THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
833) The Who — “Sunrise”
To be honest, I sort of forgot about this wonderful acoustic number at the tail end of The Who Sell Out. Shame on me. Richie Unterberger says it “shows introspective, vulnerable sides to [Pete Townshend — happy birthday, BTW!] that had previously been hidden.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-who-sell-out-mw0000652659). The Australian edition of Rolling Stone calls it The Who’s 24th greatest song and reveals that:
[This is] a lovely acoustic track featuring just Townshend’s voice and his Harmony 12-string. The song’s bright melody, nimble finger-picking and melancholy lyrics were a break from the Who’s chaotic intensity, and not everyone in the band was thrilled to see Townshend branching out. “Keith didn’t want that on the record,” Townshend said in 1980. “In a way, that’s a bit of a giveaway to the fact that at the time I was studying a bit of this jazz thing. I wrote it for my mother to show her that I could write real music.”
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
832) Omega — “Utazás A Szürke Folyón”/”Journey on the Grey River”
“Down the grey wild river there’s a road waiting for me. I must go and leave the one who gives me a home.” (courtesy of Google translate)
Haunting prog from Hungary’s greatest rock band (see #195, 644, 766). The song is off the band’s third album — 70’s Éjszakai Országút (On the Highway at Night) and both the album and song are “full of energetic heavy prog rock with acid spices – guitar riffs, stomping rhythm section and nice Hammond organ backing. . . . [The album] is [a] highly recommended early heavy prog album from the turn of the decade, and surely one of the best non-English East-European albums of this era.” (Seyo, http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=3729)
Majnik László says (courtesy of Google translate) that “[i]n 1970, apart from Omega, no one played such progressive rock in Hungary, in my opinion the sound of the album was completely new and actually daring.” (https://beatkorszak.blog.hu/2022/10/15/elo_omega-herskovits_ivan-interju) Vibrationbaby calls the album “a very interesting combination of some very trippy psychedelia as well as some romantic ballads which seem to draw from their Hungarian folk roots and not unlike songs that were being produced by contemporary western bands in the late sixties.” (http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=116173)
Iván Herskovits opines (courtesy of Google translate) that:
Ten or fifteen years ago, you could read a lot of comments saying that [the album] was cuckoo eggs and such nonsense. By now, you’re reading things like Journey on the Gray River is hypnotic. . . . Night Highway is a dark, claustrophobic record, which is strained by the contrast between the individual members and the awareness that they are not suitable for each other – especially in terms of musical manual skills. . . . From a band that is torn apart by dissatisfaction coupled with a willingness to do something, usually records are born that the makers consider bad and don’t like. It is precisely because of the negative energy that such an album will be not necessarily moody and dark, but usually tense from the first moment to the last. The members of the band – especially Presser . . . still said half a decade after the [band’s] split that Night Highway was not as good as the previous one, 10,000 steps. I didn’t even understand then: how can they not hear how great this record is?! Of course, all this is understandable from the band’s point of view, because there are no hits like the one before on the Night Highway. And so, as is now well known, the band was unable to offer [Gábor] Presser [keyboards, vocals] a musical challenge.
The [album’s] title itself is a symbol. A wanderer walking or driving by car on the highway at night often sees a world different from the daytime reality, his imagination expands and the possibility of imagination multiplies. Gábor Presser, the author of most Omega numbers, said at the press conference held at the release of the album: “Most of the good ideas and melody sketches come to mind when after the concert, we are tired on the way home by bus and we stare at the night with closed eyes.”
The most successful Hungarian rock band in history, Omega was formed in 1962 in Budapest by a group of friends. The lineup changed several times during Omega’s early years and there was no consistent music style to speak of. As with many other rock groups of the early ’60s, the band’s repertory largely consisted of songs by popular British bands of the period. Only in 1967, when they were joined by Gábor Presser (keyboards, vocals), did they began recording their own songs and issuing a few singles. Presser’s mixture of rock with elements of jazz and folk proved to be a winning formula. In 1968, John Martin, the manager of the Spencer Davis Group, invited them for a tour in Great Britain, where they recorded the album Omega: Red Star from Hungary for the Decca label. Later that year, they issued their first Hungarian LP . . . . The band sealed their success with two subsequent LPs, 10,000 Lépés . . . and Éjszakai Országút . . . .
If Omega had been singing in English and didn’t have to contend with political restrictions which were in effect back in the sixties in communist ruled Eastern Europe they would have definitely made a mark on the western charts way before 1973 when they began recording in English on [a] West German label . . . . Although they had briefly played various gigs in England including the Marqee Club and released a partial album in 1968 on the Decca label it wasn’t until 1969/70 that they really started making their mark with the albums 10,000 Lepes (10,000 Steps) and Edszakai orzogut . . . which both went gold in their native land.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
831) Olympic — “Dědečkův Duch”/”Grandpa’s Ghost”
How do the Czechs mate? They turn up Olympic! Dad, enough with the dad jokes! Sorry. The great and pioneering Czech band (see #635)— going strong after 60 years! — gives us this great beat number about (I think) a guy who is desperate for a strong drink but the ghost of his alcoholic grandfather won’t let him have one! It is off Olympic’s first album, 68’s Želva (The Turtle), which was “the first rock LP record published in Czechoslovakia. . . . strongly influenced by waves of mersey-sound, garage and psychedelic rock”. (Peter Markovski, https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2016/09/1960s-1970s-psychedelia-in.html)
Pavla Horáková tells us:
The band got together in 1963 and started as a backing group, playing with pop singers at the Semafor theatre where many famous Czech musicians and singers began their careers. In the days when Beatlemania was in full swing around the world, Olympic realised they could do without outside singers and guitarist Petr Janda became the band’s leader and singer. Soon their first hit was born, called “Dej mi vic sve lasky” or “Give Me More Love” . . . . [Želva’s] songs mostly featured slightly awkward lyrics and charming Beatles-like melodies. The Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia found the band on holiday in France. Immediately a lot of offers came their way chances to record albums and tour in the West. But the guys decided to return home. A year later, another album was out.
