Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊

The Bunch — “Spare a Shilling”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 27, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,764) The Bunch — “Spare a Shilling”

Oh man, does John Pantry (see #494, 1,242) kick ass. OK, since he followed his calling and embarked on a notable career in Christian music and broadcasting after the 60’s came to a close, let me just say “Hallelujah” for John Pantry. A singer and songwriter for the ages. Pantry wrote this enchanting and “jaunty ditty” that was “heavily plugged by Brian Matthew and Tony Blackburn, who made it his record of the week, but it failed to take off”. (Bournemouthbeatboom, https://bournemouthbeatboom.wordpress.com/the-bunch/)

OK, but was it actually performed by the Bunch or by Peter & the Wolves (see #983, 1,392)? David Wells tells us that:

[B]oth John [Pantry] and drummer Garry Nicholls are certain that the released version is actually a Peter & the Wolves performance: Nicholls feels that another singer (possibly a bona fide Bunch member) may subsequently have been overdubbed . . . onto the Peter & the Wolves’ master tape, while Pantry has listened to the single and believes that he is the singer, deliberately pitching his vocal in a different register to suit the song’s requirements. Or perhaps you’d prefer Peter & the Wolves bassist Nick Ryan’s version, which is that he didn’t play on the track and that that the singer on the disc displays Pantryesque nuances simply because he would have learned the song from John’s demo recording.

liner notes to the CD comp The Upside Down World of John Pantry

Jason tells us of Peter & the Wolves:

[O]ne of Pantry’s first groups, Sounds Around. . . . played straight pop with slight soul and psych influences – they released two singles in 1966-1967. Peter & The Wolves came shortly after Sounds Around’s demise (they were essentially the same group). This is the group with which Pantry is most associated, along with The Factory [see #5, 460, 761] . . . . [Peter & The Wolves’] most productive period was probably the years of 1967-1969, where they released a string of pop gems.

https://therisingstorm.net/year/1968/page/5/

Bournemouthbeatboom tells us of the Bunch:

Dave and The Concordes were formed in the summer of 1963 by members of the Christchurch Youth Club. . . . [F]ound[ing] member John Sherry . . . . took on the job of managing the quintet, organising rehearsals at his parent’s home . . . and booking numerous dates . . . .On Sunday, 2^nd February 1964, the group entered the inaugural ‘Big Beat and Vocal Contest’ held at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens. . . . [and] came in a creditable fourth . . . . Fast forward to Sunday, 25^th October 1964, and they were back . . . for the second ‘Big Beat and Vocal Contest‘ as a quartet of Sherry, Huntley, Lake, and Willoughby and a new name, The Bunch. . . . [T]hey were worthy winners. . . . As their popularity grew and their diary bulged with an ever-expanding list of dates, John bought a vintage 1949 ambulance, which he converted into a bandwagon to transport the gear and group members. . . . There were also trips abroad with a month’s residency at the Star Club in Hamburg . . . . In the summer of 1966, John had a rethink. As the initial excitement of the Beat Boom gradually faded, he decided it was time to drop the quintessential early sixties pop group format and expand the lineup to a seven-strong soul band with completely different personnel. Apart from John remaining on drums, the newly configured septet comprised Chris Redwood on guitar, John King on bass, a pair of saxophonists, Mike Berry and Dave Potter, keyboard player Dave Cooper, plus vocalist Pete Beckett . . . . Their repertoire also received a complete overhaul from gritty R&B to songs selected liberally from the Tamla Motown and Stax songbooks . . . . The band also picked up a benefactor and manager in Jeffrey Rothner, an estate agent by trade, who financed the band, allowing them to turn professional in October 1966. With the added clout of the Roburn (Theatrical) Enterprises agency behind them, the quality of gigs improved overnight . . . . There were . . . prestigious dates in London at the Flamingo Club, in Wardour Street, the Whisky A Go-Go also in Wardour Street, Tiles on Oxford Street, the Scotch of St. James, and Marquee Club in Soho . . . . At the turn of the new year, the band gained a residency at the Playboy Club in Park Lane before embarking on a busy April. They started the month by taping two songs . . . for the BBC radio show Monday Monday . . . . They also filmed a sequence for a Canadian TV documentary called Swinging London, [and] appeared at Brian Epstein’s Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue with Bo Diddley and Ben E. King . . . . The following month, the band entertained suave French hipsters in the clubs of Paris for a week and recorded a session for French radio before returning to London to tape another couple of numbers for BBC’s Saturday Club. Through the summer months of June and July, they were back in France for a three-week residency at the Papagayo club in Saint-Tropez . . . . Rothner secured the band a recording deal with CBS, and over an eighteen-month period they released four singles under the auspices of their in-house producer Eddie Tre-Vett at IBC Studios . . . . At the outset they mined a similar pop/blue-eyed soul vein as Amen Corner with punchy, dominant brass and a steady backbeat aimed at filling dance floors, which is ably demonstrated on their first single, “You Never Came Home . . . (January 1967). . . . [F]or a debut, the record is surprisingly strong, with either side having the potential of becoming a hit, if only their label had got behind it. The follow-up, “Don’t Come Back to Me . . . (May 1967), was a Chris Redwood composition . . . . a blue beat/pop hybrid that could easily have been recorded by The Equals, yet, despite a session recorded for Saturday Club to aid promotion, the single flopped. During the summer of 1967, there were changes in the ranks. Pete Beckett left to be replaced by Eric Jones on vocals, and Dave Cooper succumbed to pressures from home to help run the family business back in Bournemouth, a dog and cat boarding kennels located in St. Leonards. For single number three [including “Spare a Shilling”], released in November 1967, the band changed tack altogether by becoming psychedelic dandies, as they realised they were out of whack with the prevailing trend for drug-inspired off-kilter weirdness. . . . Almost a year later, their fourth and final single, the disappointingly bland singalong “Birthday . . . (September 1968), left the psychedelia behind and went straight for the pop market but missed by a mile. . . . John Sherry’s son James . . . thinks the “Birthday” single had no input from his dad’s band and was put together by John Pantry and released as The Bunch in name only. . . . By the time the record hit the shops, the game was up anyway, as the band had already split asunder.

https://bournemouthbeatboom.wordpress.com/the-bunch/

Jason gives us a sense of Pantry’s B.C. history:

John Pantry is one of those artists that deserves to be heard by more people, especially those who value melodic British pop. . . . [He was] a talented studio engineer for IBC Studios (working with Eddie Tre-Vett), producing for the likes of Donovan, The Small Faces, The Bee Gees, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Cream. He was also a member of Peter & The Wolves, an accomplished mid 60s pop group from Leigh-on-Sea/Southend and had a major hand with many other IBC studio projects of the time: the Factory, Sounds Around, Wolfe, The Bunch and Norman Conquest. . . . Besides being a savvy studio technician, Pantry was a gifted songwriter and vocalist and an accomplished musician (. . . keyboards). . . . John Pantry was asked to write two tracks for The Factory, a legendary psychedelic group who had previously released the classic “Path Through The Forest” 45 [see #5]. Pantry wrote and sang lead on the two Factory standouts, “Try A Little Sunshine” [see #460] and the more folk-like “Red Chalk Hill [see #761]” . . . .

https://therisingstorm.net/year/1968/page/5/

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Apple — “Buffalo Billy Can”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 26, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,763) Apple — “Buffalo Billy Can”

This B-side from the Welsh band from Cardiff (see #883) is “a strange psychedelic pop song” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited), “a marvelous slice of lysergic psychedelic pop” (David Wells, Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era), an “all-time psych classic[]”. (liner notes to the CD comp Chocolate Soup for Diabetics: Vols 1-5)) “It has a cult of sorts among collectors, with its . . . inventive guitar and piano figures, although the song isn’t as good as “The Otherside.” (see #883) (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/apple-mn0000482669, https://www.allmusic.com/album/an-apple-a-day-mw0000460214).

