Sunday, April 25, 2021

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2118 (starts 4/26/21) 

    This week's show features a couple of artists' sets that feature more than one incarnation of the bands in question. We also have sets that climb and descend through the years of the psychedelic era, as well as a few sets from individual years. We start with an all-vinyl set from 1966...

Artist:     Bob Dylan
Title:     Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35
Source:     LP: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits
Writer:     Bob Dylan
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1966
     Some of the best rock and roll songs of 1966 were banned on a number of stations for being about either sex or drugs. Most artists that recorded those songs claimed they were about something else altogether. In the case of Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35, "stoned" refers to a rather unpleasant form of execution (at least according to Dylan). On the other hand, Dylan himself was reportedly quite stoned while recording the song, having passed a few doobies around before starting the tape rolling. Sometimes I think ambiguities like this are why English has become the dominant language of commerce on the planet.

Artist:    Paul Revere and the Raiders
Title:    Hungry
Source:    LP: Spirit of '67
Writer:    Mann/Weil
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    1966 was an incredibly successful year for Paul Revere and the Raiders. In addition to starting a gig as the host band for Dick Clark's new afternoon TV show, Where The Action Is, the band managed to crank out three consecutive top 10 singles. The second of these was Hungry, written by Brill building regulars Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Pet Sounds
Source:    Mono LP: Pet Sounds
Writer(s):    Brian Wilson
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    Originally titled Run James Run, Brian Wilson's instrumental Pet Sounds was intended for a James Bond film, but instead ended up as the title track of the Beach Boys' most celebrated album (although it actually appears close to the end of the album itself). The track somewhat resembles a 60s update of the Tiki room recordings made by Martin Denny in the 1950s, with heavily reverberated bongos and guiro featured prominently over a latin beat. Although credited to the Beach Boys, only Brian Wilson appears on the track (on piano), with the remainder of the instruments played by various Los Angeles studio musicians collectively known as the Wrecking Crew.

Artist:    Chocolate Watchband
Title:    Misty Lane
Source:    Mono British import CD: Melts In Your Brain, Not On Your Wrist (originally released in US as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Martin Siegel
Label:    Big Beat (original US label: Uptown)
Year:    1967
    The third Chocolate Watchband single, Misty Lane, was made, according to rock historian Alec Paleo, "under duress". Reportedly, the band hated the single so much that they took turns tossing copies in the air and shooting at them. Written by British songwriter Martin Siegel, the song sounds nothing like the garage-punk club band that lived to outstage the big name acts they often opened for, but was provided to them by producer Ed Cobb, who later admitted that he didn't really know what to do with the band in the studio.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    This Is Where I Belong
Source:    Mono French import 45 RPM EP: Till Death Do Us Part (originally released internationally as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    BMG (original label: Pye)
Year:    1967
    Long considered the most obscure Kinks song ever recorded, This Is Where I Belong was originally slated to be the non-album B side of a song called Mr. Pleasant. The record was prepared for release in the UK, Europe and Asia in April of 1967, but withdrawn in the UK in favor of Waterloo Sunset. The single did get released in nine countries, however, including France, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. Mr. Pleasant was also released in the US, but with a different B side. This Is Where I Belong is now a bit more accessible, appearing as a bonus track on the British CD reissue of the Face To Face album and on a 4-song EP issued in France and distributed in the US for Record Store Day in 2016.

Artist:    Easybeats
Title:    Heaven And Hell
Writer(s):    Vanda/Young
Label:    Rhino (original US label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    Throughout the mid-60s Australia's most popular band was a group of immigrants calling themselves the Easybeats. Often referred to as the "Australian Beatles", their early material sounded like slightly dated British Beat music (Australia had a reputation for cultural lag, and besides, half the members were British). By late 1966 guitarist Harry Vanda (one of the two Dutch members of the group) had learned enough English to be able to replace vocalist Stevie Wright as George Young's writing partner. The new team was much more adventurous in their compositions than the Wright/Young team had been, and were responsible for the band's first international hit, Friday On My Mind. By then the Easybeats had relocated to England, and continued to produce fine singles such as Heaven And Hell.

Artist:     Canned Heat
Title:     Catfish Blues
Source:     LP: Progressive Heavies (originally released on LP: Canned Heat)
Writer:     Robert Petway
Label:     United Artists (original label: Liberty)
Year     1967
     Like many other US cities in the 1960s, San Francisco had a small but enthusiastic community of blues record collectors. A group of them got together in 1966 to form Canned Heat, and made quite an impression when they played the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967. This led to a contract with Liberty Records and an album consisting entirely of cover versions of blues standards. One standout track from that album is Robert Petway's Catfish Blues, expanded to over six minutes by the Heat.

Artist:    E S B
Title:    Mushroom People
Source:    Mono CD: An Overdose Of Heavy Psych (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Caldwell/Zinner/Fortunato/Burke/Lagana
Label:    InArts
Year:    1967
    The Bees (not to be confused with a different band called the Bees that recorded Voices Green And Purple) were a Los Angeles band that cut two singles for Randy Wood's Mira and Mirwood labels in 1965. At least two members of the band, George Caldwell and Robert Zinner, formed a new band,The W.C. Fields Memorial Electric String Band, in February, 1966, along with Richard Fortunato (formerly of The Vejtables), Patrick Burke and Steve Laguna. In May of 1966 they became the first band to release Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart's I'm Not Your Stepping Stone as a single (on the Mercury label, at around the same time that Paul Revere And The Raiders included the song on their Midnight Ride LP). Later that year they released the legendary Hippy Elevator Operator single on the HBR label. 1967 saw the band shortening their name to E S B and releasing Mushroom People as the second single for the new InArts label in September of that year. Eventually Fortunato, Lagana and Burke would become a power trio called Fields, releasing one LP and single for the Uni label in 1969.

Artist:    Janis Joplin
Title:    Kozmic Blues
Source:    CD: I Got Dem 'Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama
Writer(s):    Joplin/Mekler
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1969
    After she parted company with Big Brother and the Holding Company following the Cheap Thrills album, Janis Joplin got to work forming a new band that would come to be known as the Kozmic Blues Band. Unlike Big Brother, this new band included a horn section, and leaned more toward R&B than the earlier band's hard rocking sound. Joplin released only one studio album with the Kozmic Blues Band, 1969's I Got Dem 'Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama. Although the album sold well, it was savaged by the rock press. Still, there were some standout tracks on the album, including the title tune (of sorts), Kozmic Blues. Joplin made several live appearances with this group, including the Woodstock performing arts festival, before disbanding the unit in favor of a smaller group, the Full-Tilt Boogie Band.

Artist:    Dion
Title:    Abraham, Martin And John
Source:    CD: Songs Of Protest (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Dick Holler
Label:    Rhino (original label: Laurie)
Year:    1968
    Although sometimes characterized as a protest song, Dion DiMucci's 1968 hit Abraham, Martin And John is really a tribute to three famous Americans, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy (with a reference to the recently-assassinated Bobby Kennedy included in the final verse of the song). Most people in the business saw Dion, perhaps the most successful doo-wop artist of all time, as being near the end of his career by 1967, although he was one of only two rock musicians included on the cover collage of the Beatles' 1967 LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band beside the Beatles themselves (the other being Bob Dylan).  In April of 1968, however, Dion experienced what he later called "a powerful religious experience" which led to him approaching his old label, Laurie Records, for a new contract. The label agreed on the condition that he record Abraham, Martin And John. The song, written by Dick Holler (who also wrote, strangely enough, Snoopy vs. The Red Baron), ended up being one of Dion's biggest hits and led to the revitalization of his career.

Artist:    Monkees
Title:    Pleasant Valley Sunday
Source:    CD: The Monkees Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD.)
Writer:    Goffin/King
Label:    Rhino (original label: Colgems)
Year:    1967
    After making it a point to play their own instruments on their third LP, Headquarters, the Monkees decided to once again use studio musicians for their next album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, LTD. The difference was that this time the studio musicians would be recording under the supervision of the Monkees themselves rather than Don Kirschner and the array of producers he had lined up for the first two Monkees LPs. The result was an album that many critics consider the group's best effort. The only single released from the album was Pleasant Valley Sunday, a song penned by the husband and wife team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and backed by the band's remake of the Tommy Boyce/Bobby Hart song Words, which had been recorded the previous year by the Leaves. Although both songs ended up making the charts, it was Pleasant Valley Sunday that got the most airplay and is considered by many to be Monkees' greatest achievement.

