THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
2,060) Mark Erickson & The Point Dume Boys — “Hey, in the Water”
Brian Wilson’s greatest lost album is actually . . . Mark Eric Malmborg’s A Midsummer’s Day Dream (see #326, 948, 1,626)! It is “one of the lost slices of pop perfection from late 60’s Southern California” (Bill Wikstrom, http://talkaboutpoppopmusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/mark-eric-midsummers-day-dream.html), a “beautiful album” that “catch[es] the tail end of LA’s pop innocence perfectly, just as it was gone forever”. (https://www.lpcdreissues.com/item/a-midsummer-s-day)
This infectious, jazzy ode to a Malibu girl in the water post-dates Day Dream. Bad Cat Records informs us that “Eric subsequently turned his time and attention to modeling, commercials and acting, briefly appearing in a number of early-1970s television shows including The Partridge Family and Hawaii 5-0.” (http://badcatrecords.com/ERICmark.htm). But he also, as Brad Kyle writes, “in 1971 . . ponied up the dough to fashion his own indy label . . . . [and] recorded ‘Hey, In the Water’”. (https://bradkyle.substack.com/p/audio-autopsy-1969-mark-eric-and) But, “[t]his vanity-pressed 45 … probably didn’t make it to the public’s ear.” (liner notes to the CD comp Soft Sounds for Gentle People 4) If so, it was the public’s loss.
Bad Cat Records goes on about the album:
[The LP is] probably the best Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys album they never released. . . . Interestingly, Eric and his collaborator/arranger former Animals guitarist Vic Briggs apparently wrote these twelve tracks as demos intending to place them with other acts. . . . but the results were so impressive that Revue decided to release it as a Marc Eric effort. Musically the album was already several years out of step with popular tastes so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to see the parent LP and singles vanish directly into cutout bins.
About Mark Eric, Bryan Thomas tells us:
L.A. native Mark Eric was leading the Southern California dream life in his teens — surfing by day and writing songs about girls by night — before his musical talents drew him to Hollywood. He was 16 when he met Russ Regan, then at Warner Bros., but his first break came while waiting in the lobby of label honcho Lou Sadler’s office. There he met Bob Raucher, an engineer at local KHJ radio station . . . . Raucher took a liking to the suntanned surfer/songwriter, and, under his “personal management,” Eric was soon recording at Gold Star studios in Hollywood. One of his songs was later recorded by the Four Freshmen . . . . Subsequent sessions by Eric, backed with studio musicians, led to another meeting with Regan, now heading up UNI . . , who signed the promising soft pop singer to the label. Eric only recorded one album . . . which was released in 1969 on UNI’s R&B subsidiary, Revue Records. . . . One of [Erik’s] songs, “Fly Me a Place for the Summer,” was later recorded by the Mike Curb Congregation [see #57] for an airline commercial. . . .
Eric’s charming, somewhat imperfect falsetto (in a somewhat obvious homage to Brian Wilson) hints at a subterranean layer of loneliness throughout. His self-penned, broken-hearted Beach Boys-style ballads . . . are, in fact, the perfect vehicle for his faltering upper-register voice.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mark-eric-mn0000273359, https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-midsummers-day-dream-mw0000663846
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,500 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 