Apple later released An Apple a Day — an LP — including “Buffalo Billycan” — of which Vernon Joynson tells us:

[T]he best of Apple’s material is up there with the cream of British psychedelia. . . . [The LP is] a fine amalgam of psychedelia and heavy R&B, it’s well established as one of the most sought-after of all UK psych albums . . . . at its best it’s nothing short of superb.

The Tapestry of Delights Revisited

Richie Unterberger is a bit more blasé, calling Apple a “rather typical British psychedelic-pop group of the late ’60s, although perhaps not as fruity or indulgent as some.” (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/apple-mn0000482669) Not as fruity? The band’s name is Apple!

Rocking in the Norselands tells us of Apple and the LP:

A three-song demo tape . . . managed to get the attention of Larry Page. . . . a record producer/manager from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. Much of his success centred on his efforts with The Kinks and The Troggs, and his ownership of the record labels Page One Records (1966-1969) and Penny Farthing Records (1969 onwards). Page offered Apple a contract, and signed them to his Page One Records label in 1968. That’s when they discovered that Page planned to release a single by simply using their demos as they were. The band was keen to record them properly, but Page did not feel that was necessary, which was a red flag. It felt like rather than being enthusiastic with the recordings themselves, Page was looking to save money by simply using what was already available. “Page certainly was a tight old bugger,”said Jeff Harrad . . . . “That’s why there are so few photos of us. He didn’t want to pay for things like that, and even then, the few that were taken were in black and white. He wouldn’t pay for colour.” The label initially released a single: Let’s Take A Trip Down The Rhine/Buffalo Billycan (Oct 1969). In a sign of things to come, it received little to no promotion. Who knows what it could have done if it had been recorded and promoted properly. . . . The album would include all four tracks from the singles . . . but that meant that the original demo recordings were still being used. Other tracks had been quickly recorded in demo-track fashion and had become actual takes used on the album. For this reason, the band themselves were extremely unhappy with the album. . . . The album was accompanied by a colour leaflet/brochure from the Apple And Pear Development Council (a newly established organisation to promote English and Welsh apples and pears). . . . It was speculated that the album only saw release because the costs were effectively underwritten by the sponsorship from the Development Council. . . . Heavily discouraged by the label’s treatment of them and the poor sales, the band ceased to exist shortly after the album’s release.

https://norselandsrock.com/apple/

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寺内タケシとバニーズ/Takeshi Terauchi & the Bunnys — “レッツ・ゴー・ブガルー”/“Let’s Go Boogaloo”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 25, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,762) 寺内タケシとバニーズ/Takeshi Terauchi & the Bunnys — “レッツ・ゴー・ブガルー”/“Let’s Go Boogaloo”

Don’t back off, just boogaloo! Takeshi Terauchi’s (see #999) — “Japan’s premier guitar hero” (AV+ML, http://www.fancymag.com/bunnys.html) — “hard-hitting, devastating guitar solo during the interlude is absolutely stunning!” (t.yeverythingisgoodreturn5893, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xLbIQMC_qI (Courtesy of Google Translate))

Popsike.com raves:

KILLER wired Japanese fuzz psych single from the late 60’s, cleary inspired (okay, “stolen”) from Hendrix and the Kinks and given the GS [Group Sounds] treatment. . . . [It] starts with a buncha Japanese kiddies shouting “yee-haw!” and suddenly we’re launched into a rousing fuzz-infested Asian take on “Spanish Castle Magic” that might’ve had Jimi’s lawyers on the phone had they heard it . . . .

https://www.popsike.com/TAKESHI-TERAUCHI-BUNNYS-Lets-Go-Boogaloo-1968-GARAGE-PUNK-PSYCH-5678s-HEAR/170969474283.html

AV+ML tells the tale of Takeshi Terauchi:

Little known in the U.S. [,] . . Takeshi Terauchi, affectionately known as Terry[,] . . . started recording electric guitar . . . music in the early Sixties. His best recordings in the mid-to-late Sixties were with two different bands: the adorably named Bunnys and Blue Jeans. Generally, the music itself is Ventures inspired instrumentals accented with fuzzed-out whammy bar acrobatics. What makes The Bunnys and Blue Jeans unique is that they were also influenced by traditional Japanese Minyo, that is, very old rural folk songs. Terry recorded many a Minyo with the electric guitar at the helm in place of traditional instruments like the Shamisen. Terry-san ranks close behind Western contemporaries Link Wray and Davie Allan when it comes to bad-ass guitar riffing. . . . Terry recorded with The Blue Jeans during the early to mid Sixties. The Blue Jeans belted out surf instrumentals with authority and Terry’s guitar is always interesting. Management problems coupled with the need to keep up with changing times triggered Takeshi’s departure from Blues Jeans in 1966. The Beatles invaded and GS, or Group Sounds (Mersey Beat pop sap with vocals), was in. Terry recruited unknown players to form his own GS band, the Bunnys. . . . Terry’s years with Bunnys were brief: – from Dec. of ‘66 through ‘68. Terry’s Bunnys put out 16 singles, and 6 LPs, including a live album. . . . His next move was to add something uniquely Japanese to an otherwise Western sound. Seicho Terauchi-Bushi, released in ’67, is Terry’s interpretation of Japanese Minyo. He replaced the traditional shamisen (3-string instrument) with his powerful electric guitar sound and created fresh and exciting eleki versions of 200 year old songs. This heightened his fame, as he simultaneously exposed his young audience to something from past generations and gained the older crowd’s respect. This was the Bunnys’ most successful record, selling over 100,000 copies and becoming the best selling GS record at the time. 1967 was a busy year for The Bunnys, as they released 8 singles on Seven Seas and 3 LP’s on King. . . . Terry left in the Fall of ‘68 to form his own Blues Jeans . . . .

http://www.fancymag.com/bunnys.html

“[M]usical differences emerged and Terauchi left the [Bunnys], reforming Blue Jeans. Bunnys continued without him for several years . . . finally splitting up in 1971.”(https://www.discogs.com/artist/3425042-Takeshi-Terauchi-And-The-Bunnys)

Here is Jimi Hendrix and “Spanish Castle Magic”:

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Hard Loving Loser Special Edition: Mimi & Richard Fariña/Gwynn Owen: Mimi & Richard Fariña — “Hard Loving Loser”, Gwynn Owen — “Hard Lovin’ Loser”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 24, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,760) Mimi & Richard Fariña — “Hard Loving Loser”

Richard Fariña wrote this “sexy/goofy” (Bill Sherman, https://blogcritics.org/music-review-ian-sylvia-and-mimi/) “anti-conformity [folk/folk-rock] anthem[]” (Ed Whitelock, https://www.popmatters.com/richard-farina-plainsong-review) “about a very unlikely lady’s man” (Brendan Foreman, https://agreenmanreview.com/music-2/mimi-richard-farinas-pack-up-your-sorrows-best-of-the-vanguard-years/). “The free-living character in the song is quite similar to the protagonist in [his acclaimed] novel Been Down So Long, It Looks Like up to Me.” (Matthew Greenwald, https://www.allmusic.com/song/hard-lovin-loser-mt0001731064) The song is a hoot perfect for a hootenanny.

