzo
Writer(s):    Stephen R Webb
Label:    WayWard
Year:    1989
    One of the more unusual bands on the Albuquerque, NM scene in the late 1980s was a group called the Soft Corps. With a membership that varied depending on the needs of a particular song, the group's on-stage antics included a guitar being leaned on its amp, causing massive feedback while members traded instruments and the band's leader walked off the stage to watch the show. In mid-1988 the Soft Corps officially disbanded, with three of the members, guitarist/bassist/vocalist Quincy Adams, guitarist/keyboardist Suzan Hagler and guitarist/bassist/vocalist StephenR Webb joining up with drummer John Henry Smith to form The Mumphries. Bad Dream, recorded in 1989, features Webb on lead guitar and vocals, Hagler on keyboards, Adams on bass and Smith on drums.

Artist:    Strawberry Zots
Title:    Tiny Town
Source:    LP: Cars, Flowers, Telephones
Writer(s):    Mark Andrews
Label:    StreetSound
Year:    1989
    Sometimes if a band in the 1960s had a song they wanted to record that didn't quite fit stylistically with the rest of their material, they would put it at the end of an album side. Probably the most obvious example of this was Moby Grape's Just Like Gene Autry: A Foxtrot, which appeared on the second LP, Wow. To emphasis just how different the song was from the rest of the album, the listener was instructed to change the speed of the record from 33 1/3 RPM to 78 RPM in order to play it (which makes it impossible to play on many high end turntables made after the mid 1970s). Albuquerque's Strawberry Zots, while deliberately emulating all things psychedelic, did not take such a drastic approach with Tiny Town, from their 1989 LP Cars, Flowers, Telephones, but they did, appropriately, put it at the end of side one. Once you've heard the song you'll understand why.

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    Prologue, August 29, 1968/Someday (August 29, 1968)
Source:    LP: The Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s):    Pankow/Lamm
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    In the months leading up to the 1968 Democratic convention the phrase "come to Chicago" was often heard among members of the counter-culture that had grown up around various anti-establishment causes. As the summer wore on it became clear that something was going to happen at the Convention that August. Sure enough, on August 28, with the crowd chanting "the whole world's watching", police began pulling demonstraters into paddy wagons, with a full-blown riot erupting the following day. Around that same time a local Chicago band calling itself the Big Thing hooked up with producer James William Guercio, who convinced them to change their name to the Chicago Transit Authority (later shortened to Chicago). It's only natural then that the band would include a song referencing the events of August 29th on their debut LP. The tracks begin with an actual recording of the chant itself, which leads into a tune written by James Pankow and Robert Lamm called Someday (August 29, 1968). The chant itself makes a short reappearance midway through the song as well.
        
Artist:    Amboy Dukes
Title:    Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source:    CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nugent/Farmer
Label:    Priority (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Detroit was one of the major centers of pop music in the late 60s. In addition to the myriad Motown acts, the area boasted the popular retro-rock&roll band Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the harder rocking Heard (later known as the Bob Seger System), the anarchistic MC5, and Ted Nugent's outfit, the Amboy Dukes, who scored big in 1968 with Journey To The Center Of The Mind.

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Bottom Of The Soul
Source:    CD: Beyond The Garage (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Bonniwell Music Machine)
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:    1967
    After severing ties with Original Sound Records in early 1967, Sean Bonniwell and his band, the Music Machine, signed a contract with Warner Brothers, a label that was already well on its way to becoming one of the world's top record companies. Although the first single released on the label featured the original lineup, the song, Bottom Of The Soul, was credited to the Bonniwell Music Machine, as were all subsequent releases by the band. The song itself, in the words of Bonniwell himself, "celebrates the courage of those homeless whose criterion...measures the burdon of living life at the bottom of the soul".

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:    Jethro Tull
Title:    It's Breaking Me Up
Source:    LP: This Was
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    Jethro Tull originally was part of the British blues scene, but even in the early days the band's principal songwriter Ian Anderson made no secret of the fact that he wanted to expand beyond the confines of that particular genre. Ironically, It's Breaking Me Up, from Jethro Tull's first LP, is an Anderson composition that is rooted solidly in the British blues style.