Artist:      Beatles
Title:     And Your Bird Can Sing
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Yesterday...And Today
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:     1966
     At the time the Revolver album was being made, the Beatles and their producer, George Martin, worked together on the mono mixes of the songs, which were always done before the stereo mixes. In fact, the stereo mixes were usually done without the participation of the band itself, and generally were less time consuming. This led to a rather odd situation in June of 1966. Mono mixes had been made for three of the songs on Revolver at this point, and the band's US label, Capitol, was ready to release a new Beatles album. The problem was that they did not have enough new material for an entire album. Their solution was to use their Duophonic fake stereo process on the mono mixes and include them on the album, which was titled Yesterday...And Today. As a result, when Revolver was released in the US in the fall of 1966, it had three fewer songs than the original British version of the album. One of those three songs was And Your Bird Can Sing, a John Lennon composition that he considered a "throwaway", yet one that contains of the earliest examples of harmony lead guitars (on the intro) in rock. The song's original working title was You Don't Get Me, which lends authenticity to the story told by Cynthia Lennon of John's reaction to her gift of a clockwork bird in a gilded cage.

Artist:    Leaves
Title:    Too Many People
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pons/Rinehart
Label:    Rhino (original label: Mira)
Year:    1965
    The Leaves are a bit unusual in that in Los Angeles, a city known for drawing wannabes from across the world, this local band's members were all native Elayins. Formed by members of a fraternity at Cal State Northridge, the Leaves had their greatest success when they took over as house band at Ciro's after the Byrds vacated the slot to go on tour. Like many bands of the time, they were given a song (Bob Dylan's Love Minus Zero) to record as a single by their producer and allowed to write their own B side. In this case the intended B side was Too Many People, written by bassist Jim Pons and  guitarist Bill Rhinehart. Before the record was released, however, the producers decided that Too Many People was the stronger track and designated it the A side. The song ended up getting more airplay on local radio stations than Love Minus Zero, making it their first regional hit. The Leaves had their only national hit the following year with their third attempt at recording the fast version of Hey Joe, the success of which led to their first LP, which included a watered down version of Too Many People. The version heard here is the 1965 original. Eventually Pons would leave the Leaves, hooking up first with the Turtles, then Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention.

Artist:    Five Americans
Title:    I See The Light
Writer(s):    Durrill/Ezell/Rabon
Label:    Rhino (original label: Abnak)
Year:    1965
    For years I was under the impression that the Five Americans were a Texas band, mainly due to Abnak Records having a Texas address. It turns out, though, that the band was actually from Durant, Oklahoma, although by the time they had their biggest hit, Western Union, they were playing most of their gigs in the Lone Star state. I See The Light is an earlier single built around a repeating Farfisa organ riff that leads into a song that can only be described as in your face. The song was produced by the legendary Dale Hawkins, who wrote and recorded the original version of Suzy Q in the late 1950s.

Artist:    Monks
Title:    Love Came Tumblin' Down
Source:    German import CD: Black Monk Time
Writer(s):    Burger/Clark/Day/Johnston/Shaw
Label:    Repertoire (original label: International Polydor Production)
Year:    1966
    By the mid-1960s, the US military draft was in full swing, introducing young men from all over the nation to army life across the globe. Five of these young men ended up stationed in Frankfurt, Germany and discovered that they had a common musical vision and enough talent to make a little side cash playing at the local beer halls. At the time, virtually every band playing those local beer halls sported Beatles haircuts and played covers of Beatles and other popular bands. Being in the US Army, the five young men obviously couldn't wear Beatles haircuts. Instead, they each shaved a square patch at the top of their heads and called themselves the Monks. Their music was equally radical. Rather than top 40 covers they wrote and played their own original compositions, with the emphasis on original. Despite what would appear on the surface to be drawbacks, the Monks soon had a loyal enough following to allow the five young men, Minnesota-born guitarist Gary Burger, drummer Roger Johnston (a Texan), Chicagoan Larry Clark (the organ playing son of a preacher, man), electric banjoist Dave Day (who hailed from Washington) and Californian bassist Eddie Shaw, to remain in Germany following their respective discharges from the Army. In early 1966 they signed with Polydor's German division and recorded their one and only LP, Black Monk Time. Thanks to songs like Love Came Tumblin' Down, the Monks were eventually recognized as the precursor to such bands as AC/DC, the Ramones and the Clash ten years before any of those bands came into existence. Strangely enough, nobody seems to know where any of these five men ended up after the Monks disbanded in 1967. If anyone reading this has any knowledge of the whereabouts of any of them, drop me a line.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Unhappy Girl
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    After the success of their first album and the single Light My Fire in early 1967, the Doors quickly returned to the studio, releasing a second LP, Strange Days, later the same year. The first single released from the new album was People Are Strange. The B side of that single was Unhappy Girl, from the same album. Both sides got played on the jukebox at a place called the Woog in the village of Meisenbach near Ramstein Air Force Base (which is where I was spending most of my evenings that autumn).

Artist:    Bee Gees
Title:    And The Sun Will Shine
Source:    45 RPM promo EP (from the LP: Horizontal)
Writer(s):    Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb
Label:    Atco
Year:    1968
    The Bee Gees found international success with the LP Bee Gees 1st, released in the summer of 1967. The album spawned two international hit singles, New York Mining Disaster 1941 and To Love Somebody, with a third single, Holiday, hitting the US and Canadian charts in September. The rest of the world, however, got a new song called Massachusetts that did not get released in North America until November of 1967. Meanwhile, another new song, World, was released everywhere else. The next Bee Gees single that would be released everywhere was Words, a non-album track that came out in January of 1968. While Words was still climbing the singles charts, the band released a new album, Horizontal, in February of 1968. In the US, Atco released a promotional EP exclusively to radio stations with four songs from Horizontal on it, including World and another song, And The Sun Will Shine, that was simultaneously released as a single in France. The song is notable for Robin Gibb's ad-libbed vocals, which were recorded in one take.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Flowing Smoothly
Source:    Mono CD: The Complete Reprise Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Brett Wade
Label:    Real Gone/Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1969
    By late 1968, the group was the Electric Prunes in name only. All the original members were gone, replaced by a group of musicians hand picked by producer Dave Hassinger to record the second of two albums written entirely by David Axelrod. Since ownership of the name Electric Prunes had been signed away to manager Lenny Poncher in the group's early days, there was nothing the original band members could do about it. Not long after the release of the fourth Electric Prunes album, Release Of An Oath, in late 1968, the current group recorded a single, Hey, Mr. President, that was released in early 1969. The B side of that single, a tune called Flowing Smoothly, was written by one of the new members, bassist/guitarist Brett Wade. This same lineup, which also included former West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band guitarist Ron Morgan, also recorded the final Electric Prunes LP, Just Good Old Rock And Roll.

Artist:    Electric Prunes
Title:    Hideaway (live)
Source:    CD: Return to Stockholm
Writer(s):    Lowe/Tulin
Label:    PruneTwang
Year:    2012
    By the time the Electric Prunes name was officially retired in 1970 the band was little more than a footnote in the annals of rock history. That began to change, however, in 1972, with the release of Lenny Kaye's original Nuggets collection. The Prunes' best-known song, I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), was chosen to open the 30-song collection of psychedelic classics, giving the band much-deserved exposure. As their legend continued to grow, it was given a boost by the release of Stockholm '67, a live recording that came out in 1997 on the British Heartbeat label. This, as it turned out, was enough to motivate the original band members to get back together to perform live and make new records. On Jan 1, 2012, after coming out with three new studio albums over a period of a dozen years, the band released, on their own PruneTwang label, an album called Return To Stockholm made up of performances recorded in 2004. Among the songs on that album is a live extended version of Hideway, an original tune that first appeared, in studio form, on the second Electric Prunes LP, Underground, in 1967.

Artist:    Claypool/Lennon Delirium
Title:    Monolith Of Phobos
Source:    LP: Monolith Of Phobos
Writer(s):    Claypool/Lennon
Label:    Ato
Year:    2016
    In 2015, Sean Lennon's Ghost Of A Saber Toothed Tiger opened for Les Claypool's band, Primus, and, as often is the case, members of the two bands ended up jamming together backstage. Lennon and Claypool became friends, and eventually, after a wine-enhanced viewing of the Monkees movie, Head, at Claypool's Sebastapol, California guest house, formed the Claypool-Lennon Delirium to explore common psychedelic musical interests (as Lennon put it: "We have similar taste in notes. We tend to like the notes that other people hate"). Notes like those can be heard on the title track of their first album, Monolith Of Phobos. The name comes from a Buzz Aldrin appearance on C-SPAN talking about how there is a monolith (actually a large boulder about 279 ft across and 300 ft tall) on Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons. According to Lennon "We were just hanging out watching that video, and Les came back the next day with a full song about it."

Artist:    Residents
Title:    Loser≅Weed
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    The Residents
Label:    Ralph
Year:    1976 (?)/1978
    Loser≅Weed is the B side of a single released on translucent gold colored vinyl in 1978. The text on the back of the sleeve of that single claims that the record, featuring an avant-garde version of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, had originally been released in 1976, but knowing the Residents' reputation for deliberately obscuring the truth, I have to take that claim with a grain of salt, since none of my sources have any info regarding a 1976 issue. The sign ≅ that appears between the words "loser" and "weed", incidentally, is known as a congruence, or isomorphic sign, essentially meaning, in this instance, "structurally identical".

