THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
Brace for the Obscure 60’s Rock has reached a new millennium. It has been one crazy magic carpet ride since I started the blog in 2021 — 2000 songs and beyond. Its origin and purpose is not a total mystery to me. As I said when I started out, it is to present the fruits of my labor of attempting to listen to every pop/rock/soul song released or recorded in the “Sixties” to anyone who might be interested — the most magical songs I have discovered in my quest that most people, even if they regularly listen to 60’s pop, are unlikely to have heard (at least in the U.S.). I love putting my blog together. I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do. As I also said when I started, I plan to keep posting songs until there aren’t any more worthy of inclusion. Should that require me to be reincarnated, so be it. George Harrison would be proud. Please share my ultimate trip.
I start off with an encore performance by the IBM 7094 computer, whose rendition of “Daisy Bell” inspired HAL 9000’s rendition in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Song #2001 is the Smoke’s “Odyssey”. Song #2002 is the Millennium’s “I’m with You”.
135 [repeat]) IBM 7094 — “Daisy Bell”
“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage. I can’t afford the carriage. But you’d look sweet on the seat of a bicycle built for two.”
It is one of the most iconic scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Discovery’s supercomputer HAL murders astronaut Frank Poole after suffering a ”mental” breakdown possibly the result of being put in the position of having to lie to the ship’s crew about the true purpose of its mission. Commander David Bowman must then wrest away control of the Jupiter-bound spaceship by turning off HAL’s “consciousness” module by module. HAL is fully-aware if what is happening, and expresses existential angst:
HAL: I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.
HAL: Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.
David Bowman: Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL: It’s called “Daisy.”
This moment elicits tremendous audience sympathy for HAL, which is quite an achievement by Kubrick as 1) HAL is a computer, and 2) HAL has just murdered almost the entire crew of the Discovery. But consciousness is consciousness, and we can all imagine what it must be like to witness ours slipping away. HAL is experiencing a sort of self-aware rapid onset dementia, which is in common parlance today in a way it wasn’t in 1968.
OK, but what does any of this have to do with the greatest songs of the 1960‘s that no one has ever heard? The scene is famous, and, anyway, “Daisy” was written in the 19th Century! Well, as Cary O’Dell with the Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound division of the Library of Congress explains, there is a connection, one whose first link was forged in 1892:
The song “Daisy Bell” . . . was written in 1892 by an Englishman, Harry Dacre. Legend has it that Dacre . . . came upon the idea for the song during a visit to America. On his trip . . . Dacre had brought with him his bicycle and, when he docked, much to his chagrin, he was promptly charged a duty on it by US customs. Later, bemoaning the fee to fellow songwriter William Jerome, Jerome stated it was a good thing Dacre didn’t bring with him a “bicycle built for two” as he’d be charged a twin duty. Smitten with the phrase “a bicycle built for two,” Dacre decided it would work well in a song. And so “Daisy Bell” was born. “Daisy” was first made famous by British music hall performer Katie (Kate) Lawrence. Since being introduced into the musical vernacular, the song has been endlessly revived, recorded, expanded, lyrically rewritten, parodied, and translated.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/DaisyBell.pdf
The story picks up again in 1961 and involves a cover version of “Daisy,” one distinguished by being performed by an IBM computer:
One of “Daisy Bell’s” most radical and interesting uses . . . arrived in 1961 via IBM and a team of visionary computer programmers. That year . . . Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, made, for the first time, an artificial device “sing.” And the song it sang was the turn of the century ditty . . . . For years the demonstration was part of the formal tour of Bell Labs. In the early 1960s, when science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke visited . . . he took special note of this singing and talking computer. Later, as the author of . . . “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Clarke incorporated it into its screenplay. In the 1968 film, when . . . HAL (whose anagram coincidentally is just one letter alphabetically away from IBM) is switched off (essentially killed), “he” (the voice of actor Douglas Rain) sings “Daisy Bell” as power ebbs out of his circuits.
https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/DaisyBell.pdf
So, to make a long story short, here is #135 of the greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard, IBM’s 1961 cover version of “Daisy Bell”:
And here is the original 1894 hit by the original artist:
2,001) The Smoke — “Odyssey”
This “masterpiece”, “suite-like and full of beautiful, complex passages” (Jason, https://therisingstorm.net/the-smoke-self-titled/), is from “certainly one of the best US pop-psych albums, straddling the edge of soft-rock light psych like Sagittarius, but rocking out quite a bit more convincingly. There’s a definite Beach Boys [see #667, 1,825] influence, but the soaring vocal arrangements and guitar-based song structures move in a direction those Boys never dared tread.” (Aaron Milenski, The Acid Archives, 2nd ed.)
