Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2311 (starts 3/13/23

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/465006-dc-2311

    This week we feature back to back Peter Gabriel tracks, one with and one without Genesis. Also on the bill what is acknowledged as one of Jimi Hendrix's greatest live performances and a half dozen other tunes from the early to mid 1970s.

Artist:    George Harrison
Title:    Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
Source:    LP: Living In The Material World
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Apple
Year:    1973
    Of all the former members of the Beatles, guitarist George Harrison had the hottest start as a solo artist. His first album following the band's breakup, 1970's All Things Must Pass, was a critical and commercial blockbuster. He followed it up with the multi-artist benefit Concert For Bangla Desh in 1971, but was reportedly exhausted from his efforts to see that the money raised went where it was intended to. For the next year and a half he struggled to maintain a growing adherence to the spiritual path he had first entered when the Beatles went to India while participating in such worldly activities as producing singles for former bandmate Ringo Starr and others, sitting in on friends' studio recordings (including Nilsson's infamous You're Breaking My Heart), losing his driver's license for wreckless driving (he crashed his Mercedes into a roundabout at 90MPH) and doing a lot of cocaine. It was this constant inner conflict that fueled his next album, 1973's Living In The Material World. The album's lead single, Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth), topped the US charts, the last time a Harrison song would do so until 1981, and became a staple of his concert performances for the rest of his life.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience (II)
Title:    Hear My Train A Comin'
Source:    CD: Blues (originally released on LP: Rainbow Bridge)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA/Experience Hendrix (original label: Reprise)
Year:    Recorded 1970, released 1971
    Jimi Hendrix first came up with the song known as Hear My Train A Comin' (although he usually introduced it as Get My Heart Back Together) in 1967, but was never able to get a studio version of the tune recorded to his satisfaction. Nonetheless, he did play the song live on several occasions, including at Woodstock. What is generally agreed to be the definitive version of the song was recorded on May 30, 1970 at the Berkeley Community Theatre, with bassist Billy Cox and drummer Mitch Mitchell, a trio billed as the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The recording of that performance was first released on the Rainbow Bridge album in 1971, and later included on the 1994 compilation album Blues.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    The Wizard
Source:    CD: Black Sabbath
Writer:    Osborne/Iommi/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers/Rhino
Year:    1970
    Often cited as the first true heavy metal album, Black Sabbath's debut LP features one of my all-time favorite album covers (check out the Stuck in the Psychedelic Era Facebook page's Classic Album Covers section) as well as several outstanding tracks. One of the best of these is The Wizard, which was reportedly inspired by the Gandalf character from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Artist:    Argent
Title:    Hold Your Head Up
Source:    European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: All Together Now)
Writer(s):    Argent/White
Label:    Sony Music (original US label: Epic)
Year:    1972
    Following the dissolution of the Zombies, keyboardist Rod Argent went about forming a new band called, appropriately enough, Argent. The new group had its greatest success in 1972 with the song Hold Your Head Up, which went to the #5 spot on the charts in both the US and UK. The song originally appeared on the album All Together Now, with a running time of over six minutes. The first single version of the tune ran less than three minutes, but was quickly replaced with a longer edit that made the song three minutes and fifteen seconds long. In the years since, the longer LP version has come to be the most familiar one to most radio listeners.

Artist:    Genesis
Title:    The Battle Of Epping Forest
Source:    CD: Selling England By The Pound
Writer(s):    Banks/Collins/Gabriel/Hackett/Rutherford
Label:    Rhino/Atlantic (original label: Charisma)
Year:    1973
    Although sometimes criticized for making their music overly complicated at times (such as on The Battle Of Epping Forest), there is no doubting the thought and effort (not to mention outstanding musicianship) put forth by Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Steve Hackett and Phil Collins on the album Selling England By The Pound. Released in 1973, the LP focuses on the loss of traditional English culture and the increasing "Americanization" of the United Kingdom in the last half of the 20th century. The Battle Of Epping Forest was actually inspired by a newspaper article about gang violence in London's East end that Gabriel had read several years earlier. When Gabriel was unable to locate a copy of the article he created new characters to populate the song (and of course the band's legendary stage show).

Artist:    Peter Gabriel
Title:    Solsbury Hill
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Peter Gabriel
Label:    Atco
Year:    1977
    Vocalist Peter Gabriel's first single after leaving Genesis was Solsbury Hill, a song inspired by a spiritual experience Gabriel had atop Little Solsbury Hill in Somerset, England. Gabriel said of the song:  "It's about being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get ... It's about letting go." The song hit the top 20 in the UK and shows up from time to time in various TV and movie soundtracks.
    
Artist:    Doors
Title:    A Little Game/The Hill Dwellers/Spanish Caravan
Source:    CD: Live At Hollywood Bowl
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 1987
    The shortest (by far) Doors album ever released was Live At Hollywood Bowl. Released in 1987 on both LP and CD, the album clocks in at 19:09 and 22:43 respectively. To put it into perspective, side one of the 1973 Genesis LP clocks in at 25:07...and that's the short side of the album. Part of the reason is technical; Jim Morrison's vocal mike was badly distorted at the beginning of the concert, making several songs unuseable. Another factor was that the album itself was the soundtrack to a filmed concert that was simultaneously released on VHS tape, although the video is actually longer than either audio version. Some of the pieces that did make the album, such as A Little Game and The Hill Dwellers, were part of the Celebration Of The Lizard, a massive work that the band was never able to get a satisfactory recording of in the studio. In this case the two bits run together and lead into a short section of Spanish Caravan.
    
Artist:    Jean-Luc Ponty
Title:    Between You And Me
Source:    LP: Aurora
Writer(s):    Jean-Luc Ponty
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1976
    Originally trained as a classical violinist, and playing in an orchestra sponsored by Concerts Lamoureux, Jean-Luc Ponty took a side job playing clarinet in a college jazz band. Becoming a fan of John Coltrane, Ponty learned to play the saxophone as well. One night, after an orchestral concert, he showed up at a local jazz club with only his violin and proceeded to play it in a be-bop style. Within four years he was considered the world's foremost "jazz fiddler". An invitation from John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet to play the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1967 led to a recording contract with Liberty's World Pacific label, which culminated in the 1970 album King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa. This in turn led to Ponty emigrating to the United States and touring as a member of the Mothers Of Invention. In 1975 he signed with Atlantic, releasing a dozen consecutive top five jazz albums over the next ten years. The second of these was Aurora, released in 1976. Between You And Me, like the rest of the LP, was composed by Ponty himself.

Artist:     Beatles
Title:     Abbey Road Medley #2
Source:     CD: Abbey Road
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Parlophone
Year:     1969
     The Beatles had been experimenting with songs leading into other songs since the Sgt. Pepper's album. With Abbey Road they took it a step further, with side two of the album containing two such medleys. The second one consists of Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End, with Her Majesty (not included on this week's show) tossed in as a kind of "hidden" track at the end of the album. The End is somewhat unique in that it features solos by all three guitar-playing members of the band, as well as the only Ringo Starr drum solo to appear on a Beatles album.

    

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2310 (starts 3/6/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/464078-pe-2310

    This week's show starts off with a Beatles set and includes an Advanced Psych segment consisting entirely of tracks recorded at a certain independent Albuquerque, New Mexico studio that no longer exists. The rest of the show isn't quite so self-indulgent.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Birthday/Yer Blues
Source:    CD: The Beatles
Writer:    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year:    1968
    One of the great ironies of rock history was that the album entitled simply The Beatles was the one that had the fewest songs with all four of the band members playing on them. By 1968 the Beatles were experiencing internal conflicts, and nearly all of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's songs were played by just the two of them, while George Harrison's songs (and Ringo Starr's single contribution as a songwriter) featured an array of some of the UK's top musicians (including guitarist Eric Clapton). The opening tracks of side three of the album are typical of this approach, as Birthday is essentially a McCartney solo piece. Yer Blues, on the other hand, has Lennon singing and playing guitar, with probably McCartney on bass and drums. The first performance of Yer Blues in front of a live audience was in December of 1968 as part of the Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus. It was not the Beatles however, that performed the tune. Instead, Yer Blues was played by the Dirty Mac, a jam band consisting of Lennon, Clapton, drummer Mitch Mitchell (of the Jimi Hendrix Experience), and the Stones' Keith Richards on bass. That performance was never seen, other than by the studio audience, until the entire Circus was released on DVD a few years ago (Mick Jagger reportedly had the entire project shelved due to his dissatisfaction with the Stones' performance).

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Baby, You're A Rich Man
Source:    LP: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1967
    Baby, You're A Rich Man was one of the last actual collaborations between John Lennon and Paul McCartney and addresses the Beatles' longtime manager Brian Epstein, although not by name. Lennon came up with the basic question "how does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" (a popular term for the young and hip in late 60s London), which became the basis for the song's verses, which were combined with an existing, but unfinished, Paul McCartney chorus (Baby, You're A Rich Man, too). The finished piece was issued as the B side of the Beatles' second single of 1967, All You Need Is Love, and later remixed in stereo and included on the US-only LP version of Magical Mystery Tour.
          