Olympic were given their name in 1963 while they were regularly performing at one of the “hippest” venues in Prague of that time, the music club Olympik. . . . Since the late 1950s they had been playing in legendary rock’n’roll groups . . . . [T]he actual launch of their unprecedented professional career was November 11, 1963 when Olympic debuted as the house band for the first rock’n’roll musical “Ondrá? podotýká” at the renowned Semafor Theatre. This early line-up comprised about seven musicians, including a saxophonist. In the spring of 1964 Olympic entered the Supraphon recording studios for the first time, and they instantly made Czech music history again. The resulting “big beat” series of 7″ singles was released in collaboration with the popular Mladý svet (trans. Young World) magazine, with Olympic backing top Czech vocalists on four records out of five, including Eva Pilarová and Karel Gott. Olympic initially continued to work for Supraphon as a backing band on several singles whenever the fashionable rock backbeat was required. Yet for themselves they had chosen another pioneering path: instead of slavishly performing cover versions of Western hits like the majority of other Czech beat groups, they began to write and sing their own songs with Czech lyrics. In 1967, the group was offered to record the first-ever Czechoslovak profile beat album. The recording sessions took place between January and October 1967, and the LP was released in early 1968. The second Supraphon album, Pták Rosomák (trans. The Bird Wolverine), was recorded in December 1968 and January 1969. Apart from loads of hip psychedelia, it also included earlier hits . . . . and again it was an enormous success on the domestic market. . . . The band revisited France to work on a new record but it was eventually cancelled . . . . After considering emigration at first, Olympic returned to Prague in August 1969, in spite of the cheerless political situation. Since they weren’t a band with many “offending” messages or with an overly rebellious attitude, the communist censors let them carry on. “Kufr” was a hit in late 1969, and even bigger hits followed in 1970 in the form of more pop-oriented songs. Jedeme, jedeme (trans. “Riding On, Riding On”) was their third album for Supraphon, recorded in September 1970. It contained fresh versions of several songs originally written for the previously-cancelled French LP, and it shows a slight shift towards progressive rock.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
830) The Collage — “Driftin'”
Ethereal B-side and album track from the Collage (see #415, 678).
Unterberger gives us some history:
Part of the idea behind the formation of the Collage was to emulate the Mamas and the Papas’ lineup with a two-man, two-woman quartet of harmonizing singers. The group’s sole . . . album . . . has a yet more pronounced sunshine pop feel, as well as yet lusher production . . . . The songs have a sweeter tone, almost as if elements of the Mamas and the Papas and the 5th Dimension have been layered with production and songwriting a little more oriented toward an adult pop/variety entertainment audience. . . . There are some mild psychedelic touches, but also some hammy vaudevillian ones, and . . . the original songs had showtune-style melodies.
When Ron [Joelson] met Jerry [Careaga], according to Jerry:
[Ron] was a hippie poet, smoked grass, and, as a teenager, was friends with Bob Dylan. I was his polar opposite — with a short-haired, clean-shaven look courtesy of the Air Force — and was fascinated with his lifestyle and what he wrote. Ron’s poems were unstructured and freeform, with unusual metaphors. My songs were structured and commercial-sounding. I had begun writing in the mid-’50s as a teenager, but as a result of my military upbringing, I never ventured into the subversive culture of the beat generation. I didn’t smoke dope either. Ron’s lifestyle was all new to me, and it was fun.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
829) H.P. Lovecraft — “The Drifter”
This Chicago band put the LSD in Lake Shore Drive, and in a folk classic. Richie Unterberger says that “[t]he . . . vocal blend was particularly stirring on the[] cover[] of ‘The Drifter’ (penned by folkie Travis Edmonson, half of the duo Bud & Travis) . . . .” (http://www.richieunterberger.com/hplove.html) As to the first album, from which I take “The Drifter”, hieronymous says “the sound is folk rock meets psychedelia[, t]he vocal sound reminds me of Jefferson Airplane – some of the vocals seem melodramatic at first, but stick with it . . . the combination of Michaels and George Edwards is actually pretty magical.” (http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=2340776)
Like the stories of the author after whom they were named, H.P. Lovecraft’s music was spooky and mysterious, a vibe well-suited for the psychedelic times . . . . Their remarkably eclectic balance of folk, jazz, orchestrated pop, and even bits of garage rock and classical music, was too fragile and ethereal to keep afloat for any longer than that, perhaps. It lasted long enough, however, for the group to gift us with two uneven, occasionally brilliant albums that are among the most intriguing obscure relics of the psychedelic age.
Featuring two strong singers (who often sang dual leads), hauntingly hazy arrangements, and imaginative songwriting that drew from pop and folk influences, H.P. Lovecraft was one of the better psychedelic groups of the late ’60s. The band was formed by ex-folky George Edwards in Chicago in 1967. [He] and keyboardist Dave Michaels, a classically trained singer with a four-octave range, handled the vocals, which echoed Jefferson Airplane’s in their depth and blend of high and low parts. Their self-titled 1967 LP was an impressive debut, featuring strong originals and covers of early compositions by Randy Newman and Fred Neil, as well as one of the first underground FM radio favorites, “White Ship.”
With the exception of a couple of badly dated tracks, th[e first album] is one of the best second-division psychedelic albums, with strong material that shows the immediately identifiable Edwards-Michaels vocal tandem at its best. According to the LP notes, the songs were largely inspired by novelist H.P. Lovecraft’s “macabre tales and poems of Earth populated by another race.” It’s more haunting than gloomy, though, with deft touches of folk, jazz, and horns.
George Edwards [real name: Charles Ethan Kenning] tells us:
I played Folk Music in high school, then in Chicago area clubs, and later toured the country playing most of the many Folk venues that had become popular in the early 60’s. . . . In the mid sixties, I began my association with Dunwich, working with them as a writer and session singer, eventually recording a series of singles for them. We recorded some of my original songs, and the Lennon/McCartney composition “Norwegian Wood” among others. . . .
In addition to my solo career, I was also working as a backup singer with a trio, playing supper clubs in the midwest. David Michaels was also part of this group. I was still pursuing a recording career, and had just recorded a Chip Taylor tune “Anyway That You Want Me” for my next Dunwich single. After listening to the finished record, I decided to invite David to come in and add a harmony vocal. We had been singing together in the above mentioned group for a couple of years, and had developed a very good musical rapport, and a tight vocal blend. . . .
[M]uch of the material on the first LP was from my folk days. . . . “The Drifter” is a Travis Edmundson tune, also from my folk material.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
828) Roger Nichols and a Small Circle of Friends — “The Drifter”
The Friends’ (see #631) final A-side (with “Trust” on the flip side (see #136, as covered by the Peppermint Trolley Co.)) “failed to make a commercial impact.” How it wasn’t a soft pop/sunshine pop megahit is beyond me. Lyricist Paul Williams says “I think it’s one of the prettiest records. And . . . that blend of voices and those harmonies were just wonderful.” Roger that.
The single came after the classic album Roger Nichols and a Small Circle of Friends, but they are two of a kind. I’d call the album one of the great lost albums of the 60’s, except that people could have bought it, they just didn’t! Yeah, you know who you are.
