Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2503 (starts 1/13/24)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/557806

    This week the focus is on 1969, with a set of vintage rockers followed by a followup to a classic 1969 comedy creation from the Firesign Theatre.

Artist:    Blood, Sweat And Tears
Title:    More And More (live version)
Source:    CD: Blood, Sweat And Tears (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Vee/Juan
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 2000
    Blood, Sweat and Tears founder Al Kooper left the band after their first album, Child Is Father To The Man. Several people at Columbia Records were keen to see the band continue and a new vocalist, David Clayton Thomas, was recruited to front the band. The group then proceeded to record a self-titled second LP that yielded no less than three top 5 singles, as well as some strong album tracks such as More And More. The recording heard here was taken from their summer 1968 live debut at the Cafe Au-Go-Go, ironically the same place Kooper's (and BS&T guitarist Steve Katz's) former band the Blues Project had recorded their debut LP over two years before.

Artist:    Steppenwolf
Title:    From Here To There Eventually
Source:    LP: Monster
Writer:    Kay/McJohn/Edmonton
Label:    Dunhill
Year:    1969
    The final track of Steppenwolf's fourth LP, Monster, is a perfect example of the band's typical hard-driving beat and John Kay's distinctive vocal style. The album itself is generally considered to be Steppenwolf's most blatantly political.

Artist:        Zephyr
Title:        Sail On
Source:    CD: Zephyr
Writer:        Bolin/Givens
Label:        One Way (original label: ABC Probe)
Year:        1969
        Boulder, Colorado was home to Zephyr, a blues-rock band originally centered around the powerful vocals of Candy Givens. As time went on, however, fellow member Tommy Bolin emerged as one of rock's top guitarists. Bolin would leave Zephyr after a couple albums to join the James Gang (replacing Dominick Troiano) and later take Richie Blackmore's place in Deep Purple as well as recording a pair of well-regarded solo albums. Unfortunately Bolin, like so many other talented young musicians, died in his mid 20s of a drug overdose, just as his career was kicking into high gear.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Proud Mary
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Chronicle (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: Bayou Country)
Writer(s):    John Fogerty
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1968
    Fun fact: Creedence Clearwater Revival never had a #1 hit. They did, however, manage to hit the #2 spot...five times. The first of these #2 hits was Proud Mary, written a week after John Fogerty's discharge from the National Guard. The song updates Mark Twain's portrait of life on a riverboat for the 20th century, a portrait that resonated well with a generation that was just reaching the age where the prospect of spending one's life "working for the man every night and day" was begining to look unavoidable. The song was released at the tail end of 1968 (according to some, early 1969), a year that had seen the idyllic hippie lifestyle of the summer of love give way to the radical politics of groups like the SDS and the Black Panthers, who advocated violence as a response to the continued intractability of the Establishment. The fact that hallucinogenics like LSD and mescaline were being replaced by harsher (and cheaper) drugs like speed and various narcotics was not lost on the members of CCR either, who, according to Fogerty, made a promise to themselves on the floor of the Fillmore that they would be a drug-free band, choosing to "get high on the music" instead. It's likely that the single was prepared separately from the album it appeared on, Bayou Country, since the LP itself uses an electronically rechanneled mono version of the song rather than a true stereo mix.

Artist:    Firesign Theatre
Title:    The Three Faces Of Al
Source:    LP: The Three Faces Of Al
Writer(s):    Austin/Proctor/Bergman
Label:    Rhino
Year:    1984
    Undoubtably the Firesign Theatre's best-known and best-loved creation was private detective Nick Danger, Third Eye. The character first appeared in The Further Adventures Of Nick Danger, a parody of 1930s radio dramas that took up the entire second side of the 1969 album How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All. After showing up on a variety of albums, radio shows and even a movie over the next decade and a half, Danger finally got his own full-length album, The Three Faces Of Al, in 1984. David Ossman, who played the 1000-year-old man Catherwood in Further Adventures, had left the Firesign Theatre (temporarily, as it turned out) to be a producer at NPR, and did not participate in the writing or recording of The Three Faces Of Al.

Artist:    Dr. John
Title:    Such A Night
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Mac Rebennack
Label:    Atco
Year:    1973
    Mac Rebennack was a fixture on the New Orleans music scene for over 50 years. He first started performing publicly in his teens, lying about his age to able to play in some of the city's more infamous clubs. At age 13 he was expelled from Jesuit school and soon found work as a staff songwriter and guitarist for the legendary Aladdin label. In 1957, at age 16, he joined the musicians' union, officially beginning his professional career. In the early 1960s he got into trouble with the law and spent two years in federal prison. Upon his release he relocated to Los Angeles, due to an ongoing cleanup campaign in New Orleans that had resulted in most of the clubs he had previously played in being permanently shut down. While in L.A., Rebennack developed his Dr. John, the Night Tripper personna, based on a real-life New Orleans voodoo priest with psychedelic elements thrown in (it was 1968 after all). By the early 1970s Dr. John had developed a cult following, but was getting tired of the self-imposed limitations of his Night Tripper image. In 1972 he recorded an album of New Orleans cover songs, following it up with his most successful album, In The Right Place, in 1973. Produced by the legendary Allen Toussaint, In The Right Place provided Dr. John his most successful hit single, Right Place Wrong Time, as well as a followup single, Such A Night, that peaked just outside the top 40. Around this time he returned to New Orleans, but continued to record at some of the top studios in the country, both as a solo artist and as a session player, appearing on literally thousands of recordings over the years. Dr. John continued to perform until shortly before his death on June 6, 2019.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2502 (starts 1/6/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/556994

    This week's show gets off to an unusual start, with back-to-back artists sets from the Who and Paul Revere And The Raiders. Later in the show we have a Battle of the Bands rematch between the Beatles and Love, along with a couple of interesting cover tunes to finish out. There's lots of good stuff in between as well.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Armenia City In The Sky
Source:    LP: The Who Sell Out
Writer(s):    John Keene
Label:    Decca
Year:    1967
    Pete Townshend has always been a prolific songwriter. John Entwistle, while not as prolific as Townshend, wrote more than his share of quality tunes as well. It is a bit surprising, then, that the opening track of The Who Sell Out did not come from the pens of either of the band's songwriters. Instead, Armenia City In The Sky was written by one of the band's roadies, John "Speedy" Keene. Although not a household name, Keene was the lead vocalist for Thunderclap Newman (named for the band's recording engineer), who had a huge hit in 1969 with Keene's Something In The Air, which was produced by Townshend.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Run Run Run
Source:    Canadian import CD: Magic Bus-The Who On Tour (originally released on LP: A Quick One, re-titled Happy Jack in US)
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1966
    After the release of their first LP, My Generation, the Who terminated their contract with the British Brunswick label and signed with a new company, Reaction. The first Reaction release was a single, Substitute, which made the British top 5. In late 1966 the band released their first album for Reaction, A Quick One. The album was markedly different from My Generation, as the group had moved beyond their so-called maximum R&B phase and were exploring new directions. A Quick One was also the first Who album to be mixed in stereo, as can be heard on the opening track of the LP, Run Run Run. Although not released as a single, the song proved popular enough to include on the 1968 LP Magic Bus, along with several of their singles and B sides (and a couple more album tracks).

Artist:     Who
Title:     I Can See For Miles
Source:     LP: The Who Sell Out
Writer:     Pete Townshend
Label:     Decca
Year:     1967
     I Can See For Miles continued a string of top 10 singles in the UK and was the Who's biggest US hit ever. Pete Townshend, however, was disappointed with the song's performance on the UK charts. He said that the song was the ultimate Who song and as such it should have charted even higher than it did. It certainly was one of the heaviest songs of its time and there is some evidence that it prompted Paul McCartney to come up with Helter Skelter in an effort to take the heaviest song ever title back for the Beatles. What makes the story even more bizarre is that at the time McCartney reportedly had never actually heard I Can See For Miles and was going purely by what he read in a record review. I Can See For Miles was also used as the closing track of side one of The Who Sell Out, released in December of 1967. Some of the commercials and jingles heard at the beginning of the track were recorded by the band itself. Others were lifted (without permission) from Wonderful Radio London, a pirate radio station that had been operating off the English coast before being shut down by the passage of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act a few months before The Who Sell Out was released.

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

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Louie, Go Home
Source:    Mono LP: Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Midnight Ride)
Writer(s):    Lindsay/Revere
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    Nobody knows for sure who recorded Louie Louie first: the Kingsmen or Paul Revere And The Raiders. Both bands recorded the song in April of 1963 in the same studio in Portland, Oregon, but nobody seems to remember which band played at which session. Regardless, the Kingsmen ended up with the national hit version of the song, while Paul Revere And The Raiders went on to become one of the most successful American rock bands of the mid-1960s, thanks in part to Dick Clark, who discovered them playing in Hawaii and chose them to be the house band on his new show Where The Action Is. By this time the band had been signed to Columbia Records, releasing their first single for the label, Louie-Go Home, in 1964. By 1966 they were riding high on the charts, and re-recorded Louie, Go Home (different punctuation, same song, different arrangement) in stereo for their second of three albums released that year: Midnight Ride.

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Our Candidate
Source:    Mono LP: The Spirit Of '67
Writer(s):    Mike Smith
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    Paul Revere And The Raiders continued their winning ways with the release of their second LP of 1966. The Spirit Of '67, like its predecessor Midnight Ride, featured a mix of cover songs and originals, including My Candidate from drummer Mike "Smitty" Smith. The Spirit Of '67 was, in a sense, an ending for the group, however. Future albums would use studio musicians extensively, and virtually all the material would come from the pens of Paul Revere and Mark Lindsay, leading to most of the other members (including Smitty) leaving the band altogether.

Artist:    Bobby Fuller Four
Title:    I Fought The Law
Source:    CD: I Fought The Law-The Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Sonny Curtis
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mustang)
Year:    1965
    I Fought The Law is one of the truly iconic songs in rock history. Originally recorded by the Crickets in 1959 after Sonny Curtis, who wrote the song, had joined the band as lead guitarist and taken over lead vocals following the death of Buddy Holly, the song became a national hit when it was covered by the Bobby Fuller Four in late 1965. The song hit the #9 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1966, and has since been recorded by numerous artists from a variety of genres, including the Clash, Hank Williams, Jr., the Dead Kennedys and Bruce Springsteen, who has made it a staple of his live show over the years.
    
Artist:    Los Shakers
Title:    Break It All (US version)
Source:    CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Hugo & Osvaldo Fatturosa
Label:    Rhino (original label: Audio Fidelity)
Year:    1966
    We're all familiar with the British Invasion of the American music industry that began with the arrival of the Beatles on US shores (well, technically an airport runway) in early 1964. Less known was a Uraguayan Invasion of Argentina about a year later. Inspired by the film A Hard Days Night, brothers Hugo and Osvaldo Fatturoso formed Los Shakers in the Uraguayan city of Montevideo in 1964. They soon signed with the Argentina-based Odeon label (Buenos Aires being less than 100 miles from Montevideo) and by 1965 had touched off an entire wave of Uraguayan bands recording songs in English for Argentinian labels and appearing on Argentinian TV shows. They even recorded a new version of their biggest hit, Break It All, for the Audio Fidelity label that was released in the US and Mexico in 1966. By 1967, however, bands in Argentina were favoring songs sung in Spanish, and the Uraguayan Invasion subsided, finally dying off entirely when a military dictatorship was established in Uraguay itself in 1973.