Artist:    Mamas and the Papas
Title:    Somebody Groovy
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM B side)
Writer:    John Phillips
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1965
    The Mamas and the Papas were blessed with strong vocals and even stronger songwriting. Their debut single, California Dreamin', written by John & Michelle Phillips, is one of the defining songs of the mid-sixties. The B side of that single, released in 1965, was another John Phillips tune, Somebody Groovy.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    See See Rider
Source:    CD: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals 1966-1968 (originally released on LP: Animalization and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ma Rainey
Label:    Polydor (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1966
    One of the last singles released by the original incarnation of the Animals (and the first to use the name Eric Burdon And The Animals on the label), See See Rider traces its roots back to the 1920s, when it was first recorded by Ma Rainey. The Animals version is considerably faster than most other recordings of the song, and includes a signature opening rift by organist Dave Rowberry (who had replaced founder Alan Price prior to the recording of the Animalization album that the song first appeared on) that is unique to the Animals' take on the tune.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Glittering Girl
Source:    LP: The Who Sell Out (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Track/Polydor (original US label: MCA)
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1995
    The Who often recorded more material than they could fit on an album, resulting in several unreleased tracks remaining in the vaults for years. One of these was Glittering Girl, a Pete Townshend tune that was recorded around the same time as the songs on The Who Sell Out. Although originally intended for single release (they went with Pictures Of Lily instead), Glittering Girl was finally issued as a bonus track on the 1995 CD release of The Who Sell Out and is included on disc two of the remastered vinyl edition of the LP.
    
Artist:     Frumious Bandersnatch
Title:     Hearts To Cry
Source:     Mono British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released on self-titled EP)
Writer:     Jack King
Label:     Big Beat (original label: Muggles Gramophone Works)
Year:     1968
     Rock music and the real estate business have something in common: location can make all the difference. Take the San Francisco Bay Area. You have one of the world's great Cosmopolitan cities at the north end of a peninsula. South of the city, along the peninsula itself you have mostly redwood forest land interspersed with fairly affluent communities along the way to Silicon Valley and the city of San Jose at the south end of the bay. The eastern side of the bay, on the other hand, spans a socio-economic range from blue collar to ghetto and is politically conservative; not exactly the most receptive environment for a hippy band calling itself Frumious Bandersnatch, which is a shame, since they had at least as much talent as any other band in the area. Unable to develop much of a following, they are one of the great "should have beens" of the psychedelic era, as evidenced by Hearts To Cry, the lead track of their 1968 untitled EP.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Touch Me (Doors only mix w/ new lead guitar overdub)
Source:    CD: The Soft Parade (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Robby Kreiger
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1968, overdub added 2019
    For those of us who found the use of horns and strings to be totally out of place on a Doors album, there is now a version of the 1969 album The Soft Parade that strips away all those extra instruments, allowing the band's actual playing to be heard clearly for the first time. In addition, guitarist Robby Krieger has added new guitar solos to a couple of tracks, including the hit song Touch Me (replacing the saxophone solo originally heard on the late 1968 single). Also more prominent is the keyboard work from Ray Manzarek, which was originally buried in the mix.
The song also features the legendary Harvey Brooks (Super Session, Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album, countless others) on bass.

Artist:    Syndicate Of Sound
Title:    Little Girl
Source:    CD: Battle Of The Bands, Vol. Two (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Baskin/Gonzalez
Label:    Era (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's Little Girl, which has come to be recognized as one of the top garage-rock songs of all time. It's also one of the few original garage-rock hits recorded and mixed in true stereo. Little Girl was originally released regionally in mid 1966 on the Hush label, and reissued nationally by Bell Records a couple months later.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Rock And Roll Woman
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again and as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Buffalo Springfield did not sell huge numbers of records (except for the single For What It's Worth) while they were together. Nor did they pack in the crowds. As a matter of fact, when they played the club across the street from where Love was playing, they barely had any audience at all. Artistically, though, it's a whole 'nother story. During their brief existence Buffalo Springfield launched the careers of no less than four major artists: Richie Furay, Jim Messina, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. They also recorded more than their share of tracks that have held up better than most of what else was being recorded at the time. Case in point: Rock And Roll Woman, a Stephen Stills tune that still sounds fresh well over 50 years after it was recorded.

Artist:    West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Title:    Until The Poorest People Have Money To Spend
Source:    CD: Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil
Writer(s):    Markley/Harris
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
            The final West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band album for Reprise, Volume III-A Child's Guide To Good And Evil, is generally considered the group's best album as well, despite the absence of founding member Danny Harris (who would return for their next LP on the Amos label). As always, Bob Markley provided the lyrics for all the band's original songs on the album, including Until The Poorest People Have Money To Spend, which Shaun Harris wrote the music for. Although the sentiment expressed in the song is a good one, the sincerity of Markley's lyrics is somewhat suspect, according to guitarist Ron Morgan, who said that Markley was notoriously miserly with his own money (of which he had inherited quite a lot).
     
Artist:    Soft Machine
Title:    Why Am I So Short?/So Boot If At All/A Certain Kind
Source:    LP: The Soft Machine
Writer(s):    Ratledge/Ayers/Hopper/Wyatt
Label:    ABC Probe
Year:    1968
    Fun fact: although Kevin Ayers is probably best known as a founding member of the British band Soft Machine, he only appeared on the band's first LP before leaving the group following their first US tour in 1968. While on tour with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the band, which in addition to Ayers on bass and guitar, Mike Ratledge on organ and Robert Wyatt on drums and lead vocals, found time to record their first album, working with producers Tom Wilson and Chas Chandler, in New York. The tracks on the album tend to segue into each other, with the second half of the first side consisting of Why Am I So Short, followed by what is basically a drum solo called So Boot If At All, which leads into a piece called A Certain Kind, written by Hugh Hopper, who ended up replacing Ayers on bass.

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Remember A Day
Source:    CD: Relics (originally released on LP: A Saucerful Of Secrets)
Writer(s):    Rick Wright
Label:    Capitol (original label: Tower)
Year:    1968
    Trivia question: Which Pink Floyd album never made the US album charts? The answer:  A Saucerful Of Secrets, the band's second LP. Like the band's debut LP, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, A Saucerful Of Secrets was released on Capitol's Tower subsidiary and received virtually no promotion from the label. By 1968 it was becoming increasingly clear that Syd Barrett was going off the deep end due to ongoing mental health issues exacerbated by heavy use of hallucinogenics and it's reasonable to assume the label expected to band to soon dissolve. After one performance where Barrett did nothing but stand and strum a single chord for the entire set the rest of the band made a decision to bring in Barrett's childhood friend David Gilmour as their new guitarist. In all likelihood this decision saved the band itself, as A Saucerful Of Secrets ended up being the only Pink Floyd album to include both Barrett and Gilmour. Meanwhile, other band members were stepping up their contributions as well, Rick Wright's Remember A Day being a prime example.

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 (without the parenthesis), 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.

    All three of this week's Advanced Psych tracks were recorded at Bottom Line, an independent recording studio in the basement of a rented house on San Rafael Ave. in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that existed from around 1985 until the house was sold in 1989. The proprietor of Bottom Line was drummer John Henry Smith, although much of the actual recording equipment belonged to the various musicians that lived and recorded there.

Artist:    Crawling Walls
Title:    One Last Kiss
Source:    LP: Inner Limits
Writer(s):    Bob Fountain
Label:    Voxx
Year:    1985
    The Crawling Walls were an Albuquerque, NM neo-psychedelic band that recorded one album, Inner Limits, in 1985. Led by keyboardist/vocalist Bob Fountain, the band also included guitarist Larry Otis (the Philisteens), bassist Nancy Martinez and drummer Richard J. Perez. Fountain wrote and sang lead on all of the LP's tunes, including One Last Kiss, the opens the album's second side.
   
Artist:    Pheremones
Title:    Dream Wars
Source:    CD: Superflous Residuum
Writer(s):    Mitchell/Muncy
Label:    WayWard
Year:    1987
    The Pheremones (sic) were formed in early 1987 by vocalist Cole Mitchell and guitarist Duane Muncy, and also included lead guitarist Ed Carlson, bassist Stephen R Webb, and drummer John Henry Smith. Influenced heavily by early rockabilly and later bands such as the Rolling Stones, their sound was once described by Mitchell as "trailer trash rock and roll", and reflected a back-to-basics approach. On Dream Wars, a 1987 demo recording made at Bottom Line, they also showed a touch of Creedence Clearwater Revival in their sound.

Artist:    Mumphries
Title:    Wishing And Wondering
Source:    CD: Thank You, Bonzo
Writer(s):    Stephen R Webb
Label:    WayWard
Year:    1989
    The last track to be recorded at Bottom Line was Wishing And Wondering, a song decrying man's mistreatment of his home planet. The song was recorded by the Mumphries, an Albuquerque, NM band made up of Jeff "Quincy" Adams (bass, guitar and vocals), Suzan Hagler (guitar, keyboards), John Henry Smith (drums) and Stephen R Webb (guitar, bass, vocals) and was intended to be submitted to various environmentalist organizations. It is still available, if anyone wants to use it.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Sympathy For The Devil
Source:    CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released on LP: Beggars Banquet)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    Beggar's Banquet was a turning point for the Rolling Stones. They had just ended their association with Andrew Loog Oldham, who had produced all of their mid-60s records, and instead were working with Jimmy Miller, who was known for his association with Steve Winwood, both in his current band Traffic and the earlier Spencer Davis Group. Right from the opening bongo beats of Sympathy For The Devil, it was evident that this was the beginning of a new era for the bad boys of rock and roll. The song itself has gone on to be one of the defining tunes of album rock radio, and occupies the #32 spot on Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.

Artist:    Iron Butterfly
Title:    Most Anything You Want
Source:    CD: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Writer(s):    Doug Ingle
Label:    Atco
Year:    1968
    Iron Butterfly will forever be known for the seventeen minute long In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, but, contrary to popular believe, they did record other songs as well, releasing four studio albums from 1968-1971. The In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida lineup of Doug Ingle (vocals, organ), Ron Bushy (drums), Lee Dorman (bass) and Erik Brann (guitar) was only around for two of those LPs, however, and can be heard on tracks like Most Anything You Want, which opens the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album.