Matthew Greenwald tells us that:
[Roger Nichols and a Small Circle of Friends is a] true sleeper in the context of California pop. . . . The album is a lot of things at once. Soft pop, a smattering of rock, and a heavy dose of easy listening. The group itself has a great vocal blend. Nichols is joined by Murray MacLeod and his sister, Melinda. The three voices combined create a wonderful, soft sheen, equally effective on the ballads . . . and uptempo numbers . . . . The credits on the album are a virtual who’s who of California pop at the time. . . . [including] Lenny Waronker, Van Dyke Parks, Bruce Botnick, and Randy Newman. Superbly produced by Tommy LaPuma, the album unfortunately didn’t do very well at the time of its release, which is an incredible injustice. The music, though, holds up extremely well today, and is an authentic slice of California pop. Delicious.
Mr Nichols and friends present a groovy smorgasbord of late 60’s pop music . . . . The album is full of candy-coated treats such as soft rock, psych pop and commercial pop. . . . Their sound is soft rock-based with a strong emphasis on imaginative male & female vocal arrangements that may include spicy touches of ethnic beats, lush strings and perky horn mixes. . . . There are many other bands from this period with a similar pop sound, but Nichols and friends had more talent and a healthy budget allowing to record with a top-notched production crew at a state of the art studio.
The Acid Archives, 2nd Ed.
Steve Stanley:
[T]he album overall had the hallmark late-sixties soft pop sound that was selling busloads of records for acts like the 5th Dimension and the Association at the time. . . . [But] when it came to the record-buying public, the . . . LP fell on deaf ears. [Producer] Tommy LiPuma adds his perspective: “I think at the time, radio stations didn’t know what the dell to do with it, it didn’t necessarily fit into a format, and there wasn’t anything that broke out as a hit.”
liner notes to the CD reissue of Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends
Ed Hogan tells us of Nichols:
[Roger Nichols’] household brimmed with music when he was growing up. His dad was . . . a professional photographer who played sax in local jazz bands. His mother was a music major and a classical pianist. When Nichols started grade school, he picked up the violin, continuing his violin and classical studies throughout grammar and high school. His attention turned to basketball and Nichols forsook violin for the hoops but played guitar on the side. Recruited to U.C.L.A. on a basketball scholarship . . . . [He was] confronted to make a choice between music or basketball by his coach . . . . Nichols chose music. . . . After he left college . . . . [o]n weekends, he worked in clubs with his group . . . . Around 1965, the group was signed to a recording contract by Liberty Records. . . . With the label for eight months without having a record released, Nichols called A&M Records expressing interest in playing some demos for label co-owner Herb Alpert. . . . [N]ichols wrote an instrumental for Alpert that he promptly recorded a week after hearing it.
Though Roger Nichols and a Small Circle of Friends wasn’t a big seller, Albert urged A&M publishing company head . . . to sign Nichols as a songwriter to their company. [The label] introduced [him] to lyricist Paul Williams. . . . The duo wrote together for four years, resulting in lots of album cuts, B-sides, even A-sides, but no hits. An advertising executive approached a friend of Nichols asking for help with an under-budget commercial project for Crocker Bank. . . . Hoping to capture the youth market . . . Nichols and Williams were given the slogan, “You’ve got a long way to and go and we’d like to help you get there.” They had just ten days to create a song, essentially a jingle. Waiting until the last day . . . Nichols . . . wrote the basic verse melody in a half hour. . . . Richard Carpenter of the Carpenters heard the jingle on a TV commercial . . . . [T]he Carpenters recorded the song [as] “We’ve Only Just Begun” . . . .
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
827) Johnny Adams — “Real Live Living Hurtin’ Man”
This ‘ 70 A-side was “ironically written by a pair of female songwriters, Margaret Lewis and Myrna Smith. . . . [It is] classic southern soul.” (The Vintage Soul Machine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJJNAWp-x5A)
Renowned around his Crescent City home base as “the Tan Canary” for his extraordinary set of soulfully soaring pipes, veteran R&B vocalist Johnny Adams . . . . was never particularly into the parade-beat grooves that traditionally define the New Orleans R&B sound, preferring to deliver sophisticated soul ballads draped in strings. Adams sang gospel professionally before crossing over to the secular world in 1959. Songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie . . . convinced her neighbor, Adams, to sing her tasty ballad “I Won’t Cry.”* . . . Adams was on his way. He waxed some outstanding follow-ups . . . notably “A Losing Battle” . . . and “Life Is a Struggle.” After a prolonged dry spell, Adams resurfaced in 1968 with an impassioned R&B revival of Jimmy Heap’s country standard “Release Me” . . . that blossomed into a national hit. Even more arresting was Adams’ magnificent 1969 country-soul classic “Reconsider Me,” his lone leap into the R&B Top Ten . . . . Despite several worthy SSS follow-ups (“I Can’t Be All Bad” was another sizable seller), Adams never traversed those lofty commercial heights again . . . .
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Strangely [“Join My Gang” is] just as idiosyncratic lyrically as say “I’m A Boy” or “Pictures Of Lily” but hearing Oscar do it makes you wonder what a Who version would have sounded like. Perhaps it was too light weight or maybe Pete felt he’d foisted enough perverse little ditties on the band. That said [it] is a light, jaunty little piece of pop with some silly lyrics with a main chorus of “You can join my gang. That would shake the world, you can join my gang even though you’re a girl” with some VERY ’67 Bowie style oboe in the background and some jangly folk rocky guitar. It’s catchy and the melody to the chorus is pretty damn infectious.
You would think . . . Oscar . . . had it made. His father (Oscar) was The Who’s lawyer and presumably these connections got him a deal with Robert Stigwood’s Reaction label. Stigwood would also become his manager. Previously he had gone under the moniker of Paul Dean cutting two singles (the last of which was on Reaction) with that name. A name change to Oscar and a crack at an unreleased Pete Townshend song . . . were next. Despite all this his debut stalled.
Few vocalists have gone through as many permutations in their career in popular music in the manner of Paul Nicholas. Best known as a singer, [he] began his career in professional music at the keyboard at age 19, playing piano with Screaming Lord Sutch and his backing band, the Savages, in 1964. He didn’t remain with the band too long, however, choosing to give up playing full-time in favor of studying drama and developing his acting skills. [He] continued to record occasionally, but despite his access to early compositions by Pete Townshend (“Join My Gang”) and David Bowie (“Over the Wall We Go”), he failed to chart a single with any of his work. In 1968, Nicholas joined the British cast of the musical Hair, which was brought to London in 1968 by Robert Stigwood in the lead role of Claude. The two years he spent in the part marked [his] first time crossing paths professionally with the producer, and he was later cast in Stigwood’s productions of Jesus Christ, Superstar and Grease. Nicholas also appeared in the rock-related movies Tommy, Lisztomania, and Stardust. [His] extensive credits in Stigwood’s productions and his resulting popularity inevitably led to his recording several singles for the producer’s RSO Records, mostly in a disco-pop vein, but his success was largely confined to the stage, where he continued to earn leading roles in major productions . . . .