Artist:    Procol Harum
Title:    Homburg
Source:    British import CD: Procol Harum (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Brooker/Reid
Label:    Salvo/Fly (original US label: A&M)
Year:    1967
    Procol Harum's followup single to A Whiter Shade Of Pale was a now nearly forgotten song called Homburg. Although the song's lyrics were praised by critics and by fellow songwriters such as Elton John, the music itself was perceived as being too similar to the previous single to stand on its own. You can decide for yourself on that one. Three years after the record was released, Procol Harum left EMI's Regal Zonophone label to sign with the newly-formed Fly Records. In 1971 Fly released a compilation album called Flyback 4-The Best Of Procol Harum. Included on the album were new stereo mixes of three songs, one of which was Homburg.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    See See Rider
Source:    LP: Animalization
Writer(s):    Ma Rainey
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    One of the last singles released by the original incarnation of the Animals, See See Rider traces its roots back to the 1920s, when it was first recorded by Ma Rainey. The Animals version is considerably faster than most other recordings of the song, and includes a signature opening rift by organist Dave Rowberry (who had replaced founder Alan Price prior to the recording of the Animalization album that the song first appeared on) that is unique to the Animals' take on the tune.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Turn! Turn! Turn!
Source:    Simulated Stereo CD: The Best Of 60s Supergroups (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Turn! Turn! Turn!)
Writer(s):    Pete Seeger
Label:    Priority (origina label: Columbia)
Year:    1965
     After their success covering Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, the band turned to an even more revered songwriter: the legendary Pete Seeger. Turn! Turn! Turn!, with lyrics taken directly from the book of Ecclesiastes, was first recorded by Seeger in the early 60s, nearly three years after he wrote the song. The song was never mixed in true stereo, forcing the band's record label to use a simulated stereo mix on stereo copies of the LP. Once monoraul albums were phased out in the late 1960s, this "fake" stereo version remained the only one available for many years, appearing on various compilations before a mid-1990s remaster of the Turn! Turn! Turn! album used the original mono mix.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    I Want To Tell You
Source:    LP: Revolver
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Apple/Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    The first pre-recorded reel-to-reel tape I ever bought was the Capitol version of the Beatles' Revolver album, which I picked up about a year after the LP was released. Although my Dad's tape recorder had small built-in speakers, his Koss headphones had far superior sound, which led to me sleeping on the couch in the living room with the headphones on. Hearing songs like I Want To Tell You on factory-recorded reel-to-reel tape through a decent pair of headphones gave me an appreciation for just how well-engineered Revolver was, and also inspired me to (eventually) learn my own way around a recording studio. The song itself, by the way, is one of three George Harrison songs on Revolver; the most on any Beatle album up to that point, and a major reason that, when pressed, I almost always end up citing Revolver as my favorite Beatles LP.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Love Me Do (version three)
Source:    Mono CD: Please Please Me
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Parlophone (original US label: Tollie)
Year:    1963
    The Beatles made three recordings of their debut single, Love Me Do. The first version of the song (which had actually been written before the Beatles even existed) was made on June 6, 1962  for the band's EMI Artist Test with Pete Best playing drums. Although the band passed the audition, they decided to change drummers soon after the audition, replacing Best with Ringo Starr. On September 4, 1962 they returned to EMI studios for their first official recording session and cut the song a second time, this time with Ringo on drums. Producer George Martin was not entirely satisfied with Ringo's drumming on the recording, and so the song was recut a week later, on September 11, 1962, with studio drummer Andy White (Ringo played tambourine on this version). The single was first issued on October 5th of that year, using the version with Ringo on drums. That version was soon replaced, however, with the Alan White version, which was included on the band's 1963 debut LP Please Please Me, as well as the first pressings of Vee Jays Introducing...The Beatles LP and the US single version of the song released on the Tollie label.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    She Said She Said
Source:    LP: Revolver
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    The last song to be recorded for the Beatles' Revolver album was She Said She Said, a John Lennon song inspired by an acid trip taken by members of the band (with the exception of Paul McCartney) during a break from touring in August of 1965. The band's manager, Brian Epstein, had rented a large house in Beverly Hills, but word had gotten out and the Beatles found it difficult to come and go at will. Instead, they invited several people, including the original members of the Byrds and actor Peter Fonda, to come over and hang out with them. At some point, Fonda brought up the fact that he had nearly died as a child from an accidental gunshot wound, and used the phrase "I know what it's like to be dead." Lennon was creeped out by the things Fonda was saying and told him to "shut up about that stuff. You're making me feel like I've never been born." The song itself took nine hours to record and mix, and is one of the few Beatle tracks that does not have Paul McCartney on it (George Harrison played bass). Perhaps not all that coincidentally, Fonda himself would star in a Roger Corman film called The Trip (written by Jack Nicholson and co-starring Dennis Hopper) the following year.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    You Told Me
Source:    CD: Headquarters
Writer(s):    Michael Nesmith
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1967      
            After Don Kirschner got himself fired from Colgems for issuing the album More of the Monkees without the band's knowledge or permission (as well as a subsequent single that was sent out in promo form to radio stations and almost immediately rescinded), the band members insisted on having greater artistic control over what was being issued with their names on it. The end result was the Headquarters album, the only Monkees LP to feature the band members playing virtually all the instruments (with a few exceptions, notably producer Chip Douglas playing bass guitar). Although the Michael Nesmith composition You Told Me starts off side one of the LP, it was actually the third and final Nesmith track to be recorded for Headquarters. Peter Tork plays banjo on the song, which was sung by Nesmith himself.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2106 (starts 2/1/21)