Artist:    Human Beinz
Title:    April 15th
Source:    British import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released in US on LP: Evolutions)
Writer(s):    Belley/De Azevedo
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    The Human Beinz started out in Youngstown, Ohio as the Premiers in 1964, but changed their name to the Human Beingz in 1966. After a few moderately successful singles on various regional labels (including a cover of Van Morrison's Gloria that predates the hit Shadows Of Knight version), the group signed to Capitol Records in 1967. In September of that year they released a cover of the Isley Brothers' Nobody But Me that became their only top 40 hit. Unfortunately, their name was misspelled on the label, and since the record was a hit, the band was stuck with the new spelling. By the time the group disbanded they had released several more singles (including two that hit the #1 spot in Japan), as well as two LPs, for Capitol. The second of these, Evolutions, was the more psychedelic of the two. Although the group was known mainly for its tight arrangements of cover songs, they did experiment a bit on Evolutions, particularly on April 15th, a seven minute jam co-written by guitarist/vocalist Dick Belley.
        
Artist:    Cream
Title:    I'm So Glad
Source:    Mono British import LP: Cream (originally released on LP: Fresh Cream)
Writer(s):    Skip James
Label:    Polydor (original US label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    Unlike later albums, which featured psychedelic cover art and several Jack Bruce/Pete Brown collaborations that had a decidedly psychedelic sound, Fresh Cream was marketed as the first album by a British blues supergroup, and featured a greater number of blues standards than subsequent releases. One of those covers that became a concert staple for the band was the old Skip James tune I'm So Glad. The song has become so strongly associated with Cream that the group used it as the opening number for all three performances when they staged a series of reunion concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in 2004. Unlike the rest of the songs on Fresh Cream, I'm So Glad was never mixed in stereo.

Artist:    Del-Vetts
Title:    Last Time Around
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Dennis Dahlquist
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    The Del-Vetts were from Chicago's affluent North Shore. Their gimmick was to show up at a high school dance by driving their matching corvettes onto the gymnasium dance floor. Musically, like most garage/punk bands, they were heavily influenced by the British invasion bands. Unlike most garage/punk bands, who favored the Rolling Stones, the Del-Vetts were more into the Jeff Beck incarnation of the Yardbirds. The 'Vetts had a few regional hits from 1965-67, the biggest being this single issued on the Dunwich label, home of fellow Chicago suburbanites the Shadows of Knight. In retrospect, considering the song's subject matter (and overall loudness), Last Time Around may well qualify as the very first death metal rock song ever recorded.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    She's Coming Home
Source:    CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Psychedelic Lollipop)
Writer:    Atkins/Miller
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1966
    Generally speaking, cheatin' songs in 1966 were considered the province of country music. The few exceptions, such as Paul Revere and the Raiders' Steppin' Out, were all told from the victim's point of view. The Blues Magoos, however, turned the entire thing upside down (or at least on its side) with She's Coming Home, a song about having to break up with one's new girlfriend in the face of the old one returning from...(prison, military duty? The lyrics never make that clear). The unusual nature of the song is in keeping with the cutting edge image of a band that was among the first to use the word psychedelic in an album title and almost certainly was the first to wear electric suits onstage.

Artist:    Manfred Mann
Title:    By Request-Edwin Garvey
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Mike D'Abo
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1968
    After Manfred Mann's original vocalist, Paul Jones, left the group for a marginally successful solo career in 1966 the band quickly found a replacement in singer/songwriter Mike D'Abo, who looked a bit like Jones, although he didn't sound like him at all. D'Abo's biggest hit with Manfred Mann was their 1968 cover of a yet-to-be-released Bob Dylan song called Quinn The Eskimo, which came out under the title Mighty Quinn. D'Abo also wrote several songs for the band, including Handbags And Gladrags (which later became the theme music for the original British version of The Office) and a strange little tune called By Request-Edwin Garvey. The latter was a preview of a series of parody songs that would dominate the group's final album, Mighty Garvey (released in the US as The Mighty Quinn).

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Punky's Dilemma
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Bookends)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    Originally written specifically for the 1967 soundtrack of the movie The Graduate but rejected by the producers, Punky's Dilemma sat on the shelf until the following year, when it became the only track on side two of Simon And Garfunkel's Bookends LP that had not been previously released. The lyrics are about as psychedelic as Simon And Garfunkel ever got.

Artist:    Chocolate Watchband
Title:    Medication
Source:    British import CD: Melts In Your Brain, Not On Your Wrist (originally released on LP: The Inner Mystique)
Writer(s):    Alton/Ditosti
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Tower)
Year:    Backing tracks recorded 1968, lead vocals recorded 2005
    By early 1968 the Chocolate Watchband had fallen on hard times. In fact, the original group had disbanded, only to reform at the behest of Tower Records and producer Ed Cobb, who wanted to put out a second Watchband LP. In short order a new group featuring mostly former members of the Watchband was formed. Cobb, however, did not have the time to wait for the new lineup to gel and got to work on the album without them. In fact, the entire first side of The Inner Mystique was performed by studio musicians. Additionally, Cobb pulled out unreleased tapes from the archive to help fill out the album, including the original band's cover of a Standells tune called Medication. Like their earlier track Let's Talk About Girls, Medication featured studio vocalist Don Bennett rather than the band's actual lead vocalist, Dave Aguilar. It's not known for sure why the substitution was made, unless perhaps Cobb was feeling pressure from the rock press, which had dismissed Aguilar as a Mick Jagger wannabe. Finally, in 2005, Aguilar recorded brand new vocals to go with the original 1968 track.

Artist:    Rascals
Title:    People Want To Be Free
Source:    Mono CD: Songs Of Protest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Cavaliere/Bragati
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1968
    After achieving major success with a series of pop love songs starting with Good Lovin' in 1966, the Young Rascals decided to get more topical in 1968. Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati penned a song called People Got To Be Free, which added a bit of gospel flavor to their well-known "blue-eyed soul" sound. Their record label was reluctant to release the song, but Cavaliere insisted, and it became the band's last major hit, going all the way to the top of the charts.

Artist:    Small Faces
Title:    Itchycoo Park
Source:    CD: British Beat (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Marriott/Lane
Label:    K-Tel (original label: Immediate)
Year:    1967
    Led by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, the Small Faces got their name from the fact that all the members of the band were somewhat vertically challenged. The group was quite popular with the London mod crowd, and was sometimes referred to as the East End's answer to the Who. Although quite successful in the UK, the group only managed to score one hit in the US, the iconic Itchycoo Park, which was released in late 1967. Following the departure of Marriott the group shortened their name to Faces, and recruited a new lead vocalist named Rod Stewart. Needless to say, the new version of the band did much better in the US than their previous incarnation.
    
Artist:    13th Floor Elevators
Title:    Levitation
Source:    British import CD: Easter Everywhere
Writer(s):    Hall/Sutherland
Label:    Charly (original US label: International Artists)
Year:    1967
    The first album by the 13th Floor Elevators has long been considered a milestone, in that it was one of the first truly psychedelic albums ever released (and the first to actually use the word "psychedelic" in the title). For their followup LP, the group decided to take their time, going through some personnel changes in the process. Still, the core membership of Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall and Stacy Sutherland held it together long enough to complete Easter Everywhere, releasing the album in 1967. The idea behind the album was to present a spiritual vision that combined both Eastern and Western religious concepts in a rock context. For the most part, such as on tracks like Levitation, it succeeds remarkably well, considering the strife the band was going through at the time.
     

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2310 (starts 3/6/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/464077-dc-2310

    This week we manage to fit 14 tracks into a 59 minute show, with only two of them exceeding the five minute mark. It wasn't really planned that way; in fact, the longest track was the first one chosen (although it doesn't show up until half way through the hour). The other "long" track actually starts the show...

Artist:    Mothers
Title:    Montana
Source:    CD: Over-Nite Sensation
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Zappa (original label: Discreet)
Year:    1973
    Montana is quite possibly the most recognizable song Frank Zappa ever wrote. The track first appeared on the Mothers album Over-Nite Sensation and quickly became a concert staple. On the original album version Zappa's guitar solo is followed by a series of vocal gymnastics performed by none other than Tina Turner and the Ikettes, who were recording with Turner's husband Ike in an adjacent studio. According to Zappa it took the singers two days to master the complex melody and timing of the section. Reportedly Tina was so pleased with the result that she invited her husband into the control room to hear the finished section, only to have Ike say "What is this shit?" and walk back out.

Artist:     Spirit
Title:     Mr. Skin
Source:     LP: The Best Of Spirit (originally released on LP: Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus)
Writer(s):    Jay Ferguson
Label:    Epic
Year:     1970
     Mr. Skin, a song originally released on the 1970 album The Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus, is a playful little number that shows just how far Spirit had moved away from the jazz influences heard on their first LP in the space of only a couple of years

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Our Lady
Source:    Japanese import CD: Who Do We Think We Are
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Deep Purple was the top selling artist of 1973, thanks in large part to the release of their seventh studio album, Who Do We Think We Are. It was also the final year for the band's classic Mk2 lineup, with both vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover leaving the band that summer. According to Gillan, the band had just finished 18 months of touring and every member had had some sort of major illness over that same period, yet their managers insisted that they immediately get to work on the new album, even though the band members desperately needed a break. Nonetheless the album itself is one of their strongest, in spite of the fact that, for the most part the band members weren't even on speaking terms and much of the album was recorded piecemeal, with each member adding his part at a different time. The final track on the album, Our Lady, was a return to the band's psychedelic roots, with a strong Hendrix vibe throughout the piece.