Artist:     Rolling Stones
Title:     Child Of The Moon
Source:     45 RPM single B side
Writer:     Jagger/Richards
Label:     London
Year:     1968
    Child Of The Moon was, essentially, the last gasp of the Rolling Stones' psychedelic period, and one of the last Stones tracks to feature founder Brian Jones prominently (on saxophone). Following the poor critical response to their self-produced late 1967 LP Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones had brought in producer Jimmy Miller for their next album, Beggar's Banquet. Miller, who had previously produced several hit records for Steve Winwood, including Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man (both by the Spencer Davis Group), tended to favor straight-ahead rock and roll with a touch of soul. This was reflected in the first single Miller produced for the Rolling Stones, Jumpin' Jack Flash. Although Miller is also credited as the producer of Child Of The Moon, which appeared as the single's B side, it is more likely that the song was more or less produced by the band itself as Miller was still getting his footing.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Born Cross-Eyed
Source:    CD: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s):    The Grateful Dead
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1968
    After cranking out their first LP in a matter of days, San Francisco's Grateful Dead took a full six months to record, edit and mix the follow-up album, Anthem Of The Sun. Most of the tracks on the album run together and feature an experimental mix of live and studio material. The sole exception is Born Cross-Eyed, which has a running time of barely over two minutes. As near as I can tell, it is also the only actual studio track on the album. Although the song is credited to the entire band, Bob Weir's lyrics are rumoured to be autobiographical in nature.

Artist:    Iron Butterfly
Title:    Gentle As It May Seem
Writer(s):    DeLoach/Weis
Label:    Rhino (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    Personnel changes were pretty much a regular occurrence with Iron Butterfly. After the first album, Heavy, everyone except keyboardist Doug Ingle and drummer Ron Bushy left the band. This was accompanied by a drastic change in style as well, as Ingle, who had already been carrying the lion's share of lead vocals, became the group's primary songwriter as well. Gentle As It Seems, written by Daryl DeLoach and lead guitarist Danny Weis, is a good example of the band's original sound, back when they were scrounging for gigs in a rapidly shrinking L.A. all-ages club scene.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    Cheating
Source:    LP: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals Vol. II (originally released on LP: Animalization)
Writer(s):    Burdon/Chandler
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    As a general rule, the original Animals wrote very little of their own material, preferring to record covers of their favorite blues songs to supplement the songs from professional songwriters that producer Mickie Most picked for single release. One notable exception is Cheating, a strong effort from vocalist Eric Burdon and bassist Chas Chandler that appeared on the Animalization album. The hard-driving song was also chosen for release as a B side in 1966.

Artist:    Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:    Monterey
Source:    CD: Psychedelic Pop (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Twain Shall Meet)
Writer:    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    BMG/RCA/Buddah (original label: M-G-M)
Year:    1968
    One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading out at the end a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether M-G-M, which included Monterey on The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals Volume 2, used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the result is the same.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    She'll Return It
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals-Vol. II (originally released on LP: Animalization and as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Rowberry/Burdon
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    As a general rule the Animals, in their original incarnation, recorded two kinds of songs: hit singles from professional songwriters such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and covers of blues and R&B tunes, the more obscure the better. What they did not record a lot of was original tunes from the band members themselves. This began to change in 1966 when the band began to experience a series of personnel changes that would ultimately lead to what amounted to an entirely new group, Eric Burdon And The Animals, the following year. One of the earliest songs to carry a byline from band members was She'll Return It, an Eric Burdon/Dave Rowberry composition that was erroneously credited to the entire band. She'll Return It was released as the B side of See See Rider in August of 1966 and included on the Animalization album. In retrospect, it is one of the strongest tracks on one of their strongest LPs.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Colours
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Golden Days Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sire (original US label: Hickory)
Year:    1965
    Following the success of his 1965 debut single, Catch The Wind (#4 UK, #23 US), Scottish singer/songwriter Donovan Leitch followed it up with the similarly styled Colours. Although not a hit in the US, Colours matched the success of Catch The Wind in the UK. Both songs were included on an EP, also called Colours, that was issued in Europe and the UK in December of 1965.

Artist:    Simon and Garfunkel
Title:    The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Rock Me, Baby
Source:    LP: Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival
Writer(s):    King/Josea
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1967
    Despite having recorded and released over a dozen original songs in Europe and the UK prior to their US debut at the Monterey International Pop Festival, the Jimi Hendrix Experience chose to fill their set with more cover songs than originals at the festival itself. Of the five cover songs, two were high-energy reworkings of blues classics such as B.B. King's Rock Me, Baby. Hendrix would eventually rework this arrangement into an entirely original song with new lyrics.

Artist:     Frumious Bandersnatch
Title:     Hearts To Cry
Source:     CD: Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-70 (originally released on self-titled EP)
Writer:     Jack King
Label:     Rhino (original label: Muggles Gramophone)
Year:     1968
     Rock music and the real estate business have something in common: location can make all the difference. Take the San Francisco Bay Area. You have one of the world's great Cosmopolitan cities at the north end of a peninsula. South of the city, along the peninsula itself you have mostly redwood forest land interspersed with fairly affluent communities along the way to Silicon Valley and the city of San Jose at the south end of the bay. The eastern side of the bay, on the other hand, spans a socio-economic range from blue collar to ghetto and is politically conservative; not exactly the most receptive environment for a hippy band calling itself Frumious Bandersnatch, which is a shame, since they had at least as much talent as any other band in the area. Unable to develop much of a following, they are one of the great "should have beens" of the psychedelic era, as evidenced by Hearts To Cry, the lead track of their 1968 untitled EP.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    Are You Ready
Source:    CD: On Time
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    One of the most appropriate opening songs for a debut album ever recorded, Are You Ready was one of eight tracks laid down by Grand Funk Railroad during a marathon two-day session at Cleveland Recording on June 18-19, 1969. The band had recorded two songs in April that Capitol Records wanted to release as a single, but producer Terry Knight insisted that the band be allowed to record an entire LP. Surprisingly, Knight won that battle, and Grand Funk Railroad's On Time was released in August of 1969. Despite being universally panned by the rock press, On Time went gold in 1970, thanks in large part to the band's willingness to perform large outdoor festivals for no pay (but massive exposure). Within two years they would be one of the first bands to successfully fill large sports arenas, ushering in a new age in the history of rock concerts (and no longer working for no pay).

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2118 (starts 4/26/21) 

    This week we feature the entire second side of the Moody Blues' Threshold Of A Dream, along with classics from Sugarloaf, Black Sabbath and David Bowie. Plus, Jimi Hendrix jamming with some friends on an old Elmore James tune and a classic Firesign Theatre bit.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    Paranoid
Source:    LP: Paranoid
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osborne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Rhino/Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    Although it was the last track recorded for Black Sabbath's second album, Paranoid was actually the first song released from the sessions, appearing as a single about six months after the band's first LP hit the racks. The song, according to bassist Geezer Butler, was recorded as an afterthought, when the band realized they needed a three minute filler piece for the LP. Tony Iommi came up with the basic riff, which Butler quickly wrote lyrics for. Singer Ozzie Osbourne reportedly sang the lyrics directly from the handwritten lyric sheet. Paranoid turned out to be one of Black Sabbath's most popular tunes, and has shown up on several "best of" lists, including VH1's "40 Greatest Metal Songs", where it holds the # 1 spot. In Finland, the song has attained near-legendary status, and the phase "Soittakaa Paranoid!" can often be heard being yelled out from a member of the audience at a rock concert there, regardless of what band is actually on stage (much as "Free Bird" was heard at various concerts in the US throughout the 70s and 80s).

Artist:    Jethro Tull
Title:    My Sunday Feeling
Source:    CD: This Was
Writer(s):    Ian Anderson
Label:    Chrysalis/Capitol (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968
    For years my only copy of Jethro Tull's first LP, This Was, was a cassette copy I had made myself. In fact, the two sides of the album were actually on two different tapes (don't ask why). When I labelled the tapes I neglected to specify which tape had which side of the album; as a result I was under the impression that My Sunday Feeling was the opening track on the album. It turns out it was actually the first track on side two, but I still tend to think of it as the "first" Jethro Tull song, despite the fact that the band had actually released a single, Sunshine Day, the previous year for a different label.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix
Title:    Bleeding Heart
Source:    CD: Valleys Of Neptune
Writer(s):    Elmore James
Label:    Experience Hendrix/Legacy
Year:    1969
    There's no question that Jimi Hendrix was a huge fan of bluesman Elmore James, and of the song Bleeding Heart in particular. In fact, Hendrix recorded several versions of the song using various arrangements, tempos and even musician configurations. The first of these to be officially released (on the 1972 LP War Heroes) was actually one of the last to be recorded, in spring of 1970, with Billy Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, a group that billed itself as the Jimi Hendrix Experience. One of the longest, and fastest, versions of Bleeding Heart was recorded on April 24, 1969, featuring Billly Cox on bass, Rocky Isaac on drums, Chris Grimes on tambourine and Al Marks on maracas. This version was finally released in March of 2010, on the Valleys Of Neptune album and as a 7" 45 RPM single.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    Immigrant Song
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Page/Plant
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    Although the third Led Zeppelin album is known mostly for its surprising turn toward a more acoustic sound than its predecessors, the first single from that album actually rocked out as hard, if not harder, than any previous Zeppelin track. In fact, it could be argued that Immigrant Song rocks out harder than anything on top 40 radio before or since. Starting with a tape echo deliberately feeding on itself the song breaks into a basic riff built on two notes an octave apart, with Robert Plant's wailing vocals sounding almost like a siren call. Guitarist Jimmy Page soon breaks into a series of power chords that continue to build in intensity for the next two minutes, until the song abruptly stops cold. The lyrics of Immigrant Song were inspired by the band's trip to Iceland in 1970.

