I think Daverenick5830 would rename the song “Sitting by the Styx”, with a “kind of whirling ominous hurricane of sound between verses that undercuts the happy lyrics, like the couple by the riverside is just a happy flimsy little daydream layered over an awful nightmare, like those vaudevillian tunes penned during the nightmare depression”. (daverenick5830, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80o__1OkB8M)
Wikipedia relates that:
Ray Davies was inspired to compose “Sitting by the Riverside” after reminiscing about childhood fishing expeditions with his father. The song’s narrator expresses his pleasure at sitting and drinking wine with his partner by the riverside . . . . Johnny Rogan considers the song one of several by Davies about “the beauty of a quiet life”, suggesting its mood of “lazy resignation” is reminiscent of “Sunny Afternoon” . . . . Rob Jovanovic . . . [says it] convey[s] imagery of simple village life. . . . The narrator closing his eyes results in a rush of overwhelming memories and fear, accompanying which is a swelling cacophony. A section of rising dissonance between verses serves to briefly undermine the idyllic mood, before cutting back to the pleasant feeling of the verse. . . . The recording features honky-tonk piano and a Mellotron . . . which duplicates the sound of an accordion. The dissonant section between verses features rising piano strings. Its wordless chorus and orchestral crescendo are reminiscent of “A Day in the Life” . . . . While the studio version of the song was recorded in July 1968, Davies did not include it on the twelve-track edition of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, planned for release in September 1968. After he delayed the album’s release by two months to expand its track listing to fifteen, it was among the songs he added.
Stephen Thomas Erlewine tells us of the immortal LP:
Ray Davies’ sentimental, nostalgic streak emerged on Something Else, but it developed into a manifesto on The Village Green Preservation Society, a concept album lamenting the passing of old-fashioned English traditions. As the opening title song says, the Kinks — meaning Ray himself, in this case — were for preserving “draught beer and virginity,” and throughout the rest of the album, he creates a series of stories, sketches, and characters about a picturesque England that never really was. It’s a lovely, gentle album, evoking a small British country town, and drawing the listener into its lazy rhythms and sensibilities. Although there is an undercurrent of regret running throughout the album, Davies’ fondness for the past is warm, making the album feel like a sweet, hazy dream. And considering the subdued performances and the detailed instrumentations, it’s not surprising that the record feels more like a Ray Davies solo project than a Kinks album. . . . [T]he album is so calm. But calm doesn’t mean tame or bland — there are endless layers of musical and lyrical innovation . . . and its defiantly British sensibilities became the foundation of generations of British guitar pop.
Scheduled for release on September 27th [1968], th[e] 12 song Village Green album was soon canceled under Ray’s wishes. He had asked Pye, their label, to have some additional time to track new songs, and perhaps even expand it into a 20-track double LP. The label reluctantly agreed, and so in September, they recorded an additional two songs for the record, them being “Big Sky” and “Last of the Steam Powered Trains”, and started to mix the new double LP. However, Pye weren’t that confident in the band back then. The failure of their latest single, “Wonderboy”, which barely made the top 30 in England, had left a bad taste in their mouths, and a double LP by them would be a big bet. They decided to nix the idea, much to Davies’ anger and insisted on it being a single album. As a compromise, however, they decided to allow the album to feature fifteen tracks, instead of the original twelve. That meant two tracks would be removed, them being “Days” and “Mr. Songbird”, and the two newly recorded songs and three outtakes would be added.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,590) Dave Waite & Marianne Segal — “Paper Flowers”
The dorks at Polydor didn’t release this glittering UK folk rock gem?! They folked themselves. It would have been a hit!
Richard Allen tells us that “[t]hree tracks, ‘Paper Flowers’, ‘It’s Really Quite Alright’ and ‘I Can’t Love You More’, were produced in 1969 by Jon Miller for a possible single and whilst these employed Phil Dennys’ rich orchestration and the work of top sessions musicians such as Herbie Flowers and Barry Morgan, they were never released.” (excerpt from No Sense of Time, https://mariannesegal-jade.com/audio/) Marianne Segal recalls:
Dave said he’d written a song. We tried it and it worked, so we recorded it! The first version is a recording . . . produced by Jon Miller and arranged by Phil Dennis for a possible single in 1969 on Polydor. The second version is a demo.
liner notes to the CD comp Dave Waite & Marianne Segal: Paper Flowers
Forced Exposure tells us more:
Before the legendary ’70s UK folk rock band Jade, there was a folk duo — Dave Waite and Marianne Segal. Well known on the live circuit of the mid- to late ’60s, Dave and Marianne slung guitars in the boot of their Triumph and travelled the university and folk clubs of England at a time when folk was groovy and Carnaby Street was still swinging. Their music was a fusion of English and American contemporary folk artists such as John Renbourne, Bert Jansch, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Mamas and The Papas and Peter Paul and Mary but it also contained a spark of ever-so-English vocal purity that gave the duo a sound more suited to the label ‘folk-pop.’ . . . [Paper Flowers, the CD collection of their unreleased songs from this era is] one of the great lost UK folk albums of the 1960s. In part comparable to Sandy Denny and The Strawbs and with the folk-pop sensibilities of US West Coast contemporaries such as The Mamas and Papas, [it] is a rare acoustic snapshot of an era known more for its volume and wild theatrics than for its gentle rustic melodies. Paper Flowers is the sound of summer days in Hampstead, beautiful people, beautiful clothes, incense, innocence and mythic ’60s mystery. Marianne and Dave weave magical harmonies on original and contemporary ’60s folk material . . . .
The duo, and the two years we had with it, was the sweetest of times, however the “groovy” element was, as now, a media myth. If you had cash or a “thing” then you could “groove” but for most people life went on as usual in its post World-War Two shades of concrete grey. Yet, for Marianne and I, the world was wide open and we were able to work in the places we wanted to go, and do exactly what we wanted, when we wanted. Despite the subsequent canonisation of the ’60’s I suppose we really did have a groovy time and in retrospect what could be better than that?
liner notes to the CD comp Dave Waite & Marianne Segal: Paper Flowers
Richie Unterberger tells us more, more:
Both Dave Waite and Marian Segal are most known for their work as two-thirds of the obscure early-’70s folk-rock group Jade, who released an album highly similar in approach to the first two albums Fairport Convention [see #1,199] made with Sandy Denny as singer in the late ’60s. Prior to forming Jade, however, Waite and Segal worked as a folk duo, playing material that trod on similar territory as Denny did in her pre-folk-rock days, though it was more influenced by the pop-folk of acts such as the Seekers (and, in the latter part of the Waite-Segal partnership, Joni Mitchell).
Dave Waite . . . grew up in the South London suburbs in a very musical family. By the mid-1950s, he was – in his own words – “a dedicated guitar freak” . . . . By the late 1950s, [he] was in and out of various trios and duos until 1960 when he became part of The Countrymen who . . . traded a clean cut, middle of the road folk-pop sound that was very popular with BBC variety audiences. They issued recordings on Pye and had both a TV and radio series. . . . By 1967, The Countrymen had fallen apart after management wrangles so Dave was looking for something new . . . . Playing solo at universities and folk clubs he honed his style . . . . A chance meeting in 1967 cemented the musical union that was to give birth to Jade. Dave spotted Marian performing . . . . “I was looking for something and so was she. We wanted to play the same material and best of all what I saw and heard that night with her oh-so English voice, counterpoised against a transatlantic guitar style, told me she was the other part of what I wanted to be doing”. From that moment on, Dave Waite and Marian Segal became a well-known duo on the UK folk scene . . . . Marian progressed to writing her own songs but she did not feel confident with them in a live environment until Dave began to encourage her. Six months into 1968, Marian finally felt confident enough to include her songs in the duo’s set list . . . . Dave recalls: “They loved Marian’s songs and the places she took them to, in just one line. I stood and saw how she made the connection between herself and the audience.” By this time, the duo had attracted the attention of famed folk agent Sandy Glennon, who took them under his wing . . . . Eventually, and after much hard work, Dave and Marian established themselves on the circuit which enabled them to work at clubs all over the UK . . . . [and] regular radio spots . . . and appearances on regional television shows . . . . In 1969, Sandy Glennon introduced them to record producer Jon Miller. Jon . . . . hooked up with Dick James to form a publishing company, Jamil, that aimed to sign up new British acts. He invited Dave and Marian to record some demos and as a result, the duo signed to DJM for both publishing and recording. . . . Realising that times were changing and that the ‘60s pop folk sound had become dated . . . Miller decided that [they] should move away from the lightweight American style folk sound and travel in a heavier, more progressive direction. He introduced Rod Edwards, one half of The Piccadilly Line (later Edwards Hand) [see #151, 663, 806, 813, 911] and came up with the name Jade whilst also offering to manage the group.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,589) Doug Ashdown — “Something Strange”
Here is one of the firsts songs written by Australia’s folk giant Doug Ashdown (see #1,375). Brilliant.