Artist:    Wishbone Ash
Title:    Blind Eye
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Wishbone Ash
Label:    Decca
Year:    1970
    One of the first bands to feature two lead guitarists working in tandem, Wishbone Ash rose to fame as the opening act for Deep Purple in early 1970. After guitarist Andy Powell sat in with Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore during a sound check, Blackmore referred Wishbone Ash to MCA, the parent company of the US Decca label. The band's first LP came out in December of 1970, with Blind Eye becoming the band's first single. Although Wishbone Ash went on to become one of Britain's top rock bands of the 1970s, they were never as successful in the US, despite relocating to the states in 1973.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Upsetter
Source:    45 RPM single (also released on LP: E Pluribus Funk)
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1972
    Grand Funk Railroad was something of an enigma. Due to universally negative reviews in the rock press, progressive FM stations avoided them like the plague. At the same time, top 40 radio was in the process of being supplanted as the voice of the mainstream by the Adult Contemporary (A/C) format, which tended to ignore hard rock. Nonetheless Grand Funk Railroad had a following. In fact, GFR was the first band to book (and sellout) entire sports arenas, setting attendance records wherever they played. This translated into major record sales, as they became the first band to have three LPs hit the million-seller mark in the same year (1970). That year they also had their first mainstream hit with I'm Your Captain (Closer To Home). From that point on the band would continue to release singles, although most, such as Upsetter, were still ignored by A/C radio (although they did get a fair amount of airplay from the remaining "true" top 40 stations). As the group's album sales were beginning to drop off, the singles became increasingly important to the band's continued success, and from 1973 on (starting with We're An American Band ) Grand Funk became pretty much a singles-oriented group, cranking out tunes like Bad Time and Some Kind Of Wonderful.
 
Artist:    Chambers Brothers
Title:    I Can't Turn You Loose
Source:    LP: Super Rock (originally released on LP: Love, Peace and Happiness)
Writer(s):    Otis Redding
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    Following the template created by Cream with their Wheels Of Fire album, the Chambers Brothers released the double LP Love, Peace and Happiness in 1969, with one LP made up entirely of studio tracks and the other consisting of live recordings made at the Fillmore East. Unlike Wheels Of Fire, however, Love, Peace and Happiness did not contain any major hit singles like White Room or Crossroads, and got only lukewarm reviews from the rock press. Most reviewers favored the live tracks, with the Brothers' cover of Otis Redding's I Can't Turn You Loose getting the most positive attention.

Artist:    J. Geils Band
Title:    Whammer Jammer
Source:    Mono 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Juke Box Jimmie
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    First they were a Boston bar band called Snoopy and the Sopwith Camel. Then they became the J. Geils Blues Band. Finally they dropped the "blues" from the name and became famous. Whammer Jammer, an early B side showcasing "Magic Dick" Salwitz on lead harmonica, shows why the "blues" part was there in the first place.

Artist:    Renaissance
Title:    Ocean Gypsy
Source:    LP: Scheherazade And Other Stories
Writer(s):    Dunford/Thatcher
Label:    Sire
Year:    1975
    Although they are generally perceived as the art-rock band of the 70s with the closest ties to traditional classic music, Renaissance's two most popular albums, including the 1975 release Scheherazade And Other Stories, do not, like their previous LPs, contain any direct quotes from classical pieces. They do, however, contain some excellent tunes like Ocean Gypsy from the songwriting team of guitarist Michael Dunford and dedicated lyricist Betty Thatcher. The song features outstanding vocals from Annie Haslam.
    
Artist:    Barclay James Harvest
Title:    The Great 1974 Mining Disaster
Source:    British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Everyone Is Everybody Else)
Writer(s):    John Lees
Label:    Polydor
Year:    1974
    Although they were never as big as other prog-rock bands such as Yes or Emerson, Lake And Palmer, England's Barclay James Harvest nonetheless had a long and productive career. Their 1974 album Everyone Is Everybody Else is generally considered to be their artistic and commercial peak, and was especially successful in continental Europe, as were the band's subsequent LPs. One of the more notable tracks on Everyone Is Everybody Else is The Great 1974 Mining Disaster, a tribute to the Bee Gees first international hit single, New York Mining Disaster 1941, with a healthy number of David Bowie references thrown in.

Artist:    Derek And The Dominos
Title:    Bell Bottom Blues
Source:    CD: The Best Of Eric Clapton (originally released on LP: Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs)
Writer(s):    Clapton/Whitlock
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1970
    Bell Bottom Blues, from the Derek And The Dominos album Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, is at once one of the many and one of the few. It is one of the many songs inspired by/written for George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd by Eric Clapton, who was in love with her at the time. At the same time it is one of the few songs on the album that does not include guitarist Duane Allman on it. Clapton wrote the song after Boyd asked him to pick up a pair of bell-bottom jeans on his next trip to the US (apparently they were not available in London at that time). The song was released twice as a single in 1971, but did not chart higher than the #78 spot. In 2015 drummer Bobby Whitlock, who had helped write the third verse, was given official credit as the song's co-writer.

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:    Uriah Heep
Title:    Lady In Black (alternate version)
Source:    British import CD: Salisbury
Writer(s):    Ken Hensley
Label:    Sanctuary
Year:    Recorded 1971, released 2003
    Although never released as a single either in the US or UK, Uriah Heep's antiwar ballad Lady In Black made the top 5 on three separate occasions in Germany, with the song going into the top 5 in two of those runs and winning the Golden Lion award (the German equivalent of a Grammy). The song was also popular in Russia. This alternate recording of the tune is over a minute shorter than the released album track.
    
Artist:    Who
Title:    Squeeze Box
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    MCA
Year:    1975
    According to Pete Townshend, who wrote the song, Squeeze Box started off as a dirty joke. It ended up becoming the Who's only international #1 hit single. I think that says all you need to know about the world of popular music.

Artist:    Black Oak Arkansas
Title:    Jim Dandy
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Lincoln Chase
Label:    Atco
Year:    1973
    My first exposure to Black Oak Arkansas was at a Grand Funk Railroad concert in August of 1971. I had literally arrived on the campus of Southwestern University in Weatherford Oklahoma the night before the concert, having hitchhiked there from New Mexico. On arrival I soon learned that my bandmates DeWayne and Mike, whose dorm room I was crashing in, already had tickets for the concert in Norman, Oklahoma. They invited me to come along, assuring me that I could easily score tickets at the gate. As it turns out they were right, but by the time we got there the only tickets left were bleacher seats. Of course, the rest of the group that made the drive to Norman all had floor tickets, so I ended up sitting by myself up in the nosebleed section for the opening act, a group I had never heard of called Black Oak Arkansas. I decided that, for the next 45 minutes or so, I would be a reviewer, and started analyzing this new band one song at a time. To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed at first, but found each successive song to be a little bit better than the one before it. By the time the band had finished their set, I was electrified (literally, since the last song was called The Day Electricity Came To Arkansas). I eventually bought a copy of the album Black Oak Arkansas, and was pleased to discover that the songs were in the exact same order on the LP as I had first heard them in concert. Over the years I continued to follow the band's progress, and was happy to hear, in 1973, their remake of an old LaVerne Baker song, Jim Dandy, on the local AM radio station. In fact, I went out and bought a copy of the 45 RPM single (which has since been replaced with a less scratchy copy).

   

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2309 (starts 2/27/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/463147-pe-2309

    This week we go exploring some of the nooks and crannies of the psychedelic era, with an occasional visit to more familiar territory to break things up. In fact, we start with a huge hit single, but immediately move into album track territory and stay there for the rest of the first hour. We go even deeper in the second half of the show, with nearly half the tracks making their Stuck in the Psychedelic Era debut.

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

Artist:    Kaleidoscope
Title:    Pulsating Dream
Source:    CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released on LP: Side Trips)
Writer:    Chris Darrow
Label:    Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year:    1967
    From Los Angeles we have the Kaleidoscope, a band that had more in common with the folk-rock bands up in San Francisco than its contemporaries on the L.A. club scene. Pulsating Dream is a somewhat typical example of what the group sounded like on its only album for Epic, Side Trips, released in 1967.

Artist:    Them
Title:    Bent Over You
Source:    LP: Time Out! Time In! For Them
Writer(s):    Them/Lane/Pulley
Label:    Tower
Year:    1968
    While not an unlistenable track by any means, the most curious aspect of Bent Over You from Them's 1968 Time Out! Time In! For Them album is probably the fact that the entire band (but not the individual members) shares songwriting credit with Thomas Lane and Sharon Pulley, who in fact wrote most of the songs on the album itself. I have to wonder just how the royalties situation would have worked if the album had actually made any money.

Artist:    Blind Faith
Title:    Had To Cry Today
Source:    LP: Blind Faith
Writer(s):    Steve Winwood
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
    One of the most eagerly-awaited albums of 1969 was Blind Faith, the self-titled debut album of a group consisting of Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream, Steve Winwood from Traffic and Rich Grech, who had played bass with a band called Family. The buzz about this new band was such that the rock press had to coin a brand-new term to describe it: supergroup. On release, the album shot up to the number one spot on the charts in record time. Of course, as subsequent supergroups have shown, such bands seldom stick around very long, and Blind Faith set the pattern early on by splitting up after just one LP and a short tour to promote it. The opening track of the album was a pure Winwood piece that features Winwood and Clapton playing simultaneous lead guitar solos.

Artist:    Frijid Pink
Title:    Sing A Song For Freedom
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Beaudry/Thompson/Stevers
Label:    Parrot
Year:    1970
    Frijid Pink was formed in Detroit in 1967 by singer Tom Beaudry, guitarist Gary Ray Thompson, bassist Tom Harris, and drummer Richard Stevers. After a couple of years playing various venues in the southeast Michigan area, the band signed with London subsidiary Parrot Records, releasing a pair of singles in 1969. They scored an international hit with a fuzz-laden rendition of House OfThe Rising Sun in 1970, which was soon followed by a self-titled LP. Their second LP, Defrosted, featuring the single Sing A Song For Freedom, was released in summer of 1970, but a change in personnel brought on by overesized egos led to the band's swift decline.
    