Artist:    Balloon Farm
Title:    A Question Of Temperature
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Appel/Schnug/Henny
Label:    Rhino (original label: Laurie)
Year:    1967
    It's not entirely clear whether the Balloon Farm was an actual band or simply an East Coast studio concoction. Regardless, they did manage to successfully cross garage rock with bubble gum for A Question Of Temperature, originally released on the Laurie label in 1967. Band member Mike Appel went on to have greater notoriety as Bruce Springsteen's first manager.
    
Artist:     Cream
Title:        White Room
Source:    CD: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:        1968
        Musically almost a rewriting of Eric Clapton's Tales of Brave Ulysses (from Cream's Disraeli Gears album), White Room, a Jack Bruce/Pete Brown composition from the Wheels Of Fire album, is arguably the most popular song ever to feature the use of a wah-wah pedal prominently.

Artist:    Fingers
Title:    Circus With A Female Clown
Source:    Mono British import CD: Psychedelia At Abbey Road (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Robin/Mills/Ducky
Label:    EMI (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1967
    One of the first British bands to label themselves as "psychedelic", the Fingers included as part of their stage show a monkey named Freak Out, whom the band members claimed produced "psychotic" odors (having met someone with a pet monkey, I find that easy to believe). The band only released two singles, however. The second of these had the truly strange Circus With A Female Clown on its B side. The somewhat more conventional A side failed to chart, however, and the group broke up soon after the record was released.
        
Artist:      Donovan
Title:     Mellow Yellow
Source:      Mono CD: Donovan's Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Donovan Leitch
Label:     Epic/Legacy
Year:     1966
     Although the Mellow Yellow album came out in early 1967, the title track had been released several months earlier as a followup to Donovan's breakthrough US hit Sunshine Superman. Ironically, during Donovan's period of greatest US success none of his recordings were being released in his native UK, due to a contract dispute with Pye Records. Incidentally, electric banana didn't turn out to be a sudden craze after all, and it is not Paul McCartney whispering "quite rightly" on the chorus. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble.

Artist:    P.F. Sloan
Title:    Halloween Mary
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    P.F. Sloan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1965
    If there is any one songwriter associated specifically with folk-rock (as opposed to folk music), it would be the Los Angeles based P.F. Sloan, writer of Barry McGuire's signature song, Eve Of Destruction. Sloan also penned hits for the Turtles in their early days as one of the harder-edged folk-rock bands, including their second hit, Let Me Be. In fact, Sloan had almost 400 songs to his credit by the time he and Steve Barri teamed up to write and produce a series of major hits released by various bands under the name Grass Roots. Sloan himself, however, only released two singles as a singer, although (as can be heard on the second of them, the slightly off-kilter Halloween Mary) he had a voice as powerful as many of the recording stars of the time.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    Gonna Send You Back To Walker
Source:    Mono CD: Retrospective (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Matthews/Hammond
Label:    Abkco (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1964
    The members of the Animals, particularly vocalist Eric Burdon, made their opinion of their home town known with the song Gonna Send You Back To Walker, released as the B side of their first single in 1964. Originally released twice by American rhythm and blues singer Timmy Shaw, first as a B side called City Slick, then as an A side called Gonna Send You Back to Georgia, the Animals reworked the lyrics to fit English localities. Walker itself was Burdon's home town, a distict of Newcastle upon Tyne that once was a major shipyard, but had long since fallen into hard times by the mid-20th century. The "south" referred to in the song is the "big city" of London.

Artist:    "E" Types
Title:    Put The Clock Back On The Wall
Source:    CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Bonner/Gordon
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1967
    The E-Types were originally from Salinas, California, which at the time was known for it's sulfiric smell experienced by passing motorists travelling along US 101. As many people from Salinas apparently went to "nearby" San Jose (about 60 miles to the north) as often as possible, the E-Types became regulars on the local scene there, eventually landing a contract with Tower Records and Ed Cobb, who also produced the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband. The Bonner/Gordon songwriting team were just a couple months away from getting huge royalty checks from the Turtles' Happy Together when Put The Clock Back On The Wall was released in early 1967. The song takes its title from a popular phrase of the time. After a day or two of losing all awareness of time (and sometimes space) it was time to put the clock back on the wall, or get back to reality if you prefer.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    The Walking Song
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Kaylan/Nichols
Label:    White Whale
Year:    1967
    When they weren't recording hit songs by professional songwriters, the Turtles were busy developing their own songwriting talents, albeit in a somewhat satirical direction. One early example is The Walking Song, which contrasts the older generation's obsession with material goods with a "stop and smell the roses" approach favored by the song's protagonist. This toungue-in-cheek style of writing would characterize the later careers of two of the band members, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, after performing with the Mothers at the Fillmore would become known as the Phlorescent Leech (later Flo) and Eddie.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Smiling Phases
Source:    CD: Heaven Is In Your Mind
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi/Wood
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    The standard practice in the UK during the 60s was to not include songs that had been released as singles on LPs. This left several songs, such as the 1967 B side Smiling Phases, only available on 45 RPM vinyl until the group's first greatest hits anthology was released. In the US the song was more widely circulated, having been included on the American version of Traffic's debut LP (originally issued as Heaven Is In Your Mind but soon retitled Mr. Fantasy). Smiling Phases has since come to be recognized as one of Traffic's most iconic tunes, and has been covered by such bands as Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Artist:    Buffalo Springfield
Title:    Mr. Soul
Source:    LP: Retrospective-The Best Of Buffalo Springfield (originally released on LP: Buffalo Springfield Again)
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967
    Executives at Atco Records originally considered Neil Young's voice "too weird" to be recorded. As a result many of Young's early tunes (including the band's debut single Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing), were sung by Richie Furay. By the time the band's second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, was released, the band had enough clout to make sure Young was allowed to sing his own songs. In fact, the album starts with a Young vocal on the classic Mr. Soul.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Parachute Woman
Source:    CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer:    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    The last Rolling Stones album with the band's original lineup was Beggar's Banquet, released in 1968. The album itself was a conscious effort on the part of the band to get back to their roots after the psychedelic excesses of Their Satanic Majesties Request. Sadly, Brian Jones was fast deteriorating at the time and his contributions to the album are minimal compared to the band's earlier efforts. As a result, Keith Richards was responsible for most of the guitar work on Beggar's Banquet, including both lead and rhythm parts on Parachute Woman.

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:    Beatles
Title:    Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Source:    LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    EMI/Parlophone
Year:    1967
    According to principal songwriter John Lennon, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite was inspired by a turn of the century circus poster that the Beatles ran across while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Most of the lyrics refer to items on the poster itself, such as Henry the Horse and the Hendersons.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Can't Explain
Source:    Mono CD: Love Story (originally released on LP: Love)
Writer(s):    Lee/Echols/Fleckenstein
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1966
    Love's original lineup consisted of bandleader Arthur Lee on vocals, Johnny Echols on lead guitar, John Fleckenstein on bass and Don Conka on drums, with Lee, a prolific songwriter, providing the band's original material. They were soon joined by singer/songwriter/guitarist Bryan MacLean, who gave up his traveling gig as a roadie for the Byrds. Before they completed their first album, however, Fleckenstein and Conka had been replaced by Ken Forssi and Snoopy Pfisterer, although Lee himself provided most of the drums and some of the bass tracks on the LP. Two of the tracks on the album, however, are rumored to have been performed by the original five members, although this has never been verified. One of those tracks is Can't Explain, on which Fleckenstein has a writing credit. The song is certainly one of the band's earliest recordings and captures Love's hard-edged "L.A.-in" take on folk-rock.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Baby, You're A Rich Man
Source:    CD: Magical Mystery Tour
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Parlophone
Year:    1967
    Baby, You're A Rich Man was one of the last collaborations between John Lennon and Paul McCartney and addresses the Beatles' longtime manager Brian Epstein, although not by name.  Lennon came up with the basic question "how does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" (a popular term for the young and hip in late 60s London), which became the basis for the song's verses, which were combined with an existing, but unfinished, Paul McCartney chorus (Baby, You're A Rich Man, too). The finished piece was issued as the B side of the Beatles' second single of 1967, All You Need Is Love, and later remixed in stereo and included on the US-only LP version of Magical Mystery Tour.
 
Artist:    Love
Title:    A House Is Not A Motel
Source:    CD: Love Story (originally released on LP: Forever Changes)
Writer:    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1967
    Arthur Lee was a bit of a recluse, despite leading the most popular band on Sunset Strip in 1966-67. When the band was not playing at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go Lee was most likely to be found at his home up in the Hollywood Hills, often in the company of fellow band member Bryan McLean. The other members of the band, however, were known to hang out in the most popular clubs, chasing women and doing all kinds of substances. Sometimes they would show up at Lee's house unbidden. Sometimes they would crash there. Sometimes Lee would get annoyed, and probably used the phrase which became the title of the second track on Love's classic Forever Changes album, A House Is Not A Motel.

Artist:     Beatles
Title:     Good Morning Good Morning/Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)/A Day In The Life
Source:     CD: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer:     Lennon/McCartney
Label:     Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:     1967
     One of the great accidents of record production was the splice that turned the chicken at the end of Good Morning Good Morning into a guitar, starting off Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) and ultimately leading into A Day In The Life, with it's slowly dissolving orchestral chord that brings the number one album of 1967 to a close.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    Fakin' It
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    Fakin' It, originally released as a single in 1967, was a bit of a departure for Simon And Garfunkel, sounding more like British psychedelic music than American folk-rock. The track starts with an intro that is similar to the false ending to the Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever; midway through the record the tempo changes drastically for a short spoken word section (name-dropping Mr. [Donovan] Leitch) that is slightly reminiscent of the bridge in Traffic's Hole In My Shoe. The song was later included on the 1968 LP Bookends.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Highway Chile
Source:    Simulated stereo British import LP: Smash Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Polydor (original label: Track)
Year:    1967
    The Jimi Hendrix Experience already had three hit singles in the UK before releasing their first LP, Are You Experienced, in May of 1967. The following month the band made its US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The gig went over so well that Reprise Records soon made arrangements to release Are You Experienced in the US. To maximize the commercial potential of the LP, Reprise decided to include the A sides of all three singles on the album, even though those songs had not been on the British version. The B sides of all three singles, however, were not included on the album. Among those missing tracks was Highway Chile, a somewhat autobiographical song that was originally paired with The Wind Cries Mary. In April of 1968, prior to the release of the Electric Ladyland album, Polydor released an album called Smash Hits that collected all eight songs that had been released in single form up to that point, as well as a handful of tunes from the original UK version of Are You Experienced. Highway Chile was not included on the US version of Smash Hits, which was released the following year; in fact, Highway Chile was not released in the US at all during Hendrix's lifetime, finally appearing (in fake stereo) on the 1972 LP War Heroes.

Artist:    Show Stoppers
Title:    If You Want To, Why Don't You
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    W.E. Hjerpe
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1967
    The Show Stoppers were a Rochester, NY based club band that included Don Potter and Bat McGrath, who would go on to release an album together on the Epic label in 1969. The Show Stoppers were discovered by John Hammond in 1967 and signed to the Columbia label, where they released two singles. Although three of the tracks would best be described as danceable pop music, the A side of their second single, If You Want To, Why Don't You, had more of a garage-rock sound, and has appeared on at least one garage-rock compilation. Both Potter and McGrath now reside in Nashville, where Potter became well-known as the creator of the "Judds sound" in the 1980s. Special thanks to Tom at the Bop Shop in Rochester (a record store that specializes in vinyl) for making this record available to me.