Ashdown tells us of Ashdown:
After playing lead guitar in a Shadows/Beatles cover band, I descended into the subterranean world of the folk clubs where I became a Dylan impersonator supreme. My first real break came when I recorded my debut album for CBS. I think it garnered me a tin record for 25 sales! My album Source released in 1968 featured one of my first compositions “Something Strange”. I got busy writing my own songs and began to write with Jim Stewart. Jim and I co-wrote an album called the Age Of Mouse. Featuring the band Fraternity, it was the first double album of original material released in Australia. I then travelled to Nashville where I lived and worked for three years. While there I met many great writers and singers, ate and drank lots of “country breakfasts” and co-wrote many songs. One of these, “Just Thank Me”, became a number one country hit for the late David Rogers. Another unforgettable experience while in Nashville was co-producing a single for, and touring with, the great Broadway star Carol Channing. During my stay in America I also performed at Gerdes Folk City in New York, at the Exit Inn in Nashville and on the Mike Douglas TV show in Philadelphia. Upon returning to Australia I fronted the country rock band, The Sleeping Dogs.
The definitive Milesago: Australasian Music & Popular Culture 1964-1975 tells us:
Adelaide-born Doug Ashdown . . . . had travelled to England [by age 17], where he played in a rock band, returning to Adelaide the following year and working as lead guitarist in The Bowmen with Bobby Bright . . . . Doug’s first major break came when he signed with CBS. . . . [O]ver the next three years he recorded three albums for them . . . This Is Doug Ashdown in 1965. . . . The Real Thing (1966) . . . . [and] Source (1968) . . . . [B]y decade’s end, he was an accomplished performer, songwriter and recording artist, and a leading light on the Australian folk scene. After his CBS contract expired Doug . . . [i]n 1969 . . . joined forces with expatriate Irish singer, songwriter and producer Jimmy Stewart who had recently formed the Sweet Peach label. . . . Doug’s fourth album, his first for Sweet Peach, was The Age Of Mouse which earned him a place in the history books as the first double album of original material ever released in Australia . . . . The songs were co-written with Jimmy Stewart . . . . Sweet Peach lifted three Singles . . . [t]he first two . . . local chart successes, and the album gained considerable critical acclaim. As a result, it was picked up by MCA for overseas release in fifty countries. . . . [and] had generated enough interest in the USA to prompt Doug and Jimmy to move there. . . . Doug was unable to crack the US market, so Jimmy and Doug returned to Australia where they set up a new label . . . . Stewart produced Doug’s next album entitled Leave Love Enough Alone (1974). . . . [T]he album’s evocative title track, co-written by Doug and Jimmy Stewart during a bitter winter in Nashville. . . . was released in September 1974 and received some airplay, but . . . [didn’t] ma[k]e the charts . . . . [It] proved to be a classic ‘sleeper’ and the breakthrough finally came more than a year later when it was retitled and reissued as “Winter In America”. . . . bec[oming] a major hit through late 1976 and early 1977, reaching #14 in Melbourne and #30 in Sydney. . . . [and] remains one of the most popular and enduring Australian songs of the ’70s . . . .
[Ashdown] formed his own skiffle band, The Sapphires, in 1958. When his father transplanted the family back to England for nine months in 1960-1, the youthful Ashdown played electric guitar with an ensemble called Rommel and the Desert Rats. On return to Adelaide, he spent time (1961-4) as one of The Beaumen along with Bobby Bright . . . . “I discovered Dylan and that was it”. . . . Ashdown debuted as a folksinger at Adelaide’s Purple Cow, late in 1964, and he had his first big break when Tina Lawton asked him to substitute for her at a Town Hall concert. [He] . . . brought the house down. . . . . [H]e quickly became a fixture on the coffee lounge circuit. . . . Saturday nights frequently found him performing five gigs . . . . It was as the Folk Hut’s chief drawcard that Ashdown came to the attention of CBS’s Sven Libaek, then in Adelaide scouting for new talent. He was offered a recording contract . . . . Almost from the beginning, Ashdown objected to being categorised, insisting that he never thought of himself as a folksinger, and that he found the whole folk thing too restrictive. . . . Unsurprisingly, this lack of commitment to the folk scene earned Ashdown the disdain of the folk establishment – as did the commercial success and orientation of his recordings, or his willingness to record Lennon-McCartney’s ”Hide Your Love Away” . . . . On one occasion, a number of audience members walked out of a folk concert in Sydney when he attempted to perform an electrified version of Dylan’s ”I Shall Be Released”. Ashdown, in turn, once confessed to interviewer Greg Quill that his third album, the ground-breaking 1968 LP Source reflected his dissatisfaction with both the folk and mainstream music scenes. Intensely critical of the pop scene’s preoccupation with drugs, doom and destruction, he teamed up with Jimmy Stewart in 1968, creating a solid body of self-composed material about “real things” – small portraits and studies of individual lonelinesses and the patterns of particular loves, recounted (he maintained) without either judgment or world-shattering conclusions. The material was preserved on . . . The Age of Mouse . . . .
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,588) Click — “Girl with a Mind”
“. . . is not easy to find“. Um, that might be a bit touchy today. Anyway, this entrancing and “offbeat” (Billboard (Feb. 3, 1968), Davie Gordon, https://www.45cat.com/record/lr3419) A-side clicks with me, “something between The Cowsills and an America version of Donovan’s slightly lysergic take on folk rock”. (RDTEN1, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/click/click/)
Billboard predicted (Feb 3, 1968):
Intriguing material, smooth performance and Joey Scott arrangement must be heard and it could really prove a top chart item. Off-beat number with much sales potential
You couldn’t be blamed for thinking Click was a band. I certainly did. And as is so often is the case, I was wrong. Click was in fact singer/songwriter Click Horning. Raised in New Hampshire, at seventeen Horning left school, joining two older sisters living in New York City. Through his sisters he scored a job as a music publisher staff writer, followed by a recording deal with Robert and Gene Schwart’s Laurie Records. Horning made his recording debut in 1967 with a pairs of obscure singles for Laurie. To my ears the 45s recalled something between The Cowsills and an America version of Donovan’s slightly lysergic take on folk rock. Nice enough, but not exactly the most original sides you’ve ever heard. . . . It’s interesting how many obscure acts ABC signed during the late ’60s and early ’70. On the list was the young Mr. Horning. 1969’s Click teamed Horning with producer Tom Wilson and was mildly interesting for several reasons including the fact Horning was allowed to record a collection of all original material – quite rare for a newly signed act. Judging by the eleven selections, while Horning wasn’t the most impressive singer you’ve ever encountered, he had a decent enough voice and was quite versatile. The same was true for his songwriting which spanned the spectrum from top-40ish pop . . . to heavy psych . . . with side trips into jazz . . . jazz-rock fusion . . . Donovan-styled folk-rock . . . and singer/songwriter territory . . . . Dropped by ABC, Horning stayed active on the New York music scene, forming the band Moonshine, followed by Henry J and the Rollers. He played in a series of local bands including the Cosmic Hasbeens and The Too Old To Practice Band. In the late-’70s he returned to New Hampshire and splitting his time between a solo career and the band Night Kitchen.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,587) Glass Family — “I’m Losing It”
This killer fuzz-drenched garage/psych stomper wasn’t issued as a single or on the Glass Family’s ’69 LP Electric Band (see #309, 338). Rather, it found its way onto possibly the first 60’s punk/garage rock compilation album, ’67’s Freakout U.S.A. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=jFyzFqUXnJ0) –an “[a]mazing psych comp made of groups (except the Glass Family) that never had an album, essential stuff for you fuzz frenetics out there.” (higdon4, https://www.discogs.com/master/569206-Various-Freakout-USA)
Jenell Kesler tells us about the Family:
The Glass Family . . . began their career on a lark, as a way of making money for beer and surfboard wax, often playing the same venue and parties under a different name, mere days apart . . . . It was an ideal time to young and idealistic in L.A. back in 1967, where they experimented with instrumentation, fuzzed out guitars, and vocal arrangements emphasizing the softer side of psychedelic rock. And though they were never a hit, and received nearly no radio airplay, this assemblage of talent set the pace for many bands to follow, and anyone who saw them live stumbled home with hallucinogenic musical imagery dancing in their heads . . . .
And Maplewood Records, which issued the first official release of Electric Band since the sixties, informs us that:
The origins of The Glass Family start in West Los Angeles. Jim Callon formed a band to play surf music and covers at frat parties to make some money. They went by a few different monikers at that point; the Carpet Baggers and the Soul Survivors amongst them. A few years later when the band members were at Cal State LA for grad school, they changed the band name to The Glass Family. They played all over Los Angeles, gigging at notable venues like The Troubadour, The Topanga Corral and The Whiskey A Go-Go, sharing bills with The Doors, Vanilla Fudge, and Love. By 1967, they’d secured a record deal with Warner Bros. Records, who released their record in 1968. Although it never became the hit that they’d hoped for, the more important result was that the Glass Family were a piece of the puzzle of the times: playing gigs with Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Bros, Canned Heat, Big Brother and The Holding Company with Janis Joplin, and The Grateful Dead.