 https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/356533-dc-2106

 
    This week we feature a long extended piece from the jazz-rock band Chase, a group best-known for their 1971 hit Get It On. Before that, though, we have a descending trip through the years 1973 to 1968. To finish out, we have a set of tracks from 1970. It all starts with a song that has one of the most distinctive (and, to be honest, goofy) intros in the history of recorded music...

Artist:    Blue Suede
Title:    Hooked On A Feeling
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Mark James
Label:    EMI
Year:    1973
    By 1974, the novelty record was almost dead. Then again, the Blue Suede version of the 1969 B.J. Thomas hit, Hooked On A Feeling, is not quite a novelty record. The single, release in May of 1973 in the band's native Sweden, went all the way to the top of the charts when it was released in the US in early 1974. Not bad for a band that recorded nothing but cover songs (even the famous "ooka-chaka" intro was swiped from a 1971 Jonathan King version of the song). If you are one of the many who hoped never to hear this song again, you can blame Quentin Tarantino, who revived interest in the song when he included it in the soundtrack of his film Reservoir Dogs.

Artist:    West, Bruce & Laing
Title:    Love Is Worth The Blues
Source:    CD: Why Dontcha
Writer(s):    West/Bruce/Laing
Label:    Columbia/Windfall
Year:    1972
    When Mountain's bassist/vocalist Felix Pappalardi announced, in January of 1972, that he would be leaving the band at the end of their current tour, the group's remaining two members, guitarist Leslie West and drummer Corky Laing, immediately set about looking for a replacement. From the start the choice was obvious; Pappalardi had produced all but the first album by Cream, and, as Mountain's producer, deliberately set out to model his new band on the legendary British supergroup, even to the point of developing a vocal style similar to that of Cream bassist Jack Bruce. In fact, one of Mountain's most popular songs, Theme From An Imaginary Western, was a cover of a Jack Bruce/Pete Brown composition from Bruce's first solo LP. It was quickly decided that, rather than continue on as Mountain, the band would call itself West, Bruce & Laing. They got to work on their first album, Why Dontcha, early in 1972, but, due to a combination of factors, including a schedule of live performances and a tendency to spend a lot of their off time getting high, the album was not finished until November of 1972. Although they had managed to negotiate a lucrative deal with Columbia, the label itself was not happy with the overall quality of the album and did not give it a lot of promotional support. Nonetheless, the album did fairly well, staying on the Billboard LP chart for a total of 20 weeks, peaking in the #26 spot. One of the highlights of Why Dontcha was Love Is Worth The Blues. The song, credited to the entire band, features lead vocals from Leslie West and features the kind of interplay between guitar, bass and drums that Cream was famous for.