Artist:    Mothers of Invention
Title:    Big Leg Emma
Source:    CD: Absolutely Free (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer:    Frank Zappa
Label:    Ryko (original label: Verve)
Year:    1967
    Sometime during the creation of the second Mothers Of Invention album, Absolutely Free, the band recorded a pair of stand alone tunes that were released as a 45 RPM single. The B side of that record was Big Leg Emma, a song that was written by Frank Zappa in 1962 and would eventually be added to his live show in the late 1970s.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Gates Of Eden
Source:    45 RPM single B side (originally released on LP: Bringing It All Back Home)
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    Big record companies like to hedge their bets. In fact, they can hardly resist it. When Bob Dylan decided to release the six-minute long Like A Rolling Stone as a single, Columbia Records balked at the idea and cancelled the release. An acetate of the song, however, found its way into the hands of a New York club DJ, who literally played it to death (acetates having a very limited lifespan) in a single night due to multiple requests by club patrons to "play it again". Word got out quickly and the shirts decided to take a chance and release the song after all. But there was still the issue of Dylan's early fans considering him a traitor to folk music for using electric guitars, organ, piano and drums on the song, so they lifted the purely acoustic Gates Of Eden from Dylan's previous album, Bringing It All Back Home, for the B side. Ironically, Gates Of Eden is only about 20 seconds shorter than Like A Rolling Stone itself, making the total playing time of the two sides nearly twelve minutes, something not often seen in the US since the 1950s, when Extended Play 45s were still considered a viable format.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Caroline No
Source:    Mono LP: Pet Sounds
Writer(s):    Wilson/Asher
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    According to lyricist Peter Asher, Caroline No was written because Brian Wilson was "saddened to see how sweet little girls turned out to be kind of bitchy, hardened adults". Though the song was originally included on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, it ended up being the only single ever released by Capitol credited to Brian Wilson as a solo artist.

Artist:     Electric Prunes
Title:     Big City
Source:     CD: Underground
Writer:     J. Walsh/D. Walsh
Label:     Collector's Choice/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1967
     The Electric Prunes were given more creative freedom on their second LP, Underground, than any of their other albums. Nonetheless, Underground did contain a few cover songs, one of which was the song Big City, which emphasizes the vocals more than most Prunes tunes.

Artist:    Blue Cheer
Title:    Summertime Blues
Source:    CD: The Best Of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: Vincebus Eruptum)
Writer(s):    Cochrane/Capehart
Label:    Priority (original label: Philips)
Year:    1968
    European electronics giant Philips had its own record label in the 1960s. In the US, the label was distributed by Mercury Records, and was known primarily for a long string of hits by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. In 1968 the label surprised everyone by signing the loudest band in San Francisco, Blue Cheer. Their cover of the 50s Eddie Cochrane hit Summertime Blues was all over both the AM and FM airwaves that summer.

Artist:    Kindred Spirit
Title:    Blue Avenue
Source:    Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single B side_
Writer(s):    Wayne Ulaky
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original labels: Moxie and Intrepid)
Year:    1969
    Known primarily as a flood-prone steel processing center for most of its existence, Johnstown, PA, like many industrial cities, had its own music scene, and for a short time its own local record label in the 1960s. Moxie Records only released two singles, the first being a 1969 cover of the Rolling Stones' Under My Thumb by Kindred Spirit, a popular local band consisting of lead vocalist Greg Falvo, guitarists Joe Nemanich and John Galiote, keyboard and keyboard bassist Jim Smedo, drummer Tom "Boots" McCullough and vocalist Carl Mundok. Although most bands got to put an original tune on the B side of singles (so they could collect royalties on record sales), Kindred Spirit instead recorded another cover song, the Beacon Street Union's Blue Avenue for their own single's flipside. As it turned out, Kindred Spirit ended up outlasting Moxie Records after the single was picked up by Mercury Records and released on their new Intrepid subsidiary label in November of 1969. The following year a second Kindred Spirit single, Peaceful Man, was released on Intrepid. As far as I can tell, Peaceful Man was an original tune (lead vocalist Falvo is listed as co-writer), although the B side of that record was a cover of an album track from the first Flock LP.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2502 (starts 1/6/25)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/556990

    It's another journey through the early 1970s, finally settling in for a 1971 set to finish things out.

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    I Got A Line On You
Source:    European import CD: Pure....Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: The Family That Plays Together)
Writer(s):    Randy California
Label:    Sony Music (original label: Ode)
Year:    1968
    Although not an instant hit by any measure, I Got A Line On You, from Spirit's second album, The Family That Plays Together, has proven to be the band's most popular song. Released in October of 1968, the song lingered below the top 100 for several weeks before college radio stations began playing it in late November. The tune finally peaked at #25 on March 15, 1969.

Artist:    Wishbone Ash
Title:    Phoenix
Source:    CD: Wishbone Ash
Writer(s):    Upton/Turner/Turner/Powell
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1970
    The first Wishbone Ash album was characterized by the dual lead guitar work of Andy Powell and Ted Turner. This is particularly notable on the album's showcase piece, the ten and a half minute long Phoenix. Unfortunately, the lack of a powerful lead vocalist kept Wishbone Ash from becoming a first-tier band.

Artist:    Climax Blues Band
Title:    Reap What I've Sowed
Source:    45 RPM promo
Writer(s):    Climax Blues Band
Label:    Sire
Year:    1970
    The Climax Chicago Blues Band was a band steeped in confusion pretty much from the start. Formed in Stafford, England in 1967, the group originally consisted of  vocalist/harmonica player Colin Cooper, guitarist/vocalist Pete Haycock , guitarist Derek Holt, bassist/keyboardist Richard Jones, drummer George Newsome, and keyboardist Arthur Wood. Originally part of the British blues-rock scene of the late 1960s, the band found itself continually adapting to a changing musical landscape throughout its existence, racking up a total of 17 albums over the years. After releasing two LPs on EMI's Parlophone label, the band switched over to EMI's progressive rock oriented label, Harvest, releasing their third album, A Lot Of Bottle, in 1970. By this time there was more than a little confusion over the band's name, which, on the British release of A Lot Of Bottle, was still the Climax Chicago Blues Band. In the US, however, the name of the album itself was The Climax Blues Band. To make things even more confusing, the band's next two studio albums were credited to the Climax Blues Band in North America, but appeared under the name Climax Chicago in the rest of the world. This confusion over the band's name may be part of the reason they were never a major success, although they did manage a couple hit singles over the years (Couldn't Get It Right in 1977 and I Love You in 1981). The band's first US single, 1971's Reap What I've Sowed, was only issued to radio stations, with the notation that it was from the "forthcoming" album, The Climax Blues Band, which had actually been released the previous year in the UK. As I said, steeped in confusion.

Artist:    Mark Fry
Title:    The Witch
Source:    British Import CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution (originally released in Italy on LP: Dreaming With Alice)
Writer(s):    Mark Fry
Label:    Grapefruit (original label: IT)
Year:    1972
    One of the most obscure albums ever released, Dreaming With Alice is sometimes considered the ultimate example of acid folk music. Recorded in 1971 by teenaged British art student Mark Fry and released only in Italy on RCA's IT subsidiary, the album includes a track called The Witch, which is described in the book Galactic Ramble as "one of the creepiest songs you'll ever hear". Personally I don't really find anything creepy about it at all, although the track itself is quite hypnotic and highly listenable.
        
Artist:    James Gang
Title:    Alexis
Source:    CD: Bang
Writer(s):    Bolin/Cook
Label:    Atco
Year:    1973
    When Joe Walsh left the James Gang, many people thought it was all over for the Cleveland, Ohio band formed by drummer Jim Fox. The group recovered, though, adding two Canadians, guitarist Dominic Troiano and vocalist Roy Kenner, from the band Bush. The group recorded two more albums for ABC before Troiano left to replace Randy Bachman in the Guess Who. With their ABC Records contract now expired, the group was once again expected to ride off into the sunset, but instead added guitarist Tommy Bolin, formerly of the Boulder, Colorado band Zephyr, and signed a new contract with Atlantic's Atco label. The first album from the new lineup was 1973's Bang, considered the strongest James Gang album since Walsh's departure. Bolin, in particular, strutted his stuff, both as a guitarist and a songwriter, on several of Bang's tracks. He even took the lead vocals on Alexis, a standout tune that foreshadows his work as a solo artist later in the decade.

Artist:    Mahogany Rush
Title:    Chains Of (S) Pace
Source:    LP: Child Of The Novelty
Writer(s):    Frank Marino
Label:    20th Century
Year:    1974
    The second Mahogany Rush album saw the addition of keyboardist Phil Bech (who had played on one track on the band's first LP) as an official member. Still, the band mostly functioned as a power trio in the mold of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, as can be heard on tracks like Chains Of (S) Pace, which closes out the album.

Artist:    Barclay James Harvest
Title:    Mocking Bird
Source:    LP: Once Again
Writer(s):    John Lees
Label:    Sire
Year:    1971
    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. Formed in Oldham, England by bassist/vocalist Les Holroyd, guitarist/vocalist John Lees , drummer/percussionist Mel Pritchard, and keyboardist/vocalist Stuart "Woolly" Wolstenholme in 1966, the band released their first single on the Parlophone label in 1968 before moving over to EMI's prog-rock label, Harvest. All of Barclay James Harvest's early albums featured a full orchestra arranged and conducted by Robert John Godfrey, which was supposed to be the "next big thing" in progressive rock, but failed to connect with either fans or critics. A dispute between the band members and Godfrey over "writing issues" on the song Mocking Bird led to Godfrey's dismissal following the release of the second Barclay James Harvest album, Once Again. Godfrey would later bring a lawsuit against the band, claiming he was owed writing credit and royalties for several of their compositions. That's what they get for using a full orchestra on a rock record.

Artist:    Bloodrock
Title:    Breach Of Lease
Source:    LP: Bloodrock 3
Writer(s):    Rutledge/Grundy/Cobb/Hill/Nitzinger
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1971
    For some reason lead guitarist Lee Pickens did not receive any writing credits on the third Bloodrock album, released in 1971. Everyone else in the band did, however, on the song Breach Of Lease. So did professional songwriter John Nitzinger. But not Pickens, who along with lead vocalist Jim Rutledge would leave the band the following year.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    Aqualung
Source:    CD: Aqualung
Writer(s):    Ian & Jennie Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis (original US label: Reprise)
Year:    1971
    Arguably Jethro's Tull most popular song, Aqualung was the title track from the band's fourth LP and lifted the group into the ranks of rock royalty. Like nearly all of Tull's catalog, Aqualung was written by vocalist/flautist Ian Anderson, who also played acoustic guitar on the track. The lyrics of the song were inspired by photographs of homeless men taken by Anderson's then-wife Jennie, who received co-writing credits on the piece.

 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2501 (starts 12/30/24)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/556157

    After a Yule show dominated by R&B and novelty tunes followed by a show split 50/50 between punk/new wave and, well, a 50/50 split of songs, we figured were about due for something more in line with what you'd expect from a show called Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. So what we have is a mixture of sets from 1966 and 1968 (including Arlo Guthrie's original version of the Motorcycle Song), some progressions (and a regression) though the years, an Advanced Psych set and, to top it all off, an uninterrupted final segment made up entirely of tracks from 1969. It starts with an eerily prophetic track from the Mothers Of Invention...