Artist:    Mother Earth
Title:    Temptation Took Control Of Me And I Fell
Source:    LP: Bring Me Home
Writer(s):    Eric Kaz
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1971
    Although originally formed in San Francisco as a blues-based rock band, by 1971 Mother Earth had relocated to a farm outside Nashville and expanded its musical horizons to include elements of R&B, jazz, country and, on the LP Bring Me Home, gospel. The opening track on the album, Temptation Took Control Of Me And I Fell, was written by Eric Kaz, a then-unknown songwriter who would go on to write hit songs for such diverse artists as Bonnie Raitt, George Strait and Michael Bolton.

Artist:    Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina
Title:    Nobody But You
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Jim Messina
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1972
    Nobody But You was the second single from the 1972 album Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In. Written by Messina, it was soon eclipsed by its B side, Danny's Song, which became a top 40 hit for Anne Murray the following year. Nobody But You was also the opening track on the album itself.

Artist:    Moody Blues
Title:    On The Threshold Of A Dream (side two)
Source:    CD: On The Threshold Of A Dream
Writer(s):    Hayward/Thomas/Edge/Pinder
Label:    Deram
Year:    1969
    Ever since their 1967 album Days Of Future Passed, the Moody Blues have had this annoying habit of letting all the songs on their albums run into each other, making it difficult to impossible to play an individual track on the radio. As a result, I play the Moody Blues sparingly, essentially playing an entire album side about one sixth as often as I might play just one song. This time around it's side two of their third concept album, On The Threshold Of A Dream. The side begins with Justin Hayward's Never Comes The Day, which leads into Ray Thomas's Lazy Day followed by Hayward's Are You Sitting Comfortably. The rest of the side, known collectively as the Voyage Suite, starts with Graeme Edge's The Dream (recited by Mike Pinder), followed by Pinder's Have You Heard (part 1), The Voyage and Have You Heard (part 2). The side wraps up with a sound effect that continues on into the inner groove of the original LP and fades out after a few seconds on CD and tape versions of the album.

Artist:    Firesign Theatre
Title:    Hawaiian Sellout
Source:    LP: Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers
Writer(s):    Proctor/Bergman/Austin/Ossman
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1970
    Among the many short sections of TV shows that George Tirebiter tunes in on the album Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers is Hawaiian Sellout, a bit that parodies 1960s game shows, with the humor coming from the absurdity of the prizes that the contestant has won so far. This sort of sketch humor would become the staple of actual TV shows like Saturday Night Live and Second City TV in the 1970s, as well as movies like Tunnel Vision and the Groove Tube.

Artist:    Sugarloaf
Title:    Green-Eyed Lady
Source:    LP: Sugarloaf
Writer(s):    Corbetta/Phillips/Riordan
Label:    Liberty
Year:    1970
    The unwritten rules of radio, particularly those concerning song length, were in transition in 1970. Take Sugarloaf's Green-Eyed Lady, for example. When first released as a single the 45 was virtually identical to the album version except that it faded out just short of the six-minute mark. This was about twice the allowed length under the old rules and it was soon replaced with an edited version that left out all the instrumental solos, coming in at just under three minutes. The label soon realized, however, that part of the original song's appeal (as heard on FM rock radio) was its organ solo, and a third single edit with that solo restored became the final, and most popular, version of Green-Eyed Lady. Meanwhile, though all of this, FM rock jocks continued to play the original album version heard here. Smart move on their part.

Artist:    David Bowie
Title:    Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed
Source:    CD: David Bowie (originally US title: Man Of Words/Man Of Music)
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1969
    Written in response to the death of his father, David Bowie's Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed, from his self-titled 1969 LP, may have gone overlooked indefinitely if it were not for the fact that someone noticed that the song was Bowie's first collaboration with producer Tony Visconti, who would continue to work with Bowie for the remainder of his career. The song itself is classic early Bowie and, to my ears, is one of the best tracks on the album.

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2117 (starts 4/19/21) 

    This week we have an unusually high number of medleys and artists' sets, with the emphasis on bands from San Francisco. This includes three tracks from the most successful LP of 1968, Cheap Thrills, from Big Brother And The Holding Company, one of the "suites" from Jefferson Airplane's most psychedelic LP, After Bathing At Baxters, and an entire half hour segment of Grateful Dead tracks. We also have our third Beatles set in three weeks, featuring yet another medley. That leaves a bit less time than usual for other stuff, but we still manage to fit no less than four songs that have never been played on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era before, including a pair of seldom-heard B sides from the Kinks and the Weeds. Speaking of B sides, the show itself gets underway with one of the best...

Artist:    Doors
Title:    The Crystal Ship
Source:    CD: The Doors
Writer:    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    Ever feel like you've discovered something really special that nobody else (among your circle of friends at any rate) knows about? At first you kind of want to keep it to yourself, but soon you find yourself compelled to share it with everyone you know. Such was the case when, in the early summer of 1967, I used my weekly allowance to buy copies of a couple of songs I had heard on the American Forces Network (AFN). As usual, it wasn't long before I was flipping the records over to hear what was on the B sides. I liked the first one well enough (a song by Buffalo Springfield called Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It, the B side of For What It's Worth), but it was the second one, the B side of the Doors' Light My Fire, that really got to me. To this day I consider The Crystal Ship to be one of the finest slow rock songs ever recorded.

Artist:    Human Beinz
Title:    Close Your Eyes
Source:    Australian import CD: Evolutions
Writer(s):    Jim Murray
Label:    Ascension (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1968
    Youngstown, Ohio, was the home of vocalist/guitarists Dick Belley and Ting Markulin, bassist/vocalist Mel Pachuta,  and drummer Gary Coates, who formed a band called the Premiers in 1964. By 1966 they had replaced Coates with Mike Tatman, changed their name to the Human Beingz and released their first single, a cover of the Who's My Generation for the local Elysian label. Around that same time they also recorded a cover of Gloria for the Pittsburgh-based Gateway label that actually predated the more popular Shadows of Knight version of the Van Morrison classic. In 1967 they signed with Capitol Records, who, without input from the band members, changed the spelling of the group's name to Human Beinz, promising to change it back if the band's first single for the label didn't catch on. However, the single, a cover of the Isley Brothers' Nobody But Me, did indeed catch on, and the name change became permanent. The Human Beinz ended up releasing two LPs for Capitol. The first of these was much in the same vein as their previous work, containing a mixture of cover songs and tunes written by their producer, Alexis de Azevedo, along with a pair of original songs from band members. Determined to create something more memorable, the group released Evolutions, a much more experimental album, in 1968. Although not a top seller by any means, the album contains several gems, such as Close Your Eyes, which bears more than a passing resemblance to some of the tunes on Love's Forever Changes album. Following the release of Evolutions, the Human Beinz stayed together long enough to complete a tour of Japan (where they had three #1 singles) before disbanding in 1969.

Artist:    Lighthouse
Title:    Never Say Goodbye
Source:    LP: Lighthouse
Writer:    P. Hoffert/B. Hoffert
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1969
     Lighthouse was formed in Toronto in 1968 by vocalist/drummer Skip Prokop (formerly of the Paupers) and keyboardist/arranger Paul Hoffert. The idea was to combine a rock rhythm section with R&B-style horns and classical-style strings. The first move they made was to recruit guitarist Ralph Cole, whom the Paupers had shared a bill with in New York. The three of them then went about recruiting an assortment of friends, studio musicians and members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, making a demo tape and submitting it to M-G-M records, who immediately offered Lighthouse a contract. The band's manager, however, was able to get a better contract from RCA, and the group set about recording their first album, making their stage debut in Toronto in May of 1969. Among the original 13 members of the band were lead vocalist Vic "Pinky" Davin and saxophonist Howard Shore (who would become the leader of the house band for NBC's Saturday Night Live when that TV show made its debut in 1975). The group managed to record two albums that year, their eponymous debut album and the follow-up Suite Feeling. Both albums were recorded at Toronto's Eastern Sound Studio and released on the RCA Victor label in 1969. Although the group scored a couple of minor hits in their native Canada, they were not able to achieve commercial success in the US, and, after a third LP for RCA, changed labels to GRT, where (after several personnel changes, including lead vocals) they managed to chart two top 40 singles, One Fine Morning and Sunny Days, in 1971 and 1972. Never Say Goodbye, from the first Lighthouse album, is a good example of just how the band was able to combine jazz, rock and classical styles into a single song.