Los Angeles at that time was a wonderful place to be . . . . It was people expanding their minds with LSD and marijuana. People just wanted to try new things and change the way that they were expected to live their lives.
When I was going to UCLA and then later Cal State LA, there were only three or four other guys with long hair. Those were my friends. Straight people didn’t like us. They looked at us and treated us as if we were terrorists. But the girls liked us!”
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As to Mario Migliardi, Violangelo Teatro/Violangelo Theater tells us (courtesy of Google Translate):
One of the most original musicians of the second half of the 20th century. He was one of the founding members of the Terzo Millennio Association. From Piedmont, he combined his university studies at the faculty of chemistry with his studies in music. After moving to Rome, he collaborated with RAI [Radiotelevisione italiana] and was soon called by Maestro Razzi to the newly founded Studio di Fonologia in Milan, where he became the animator with Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna. He deepened his studies on the decomposition of sound and on “Musique Concrete” and his experiments – in addition to making him a prestigious exponent of electronic music – influenced his production as a composer also in the field of light music. For the latter he collaborated again with RAI in Rome, as a composer, pianist, organist, arranger and conductor, also participating in popular entertainment programs, such as “Canzonissima”. We are at the end of the 60s and Migliardi – already artistic consultant of RCA Italiana – is called to the artistic direction of FONIT-CETRA, Roman headquarters, where he will remain until the 70s. He then resumes his musical experiments and orchestral direction, which sees him on the podium of both the Orchestra di Musica Leggera della RAI in Rome, and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino, for radio and television programs with national and international artists, including Milly, Sandie Show, Milva. He then wrote the incidental music for Violetta Chiarini’s theatrical texts and the songs for the musical shows of the actress-singer and author, among which “E’ arrivato il tempo di essere” – from which the audiobook by Mondadori “Femminilità e femminismo”, directed by Gino Negri – “Io e me”, also a theatrical piece, broadcast in installments by RADIO-Due, “Vecchia Europa sotto la luna”, of which he curated the recording edition. He has recorded numerous electronic music, concrete music and light music, some of which appeared under the pseudonym of “Vidulescu”. For over seventeen years he was a teacher of composition and electronic sound recording at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome.
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Etta James was in the heartbreak business. Other singers sold sweet dreams of love, romance, and sex, but Etta James sold pain and she had an endless supply. . . . She never knew who her father was. When she was born, her mother who was fourteen, abandoned her, leaving her with a childless older couple. The woman, called “Mama Lu” by Etta, became her surrogate mother . . . . But . . . . [p]eriodically, her birth mother, Dorothy, who loved the night life, would appear and take the child away. . . . They would live in squalor . . . and then, bored and frustrated with parenthood, Dorothy would return Etta . . . . The pattern continued until Etta was twelve when Mama Lu died. Dorothy . . . took her to San Francisco. . . . [and] . . . left Etta with [Dorothy’s brother] and walked away. . . . Etta was shuttled between her aunt and uncle and her mother . . . . [She] began running with gangs and at fourteen was put in juvenile detention for thirty days. . . . Etta . . . had been gifted with extraordinary musical ability . . . . She was a radio Gospel star at the age of seven. She . . . was discovered by Johnny Otis and at sixteen recorded her song “Roll With Me Henry”, which became one of the biggest R&B hits of 1955. She became a star, went on the road with the Johnny Otis Show, and had more hits. . . . [But] she got ripped off by everyone; the record company didn’t pay royalties, Otis put his wife’s name on “Roll With Me Henry” and a white woman, Georgia Gibbs, covered it as “Dance With Me Henry[” and it reached] #1 Pop and sold over a million copies. Etta was singing for $10 a night when she watched Gibbs sing “Dance With Me Henry” on The Ed Sullivan Show. By 1960, the hits had stopped coming . . . . Leonard Chess . . . was looking for black artists who could “crossover” and sell to the pop audience. He gave Etta a chance and soon she was again one of the biggest stars in Black Music and selling records to white people too. . . . [But s]he began shooting heroin[, t]he records started to sell less well . . . [, s]he started doing crimes for drug money[,] was in and out of jail[ and] in a . . . physically abusive relationship . . . . Leonard Chess [however,] never lost faith in her. . . .
West Coast rhythm and blues titan Johnny Otis discovered James in 1954. “We were up in San Francisco,” Otis recalled in Rolling Stone, “for a date at the Fillmore. That was when it was black. … I was asleep in my hotel room when … my manager phoned. He was in a restaurant and a little girl was bugging him: she wanted to sing for me. I told him to have her come around to the Fillmore that night. But she grabbed the phone from him and shouted that she wanted to sing for me NOW. I told her that I was in bed—and she said she was coming over anyway. Well, she showed up with two other little girls. And when I heard her, I jumped out of bed and began getting dressed. We went looking for her mother since she was a minor. I brought her to L.A., where she lived in my home like a daughter.” . . . Otis took the Creolettes to Los Angeles—with the forged permission of the underage Jamesetta’s mother—and put them into his revue. He renamed the group The Peaches, and reversed Jamesetta’s name, creating what has remained her stage name ever since: Etta James.
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,584) Maurice Gibb — “Something’s Blowing”
An incredible and joyous song from Maurice Gibb’s (see #353, 354, 466, 861, 1,336) lost solo album recorded during the Bee Gee’s split — with a little nick from “Good Morning Starshine” at the end!
Bruce Eder explains:
In contrast to Barry and Robin, who have shared and alternated the spotlight as lead vocalists, Maurice . . . [was] almost exclusively a backing vocalist for his four-decade career, providing a key part of the harmony singing for his brothers. In less overtly visible ways, however, he [was] essential to the group’s sound from the beginning of their recording career — in addition to sharing arranging chores with his brothers and playing bass . . . he . . . also played guitar, piano, organ, and Mellotron on their recordings, and even occasionally the drums on their demos. . . . Gibb’s voice is the least familiar to the public, concentrated as it usually is on backup and harmony singing. The major exception arose during the 1969 split between Robin Gibb and his two brothers, when Barry and Maurice carried on as a two-man version of the Bee Gees. Cucumber Castle, the one album that they completed together before the two of them, in turn, parted company, included a delightful African-flavored number entitled “I.O.I.O. []” [see #594,] which featured Maurice intoning the title throughout, as far forward in the mix as Barry Gibb’s lead. Maurice Gibb did begin work on a solo LP, and released a single, “Railroad[]” [see #861,] co-authored by Billy Lawrie, a songwriter and singer, and also the brother of the British pop/rock legend Lulu [see #960], who became Maurice’s wife in 1969. Gibb handled all of the vocals on the single . . . . [H]e did begin work on a solo LP to have been called “The Loner.” He worked for three months with Billy Lawrie playing and singing, and with guitarist Les Harvey of Stone the Crows, drummer Geoff Bridgeford, and John Coleman and Gerry Shurry, the latter three members of the Australian band Tin Tin [see #355, 1,121] — whose 1970 debut album Maurice Gibb had produced — filling out what instruments Gibb didn’t wish to play himself. . . . [T]he sessions . . . only yielded one released song, “The Loner[]” [see #353] . . . . credited to “The Bloomfields” and appeared on the soundtrack of the movie Bloomfield . . . . Like the other solo albums begun by his brothers in 1970, Maurice Gibb’s LP was never released officially, though large parts of it have appeared on bootlegs over the years. Later in the same year, he and his brothers were able to patch up their differences and resume working together, and there’s been little serious talk of “The Loner” ever being issued since then.
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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 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,583) The Alan Bown! — “Magic Handkerchief”
This A-side by the Alan Bown! (see #1,213, 1,414) is a “REAL gem” (MonkeyHanger, https://www.45cat.com/record/cub1). Dave Thompson calls it a “[b]lissed out mini-classic[ . . . that is] as delightful as only second-division British psych can be”. (https://www.allmusic.com/album/outward-bown-mw0000039618) MonkeyHanger says that “Jess Rhoden’s soulful vocals would have graced ANY 60’s band and on this track they are just incredible. Nice dual-tempo arrangement with loads of Bown’s trumpet and just a hint of phasing…Beautiful.”(https://www.45cat.com/record/cub1)
Of the album, Andrew Darlington says it is “a charming artefact of Brit-psych . . . . Although there’s none of the unsettling darkness of a Syd Barrett [see #13, 87, 315, 922], or the hard Freak-beat edge of Creation [see #129, 165, 1,502], the twelve tracks present stronger songs than many of their high-charting contemporaries.” (http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.com/2016/07/from-mod-to-brit-psych-alan-bown.html?m=1). Dave Thompson tells us:
Everybody who’s followed the convoluted career of Jess Roden, Britain’s best-kept blue-eyed soul-shaped secret for more than 30 years, should close their ears right now. The man who turned “I Can’t Get Next to You” into one of the most dramatically passionate rock workouts of the ’70s is completely up a bubblegum tree [on Outward Bown], running through an album of light-psych whimsy that has as much to do with his future as…name your poison: Peter Frampton and the Herd, Status Quo and “Matchstick Men,” Traffic and its debut album. It’s great pop, of course — as great as any of those and many more. . . . a collection of semi-detached suburban Ray Davies observations full of vaguely Edwardian lifestyle concerns, peopled by pretty girls who wash the dishes, toys that talk, and love that flies from the rooftops with the clouds. Signs of the band’s (and band members’) brilliance are all over the place. . . . And it’s all so impossibly sweet, so implausibly twee, and so utterly a child of its times that you can’t help but wonder just how humanity survived the ’60s. Let alone Roden himself!