Artist:    Mothers Of Invention
Title:    Help, I'm A Rock, 3rd Movement: It Can't Happen Here
Source:    45 RPM single B side (reissue)
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Barking Pumpkin (original label: Verve)
Year:    1966
    Help, I'm A Rock and its follow up track It Can't Happen Here are among the best-known Frank Zappa compositions on the first Mothers Of Invention album, Freak Out! What is not so well known is that the band's label, Verve, issued an edited mono version of the track under the title Help, I'm A Rock, 3rd Movement: It Can't Happen Here, as the B side of the band's first single. This version removes the avant-garde jazz piano and drum section from the piece, making the track slightly over three minutes in length. The result is one of the strangest a cappella performances ever committed to vinyl.

Artist:    Vagrants
Title:    Respect
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Otis Redding
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Sounding a lot like the Rascals, the Vagrants were a popular Long Island band led by singer Peter Sabatino and best remembered for being the group that had guitarist Leslie Weinstein in it. Weinstein would change his last name to West and record a solo album called Mountain before forming the band of the same name. This version of Respect is fairly faithful to the original Otis Redding version. Unfortunately for the Vagrants, Aretha Franklin would release her radically rearranged version of the song just a few weeks after the Vagrants, relegating their version of the tune (and the Vagrants themselves) to footnote status.

Artist:    Quicksilver Messenger Service
Title:    Light Your Windows
Source:    CD: Quicksilver Messenger Service
Writer(s):    Duncan/Freiberg
Label:    Rock Beat (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    There are differing opinions on just how serious legendary San Francisco singer/songwriter and general iconoclast Dino Valenti was being when, at a jam session with guitarist John Cippolina one night, he suggested that the two of them form a band. Since Valenti was busted for drugs the very next day (and ended up spending the next two years at San Quentin), we'll never know for sure. Cippolina, however, was motivated enough to begin finding members for the new band, including bassist David Freiberg (later to join Starship) and guitarist/drummer Skip Spence. When Marty Balin stole Spence away to join his own new band (Jefferson Airplane), he tried to make up for it by introducing Cippolina to vocalist/guitarist Gary Duncan and drummer Greg Elmore, whose own band, the Brogues, had recently disbanded. Taking the name Quicksilver Messenger Service (so named for all the member's astrological connections with the planet Mercury), the new band soon became a fixture on the San Francisco scene. Inspired by the Blues Project, Cippolina and Duncan quickly established a reputation for their dual guitar improvisational abilities. Unlike other San Francisco bands such as the Airplane and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service did not jump at their first offer from a major record label, preferring to hold out for the best deal. This meant their debut album did not come out until 1968, missing out on the initial buzz surrounding the summer of love. The band toned down their jamming for their first LP, preferring to concentrate on more structured compositions such as Light Your Windows, which clocks in at less that three minutes.

Artist:    Fairport Convention
Title:    Million Dollar Bash
Source:    French import CD: Unhalfbricking
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Island (original US label: A&M)
Year:    1969
    While much of the country was focused on what was going on in San Francisco during the so-called Summer of Love, Bob Dylan was quietly writing a batch of new songs and teaching them to members of the Hawks that had been his stage band the previous year and were now living on a quiet country road in upstate New York in a house they nicknamed Big Pink. Band member Garth Hudson set up a recording unit using equipment lent to him by Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, and ended up recording about 30 new songs before Dylan left for Nashville in October to record his John Wesley Harding album. It wasn't long before a fourteen song demo tape was copyrighted by Dylan and Grossman and copies began making the rounds in musicians' circles, leading to several of the songs being recorded by other artists before Dylan's own versions with the Hawks (soon to be known as The Band) were officially released. The members of the British folk-rock band Fairport Convention were so taken with the songs that they ended up including their own versions of three of them, including Million Dollar Bash, on their 1969 LP Unhalfbricking. Fairport's Ashley Hutchings later said  "We loved it all. We would have covered all the songs if we could."

Artist:    Birds
Title:    Say Those Magic Words
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):    Feldman/Gettehrer/Goldstein/Shuman/Pomus
Label:    Rhino (original label: Reaction)
Year:    1966
    The Birds are best known for two things. First, they were future Rolling Stone Ron Wood's first band. They also gained notoriety when they took legal action against the Byrds for stealing their name. Originally formed in 1963 as the R&B Bohemians, the band soon changed its name to the Thunderbirds, later shortening it to the Birds to avoid confusion with Chris Farlowe's backup band. The Birds released only four singles between 1964 and 1966, the last of which was an amped up cover of a McCoys tune, Say Those Magic Words. When the single (their first for the Reaction label) failed to chart the group began to disentegrate and officially disbanded in early 1967.

Artist:    Haunted
Title:    1-2-5
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Canada on LP: The Haunted)
Writer(s):    Burgess/Peter
Label:    Rhino (original label: Quality)
Year:    1966
    Formed in Montreal in 1964, the Haunted was one of the most popular bands in the Canadian province of Quebec, as well as Southern Ontario. In January of 1966 the band won an eight-hour long battle of the bands, resulting in a contract with Quality Records. The Haunted's first single was a song called 1-2-5, which the label refused to release due to the song's subject matter (a liason with a prostitute). Undaunted, the band changed a few lyrics, substituting lines like "a roomful of clowns" and "a line of executives" for the original references to working girls and re-recorded the song. The label, being somewhat clueless, released the song in its new form, but messed up the band's name on the label, calling them the Hunted. Finally, the band changed labels, issuing the song as an album track on Trans World Records in 1967.

Artist:    Love
Title:    My Flash On You
Source:    Mono LP: Love
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    Sounding a bit like the fast version of Hey Joe (which was also on Love's debut LP), My Flash On You is essentially Arthur Lee in garage mode. A punk classic.
 
Artist:    Frantics
Title:    Human Monkey
Source:    Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Miller/Stevenson
Label:    Rhino (original label: Action)
Year:    1966
    The Frantics were a popular cover band in Tacoma, Washington in the early 60s. Guitarist Jerry Miller, however, had greater ambitions and eventually relocated to San Francisco, taking the band's name and two of its members, keyboardist Chuck "Steaks" Schoning and drummer Don Stevenson, with him. After recruiting bassist Bob Mosely the Frantics cut their only single, an early Motown-style dance number called the Human Monkey, in 1966. The group would soon shed Schoning and pick up two new members, changing their name to Moby Grape in the process.

Artist:    Luv'd Ones
Title:    Dance Kid Dance
Source:    Mono CD: Truth Gotta Stand (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Char Vinnedge
Label:    Beat Rocket (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    In 1963, 20-year-old Char Vinnedge of Niles, Michigan, who had been playing piano since the age of four, helped her brother pick out an Airline guitar from Montgomery Ward. It soon became apparent that he was never going to learn to the play the thing, however, and Char ended up buying it from him. She soon found that she had an affinity for the instrument, and by 1964 had recruited her younger sister Faith (who chose to play bass because that was what Paul McCartney played), along with drummer Faith Orem and rhythm guitarist Terry Barber, to form a group called the Tremelons. Barber soon left the group, to be replaced by Mary Gallagher, and in 1966 the band was signed to Chicago's Dunwich Records, changing their name to the Luv'd Ones at the suggestion of label owner Bill Traut. They ended up releasing three singles for Dunwich that year, the last of which was the antiwar song Dance Kid Dance. After the Luv'd Ones disbanded, Vinnedge spent the next few years studying and deconstructing the music of Jimi Hendrix, eventually coming to the attention of bassist Billy Cox and recording an album called Nitro Function with him in 1971 that for some reason was only released in Europe.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    A Well Respected Man
Source:    Mono Canadian import CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Polygram/PolyTel (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1966
     The Kinks were one of the original British Invasion bands, scoring huge R&B-influenced hits with You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night in 1964. The hits continued in 1965 with more melodic songs like Set Me Free and Tired Of Waiting For You. 1966 saw Ray Davies's songwriting take a satiric turn, as A Well Respected Man amply illustrates. Over the next few years the Kinks would continue to evolve, generally getting decent critical reviews and moderate record sales for their albums. The title of one of those later albums, Muswell Hillbillies, refers to the Davies brothers hometown of Muswell Hill, North London.

Artist:    Adam
Title:    Eve
Source:    Mono CD: A Lethal Dose Of Hard Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Taylor/London/Dawson/Schnug
Label:    Arf! Arf! (original label: Malo)
Year:    1966
    Obviously a one-note gimmick, Adam consisted of Adam Taylor, Adam London, Adam Dawson and Adam Schnug, releasing one single called Eve in 1966. The following year a band called the Balloon Farm released A Question Of Temperature. It has long been suspected that they were both the same band. My own theory is that both tracks are the work of New York studio musicians having a little after-hours fun, similar to what was going on in Los Angeles with projects such as Sagittarius and the Ballroom.

Artist:    Monocles
Title:    The Spider And The Fly
Source:    LP: Nuggets Vol. 2 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Strong/Stevens
Label:    Elektra (original label: Chicory)
Year:    1967
    Once upon a time (1958) there was a B movie called the Fly. The most memorable thing about the film was hearing a tiny high-pitched voice emanating from a human head on a fly's body yelling "help me". This inspired a composer and conductor named Charles H. Sagle to write a song called The Spider And The Fly. Not wanted to destroy his career, he used not one, but two pseudonyms, Bob Strong and Carl Stevens. As Carl Stevens he was leader of Carl Stevens And His Orchestra, which included percussionist Bobby Christian, who in turn led a group called Bobby Christian And His Band that included as a member (you guessed it) Carl Stevens. The Spider And The Fly was released on Mercury's Wing Records subsidiary with the song title preceeded by: WARNING: Do Not Listen to this Record in the Dark or Alone. Nine years later, a band from Greeley, Colorado calling themselves the Monocles recorded an even stranger version of The Spider And The Fly, releasing it on the local Chicory label. A copy of this single has been known to sell for upward of seven-hundred dollars in recent years.

Artist:    Asylum Choir
Title:    Welcome To Hollywood
Source:    Mono European import CD: Look Inside The Asylum Choir (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Russell/Benno
Label:    Rev-Ola (original label: Smash)
Year:    1968
    Leon Russell and Marc Benno were both well-established as studio musicians in L.A. when they teamed up to create an album called Look Inside The Asylum Choir in 1968. Although the album was not a hot seller (the fact that the cover featured a roll of toilet paper probably didn't help), it did provide the two a chance to indulge their own particular brand of insanity, as heard on the album's opening track, Welcome To Hollywood. Look Inside The Asylum Choir was re-released (with a new cover) three years later in the wake of Russell's emergence as a superstar in his own right.

Artist:    SRC
Title:    Up All Night
Source:    Mono import CD: Ah Feel Like Ahcid (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and on LP: Milestones)
Writer(s):    Clawson/Richardson/Quackenbush/Lyman/Quackenbush
Label:    Zonophone UK (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    Stylistic and regional contemporaries of bands such as the MC5 and the Amboy Dukes, SRC were formed in 1965 as the Tremelos, soon changing their name to the Fugitives and releasing four singles and an album on various local Detroit labels. They released their first records under the name SRC in 1967, a pair of singles for the A[squared] label, which led to a contract with Capitol that resulted in one album per year from 1968-70. The most successful of these was the 1969 LP Milestones, which included the single Turn Into Love and its B side, Up All Night. After being dropped from the Capitol roster the group continued on for a couple more years, releasing a final single under the name Blue Scepter for Rare Earth Records in 1972.

