Strawberry Alarm Clock — “Birdman of Alkatrash”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — February 14, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,111) Strawberry Alarm Clock — “Birdman of Alkatrash”

Would you believe me if I told you that the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s (see #127, 272, 901) groovy and era-defining #1 “Incense and Peppermints” was originally the B-side and the loony, “sneering[, ] punkish” (Bruce Eder, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/strawberry-alarm-clock-mn0000633079/biography) and garagey “Birdman” was originally the A-side?

“Birdman” has a very Seeds-y “Pushin Too Hard” (see #116) vibe. It gets a lot of abuse, such as “My dog hates this one… he thinks there’s a duck at the door!!” (Hugo Masekela, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWNBFX7KPp8). But it’s a great track. Quack!

Jeremy writes that:

The song, offering a humorous pun on the ‘birdman of Alcatraz’ inmate Robert Stroud, is self-consciously silly, bobbing merrily along on the strength of its playful music. . . . [and] much softer than the band’s previous raveups, scattered around various singles under their original name Thee Sixpence. . . . The more rounded edges and goony nature of the song are largely due to the keyboard and the warped lead guitar riffs. “The Birdman Of Alkatrash” was not chosen for inclusion on Strawberry Alarm Clock’s first album, Incense And Peppermints. . . . despite the finished album being a mere 30 minutes in length. It would perhaps have sounded too out of place. In a sense, the song stands as a final goodbye to the Clock’s formative months.

https://www.unwindwithsac.com/songs/the-birdman-of-alkatrash

What was going on with “Birdman” and “Incense” and where did the SAC come from? Eyehate Werk explains that manager Bill Holmes made “Birdman” the A-side “to appease the band. None of them liked ‘Incense…’”. (https://www.45cat.com/record/373aa). Bruce Eder writes that:

[“Incense and Peppermints”] was “just” a B-side . . . that would be forgotten as soon as “The Birdman of Alkatrash” started to get airplay, if it ever did. . . . The All-American single . . . began getting airplay, but it was the B-side . . . that DJs were choosing and airing. Enter Uni Records, a newly established imprint of American Decca and its parent company, MCA, who picked it up for national distribution. . . . The song swept across the airwaves gradually, fueling a sales wave that built into a number one chart placement over the next three months, in November of 1967.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/strawberry-alarm-clock-mn0000633079

BetaMaster64 says that the single was initially released under the SAC’s prior name — Thee Sixpence:

I contacted George Bunnell, a member of SAC, about the original release of I&P, and he said that the single was released originally as Thee Sixpence with Birdman as side A. The single was only in stores for a short time before they were all withdrawn and probably thrown away. Who knows how many Sixpence singles made it…probably not many besides the ones the band members have.

https://www.45cat.com/record/373aa

As to SAC, Bruce Eder tells us that:

Strawberry Alarm Clock occupies a peculiar niche in the history of ’60s rock. Their name is as well known to anyone who lived through the late-’60s psychedelic era as that of almost any group one would care to mention, mostly out of its sheer, silly trippiness as a name and their one major hit, “Incense and Peppermints,” which today is virtually the tonal equivalent of a Summer of Love flashback. But there was a real group there, with members who had played for a long time on the Southern California band scene, who were proficient on their instruments and who sang well and generated four whole LPs . . . . The band’s origins go back to Glendale, CA, in the mid-’60s, and a group then known as the Sixpence. It was 1965 and all things British were still a selling point, so the name made as much sense as anything else. . . . They mostly did covers of then-popular hits and developed a considerable following in Glendale and also in Santa Barbara, playing there so often that a lot of histories have them coming out of Santa Barbara.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/strawberry-alarm-clock-mn0000633079/biography

Here are Chile’s Los Doltons:

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