Club band The Alan Bown Set were one of many acts to find that the emergence of psychedelia had rendered the fingerpoppoin’, footstompin’, handclappin’ soul revue mentality uncool almost overnight. Undaunted, they soaked up the new sounds, invested in kaftans and wrote a batch of songs inspired by the arrival of the Aquarian Age — or, at the very least, the arrival of The Bee Gees.
liner notes to the CD comp Let’s Go Down and Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967
As to trumpeter Alan Bown, Bruce Eder writes:
Any musical aspirations that he harbored were invisible until he completed a stint in the Royal Air Force at the outset of the 1960s. He found a music scene that was booming throughout England with an important extension to Germany, and which encompassed not only rock & roll but also blues, R&B, and jazz. The latter two areas were where Bown’s interest lay, and he was soon a member of a group called the Embers that was booked into the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, working on the same bills as such Liverpool-based artists as . . . the Beatles . . . . He returned to England after the extended engagement and joined the John Barry Seven, led by the trumpeter/arranger John Barry. . . . When Barry disbanded the group in 1964, Bown picked up the pieces and formed an outfit of his own . . . the Alan Bown Set . . . . The sextet was an immediate success as a live act . . . . Oddly enough, Bown and company never even thought about a recording contract, intending the band as a vehicle for steady work for themselves, doing what they enjoyed. It wasn’t until a couple of years into their history that . . . an A&R man for Pye Records, spotted [them] and got them under contract, which resulted in a string of 45s and half of an LP called London Swings that included part of their live show . . . . The Pye contract ended in late 1967, and the group was then signed to the British division of MGM Records, to an imprint called Music Factory. By this time, they’d modified their image and sound — the interest in R&B and soul was fading somewhat in the London clubs, even as psychedelic music was starting to become all the rage. And so, for its MGM/Music Factory releases, a somewhat longer-haired and more flamboyant version of Bown’s band was seen, and . . . simply known as the Alan Bown! . . . . They cut a song called “We Can Help You,” which had originated with the British band Nirvana [see #287, 391, 475, 1,238, 1,525] — and the Alan Bown version started to make a splash in England in terms of exposure. But on the week of the record’s actual release . . . . [a] strike at the plant where the record was pressed and due to ship from prevented its release, at precisely the moment when it had to be in stores. And MGM Records chose to abandon the Music Factory label — though the Alan Bown! would remain with the company on the MGM label proper, this also meant that the company abandoned all promotional and distribution efforts involving the Music Factory releases. “We Can Help You,” despite a string of promotional appearances by the band on its behalf (including . . . [on] Top of the Pops), was left to die . . . and . . . Outward Bown[] was ignored. A pair of singles that followed, . . . both failed to chart. . . . A contract with Deram Records, the progressive rock imprint of English Decca, followed, along with a pair of singles and a self-titled LP, and there was also a lineup shift that, for a time, brought Robert Palmer into the group as its lead singer. But . . . the group’s moment had clearly passed . . . .
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,583) The Honeybus — “Girl of Independent Means”
From Honeybus (see #6, 52, 207, 434, 562, 605, 764, 1,100, 1,439) 2.0, here is a ’68 A-side “which certainly deserved to do well” (Roger Dopson, liner notes to the CD comp Honeybus at Their Best): “quite catchy” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited), a “great upbeat single featuring brass and an insistent hook” (Story: The Honeybus Story, https://www.angelfire.com/pop2/honeybus/story.htm), an “excellent, quirky, commercial beat number”. (Roger Dopson again)
Honeybus is one of my favorite bands, with the honey being especially bittersweet given what should have been, what could have been. Jittery White Guy puts it perfectly:
Honeybus had the pop touchstones of the Beatles and the Hollies, while balancing the more sunshiny, twee aspects of the early Bee Gees with some mild touches of post-Sgt. Pepper psychedelia. . . . Their songs were unusually tuneful, some lovely little hooks paired with sweet harmonies, and it’s almost shocking to hear these songs today and realize the band had pretty much zero commercial success (at least here in the US).
Bruce Eder beautifully ponders what made the band so special and what “happened”:
Considering that most have never heard of them, it’s amazing to ponder that they came very close, in the eyes of the critics, to being Decca Records’ answer to the Rubber Soul-era Beatles. The harmonies were there, along with some catchy, hook-laden songs . . . . The pop sensibilities of Honeybus’ main resident composers, Peter Dello and Ray Cane were astonishingly close in quality and content to those of Paul McCartney and the softer sides of John Lennon of that same era. What’s more, the critics loved their records. Yet, somehow, Honeybus never got it right; they never had the right single out at the proper time, and only once in their history did they connect with the public for a major hit, in early 1968. . . .
Dello and Cane . . . were the prime movers behind Honeybus. In 1966, they formed the Yum Yum Band . . . . A collapsed lung put Dello out of action in early 1966, and it was during his recuperation that he began rethinking what the band and his music were about. He developed the notion of a new band that would become a canvas for him to work on as a songwriter — they would avoid the clubs, working almost exclusively in the studio, recreating the sounds that he was hearing in his head. . . . It was a novel strategy, paralleling the approach to music-making by the Beatles in their post-concert period, and all the more daring for the fact that they were a new group . . . . The group was one of the best studio bands of the period, reveling in the perfection that could be achieved . . . .
They were duly signed to England’s Decca Records and assigned to the company’s newly organized Deram label . . . . The critics were quick to praise the band . . . [but their first two singles were commercially] unsuccessful. Then . . . their third release, “I Can’t Let Maggie Go,” [see #6] . . . . . . peaked at number eight. . . . [It] should have made the group, but instead it shattered them. Peter Dello resigned during the single’s chart run. He had been willing to play live on radio appearances and the occasional television or special concert showcase . . . but he couldn’t accept the physical or emotional stresses of performing live on a regular basis, or the idea of touring America . . . . Dello left . . . . [and] Jim Kelly came in on guitar and vocals, while Ray Cane . . . took over most of the songwriting, and Honeybus proceeded to play regular concerts. The group never recovered the momentum they’d lost over “Maggie,” however, despite a string of fine singles . . . . [that] never charted . . . . [T]he group had pretty well decided to call it quits once they finished the[ir] LP . . . . The Honeybus Story . . . was released in late 1969, but without an active group to promote it, the record sank without a trace. . . . [I]t was a beautiful album, with the kind of ornate production and rich melodies that had become increasingly rare with the passing of the psychedelic era . . . .
As to the situation surrounding “Girl”, Story: The Honeybus Story tells us:
“I Can’t Let Maggie Go” . . . . hit number 8 in the UK and became a huge hit in dozens of territories but the resulting merry-go-round of gigs, press and TV conflicted with Dello’s vision. He saw Honeybus as essentially a studio project and had had enough of life on the road during the early 60’s. With a record in the top ten, the record company screaming for a follow-up and album and widespread adulation, Pete Dello quit his own group. Such a blow would have signalled the end for most bands but the remaining members of Honeybus were more resourceful than that. First, they recruited Jim Kelly on vocals and guitar, then set about recording a follow-up to “Maggie”. Before Dello’s departure, both “I’m A Gambler” and live favourite “Francoise” had been mooted, but his compositions were now unavailable. It was six months until Cane’s “Girl Of Independent Means” . . . was released. . . . “Girl” . . . failed to sustain the group’s success. The song was probably too far removed from it’s predecessor and was released too late to register.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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Actually, the song was a joke! The Specters’ drummer, Paul Odgren (who later earned a PhD at the UMass Medical School) tells us about how the song came to be and its fate:
It was originally supposed to be called “A Place for Sin,” but the producer was worried that it sounded like an invitation to a whorehouse. So [lead guitarist] Jack [Pezanelli], in a sardonic mood, instead re-wrote it into a brooding teen downer piece. “Depression” was exactly the same song, even many of the lyrics, as “A Place for Sin.” It’s a little amusing now to see how people take the song as a glimpse into the dark soul of alienated teens when really, it was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I guess it sounded too sincere… The Melbourne label was based in Manchester, N.H., and the producer [James N. Parks] had produced Paul Anka’s first big hit, “Diana.” To our young eyes, it looked impressive to see the gold record on his wall, but really it was kind of a scam. We paid for the recording and for the pressing out of pocket and there was no effort by the “label” to market it whatsoever. Its airplay was largely limited to Worcester’s rock ‘n roll AM station, WORC.