Artist:    Doors
Title:    Indian Summer
Source:    CD: Morrison Hotel
Writer(s):    Morrison/Krieger
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1970
    Although it was included on the 1970 LP Morrison Hotel, Indian Summer is actually one of the earliest Doors tracks, having been recorded for the band's debut album in 1966. Unlike the other songs recorded by the Doors at that time, Indian Summer is credited to guitarist Robby Krieger and vocalist Jim Morrison rather than to the entire band.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    You're Lost Little Girl
Source:    LP: Strange Days
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    The Doors second LP, Strange Days, was stylistically similar to the first, and served notice to the world that this band was going to be around for awhile. Songwriting credit for You're Lost Little Girl (a haunting number that's always been a personal favorite of mine) was given to the entire band, a practice that would continue until the release of The Soft Parade in 1969.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The Spy
Source:    CD: Morrison Hotel
Writer(s):    Jim Morrison
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1970
    As the 1960s drew to a close, the Doors, who had been riding high since 1967, were at a low point. In fact, it could be argued that the last few months of 1969 were the worst in the band's career. Vocalist Jim Morrison had been arrested for indecent exposure for exposing himself onstage in Miami the previous March. This had resulted in the cancellation of over two dozen performances as well as a sizable number of radio stations refusing to play their records. In June, the band released their fourth album, The Soft Parade, which was critically panned for its overuse of horns and strings. The album was also the first to give individual members of the band songwriting credits (previously all songwriting credits were shared by the four band members). This was brought about by Morrison's wish to distance himself from the lyrics of the album's opening track, Tell All The People, which had been written by guitarist Robby Krieger. Adding to the problems, Morrison had been arrested for causing a disturbance on an airplane and charged under a new hijacking law that carried a fine up of to $10,000 and ten years in prison. In November, the Doors started work on their fifth album, to be called Morrison Hotel (with the second side subtitled Hard Rock Cafe). After the poor reception of The Soft Parade the band decided to take a back to basics approach. One thing that did not change, however, was the policy of band members taking individual song credits. Thus, we have songs like The Spy (originally called Spy In The House Of Love), which was inspired by Morrison's fiery relationship with his longtime girlfriend Pamela Coulson. Morrison Hotel would end up being a turning point for the Doors; their next LP, L.A. Woman, is universally considered one of their best.

Artist:    Mad River
Title:    Wind Chimes
Source:    LP: Mad River
Writer(s):    Mad River
Label:    Sundazed/EMI (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    When Mad River's debut LP was released, the San Francisco rock press hailed it as "taking rock music as far as it could go." Indeed, songs like Wind Chimes certainly pushed the envelope in 1968, when bubble gum was king of top 40 radio and progressive FM stations were still in the process of finding an audience. One thing that helped was the band members' friendship with avant-garde poet Richard Brautigan, who pulled whatever strings he could to get attention for his favorite local band. Still, the time was not yet right for such a band as Mad River, who had quietly faded away by the early 1970s.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Credo
Source:    CD: Mass In F Minor
Writer:    David Axelrod
Label:    Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    After the commercial disappointment of the Electric Prunes second LP, Underground, producer David Hassinger decided to use the band in an experiment. David Axelrod had written a rock-mass and was looking for a band to record it. The problem was that the only member of the Electric Prunes who could read music was bassist Mark Tulin, who then had to show the rest of the band what was wanted from them. Needless to say it was a slow process, and after the three songs that comprise side one of the LP were completed, Hassinger decided to hire a Canadian band called the Collectors to provide instrumental tracks for the album's second side. In addition to Tulin, bassist Quint Weakley and vocalist James Lowe appear on every track on Mass In F Minor, while guitarists Ken Williams and Mike Gannon are only featured on the LP's first side. Williams's guitar work is featured prominently on Credo, which also features a full orchestra track arranged by Axelrod.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Your Mind And We Belong Together
Source:    Australian import CD: Comes In Colours (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Raven (original label: Elektra)
Year:    1968
    The last record to be released by the classic Love lineup of Arthur Lee, Ken Forssi, Johnny Echols, Bryan MacLean and Michael Stuart was a single, Your Mind And We Belong Together. Although released in 1968, the song is very much the same style as the 1967 album Forever Changes. A bonus track on the Forever Changes CD shows Lee very much in command of the recording sessions, calling for over two dozen takes before getting an acceptable version of the song. The song serves as a fitting close to the story of one of the most influential, yet overlooked, bands in rock history...or would have, if Lee had not tried to revive the band with new members several times over the next several decades.

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

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    I Don't Live Today
Source:    LP: The Essential Jimi Hendrix Volume Two (originally released on LP: Are You Experienced)
Writer:    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    I remember a black light poster that choked me up the first time I saw it in early 1971. It was a shot of Jimi Hendrix playing his guitar with the caption I Don't Live Today. I don't believe Hendrix was being deliberately prophetic when he wrote and recorded this classic track for the Are You Experienced album, but it occasionally gives me chills to hear it, even now.
 
Artist:    Who
Title:    I'm A Boy (original version)
Source:    British import 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Reaction
Year:    1966
    The Who's1966 hit I'm A Boy was originally intended to be part of a rock mini-opera set in a future where parents choose the sex of their children ahead of time. The family of the protagonist orders four girls, but instead gets three girls and a boy. Refusing to acknowledge the truth, the mother insists on dressing the boy in girl's clothing and forces him to do "feminine" things. OK, it's a pretty absurd idea, but the song, recorded in early August of 1966 and released about two weeks later, ended up going all the way to the #2 spot on the British charts. The song was rearranged and re-recorded three months later for the 1966 LP A Quick One, but ended up being left off the album. It finally appeared on the 1971 LP Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Elenore
Source:    Mono CD: All The Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Kaylan/Volman/Nichols/Pons/Barbata
Label:    Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1968
    In 1968 White Whale Records was not particularly happy with the recent activities of their primary money makers, the Turtles. The band had been asserting its independence, even going so far as to self-produce a set of recordings that the label in turn rejected as having no commercial potential. The label wanted another Happy Together. The band responded by creating a facetious new song called Elenore. The song had deliberately silly lyrics such as "Elenore gee I think you're swell" and "you're my pride and joy etcetera" and gave production credit to former Turtles bassist Chip Douglas for the "Douglas F. Hatelid Foundation", which was in itself an in-joke referring to the pseudonym Douglas was forced to use as producer for the Monkees in 1967. Then a strange thing happened: the record became a hit. I suspect this was the event that began Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman's eventually metamorphosis into rock parody act Flo and Eddie.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Let The Cold Winds Blow
Source:    Mono LP: It Ain't Me Babe
Writer(s):    Howard Kaylan
Label:    White Whale
Year:    1965
    Although still quite young (the band members had to get their parents' permission to record their first LP), the Turtles already had the makings of a successful group in 1965 when they recorded It Ain't Me Babe. In addition to the usual batch of cover songs that were expected from a "pop" band (the term "rock" having not come into common usage at that point in time) the album included a handful of original compositions from bandmembers. Lead vocalist Howard Kaylan, in particular, provided some decent tunes such as Let The Cold Winds Blow, which opens side two of the original LP.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    House On The Hill
Source:    Mono CD: All The Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Kaylan/Volman/Nichols/Pons/Seiter
Label:    Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1969
    Although credited to the entire band, House On The Hill, released in April of 1969, was actually the creation of guitarist Al Nichol (music) and new drummer John Seiter, whom the Turtles had poached from tourmates Spanky & Our Gang after John Barbata had left the group. The single, produced by the Kinks' Ray Davies, failed to chart, prompting the band to return to the "Happy Together" formula for their next single, You Don't Have To Walk In The Rain.

Artist:    Glass Family
Title:    House Of Glass
Source:    LP: The Glass Family Electric Band
Writer(s):    Ralph Parrett
Label:    Maplewood (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:    1969
    The Glass Family (Ralph Parrett, David Capilouto and Gary Green) first surfaced in 1967 with a single called Teenage Rebellion on Mike Curb's Sidewalk label. The following year they signed with Warner Brothers, releasing their only LP, The Glass Family Electric Band, in 1969. The opening track from the album, House Of Glass, is, in the words of Capilouto, self-explanatory, which is a good thing, as it saves me the trouble of trying to figure out what it's about.

Artist:    Vamp
Title:    Floatin'
Source:    Mon British import CD: Think I'm Going Weird (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Andy Clark
Label:    Grapefruit (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1968
    One of the more unusual bands on the London underground scene was the Sam Gopal Dream. Led by Malaysian immigrant Gopal, who was considered an expert tabla player, the band included guitarist Mick Hutchinson, bassist Pete Sears and vocalist/keyboardist Andy Clark. After the group broke up, Hutchinson, Sears and Clark joined former Pretty Things drummer Viv Prince for a one-off single credited to Vamp (an acronym of the band members' first names) called Floatin'. That single, given the later successes of the four members, is now considered highly collectable.

Artist:    N'Betweens
Title:    Delighted To See You
Source:    Mono British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road
Writer(s):    P. Dello
Label:    EMI
Year:    Recorded 1967, released 1998.
    The name N'Betweens may not ring any bells with even the most hardcore rock fans, but after changing their name, first to Ambrose Slade and later Slade, they had a decent following in the 1970s. The group originally migrated to London from the industrial city of Birmingham in 1966, where they met up with American producer Kim Fowley, who produced their first single, a cover of the Young Rascals' You Better Run. The band did record other songs before changing their name, including Delighted To See You, which was recorded in 1967, but not released until 1998.

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

Artist:    Zombies
Title:    Tell Her No
Source:    LP: 93/KHJ Boss Goldens vol. 1 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Rod Argent
Label:    Original Sound (original label: Parrot)
Year:    1964
    Rod Argent was responsible for writing four well-known hit songs, which were spread out over a period of eight years (and two bands). The second, and probably least known of these was the Zombies' Tell Her No, released in late 1964. The song got mixed reviews from critics, all of which measured the tune against Beatles songs of the same period.