Artist:    Arlo Guthrie
Title:    The Motorcycle Song
Source:    LP: Arlo
Writer(s):    Arlo Guthrie
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1968
    Arlo Guthrie originally recorded the Motorcycle Song as a straightforward three minute long folk song for his 1967 debut album, Alice's Restaurant. He then opened his 1968 live album Arlo with a nearly eight-minute long rendition of the song that included his somewhat fanciful explanation of how the song came to be. But when it came time for his label to release a compilation album of his best-known tunes in 1977, an entirely different live version in which he stated that he had been doing the song for twelve years was used. Although there has never been any official explanation of the substitution (or for that matter any information about where the later version even came from ), I believe it has to do with the part of the story about landing on a police car. The 1968 version includes the words "and he died", while the later one says "and it died" and goes on to tell a revised version of the rest of the story in which he is confronted by a rather short, but very much alive, police officer.

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    It's Breaking Me Up
Source:    CD: This Was
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    Jethro Tull originally was part of the British blues scene, but even in the early days the band's principal songwriter Ian Anderson wanted to expand beyond the confines of that particular genre. Ironically It's Breaking Me Up, from Jethro Tull's first LP, is an Anderson composition that is rooted solidly in the British blues style.

Artist:    Amboy Dukes
Title:    Journey To The Center Of The Mind
Source:    CD: Nuggets-Classics From The Psychedelic 60s (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Journey To The Center Of The Mind)
Writer(s):    Nugent/Farmer
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mainstream)
Year:    1968
    Detroit was one of the major centers of pop music in the mid to late 60s. In addition to the myriad Motown acts, the area boasted the popular retro-rock&roll band Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the harder rocking Bob Seger and the Heard, the proto-punk bands MC5 and the Stooges, and Ted Nugent's outfit, the Amboy Dukes, who scored big in 1968 with Journey To The Center Of The Mind.
    
Artist:    Music Machine
Title:    The People In Me
Source:    CD: The Very Best Of The Music Machine-Turn On (originally released on LP: Turn On The Music Machine and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Sean Bonniwell
Label:    Collectables (original label: Original Sound)
Year:    1966
    After Talk Talk soared into the upper reaches of the US charts the Music Machine's management made a tactical error. Instead of promoting the follow-up single, The People In Me, to the largest possible audience, the band's manager gave exclusive air rights to a relatively low-rated Burbank station at the far end of the Los Angeles AM radio dial. As local bands like the Music Machine depended on airplay in L.A. as a necessary step to getting national exposure, the move proved disastrous. Without any airplay on influential stations like KHJ and KRLA, The People In Me was unable to get any higher than the # 66 spot on the national charts. Even worse for the band, the big stations remembered the slight when subsequent singles by the Music Machine were released, and by mid-1967 the original lineup had disbanded.
 
Artist:    Squires Of The Subterrain
Title:    Surfin' Indiana
Source:    Mono CD: Sandbox
Writer(s):    Christopher Zajkowski
Label:    Rocket Racket
Year:    2012
    Christopher Earl of Rochester, NY, who records as Squires Of The Subterrain, has been releasing independent recordings on his own Rocket Racket label for the better part of 20 years. His 2012 album Sandbox is a tribute to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who actually had a sandbox installed in his living room while working on the aborted Smile album. In keeping with the spirit of Wilson, the album, which includes tunes like Surfin' Indiana, was mixed monoraully rather than in stereo like other Squires albums.

Artist:    Chesterfield Kings
Title:    Ain't No Use
Source:    LP: Don't Open Til Doomsday
Writer(s):    Babiuk//Prevost/O'Brien/Cona/Meech
Label:    Mirror
Year:    1987
    Formed in the late 1970s in Rochester, NY, the Chesterfield Kings (named for an old brand of unfiltered cigarettes that my grandfather used to smoke) were instrumental in setting off the garage band revival of the 1980s. Their earliest records were basically a recreation of the mid-60s garage sound, although by the time their 1987 album, Don't Open Til Doomsday, was released they had gone through some personnel changes that resulted in a harder-edged sound on tracks like Ain't No Use.     

Artist:    Sand Pebbles
Title:    Wild Season (single edit)
Source:    CD: A Thousand Wild Flowers (originally released in Australia on CD: Ceduna)
Writer(s):    Sand Pebbles
Label:    Double Feature (original label: Sensory Projects)
Year:    2008
    Neighbours is the longest-running drama series on Australian television, having aired its first episode in March of 1985. It is also the unlikely origin point for the Sand Pebbles, a band formed in 2001 by three Neighbours screenwriters. Those three founding members, bassist Christopher Hollow, guitarist Ben Michael and drummer Piet Collins were soon joined by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Tanner. The band's fourth album, Ceduna, also featured guitarist/vocalist Tor Larsen. As of 2008 the Sand Pebbles had never released any albums outside of Australia and New Zealand, but in 2009 they released a compilation album called A Thousand Wild Flowers in the US. The album included tracks from three of their previous CDs, along with a previously unreleased edited version of Wild Season that is two minutes shorter than the album version heard on Cedona.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    It's All Too Much
Source:    CD: Yellow Submarine
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Apple/Capitol
Year:    1969
    A month after completing the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles gathered at London's De Lane Lea studios to begin recording a new George Harrison composition that they called Too Much, based on the popular beatnik exclamation. The song itself was Harrison's attempt to express the revelations he had experienced while taking LSD. The basic tracks were laid down in late May without the participation of producer George Martin, and the sessions have been described as chaotic, in contrast to the tightly controlled sessions for Sgt. Pepper's. The following month horns and clarinet overdubs were added to the six-minute-long track by Martin. Harrison later expressed regret over those overdubs, saying  "To this day I am still annoyed that I let them mess it up with those damn trumpets. Basically, the song's quite good but, you know, messed up with those trumpets."

Artist:    Lothar And The Hand People
Title:    Milkweed Love
Source:    LP: Also Dug-Its (originally released on LP: Presenting…Lothar And The Hand People)
Writer(s):    Conly/Emelin/Ford/Flye/King
Label:    Elektra (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    Originally from Denver, Colorado, Lothar and the Hand People found themselves relocating to New York City in 1967, releasing a series of singles that ranged from blue-eyed soul to pop. By 1968, however, the band had fully incorporated the Moog synthesizer and the theramine into their sound. Lothar was, in fact, the name of the theramine itself, essentially a black box with an audio modulater that was activated by waving one's hands above it. As for this week's track, Milkweed Love (from the band's debut LP)...well, you can decide for yourself what to think of it.

Artist:    Barnsley And Bradley
Title:    Sister Of Wisdom
Source:    Mono CD: Lost Souls Volume 4 (taken from an unreleased studio acetate)
Writer(s):    Barnsley/Bradley
Label:    Psych Of The South (acetate from Jaggars Recording Studio)
Year:    1967
    Barnsley And Bradley were a folk duo from Little Rock, Arkansas, who recorded Sister Of Wisdom and other songs in mid-1967. Although the recordings were not released, the duo went on to become the core of a group called Country Coalition, which recorded an LP for the Bluesway label in 1969 and made a 1970 appearance on American Bandstand.

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

Artist:    Ban
Title:    Thinking Of Your Fate
Source:    Mono British import CD: With Love...A Pot Of Flowers (bonus track)
Writer(s):    Tony McGuire
Label:    Big Beat
Year:    Recorded 1965, released 2010
    One of the first garage bands signed to Bob Shad's Brent label was The Ban. Based in Lompoc, California, the Ban was led by guitarist/vocalist Tony McGuire, who also wrote the band's original material, and also included Oliver McKinney, whose wailing organ combined with Frank Straits's distorted bass and Randy Gordon's driving drums to create Thinking Of Your Fate, a garage band classic that sat on the shelf for 35 years before finally being released on the expanded version of the Mainstream Records' sampler With Love...A Pot Of Flowers.

Artist:    Allman Brothers Band
Title:    Whipping Post
Source:    CD: Beginnings (originally released on LP: The Allman Brothers Band)
Writer(s):    Gregg Allman
Label:    Polydor  (original label: Atco)
Year:    1969
    It's hard to believe now, but when it was released in 1969, the first Allman Brothers Band LP did not sell all that well. Even stranger, the critics were at best lukewarm in their reviews of the album. It wasn't until the band released a live album in 1971 that had been recorded during the final days of the Fillmore East that the Allman Brothers became a major force in rock. Not long after that Atco Records re-released both the Allman Brothers Band and its followup, Idlewild South, as a double-LP entitled Beginnings. One of the high points of the Fillmore East album was the band's rendition of Whipping Post, heard here in its original studio form.

Artist:    Steve Miller Band
Title:    Brave New World
Source:    LP: Homer soundtrack (originally released on LP: Brave New World)
Writer(s):    Steve Miller
Label:    Cotillion (original label: Capitol)
Year:    1969
    It took the Steve Miller Band half a dozen albums (plus appearances on a couple of movie soundtracks) to achieve star status in the early 1970s. Along the way they developed a cult following that added new members with each successive album. The fourth Miller album was Brave New World, the title track of which was used in the film Homer, a 1970 film that is better remembered for its soundtrack than for the movie itself.

Artist:    Kak
Title:    Lemonade Kid
Source:    CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on LP: Kak)
Writer(s):    Gary Lee Yoder
Label:    Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year:    1969
    Kak was a group from Davis, California that was only around long enough to record one LP for Epic. That self-titled album did not make much of an impression commercially, and was soon out of print. Long after the band had split up, critics began to notice the album, and copies of the original LP are now highly-prized by collectors. Songs like the Lemonade Kid show that Kak had a sound that holds up better today than many of the other artists of the time. In fact, after listening to this track a couple times I went out and ordered a copy of the import CD reissue of the Kak album. It turns out the album isn't bad at all (and the CD has some decent Gary Lee Yoder solo songs as bonus tracks) but Lemonaide Kid is by far the best song on the album.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    God Knows I'm Good
Source:    CD: David Bowie (originally US title: Man Of Words/Man Of Music)
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Mercury)
Year:    1969
    David Bowie gets inside the head of a shoplifter in God Knows I'm Good on his second self-titled album, released in 1969 in the UK and the following year in the US, with the words Man Of Music/Man Of Words above Bowie's name on the album cover. The album itself went largely unnoticed until 1972, when it was re-released on a different label under the name Space Oddity and made the top 20 on the US albums chart.

Artist:    Parking Lot
Title:    World Spinning Sadly
Source:    Mono British import CD: Insane Times (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Paul Samwell-Smith
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Parlophone)
Year:    1969
    Virtually nothing is known about the band called the Parking Lot. In fact, it is not even known whether there actually was a band called the Parking Lot, as it could just as easily have been a group of studio musicians hired by the producer/songwriter of World Spinning Sadly, a one-off single from 1969. The producer himself, on the other hand, was definitely a real person. Paul Samwell-Smith was, in fact, the original bass player for the Yardbirds, who had left the group in 1966 (after playing on all of their major hits through Over Under Sideways Down) to pursue a career as a record producer. Although he was never a major figure in the music industry in that capacity, he did manage to remain active well past the demise of the Yardbirds themselves, which was probably his goal all along.