“A Place for Sin” was a favorite original tune, played live, which was a Kingsmen-inspired pounder about a local whorehouse. When one of the parents overheard the song being rehearsed, they demanded the guys to do a different song. . . . The lead guitarist decided to write a tune that was nothing like the sound they’d established, exaggerating the mood and lyrics as a complete joke.
Odgren tells us about the Specters:
The Specters (Ron Hadley, organ; Jack Pezanelli . . . Dave Galli, rhythm guitar, bass; Paul Odgren, drums) were born in Worcester in 1966 after re-organization of the Dischords. . . . The Dischords played regularly at . . . local spots . . . . The Specters did the same in 1966 and ’67. . . . Hadley went to Dartmouth College in the fall of ’66 and the band played a number of gigs there, too. For the summer of ’67, the band moved to Wiers Beach on Lake Winnipesaukee in NH, mainly because Hadley’s girlfriend spent summers there. That summer was a mix of feast or famine, with the band occasionally resorting to shoplifting to avoid starvation. They opened for Teddy and the Pandas (“Groovy Kind of Love”) at the Big Venue in the area, Irwin’s Winnipesaukee Gardens. At that time, there was a pretty popular band in the area of southern NH and Massachusetts’ north shore called the Spectras. To avoid confusion, the Specters changed their name again, this time to The Wednesday Review. . . . The Wednesday Review for a part of that summer rented a small hall in Sunapee, NH, named it “The Tumbling Sun,” and played some concerts/dances there. The kindly owners of the Langley Cove Cottages where the band was staying, knowing that money was often in very short supply, waived the rent in exchange for some outdoor concerts. Local newspapers picked up on them, and the locale picked up some free publicity. There were late-night rides home from venues around New Hampshire, sometimes running out of gas in the middle of nowhere and having to hitchhike to the only 24-hour gas station in the state in Concord. . . . In late ’67 and into ’68, the band added female lead vocalist, Marion “Yuye” Fernandes, from Marion, MA. They also got connected with an agent in Boston just out of Ivy League business school named Watson James. Watson booked the band in some memorable gigs, including opening a concert at the old Boston Arena for UMass, Boston, that featured some big name acts – The Chambers Brothers, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. . . . Fernandes decided to go to Northeastern U. full-time, and Renatha Saunders who hailed from northern NJ via Gddard College in VT joined as lead vocalist for a short time. The band’s demise came about when a rehearsal hall in Boston was broken into and thieves left with Hadley’s brand new Fender Rhodes electric piano, two new high-end Fender amps, and other pieces of equipment, all uninsured . . . .
I contacted J[ack] back in the early 1990s when he still lived in Worcester and was teaching at Berklee School of Music. He was amazed that anyone cared about the 45. He managed to uncover 4 or 5 copies which I bought from him; he used the money toward repairing the transmission on his car.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,580) Condello — “The Other Side of You”
A haunting, spacey pop psych number sounding a decade ahead of its time, sounding like Peter Gabriel wrote and performed it. In fact, I’m thinking that the Progfather did write and record it. The timing’s right! The song comes from a “fascinating album [Phase 1 that] moves from sparkling pop to near heavy metal, almost like a compilation album by one man” (Aaron Milenski, The Acid Archives, 2nd ed.), a “psychedelic masterwork . . . [that] flows and trickles through your mind with more saturation than Lucy and her diamonds in the sky-picking up a few nuggets, boulders, and pebbles in the emergent violet haze.” (Marios, http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2014/04/condello-phase-i-1968-us-smart.html?m=1)
Oregano Rathbone is more equivocal:
Condello’s Phase 1 album, originally issued by Scepter in 1968 . . . enjoys a weighty rep as a road-less-travelled psych-pop conversation piece. But curious crate-diggers should tread with caution. If you were only to hear “It Don’t Matter” or “All You Need”, you might file the album alongside Moby Grape’s debut: melodious, goodtimey acid rock, topped and tailed with libertarian, Fillmore-friendly lead guitar (provided herein by the future Tube, Bill Spooner). However, pound for pound, it might be more apposite to posit Phase 1 as a heraldic totem of country-rock.
To a generation of Arizona’s baby-boomers, the late Mike Condello was synonymous with The Wallace And Ladmo Show, for which he acted as a prolific and wildly inspired musical director. Then again, psych supplicants and gungho garagistes revere the man for “Soggy Cereal”, an inimitably unlikely polka included on the third Pebbles compilation.
Mike Condello did it all in four decades in the music business: serve as music director for two local Phoenix TV shows (Teen Beat and The Wallace & Ladmo Show), lead his own bands like Hub Cap and the Wheels, parody the Beatles with Commodore Condello’s Salt River Navy Band, and even play with luminaries like Keith Moon, the Tubes, and Jackson Browne. In 1968, he also led his own band – which released [Phase 1] . . . . Sadly, [he] committed suicide in the 90s after suffering from severe depression.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,579) The Lords — “I’m a Hog for You Baby”
Germany’s Lords (see #335) take the Coasters’ 1959 #38 hit and camp it up as only the Lords can do with their “inimitable double-time Mersey bastardization[]”. (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/shakin-all-over-mw0000846529)
It’s from the Lords’ second album (‘66), but Richie Unterberger’s comment about their first LP fits well: “[T]he covers are so eccentric, done as they are with heavy German accents and a hopped-up Merseybeat-like rhythm, that it’s a lot better and more interesting than most such cover-dominated albums of the time.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/in-black-and-white-in-beat-and-sweet-mw0000843617)
As to the Lords, Unterberger tells us that:
Quite popular in their own country, the Lords made no impression in the English-speaking world until a couple of decades later, when reappreciation of ’60s beat and garage music became so intense that collectors began to investigate the strange and wonderful world of Continental ’60s rock. The Lords are one of those groups that have to be heard to be believed. Although they had the requisite moptop haircuts, their repertoire was surprisingly anachronistic at times, drawing heavily from not only German drinking songs, but American folk tunes, . . . skiffle, and . . . pre-Beatle British rock . . . . Whatever they covered . . . they made their own with frantically fast tempos, heavily accented Teutonic vocals (virtually all of their material was in English), and heavy overuse of tremelo guitar lines with mucho reverb, whammy bar, and Lesley organ-like effects. They also wrote some interesting material of their own that drew from the more contemporary influences of Merseybeat and English mod pop. The Lords were not brilliant musicians or composers, but they were fun, and they had the hearts of true rockers . . . .
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,578)Dave Bixby — “Drug Song”
From Dave Bixby (see #531, 668, 1,189) comes “the saddest song I have ever heard in my entire existence” (karlicato190, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0HzNePL-XM), “as a supremely world-weary, echo-laden guy laments on how he screwed himself up with dope”. (Patrick Lundborg, The Acid Archives, 2nd ed.). Bixby explains that it “[i]s a tragedy, a place of no hope despair and a death of a soul”. (https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2011/11/dave-bixby-interview-about-ode-to.html) Oh, and it became the heart and soul of superstar rapper Travis Scott’s “Parasail”!
Dave [Bixby] played with folk bands in high school before cutting off his hippie hair to join a religious group. . . . Dave’s … Ode to Quetzalcoatl, was recorded following a long period of time [he] spent in what he calls “the void”. A dark, depressive episode after a prolonged period of taking LSD almost daily. Dave came out of the void and turned to God, a journey and transformation Ode to Quetzalcoatl documents. . . . Dave’s lived a vivid and fascinating life, beginning with his leadership within a Michigan-based Christian cult only known as “The Group”. Always a loner and an adventurer, Dave left the group after being sent to various corners of the country to launch new chapters, built a cabin and lived off the land.
For collectors of the downer/loner folk movement of the late ’60s . . . the solo debut from Michigan garage rocker-turned-born-again Xian Dave Bixby . . . go[es] for upwards of $2,000 on eBay. . . . Recorded after he spent a year playing solo and experimenting with LSD, Bixby laid down this album in a living room with the bare bones of amenities. . . . Bixby relies on the strength of his deeply faithful lyrics rooted in the Book of Revelations and the artist’s own personal drug-fueled Armageddon to carry his songs through the night.
Winter of 1968 I was not doing so well. Too many acid trips . . . . I quietly freaked out. I was in hell with no way to communicate it to anyone. Some months later my lead guitar buddy Brian MacInness introduced me to Don DeGraff I ended up in a prayer circle. . . . That night I did my own praying, fell asleep and a new spirit was born in me. . . . I saw people’s pain and fear, it was just like mine. I knew what to say to give comfort. Songs began to flood in to me, writing them down I sang them everywhere DeGraff had the first Group meeting at his house with about ten to twelve people and the numbers grew every week eventually needing a bigger building; then we out grew that building. I performed songs every Tuesday night at group meetings. These meetings grew to 300 people. I was asked many times to record an album. I selected twelve songs out of thirty I had written. Each song supported the next song in theme. The Quetzalcoatl story of a Christ like man walking the America’s captivated my imagination becoming the title for the LP. . . . In the studio it seemed a little lonely. Ode to Quetzalcoatl is a lonely journey so it all worked well. . . . This album is a concept. Each song is a chapter in a book. The theme throughout is one of stepping out in faith and walking through the darkness into the light. . . . Apocalypse. [Asked in what state of mind he was when he recorded it, Bixby said] I felt new, humbled and grateful. When I prayed I got answers and direction. I was moving forward with out doubt. I was going through a metamorphosis with out words to describe my experience. I captured some of it in song.