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Combination Of The Two
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Sam Andrew
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968

Artist:    Big Brother And The Holding Company
Title:    Oh, Sweet Mary
Source:    LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer(s):    Albin/Andrew/Getz/Gurley/Joplin
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    The only song credited to the entire membership of Big Brother And The Holding Company on their Cheap Thrills album was Oh, Sweet Mary (although the original label credits Janis Joplin as sole writer and the album cover itself gives only Joplin and Peter Albin credit). The tune bears a strong resemblance to Coo Coo, a non-album single the band had released on the Mainstream label before signing to Columbia. Oh, Sweet Mary, however, has new lyrics and, for a breath of fresh air, a bridge section played at a slower tempo than the rest of the tune.

Artist:     Big Brother and the Holding Company
Title:     Piece Of My Heart
Source:     LP: Cheap Thrills
Writer:     Ragovoy/Burns
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1968
     By 1968 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with their charismatic vocalist from Texas, Janis Joplin, had become as popular as fellow San Francisco bands Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Somehow, though, they were still without a major label record deal. That all changed with the release of Cheap Thrills, with cover art by the legendary underground comix artist R. Crumb. The album itself was a curious mixture of live performances and studio tracks, the latter being led by the band's powerful cover of the 1966 Barbara Lynn tune Piece Of My Heart. The song propelled the band, and Joplin, to stardom. That stardom would be short-lived for most of the band members, however, as well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed advice-givers convinced Joplin that Big Brother was holding her back. The reality was that the band was uniquely suited to support her better than anyone she would ever work with again.

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

Artist:    Tomorrow
Title:    Auntie Mary's Dress Shop
Source:    European import CD: Tomorrow
Writer(s):    Hopkins/Burgess
Label:    Parlophone
Year:    1968
    Sometime in the early to mid 1960s there was a band called the Teenbeats that included Ken Burgess on guitar and Keith Hopkins on bass, and later, vocals. The two of them began writing songs together, even after Hopkins became lead vocalist for a new group called Four + One that also included Les Jones on guitar, John "Junior" Wood on bass and John "Twink" Adler on drums. At the time, Motown and Stax recordings were particularly popular among British teens, and bands like Four + One made their living performing those and other current hit songs in local dance clubs. In 1964, after Jones had been replaced by Steve Howe on guitar, Four Plus One was signed to EMI's Parlophone label, releasing their first single, a cover of Time Is On My Side, on January 1, 1965. It was around this time that the band changed its name to The In Crowd and Hopkins started calling himself Keith West. The In Crowd the band released three more singles (all cover songs) that year, and in 1966 recorded a pair of songs for use in a nightclub sequence for the film Blow Up. Those recordings were shelved when the film's director, Michelangelo Antonioni, managed to get the Yardbirds (who had just added studio whiz Jimmy Page to the lineup) to appear in the scene instead. Throughout this period Hopkins and Burgess continued to develop their songwriting skills, and in early 1967 the band decided to start performing their songs, changing its name to Tomorrow and becoming, along with Soft Machine and the Pink Floyd, one of the premier British psychedelic bands. That spring, the group began working on an album that was made up entirely of Hopkins/Burgess originals, including the single My White Bicycle, which was released in May of 1967. In September a second Tomorrow single, Revolution, appeared, but the album itself was delayed until February of 1968, by which time the British psychedelic era (which was considerably shorter than its American counterpart) was already becoming a memory. The album was a commercial failure, but has in more recent years come to be recognized as one of the finest examples of British psychedelia ever recorded. The songs themselves vary from the intensity of My White Bicycle to the more whimsical Auntie Mary's Dress Shop, which is about as British a song as you'll find on a psychedelic record.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Sugar Magnolia
Source:    CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: American Beauty)
Writer(s):    Hunter/Weir
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:     1970
            One of the most popular songs in the Grateful Dead catalog, Sugar Magnolia also has the distinction of being the second-most performed song in the band's history, with 596 documented performances. The song, written by Robert Hunter and Bob Weir, first appeared on the 1970 album American Beauty, but was not released as a single. A live version two years later, however, did see a single release, charting in the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose/Born Cross-Eyed
Source:    LP: Anthem Of The Sun
Writer(s):    Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir/Constanten
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1968
    After completing their first album in three days, the Grateful Dead decided to take their time with the 1968 follow-up release. The band began recording at  American Studios in North Hollywood, but soon found themselves in New York, where they had their first experience with state-of-the-art eight track recording equipment. Naturally, the band wanted to explore the possibilities that were available with the new technology, which eventually led to producer Dave Hassinger resigning from the project in frustration (reportedly the last straw being Bob Weir's quest to capture the sound of "thick air"). With about a third of the album completed the band decided that the material needed to be road tested and scheduled a series of west coast appearances before heading back to San Francisco to continue work on the album at Coast Recorders. The band made recordings of these performances, interlacing them with the existing studio tracks and adding overdubs as needed. Among these overdubs were the contributions of Tom Constanten, who provided piano, prepared piano and electronic tape effects. As originally mixed, each album side was one continuous track, with no breaks between songs. Side one of Anthem Of The Sun consists of three compositions: That's It For The Other One, New Potato Caboose, and Born Cross-Eyed. In order to score more royalty points, however,That's It For The Other One was broken down into several subsections on the album cover. The album was completed later in 1968 and released by Warner Brothers Records, whose president, Joe Smith, called it "the most unreasonable project with which we have ever involved ourselves". Four years later, band members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh decided to revist the project, remixing the entire album and reissuing it with the original catalog number. Subsequent releases of the LP and cassette used the 1972 remix, but when the CD version of Anthem Of The Sun came it, it used the original mix. The latest LP release of Anthem Of The Sun was in 2014, remastered on 180 gram vinyl using the original 1968 mix.

Artist:    Grateful Dead
Title:    Uncle John's Band
Source:    CD: Skeletons From The Closet (originally released on LP: Workingman's Dead)
Writer(s):    Hunter/Garcia
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    For many people who only got their music from commercial radio, Uncle John's Band was the first Grateful Dead song they ever heard. The tune, from the 1970 LP Workingman's Dead, was the first Dead song to crack the top 100, peaking at #69, and got significant airplay on FM rock radio stations as well. The close harmonies on the track were reportedly inspired by Crosby, Stills and Nash, whose debut album had come out the previous year.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    She's Got Everything
Source:    CD: The Kink Kronikles (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1968
    Although recorded in 1966 at sessions for the Face To Face LP, She's Got Everything was shelved until 1968, when the Kinks released it as the B side of Days, one of many singles on the Reprise label that went virtually unnoticed in the US. After the Kinks signed a five-album deal with RCA Victor in 1971, Reprise compiled a double LP collection of Kinks recordings from 1966-1971 called The Kink Kronikles that included, for the first time, a stereo mix of She's Got Everything. The song itself is a deliberate throwback to the band's early sound.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Come Together
Source:    CD: Abbey Road
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Parlophone
Year:    1969
    After the Beatles released their 1968 double LP (the so-called White Album), they went to work on their final film project, a documentary about the band making an album. Unfortunately, what the cameras captured was a group on the verge of disintegration, and both the album and the film itself were shelved indefinitely. Instead, the band went to work recording an entirely new group of compositions. Somehow, despite the internal difficulties the band was going through, they managed to turn out a masterpiece: Abbey Road. Before the album itself came out, a single was released. The official A side (green Apple label) was George Harrison's Something, the first Harrison song ever to be released as a Beatle A side. The other A side (Apple core label) was the song that opened the album itself, John Lennon's Come Together. In later years Come Together came to be Lennon's signature song and was a staple of his live performances.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Source:    LP: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1967
    The top album of 1967 was the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also the first US Beatles album to have a song lineup that was identical to the original UK LP. As such, it was also the first Beatles album released in the US to not include any songs that were also released as singles. Nonetheless, several tracks from the LP found their way onto the playlists of both top 40 AM and "underground" FM stations from coast to coast. Among the most popular of these tracks was John Lennon's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which shows up on just about everyone's list of classic psychedelic tunes.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Abbey Road Medley #1
Source:    CD: Abbey Road
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple/Parlophone
Year:    1969
    Much of the second side of the last album to be recorded by the Beatles, Abbey Road, is taken up by (depending on whose view you take) either one long medley or two not-quite-so-long medleys of songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Personally I take the former view, as there is just a bit too much quiet space at the end of She Came In Through The Bathroom Window for me to consider it linked to the next song, Golden Slumbers. Regardless, the whole thing starts with You Never Give Me Your Money, a Paul McCartney composition reputed to be a jab at the band's second (and last) manager, Allen Klein. This leads into three John Lennon pieces, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam, ending finally with another McCartney piece, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, a song with nonsense lyrics and a title inspired by a real life break-in by an overzealous fan.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Ruby Tuesday
Source:    Mono CD: Singles Collection-The London Years (originally released as 45 RPM single B side and on LP: Between The Buttons)
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1967
    One of the most durable songs in the Rolling Stones catalog, Ruby Tuesday was originally intended to be the B side of their 1967 single Let's Spend The Night Together. Many stations, however, balked at the subject matter of the A side and began playing Ruby Tuesday instead.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Paper Sun
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi
Label:    Silver Spotlight (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1967
    One of the first British acid-rock bands was a group called Deep Feeling, which included drummer Jim Capaldi and woodwind player Chris Wood. At the same time Deep Feeling was experimenting with psychedelia, another, more commercially oriented band, the Spencer Davis Group, was tearing up the British top 40 charts with hits like Keep On Running, Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm A Man. The undisputed star of the Spencer Davis Group was a teenaged guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist named Steve Winwood, who was also beginning to make his mark as a songwriter. Along with guitarist/vocalist Dave Mason, who had worked with Capaldi in earlier bands, they formed Traffic in the spring of 1967, releasing their first single, Paper Sun, in May of that year. Capaldi and Winwood had actually written the tune while Winwood was still in the Spencer Davis Group, and the song was an immediate hit in the UK. This was followed quickly by an album, Mr. Fantasy, that, as was the common practice at the time in the UK, did not include Paper Sun. When the album was picked up by United Artists Records for US release in early 1968, however, Paper Sun was included as the LP's opening track. The US version of the album was originally titled Heaven Is In Your Mind, but was quickly retitled Mr. Fantasy to match the original British title (although the alterations in track listing remained).