Artist:     Country Weather
Title:     Fly To New York
Source:     Mono CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released only to radio stations, later included on Swiss CD:     Country Weather)
Writer:     Baron/Carter/Derr/Douglass
Label:     Rhino (original label: RD)
Year:     Recorded 1969, released 2005
     Country Weather started off as a popular dance band in Contra Costa County, California. In 1968 they took the name Country Weather and began gigging on the San Francisco side of the bay. In 1969, still without a record contract, they recorded an album side's worth of material, made a few one-sided test copies and circulated them to local radio stations. Those tracks, including Fly To New York, were eventually released on CD in 2005 by the Swedish label RD Records.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2501 (starts 12/30/24)

 https://exchange.prx.org/p/556156

    Following a couple weeks of special shows, it's time for an hour of free-form rock, starting with a classic blues cover from Cream's Wheels Of Fire album and ending with Harvey Mandel's take on a traditional African jazz standard. As for what's in between the two, read on...

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Born Under A Bad Sign
Source:    LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer:    Jones/Bell
Label:    RSO (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were pretty much considered the cream of the crop of the British blues scene in the mid 1960s, so it came as no surprise when they decided to call their new band Cream. Although the trio would go on to record several memorable non-blues tunes such as I Feel Free and White Room, they never completely abandoned the blues. Born Under A Bad Sign, originally recorded by Albert King  for the Stax label and written by labelmates William Bell and Booker T. Jones, is one of the better known tracks from Cream's double-LP Wheels Of Fire, the last album released while the band was still together.

Artist:    Yes
Title:    Every Little Thing
Source:    CD: Yes
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Rhino/Elektra (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1969
    At first glance you'd think that the British band Yes and the San Francisco group Big Brother And The Holding Company had little in common. They did, however, have similar first experiences in a recording studio. Both bands were saddled with producers and engineers who knew virtually nothing about how a rock band should sound, and in the case of Yes, an engineer who made little effort to hide his distaste for rock music itself. In both cases the results were disappointing to the band members themselves, although the rock press, at least, had a favorable opinion of Yes. Neither album was a commercial success when originally released, yet both groups went on to become chart-toppers with their later efforts. Both albums featured a pair of cover versions of relatively obscure songs to supplement the bands' original material. Even the Beatles' song covered by Yes was one of their least popular, having originally appeared on the 1964 album Beatles For Sale, often cited as the weakest of all Beatles albums. Yes's version of Every Little Thing includes a long original intro, and even sneaks in the guitar riff from Day Tripper before getting into the song itself. Original Yes guitarist Peter Banks would find himself increasingly at odds with the band's other three members, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire and Bill Bruford, and would end up leaving Yes the following year to form his own band, Flash.

Artist:    Joe Walsh
Title:    Time Out (live version)
Source:    LP: You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind
Writer(s):    Joe Walsh
Label:    ABC
Year:    1976
    If there is any one song that could be called a typical example of a Joe Walsh tune, it could very well be Time Out, a song originally released on the 1974 album So What and then as a single the following year. It has all the hallmarks: a smooth guitar riff played against a background of power chords, a vocal line that starts on a high pitched note and stays there long enough to create tension before dropping down a bit, and lyrics that are suitably cryptic, yet down to earth. Although not a top 40 hit, the song got plenty of play on mid-70s FM rock radio stations, especially after being included on Walsh's 1976 live LP You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind.

Artist:    Mothers
Title:    Fifty-Fifty
Source:    CD: Over-Nite Sensation
Writer(s):    Frank Zappa
Label:    Zappa (original label: Discreet)
Year:    1973
    Frank Zappa was already well-established by the time he recorded Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe(') in 1973. The two albums, recorded at the same time but released months apart, were his commercial breakthrough, thanks to radio-friendly tunes like Montana and Don't Eat Yellow Snow. Both albums use the same pool of talented musicians, including keyboardist George Duke and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, both of which would go on to establish themselves as first-tier stars in the world of jazz fusion. Fifty-Fifty, from Over-Nite Sensation, features solos from Duke, Ponty and Zappa himself, with lead vocals from Ricky Lancelotti. Powerful stuff.
    
Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Smooth Dancer
Source:    Japanese import CD: Who Do We Think We Are
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1973
    Deep Purple's most iconic lineup (the so-called Mark II group consisting of Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice) only recorded four studio albums together before internal tensions and conflict with their own management led to the departure of Gillan and Glover. The last of these was Who Do We Think We Are, released in 1973. By this point some of the band members were not on speaking terms, and their individual parts had to be recorded at separate times. Nonetheless, the album is full of strong tracks such as Smooth Dancer, which closes out side one of the original LP. Despite all the problems getting Who Do We Think We Are recorded and the band's subsequent disintegration, Deep Purple sold more albums in the US than any other recording artist in the year 1973 (including continued strong sales of the 1972 album Machine Head and their live album Made In Japan).

Artist:    Robin Trower
Title:    Daydream
Source:    CD: Essential Robin Trower (originally released on LP: Twice Removed From Yesterday
Writer(s):    Dewar/Trower
Label:    Chrysalis
Year:    1973
    Robin Trower's nearly six year long run with Procol Harum became increasingly frustrating for the guitarist, who felt that the band's songs, mostly written by keyboardist Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid, did not give him a lot of opportunity to express himself as a musician. So in 1971 he left the group and co-founded a group called Jude. Although this group was short-lived and made no recordings, it did serve to establish the songwriting partnership of Trower and the Scottish bassist/vocalis James Dewar. With drummer Reg Isidore they formed the Robin Trower Band in 1973, releasing their first album, Twice Removed From Yesterday, that same year. The longest track on the album was Daydream, a slow moody piece that runs in excess of six minutes.

Artist:    Graham Nash
Title:    Prison Song
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Graham Nash
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1973
    Graham Nash's Prison Song is one of those songs that by all rights should have been a huge hit. It was by a name artist. It had a catchy opening harmonica riff and a haunting melody. I can only surmise that once again Bill Gavin (whose Gavin Report was considered by many in the industry to be the top 40 "bible") decided that the lyrics were too subversive for AM radio and had the song blacklisted, much as he had done with the Byrds Eight Miles High a few years earlier. Those lyrics center on a subject that is unfortunately still relevant today: the utter absurdity of drug laws and the disproportionate sentences for violation of those laws in various part of the United States.

Title:    Down By The River
Source:    CD: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1969
    Down By The River is one of four songs on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere that Neil Young wrote while running a fever of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (that's 39.5 degrees for people in civilized nations that use the Celsius, aka centrigrade, scale). By some strange coincidence, they are the four best songs on the album. I wish I could have been that sick in my days as a wannabe rock star.

Artist:    Savoy Brown
Title:    Money Can't Save Your Soul
Source:    CD: Looking In
Writer(s):    Simmonds/ Peverett
Label:    Deram (original label: Parrott)
Year:    1970
    Looking In was the sixth album by British blues-rockers Savoy Brown, and the first without original lead vocalist Chris Youlden. It was also the final outing for guitarist Dave Peverett, bassist Tone Stevens and drummer Roger Earl, who would go on to form Foghat after being dismissed by bandleader Kim Simmonds. The album was made up entirely of original compositions such as the low-key Money Can't Save Your Soul, which was written by Simmonds and Peverett, who had taken over lead vocals upon Youlden's departure. Both Foghat and a new Savoy Brown lineup would continue to have success, especially in the US, where both bands toured extensively throughout the 1970s.

Artist:    Harvey Mandel
Title:    Wade In The Water
Source:    LP: Cristo Redentor
Writer(s):    Traditional
Label:    Philips
Year:    1968
    Harvey Mandel first came to national attention as the guitarist on Stand Back! Here Comes Charlie Musselwhite's South Side Band, one of the first blues albums to be also targeted to rock listeners. One of the standout tracks on the album was Christo Redemptor, which has come to be considered Musselwhite's signature song. Not long after the album was released, Mandel moved to San Francisco, performing regularly at the Matrix club and often jamming with fellow guitarists Elvin Bishop and Jerry Garcia. A chance meeting with local disc jockey Abe "Voco" Kesh led to Mandel's first solo LP, the instrumental Cristo Redentor, released in 1968. The traditional African song Wade In The Water (attributed on the label to James Alexander and Sam Cooke) is often cited as the album's most outstanding track, and led to Mandel being invited to replace Henry Vestine in Canned Heat the following year. 

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2452 (starts 12/23/24)

https://exchange.prx.org/p/555413 

    Once upon a time there was an angry rebellious music called rock 'n' roll. But then the music factories got hold of it and filtered out everything that was angry and rebellious about it. But then the British came up with their own brand of angry and rebellious rock 'n' roll and invaded the entire world with it, which prompted a lot of angry and rebellious teenagers to do the same in their own garages and basements, creating what soon became known as the psychedelic era. This time it was the musicians themselves that sucked the angry rebelliousness out of rock 'n' roll (it's hard to be angry and rebellious when you're making money hand over fist), until a new generation of angry rebellious young people started calling themselves punk rockers. This week, in our first hour, we check out a sampling of punk and what is now called post-punk (but was known as "new wave" at the time). For our second hour we have our first ever Battle of the Songs, featuring several different versions of two of the most covered songs of the psychedelic era. Happy New Year!

Artist:    Iggy And The Stooges
Title:    Search And Destroy
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released on LP: Raw Power)
Writer(s):    Pop/Williamson
Label:    Rhino (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1973
    Raw Power, the third album by the Stooges, saw the addition of James Williamson on guitar, with Ron Asheton moving over to bass to replace the departing Dave Alexander. Williamson also co-wrote all the songs on Raw Power with vocalist Iggy Pop. The album's opening track, Search And Destroy, has been called "an archetype for punk rock" and has been covered by numerous bands over the ensuing years.

Artist:    Modern Lovers
Title:    Roadrunner
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released on LP: The Modern Lovers)
Writer(s):    Jonathan Richman
Label:    Rhino (original label: Beserkley)
Year:    Recorded 1972, released 1976
    In April of 1972 20-year-old Jonathan Richman and his band, the Modern Lovers, made a trip to Los Angeles to record a demo tape with producer John Cale (formerly of Velvet Underground). The tape sat on a shelf for several years as the band went through both artistic and personnel changes, finally surfacing (along with a few tracks recorded with different producers) in 1976 as an album called The Modern Lovers on Matthew "King" Kaufman's new Beserkley label. By then Richman had changed his style considerably and did not acknowledge The Modern Lovers as his first LP. Nonetheless, the album, featuring tracks like Roadrunner, was a critical success and has been cited as an influence by punk rock bands such as the Sex Pistols.

Artist:    Ramones
Title:    Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Joey Ramone
Label:    Rhino (original label: Sire)
Year:    1977
    The Ramones are often cited as the first true punk-rock band. Formed in the New York City borough of Queens in 1974 by four guys with no familial relation to each other who, inspired by Paul McCartney's practice of using the alias Paul Ramon when checking into hotels, all took the last name Ramone. Their 1977 single Sheena Is A Punk Rocker was one of the first songs to actually use the term punk rock in the lyrics.