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Mainly Norfolk notes that “Hedy West rewrote [it] as Five Hundred Miles with a different tune but several overlapping verses, and recorded it in 1963 for her eponymous album on the Vanguard label, Hedy West. It was a big hit for the Kingston Trio and for Peter, Paul & Mary in 1962.” Bobby Bare had a Top 10 hit with it in ’63.
As to Fiddlin’ John, John Bush writes that:
Fiddlin’ John Carson was already 55 when in 1923 the OKeh label released “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane”/”The Old Hen Cackled” — the first recording by a strictly country artist and arguably the beginning of the country music recording industry. Carson was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia in 1868, and worked in cotton mills for over 20 years until his fiddling talents won several contests. He began performing in minstrel shows, and came to be quite popular around the Georgia area — so much so that Atlanta furniture salesman Polk Brockman recommended Carson’s name to OKeh field recorder Ralph Peer. Though Peer agreed to record the fiddler, he was disgusted with the results and sent only a few copies to the furniture store — then the only outlet for records. Brockman sold out of several pressings, convincing Peer that there was a market for hillbilly recordings. Carson was brought to New York late in 1923 to begin recording the first of his over 150 sides for the label. The following year, Carson updated his old-timey sound by recording with a string band called the Virginia Reelers. . . . Carson’s fortunes declined during the Depression, however; his final recordings were for Victor Bluebird in 1934. He later worked as an elevator operator at the Georgia State Capitol, a job he received from governor Eugene Talmadge in return for the popular musician’s campaign help.
Dylan and the Band laid down a majestic version in ’67 during the recording of the Basement Tapes. Robert MacMillan notes that “Dylan adds some oddball lyrics, particularly ‘Even down on the ocean side, no she don’t wade in just to bang my pride.'” (http://bobdylanhaiku61.blogspot.com/2015/07/900-miles-from-my-home.html)
The Basement Tapes need no intro, but Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes:
Preserving newly written Bob Dylan songs for copyright is the reason why the Band’s Garth Hudson rolled tape at Big Pink but The Basement Tapes were something much more than songwriting demos. . . . [T]his was the birth of what would be called Americana — the wondrous thing about The Basement Tapes [was that the] music [was] made with no expectation that anybody outside of a small circle would ever hear it. Of course, the opposite happened. [They] leaked out and became an enduring part not only of the legacy of both Dylan and the Band, but also of American music as a whole, as it stood at the crossroads of so many different strands of American culture.
Of all the great rockers of the late 50s and early 60s, Dion DiMucci was nearly alone in making the transition to a new, more mature era, at a time when The Beatles and The Byrds were putting teen idols out to pasture. Yet it wasn’t as abrupt and unexpected as it appeared. Even before The Beatles hit the US, he’d recorded (in December 1963) . . . 900 Miles, though it wouldn’t find release until the Wonder Where I’m Bound LP in 1969. Also in late 1963 and early ’64, he recorded hard blues by the likes of Lightnin’ Hopkins, as well as cutting his own acoustic folk tune The Road I’m On (Gloria), which only surfaced as a rare 1964 B-side.
Just months after Dion had commercially returned from the dead with his [‘68 #4] smash “Abraham, Martin & John,” Columbia patched together [Wonder Where I’m Bound, an] assortment of odds and ends from the vaults, most of it apparently selected with an eye toward folk-rock material.
What is not generally known about Dion is how good a blues guitarist he is. While his instrumental skills are a revelation on this record, equally astounding is how dramatically he reinvented himself from being one of the great pop singers to being perhaps the best white blues singer alive. . . . “Abraham, Martin and John” had received both critical acclaim and commercial success, with Billboard calling it one of Dion’s “best performances of all time” . . . . The challenge was to sustain this by releasing material that complemented Dion’s new folk rock sound. A number of unreleased recordings that Dion had made at Columbia were brought together [in Wonder Where I’m Bound].
When Dion began recording in the late ’50s, it was as the lead singer of a group of friends who sang on Bronx street corners. Billing themselves Dion & the Belmonts . . . their first few records were prime Italian-American doo wop. . . . [and their biggest single] was “A Teenager in Love,” . . . . Dion went solo in 1960 . . . moving from . . . more R&B/pop-oriented tunes with great success. He handled himself with a suave, cocky ease on hits like “The Wanderer,” “Runaround Sue,” “Lovers Who Wander,” “Ruby Baby,” and “Donna the Prima Donna[]” . . . . By the mid-’60s . . . heroin . . . was getting the best of him, and he did little recording and performing for about five years.
825) Esther & Abi Ofarim — “900 Miles from My Home”
Finally, here is a beguiling version from . . . Esther & Abi Ofarim! All Music Guide tells us that:
Esther Ofarim . . . and Avraham Reichstadt . . . were a husband-and-wife team who shot to fame in [Israel] during the early 60s. With a keen eye for the international market, Esther had represented Switzerland in the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest while the duo extended their appeal on the Continent via concert performances and foreign language recordings. They had their first hit in Germany in 1966 with ‘Noch Einen Tanz’, and the following year enjoyed even bigger success with their version of the Bee Gees’ ‘Morning Of My Life’. An appearance on the high-rating Eamonn Andrews Show on UK television, in which Esther and Abi sang a novelty love duet, proved so popular that the song became an overnight smash. ‘Cinderella Rockefella’ . . . topped the UK charts for three weeks in early 1968 and although the duo seemed likely one-hit wonders they managed a successful Top 20 follow-up with ‘One More Dance’. The partnership subsequently broke up when their marriage was dissolved.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
822)Ten Years After — “50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain”
“Love me 50, 000 miles beneath my brain.” A cool number from Ten Years After (see #607) with insanely trippy lyrics. Guitars Exchange — or is it Guitar Sexchange? — calls it “classic psychedelica that floats on the TYA jam approach, which is intensely moody. . . . a trippy song ,definitive of the day.” (https://guitarsexchange.com/en/unplugged/382/ten-years-after-cricklewood-green-1970/) Jim Newsom says that “50,000 Miles” is a “classic[] of TYA’s jam genre, with lyrically meaningless verses setting up extended guitar workouts that build in intensity, rhythmically and sonically.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/cricklewood-green-mw0000650879)
“50,000 Miles” comes from the album Cricklewood Green, which Newsom says is the “best example of Ten Years After’s recorded sound. . . . [T]he band and engineer Andy Johns mix studio tricks and sound effects, blues-based song structures, a driving rhythm section, and Alvin Lee’s signature lightning-fast guitar licks into a unified album that flows nicely from start to finish.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/cricklewood-green-mw0000650879)
TYA needs no introduction, but let me quote Mark Deming anyway:
A storming blues and boogie band from the U.K., Ten Years After rocketed from modest success to worldwide fame in the wake of their performance at the Woodstock Rock Festival in 1969, where their nine-minute rendition of “I’m Going Home” showed off the lightning-fast guitar work and howling vocals of Alvin Lee, the unrelenting stomp of bassist Leo Lyons and drummer Ric Lee, and the soulful support of keyboard man Chick Churchill. While the group was also capable of moody pop and acoustic-based material (as heard on 1971’s A Space in Time, whose single “I’d Like to Change the World” was their greatest American hit), it was the group’s raw blues-based music that remained their trademark . . . .