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Before Jimi Hendrix went to London to become a solo recording star, he had recorded some material with journeyman soul singer Curtis Knight and signed a contract with record executive Ed Chalpin. When Hendrix became an international superstar in 1967, this contract backfired on him badly, as Chalpin leased recordings of the Knight sessions to Capitol Records . . . . Eight of these tracks were issued at the end of 1967 on Get That Feeling, which — despite featuring only a picture of Hendrix, in all his 1967 glory, on the cover — only features him as a guitarist session man, with Knight actually handling the vocals. . . .
If he is known at all, the Harlem-based ’60s soul singer Curtis Knight is remembered for his connection to a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix. Knight met a down-on-his-luck Hendrix living in a New York City hotel. The singer gave the guitarist a spare axe and hired him to play with the Squires, Knight’s band. A native of Kansas, Knight had previously spent time in California . . . before relocating to New York, where he worked the circuit with the Squires, a workaday party R&B band. It’s quite possible Knight saw something in Hendrix. Not long after Jimi joined the Squires, Knight whisked him into the studio to record “How Would You Feel” . . . and soon started writing with Hendrix. . . . Knight helped encouraged Hendrix to sign a deal with record man Ed Chalpin. Jimi later claimed he thought he was signing on to a role as a sideman, but the contract bound him to Chalpin’s PPX Records. This became a big deal once Chas Chandler signed Hendrix to a contract in 1969. Chalpin claimed he owned Jimi, so Chandler owed him money. This legal dispute became protracted, complicated by the fact that Hendrix inexplicably kept returning to the studio to cut sessions with Knight while he was in the thick of proceedings. These early singles and latter-day jams with Hendrix form the bulk of Curtis Knight’s catalog. A bunch were issued under Hendrix’s name on Capitol Records via a licensing agreement with PPX, but over the years they’d show up often, appearing under any number of variations on the names of Knight, the Squires, and Hendrix. . . . [I]t was this association with Hendrix that provided Knight with a career. He moved to London, forming a band called Currtis Knight, Zeus . . . . [H]e published a book named Jimi: An Intimate Biography in 1974. This was the splashiest attempt to ride Hendrix’s coattails Knight would ever attempt, but he kept grinding out a living in the U.K. and Europe, playing gigs and cutting the occasional record. He wound up settling in the Netherlands . . . .
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Hertfordshire’s rarest psych-pop nugget—rarer than a sober hippie in ’67. This three-minute soap opera, dipped in acid, mourns poor Ramona’s altar ditch with groovy heartbreak. It . . . miss[ed] the charts like a bouquet tossed to the back row.
An accomplished band whose talent outstripped their luck in the music business, the Mirage seemed poised for a breakthrough numerous times during their 1964-1970 lifespan, but they never landed the hit record that would have made their fortune. . . . [They had] solid instrumental skills, splendid harmonies, savvy songwriting, and a creative arc that encompassed Beat-era rockers, gently lysergic Beatlesque pop, crunchy pre-glam guitar swagger, and even prescient roots rock. The roots of the Mirage lay in Hunsdon, a village in Hertfordshire in the South of England. Hunsdon was home to a beat combo called the Venders, whose members had previously been part of a skiffle act called the Missin’ Links and a more rock-oriented outfit called Del Vincent and the Delmen. The Venders featured . . . Pat Hynes on lead guitar, his brother Pete Hynes on rhythm guitar . . . and a third Hynes brother, Dave, on drums. Playing local venues and the occasional American air force base, one of the Venders’ more successful peers were the Diamonds, featuring lead guitarist Ray Glyn Mynott . . . . When Pat Hynes hurt his finger and was unable to play a gig, the Venders asked Mynott to fill in for him, and they were happy enough with his work to invite him to join the band full-time. Mynott agreed, and . . . the new Venders lineup was Pete Hynes on lead vocals, Mynott on lead guitar, Pat Hynes on rhythm guitar, Dee Murray on bass, and Dave Hynes on drums. They made their debut . . . on Christmas Eve, 1964. In early 1965, the band decided they wanted a hipper sounding name . . . the Mirage. Several members . . . were accomplished enough that they were working as session musicians in their spare time, and this moonlighting put them in contact with Dick James, one of England’s most successful music publishers. James had installed a recording studio . . . in order to cut songwriting demos, and the Mirage became one of James’ house bands, as well as being signed as staff songwriters for his firm. After meeting at the studio, the men of the Mirage struck up a friendship with Graham Nash and Allan Clarke of the Hollies [see #461], and on their recommendation, the Mirage landed a record deal with CBS. Their first single . . . issued in June 1965. . . . didn’t chart, but they had better luck with their second release, “Go Away” . . . . Issued in November 1965 and produced by Nash and Clarke, [it] earned respectable radio airplay. Despite th[is] modest success . . . and the use of a Mirage track, “I’m Gonna Leave Her,” in the hit film Georgy Girl, CBS was reluctant to authorize a third single, and the band bided their time, writing songs and committing them to tape . . . . CBS eventually let them go, and music entrepreneur Larry Page, an associate of James, signed the Mirage and made a deal to release their material through Phillips Records. . . . Dick James handled publishing for the Beatles, and he arranged for the Mirage to be able to cover “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from the then-unreleased Revolver, for their first Phillips single. . . . However, conflicting opinions at Phillips led to the single not appearing until December 1966 . . . and the Mirage recording suffered at the marketplace. Undaunted, the group cut a second single . . . which arrived in March 1967, and May 1967 saw the release of “The Wedding of Ramona Blair[]” . . . . Phillips dropped the Mirage, and they found themselves plying their trade as sessionmen, cutting publishing demos, and backing other artists in the James/Page stable . . . [including] Reg Dwight . . . . They also kept up a steady schedule of live work . . . . The Mirage landed a new record deal when Larry Page brought them aboard for his new Page One label. However, much to the group’s consternation, the A-side for their Page One debut (issued July 1968) was a bit of pop fluff . . . co-written by Page under the nom de plume Larry Stein. Their second Page One release, September 1968’s “Here Comes Jane,” was[] . . . credited as the Yellow Pages. A month later, Page One released . . . another substandard number written by Page, and the Mirage were at the end of their rope. They broke up in order to free themselves of their contract with Larry Page, and a few months later [they] signed with Carnaby Records, a new label . . . . Unable to use the name the Mirage, the band adopted the banner Portobello Explosion. Their first release for Carnaby was “We Can Fly,” [see #1,012] a Hynes brothers original . . . . The disc made little impression, and it appeared at a transitional time for the group — Dave Hynes and Kirk Duncan had been bowled over by the Band’s first two albums, and they wanted to shift [their] music into a sound that more closely resembled that band’s rustic country-rock. The name was changed once again to Jawbone . . . and their self-titled debut album, a unique mixture of Beatles-influenced pop and rootsy Americana, came out in May 1970. Reviews were tepid, and Jawbone played no live gigs in support of the release. Predictably, it was not a commercial success, and the band broke up.
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In America, the late 1950s and early 60s was an era of dance crazes . . . . Among them was the Mashed Potatoes, whose praises were first sung on a hit record by “King” Coleman . . . . This was the prelude to Coleman’s career as a compere, singer, disc jockey and preacher. . . . After winning a local talent show at the age of 15, he joined the Charles Taylor Bronze Mannequin Revue, which toured the south as part of a carnival show. By the time he was drafted in 1952, Coleman had also sung with the jazz vibraphone player Lionel Hampton’s band. Leaving the army, he returned to Florida and acquired the nickname “King Coleman” as a DJ. He had a reputation for extemporising rhyming couplets . . . . When James Brown’s band visited Miami in 1959, the local music mogul Henry Stone decided to make a recording of their crowd-pleasing song “(Do the) Mashed Potatoes”. For contractual reasons, Brown was unable to sing lead vocals on the track, so Coleman took over. The track was credited to Nat Kendrick and the Swans and became a Top 10 r’n’b hit in 1960 . . . . Now known as “The Mashed Potato Man”, Coleman recorded a number of less successful singles in the 60s, including songs celebrating the Shimmy, Hully Gully and Booga Lou dances. Coleman, who was in demand as a compere of national package tours by black artists, was radicalised by the civil rights movement. A heated argument with Bobby Schiffman, the white owner of the Apollo theatre in Harlem, New York, led to Coleman being barred from the leading black music venue for a year. After surviving a serious car crash in 1967, Coleman decided to devote himself to religion. He was ordained and recorded an album of gospel songs. He spent the late 1970s and early 80s in California, preaching, doing charity work, running a security business and acting. He appeared in the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-79) and in several films including Claudine (1974) and Up the Academy (1980). . . . His eldest son, Tony, a drummer with BB King’s band, paid tribute to his father, saying: “He was one of the originals. He was one of the roots, and I’m one of his fruits.”