Bill Sherman writes that:

After their largely acoustic debut [LP], the duo quickly and confidently made electric guitar and piano inextricable parts of their music. Though this doesn’t seem like a big deal in the aftermath of folk-rock, in 1965 it was still a commercial gamble. Dylan’s notorious appearance at the July ’65 Newport Folk Fest was still fresh, and many folk devotees were divided as to whether electric guitars even belonged in the music. Today, however, it’s hard to imagine tracks like . . . “Hard-Loving Loser” without their plugged-in accompaniment.

https://blogcritics.org/music-review-ian-sylvia-and-mimi/

Richie Unterberger writes of the Richard Fariña, the cult hero shrouded in mystery:

Richard Fariña was a noted counterculture author and folksinger in the early ’60s. Married for a time to folksinger Carolyn Hester [see #558, 1,283] , he was an early intimate of Bob Dylan [see #126, 823, 1,133, 1,162, 1,495, 1,599, 1,711] , and in fact recorded a collectable album with Dylan (playing under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt) and Ric Von Schmidt in 1963. After marrying Joan Baez’s sister, Mimi, he formed a folk-rock duo who released two acclaimed albums in the mid-’60s. Unlike folk-rock figureheads like the Byrds, the Fariñas were far more firmly rooted in folk than rock. Their recordings effectively flavored their material (mostly written by Fariña) with jangling electric guitars and a rhythm section, ably assisted by such session players as guitarist Bruce Langhorne . . . bassist Felix Pappalardi, and harmonica player John Hammond. The Fariñas themselves also played guitar, autoharp, and dulcimer. Least successful with blues, they recorded some effective Appalachian-flavored material, and several excellent bona fide mid-tempo folk-rockers and ballads. Their best songs effectively balanced world-wise, sardonic observations with good-natured, melodic optimism. The Fariñas’ promising career ended prematurely with the death of Richard Fariña in a motorcycle accident on his birthday in 1966. His novel of the same year, Been Down So Long It Looks Like up to Me, became a cult favorite.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/richard-mimi-fari%C3%B1a-mn0000850523#biography

Douglas Cooke goes deep:

Richard Fariña grew up in Brooklyn [to mother from Northern Ireland and a father from Cuba] . . . . [He] won a regents scholarship to Cornell University, where he enrolled in the Engineering program . . . . [b]ut he soon lost interest in Engineering and switched to English . . . . He began writing stories and poems for the college literary magazine, Cornell Writer, where Thomas Pynchon was junior editor. Fariña and Pynchon became friends . . . . [H]e dropped out toward the end of his senior year in 1959. Moving back to New York City, Fariña took a job . . . at an advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson. . . . It may be that Fariña’s counter-culture sentiments had not yet fully formed when he took the job, or it may be that the job itself was so stifling and boring that it drove him to that revulsion toward conformity that later fuelled his lyrics . . . . Working in Manhattan, not far from the burgeoning folk music scene in Greenwich Village, Fariña soon made a conscious decision not to sell out, not to throw his creative life away for the dull security of a nine-to-five job. He began publishing stories in magazines and mixed with the bohemians at The White Horse Tavern, the legendary Greenwich Village haunt visited by poets, artists, folksingers and wayfarers . . . . It was at the White Horse that he met the radiant Carolyn Hester in 1959. Carolyn was a successful folksinger . . . . Months later Richard . . . attended a concert of hers at Gerde’s Folk City. Richard in turn was smitten with her, and pursued her relentlessly. After a whirlwind courtship they married . . . . Having quit his job at the advertising agency, Richard had no income and gradually wiggled himself into Carolyn’s career, appointing himself her agent. Soon he began to insinuate himself onto the stage, reading his poetry between her sets. . . . Perhaps one of the most important moments in Fariña’s life was when he and Carolyn visited Kentucky-born folksinger Jean Ritchie at a party in New York City and he became fascinated with her dulcimer. Charmed by the eerie sound of the folk instrument, he took lessons . . . . gradually Fariña promoted himself from agent to sideman on stage with Carolyn. . . . Richard’s early entries into the music world smatter of fraudery. Barely able to play anything as yet, he managed to appear onstage with Carolyn Hester at the Edinburgh Folk Festival in 1962, make a BBC television appearance with her, and record an EP of four songs with the Scottish duet Rory and Alex McEwen . . . . Carolyn began to resent this instrusion into her career. She left him in the fall of 1962 . . . . Another development that had precipitated the divorce was . . . where Richard met Mimi Baez. . . . the little sister of Joan Baez . . . . After Carolyn left Europe in frustration, Richard and Mimi’s surreptitious relationship began. . . . Richard and Mimi were married secretly in Paris, unbeknownst to the Baez family. Following Mimi’s graduation from high school, they moved Carmel, California . . . . Despite the Baezes’ initial mistrust, Fariña soon won them over with his humor and charm. In their little cabin Richard and Mimi began playing together, and developed the unique guitar-dulcimer duet that made them absolutely unique in the folk music world. . . . His attempts to collaborate with Carolyn caused friction in their marriage because she was already an established musician, and Richard at that time had little to contribute on that level. By the time he met Mimi, he was a better musician, and, more importantly, I suspect that they identified with each other as unacknowledged people who had something to contribute. Mimi had been entirely eclipsed by her sister’s sudden fame, and Richard had been struggling since Cornell to make a name for himself . . . . Mimi was the superior musician, while Richard had literary talent for writing original songs. They debuted at the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1964 and soon won a recording contract with Vanguard, Joan’s label. They recorded their first album that fall . . . . Though the album’s release was delayed until April of the next year, the achievement gave the new folk duo the confidence to brave the Cambridge folk scene and began making club appearances in December of 1964. . . . Mimi & Dick Fariña, as they were now called, made a splash amid the more eclectic, vibrant, and increasingly competitive folk scene of 1964-65. They won awards in a Broadside magazine poll, winning in three categories–Best Group, Best Newcomers, and Best Female Vocalist. They befriended Eric Andersen, Debbie Green, Judy Collins, Geoff & Maria Muldaur and many others. In July they performed at the Newport Folk Festival, leading a songwriting workshop and a dulcimer workshop. Their reputation seemed to grow with each performance, and by the time they headlined the Newcomers Concert on the third day of festival, they were superstars. . . . When one watches this moment in the film Festival, a documentary of the Newport Folk Festivals of 1963, 1965, and 1966, and sees the ecstatic look on Richard’s face, one imagines that this must have been one of the happiest moments of his life, an undisputable victory after years of searching and laboring in anonymity.. . . . Richard had begun [his] novel in 1960, based largely on the experiences of his college years and his travels. . . . In the last six months or so of his life, Fariña completed his novel with an agonizing effort that left his hand paralyzed. He also recorded a second LP [Reflections in a Crystal Wind, including “Hard Loving Loser”] with Mimi . . . . They returned to Carmel, California to help Joan Baez found the Institute for the Study of Non-Violent Action, returned briefly to New York to perform on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest TV show and celebrate his 29th birthday with his family in Brooklyn, and have a publication party for the novel at the Random House offices. . . . [They] attended an autograph party on April 30, 1966, at Thunderbird Bookstore in Carmel Valley, then went to the home of Mimi’s sister, Pauline, for a surprise party for Mimi’s 21st birthday. At this party Pauline’s friend, Willie Hinds, pulled up on a Harley. Hinds took Richard for a ride on the bike on the rolling hills of Carmel, and they wiped out, throwing Richard across two fences and into an embankment. Hinds survived; Richard was killed instantly. We will never know why Richard left the party to go on that motorcycle ride, or why he gave Mimi his car keys and wallet before he left.