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Dance The Night Away
Source:    Mono European import LP: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown
Label:    Lilith (original US label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    With the album Disraeli Gears, Cream established itself as having a psychedelic side as well as their original blues orientation. Most of the more psychedelic material, such as Dance the Night Away, was from the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. Bruce provides the melody line on vocals, with guitarist Eric Clapton singing harmony throughout the piece.

Artist:    Weeds
Title:    Little Girl
Source:    45 RPM single B side (reissue)
Writer(s):    Van Morrison
Label:    Behemoth (original label: Teenbeat Club)
Year:    1966
    The Weeds were formed in La Vegas in 1966 by Fred Cole (lead vocals), Eddie Bowen (guitar), Ron Buzzell (guitar), Bob Atkins (bass guitar), and Tim Rockson (drums). Cole had already established himself as a recording artist with other local bands that played at the Teenbeat Club (thought to be the first teens-only club in the US) in Paradise, a Las Vegas suburb, and it wasn't long before the Weeds released It's Your Time on the club's own record label. Not long after the single was released the band drove to San Francisco, where they had been promised a gig at the Fillmore Auditorium, but when they arrived they discovered that no one there knew anything about it. Rather than return to Las Vegas, the Weeds decided to head north for Canada to avoid the draft, but they ran out of gas in Portland, Oregon, and soon became part of that city's music scene. Cole would eventually become an indy rock legend with his band Dead Moon, co-founded by his wife Toody, herself a Portland native.

Artist:    Limey And The Yanks
Title:    Guaranteed Love
Writer(s):    Reed/Paxton
Label:    Rhino (original label: Star-Burst)
Year:    1966
    Limey and the Yanks were an Orange County, California band that boasted an honest-to-dog British lead vocalist. Despite being kind of Zelig-like on the L.A. scene, they only recorded two singles. The first one, Guaranteed Love, was co-written by Gary Paxton, best known for his involvement in various novelty records, including the Hollywood Argyles' Alley Oop, which he co-wrote with Kim Fowley, and Bobby "Boris" Pickett's Monster Mash, which was released on Paxton's own Garpax label.

Artist:    Cyrkle
Title:    Bony Moronie
Source:    LP: Red Rubber Ball
Writer(s):    Larry Williams
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1966
    The history of rock and roll is filled with one-hit wonders. Less common, however, are groups than managed to crack the upper reaches of the charts a second time, only to suffer diminishing returns with each subsequent effort. Such was the case with the Cyrkle, who burst on the scene with Red Rubber Ball and Turn Down Day in 1966. Originally a frat-rock band called the Rhondells, the group's fortunes turned in a big way on Labor Day of 1965, when New York attorney Nathan Weiss caught their gig in Atlantic City. Weiss in turn recommended the band to his business partner, Brian Epstein, who was looking for an American band to manage (I guess the Beatles weren't enough for him). Epstein renamed the band the Cyrkle (John Lennon providing the variant spelling) and set them up as the opening band for the Beatles' last US tour, including their final gig at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966. Along the way, the group signed with Columbia Records, recording two LPs and several singles for the label before disbanding in early 1968. The first album, Red Rubber Ball, was a solid example of sunshine pop, as evidenced by the band's unique arrangement of Larry Williams's Bony Moronie. Two of the band's members, Don Dannemann and Tom Dawes, went on to become successful jingle writers (Dannemann wrote the original Un-Cola song while Dawes came up with "Plop plop fizz fizz" for Alka-Seltzer. The other two members became successful in other fields; one, Marty Fried is a bankruptcy attorney and the other, Earl Pickens, is a surgeon.
Artist:     Jefferson Airplane
Title:     How Suite It Is
Source:     LP: After Bathing At Baxters
Writer(s):     Kantner/Casady/Dryden/Kaukonen
Label:     RCA Victor
Year:     1967
     The second side of After Bathing At Baxters starts off fairly conventionally (for the Airplane), with Paul Kantner's Watch Her Ride, the first third or so of something called How Suite It Is. This leads (without a break in the audio) into Spare Chaynge, one of the coolest studio jams ever recorded, featuring intricate interplay between Jack Casady's bass and Jorma Kaukonen's guitar, with Spencer Dryden using his drum kit as enhancement rather than as a beat-setter. In particular, Casady's virtuoso performance helped redefine what could be done with an electric bass.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2117 (starts 4/19/21) 

    This week, in celebration of Earth Day, we take a look back at some of the earliest songs to show an awareness of environmental issues. The first set is pretty straightforward, with Joni Mitchell's original studio version of Big Yellow Taxi setting the tone. Our second set is more speculative, with songwriters like Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young letting their imaginations run wild. We wrap up the show with a 13-minute long version of Memphis Slim's classic Mother Earth, from the album Eric Burdon Declares War. Here's the complete lineup:

Artist:    Joni Mitchell
Title:    Big Yellow Taxi
Source:    LP: The Big Ball (originally released on LP: Ladies Of The Canyon)
Writer(s):    Joni Mitchell
Label:    Warner Brothers (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1970
    One of Joni Mitchell's best-known tunes, Big Yellow Taxi was originally released on the 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon. The original studio version of the song hit the top 10 in Australia and the top 20 in the UK and Mitchell's native Canada, but only reached the #67 spot in the US. A later live version of the song, however, cracked the top 30 in the US in 1974. Mitchell says she was inspired to write the song on a visit to Hawaii, where she looked out her hotel window to view a mountain vista in the distance, only to be shocked back to reality when she looked down to see a parking lot "as far as the eye could see".

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    Nature's Way
Writer:    Randy California
Label:    Epic
Year:    1970
    Nature's Way is one of the best-known and best-loved songs in the Spirit catalog. Originally released on the 1970 LP Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus, the song was finally issued as a single in 1973, long after lead vocalist Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes had left Spirit to form Jo Jo Gunne.

Artist:    Marvin Gaye
Title:    Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
Source:    LP: What's Going On
Writer(s):    Marvin Gaye
Label:    Tamla
Year:    1971
    No show celebrating Earth Day would be complete without Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology). Released as the second single from the 1971 LP What's Going On, the song is considered one of Marvin Gaye's greatest songs and an anthem of the environmental movement.

Artist:    Jefferson Airplane
Title:    Eskimo Blue Day
Source:    CD: Volunteers
Writer(s):    Slick/Kantner
Label:    BMG/RCA
Year:    1969
    Jefferson Airplane's sixth LP, Volunteers, was by far their most socio-political album, from the first track (We Can Be Together, with its famous "up against the wall" refrain) to the last (the song Volunteers itself). One of the more controversial tracks on the 1969 album is Eskimo Blue Day, which describes just how meaningless human concerns are in the greater scheme of things with the repeated use of the phrase "doesn't mean shit to a tree". Eskimo Blue Day was one of two songs from Volunteers performed by the Airplane at Woodstock.