Artist:    Gordon Haskell
Title:    Sitting By The Fire
Source:    British import LP: The New Age Of Atlantic (originally released on LP: It Is And It Isn't)
Writer(s):    Gordon Haskell
Label:    Atlantic (original label: Atco)
Year:    1971
    Gordon Haskell was one of those British musicians that was probably known more for the people he knew rather than the music he himself made, at least during the early part of his career. Born in 1946, he played bass during his high school years in a band led by schoolmate Robert Fripp. By the mid-60s he had turned professional as a member of the British psychedelic band Fleur de Lys. Although never a major player on the British music scene, the band did score a #1 hit in South Africa with Haskell's Lazy Life, which also hit #3 in Australia. For a short time in 1966 he was roomates with Jimi Hendrix, who had just moved to England at the behest of the Animals' Chas Chandler. Haskell became more well-known in 1970, when he replaced Greg Lake as bassist for King Crimson on their album In The Wake Of Poseidon, taking on lead vocal duties as well for the band's third LP, Lizard. His own preference for blues and folk music put him at odds with Fripp's more avant-garde approach, however, and Haskell soon left King Crimson for a solo career. Signing with Arif Marden's Atlantic subsidiary Atco, Haskell released It Is And It Isn't, in 1971. Although the album itself was not a commercial success, one of the songs, Sitting By The Fire, was chosen for inclusion on the British sampler album The New Age Of Atlantic. For the next thirty years or so Haskell played mostly bar gigs, occasionally doing support work for other artists as well. In 2001 he released an album called Look Out that featured a song called How Wonderful You Are. Despite a total lack of promotion from his label the song went on to become the most requested song in the history of the BBC's Radio 2, and led to a contract with the British label East-West. His next album, Harry's Bar, went to the #2 spot on the British album charts, but after Haskell referred to a record company official as an android the label dropped him from their roster. Haskell continued to perform across Europe until his death from cancer in October of 2020.

Artist:    Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young
Title:    Country Girl
Source:    LP: déjà vu
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    The second Crosby, Stills and Nash album, déjà vu, was enhanced by the addition of singer/songwriter/guitarist Neil Young, along with bassist Dallas Taylor and drummer Greg Reeves. The LP itself was printed on textured cardboard with gold offset lettering, giving the package a unique look. But it was the music itself that made the album one of the top sellers of 1970, with three singles going into the top 40. One of the non-single tracks was Country Girl, a medley of three uncompleted Neil Young songs that would not have been out of place on a Young solo album.

Artist:    Fairport Convention
Title:    Tale In Hard Time
Source:    LP: Fairport Chronicles (originally released in UK on LP: What We Did On Our Holidays and in US on LP: Fairport Convention)
Writer(s):    Richard Thompson
Label:    A&M (UK label: Island)
Year:    1969
    One of the more confusing things about Fairport Convention is the fact that their self-titled debut LP was only released in the UK, and their second album, What We Did On Our Holidays, was released as their self-titled US debut album. Two different albums. Same name. Confusing. What's not confusing, however, is the music itself. Songs like the often overlooked Tale In Hard Time make that abundantly clear.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Stephen Stills/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title:    Harvey's Tune
Source:    CD: Super Session
Writer(s):    Harvey Brooks
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1968
    Probably the most overlooked track on the classic Super Session LP is the album's closer, a two-minute instrumental called Harvey's Tune. The piece was written by bassist Harvey Brooks, who, along with Mike Bloomfield, had been a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and later, the Electric Flag.