[The band’s name] refer[s] to the fact they launched . . . in 1966, ten years after Elvis Presley’s career breakthrough opened the doors for rock & roll.
[They] gigg[ed] steadily, including holding down a residency at London’s Marquee Club, and in 1967, after an appearance at the Windsor Jazz Festival earned praise in the music press, the quartet signed a record deal with Deram . . . . It would cement their reputation for decades to come when their rendition of “I’m Going Home” appeared in the 1970 documentary about the [Woodstock] festival . . . .
You owe it to yourself to read Hugh Fielder’s hilarious and heartbreaking article on, and series of interviews with the members of, TYA. Here are some excerpts:
Ten Years After had been in the vanguard of the second (heavier) invasion of the US by British groups, touring relentlessly and rapidly reaching top-of-the-bill status. “We had this thing – and looking back I’m a bit ashamed of it now – that we had to sting any band that went on after us,” Alvin recalls. “We used to go out of our way to blow them off and make them look bad. It wasn’t so much playing well as going down well; we’d learnt that from our years on the club circuit. And there were a lot of bands in America who wouldn’t go on after us. At Woodstock, Country Joe whipped his equipment on before us because he’d played after us at the Fillmore East and died a death.” . . .
Leo[] . . . reveals the secret of TYA’s vigorous live shows: “Ric and I egged each other on when we flagged. I’d yell: ‘Hit ’em, you bastard!’ And he’d shout back: ‘F*ck off.’” Leo would also spur Ric on by spitting at him – anticipating the punk movement by a decade – but the drummer never minded “because he always missed”. Riding the crest of this high-energy wave, Alvin would sneer and pout outrageously as he tore through solo after solo. Even on the slower songs his bursts of notes seemed faster than mere human fingers could manage. . . .
But behind the bravado . . . was another, more insecure Alvin who couldn’t handle the superstar status that the Woodstock movie had bestowed on the group: “We’d been playing for the heads, the growing underground audience,” he recounts. “But then it got bigger, and people had to come to ice hockey arenas and stadiums to see the band. And we lost any contact with the audience. . . . I often wonder what the rest of our career would have been like if the Woodstock movie had used another song.” . . .
In June 1968 Ten Years After started a seven-week US tour at the Fillmore West: “That first tour was great,” Alvin recalls. “We had such a good time out there. We lost around $35,000, but we got asked back so we knew we were on the way. The strange thing was that we had gone to what I considered to be the home of the blues but they’d never heard of most of them. I couldn’t believe it – ‘Big Bill who?’ We were recycling American music and they were calling it the English sound. . . .
Led Zeppelin also turned up to check out the competition. In Richard Cole’s notorious Stairway To Heaven . . . the former Zeppelin tour manager relates how Jimmy Page was awestruck by Alvin’s playing. Much to the annoyance of an inebriated John Bonham who suddenly lurched forward and threw a glass of orange juice over Alvin’s guitar, slowing up his fingerwork as the strings and fretboard got stickier.
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Here’s an unusual jewel, released on Mercury Records in 1971. The band Taos was actually a quintet pieced together by a group of young men who had moved to the legendary Taos commune in the early 1970s, namely: Jeff Baker on guitar and vocals, Steve Oppenheim on keyboards and vocals, Albie Ciappa on drums, Burt Levine on guitar and banjo, and Kit Bedford on bass . . . . If the band’s commune connection leads you into expecting some sort of stoned, improvisational musical meanderings, however, you’re in for a surprise: their sole, self-titled record is pop music all the way. Indeed, the band itself is surprisingly together, tempering mildly eccentric diversions into psychedelia and country music with a solid foundation in 1960s rock and roll. . . . [T]he music here is almost too much fun to criticize. Again, this is pop music, and should be enjoyed for what it is.
As the hippie dream turned ugly at the end of the 60s, plenty of folks decided to get out of the city & get back to basics. A huge commune in Taos, New Mexico called New Buffalo that was home to these fellas, and by 70 they were making laid back, slightly nerdy country rock with Byrds harmonies. The album was from 1968/1969. Lost U.S. rural rock gem, originally released in 1/1/1969 . . . (promo copy).