Artist:    Queen
Title:    The Prophet's Song
Source:    LP: A Night At The Opera
Writer(s):    Brian May
Label:    Virgin (original label: Elektra)
Year:    1975
    When Queen's landmark LP, A Night At The Opera, was released in 1975, much attention was focused on the album's penultimate track, Freddy Mercury's Bohemian Rhapsody, which went all the way to the top of the British top 40 charts and is one of the most recognizable recordings of the 20th century. With all this attention focused on one song (albeit deservedly), several other outstanding tracks on the album have been somewhat neglected. Perhaps the best of these overlooked tracks is The Prophet's Song, a Brian May composition that opens side two of the vinyl LP. At over eight minutes in length, The Prophet's Song is Queen's longest song with vocals, and, like Bohemian Rhapsody, features layered overdubs by Mercury, including a fairly long acappella section in the middle of the track. The song also has powerful dynamics, ranging from the almost inaudible acoustic guitar and toy koto introduction to high volume electric lead guitar work set against a heavy metal background. As if that were not enough, The Prophet's Song also has a powerful message, making it one of Queen's most important works.

Artist:    Zager And Evans
Title:    In The Year 2525
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Rick Evans
Label:    RCA Victor
Year:    1969
    Since the advent of rock and roll in the 1950s there have been literally hundreds of one-hit wonders, artists who had one fairly big hit and then faded off into the background. Usually these artists recorded one or more a follow-up records that got minor airplay (and sometimes even major airplay in a limited number of markets), but were not successful enough to make a long-term career of it. A few of them get cited as the "ultimate" one-hit wonder, but for my money the title undisputedly belongs to folk-rockers Zager And Evans. The reason I say this is because they were more extreme than any other one-hit wonders, both in their success and their subsequent failures. The success part is impressive: In The Year 2525 spent six weeks in the number one spot on the US charts and finished second only to the 5th Dimension's Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In for the entire year 1969. Their subsequent failures were equally impressive: not only did they fail to crack the top 40 charts again, they couldn't even make the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making them the only artists in history to have a #1 hit without ever making another chart appearance.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Source:    CD: Electric Ladyland
Writer:    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Legacy (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1968

Artist:    Neil Young
Title:    After The Gold Rush
Source:    CD: After The Gold Rush
Writer(s):    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1970
    Once upon a time Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann wrote a screenplay for a movie to be called After The Gold Rush. Neil Young read the script and decided that he wanted to do the soundtrack for the film, which Stockwell described as "sort of an end-of-the-world movie. I was gonna write a movie that was personal, a Jungian self-discovery of the gnosis... it involved the Kabala (sic), it involved a lot of arcane stuff." The movie was never made, and even the script is now long lost. However, Young did manage to write a couple of songs for the film, including the title track itself, which became the title track of his third album. The song itself describes a dream vision about the past, present and future of earth's environment. Young still performs After The Gold Rush, although he has updated one of the song's most famous lines ("Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s") by replacing the words "the 1970s" with "the 21st century".

Artist:    Eric Burdon And War
Title:    Blues For Memphis Slim
Source:    LP: Eric Burdon Declares "War"
Writer(s):    War/Peter Chapman
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1970
    "When the acid trip is over, you've got to come back to Mother Blues." Eric Burdon's ad-libbed line from the track Blues From Memphis Slim, pretty much sums up the state of the former Animals lead vocalist's career as of 1970. The original Animals had been founded with the blues in mind, with the band members, including Burdon, preferring the cover tunes of artists like John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed featured on their albums to the hit singles provided to the band by their producer, Mickey Most. Finally, in 1966, the group officially disbanded, just as Burdon was discovering the mind-expanding qualities of hallucinogenic substances (he had been a hard drinker up to that point). In early 1967 Burdon formed a "New Animals" that would soon come to be called Eric Burdon And The Animals. This band had little in common with the original Animals (other than Burdon's distinctive vocals), and was, by any measure, pure acid rock. But after a couple of albums, even that group started to change, taking on more of an R&B sound with tracks like their extended version of River Deep, Mountain High. Finally, in 1969, this group disbanded as well, leaving Burdon and his producer, Jerry Goldstein, looking for a new band and a new sound for the singer. They found it in a Los Angeles nightclub, where a band called Nightshift was backing up former football star Deacon Jones. Burdon and Goldstein persuaded the multi-racial band to change their name to War, and got to work on an album called Eric Burdon Declares "War". The album featured mostly suites such as Blues For Memphis Slim, which was built around the bluesman's classic Mother Earth, with several added instrumental sections composed by the band. At thirteen and a half minutes, it is the longest track on the album. After a second album with the group (The double-LP The Black Man's Burdon), Eric Burdon left the group, leaving War to become one of the more popular bands of the 1970s.

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2116 (starts 4/12/21)

    This week's show begins with the longest single set ever heard on Stuck in the Psychedelic Era. From there, we continue to experiment with set lengths and song lengths, including a nearly ten minute long hit from Grand Funk Railroad and a late period Beatles set.

 Artist:    Seeds
Title:    Can't Seem To Make You Mine
Source:    Simulated stereo LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk (originally released as 45 RPM single and included on LP: The Seeds)
Writer:    Sky Saxon
Label:    Rhino (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:    1965
    One of the first psychedelic singles to hit the L.A. market in 1965 was Can't Seem To Make You Mine. The song was also chosen to lead off the first Seeds album. Indeed, it could be argued that this was the song that first defined the "flower power" sound, its local success predating that of the Seeds' biggest hit, Pushin' Too Hard, by several months.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Who's Driving Your Plane
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    London
Year:    1966
    By 1966 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were writing everything the Rolling Stones recorded. As their songwriting skills became more sophisticated the band began to lose touch with its R&B roots. To counteract this, Jagger and Richards would occasionally come up with tunes like Who's Driving Your Plane, a bluesy number that nonetheless is consistent with the band's cultivated image as the bad boys of rock. The song appeared as the B side (mistitled on the label as Who's Driving My Plane) of Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow.
Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Purple Haze
Source:    CD: The Ultimate Experience (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Are You Experienced?)
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA (original US label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    Following up on the success of their first UK single, Hey Joe, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released Purple Haze in early 1967. The popularity of the two singles (released only in Europe) led to a deal with Reprise Records to start issuing the band's material in the US. By then, however, the Experience had already released Are You Experienced without either of the two hit singles on it. Reprise, hedging their bets, included both singles (but not their B sides), as well as a third UK single, The Wind Cries Mary, deleting several tracks from the original version of Are You Experienced to make room for them.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Spoonful (live version)
Source:    LP: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s):    Willie Dixon
Label:    RSO (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    When Atco decided to release Fresh Cream in the US they chose to replace the longest song on the original 1966 British album, a cover of Willie Dixon's Spoonful, with I Feel Free, which was simultaneously released as a single in January of 1967. Because of this change, most American listeners had never heard Cream perform the song until the album Wheels Of Fire was released in 1968. The double LP album featured new studio tracks on the first two sides, and live recordings made at two of San Francisco's most famous concert venues on the other two. The longest of the four live tracks was a sixteen and a half long version of Spoonful recorded at the Winterland Ballroom (although the label reads "Live at the Fillmore"). Cream had already achieved legendary status for their ability to improvise on stage, but none of their studio recordings had reflected that aspect of the group. The live version of Spoonful heard on Wheels Of Fire quickly became an underground FM radio staple and has been considered the definitive Cream "jam" song ever since.

Artist:    Johnny Winter
Title:    I Love Everybody
Source:    LP: Second Winter
Writer(s):    Johnny Winter
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1969

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Source:    LP: Cosmo's Factory
Writer(s):    Whitfield/Stong
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1970
    Creedence Clearwater Revival were known for their tight arrangements of relatively short songs at a time when album tracks, as a general rule, were getting longer and longer. Still, there are exceptions; the most obvious of these was their cover of Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through The Grapevine on their 1970 LP Cosmo's Factory. At slightly over eleven minutes, Grapevine is CCR's longest studio recording. Despite this, according to bassist Stu Cook, the song was performed in the studio exactly as planned, with "no room for noodling". Although not a major top 40 hit, I Heard It Through The Grapevine has proved to be one of CCR's most enduring tracks, still getting occasional airplay on classic rock radio.

Artist:    Full Tilt Boogie Band
Title:    Buried Alive In The Blues
Source:    CD: The Pearl Sessions (originally released on LP: Pearl)
Writer(s):    Nick Gravenites
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1971
    The Full Tillt Boogie Band was formed in the late 60s as a side project by New York studio guitarist John Till. All the members, including Till, pianist Richard Bell, bassist Brad Campbell, drummer Clark Pierson, and organist Ken Pearson were Canadian citizens, mostly hailing from the province of Ontario. In 1969, Till, along with several other studio musicians, were tapped to become Janis Joplin's Kozmic Blues Band, backing up the vocalist on her solo debut album. Joplin, however, was not entirely comfortable with all the members of this new band, and after the album itself got mostly negative reviews from critics and fans alike, Joplin decided to disband the group, keeping only Till. Till then convinced her to use the Full Tilt Boogie Band (dropped the second "L" in Tillt) for her next album, Pearl. The new combo started touring in the spring of 1970, beginning work on the album itself that September. At the time of Joplin's sudden death on October 4, 1970, the band had completed all the basic tracks for the album; only one song, Buried Alive In The Blues, lacked a usable vocal track. Although Nick Gravenites, the Electric Flag veteran who had written the tune, offered to provide vocals for the track, the band decided to keep it an instrumental instead.