https://www.mimiandrichardfarina.com/richard.html

Here they are live:

Here they are on Rainbow Quest:

1,761) Gwynn Owen — “Hard Lovin Loser”

“Hard Loving Loser” has been frequently covered, especially in the ’60s, including by Judy Collins and Dana Gillespie (who is a favorite of mine (see #11, 106)) — but none of the covers work for me — except that of New Zealand singer Gwynn Owen. She turns the song into a glorious, sly, hip pop-rock triumph.

Gwynn Owen was . . .

a pop vocalist from Wellington[, New Zealand], regarded by many as the best woman singer of the sixties in that part of the country. She had a very powerful voice that could manage a wide vocal range, as was evidenced by the singles she released. Gwynn recorded for HMV releasing two singles in 1966 called “In My Room”/”Treat Him As I Would” and “That’s When Happiness Began”/”Take A Look”. One more single came in 1967 called “This Place”/”Hard Lovin’ Loser”. Her first two singles featured well on the Wellington local charts.

https://www.sergent.com.au/music/gwynnowen.html

Here is Judy Collins:

Here are Collins and the Smothers Brothers:

Here is Dana Gillespie:

Here is Webster’s New Word:

Here is Marti Shannon:

Here is Gloria Loring:

Here is Anki:

Here is Catherine McKinnon:

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Rufus Thomas — “Sixty Minute Man”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 23, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,759) Rufus Thomas — “Sixty Minute Man”

Rufus Thomas takes “a Billy Ward doo-wop classic . . . [and] transforms [it] into a mesmerizing tour de force of voodoo funk, complete with a Tarzan movie-inspired chant and some wondrous Dizzy Gillespie-like scat singing” (https://concord.com/concord-albums/rufus-thomas-funky-chicken/), a “down-and-bestial seven-minute update . . . on which Rufus sounds like he’s singing in tongues” (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/do-the-funky-chicken-mw0001962785) “spout[ing] vocal gibberish over a slow funk riff; the effect is a sort of late-sixties take on Cab Calloway”. (Bill Kopp, http://blog.musoscribe.com/index.php/2011/09/20/cd-review-rufus-thomas-do-the-funky-chicken/) Man, “[t]his song can hypnotize you”. (Michael Doherty, https://michaelsmusiclog.blogspot.com/2011/09/rufus-thomas-do-funky-chicken-2011-re.html)

Dr. Vibes writes that:

[It is] a monster cut . . . . [that] features faux neo-African gibberish chanting meant to invoke some kind of deep bayou ‘witch-doctor’ vibe. Which sounds pretty silly when described like that, but somehow Rufus could make it cool, bringing in one instrument at a time, the better to hypnotize you with.

https://flabbergasted-vibes.org/2019/03/01/rufus-thomas-funky-chicken-1970/

And a shortened version reached #42 on the R&B chart!

Bill Kopp talks of the LP where the sixty minute man lives — Do the Funky Chicken:

It’s easy to dismiss the work of Rufus Thomas (the world’s oldest teenager™) as the work of a novelty artist. Too easy, in fact. And it does a disservice to some great music. But Rufus didn’t exactly help matters by recording and releasing songs that all but forbade you to take him seriously. Anybody who shouts “I feel so…unnecessary!” in the middle of a song can’t expect much in the way of serious musical credibility. That’s especially true if the song in question is the title track on an album called Do the Funky Chicken. But here’s the thing: though we don’t know the full roster of players on these songs, we do know that it’s some funky music. Playing with verve and wit, Michael Toles (called out by name repeatedly throughout the record’s eleven tracks) turns out some finger-lickin’ good guitar licks. And whoever the horn sections is — maybe the Memphis Horns, maybe not – they’ve got it going.

CD Review: Rufus Thomas – Do the Funky Chicken

Here is an AI generated analysis of the song by CMF AI Radio:

The lyrics are about a man who claims to be able to satisfy his female partner for a whole hour. He boasts about his abilities and invites women to test him out, promising that they will not be disappointed. The lyrics also mention kissing, teasing, and squeezing. Overall, the song is about a man who is confident in his sexual prowess and wants women to know it.

https://radio.callmefred.com/en/song_story/sixty-minute-man-rufus-thomas/#google_vignette

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤨

As to the Dominoes’ ‘51 original, Robert Fontenot writes:

[“Sixty Minute Man” is] a funny, sexy song that broke all the rules of acceptable radio fare . . . an original based on the African-American storyteller tradition of “Lovin’ Dan” (a/k/a “Jim Dandy”) and his naughty exploits. A raw yet effortlessly executed boast of sexual prowess featuring Bill Brown’s potent bass lead, it was a phenomenon unto itself, rocketing straight to #1 R&B and staying there for three and a half months. Even more importantly, it reached the lower levels of the pop Top 20, scandalizing the industry and almost singlehandedly introducing white America to rhythm and blues.

https://www.liveabout.com/billy-ward-and-his-dominoes-bio-and-discography-2522398

Here are the Dominoes:

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Terry McManus — “Gimme a Hand”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 22, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,758) Terry McManus — “Gimme a Hand”

Another song that sends me into paroxysms of delight is this gorgeous B-side ballad from Terry McManus’ first single, “which did well on the Canadian charts”, well, #81, and “went to No. 1 in the Canadian Prairies”. (Howard Druckman, https://www.socanmagazine.ca/news/socan-grieves-the-loss-of-terry-mcmanus-leading-founder-of-songwriters-association-of-canada/, AllHit45s, https://www.45cat.com/record/amx316) Don’t get me wrong, this is no prairie dog!

McManus, Merv Buchannan and Garwood Wallace tell us that:

Terry McManus was born to two Canadian parents but spent a large part of his early life growing up in the United States. He was schooled in Nebraska and by 1967 he was working for a . . . computer company in Washington. The extra money he made he socked away to save for recording demos on the side . . . . After relocating to Canada in 1968 as a staff writer for ARC Records . . . McManus hooked up with Merv Buchanan’s Trend Records and borrowed a 4-track machine . . . to do some recording. His first release was a song he wrote called “Young Boppers” for the band Fear . . . . McManus drifted between jobs and caught a break when Fred Dixon And The Friday Afternoon recorded his song “Best Believe It” which encouraged McManus to continue pursuing his songwriting skills. However, he couldn’t pay the bills on this small royalty stipend and had to find a real job. In 1970 he began working for the Ontario Arts Council co-ordinating their pop music program and managed to get Merv Buchanan’s company to do mobile recordings for struggling acts all across Ontario. . . . At the same time McManus borrowed $500 from the bank and he . . . headed into the studio and cut two sides – “Sunshower In The Spring” and “Gimme A Hand” – with Garwood Wallace . . . on guitar and John Woloschuk . . . on bass. McManus did the rounds to try and land a record deal and was rejected by GRT Records but his second attempt landed him a deal with A & M who signed him to a deal over the phone after hearing the songs. The single was released in 1971 . . . . An album was recorded but some poor managerial decisions cost him his deal with A & M in 1973. While at the Canadian National Music Conference . . . McManus ran into Tommy Banks who was about to start up his own label called Century II and not only signed McManus to his own solo deal but also made him A & R for other acts. Later that year McManus moved from Vancouver to Edmonton to set up shop with the label where he worked with such acts as Russ Thornberry, The Original Caste [see #659, 867], and Bim. During this time McManus began recording under the pseudonym Skipper and released the single “Down On The Flatrock” for Capitol Records in 1973. The remainder of his material alternated between his real name and alter-ego for Century II . . . . McManus would also be responsible for discovering the acts Sylvester Stretch and Val Hudson . . . . By 1975 Century II began to collapse and McManus found an ally in old recording associate Bruce Sperling who took McManus to New York and hooked him up with a manager, lawyer and publishing deal with a publishing company . . . . Nothing of any importance came out of the association and McManus found himself looking for a full-time day job later that year. He began teaching at Fanshawe College in September 1975 . . . . In 1976 another of his songs, “What A Day”, was recorded by the Vos Family and used in a promotional campaign to raise funds for the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Around this time McManus began writing children’s songs for his estranged son in California and on a lark, forwarded the material to Raffi’s label Treble Clef. They liked the material so much that a children’s album, Scrub-A-Dub U., materialized at about the time that Treble Clef went out of business and McManus found his material on A & M Records once again. During an appearance at the Hamilton Folk Festival in 1979 McManus made the acquaintance of children’s performers Bob Schneider and Fred Penner. He and Penner hit it off well and McManus eventually found his songs appearing regularly on Penner’s children’s TV show starting the mid-80’s. In 1981 McManus was asked by London promoter Don Jones to perform an opening set of material to entertain children at Mr. Dressup appearances. With McManus’ experience in music legalities he was able to help Mr. Dressup (Ernie Coombs) get out of a bad recording contract and the two hit it off working on their own material together. The result was the 1982 album Wake Up Mr. Dressup With Friend Terry McManus which was released on A & M and led to a tour by the duo. By 1985 Access TV in Calgary approached McManus to write material for their kids’ show The Magic Ring which resulted in 81 songs being used in 39 shows from 1985-1991. Around the mid-80’s McManus teamed up with music lawyer Stephen Stohn and Donna Murphy to revive the long defunct Songwriters’ Association Of Canada to which McManus was elected president for 4 years before becoming Chairman Of The Board.

https://citizenfreak.com/titles/291276-mcmanus-terry-sunshower-in-the-spring-b-w-gimme-a-hand-promo

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Pop Workshop — “Fairyland”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 21, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,757) Pop Workshop — “Fairyland”

How was this UK “orchestrated Pop dancer” (teabiscuit, https://www.45cat.com/record/pof091) not a hit? Teabiscuit think “maybe [it was] a little late for this sort of song by Sep 68”. I say it was never too late, ’cause “Fairyland” sends me into paroxysms of delight.

“Don’t wake me on Sunday I’ll call you on Monday” Reminds me of the Cure!

Sebastián Vientos writes of Fairyland (courtesy of Google Translate):

[The song is a] monument[] to intense, pure, and uncompromising pop. No trace of rock, psychedelia, garage, fuzz, or guitar riffs. Just a great melodic line and passion. That’s nothing. [It] w[as] written by [a] great professional[] of the time*, and the orchestral arrangement[ was] done by a young Mike Batt [see #1,610] . . . . Pure pop, and especially orchestrated pop, is one of the most underrated and misunderstood genres of the 60s in general.

https://cancionesatomicas.blogspot.com/2009/09/pop-workshop-fairyland-punch-and-judy.html

As does Sixties Collector:

[It] represents the best of that underappreciated category of English pop from the ’68-’70 period: pop with lots of orchestration and very catchy, high-quality melodies that never tire. Perhaps it’s not appreciated as it should be because … it lacks “vestiges of rock,” no garage, no… distorted electric guitars. This song is among my 20 favorites from the entire era. Just listening to that introduction followed by that bombastic orchestral explosion. A delight!

https://cancionesatomicas.blogspot.com/2009/09/pop-workshop-fairyland-punch-and-judy.html

Sebastián Vientos (courtesy of Google Translate) tells us of the Workshop:

The Pop Workshop was a quartet from Harrow, northwest London. After a few years following the trends of the moment and changing their name from time to time, they were signed as The Locomotion by the well-known producer and owner of the Page One label, Larry Page, who changed their name to The Pop Workshop: Alan Box (vocals and guitar), Dave Evans (guitar), Andy Love (bass), and Terry Gibbs (drums).

https://cancionesatomicas.blogspot.com/2009/09/pop-workshop-fairyland-punch-and-judy.html

* “Fairyland” is one of the first songs written by Ben Findon, who wrote hits for Billy Ocean, the Dooleys and others over the years. (https://www.musicvf.com/songs.php?page=artist&artist=Ben+Findon&tab=songaswriterchartstab, https://www.discogs.com/artist/303281-Ben-Findon?superFilter=Credits)

Here is Donnie Sutherland:

Here is the Second Movement:

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State of Mind — “Move”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 20, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,756) State of Mind — “Move”

From Wilmington, Delaware, a “[t]op flight punk rave up driven by a delicious back beat”. (danbartko164, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3tgX2TvrSY), “This has to be one of the best garage punkers ever”. (revup67, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3tgX2TvrSY) “[T]hat riff ,,,grunge all over it”! (mckshrmptn, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3tgX2TvrSY) Call it an altered state of mind!

Rhythm guitarist Paul Murtagh recalls:

The original band was formed in 1965 by . . . sophomores at William Penn High School in New Castle, Delaware. . . . In 1966, . . .Bill Sayers [joined the band and] became the new lead singer . . . . They . . . started playing . . . school functions, local dances, Battle of the Bands, etc. In the summer of 1966 . . . . [they] signed a contract to record 6 record sides over a 2 year period [with Wilmington’s Chavis Records]. . . . The [first] A side [was] “Move” . . . . [and] the main local rock station, WAMS, picked [it] as the “WAMS Wax to Watch”. Over the next 10 weeks, the record slowly climbed the WAMS Top 40 charts topping out at number 10. In addition to WAMS, the record also got play on WIBG and WFIL in Philadelphia. The success . . . opened up numerous opportunities . . . . [and] the band . . . played larger venue concerts . . . . In the fall of 1967, the State of Mind . . . cut their second record. . . . The band was very excited about the A side of this record, “Make You Cry”, feeling that, musically, it was superior to “Move” and should prove to be an even bigger seller. . . . WAMS continued to provide very strong support to the band and invited them to premiere the new song at the next concert at the Elsmere Fire Hall. . . . [But t]hree of the four members planned to attend college upon graduation [while] Sayers was committed to remaining a professional musician . . . . [He decided to] leav[e] to join the Phabulous Pharaohs . . . . Without the band’s lead singer and bass player, a shuffling of personnel took place and another local musician . . . was invited to join the band for the Elsmere gig. Unfortunately, the band was unable to reproduce the sound of their second record live for the concert so had to lip-synch the record. Following this concert, the band essentially broke up.