Hi, this is Burt from Taos. We were there in 1968/1969, while the communes and ‘Easy Rider’ were going on. The locals would take pot shots at us and burned down the movie theater where we played a free gig for the residents. We were being watched and filmed by the FBI. We were all love and peace living in Nature’s Glory, but the population around us was often savage. When we left to go on tour, the house we were living in was burned down.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
820) Almond Lettuce — “Twenty Weary Miles”
A delightful, rollicking music hall-y number by a totally obscure British band that gets no respect. Vernon Joynson says that the band released “two awful singles [that] are often described as psychedelic but seem far from it” (The Tapestry of Delights Revisited). 23 Daves sort of maybe likes the song, calling it “another absurdity . . . which contains deliberate flat notes and disorientating subtle key changes and missed beats, and takes more than one listen to settle into. It’s not exactly Kevin Shields styled stuff, but it’s certainly interesting.” (http://left-and-to-the-back.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-almond-lettuce-tree-dog-song-to.html)
As to the Lettuce:
“An obscure outfit . . . . rumoured to have come from Southhampton . . . . Keyboard player Ron Jones is the only name connected with the group having written most of their released material [two singles] and so far, this group has also been found to be in no way connected to Bitter Almond who appeared in 1970 and ’71. (liner notes to the CD comp Piccadilly Sunshine: Volumes 1-10: A Compendium of Rare Pop Curios From the British Psychedelic Era)
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
810) Soul Inc. — “60 Miles High”
On this ’67 B-side, the Louisville sluggers go “a full 52 miles higher than The Byrds”! — (happening45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fJPzmqrjg0) with this “jangly mid-tempo dose of hip psych” (Tony Sanchez (with the help of Mike Stax), liner notes to the CD comp Tony the Tyger Presents . . . Fuzz, Flaykes, & Shakes: Vol. 1: 60 Miles High). They “didn’t have a sitar, but . . . [did] ha[ve] a banjo, and with a touch of reverb and the combination of a somewhat Indian-sounding scale with a repeated ‘drone’ note . . . gave [the song] a decidedly Eastern color.” (Rick Mattingly, http://groovymusicinc.com/groovymusicinc/soulinc/history.htm)
Rick Mattingly tells us of the band:
Drummer Marvin Maxwell was working on the assembly line at the Conn Organ factory . . . in March, 1965 when he was summoned to the foreman’s office to take a phone call. It was guitarist Wayne Young, telling Maxwell that their band, Soul, Inc., had just been hired to join Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour. They were expected to start work that very night. . . . [where they] opened the show with a couple of R&B numbers and then served as the backup band for Lou Christi, Round Robin, the Tradewinds, Reparata & the Delrons and Louise Harrison (sister of Beatle George Harrison) in front of thousands of screaming rock ‘n’ roll fans. It was Soul, Inc.’s first gig. The individual members, however, had a wealth of experience from playing in other Louisville bands. . . . Soul, Inc. [was] one of Louisville’s most influential bands of the 1960s . . . . [It] did a second Dick Clark tour in November of 1965 . . . . [which] included the Byrds, We Five, Paul Revere & The Raiders, and Bo Diddley. . . . Paul Revere & The Raiders vocalist Mark Lindsey declared that his two favorite bands were the Beatles and Soul, Inc. [The band] became so popular in Louisville that [packages] of Southern Star hotdogs contained a coupon inside that could be redeemed for a Soul, Inc. single: “Poppin’ Good.” . . . . Soul, Inc. lost its horn section. . . . [and] with musical trends changing . . . elected to replace [it] with another guitarist and invited Frank Bugbee to join . . . . Soul, Inc.’s English influence had a lot more to do with the Rolling Stones than the Beatles. “The Beatles sounded too white to us,” Young says. “We had always tried to sound black, which is where the Stones were coming from, too.” Maxwell adds that Soul, Inc. identified strongly with the Rolling Stones’ “bad boy” image. . . . Soul, Inc.’s aggressive attitude was evident on their . . . single, “Stronger Than Dirt,” a song inspired by a TV commercial for Ajax [with “60 Miles High” the B-side]. The song did quite well on the Louisville charts, reaching number one in the summer of 1967. Soul, Inc. had developed good relationships with several Louisville DJs who often emceed their local shows. . . .
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
818) Mitch Ryder — “I Believe (There Must Be Someone)“
Truly great blue eyed soul from the Motor City’s Mitch Ryder. Ryder has been inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame (https://rbhalloffamemarksms.com/inductees/) and not the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, started out singing “with a local Black quartet dubbed the Peps as a teen, but suffered so much racial harassment that he soon left the group”. (Jason Ankeny, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mitch-ryder-mn0000483270/biography) By the way, the harassment was from white audiences. Ryder recalls that:
The only difficulty we had was with the white audiences. The black audiences seemed to embrace it. I don’t know how it worked, but I remember really distinctly, a really nice lady coming up to me and saying, “Oh, you sing so pretty … and you’re so light.” I’m going, “Ooh, light? Lady, you don’t know the half of it.”
The song is from Ryder’s ’69 album The Detroit-Memphis Experiment. Joe Viglione writes that:
Mitch Ryder’s voice is in great shape as Steve Cropper takes over the production reigns from industry legend Bob Crewe. . . . [T]he music is truly the voice from Detroit meeting the sound of Memphis. . . . There is a maturity to Mitch Ryder’s voice here — his performance on this disc perhaps a cross between the early hits and the ballads Crewe had him singing later on. It is very, well, refined for this rock/blues combo. . . . Booker T & the MGs featuring Mitch Ryder, which is what this record is, simply delivers a no-nonsense one-two punch of good music. . . . It is great music, but there was no business person to deliver a hit single from this excellent collection. Maybe if someone with Bob Crewe’s drive had supervised the work . . . there would be a greater appreciation for this landmark recording. . . . [T]hat’s what this is, the great undiscovered Mitch Ryder party album.
[T]he choice they gave me was [Booker T & the MGs in Memphis] or Jeff Barry in L.A. I said, “Hmm, I’ll go South.” Which, in more ways than one, I guess I did. The whole country then was going psychedelic and here I am, with still some name power, and I decide to do an R&B album. [Laughs].
The unsung heart and soul of the Motor City rock & roll scene, Mitch Ryder was simply one of the most powerful vocalists to rise to fame in the ’60s, a full-bodied rock belter who was also one of the most credible blue-eyed soul men of his generation. He first made a nationwide impression fronting Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, whose fiery R&B attack boasted a gritty passion and incendiary energy matched by few artists on either side of the color line. After exploding onto the charts in 1966 and 1967 with singles like “Jenny Take a Ride” and “Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly,” Ryder went solo on the advice of producer Bob Crewe, though albums like 1967’s What Now My Love and 1969’s The Detroit-Memphis Experiment [disagree!] lacked the fire of the Detroit Wheels hits and didn’t fare as well on the charts. . . . Born William Levise, . . [he] form[ed] his own combo, Billy Lee & the Rivieras. While opening for the Dave Clark Five during a 1965 date, the Rivieras came to the attention of producer Bob Crewe, who immediately signed the group and, according to legend, rechristened the singer Mitch Ryder after randomly selecting the name from a phone book. Backed by the peerless Detroit Wheels — Ryder reached the Top Ten in early 1966 with “Jenny Take a Ride”; the single, a frenzied combination of Little Richard’s “Jenny Jenny” and Chuck Willis’ “C.C. Rider,” remains one of the quintessential moments in blue-eyed soul, its breathless intensity setting the tone for the remainder of the band’s output. [They] . . . scor[ed] their biggest hit that autumn with the Top Five smash “Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly.” “Sock It to Me Baby!” followed in early 1967, but at Crewe’s insistence, Ryder soon split from the rest of the band to mount a solo career. The move proved disastrous — outside of the Top 30 entry “What Now My Love,” the hits quickly and permanently dried up. . . . [Ryder] return[ed] home [with] a new seven-piece hard rock band known simply as Detroit. The group’s lone LP, a self-titled effort issued in 1971, remains a minor classic, yielding a major FM radio hit with its cover of Lou Reed’s “Rock and Roll” that was praised by Reed himself.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
817) Big Jim Sullivan — “Translove Airways (Fat Angel)”
Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan were the two towering session guitarists of Swinging London. Big Jim also mastered the sitar and recorded two albums of sitar-ploitation headswirlers (see #217). On this ‘67 album track/‘68 B-side, he takes us on a flight on Donovan’s “Translove Airways”.