Artist:    Chase
Title:    Invitation To A River
Source:    LP: Chase
Writer(s):    Raub/Chase/Richards
Label:    Epic
Year:    1971
    Up until the 1970s, the usual attempts at fusing jazz and rock were to start with a rock band and add horns. This was done mostly by bands from Chicago like the Buckinghams, the Flock and, of course, Chicago. Of course there were exceptions, such as Miles Davis's Bitches Brew album, that attempted to add rock elements to jazz, but those efforts were still considered experimental, and usually included other musical elements as well. In 1970 four jazz trumpeters formed a band incorporating a rock-oriented rhythm section. They called that band Chase, after the band's leader. In addition to the four trumpeters, Bill Chase, Ted Piercefield, Alan Ware and Jerry Van Blair, the band included keyboardist Phil Porter, guitarist Angel South, bassist Dennis Johnson and drummer Jay Burrid. The final member was lead vocalist Terry Richards, who co-wrote the band's first, and biggest hit, Get It On. The song was taken from the band's self-titled debut LP, which also included a fourteen-minute long piece called Invitation To A River, which was actually made up of a series of five shorter pieces, Two Minds Meet, Stay, Paint It Sad, Reflections and River, that play as one continuous track. Chase released two more albums before a plane crash took the life of Bill Chase and five others in 1974.

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    25 Or 6 To 4
Source:    CD: Chicago
Writer(s):    Robert Lamm
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1970
    For their second LP, Chicago (which had just dropped the words "Transit Authority" from their name in response to a threatened lawsuit) tried out all three of their vocalists on each new song to hear who sounded the best for that particular song. In the case of Robert Lamm's 25 Or 6 To 4, bassist Peter Cetera did the honors. The song became a top 10 single both in the US and UK. Despite rumors to the contrary, Lamm says 25 Or 6 To 4 is not a drug song. Instead, he says, the title refers to the time of the morning that he was awake and writing the tune.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Wicked World
Source:    LP: Black Sabbath
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osborne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1969
    The Secret Origin of Heavy Metal-Part One: After a short (one month) stint as Mick Abrahams's replacement in Jethro Tull, guitarist Tony Iommi rejoined his former bandmates Ozzy Osborne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward in the blues-rock band Earth in January of 1969. Later that year they realized that there was already another English band called Earth and decided to change their name. Taking inspiration from a playbill of a movie theater showing classic Boris Karloff horror films across the street from where they were rehearsing, they started calling themselves Black Sabbath in August of 1969 and began to forge a new sound for the band in keeping with their new name. Three months later Black Sabbath got their first record contract, releasing a cover of Crow's Evil Woman in November. They followed the (UK only) single up with their self-titled debut LP, recorded in just two days, on Friday, February 13th, 1970. The album was released three months later in the US, and spent over a year on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart. Although Evil Woman was included on the UK version of the LP, Warner Brothers chose to instead include the B side of the band's British single, a song called Wicked World that was not on the UK version of the album. Most Black Sabbath fans, it turns out, consider Wicked World a stronger track, as it shows a trace of the band's original blues-rock sound, especially on its fast paced intro and closing sections.

Artist:    Sugarloaf
Title:    Green-Eyed Lady
Source:    CD: Billboard Top Rock 'N' Roll Hits-1970 (originally released on LP: Sugarloaf and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Corbetta/Phillips/Riordan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Liberty)
Year:    1970
    The unwritten rules of radio, particularly those concerning song length, were in transition in 1970. Take Sugarloaf's Green-Eyed Lady, for example. When first released as a single the 45 was virtually identical to the album version except that it faded out just short of the six-minute mark. This was about twice the allowed length under the old rules and it was soon replaced with an edited version that left out all the instrumental solos, coming in at just under three minutes. The label soon realized, however, that part of the original song's appeal (as heard on FM rock radio) was its organ solo, and a third single edit with that solo restored became the final, and most popular, version of Green-Eyed Lady. The song went into the top 5 nationally (#1 on some charts) and ended up being the band's biggest hit.

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

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    Hats Off To (Roy) Harper
Source:    German import LP: Led Zeppelin III
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Charles Obscure
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1970
    The final track on Led Zeppelin's third album at first sounds like a throwaway track featuring Jimmy Page noodling slide guitar and Robert Plant throwing out blues cliches. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the writing credits on the label read "Traditional, arr. Charles Obscure". The reality, though, is that Hats Off To (Roy) Harper is based on a 1937 recording of Shake 'Em On Down by delta bluesman Bukka White. The title of the Led Zeppelin version is a tribute to the band's friend Roy Harper, who would come to international prominence in 1975 as the guest lead vocalist on Pink Floyd's Have A Cigar, from their Wish You Were Here album.