https://garagehangover.com/state-of-mind-on-chavis/

Finally, “[t]he owner-producer, a black minister, is said to have thrown away all his master tapes in a fit of pious conscience”! (liner notes to the CD comp Pebbles: Vol. 5: Original ’60s Punk & Psych Classics)

Here are France’s Les Playboys (’84). Fuzzmanos tells us that:

The group members are from Nice and have been friends since high school. In the mid-seventies, they were among the initiators of the punk movement in France under the name of Dentist. In 1979, they will be at the origin of the “garage sixties revival” . . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqL2zpLF5Q

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The Bobby Fuller Four — “Let Her Dance”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 19, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,755) The Bobby Fuller Four — “Let Her Dance”

Bobby Fuller (see #995) gave us an “ear-wormy, hook-rich masterpiece . . . . contain[ing] a brilliant juxtaposition of musical tensions that pull between the beat, lead guitar line, vocal melody, and some inspired background- vocal counterpoint” (Dennis Pilon, https://poprockrecord.com/2019/03/26/cover-me-the-bobby-fuller-fours-let-her-dance/), “an exuberant rocker, containing elements of practically every dance-floor classic to date, from Valens’ ‘La Bamba’ to Bobby Freeman’s ‘Do You Wanna Dance’ and the Beach Boys’ ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’.” (Classicbands.com, https://www.classicbands.com/fullerfour.html)

“Dance” “promptly topped the L.A. charts, making the group stars in the land of stars” (Classicbands.com again), but it only reached #133 nationwide.

Rob Jones writes:

[It] just shimmers with aural optimism, with an irregular beat and a simple, yet totally effective guitar riff that serves as an engine to the whole thing. It seems to incorporate a number of musical ingredients, from latin music, to country, to surf music. And the echo-drenched call and response vocals from Fuller and his bandmates seem to evoke the innocence that marked the times. This is a song about youthful heartbreak, and youthful resilience, maybe with a bit of hormonal confusion thrown in. What’s more rock ‘n’ roll than that?

https://thedeletebin.com/2013/03/18/the-bobby-fuller-four-play-let-her-dance/

But, Michael Hann points out that:

[F]or all the sweet harmonies, lovelorn lyrics, and bouncing chords, there was a toughness to it. It sounded like a teenage hoodlum trying to look respectable for his girlfriend’s folks. It’s power-pop before the fact, in other words.

And LeOpard13 adds:

Listen to the song’s lyrics and you’ll spot its proud defiance. Announcing the singer’s not bothered by his girlfriend’s rejection. The exuberant tone of the singing in direct contrast to the burden of the words flowing out. The hints of regret and hurt still emerge. . . . Catchy to groove to, but poignant when you pay heed to what it’s saying.

https://le0pard13.com/2013/11/29/reprise-friday-forgotten-song-bobby-fuller-fours-let-her-dance/

Richie Unterberger:

“Let Her Dance” was the first Bobby Fuller track to receive wide commercial attention . . . . Although [it] is one of the most well known Bobby Fuller songs, it’s arguably not among his very most interesting or ambitious, based as it is around a simple Buddy Hollyesque melody and a lyric about letting a girl who’s broken up with the singer dance with her new flame. It was in fact a rewritten remake of a song with the same melody and different lyrics, “Keep on Dancing,” that Fuller had released on a 1964 single. What made the song different from “Keep on Dancing,” and indeed different from what Fuller had done previously as a recording artist, was the more sophisticated production. Perhaps reflecting Phil Spector’s influence, there was a mini-Wall of Sound built up with the twangy reverbed guitar riff, stomping beat, tinkling percussion, and almost choral-sounding backup vocals. Those backup vocals were particularly effective at the end of the verses, where an almost round-like overlapping quality was achieved. Bobby Fuller’s lead vocal, as usual, made something more of the material than many would have. The lyric on the surface is one of proud defiance, announcing that he’s not bothered by his girlfriend’s rejection. The tone of the vocal and construction of the words infers something a little different, though, with hints of regret and hurt peeping through. And if he was really so unconcerned about who the girl was dancing with, would he keep repeating the message over and over for two-and-a-half minutes?

https://www.allmusic.com/song/let-her-dance-mt0001720571

As to the Bobby Fuller Four, Michael Hann writes that “[t]hey were . . . a band out of time, indebted to Buddy Holly and the first wave of rock’n’roll heroes just at the point when rock music was entering that period of light-speed acceleration that rendered everything that came before irrelevant overnight”. (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/feb/14/bobby-fuller-four-let-her-dance)

Richie Unterberger tells us:

With his blatant reverence for Buddy Holly, fellow Texan Bobby Fuller was a bit of an anomaly in the mid-’60s. With his Stratocaster guitar and brash, full sound, at his best Fuller sounded like Holly might have had he survived into the ’60s. Cracking the Top 30 in 1966 with a cover of Holly’s “Love’s Made a Fool of You” and the Top Ten with “I Fought the Law” . . . Fuller had just become a star when he died in mysterious circumstances in a parked car in Hollywood (the police thought it was a suicide, just about everyone who knew him disagreed). Fuller’s relatively short period of national stardom actually crowned a good half-dozen years of recording, during which he released many outstanding tracks. After a few local singles in his hometown of El Paso in the early ’60s, he moved to California with his combo in 1964 . . . . In the short time he recorded for Mustang in 1965 and 1966, he waxed quite a few tracks (most self-penned) in addition to his hits . . . . Rocking, tuneful, and infectiously joyous, they showed Fuller to be a worthy inheritor of early rock & roll and rockabilly traditions without sounding self-consciously revivalist. . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-bobby-fuller-four-mn0000061534#biography

ClassicBands.com:

Bobby Fuller . . . . formed a band in El Paso with his brother Randy and two friends, drummer Larry Thompson and guitarist Billy Webb. They were known as The Fanatics. After Thompson and Webb left, they were replaced by Jim Reese on guitar and Dewayne Quirico on drums. LThe group played locally for three years before packing up and moving to Los Angeles. It was there, in 1964, that the bright-eyed Texan and his group signed with Del-Fi Records, the label that had brought forth Ritchie Valens. The record company took a special interest in Bobby and changed the band’s name to The Bobby Fuller Four, much to the regret of the rest of the group. The boys hit the club circuit and by 1965 they had become the darlings of the discotheque set, performing their high-powered Rock ‘n’ Roll night after night before packed audiences. . . . When the British Invasion hit, England’s rockers re-educated Americans who had long neglected their musical heritage. But while most American bands were happy to learn about Carl Perkins, The Crickets and other home-grown heroes via the Beatles, Fuller went straight to the source. He was playing plain and simple Rock ‘n’ Roll while fellow Texan Buddy Holly was alive, and stuck with it even after the music died. By the time the Brits brought back the beat, Fuller and his band were ready to show America that a group didn’t need pointy boots to play kick-ass Rock ‘n’ Roll. . . . The Bobby Fuller Four’s first few Del-Fi singles failed. Although Fuller would later prove himself an excellent songwriter, at that point the group had yet to find its own sound . . . . [After “Let Her Dance”, t]he band followed with the superb “Never to Be Forgotten” . . . . But it was their next release that would put them over the top. “I Fought the Law” originally appeared on a post-Holly Crickets album and was penned by the group’s guitarist, Sonny Curtis . . . . Released in October 1965, the Bobby Fuller Four’s version . . . took their fame far beyond the West Coast. . . . Although the Bobby Fuller Four managed a minor follow-up hit with another cover, Holly’s “Love’s Made a Fool of You” (#26), most of the American public remained unaware of Fuller’s own songwriting talent. By then, his compositions had evolved from emulations of his ’50s idols to more sophisticated tunes. However, Del-Fi did not believe in Fuller’s originals, so the group’s next single was a bona fide Brill Building tune, “The Magic Touch”. When it missed the charts entirely, things began to fall apart. In July 1966, Fuller returned home to L.A. after a long and stressful tour. His band was on the verge of mutiny . . . . The West Coast music scene was changing rapidly, with stirrings of psychedelia. Fuller was uncertain of his next move. No one foresaw the tragedy that would come next. . . . Bobby’s lifeless body was found on the front seat of his mother’s Oldsmobile . . . . He had been badly beaten and a gasoline can was found on the floor of the car. . . . The Los Angeles Police ruled Fuller’s death a suicide . . . . His brother Randy claimed that the police never even checked the car for fingerprints. Those closest to Bobby suspected that he had been murdered. Fuller had been dating a young woman named Melanie, whose reportedly jealous, club-owner ex-boyfriend was rumored to be tied to organized crime. After Fuller’s death, she disappeared and was not heard from for many years. When she finally surfaced, she denied any knowledge of Fuller’s death. A private investigator hired by Fuller’s parents and the group’s manager, Bob Keane, was shot at and quit the case after a few days.