Ritchie Unterberger says of the album (Sitar Beat) that:
Top British session guitarist Jim Sullivan was not a novice to the sitar when he recorded this instrumental album in 1968, having studied it seriously and established himself as the only non-Indian session musician who could play the instrument on U.K. recordings. The record still sounds like rather cheesy East-meets-West à go-go, though.
Consider me a sucker for rather cheesy East-meets-West a go-go!
As Bruce Eder tells us, Sullivan then did another sitar album: “Sullivan had already recorded a whole album of sitar-based music entitled Sitar Beat for Mercury Records . . . when someone at Regal Zonophone — an imprint of EMI . . . decided that they needed an album to cash in on the boom . . . . Thus was born ‘Lord Sitar[]’”. (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lord-sitar-mn0000278270)
Progarchives tells us about Sullivan and the sitar:
In 1965 Big Jim Sullivan took his first lesson on the Sitar from a Professor at a London College of Ethnic Music. Going to a music school must have been a novel idea as Big Jim had been playing guitar on sessions since 1957, resulting in his presence on more UK hits than anyone else. His tuition was also taken from a famous Indian player who had been studying for many years (the first two years in India are spent solely on the Tabla before they touch a Sitar) and gave Jim the necessary insight to be a creditable player. The result was Jim being asked to record even more sessions as the Sitar became a de rigeur instrument on virtually all mid 60’s rock pop records. He taught Jimmy Page, took his Sitar over to George Harrison’s Esher pad to enlighten the Beatle. So we come to 1967 and Mercury Records decide to cash in on the raga craze and take from Big Jim an entire LPs worth of where Sitar met Rock. The contents are a perfect blend of late 60’s pop with the Tabla & Sitar sound and arrangements.
The sound of British pop music in the 1960s was largely the creation of unsung recording-session musicians who accompanied the solo singers of the era and were frequently enlisted to improve the efforts of well-known pop groups. The principal guitarists of this elite team were Jimmy Page . . . and Big Jim Sullivan . . . . Sullivan played on more than 50 British No 1 hits . . . . [B]orn Jim Tomkins . . . [he took] up the guitar at 14[,] gravitated towards the Soho haunts of skiffle and rock’n’roll, and in 1958 joined Marty Wilde’s backing group, the Wildcats. . . . In 1960, Sullivan and fellow guitarist Joe Brown joined the British tour of the American rock stars Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. Although the tour ended in tragedy when Cochran was killed in a car crash, the young British players had by then learned the secrets of the authentic rock’n’roll style from him . . . . Sullivan was a pioneer of guitar technologies such as the wah-wah pedal, the fuzzbox and the talkbox, and later recalled that the older generation of musicians, schooled in the style of the dance bands, called him the Electric Monster, “because I made the guitar scream and groan when I bent and pulled the strings”. . . . For more than a decade, Sullivan played three three-hour sessions a day at studios in London. He . . . calculated that about 1,000 tracks on which he played had entered the British charts. Between 1969 and 1974, Sullivan combined session work with membership of Tom Jones’s band . . . .
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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. 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
816) Syd Dale — “The Hell Raisers”
The great British music library composer Syd Dale (see #395), an NFL films go-to, gives us a tune hell-raisin’ enough to be the theme of a 60’s sexploitation flick, Doris Wishman’s 1966 film Another Day. Another Man. Frank Fob2 tells us that:
A young couple move into an expensive new apartment after the husband gets a big pay raise. Unfortunately, he is soon stricken with a mysterious ailment and becomes bedridden. The wife, unable to find a job and with bills piling up, runs into a seedy pimp who suggests a way she may be able to make a lot of money in a short time.
Syd Dale was born . . . in York, England, UK. . . . [One] of his many production music pieces, the bongo drum and harpsichord-driven “Cuban Presto” (originally released on the 1966 KPM album Accent on Percussion), was used by WPIX (Channel 11) in New York City as the theme for its late-night movie show, The Channel 11 Film Festival, from the late 1960s to the 1980s. . . . His music is still used in productions today. For example, his “Beauty Parade” was used in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode “Spy Buddies” . . . . His music played an important role on TV, radio and advertising media of the 1960s and 1970s . . . . He was an English self-taught composer and arranger of funk, easy listening, and library music. His music . . . was composed for many television and radio projects. . . . [and] widely used by NFL Films over some four decades; his track “Artful Dodger” is given prominent use in such films as the official film recapping Super Bowl V. In 1967, he created a piece entitled Walk and Talk, which . . . appeared in the 1967 ABC television animated series Spider-Man along with many other Dale library tracks. . . . Dale started as an apprentice technician at Rowntree’s chocolate factory at 16. Soon big band music became his passion.
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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. 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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Renowned gunman Richard Martin is traveling on a train, held up by Billy Kane, a former student of Martin’s. Kane spares Martin, but only after shooting his hands. Years later, Martin meets an escaped convict, wrongly convicted for the train robbery. Martin trains his new student and both men seek out Billy Kane.
By his early thirties, he was making a living touring Germany as a singer, pianist, and guitarist, and he later formed a group in Rome called the Four Caravels whose sound was modeled on the work of the Four Freshmen . . . . Alessandroni was soon to become one of the busier session musicians in Italy . . . . During the early ’60s, [he] crossed paths professionally with a slightly younger former boyhood friend, Ennio Morricone, who, after a few years as a musician working in jazz clubs, had begun to emerge in the field of movie music. Morricone had just scored his first Western and was working on another, and wanted to add some new sounds to his work. Alessandroni’s guitar and his abilities as a whistler came to the fore on the resulting score for Guns Don’t Argue . . . . But that success was merely a toe in the water in terms of their collaboration — Morricone had another project in the pipeline, called A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a Western that was anything but traditional, and it was here that Alessandroni began collaborating with him in the making of some much more important music, and utilizing far more of his range as a guitarist as well. With a lonely, echo-drenched whistle over a repetitive guitar figure, with added flutes, whip-cracks, and Alessandroni’s Duane Eddy-style electric guitar coming in along with a wordless male chorus — courtesy of Alessandroni’s vocal group, now expanded to a dozen or more members and renamed I Cantori Moderni — the haunting title track redefined the sound of Western movie music. . . . Alessandroni subsequently worked with Morricone on most of the latter’s Western scores of the period . . . . He was all over the main title theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . . . .
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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. 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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[It] a minor masterpiece . . . . the so-called Sgt. Pepper of Washington D.C. Just think of the Left Banke, late night, stoned and producing some serious outsider music. . . . is a killer unknown 60’s album with a lot of great psych moves.
From the depths of despair and angst comes this masterpiece, a howling wail of pain and discomfort embedded in a sophisticated studio effort that sounds like nothing else. Somewhere in here are elements of loner folk, Beach Boys-style pop and psychedelia, but all are used in a unique way that makes this as personal an album as I know . . . . Great songwriting and inventive arrangements throughout. . . . A truly great album . . . .
The Acid Archives (2nd Ed.)
As to the Angels, Dave Furgess tells us:
The[] Fallen Angels were a great psychedelic group who were based in the Baltimore, Maryland-Washington D.C. area and recorded two full length albums for Roulette Records. . . . The . . . debut album failed to cause much attention at the record shops and was quickly deleted. Usually this would have meant certain death to a group like The Fallen Angels. However the good folks at Roulette decided to give the group a second shot and they were even afforded the luxury of complete artistic control. This all resulted in the group’s stunning second album “It’s A Long Way Down” (which sadly suffered the same fate as the group’s debut sales-wise despite it’s obvious quality and inventiveness.) . . . . an exceptional album . . . . that actually lives up to the hype.
Realizing the futility of trying to control this band, Roulette Records allowed “The Fallen Angels” almost total artistic freedom in the production of their second album . . . . The group’s efforts resulted in what many listeners of the Psychedelic genre consider a masterpiece. . . . Although the album was an artistic triumph, “Roulette Records”‘s promotional campaign was practically non-existent. With no top ten hits, “The Fallen Angels” were unceremoniously dropped from the label. Relegated to the status of local legends, “The Fallen Angels” continued creating and performing original music in the Washington D.C. area until the fall of 1969 when the group disbanded. . . . [T]he February 1972 issue of Stereo Review, music critic Joel Vance wrote an insightful article entitled “The Fragmentation Of Rock”, which analyzed the problem of developing new talent in the industry. To illustrate the overwhelming odds against succeeding, he states: “The Fallen Angels, for example, a remarkable band from Washington, D.C., put out two astonishing albums for Roulette Records in 1967/68. But they never made it, even though they were far better than most American groups of the time”.
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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. 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
813) Edwards Hand* — “Hello America”
The melody and arrangement of this amazing song by the UK psychsters (see #151, 663) is a total rip-off of Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America”! Wait a second, this song came in ‘70 and “Coming” came in ‘80! I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
And I’ll note that a song with lyrics about America such as “You have so much to give” and “I’d really love to see you live” is on an album whose original cover art was pulled by the label in the U.S.:
The line drawing [cover art] of a Southern Sheriff, ties in with the lyrics of Sheriff Myras Lincoln – a song about an American racist policeman – and was subsequently banned and replaced with different artwork by RCA in the US. . . . [It is] a controversial caricature . . . by “Revolver” Beatles artist/friend Klaus Voorman. This artwork was banned by the US label and was subsequently replaced with different artwork on the original US pressing of the album.
Having worked with George Martin on their self titled debut, Edward’s Hand began recording at Morgan Studios in 1970, attempting to create a harder and more progressive sound than before. There where no nervous second album vibes here! The album is comprised of evocative and intelligent progressive pop songs immaculately produced featuring Edward’s and Hand’s distinctive harmonies to the fore. The second half of the album is effectively a concept of alienation and isolation . . . . Clearly more confident and adventurous lyrically on this album, Edward’s Hand also had more time with George Martin during the pre-production stages. This preparation time, an intelligent lyric writing team and George’s complex yet concise orchestral arrangements give their second LP a much worldlier and unique feel. . . . It features some stunning string arrangements by George Martin from the first sessions to be mixed at his then new Air Studios.
* Just to set the record straight, Johnny Depp was not in this band! It was not Edward Scissorhands. The band members were Rod Edwards and Roger Hand. Get it?!
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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. 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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As to the label and the Brew, Slipcue tells us that:
The Two:Dot label from Ojai, California was named for their initials of its founders (Tom W. Oglesby and Dean O. Thompson) and is one of those legendarily obscure microlabels that uber-collectors salivate over… This LP . . . [is] a hippiedelic blues-roots kinda thing, recorded on the spur of the moment with singer-songwriter Milton Kelley and a few other Ojai locals.
These days, a copy of “Home Brew” that’s still in decent shape will go for hundreds of dollars on eBay — and a sealed, never-played copy might fetch $3,500. . . . The long-vanished [Two:Dot] studio is barely remembered in Ojai [California], but it’s now world famous among collectors of obscure rock albums from the ’60s and early ’70s. Cultish websites make gushing references to the “legendary” Two:Dot, that mythical place where “mega-rare” albums . . . were created. Enthusiasts in Europe and Japan will offer big bucks for vinyl rarities recorded in that converted garage — albums hardly anyone bought when they first came out. . . .
Libbey Bowl was . . . [a] popular venue for local musicians. It was there, early in the summer of 1970, that Dean Thompson met Milton Kelley. . . . Kelley was a singer-songwriter who had grown up in Ojai and was now back in town after serving a tour in Vietnam. He was part of the musical line-up . . . that day, and Dean liked what he heard. “Dean was there recording some live stuff,” Kelley says. “He came up and said, ‘Hey, man, I’ve got a recording studio up on the hill. You should come up and do an album.’ ” The result of that conversation was “Milton Kelley’s Home Brew,” released on the Two:Dot label. . . . Dean was the engineer and the genial host. . . . “We printed 400 LPs and sold every one,” Kelley says. . . .
[A]n astonished Milton Kelley was informed that a pristine copy of “Home Brew” was now worth its weight in gold, and then some. (Alas, Kelley was not in a position to cash in. He has only one copy left, and it’s been played a lot.)
Oh, and the little studio in an Adobe mud brick house had a 16 track recorder before the Beatles did! (Mark Lewis, http://ojaihistory.com/groovy-history-ojais-twodot-studio/, originally published in the Summer 2012 edition of the Ojai Quarterly)
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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. 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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Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 