Artist:    Runaways
Title:    Cherry Bomb
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released
Writer(s):    Jett/Fowley
Label:    Rhino (original label:
Year:    1976
    In early 1975 Hollywood hustler Kim Fowley decided that what the world needed was an all-female rock band. As one of the most well-connected people in town, he managed to find guitarist Joan Jett, drummer Sandy West and vocalist/bassist Micki Steele within a few months, officially forming the Runaways in August of 1975, their first gig was at the Whisky a Go Go the following month, opening for another Fowley creation, the Hollywood Stars (by then known as the Stars). After a few personnel changes, the band ended up as a quintet featuring Jett, West, lead guitarist Lita Ford, bassist Jackie Fox and lead vocalist Cherie Currie by the end of the year. Fox, however, at the insistence of Fowley, who had become the group's manager, did not play on the first Runaways album. Instead, all the bass part were played by Nigel Harrison. The song Cherry Bomb was actually written quickly by Jett and Fowley specifically for Currie to use as an audition song when joining the band. It went on to become one of the group's best-known tunes.

Artist:    Sex Pistols
Title:    Anarchy In The UK
Source:    British import LP: Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Lydon/Jones/Cook/Matlock
Label:    Virgin (original label: EMI)
Year:    1976
    Anarchy In The UK is the first single released by the Sex Pistols, and the only song on their album to feature original bassist Glen Matlock. The song, described by Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren as "a call to arms to the kids who believe that rock and roll was taken away from them", was the only Sex Pistols song issued on the EMI label, which dropped the band from its roster after band members used profanity on a live television broadcast. The Sex Pistols are credited with initiating the punk movement in the UK.

Artist:    Clash
Title:    White Riot
Source:    CD: The Singles (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Strummer/Jones
Label:    Epic (original UK label: CBS)
Year:    1977
    The most commercially successful of the original English punk rock bands, the Clash released their debut single, White Riot, in March of 1977. The song was immediately denounced by some critics as racist, but vocalist/guitarist Joe Strummer angrily responded that the song was actually a call to white youth to do the same as inner city black youth were doing and fight back against poverty and police brutality, implying that the two groups actually had a common enemy. The Clash were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.

Artist:    Adverts
Title:    One Chord Wonders
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released
Writer(s):    T.V. Smith
Label:    Rhino (original label:
Year:    1977
    The Adverts were formed in London in 1976 by T.V. Smith and Gaye Advert, the latter often cited as the first female punk rocker. The two had both recently arrived in the Smoke from small towns in the English county of Devon. After being joined by guitarist Howard Pickup and drummer Laurie Driver they became one of the first bands to play the Roxy in its first 100 days, appearing there nine times between January and April of 1977. Their self-descriptive debut record, One Chord Wonders, released on April 22, 1977, was the 13th single released on the Stiff label.

    By 1978 a new wave of bands started showing up in London clubs that began to expand upon the basic punk sound to create something that was originally called new musick, but in recent years has come to be known as post-punk or early alternative rock.

Artist:    Gang Of Four
Title:    Love Like Anthrax
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Gang Of Four
Label:    Rhino (original label: Fast Product)
Year:    1978
    Taking their name from the notorious Chinese political cadre, Gang Of Four was one of the first post-punk bands to emerge in the UK. Formed in Leeds by singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham, the band took a more experimental approach to punk rock, as can be heard on the B side of their debut single, Love Like Anthrax. A considerably longer version of the song appeared on their 1979 LP Entertainment! using the title Anthrax.

Artist:    Magazine
Title:    Shot By Both Sides
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Devoto/Shelley
Label:    Rhino (original label: Virgin)
Year:    1978
    Buzzcocks were formed in Manchester, England in 1976 by Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto. Although the two wrote several songs together, Devoto left the band to form Magazine with guitarist John McGeoch before the Buzzcocks made any recordings. Magazine's first single was Shot By Both Sides, a song based on a guitar riff by Shelley, which was released in January of 1978. Buzzcocks used the same riff in the song Lipstick, released as a B side later the same year.

Artist:    Buzzcocks
Title:    Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pete Shelley
Label:    Rhino (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1978
    Buzzcocks made a name for themselves by releasing a steady series of singles that have been described as a synthesis of punk and pop until their breakup in 1980. The most successful of these was Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've), which hit #12 on the British top 40 chart in 1978. The song's lyrics were inspired by a line from the 1955 film version of Guys And Dolls, which Shelley was half paying attention to in a hotel room. When he heard Adelaide say the line "Wait till you fall in love with someone you shouldn't have" he thought it was a good idea for a song, and wrote one the next day.

Artist:    Talking Heads
Title:    Psycho Killer
Source:    CD: No Thanks! The 70s Punk Rebellion (originally released on LP: Talking Heads: 77)
Writer(s):    Byrne/Frantz/Weymouth
Label:    Rhino (original label: Sire)
Year:    1977
    At its core, punk-rock is a blue-collar kind of music with lower class sensibilities. The new wave of post-punk bands, however, tended to be a bit more sophisticated. For example, the three original members of Talking Heads, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, met while they were all students at the Rhode Island School of Design; it's hard to imagine Sid Vicious sitting in a college classroom. The band actually turned down their first offers from record labels, feeling that they needed to improve musically before entering a recording studio, something no original punk band would even give a second thought to. Their fourth member, Jerry Harrison (formerly of Modern Lovers), waited until Talking Heads had a recording contract before agreeing to join the band; as a result he was not on their first single at all. Talking Heads' first major hit was Psycho Killer, released as their third single in late 1977. Although some critics linked the song with the Son Of Sam killings of 1976-1977, the band had actually been performing the song since 1975. Talking Heads went on to become one of the most popular and influential bands in rock history.

Artist:    Elvis Costello
Title:    Alison
Source:    Stereo British import 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Elvis Costello
Label:    Stiff
Year:    1977
    When I started thinking about doing this week's show I knew that there was no way I could do it without including something from Elvis Costello. Born Declan Patrick MacManus in West London to a record shop worker and a jazz musician from Liverpool, Costello was exposed to a wide variety of music growing up, and as an adolescent became a fan of British beat groups like the Kinks and the Who. He also had a liking for reggae and Motown soul, and after moving back to Liverpool in the late 1960s started getting into California bands like the Byrds and the Grateful Dead, and even country music. McManus taught himself to play guitar at age 14, and before moving back to London had become a member of a local folk-rock band called Rusty. At age 19 he realized that to achieve his musical ambitions he would have to return to London, taking on the stage name Declan Costello. In 1973 he formed a band called Flip City, playing the London pub-rock circuit until 1975. By 1976 he was performing as a solo artist under the name D.P. Costello while making demo tapes to send to various record labels. Among those receiving demos were Charlie Gillett, owner of Oval Records and, more importantly for Costello's career, a disc jockey on Radio London. After Gillett played several of the songs from the demo on his weekly show, Costello began to get offers from several labels, eventually signing with the new Stiff label, which seemed, in Costello's opinion, to be prepared to move the fastest. Over a period of several weeks, working with a country-rock band named Clover from Marin County, California, he recorded the songs that made up his debut album, My Aim Is True. The album's title was taken from the song Alison, which, although not a hit single at the time, has gone on to achieve classic status. Around this same time his managers gave him a new stage name, Elvis Costello. The rest is history.

Artist:    Police
Title:    Roxanne
Source:    LP: No Wave (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Gordon Sumner
Label:    A&M
Year:    1978
    Stewart Copeland was already an experienced drummer, having been a member of the second incarnation of Curved Air from 1975 through 1976, when the band quietly dissolved. It turns out that was a good thing for Copeland, though, as it led to him forming a new band with vocalist/bassist Gordon Sumner, who went by the stage name of Sting, in early 1977. They soon recruited guitarist Henry Padovani as the band's guitarist and third member. In May of that year Sting was invited by former Gong member Mkke Howlett to participate in a band project called Strontium 90. As the original drummer for the project was unavalable, Sting brought Copeland with him. The fourth member of the project was a guitarist named Andy Summers, who was considerably older than the other band members. Strontium 90 ended up playing only a couple gigs (one under a different name), and Sting invited Summers to replace Padovani as the guitarist for the Police. The other band members, however, voted to keep both guitarists in the band, but after a couple of gigs Padovani was let go, and the Police remained a trio for the rest of its existence. With Summers, who had previously recorded with Kevin Ayers and Eric Burdon & The Animals, now in the band, some on the punk scene saw the Police as posers, and the group struggled to gain street cred (while at the same time quietly moonlighting as art rockers). Among the skeptics were Copeland's older brother Miles, who was nonetheless persuaded to finace the band's first album Outlandos d'Amour. Upon hearing the song Roxanne for the first time, Miles Copeland became a convert, using his contacts to get the Police a contract with A&M Records and eventually becoming the band's manager. The Roxanne single, released in February of 1978, did not initially chart, having been passed over by the BBC, possibly due to the song's subject matter, but after doing well in the US, it was re-released in the UK the following year, eventually peaking in the #12 spot. From that point on the Police were a first-tier mainstream rock band on both sides of the Atlantic.

Artist:    Joe Jackson
Title:    It's Different For Girls
Source:    7" box set: I'm The Man
Writer(s):    Joe Jackson
Label:    A&M
Year:    1979
    Although he is known to American audiences for jazz-inspired songs like Steppin' Out and Breaking Us In Two, Joe Jackson first made his mark as part of the British New Wave scene with his debut album Look Sharp! getting rave reviews from the rock press. His biggest British hit was It's Different For Girls from the album I'm The Man, which peaked at #12 on the UK charts. Jackson is considered a key artist of the so-called Second British Invasion of the 1980s.

Artist:    Joy Division
Title:    Love Will Tear Us Apart
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Hook/Curtis/Sumner/Morris
Label:    Cleopatra (original label: Factory)
Year:    1980
    Originally known as Warsaw, Joy Division was formed in 1976 by Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, who were inspired by seeing the Sex Pistols perform and realized that they could do it too. Neither of the two owned or played a musical instrument at the time, but they soon recruited another audience member, Terry Mason, to form a band, then all three went out and bought instruments, learning to play them over the next few months. They still needed a singer, however, and after placing an ad for a vocalist at a local music shop hired Ian Curtis without an audition because, as Sumner would later say, they "knew he was all right to get on with and that's what we based the whole group on. If we liked someone, they were in." Mason eventually became the bands manager, and after going through a couple of personnel changes they finally settled on Stephen Morris as the band's permanent drummer. Curtis, however, had deep mental and emotional problems, and committed suicide at age 23 the night before the band was scheduled to fly to the US to begin a tour. The following month Love Will Tear Us Apart was released as a single, becoming Joy Division's biggest hit. The remaining band members, honoring a pact they had made to change the band name if any member ever left the group, became known as New Order and in 2023 were nominated along with Joy Division as a single act for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Artist:    Adam And The Ants
Title:    Press Darlings
Source:    LP: Kings Of The Wild Frontier (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Adam Ant
Label:    Epic (original UK label: CBS)
Year:    1980
    By the 1970s the practice of reordering and omitting songs from British albums for their US release was a thing of the past, yet once in a while there were exceptions. All of the songs on the original British version of the second Adam And The Ants album, Kings Of The Wild Frontier, we co-written by guitarist Marco Pirroni, who had joined the band after the release of the band's debut LP, Dirk Wears White Sox. For the US release of Kings Of The Wild Frontier, however, two songs, (You're So) Physical and Press Darlings, that had been written before Pirroni joined the band and previously released in the UK as B sides, were included on the album, replacing a song called Making History. Press Darlings is a somewhat satirical look at the band's own success.

    The second half of the show is our first ever Battle Of The Songs, featuring two of the songs most performed by garage bands in the 1960s.