Artist:     Van Dyke Parks
Title:     Come To The Sunshine
Source:     Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Van Dyke Parks
Label:     Rhino (original label: M-G-M)
Year:     1966
     Van Dyke Parks is probably best known for being Brian Wilson's collaborator of choice for the legendary (but unreleased) Smile album. Parks, however, did have an identity of his own, as this recording of Come To The Sunshine shows. The song became a minor hit for WB labelmates Harper's Bizarre, although it did not have nearly the success of their first effort, a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy).

Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     D.C.B.A.-25
Source:     Mono LP: Surrealistic Pillow
Writer:     Paul Kantner
Label:     Sundazed (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:     1967
     D.C.B.A.-25 was named for the chords used in the song. As for the "25"...it was 1967. In San Francisco. Paul Kantner wrote it. Figure it out.

Artist:          Amboy Dukes
Title:        Journey to the Center of the Mind
Source:      Mono British import CD: All Kinds Of Highs (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Nugent/Farmer
Label:     Big Beat (original US label: Mainstream)
Year:        1968
        From Detroit we have the Amboy Dukes, featuring lead guitarist Ted Nugent. Originally released as a single on Mainstream Records, the same label that released the first Big Brother & the Holding Company album, Journey To The Center Of The Mind became that label's biggest hit in 1968.  After butchering Big Brother's debut album, Mainstream's studio people must have taken a crash course in rock engineering as they did a much better job on this track just a few months later.

Artist:    Al Kooper/Carlos Santa/Skip Prokop/John Kahn
Title:    Sonny Boy Williamson
Source:    LP: The Live Adventures Of Mike Bloomfield And Al Kooper
Writer(s):    Bruce/Jones
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    When guitarist Mike Bloomfield's "chronic insomnia" caused him to miss the final performance of a three night live recording engagement with keyboardist/vocalist Al Kooper at the Fillmore West on September 8, 1968, several San Francisco area musicians volunteered to fill in for him, much as Stephen Stills had earlier in the year for the Super Session album. Among those musicians was guitarist Carlo Santana, whose own band was in the process of landing a record deal with Columbia Records, the label that was taping the Kooper/Bloomfield gigs. Santana sat in on three or four songs, one of which, Jack Bruce's Sonny Boy Williamson, was included on the album. Also in the band that night were drummer Skip Prokop and bassist John Kahn.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Temporarily Like Achilles
Source:    Austrian import CD: Blonde On Blonde
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    "Honey, why are you so hard?" was a line Bob Dylan had been wanting to use in a song for quite some time. He finally got his wish when he recorded Temporarily Like Achilles in Nashville for his Blonde On Blonde album.

Artist:    John P Hammond (aka John Hammond Jr.)
Title:    Motherless Willie Johnson
Source:    LP: Mirrors
Writer(s):    Blind Willie Johnson
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    John Hammond's 1967 album Mirrors featured Hammond with a backup band on the LP's first side and a series of solo recordings with Hammond on vocals and acoustic guitar on the other. One of the highlights of the second side was Hammond's cover of Blind Willie Johnson's Motherless Children (for some unexplained reason titled Motherless Willie Johnson on the label). Johnson originally recorded the song (released as Mother's Children Have A Hard Time) in Dallas, Texas on December 3, 1927.

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:    Kak
Title:    Everything's Changing
Source:    British import CD: Kak-Ola (originally released on LP: Kak)
Writer(s):    Yoder/Grelecki
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Epic)
Year:    1969
    Everything's Changing is an appropriate title for the second song on the 1969 album Kak. Nobody noticed that Joe-Dave Damrell's bass guitar had a short until they were isolating the track during the mixdown process. Damrell quickly recorded a new bass part (using a different instrument) by plugging directly into the mixing board itself.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2309 (starts 2/27/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/463146-dc-2309

    With the exception of a couple tunes borrowed from out companion show, Stuck in the Psychedelic Era, all of this weeks tracks are from the years 1969-1971, and include elements of folk, country, blues and even a touch of gospel...all rock, of course.

Artist:    Blind Faith
Title:    Can't Find My Way Home
Source:    CD: Blind Faith
Writer:    Steve Winwood
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
    Blind Faith was the result of some 1969 jam sessions in guitarist Eric Clapton's basement with keyboardist/guitarist Steve Winwood, whose own band, Traffic, had disbanded earlier in the year. Drummer Ginger Baker, who had been Clapton's bandmate in Cream for the previous three years, showed up one day, and Winwood eventually convinced Clapton to form a band with the three of them and bassist Rick Grech. Clapton, however, did not want another Cream, and even before Blind Faith's only album was released was ready to move on to something that felt less like a supergroup. As a result, Winwood took more of a dominant role in Blind Faith, even to the point of including one track, Can't Find My Way Home, that was practically a Winwood solo piece. Blind Faith disbanded shortly after the album was released, with the various band members moving on to other projects. Winwood, who soon reformed Traffic, is still active as one of rock's elder statesmen, and still performs Can't Find My Way Home in his concert appearances.

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

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

Artist:    Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Title:    Mr. Bojangles (Prologue: Uncle Charlie And His Dog Teddy)
Source:    LP: Uncle Charlie And His Dog Teddy
Writer(s):    Jerry Jeff Walker
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1970
    Jerry Jeff Walker's most famous composition, Mr. Bojangles, was also the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's biggest hit. As originally released, the single included a minute and a half long spoken word intro taken from the LP Uncle Charlie And His Dog Teddy. Uncle Charlie himself was a relative of producer Bill McEuen's wife (and bandmenber John McEuen's sister-in-law) who recorded the spoken section in 1963 at the age of 77, along with a fragment of a tune called Jesse James that was included on the album, but not the single. The success of the Dirt Band version of Mr. Bojangles put the group at the forefront of the country-rock movement of the early 70s and eventually led them to become one of the most successful country acts of the 1980s.

Artist:    Neil Young/Crazy Horse
Title:    Running Dry (Requiem For The Rockets)
Source:    LP: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1969
    For his second post-Buffalo Springfield LP, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young found a local Los Angeles band called the Rockets and convinced guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina to join him, renaming them Crazy Horse for the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. One member of the Rockets that was not part of Crazy Horse was violinist Bobby Notkoff, whose eerie style gave the band a distinctive sound. Notkoff can be heard on Running Dry, which is subtitled Requiem For The Rockets as a tribute to the original band. The Rockets themselves had previously recorded one self-titled LP, but only 5000 copies were ever pressed.

Artist:    Brewer And Shipley
Title:    One Toke Over The Line
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Brewer/Shipley
Label:    Kama Sutra
Year:    1971
    Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley might be considered the link between the folk-rock of the late 1960s and the singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s. The two of them had met on more than one occasion in the mid 1960s, doing coffeehouse gigs across the midwest, until both decided to settle down in Los Angeles and start writing songs together in 1968. After recording two albums together, the duo relocated to Kansas City in 1969, spending much of the next two years on the road, playing small towns such as Tarkio, Missouri, which in turn inspired the title for their third album, Tarkio. That album, released in 1971, included what was to be their biggest hit. One Toke Over The Line went to the #10 spot on the charts (#5 in Canada) and prompted the Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, to denounce the song as "blatant drug-culture propaganda". Concerning the origin of the song itself, Mike Brewer had this to say: "One day we were pretty much stoned and all and Tom says, “Man, I’m one toke over the line tonight.” I liked the way that sounded and so I wrote a song around it." He said it was written as a joke as the duo was setting up for a gig.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Ripple/Brokedown Palace
Source:    LP: American Beauty
Writer(s):    Hunter/Garcia
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    The album Live Dead was a turning point for the Grateful Dead. Up to that point the band had been trying to recreate the group's live performances in the studio. Now that that goal was accomplished, it was time to take a new look at the studio and what they would be doing in it. The answer was to concentrate on their songwriting, particularly that of Jerry Garcia and poet/lyricist Robert Hunter, who had been working with the band for a couple of years already. The next two Dead albums, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty (both released in 1970), did just that, and are among the most popular albums the band has ever recorded. There was only one single released from American Beauty, featuring Truckin', their most popular song up to that point, backed with Ripple, another Hunter/Garcia composition. The distinctive mandolin work on the song came from David Grisman; it was his first of many collaborations with Garcia and the Dead. The song's ending slightly overlaps the beginning of the next song on the LP, Brokedown Palace.

Artist:    Eric Burdon And War
Title:    Sun/Moon
Source:    CD: The Black Man's Burdon
Writer(s):    War
Label:    UMe
Year:    1970
    When LPs were first introduced in 1948, their primary selling point was that they had longer playing times than the standard 78 RPM records of the time. By 1952 Columbia Records had introduced "extended play" LPs that could hold up to 26 minutes per side. This was ideal for classical music and for some of the more experimental jazz artists such as Miles Davis, who favored long extended pieces. Popular music, on the other hand, was more suited to singles, and by the mid-1950s RCA's 45 RPM records dominated the pop market. In its early years, rock 'n' roll was entirely singles oriented. Only the most popular artists, such as Elvis Presley, even released LPs, and those tended to only have about 15 to 20 minutes' worth of music per side. By the 1960s the 15 to 20 minute album side was the standard for popular music, with some labels, such as Tower, releasing albums with even shorter running times. As rock music became more album-oriented in the late 1960s, it maintained the shorter side length. In 1970, however, Eric Burdon And War decided to release an album with a total of over 90 minutes' worth of music on it. To do this they made The Black Man's Burdon a double-LP set. Even then, the side lengths far exceeded the standard. The longest of these was side three, which started off with the ten-minute slow blues jam Sun/Moon and ended up with a total running time of over 27 minutes. That's nearly a minute longer that the two sides of Meet The Beatles combined! Although Eric Burdon And War were the first to put out long album sides, they were by no means the last. Many Genesis albums, for instance, had running times of over 25 minutes per side, and Def Leppard's Hysteria LP actually runs for more than an hour total. Of course there are some sound quality issues with the longer album sides (for technical reasons), which makes finding a listenable copy of The Black Man's Burdon on vinyl a virtual impossibility. Luckily, it's now available on CD.