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
An impossibly gorgeous British beat ballad written and recorded by a later incarnation of the Tornados (yes, the “Telstar” Tornados) with a little help from Joe Meek, rerecorded a few years later with equally impressive results by Israel’s Churchills, then including co-writer and ex-Tornado Robb Huxley. Talk about an exodus! Mattgee3734 writes:
The singer here, who also happened to have co-written the song, presented as “Robb Gayle”… is Robb Huxley. He would re-surface . . . as a member of Israeli band The Churchills, with whom he re-recorded the song. The new version appeared as the A side of the Churchills 1st 45… they then switched to psych and recorded a magnificent album . . . .
Joe [Meek] asked us if we had anything for the B side. We had a song that I had started to write on my Dad’s old, out of tune piano . . . and Pete Holder helped me finish it off. . . . We played it to Joe and he liked it but he said that it should be done in three four and not in four four as we were playing it. My immediate reaction was that Joe had no idea what he was talking about until Dave Watts said “Yeah man! That’s it” and started to play the chords with what turned out to be a six eight feel. It seemed that like magic the song took on a completely different feel and appeal and all this had basically come from Joe. I have read over the years many articles portraying Joe as some one who could not sing in tune and was tone deaf but I do not agree entirely with that. He had a vivid imagination and heard things in his mind that he could only bring to the surface with the help of others. If any one was singing off key he would know immediately and anyone who was tone deaf would never have known this. Joe could sing but he was not a very good singer as he would often waver and go off key. . . . “Too Much in Love to Hear” actually came out very well. Dave Watts put a very nice jazzy almost old world feel to his piano parts, Pete Holder put in a nice typical Shadows style solo and together with jazzy style drumming and a good bass line, I put down the vocal and played rhythm guitar.
One of the U.K.’s most distinctive instrumental bands in the early-to-mid 1960s, the Tornados scored a worldwide hit with 1962’s soaring space age ode “Telstar.” The first song by a U.K. group to top the U.S. charts, its uniquely driven, clavioline-led sound was the perfect combination of the band’s musicianship and Joe Meek’s innovative production and recording techniques. As one of the house bands at Meek’s studio and as the backing group for Billy Fury, the Tornados juggled those obligations with releasing their own music, earning Top Five EPs in the U.K. with 1962’s The Sound of the Tornados and Telstar and Top 20 U.K. singles in 1963’s “Globetrotter,” “Robot,” and “Ice Cream Man.” By that time, shifting pop music trends and multiple lineup changes — more than two dozen members played in the group overall — contributed to the Tornados ‘ waning popularity. However, they remained creative to the end . . . .The group returned to backing Fury and issued a pair of 1966 singles that ranked among their most creative work: “Pop-Art Goes Mozart” arranged sections of The Marriage of Figaro [“Too Much in Love to Hear” was the B-side] . . . . The Tornados soldiered on for a time following Meek’s 1967 death . . . .
We had the famous writer of “Telstar” consumed with the hope that he might create another “Telstar” with another of the groups that he had formed to be the Tornados. On the other hand we have the virgin pure recently “Turned Pro” Saxons, together with Dave Watts, a seasoned professional musician, all with their individual desires to be part of what was “IN”, while masquerading as the Tornados.
Huxley further recalls — you need to read the whole thing, it is hilarious — that:
At a band meeting one Friday afternoon Yehuda [Talit] discussed with us the possibilities of making a record. He said that there was a good chance that CBS of Israel would be interested in releasing a single by the Churchills. I was rather surprised when it was suggested that we record “Too Much in Love to Hear”. . . . One time . . . [band member] Miki [Gavrielov] was sifting through my records when he came across the Tornados single and put it on the turntable. Miki asked me who wrote the song and I explained that I did, along with Pete Holder. So it was decided that we would record that song . . . . I showed the band the chords . . . . We were told that the record would be produced by Alex Weiss who was at that time a renowned musician, composer and conductor in Israel. [Band member] Stan [Solomon] and I had no idea who he was but we figured that he must have been pretty good judging by the excitement generated by the rest of the band and Yehuda. He would also arrange string accompaniment . . . . There would also be a brass section. . . . We were scheduled to arrive at the studio at 7.30 am. Stan said “What are they out of their f*ckin’ minds?” We didn’t usually go to sleep till around 6 am. Stan and I were forced to have an early night and crawled into bed at around 4 am. Three hours later we dragged ourselves out of bed, smoked a joint . . . and walked over to the taxi stand . . . . At the studio we met Yehuda and the rest of the band and were introduced to sound engineer Amnon Roberman and his assistant Dori. . . . I believe that this was one of the first recordings of its kind to be made in Israel. Most of the recordings prior to this were either classical, folk music and for the most part were recorded using acoustic instruments. . . . Stan and I discussed what type of solo we should put on “Too Much in Love to Hear”. Stan said that he thought we should put a Hendrix style solo which I would play and then we would reverse it and play it backwards and dub it on to the track. . . . Amnon was looking concerned and called Stan into the control room where they talked back and forth until Stan returned. “They think that we’re crazy, Robbie, they tried to tell me that they can’t record a guitar like that. I told ‘em that Hendrix records like that in England and that’s the sound we want”. I resumed my work on the solo and I realized that it could not be a melodic type of solo as it would not fit with the backing track when it was played backwards. I decided to keep it as simple as possible and basically slid my fingers up and down the strings from octave to octave. We could see Amnon peering through the window shaking his head with disapproval. I said to Stan, “Wait till we tell him that we want to reverse the tape and play it backwards he’ll sh*t his pants!” We got the solo down with Stan staying in the studio with me. He let out a scream at the beginning of my solo and also shouted “We are the t*t men of Tel-Aviv”. Yehuda was beside himself and complained profusely to Stan when we entered the control room to listen to the play back. “You can’t say that on a record”. Stan replied telling Yehuda not too worry as it would be backwards and that nobody would understand it. Amnon swiveled round on his chair with a look of amazement, asking what did we mean backwards? . . . [He] almost fell out of his chair and with his eyes popping out of his head said that it couldn’t be done. We explained that it could as we had heard it on the Jimi Hendrix album Are You Experienced. The result was that Amnon and Dori jabbered away in Hebrew with their hands waving in the air and with some input from the rest of the Churchills they eventually agreed to do as we asked. . . . Here we had a good melodic song, sung in a pop style voice combined with a group sound that was embellished with a typical almost 50’s sounding brass section, with classical style strings layered in; suddenly attacked in the solo by an imposing backward guitar, a scream and some unrecognizable utterance.
[T]he Churchills – Israel’s own psych-rock pioneers . . . . story began in Israel in 1965, when Mickey Gavriellov noticed Haim Romano playing a mandolin for a small group of friends. Gavriellov, who wanted to be in a band, started following Romano around with his guitar, trying desperately to get noticed. Gavriellov soon started playing bass with guitarist Yitzchak Klepter, drummer Ami Treibich, and vocalist Selvin Lifshitz. . . . [T]he band soon added Romano on lead guitar. The group soon became known as Churchill’s Hermits (in tribute to Herman’s Hermits), and eventually just the Churchills. . . . Huxley had come to Israel from England in 1967 as a member of one of the various touring incarnations of the Tornadoes . . . . When the Tornadoes finished their tour in Israel, the bassist and drummer decided to return to England, but Huxley and the band’s keyboardist decided to stay. After playing in a few groups in Israel, Huxley came across the Churchills. “The band would play two sets . . . . one of pop covers and one of American soul music, on which they were joined by [Canadian singer] Stan Solomon.” At the time, Solomon was singing in a band called the Saints. Huxley and Solomon became friends very quickly, and soon moved in with each other. In 1968 Lifshitz and Klepter were drafted into the Israeli army. Solomon was almost immediately asked to become the band’s new lead singer, and he in turn recommended Huxley as Klepter’s replacement. The change was dramatic. “Stan and I had the other members of the band over to our apartment,” Huxley said, “where we smoked a bunch of hash, which there was a lot of in Israel at that time… We introduced them to the Doors, Vanilla Fudge, and Hendrix – that kind of music, and they just freaked out! They totally loved it!” . . . This unique mix of Eastern and Western music became very popular in Israel, no doubt helped by the fact that, thanks to Huxley and Solomon, the Churchills became the first Israeli rock band to play original material. . . . The band soon released its first single, “Too Much in Love to Hear,” a Huxley original, backed with Solomon’s “Talk to Me.” Not long after the single was released, the band ventured to Denmark, where they spent four months opening for Deep Purple. . . . When the band returned to Israel, they were asked to create a soundtrack for the film A Woman’s Case, a bizarre movie about an advertising executive who falls for and later plots to kill a lesbian fashion model. The songs Huxley, Solomon and Gavriellov wrote for the movie became the basis for the band’s 1968 self-titled debut album. . . . In 1969, Stan Solomon left the band and returned home. “Stan’s father was one of the richest men in Canada,” Huxley explained. “He wanted Stan to come back and join the family business, which was a clothing business. . . . “[Stan’s quitting] was a crisis,” said Gavriellov. . . . In early 1970, Huxley briefly went back to England to get married. When he returned, the other band members informed him that while he was gone, they had added a new lead singer – Danny Shoshan, formerly of the Lions of Judea. “In my opinion,” said Huxley, “Danny Shoshan became the other Stan Solomon. He and I started writing together like I had with Stan. But Danny sang with a very ballsy voice, so we started doing harder stuff because we could.”