Artist:    Richard Berry And The Pharaohs
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Flip)
Year:    1957
    Hard to believe that the greatest party song of all time started off as a lowly B side. Even more ironic is the fact that Berry sold the songwriting and publishing rights to Louie Louie and four other songs to Max Fiertag, the head of Flip Records, for a grand total of $750 to pay for his upcoming wedding. Nearly 30 years later, however, Berry was visited by a lawyer who mentioned the possibility of taking court action to gain Berry the rights to Louie Louie. As he was living on welfare at the time, Berry figured there was nothing to lose by trying, and he ended up dying a millionaire in 1997.

Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1966
    In 1966 there were certain songs you had to know how to play if you had any aspirations of being in a band. Among those were Louie Louie, Gloria and Hey Joe. The Byrds' David Crosby claims to have discovered Hey Joe, but was not able to convince his bandmates to record it before their third album. In the meantime, several other bands had recorded the song, including Love (on their first album) and the Leaves. The version of Hey Joe heard here is actually the third recording the Leaves made of the tune. After the first two versions tanked, guitarist Bobby Arlin came up with the idea of adding fuzz guitar to the song. It was the missing element that transformed a rather bland song into a hit record (the only national hit the Leaves would have). As a side note, the Leaves credited Chet Powers (aka Dino Valenti) as the writer of Hey Joe, but California-based folk singer Billy Roberts had copyrighted the song in 1962 and had reportedly been heard playing the tune as early as 1958.

Artist:     Kingsmen
Title:     Louie Louie
Source:     Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Richard Berry
Label:     Rhino (original labels: Jerden/Wand)
Year:     1963
     Although Paul Revere and the Raiders had recorded the song just a few days earlier, the version of Louie Louie that is remembered as the greatest party song of all time came from another Portland, Oregon band, the Kingsmen. With its basic three-chord structure and incomprehensible lyrics, the most popular song to ever come out of the Pacific Northwest was considered a must-learn song for garage bands everywhere. The fact that the FBI actually launched an investigation into the possibility that the lyrics were obscene just made the recording that much more popular.

Artist:    Tim Rose
Title:    Hey Joe (You Shot Your Woman Down)
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Billy Roberts
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    The folk music revival of the late 50s and early 60s is generally thought of as an East Coast phenomena, centered in the coffee houses of cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia. California, though, had its share of folk music artists, especially in the San Francisco area, where the beatniks espoused a Bohemian lifestyle that would pave the way for the Hippy movement centered in the city's Haight-Ashbury district. Among the California folkies were Billy Roberts, who copyrighted the song Hey Joe in 1962, and Tim Rose, who (along with the Music Machine's Sean Bonniwell) came up with a slower version of the song. Rose's version, released as a single in mid-1966, got considerable airplay on San Francisco radio stations and was the inspiration for the more famous Jimi Hendrix version of the song that made the British top 10 toward the end of the year. Rose's version was not widely available until 1967, when his debut LP for Columbia was released. By then, however, the Hendrix version was all over the progressive FM airwaves in the US, and the Rose version (now in stereo) remained for the most part unheard.

Artist:    Sonics
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1965
    Of course, being from the Pacific Northwest, the Sonics had to record their own version of Louie Louie. This one rocks out harder than most.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Hey Joe (Where You Gonna Go)
Source:    LP: Fifth Dimension
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    David Crosby always claimed that he was the one who first discovered and popularized this tune on the LA club scene, but that resistance from other band members kept the Byrds from recording the song until after versions by the Leaves, Love, Tim Rose and the Music Machine, among others, had already been released. Crosby would later say that recording the song with the Byrds was probably a mistake, but at the time he was quite incensed that other groups had beaten him to the punch with a song he had come to regard as his own, being under the assumption that it was a traditional folk song. As it turns out the song had been copyrighted in 1962 by California folk singler Billy Roberts, although at least half the recorded versions had credited the song to other writers, particularly Dino Valenti.

Artist:    Sandpipers
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: A&M)
Year:    1966
    The Sandpipers were an easy listening vocal group best known for their 1966 hit version of the Cuban patriotic song Guantanamera. They followed it up possibly the least likely song to be done in an easy listening style: Louie Louie.

Artist:    Love
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    German import CD: Love
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    There are contradictory stories of the origins of the song Hey Joe. Some say it's a traditional folk song, while others have attributed it to various songwriters, including Tim Rose and Dino Valenti (under his birth name Chet Powers). As near as I've been able to determine the song was actually written by an obscure California folk singer named Billy Roberts, who reportedly was performing the song as early as 1958. The song circulated among West Coast musicians over the years and eventually caught the attention of the Byrds' David Crosby. Crosby was unable to convince his bandmates to record the song, although they did include it in their live sets at Ciro's on L.A.'s Sunset Strip. One of the Byrds' roadies, Bryan Maclean, joined up with Arthur Lee's new band, Love, and brought Crosby's version of the song (which had slightly different lyrics than other, more popular versions) with him. In 1966 Love included Hey Joe on their debut album, with Maclean doing the vocals. Meanwhile another L.A. band, the Leaves, recorded their own version of Hey Joe (reportedly using misremembered lyrics acquired from Love's Johnny Echols) in 1965, but had little success with it. In 1966 they recorded a new version of the song, adding screaming fuzz-drenched lead guitar parts by Bobby Arlin, and Hey Joe finally became a national hit. With two other L.A. bands (and Chicago's Shadows Of Knight) having recorded a song that David Crosby had come to regard as his own, the Byrds finally committed their own version of Hey Joe to vinyl in late 1966 on the Fifth Dimension album, but even Crosby eventually admitted that recording the song was a mistake. Up to this point the song had always been recorded at a fast tempo, but two L.A. songwriters, Sean Bonniwell (of the Music Machine) and folk singer Tim Rose, came up with the idea of slowing the song down. Both the Music Machine and Tim Rose versions of the songs were released in 1966. Jimi Hendrix heard the Rose recording and used it as the basis for his own embellished version of the song, which was released as a single in the UK in late 1966 (although it did not come out in the US until the release of the Are You Experienced album in 1967). Yet another variation on the slow version of Hey Joe was released by Cher in early 1967, which seems to have finally killed the song, as I don't know of any major subsequent recordings of the tune (unless you count the Mothers Of Invention's parody of the song, Flower Punk, which appeared on the album We're Only In It For The Money in 1968).

Artist:    Paul Revere And The Raiders
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    Mono LP: Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Columbia (original label: Sande)
Year:    1963
    The greatest party song of all time came from the pen of Richard Berry, a west coast singer/bandleader who released his original "soft" version of the song in 1957. In 1963 two west coast bands, the Kingsmen and Paul Revere And The Raiders, recorded competing versions of the song within days of each other. The Kingsmen version, with its raw sound and unintelligible lyrics, became popular on the east coast, while the better-produced (and more professionally performed) Raiders version quickly went to the top of the charts on the west coast and Hawaii. Columbia Records picked up the band's contract and re-released the single nationally. Columbia's top A&R man, Mitch Miller, however, was a notorius rock and roll hater (as a listen to one of his old Sing Along With Mitch TV shows proves) and refused to promote the record. Eventually the Kingsmen version of Louie Louie went gold while the Raiders version has become little more than a footnote (although the band itself has always championed their recording of the song).

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Smash Hits (originally released in US on LP: Are You Experienced?)
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1966
    The first track recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was Hey Joe, a song that Hendrix had heard Tim Rose perform in Greenwich Village before relocating to London to form his new band. Hendrix's version, released as a single in the UK and Europe in late 1966, is a bit heavier than Rose's and leaves off the first verse ("where you going with that money in your hand") entirely. The song itself was copyrighted in 1962 by California folk singer Billy Roberts and a much faster version by the Leaves had hit the US charts in early 1966.

Artist:    Rockin' Robin Roberts
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    Mono LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1961
    rockin' Robin Roberts's  version of Louie Louie starts off exactly like the Paul Revere And The Raiders version and has the same guitar solo (note for note) as the Kingmen version. Both of those were recorded and released in 1963, while Roberts's came out in 1961. Hmmm.

Artist:    Shadows Of Knight
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Back Door Men
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Dunwich)
Year:    1966
    Possibly the greatest garage-rock album of all is the second Shadows Of Knight LP, Back Door Men. Released in 1966, the album features virtually the same lineup as their debut LP, Gloria. Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Shadows were capable of varying their style somewhat, going from their trademark Chicago blues-influenced punk to what can only be described as early hard rock with ease. Like many bands of the time, they recorded a fast version of Billy Roberts' Hey Joe (although they credited it to Chet Powers on the label). The Shadows version, however, is a bit longer than the rest, featuring an extended guitar break by Joe Kelley, who had switched from bass to lead guitar midway through the recording of the Gloria album, replacing Warren Rogers, when it was discovered that Kelley was by far the more talented guitarist (Rogers was moved over to bass). Incidentally, despite the album's title and the Shadows' penchant for recording classic blues tunes, the band did not record a version of Howlin' Wolf's Back Door Man. The Blues Project and the Doors, however, did.
    
Artist:    Black Flag
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Posh Boy)
Year:    1981
    Of course Black Flag did a hardcore punk version of Louie Louie. How could they not?

Artist:    Patti Smith
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    Mono 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Billy Roberts (spoken intro written by Patti Smith)
Label:    Mer
Year:    1974
    Before signing with Arista Records in 1975, the Patti Smith group recorded a 1974 single for the independent Mer label. Financed by art collector/curator Sam Wagstaff, the record featured Smith's version of Hey Joe, with a spoken introduction concerning Patty Hearst, who had been kidnapped by, and subsequently became a member of, a radical group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army that year.

Artist:    The Last
Title:    Louie Louie
Source:    LP: The Best Of Louie Louie (originally released in France on LP: Painting Smiles On A Dead Man)
Writer(s):    Richard Berry
Label:    Rhino (original label: Lolita)
Year:    1983
    Formed somewhere in Southern California in 1976 by Joe Nolte, Vitus Mataré and Dave Harbison, The Last by 1978 included brothers Mike and David Nolte as well. Their sound was billed as a mix of garage rock, surf rock, folk rock and psychedelic rock (sounds like a perfect candidate for a future Advanced Psych segment...anyone have a copy of any of the records they released on a variety of labels over a ten year period they can send me?) In 1983 the band was on the verge of collapse, but then came a ray of hope. In the words of Joe Nolte "Vitus had hooked up an 8 Track setup at the Venice garage we practiced in, and I had gotten word that Rhino was planning a "Best of Louie Louie" album. The perverse idea of doing to "Louie Louie" what we'd done to "Be Bop A Lula" seemed irresistible, so we inaugurated the new machine with a gothic, dirge like version. It made the album. Appropriately, it's the Last version of Louie Louie to be heard this week.

Artist:    Cher
Title:    Hey Joe
Source:    LP: Cher's Golden Greats (originally released on LP: With Love, Cher and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Billy Roberts
Label:    Imperial
Year:    1967
    Considering that Cher's first major hit as a solo artist was Bang Bang, a song about shooting one's lover, it was probably inevitable that she would record her own version of the venerable Hey Joe, which deals with the same subject. Also, given Cher's established style with Bang Bang, it is no surprise that she chose to go with the slowed-down arrangement first used by Tim Rose and popularized in England by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. What may come as a surprise, however, is that Cher's 1967 version of Hey Joe actually did better on the US charts than any other version except the Leaves' fast-tempo hit from 1966.

    And that wraps up our first (and probably last) Battle of the Songs. Who won? Who knows? Who cares? It was fun listening to all these different versions of Louie Louie and Hey Joe, and that's what counts, right?