https://www.classicbands.com/fullerfour.html

Here’s a cool video:

Performing on Where the Action Is!:

Here’s “Keep on Dancing”:

Dennis Pilon writes that “[n]o wonder it’s been covered by countless bands, each choosing to balance the competing elements in somewhat different and intriguing ways.” He gives an exhaustive list of covers at: https://poprockrecord.com/2019/03/26/cover-me-the-bobby-fuller-fours-let-her-dance/.

Here’s Marshall Crenshaw:

Here’s Phil Seymour:

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Pete Atkin — “Laughing Boy”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 18, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,754) Pete Atkin — “Laughing Boy”

Ah, the team of Pete Atkin and Clive James. (see #263, 859-60) It’s as if Gilbert and Sullivan woke up in Swinging London. And I’m not talkin’ Gilbert O’Sullivan!

Christopher Evans writes that “Laughing Boy” “laments the fact that the singer’s friends — especially the female ones — are unable to discern the suffering artist behind the carapace of caustic wit.” He notes that “James, it is worth remembering, was already established on British TV by now as a purveyor of corner-of-the-mouth putdowns in his capacity as a film reviewer.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/beware-of-the-beautiful-stranger-mw0000844411)

Bittersweet, yearning and knowing. “I’ve got the only cure for life And the cure for life is joy”

Christopher Evans talks of the partnership:

In the early ’70s, the songwriting partnership of Pete Atkin and Clive James was held in high esteem by the British music press, yet commercial success proved much more elusive. Their unique attempt to fuse the discipline and craftsmanship of Tin Pan Alley with the self-expression of rock, while refusing to accept any limitation on what constituted appropriate subject matter for lyrics, inevitably set them on a collision course with their record companies’ marketing departments. . . . James’ points of reference took in the full panoply of art, cinema, literature, and poetry, sometimes leaving his work open to accusations of being wordy and pretentious. In its own way, Atkin’s music was just as erudite, drawing on every form of popular music from show tunes through folk, jazz, and rock. . . . The pair first met in 1966 as members of the Cambridge Footlights Revue that spawned so much British comedy talent, from the satire of Beyond the Fringe to the surrealism of Monty Python. . . . James recently emigrated from Australia, was a postgraduate student, six years older than Atkin . . . .

Though they managed to finance a couple of private recordings of their earliest songs, it wasn’t until 1970 that a full-fledged record emerged in the form of Beware of the Beautiful Stranger. In fact, the album had been recorded as a collection of demos to showcase the pair’s talents as songwriters for other artists, but producer Don Paul was a friend of popular BBC DJ Kenny Everett, who took a shine to the album’s opening track and began playing it on daytime Radio 1. As a result, Philips agreed to issue the album as it stood, and Atkin’s career as a recording artist was launched. . . . [But] British record-buyers were having none of it. By the time the pair’s second album, the more rock-oriented Driving Through Mythical America, arrived in 1971, their beyond-the-mainstream status was confirmed. . . . Exhausted by all the ceaseless wrangling with RCA, Atkin went on to find a new career in radio production with the BBC, though he continued to make the odd appearance in small folk clubs. Meanwhile James quickly became one of the most familiar figures on British television, where his lacerating wit and coruscating wordplay secured him a seemingly endless sequence of programs tailored to his unique style . . . .

Atkin’s deadpan and very English voice was the perfect vehicle for James’ wryly melancholic musings, most of which focused here on an infinitely sensitive young aesthete’s quest for eternal love and his endless capacity to screw it up when he found it. . . . Musically, the album finds Atkin still in an MOR no man’s land between folk and tasteful acoustic pop, a little too eager to please and reluctant to offend. . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/pete-atkin-mn0000312634/biography; https://www.allmusic.com/album/beware-of-the-beautiful-stranger-mw0000844411

As Pete Atkin recalls:

I’d sung a few of my own silly songs at [Cambridge] Footlights . . . concerts, and one day Clive simply handed me a lyric and said “Hey, sport, do you think you can do anything with this?” . . . [W]e soon started turning out songs . . . . [W]e did imagine our songs being sung famously by successful singers, which is partly what led me to organize some amateurish recordings . . . and to assemble a couple of privately-pressed LPs. The idea was to sell enough of them to unwitting friends . . . to cover the costs and use the rest as demos. . . . [T]he demo LPs did lead us in late 1969 to the publishers Essex Music [and] some proper studio sessions to record some of the songs. And those, amazingly, are the recordings you have here. . . . [The producer Don Paul was] a mate of Kenny Everett, at that time the most famous and influential DJ in the land with his Saturday morning show on BBC Radio 1. Don played him a couple of the tracks, and he . . . played them on his show several weeks running. . . . And so I became a recording artist, which hadn’t originally been the idea at all . . . . At that critical point Kenny . . . notoriously got himself sacked by the BBC for what was considered in those days to be an inexcusable and intolerable joke, something to do with the Minister of Transport’s wife having just passed her driving test. . . . Although the album didn’t, as they used to say, trouble the charts, it did pretty well really, perhaps partly because it didn’t sound much like anything else. It might have done even better, but the trouble was it didn’t sound much like anything else.

liner notes to the CD reissue Beware of the Beautiful Stranger . . . Plus: The Songs of Pete Atkin & Clive James

Live:

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Ronnie Bird — “Sad Soul”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 17, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,753) Ronnie Bird — “Sad Soul”

French rock star Ronnie Bird gives us a compelling performance in English of this “sublime” and “moody” A-side (Flipped Out Phil, https://flippedoutphil.substack.com/p/ronnie-bird-the-frenchman-with-the), co-written by two of his band members including future Foreigner star Mick Jones. “Sad soul and a tired mind Gonna leave this world behind”. Actually, I could see Foreigner turning this into a hit a decade later! The single contained “the only Sixties recordings featuring Ronnie singing in English and, alas, they marked the effective end of his career as a pop star.” (Flipped Out Phil again).