Jason talks of the LP:
This was a Michael Lloyd studio band that released just one album which mysteriously appeared in 1968[ and] is a much better soft popsike record than Lloyd’s earlier release, the October Country LP [no way, see #624, 1,702, 1,905] . . . . [It] was created while Lloyd was in between stints with the crazed, ill-fated West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band [see #197, 488]. The Smoke dedicated this obscure release to Stuart Sutcliffe and the band cannot help but pay homage to their obsessions, the Beatles [see #28-29, 113, 132, 374, 422-23, 520-22, 545, 669, 779-81, 840, 872, 942, 1,087, 1,256, 1,437, 1,473, 1,910] and the Beach Boys. There are no duff tracks on this soft pop masterpiece . . . .
Bryan Thomas adds:
Copies of the Smoke’s self-titled album are highly valued by collectors of West Coast soft rock and psychedelic music. The album certainly deserves its reputation as one of the masterpieces of 1968. . . . Lloyd had met [Brian] Wilson after Beach Boy Bruce Johnston invited him to the recording sessions for “Good Vibrations.” In addition to Beach Boys-style production values, there are also references to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band throughout.
Wikipedia recounts Michael Lloyd’s early years:
By the age of 13, he had formed his own band . . . at the same time continuing to take lessons in music theory and composition. He also started writing songs and pitching them to record labels in Los Angeles, including Tower Records, a subsidiary of Capitol. By Lloyd’s own account, Eddie Ray, the head of A&R at Tower, suggested that the teenage Lloyd work with Mike Curb [see #57], and the pair began collaborating on songs and record production. Other sources suggest that Lloyd and Curb were introduced to each other by Kim Fowley [see #89, 449], who had signed Lloyd to a song-publishing deal. Lloyd also recorded surf music as a member of the New Dimensions, a group that included Jimmy Greenspoon, later of Three Dog Night. Around 1964, Lloyd began performing with brothers Shaun and Danny Harris . . . . Together they formed a group initially called the Rogues, later renamed the Laughing Wind. They recorded demos with Fowley, who then introduced the band to Bob Markley, a law graduate and aspiring performer who had already had his own TV show in Oklahoma. With Fowley’s support and Markley’s financial backing, Lloyd became a member of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band with the Harris brothers, Markley and drummer John Ware, releasing an album, Part One, in 1967. Fowley also released some of the Laughing Wind’s demos, with other tracks featuring Markley, as Volume One, credited to the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Lloyd left the band shortly afterward, but returned to contribute to their 1969 album Where’s My Daddy?. In 1967, Lloyd wrote songs and produced [a] Fowley[] solo album . . . . Curb allowed Lloyd to use his Hollywood Boulevard studios, and together with . . . Stan Ayeroff and Steve Baim . . . Lloyd wrote and produced an album, The Smoke . . . . Lloyd also provided the music for Steven Spielberg’s first short film, Amblin’, and worked with Curb on other movie soundtracks, including The Devil’s 8 . . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lloyd_(music_producer)
I knew that Fowley had to be somehow involved!
Jim lrvin and Tim Forster let Lloyd tell the story of Smoke:
[“]Mike Curb had this great studio called Hollywood Boulevard and he let me spend about six months there making an album. It was just me and those two guys. No engineers, no anything.” Thus was born The Smoke. Michael song lead vocals, played bass and keyboards while “those two guys” were Stan Ayeroff, who co-wrote three of the songs and played guitar, and Steve Baim who played drums. . . . Lloyd poured everything he’d learnt into the album. . . . [“]Obviously The Beatles and The Beach Boys were a prime motivation. I think I’ve always been trying to catch up with them.” There are overt Beatles references throughout the record . . . . the lush arrangements featur[ing] Pepperesque bursts of trumpet, strings, harpsichord and lashings of sweet singing. . . . As records by Beatle-obsessed youths of the ’60s go, it all remains remarkably fresh . . . . [But] the album flopped. “I don’t know if anybody really knew what to make of it,” sighs Lloyd. “We never went on to play live as The Smoke as I’d planned.[“]
https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2026/06/rep-smoke-smoke-1968-us-beautiful.html (MOJO, January 1998)
Lloyd talks about himself:
Referred to as a boy genius at the start of his career Michael Lloyd has certainly proven that right. . . . [T]he prolific and talented record producer has accumulated in excess of 100 gold and platinum records well over 72 albums and 34 singles collecting numerous #1 singles and albums. Lloyd’s records . . . rang[e] from Pop & Rock to Country & Jazz, R&B & Gospel . . . . His various chart records span five decades, from the 60’s to the present. Additionally, Lloyd has provided scoring, music supervision, song writing, song placement and or music producing for well over 100 motion pictures, 16 TV movies, 13 television specials & 35 television series. . . . As well as being the music supervisor for the motion picture, and the Dirty Dancing album . . Michael produced the blockbuster hits “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life” for Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, “Yes” by Merry Clayton [see #53] and “She’s Like The Wind” by Patrick Swayze. . . [H]e met Mike Curb, which began a long and fruitful friendship and business association . . . . Curb put Lloyd to work scoring motion pictures, and a few years later, when Curb became president of MGM Records, he brought Lloyd, then 20 years old, in as vice president of A & R. At MGM Records, Lloyd signed Lou Rawls, which generated Lloyd’s first major hit, “A Natural Man”. Some of the artists Lloyd has worked with over the years include Barry Manilow, Belinda Carlisle, Kimberley Locke, Dionne Warwick, Steve Holy, Natalie Grant, Bill Medley, Benny Mardones, Stryper, Jennifer Warnes, The Righteous Brothers, The Monkees [see #1,718], Shaun Cassidy, Eric Carman, The Bellamy Brothers, The Burrito Brothers, The New Seekers, Sammy Davis Jr., Air Supply, Carmen, Jeffrey Osborne, The Osmonds, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Bill Medley, Tamara Walker, The Pointer Sisters, Leif Garrett, Susie Alllanson, Brush Arbor, Donny & Marie, Maureen McGovern, Roger Williams, Merry Clayton, Debby Boone, and Frank Sinatra [see #1,455] . . . .
2,002) The Millennium — “I’m with You”
Written by Lee Mallory (see #18, 1,693, 1,885-86), seemingly sung by a truly heavenly choir, and “offer[ing] up a slice of top caliber Association[ see #1,264]-styled sunshine pop.” (http://badcatrecords.com/MILLENNIUM.htm) Matthew Greenwald writes:
A lush, slightly syncopated pop melody guides the verses, and then turns into a more standard 4/4 rock time in the chorus. A quasi-mystical love song, it could easily be directed at a lover or a “creator.” In this way, the song indeed captures the somewhat skewed but disarming utopian vision of the [Millennium’s] album [Begin]. A brilliant arrangement with multiple guitar overdubs caps off the recording with buoyant, almost geometric precision.
Sunshine pop went supernova with the Millennium (see #397, 506, 586, 662, 810, 1,002), a 60’s sunshine supergroup that created Begin, the greatest sunshine pop album ever recorded. Begin cost more to make than any other album from ’68 other than The Beatles (the White Album)— and no one bought it (at least until era of CD reissues). As Richie Unterberger writes, it was “at once too unabashedly commercial for underground FM radio and too weird for the AM dial.” (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-millennium-mn0000814312) Dominique Leone says the album, “probably the single greatest 60s pop record produced in L.A. outside of The Beach Boys . . . found itself very much outside the times that year.” (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5546-pieces/) Noel Murray sagely adds:
On the surface, the music . . . is right in the mainstream of radio-friendly pop from 1966-68. [The] songs had the angelic harmonies of The Association and The Mamas & The Papas [see #1,734], the aspirational naïveté of The Beach Boys, the live-inside-the-music atmospherics of The Beatles, and the lysergic tinge of every California band from San Francisco on down. But [Curt] Boettcher [see #1,881, 1,886] and [Gary] Usher were also interested in the avant-garde and classical music, and their highbrow approach to the sweet and fluffy didn’t connect in an era where rock ’n’ roll was getting harder and rowdier. . . .
Matthew Greenwald rightly fawns over Begin:
The Millennium’s Begin is a bona fide lost classic. The brainchild of producers Curt Boettcher and Gary Usher, the group was formed out of the remnants of their previous studio project, Sagittarius — which had been preceded by yet another aggregation, the Ballroom [see #707]. On Begin, hard rock, breezy ballads, and psychedelia all merge into an absolutely air-tight concept album, easily on the level of other, more widely popular albums from the era such as The Notorious Byrd Brothers, which share not only Usher’s production skills, but similarities in concept and construction. The songwriting . . . is sterling and innovative . . . . Begin is an absolute necessity for any fan of late-’60s psychedelia and a wonderful rediscovery; it sounds as vital today as it did the day it was released.
Finally, Jamobo:
[Begin] is notable as being the second album to use 16-track recording and the group made the most out of that here. Wonderfully lush music that sweeps you in with its fantastic harmonies, both in the instruments and in the vocals, and with the individual melodies that grab your attention instantly and have you singing along by the end of the song. . . . [It] manages to capture a wonderful part of the the era that is was created in, but also remains timeless through its use of gorgeous melodies, harmonies and instrumentation.
https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/jamobo/album/91645-begin/
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