The 1960s, for much of the world, were synonymous with social ferment and rebellion. Not so in Israel. Nineteen sixty-seven was the year of the Six-Day War, followed by the War of Attrition with Egypt, followed still by the Yom Kippur War in 1973. . . . [T]here was no Israeli equivalent of mass student uprisings, no Haight-Ashbury. . . . [But there] sprang a complete anomaly: The Churchills – a trippy, psychedelic band that emerged not from California, London, or other high temples of grooviness, but from the environs of Tel Aviv. The Churchills began as a standard Israeli cover band. At the same time, a revamped version of the Tornados, the British band that gave the world “Telstar,” toured Israel. The Tornados disbanded after that tour and one of its members, Robb Huxley, “decided to stay in Israel as I had met and become friends with Canadian Stan Solomon, who was the [Churchills] singer…and then began our arduous task to change the music of the band and hopefully turn the Israeli audience on to a different style of music.” . . . The Israeli audiences “took us as being a bunch of crazy musicians,” [Huxley] remembers, “who played ‘noise’ and were all ‘soaked’ in LSD.” . . . Yet the Churchills . . . doggedly plugged away. In 1968 came their eponymous album, Churchill’s—the errant apostrophe a forgivable offense in a Hebrew-speaking world. The album was a psychedelic, expressive classic, with songs ranging from the bombastic to the plaintive. The fact that Churchill’s . . . existed at all was odds-defying. . . . The album’s sonic palette is heavily inflected with strong doses of the jangly, drone-like tones of the Mediterranean and Middle East . . . . The band joined forces with Arik Einstein, one of the founding fathers of Israeli rock. They connected with other Israeli musicians who were forming a homegrown, nascent rock scene. . . . In Israel, the sort of music the Churchills championed was a marginalized, often scorned, form of expression. Yet it did find its way into public consciousness. The musicians and their fans coalesced. The Churchills are part of a wonderful, scattered lineage found in culture’s nooks and crannies.
Well, were they popular in Israel or were they not?
* The band’s name “was simply a reference to founding member Yitzhak Klepter’s schoolboy nickname, inspired by his round, plump appearance that apparently conjured up images of the British prime minister”. (Richard klin https://www.jewishviews.com/israeli-gears/)
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,572) The Golden Earrings — “That Day”
This song is by my favorite British beat group . . . from the Netherlands. But warning: If you are Dutch, read no further! The Golden Earrings’ (see #63, 163, 319, 1,215, 1,504, 1,560) 3rd A-side, written by guitarist George Kooymans and bassist Marinus Gerritsen, reached #2 in the charts in ’66, stopped from reaching #1 only by the Beatles’ “Michelle”. Ironic, because it is such a dead ringer for the Beatles that Paul McCartney must have woken up one morning wondering if he had written it! “Unreleased Beatles song? lol” (alphasigmasezon8597 (courtesy of Google Translate), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_diAWMf0RE) “For me this remains the[ir] most beautiful song”. (pietkeizer5279 (courtesy of Google Translate), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_diAWMf0RE)
Kremer Henk (courtesy of Google Translate) tells us that:
[T]he band . . . took the ferry to London, where the Earrings had booked a recording day at the Pye Studios. Partly out of dissatisfaction with the Dutch studios at the time and also because the manager was not averse to a stunt. [It] was the first Dutch pop song to be recorded in England. The single was received as a sensation; immediately after returning home, The Golden Earrings appeared on television with Willem Duys in his popular talk show Voor de vuist weg. Nothing was left to chance to ensure that the highest position in the charts would be reached.
Not only could the Earrings sound just as if they had washed up on a bank of the Mersey, a feat in and of itself, they also wrote great songs. Unlike some groups, they didn’t have the luxury of having Lennon and McCartney donate to the cause. The Earrings have earned a lot of good will in my book — everything that happened in the 70’s is forgiven! As Mark Deming writes:
Golden Earring were hailed as one of the hottest new bands in America when the song “Radar Love” . . . was released in 1973. Funny thing was, Golden Earring were hardly a new band; while they weren’t well known outside the Netherlands, in their native Holland they were major stars who had been scoring hits for eight years.
They were always melodic . . . their music combined the tough chunkiness of The Who and The Kinks with the minor-key, brooding melodies of The Zombies. . . . Where bands like the rough-hewn Outsiders [see #615, 664, 1,218] defined the edgy sound of Amsterdam, the more polished Golden Earrings defined the sound of The Hague. . . . The[ir] roots . . . lie in The Tornados, a band formed by 13-year-old George Kooymans and 15-year-old Marinus Gerritsen in 1962. . . . An instrumental outfit, their repertoire included Shadows and Ventures numbers. . . . The Hague . . . was stuffed with rock ‘n’ roll bands and competition was tough. . . . [The] boom was fuelled by bands made up from Indonesian immigrants. Indo-Rock had been born. . . . After the British Tornados’ Telstar became a Dutch hit in late 1962 . . . . the band chose The Golden Earrings, from the standard that Peggy Lee had a hit with in 1948. . . . [B]y the end of 1963, it became clear that the shifting musical climate meant the band would have to incorporate vocals. Frans Krassenburg became their singer in early 1964. . . . The[ir] break came in July 1965 . . . . Freddy Haayen saw the band at their regular venue Club 192 . . . . [and] said he worked for Polydor Records and that he wanted to record them. Actually, he was an architecture student who also worked as a trainee at Polydor’s warehouse. The Golden Earrings didn’t know this and duly turned up . . . to record four tracks . . . . Haayen had made good on his bluff and scored a deal with Polydor. Released in September, “Please Go” . . . reach[ed] number 10. . . . In September they played with The Who; November saw them teamed up with The Kinks. . . . [T]he band[‘s] first album, Just Earrings[, r]eleased [in] November 1965 . . . showcased the band’s supreme confidence. . . . [They] were already making records that should have been heard beyond the borders of their native Holland. . . . While other Dutch legends like Q’65 [see #108, 557, 913, 1,164, 1,227, 1,356] and The Outsiders were unhinged and freaked-out, The Golden Earrings focused their energies on structure and songwriting. . . . A year [after Just Earrings] they were riding high after three hit singles[, a]ll . . . kinetic numbers that relied on driving rhythms to make their mark. When the next single arrived in late August 1966 it became clear The Golden Earrings were absorbing the new textures that could be applied to pop. . . . [with] “Daddy Buy Me A Girl” [see #163]. . . . [I]n late November when it was announced that rhythm guitarist Peter de Ronde had left the band. . . . Continuing as a four piece . . . the band immediately began recording . . . Winter Harvest . . . . [which] was a quantum leap. There were no cover versions, and no songs that had already been issued as singles. . . . Overall . . . the sound was of a band that were in total control and utterly confident. . . . They played dates in Stockholm and Hamburg just before the release of Winter Harvest, and also licensed the album to Capitol Records in America. . . . But they didn’t find an American audience . . . . Back home, “In My House” and “Smoking Cigarettes” were extracted . . . as a single coupling in April 1967. As usual it was another massive Dutch hit. The single was followed by the departure of vocalist Frans Krassenburg. His replacement was Barry Hay, the frontman of Hague band The Haigs [see #138] . . . .
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
Just click on the first blue block for a month to month subscription or the second blue block for a yearly subscription.
THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,571)The Jynx — “How”
A mysterious UK band gave us a ‘64 beat classic and then disappeared. Vernon Joynson says “[n]o other details known”. (The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) Thankfully, 06m.jones can tell us that the Jynx was “[a] group from Birkhamstead who won a beat contest and the prize was to record their song.” (https://www.45cat.com/record/db7304) How has “How” not been covered a million times?
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,000 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
Just click on the first blue block for a month to month subscription or the second blue block for a yearly subscription.
He had a vivid imagination and heard things in his mind that he could only bring to the surface with the help of others. If any one was singing off key he would know immediately and anyone who was tone deaf would never have known this. Joe could sing but he was not a very good singer as he would often waver and go off key. . . . “Too Much in Love to Hear” actually came out very well. Dave Watts put a very nice jazzy almost old world feel to his piano parts, Pete Holder put in a nice typical Shadows style solo and together with jazzy style drumming and a good bass line, I put down the vocal and played rhythm guitar.
Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 