Artist:    James Gang
Title:    White Man/Black Man
Source:    LP: Thirds
Writer(s):    Dale Peters
Label:    ABC
Year:    1971
    Although the James Gang Thirds album is best known for its Joe Walsh compositions such as Walk Away, bassist Dale Peters takes center stage as both vocalist and songwriter on two of the album's tracks, including White Man/Black Man, a call for racial tolerance and understanding. Backing vocals on the song were provided by the Sweet Inspirations.

Artist:    Chicago
Title:    I'm A Man
Source:    CD: The Chicago Transit Authority
Writer(s):    Winwood/Miller
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1969
    With prolific songwriters like Robert Lamm and James Pankow in the band, it should come as no surprise that Chicago recorded very few cover songs; in fact there was only one on their first ten albums. That one was I'm A Man, originally released as the last single by the Spencer Davis Group to feature Steve Winwood on lead vocals. The Chicago version, from their debut LP, The Chicago Transit Authority, features a drum solo from Danny Seraphine and is the second longest track on the album. I'm A Man was a concert favorite, often used as the band's encore tune. It also got plenty of airplay on FM rock radio stations in the early 1970s, but has generally been absent from classic rock playlists in recent years.
 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2308 (starts 2/20/23)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/462320-pe-2308

    This is one of those shows that kept going off in directions I didn't originally intend it to (I didn't plan on three artists' sets, for instance), but for the most part it seems to have worked out pretty well. A couple of never-before-played-on-the-show pieces snuck into the first half hour, including a pre-Rod Stewart cover of a Cat Stevens song. Speaking of Rod Stewart, we have a track with him sitting in as guest lead vocalist for a band originally formed in Australia that had relocated to England a couple years before (no, not the Easybeats).

Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    Talk Talk
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Turn On The Music Machine)
Writer(s):    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Rhino (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    The Music Machine was one of the most sophisticated bands to appear on the L.A. club scene in 1966, yet their only major hit, Talk Talk, was deceptively simple and straightforward punk-rock, and still holds up as two of the most intense minutes of rock music ever to crack the top 40 charts.

Artist:    We The People
Title:    You Burn Me Up And Down
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Thomas Talton
Label:    Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year:    1966
    We The People was kind of a regional supergroup in the Orlando, Florida area, as it was made up of musicians from various local garage bands. The departure of lead guitarist Wayne Proctor in early 1967 and the band's other main songwriter Tommy Talton a year later led to the group's demise, despite having landed a contract with RCA Victor, at the time the world's largest record label. Before splitting up, however, they recorded a handful of garage-rock classics such as You Burn Me Up And Down, which was released as a B side in 1966.

Artist:    Count Five
Title:    Psychotic Reaction
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ellner/Chaney/Atkinson/Byrne/Michaelski
Label:    Rhino (original label: Double Shot)
Year:    1966
    Although San Jose, Ca. is a rather large city in its own right (the 10th-largest city in the US in fact), it has always had a kind of suburban status, thanks to being within the same media market as San Francisco. Nonetheless, San Jose had its own very active music scene in the mid-60s, and Count Five was, for a time in late 1966, at the top of the heap, thanks in large part to Psychotic Reaction tearing up the national charts.

Artist:    Standells
Title:    Zebra In The Kitchen
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Hal Hopper
Label:    Sundazed/M-G-M
Year:    1965
    Although they are best known for the song Dirty Water and a couple of followup garage band favorites, the Standells were actually a well-established band by the time they gained national fame, having released several singles for the Liberty (1964) and Vee Jay (1965 labels). Probably the oddest early Standells release, however, was a one-off single for M-G-M of the title song for a film called Zebra In The Kitchen starring a then 14-year-old Jay (Dennis the Menace) North. Given, in the words of lead vocalist/keyboardist Larry Tamblyn, "carte blanche to do as we saw fit." Tamblyn rewrote the melody, chord structure and arrangement on the tune originally written by North's uncle, Hal Hopper. The single was released, along with the film itself, in June of 1965.

Artist:    Cyrkle
Title:    The Visit (She Was Here)
Source:    Mono LP: Neon
Writer(s):    Chandler/McKendry
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    If you were to look up the term "diminishing returns" in a pop music encyclopedia, you might see a picture of the Cyrkle. Their first single, Red Rubber Ball, was a huge hit in 1966, going all the way to the #2 spot, with the album of the same name peaking at #47. The follow-up single, Turn Down Day, was also a top 20 hit, but it would be their last. Each consecutive single, in fact, would top out just a little bit lower than the one before it. Their first single of 1967 only managed to peak at #70. The B side of that single was the soft-rock tune The Visit (She Was Here), which was taken from the Cyrkle's second LP, Neon (which only managed to make it to #164 on the album charts). The group disbanded later that same year.

Artist:    Seeds
Title:    The Wind Blows Your Hair
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Saxon/Bigelow
Label:    Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1967
    The Wind Blows Your Hair is actually one of the Seeds' better tracks. Unfortunately, by the time it was released as a single in October of 1967 the whole idea of Flower Power (which the Seeds were intimately tied to) had become yesterday's news (at least in ultra-hip L.A.) and the single went nowhere.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    Baroque # 1
Source:    LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    Of the half dozen or so major US record labels of the time, only two, Decca and M-G-M, failed to sign any San Francisco bands in the late 1960s. Decca, which had been bought by MCA in the early 60s, was fast fading as a major force in the industry (ironic considering that Universal, the direct descendant of MCA, is now the world's largest record company). M-G-M, on the other hand, had a strong presence on the Greenwich Village scene thanks to Jerry Schoenbaum at the Verve Forecast label, who had signed such critically-acclaimed artists as Dave Van Ronk, Tim Hardin and the Blues Project. Taking this as an inspiration, the parent label decided to create interest in the Boston music scene, aggressively promoting (some would say hyping) the "Boss-Town Sound". One of the bands signed was Ultimate Spinach, which was led by keyboardist Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote all the band's material, including Baroque # 1, an instrumental that shows the influence of West Coast bands such as Country Joe And The Fish.
    
Artist:    Koobas
Title:    First Cut Is The Deepest
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Cat Stevens
Label:    Rhino (original UK label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    Formed in Liverpool in 1962, the Koobas (after an obligatory stay in Hamburg) landed their first record contract after filming a segment for a movie called Ferry Cross The Mersey that ended up on the cutting room floor. They released several singles from 1965-1968, but none of them were successful in their native land, although their final single, a psychedelicized (think Vanilla Fudge) version of Cat Stevens's First Cut Is The Deepest, did fairly well in Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Artist:    Action
Title:    Bustbin Full Of Rubbish
Source:    British import CD: Mighty Baby (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Ian Whiteman
Label:    Big Beat
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 1993
    Although popular with the Mod crowd, the Action was never able to convert that popularity into chart success, despite releasing a series of singles on the Parlophone label from 1965-67. The band began going through changes in 1967, including the loss of lead vocalist Reg King and the addition of keyboardist/composer Ian Whiteman in 1967. After being dropped by Parlophone, the Action recorded a series of demos for Georgio Gomelski, who was in the process of setting up his new Marmalade label in 1968, but were unable to find any takers among the labels that existed at the time, and the recordings remained unreleased until the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Action finally changed its name to Mighty Baby in 1969, signing with the new Head label. Unfortunately, Head Records went belly up in 1970, and after releasing a second LP on the Blue Horizon label in 1971, the Action/Mighty Baby finally called it quits.

Artist:    Love
Title:    The Daily Planet
Source:    CD: Forever Changes
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    The closest Love ever got to a stable lineup was in early 1967, when the group consisted of multi-instrumentalist and band leader Arthur Lee, lead guitarist Johnny Echols, rhythm guitarist Bryan MacLean, bassist Ken Forssi and drummer Michael Stuart. This group, along with "Snoopy" Pfisterer on keyboards and Tjay Cantrelli on flute and saxophone, had completed the De Capo album in late 1966 and were firmly entrenched as the top-drawing band on the Sunset Strip. There were drawbacks, however. Then, as now, Los Angeles was the party capitol of the world, and the members of Love, as kings of the Strip, had easy access to every vice they could imagine. This became a serious problem when it was time to begin working on the band's third LP, Forever Changes. Both Lee and MacLean had new material ready to be recorded, but getting the other band members into the studio was proving to be impossible, so their producer took matters into his own hands and brought in some of L.A.'s top studio musicians (known as the Wrecking Crew) to begin work on the album. The move turned out to be a wake up call for the rest of the band, who were able to get their act together in time to finish the album themselves. Lee and MacLean, however, chose to keep the two tracks that they had completed using studio musicians. One of those was a Lee composition, The Daily Planet, that had been arranged by Neil Young. Ken Forssi later claimed that bassist Carol Kaye was having problems with the song and Forssi himself ended up playing on the track, but there is no way now to verify Forssi's claim.