Artist:    Vanilla Fudge
Title:    Take Me For A Little While/Eleanor Rigby
Source:    LP: Vanilla Fudge
Writer(s):    Martin/Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Atco
Year:    1967
    Vanilla Fudge made their mark by doing slowed down rocked out versions of popular songs such as the Supremes' You Keep Me Hangin' On. In fact, all of the tracks on their debut LP were songs of this nature, including two Beatles tunes. Side two of the original LP featured three tracks tied together by short psychedelic instrumental pieces knowns collectively as Illusions Of My Childhood. In addition to the aforementioned Supremes cover, the side features a Trade Martin composition called Take Me For A Little While that takes a diametrically opposed viewpoint to the first song, which leads directly into Eleanor Rigby, which sort of sums up both of the previous tracks lyrically. Although the Vanilla Fudge would stick around for a couple more years (and four more albums), they were never again able to match the commercial success of their 1967 debut LP.

Artist:    Grand Funk Railroad
Title:    I'm Your Captain
Source:    CD: Closer To Home
Writer(s):    Mark Farner
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1970
    I first switched from guitar to bass during my junior year in high school, when I joined a band that already had a much better guitarist than I was, but no bass player. Like Noel Redding, I started by using an old acoustic guitar with a pickup, turning the tone control to its lowest setting. It wasn't until spring that I finally got an actual bass to play (a Hofner Beatle that I paid the German equivalent of $90 for at a small local music shop). The band itself was modeled on early power trios like Cream and Blue Cheer, which basically meant that I was playing pseudo leads in the lower register, hopefully in some sort of counterpoint to what the lead guitarist was playing. It wasn't until I returned to the States and hooked up with a band that had two guitarists and played actual songs that I learned what playing the bass was really about. One of those songs was I'm Your Captain by Grand Funk Railroad. Borrowing a copy of the Closer To Home album I listened closely to Mel Schacher's bass lines, especially the riffs on the intro to I'm Your Captain and during the transition to the song's second movement. To this day I credit Schascher as being the most important influence on my own bass playing (even though I haven't actually picked up a bass guitar since 1989).

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Julia
Source:    CD: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year:    1968
    John Lennon's songwriting continued to take a more personal turn with the 1968 release of The Beatles, also known as the White Album. Perhaps the best example of this is the song Julia. The song was written for Lennon's mother, who had been killed by a drunk driver in 1958, although it also has references to Lennon's future wife Yoko Ono (Yoko translates into English as Ocean Child). Julia is the only 100% solo John Lennon recording to appear on a Beatles album.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Abbey Road Medley #2
Source:    LP: Abbey Road
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Apple
Year:    1969
    The Beatles had been experimenting with songs leading into other songs since the Sgt. Pepper's album. With Abbey Road they took it a step further, with side two of the album containing two such medleys (although some rock historians treat it as one long medley). The second one consists of three songs credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney: Golden Slumbers is vintage McCartney, while Carry That Weight has more of a Lennon feel to it. The final section,The End, probably should have been credited to the entire band, as it contains the only Ringo Starr drum solo on (a Beatles) record as well as three sets of alternating lead guitar solos (eight beats each) from Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon (in that order).

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Glass Onion
Source:    CD: The Beatles
Writer(s):    Lennon/McCartney
Label:    Parlophone (original label: Apple)
Year:    1968
    John Lennon decided to have a little fun with Beatles fans when he wrote the lyrics to Glass Onion, the third song on the 1968 album The Beatles (aka the White Album). The song contains references to many earlier Beatles tunes, such as Strawberry Fields Forever, The Fool On The Hill and Lady Madonna. Glass Onion even contains a tongue-in-cheek reference to the whole "Paul is dead" rumor with the lines "Here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul". The track is notable for being the first song on the album to feature the entire band, as Paul McCartney played drums on both Back In The USSR and Dear Prudence, which precede Glass Onion on the album's first side.

Artist:     Mountain
Title:     Theme From An Imaginary Western
Source:     CD: Woodstock 2
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown
Label:     Atlantic
Year:     1969
     Keyboardist Felix Pappaliardi worked closely with the band Cream in the studio, starting with the album Disraeli Gears, so it was only natural that his new band Mountain would perform (and record) at least one song by Cream's primary songwriting team, Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. If Mississippi Queen was guitarist Leslie West's signature song, then Theme From An Imaginary Western was Felix's, at least until Nantucket Sleighride came along. This particular recording, from the Woodstock 2 album, sounds like a different performance than the one heard on the Rhino 40th anniversary box set. The story I heard is that the band was unhappy with the actual Woodstock recording (due to both technical and performance flaws) and provided an alternate live recording to be used on the original LP. The fact that the 40th anniversary version includes a section where the vocals are inaudible, but that are clearly heard on this recording, adds credibility to that story.

Artist:    Moby Grape
Title:    Boysenberry Jam
Source:    LP: Grape Jam
Writer(s):    Spence/Miller/Stevenson/Mosley
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1968
    For their second album, San Francisco's Moby Grape decided to throw in something extra. Instead of a single LP at the standard price, the group added a second album for just a dollar more. This second album, packaged in its own cover, was made up of a series of jam sessions featuring various band members, with a couple of guest artists thrown in. One of the hardest rocking of these was Boysenberry Jam, which features guitarist Jerry Miller, drummer Don Stevenson and bassist Bob Mosley on their usual instruments, along with Skip Spence playing the piano. This was really not all that much of a stretch, given that Spence, normally a guitarist, had been the original drummer of Jefferson Airplane, proving his versatility.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Positively 4th Street
Source:    CD: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    Recorded during the same 1965 sessions that produced the classic Highway 61 Revisited album, Positively 4th Street was deliberately held back for release as a single later that year. The stereo mix of the song was not issued until the first Dylan Greatest Hits album was released in 1967.

Artist:    Blues Project
Title:    I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes
Source:    Mono CD: Projections
Writer(s):    Blind Willie Johnson
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Verve Folkways)
Year:    1966
    One lasting legacy of the British Invasion was the re-introduction to the US record-buying public to the songs of early Rhythm and Blues artists such as Blind Willie Johnson. This emphasis on classic blues in particular would lead to the formation of electric blues-based US bands such as the Butterfield Blues Band and the Blues Project. Unlike the Butterfields, who made a conscious effort to remain true to their Chicago-style blues roots, the Blues Project was always looking for new ground to cover, which ultimately led to them developing an improvisational style that would be emulated by west coast bands such as the Grateful Dead, and by Project member Al Kooper, who conceived and produced the first rock jam LP ever, Super Session, in 1968. As the opening track to their second (and generally considered best) LP Projections, I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes served notice that this was a new kind of blues, louder and brasher than what had come before, yet tempered with Kooper's melodic vocal style. An added twist was the use during the song's instrumental bridge of an experimental synthesizer known among band members as the "Kooperphone", probably the first use of any type of synthesizer in a blues record.

Artist:    Third Bardo
Title:    I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time
Writer(s):    Evans/Pike
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Roulette)
Year:    1967

Artist:    Frumious Bandersnatch
Title:    Cheshire
Source:    British import CD: The Berkeley EPs (originally released on untitled EP)
Writer(s):    Jack King
Label:    Big Beat (original label: Muggles Gramophone Works)
Year:    1968
    The longest track on the Frumious Bandersnatch EP (taking up the entire second side of the record), was a tune called Cheshire. Although the recent British CD issue of The Berkeley EPs credits Bob Winkleman as the writer of the piece, the liner notes of the same CD make it clear that Cheshire is actually the work of drummer Jackson King; in fact, the song dates back to the band's earliest days with its original lineup. Like the band name itself, the title of the track reflects King's intense interest in the works of Lewis Carroll.   
Artist:     Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:     Monterey
Source:     CD: Best of Eric Burdon and the Animals (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Burdon/Briggs/Weider/McCulloch/Jenkins
Year:     1968
     After the original Animals broke up in late 1966, lead vocalist Eric Burdon recorded a solo album, Eric Is Here, using mostly studio musicians, but credited officially to Eric Burdon And The Animals. He then set about organizing a new Animals band that included drummer Barry Jenkins (who had been a member of the original band and had played on Eric Is Here), guitarist/violinist John Weider, guitarist/pianist Vic Briggs and bassist Danny McCulloch. One of the first appearances of the New Animals on stage was at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The experience (pun intended) so impressed the group that they wrote a song about it. The song was issued both as a single and on the LP: The Twain Shall Meet. The single used a mono mix; the LP version, while in stereo, was overlapped at both the beginning and end by adjoining tracks, and was missing the first few seconds of the single version. The version used here was created by splicing the mono intro onto the stereo main portion of the song, fading it a bit early to avoid the overlap from the LP. This process (called making a "cut down") was first done by a company called Drake-Chenault, which supplied tapes to radio stations using the most pristine stereo versions of songs available. Whether Polydor used the Drake-Chenault version or did the cut down itself, the version is the same.