THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,700) The Strawberry Alarm Clock — “World’s on Fire”
Light some incense and pop some peppermints, here is an “epic psychedelic jam” (The Recoup, https://therecoup.com/2013/11/01/strawberry-alarm-clock-incense-and-peppermintswake-up-its-tomorrow-tune-in/) off of the SAC’s (see #127, 272, 901, 1,111) first LP that “the listener is assured of getting blissfully lost in” (ochsfan, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-strawberry-alarm-clock/incense-and-peppermints-1/), “[o]ne of the grooviest song ever!!!” (mixaliskokkinos1496, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbMxAfHNcjc), “Tapping into the[ir] improvisational side . . . [it is] an 8 minute plus track assembled of thrashing congas, weaving guitar escapades and repetitious but right on drumming. Hypnotic to the core, the long winded piece demonstrates just how good the fellows were at doing the jam thing.” (Beverly Paterson, https://somethingelsereviews.com/2012/01/18/the-strawberry-alarm-clock-incense-and-peppermints-1967-2011-reissue/) The SAC’s 7th best song ever! — “I love the psychedelic opening of this grand track.” (Millie Zeiler, https://www.classicrockhistory.com/top-10-strawberry-alarm-clock-songs/)
“[I]t’s the classic cosmic Krautrock sound years before anyone would know what that meant.” (ashratom, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-strawberry-alarm-clock/incense-and-peppermints-1/) What?! Don’t listen to ashtatom, fake news!
Bassist George Bunnell describes how the song came to be:
It was originally called “Colors on the Wall”. . . . [T]hat one we wrote . . . it was like we were probably in the 11th grade or something like that. We were probably 16 or 17. That one there, it was from taking pot and taking acid and that thing. It was “Colors on the Wall”. It was written by the keyboard player in my other band, The Waterfront Train Band, Fred Schwartz. . . . [H]e’s the one that had the idea of it. He and I sat. I have a cassette tape of him and I figuring out the bass part to that song and his organ part. He did the organ. He mostly wrote the lyrics about that thing. Then [our] manager [Bill Holmes] said, No, it’s about drugs. We can’t use it. So he changed the lyrics to… He called it… What did he call it? “A Beautiful World” or something first. And then he changed it to “Worlds on Fire”, and dancing flames. So he changed the lyrics. Oh, and there was a reason behind him, abruptly changing the lyrics. . . . [T]he manager told Fred . . . that we finished recording the music, and Fred said, “Well, you can’t have the song. We’re going to record it, and our band is going to do it. You guys can’t have it”. The manager got really mad at him, and then Fred chased him around the dressing room with a phone. It had a cord attached to it then. He was chasing him with the receiver. It was nuts. . .. So that night, Bill Holmes went home and wrote “World’s on Fire”, those lyrics. We went in the next day, basically, or the day after that, and did the vocal sessions with all the harmonies and stuff. Wow. Yeah, that’s how that came about, and he didn’t take credit for it.
https://psychedelicscene.com/2024/07/07/interview-george-bunnell-of-strawberry-alarm-clock/
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 is the short version:
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