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 composers Burt Bacharach and Hal David had in mind when they wrote the song.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Andmoreagain
Source:    CD: Love Story
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    If there is any one song that validates comparisons of Johnny Mathis and Love's Arthur Lee, it's Andmoreagain, from the third Love album, Forever Changes. Oddly enough, the song has also drawn comparisons to the music of Burt Bacharach, particularly for its soft melody and use of major 7th chords. This is somewhat ironic, given Bacharach's adverse reaction to Love's version of My Little Red Book, a song he wrote for the soundtrack of the film What's New, Pussycat.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Wicked World
Source:    LP: Black Sabbath (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osborne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers (original UK label: Fontana)
Year:    1970
    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 January of 1970. 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 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, particularly on the US LP version of the song, which leaves out the overdubbed horns added to both sides of the UK single.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    The Boxer
Source:    CD: Collected Works (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bridge Over Troubled Water)
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969
    The only Simon And Garfunkel record released in 1969, The Boxer was one of the duo's most successful singles, making the top 10 in nine countries, including the US, where it hit the #7 spot. The track, which runs more than five minutes, was later included on the 1970 LP Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Artist:     Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield/Harvey Brooks/Eddie Hoh
Title:     Really
Source:     LP: Super Session
Writer:     Bloomfield/Kooper
Label:     Columbia/Legacy
Year:     1968
     Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield first met when they were both members of Bob Dylan's band in 1965, playing on the classic Highway 61 Revisited album and famously performing at the Newport Folk Festival, where Kooper's organ was physically assaulted by angry folk purists. After a stint with seminal jam band The Blues Project, Kooper became a staff producer for Columbia Records in New York, where he came up with the idea of an album made up entirely of studio jams. He recruited Bloomfield, who had in the intervening years played with the Butterfield Blues Band and the Electric Flag, along with bassist Harvey Brooks (also from Butterfield's band) and studio drummer Eddie Hoh and came up with the surprise hit album of 1968, Super Session. Although Bloomfield bowed out of the project halfway through, he plays on all the tracks on side one of the album, including Really, which utilizes a classic blues progression.

Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    For Your Love
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Graham Gouldman
Label:    Epic
Year:    1965
    The last Yardbirds song to feature guitarist Eric Clapton, For Your Love was the group's fist US hit, peaking at the # 6 slot. The song did even better in the UK, peaking at # 3. Following its release, Clapton left the Yardbirds, citing the band's move toward a more commercial sound and this song in particular as reasons for his departure (ironic when you consider songs like his mid-90s hit Change the World or his slowed down lounge lizard version of Layla). For Your Love was written by Graham Gouldman, who would end up as a member of Wayne Fontana's Mindbenders and later 10cc with Kevin Godley and Lol Creme.

Artist:     Who
Title:     Bucket T
Source:     Mono LP: Magic Bus (original released in UK on EP: Ready Steady Who)
Writer(s):     Atfield/Christian/Torrance
Label:     MCA (original label: Track)
Year:     1966
     Ready Steady Go was Britain's answer to American Bandstand. A hugely popular one-shot special edition of the show called Ready Steady Who aired in 1966. A five song EP (also called Ready Steady Who) had an entirely different set of songs than the TV special, and included some real oddities such as their version of the Batman theme and Bucket T, a hot rod song originally recorded by Ronny & the Daytonas.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    St. Stephen (1971 remix)
Source:    CD: Aoxomoxoa
Writer(s):    Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1969
    One of the Grateful Dead's most recognizable tunes is St. Stephen. The song first appeared on the 1969 album Aoxomoxoa, and was a regular part of the band's live performances (usually combined with The Eleven) for the next few years. From the mid-1970s on the song was only occasionally played in concert, and was considered a special treat by Deadheads.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: The Grateful Dead
Writer(s):    McGannahan Skjellyfetti
Label:    Rhino (original label: Warner Brothers)
Year:    1967
    The Grateful Dead's major label debut single actually sold pretty well in the San Francisco Bay area, where it got airplay on top 40 stations from San Francisco to San Jose. Around the rest of the country, not so much, but the Dead would soon prove that there was more to survival than having a hit record. Writing credits on The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion) were given to McGannahan Skjellyfetti, which like the Rolling Stones' Nanker Phelge was a name used for songs written by the entire band (there was probably some copyright-related reason for doing so).

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    China Cat Sunflower
Source:    CD: Aoxomoxoa (1971 remix)
Writer(s):    Hunter/Garcia/Lesh
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1969
    The third Grateful Dead album, Aoxomoxoa, was an experimental mixture of live audio and studio enhancements, much in the same vein as their previous effort, Anthem Of The Sun. One significant difference between the two is that, unlike Anthem, Aoxomoxoa was written entirely by the team of guitarist Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh and poet Robert Hunter, giving the album a more cohesive sound. One track on Aoxomoxoa, China Cat Sunflower, is almost entirely a studio creation, and as such has a bit cleaner sound than the rest of the LP, especially on the 1971 remixed version of the album.

Artist:    Python Lee Jackson
Title:    In A Broken Dream
Source:    LP: Golden Days Of British Rock (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    David Bentley
Label:    Sire (original label: Youngblood International)
Year:    1970
    Formed in Sydney, Australia in December 1965, Python Lee Jackson went through several personnel changes before breaking up in January of 1968.  Not long after that two of the band's founding members, guitarist Mick Lieber and drummer David Montgomery, along with keyboardist/vocalist Dave Bentley (who had joined the band in 1966), relocated to the UK, reforming the band in October 1968. In April of 1969 they recorded three songs with guest vocalist Rod Stewart, after Bentley told his bandmates that he didn't think his voice was right for the songs. The first of these was In A Broken Dream, produced by legendary DJ John Peel, who had taken an interest in the band after seeing them perform at the Arts Lab on Drury Lane. The song was originally released in 1970, but did not chart until it was re-released two years later in the wake of Stewart's rise to fame as a solo artist and member of Faces.

Artist:    Mandrake Paddle Steamer
Title:    Steam
Source:    British import 45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Martin Briley
Label:    Bam Caruso (original label: Parlophone)
Year:    1969
    Mandrake Paddle Steamer was the brainchild of art school students Martin Briley and Brian Engle, who, with producer Robert Finnis, were among the first to take advantage of EMI's new 8-track recording equipment at their Abbey Road studios. The result was Strange Walking Man, a single released in 1969. The B side of that record was an instrumental written by Briley called, appropriately, Steam. The single was the only recording ever released by Mandrake Paddle Steamer, and was re-released (with a really nice looking picture sleeve) by the British Bam Caruso label in June of 1985.

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

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    I Am The Walrus
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1967
    There were actually three different versions of the Beatles' I Am The Walrus released in late 1967, all of which were made from the same basic master tape. The first (heard here) was a mono single version that was issued as the B side of the Hello Goodbye single in late November. This version features a four-beat intro and has an extra bar of music immediately preceding the words "yellow matter custard" in the middle of the song. The second version was the stereo version featured on the US-only Magical Mystery Tour album. This version is basically the same as the mono version, but does not contain the extra bar in the middle. The third version appeared in early December in Europe and the UK on the stereo version of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack EP. This version features a six beat intro, but is otherwise identical to the US stereo version. In the early 1980s engineers at Capitol Records created a fourth version of I Am The Walrus that uses the six beat intro from the UK stereo version and includes the extra bar in the middle of the song from the US single version. This fourth version was included on the US version of the Beatles' Rarities album.
    
Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: More Hot Rocks (Big Hits and Fazed Cookies) (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Flowers)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1966
    By mid-1966 there was a population explosion of teenage rock bands popping up in garages and basements all across the US, the majority of which were doing their best to emulate the grungy sound of their heroes, the Rolling Stones. The Stones themselves responded by ramping up the grunge factor to a previously unheard of degree with their last single of the year, Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow? It was the most feedback-laden record ever to make the top 40 at that point in time, and it inspired America's garage bands to buy even more powerful amps and crank up the volume (driving their parents to drink in the process).

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Connection
Source:    CD: Between The Buttons
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label:London)
Year:    1967
    Often dismissed as the beginning of a departure from their blues roots, the Rolling Stones first LP of 1967, Between The Buttons, actually has a lot of good tunes on it, such as Connection, a song with multiple meanings. Most studios at that time only had four tracks available and would use two tape machines to mix the first tracks recorded on one machine (usually the instrumental tracks) down to a single track on the other machine, freeing up the remaining tracks for overdubs. This process, known as "bouncing", sometimes happened two or three times on a single recording if extra overdubs were needed. Unfortunately each pass resulted in a loss of quality on the bounced tracks, especially if the equipment was not properly maintained. This is particularly noticeable on Connection, as the final mix seems to have lost most of its high and low frequencies, resulting in an unintentionally "lo-fi" recording.

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

Artist:     Moby Grape
Title:     Omaha
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer:     Skip Spence
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1967
     As an ill-advised promotional gimmick, Columbia Records released five separate singles concurrently with the first Moby Grape album. Of the five singles, only one, Omaha, actually charted, and it only got to the #86 spot. Meanwhile, the heavy promotion by the label led to Moby Grape getting the reputation of being over-hyped, much to the detriment of the band's career.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Bluebird
Source:    LP: Homer (soundtrack) (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again)
Writer(s):    Stephen Stills
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    When it comes right down to it Buffalo Springfield has one of the highest ratios of songs recorded to songs played on the radio of any band in history, especially if you only count the two albums worth of material that was released while the band was still active. This is probably because Buffalo Springfield had more raw songwriting talent than just about any two other bands. Although Neil Young was just starting to hit his stride as a songwriter, bandmate Stephen Stills was already at an early peak, as songs like Bluebird clearly demonstrate.

Artist:     Donovan
Title:     House Of Jansch
Source:     Mono British import CD: Mellow Yellow
Writer:     Donovan Leitch
Label:     EMI (original US label: Epic)
Year:     1967
     One of the top names in British folk music in the 60s was Bert Jansch. House Of Jansch was Donovan's way of acknowledging Jansch's influence on his own music. Ironically, the album it appeared on, Mellow Yellow, was not released in the UK due to an ongoing contract dispute between the Scottish singer/songwriter and Pye records.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Let's Get Together
Source:    LP: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Writer(s):    Dino Valenti
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1966
    Although Dino Valenti recorded a demo version of his song Let's Get Together in 1964, it wasn't until two years later that the song made its first appearance on vinyl as a track on Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. The Airplane version of the song is unique in that the lead vocals alternate between Paul Kantner, Signe Anderson and Marty Balin, with each one taking a verse and all of them singing on the chorus.

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