Richie Unterberger tells us of Ronnie:

During the mid-’60s, Ronnie Bird [Ronald Mehu] was the only French artist to successfully emulate the sounds of the British Invasion across the channel. Bird was one of the few French singers with a facility for singing rock & roll in French without sounding strained or embarrassing. His first few discs were crafted with the help of expatriate guitarist Mickey Baker . . . half of Mickey & Sylvia and responsible for great session work on numerous rock and R&B songs in the ’50s. Baker played on Bird’s discs and actually wrote a few tracks with him, although most of Bird’s records were French covers of songs by British giants like the Stones, the Who, the Pretty Things, and the Hollies. For a time, Bird’s band included guitarist Mick Jones, who went on to fame with Foreigner in the ’70s. Although extremely derivative of the tougher side of the British Invasion, Bird’s covers and originals were respectably hard-driving and well-executed. Dabbling in soul and psychedelia at times as the ’60s progressed, Bird eased out of the music business and emigrated to New York in the ’70s.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ronnie-bird-mn0000275014#biography

Larousse adds (courtesy of Google Translate):

He hung out with the gang at the Champs-Élysées drugstore, a mecca for “twinks” crazy about English pop. Ronnie Bird formed his own band, the Blazers, at seventeen, then dropped out of school to join the Rebelles. Henri Leproux, owner of the Golf Drouot – this rock temple in search of young talent – gave him his chance. RB was signed to Decca in 1964. Dressed in the style of the English mods (skimpy trousers and jackets, pointed boots, hair in a helmet à la Brian Jones), he covered songs by Buddy Holly, the Small Faces and the Who. After a notable appearance at the Mutualité in June 1964 for the release of his second 45, in 1965 he covered two English hits, by the Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things (“Elle m’attend” and “Tu perds ton temps”). At the end of the 1960s, Ronnie Bird realized that the time for adaptations was over. In 1968, he recorded “Le Pivert” and then “SOS Mesdemoiselles”, with original music by his musicians Tommy Brown (drummer) and Micky Jones (guitarist, future Foreigner). Ronnie sometimes wrote the lyrics himself for these rocking songs with strong “Stonian” accents (“Tu ne sais pas”, “la Surprise”, or “Si quelque chose m’arrived”). The public gradually forgot him, but not those nostalgic for the French “mod” style. He moved to New York in the early 1970s where he became a cameraman at the Antenne 2 office.

https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/personnage/Ronald_Mehu_dit_Ronnie_Bird/155989

Here’s a video:

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Sandy Posey — “The Last Day of Love”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 16, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,752) Sandy Posey — “The Last Day of Love”

Countrypolitan icon Sandy Posey (see #1,154) sings of the day she is left by her lover — so somber, so sad, so spellbinding, so Sandy.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes:

Walking the line separating girl group pop and the Nashville Sound, Sandy Posey scored a pair of major hits with her first two singles, “Born a Woman” and “Single Girl,” both number 12 Billboard hits in 1966. . . . Posey transitioned to country music in the ’70s, earning a string of country hits that ran through the decade. . . . After graduating from a high school in West Memphis, Arkansas, she started to pursue a musical career in Memphis. Landing a job as a receptionist in a recording studio, she also started to work as a session singer. . . . [She] came to the attention of producer Chips Moman. Hearing her demo of “Born a Woman[]” convinced Moman to help Posey secure a contract with MGM Records. Moman produced “Born a Woman,” . . . [which] snag[ged] Posey two Grammy nominations in 1967 . . . . After “What a Woman in Love Won’t Do” reached 31, Posey again occupied the number 12 position with “I Take It Back.” As quickly as she shot up the charts, Posey shot back down. “Are You Never Coming Home” topped out at 59 in 1967, with “Something I’ll Remember” failing to chart in 1968. By 1971, she refashioned herself as a country singer . . . . [and o]ver the next few years, she was modestly successful on the country charts . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sandy-posey-mn0000291724#biography

Michael D’Arcy notes that:

Posey also continued with her obligations as a back-up vocalist. She contributed to `When A Man Loves A Woman’ – a huge hit by Percy Sledge. Sandy also provided vocal back-up for Elvis Presley [see #80, 879] at Moman’s American Studios. Amongst others, her contributions are included on `Elvis’s Gospel Songs’ in 1966 and `Back In Memphis’ and `Mama Liked the Roses’ in 1969. Her activities in supporting Elvis Presley in this way led to Sandy’s appearance with Elvis on his initial Las Vegas concert in 1969.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070203191740/http://www.countrypolitan.com/fringe0601.php

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Nick Garrie — “Ink Pot Eyes”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 15, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,751) Nick Garrie — “Ink Pot Eyes”

Yet another gorgeous and contemplative gem “(about a ‘beautiful Russian actress’ of Garrie’s acquaintance)” (Marco Rossi, https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/album/the-nightmare-of-jbstanislas-40thanniversary-deluxeedition) from Nick Garrie’s (see #3, 19, 41, 65, 104, 137, 245, 362, 493, 871, 965, 1,088, 1,120, 1,635) The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas, a top contender for the greatest lost album of the 60’s. If Nick’s French record company’s owner hadn’t committed suicide on the eve of Stanislas’s release, who knows what might have been. Stunning songs — I was transfixed the first time I heard them and I have been a huge fan of Nick and his music ever since.

John Clarkson writes:

Nick Garrie’s 1969 album, The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas. is now seen to be a psychedelic folk/pop masterpiece. It has, however, only recently gained this reputation and for over thirty five years was largely unheard. The son of a Russian father and Scottish mother, Garrie’s early years were divided between Paris, where his Egyptian stepfather worked as a diplomat, and Norwich, where he attended a boarding school. He recorded The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas at the age of twenty in Paris with Eddie Vartan, who was a then fashionable French producer and the brother of the actress Sylvie Vartan. Garrie originally intended the album to have a sparser sound, but when he turned up at the studio on the first day of recording he found that Vartan had employed a 56-piece orchestra to expand on his more tender arrangements. The finished result is a compelling oddity and merges together Garrie’s wistful melodies and often abstract lyrics with Vartan’s colourfully extravagant orchestrations. It is . . . much deserved of the cult status it has since come to gain. Lucien Morrisse, the owner of Disc AZ, Garrie’s record label, committed suicide before The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas was ever released and for years it languished in obscurity, eventually starting to attract fan interest when tracks from it began to leak onto the internet. . . . only finally s[eeing] official release when it came out on CD on Rev-Ola Records in 2004 . . . .

https://pennyblackmusic.co.uk/Home/Details?id=18614

Here are excerpts from a vintage interview (2010) that Clarkson conducted with Nick:

NG: I had just started teaching when I found out about it. I had done a PGCE course late in life and I typed in Nick Garrie as a joke because I hadn’t used the name since Stanislas and I couldn’t believe it when there was all these pages on it. I don’t know for sure, but I believe there was a company called Acid Ray who were in Korea and they must have bootlegged some tapes as they put out a compilation album called Band Caruso with “Wheel of Fortune” on it. I think that was the first thing on the web and it did quite well, so that is probably how the name got about. Things went from there.

JC: What did you feel troubled about when you were writing Stanislas?

NG: I wrote most of it when I was between nineteen and twenty. I was at Warwick University at the time, but I had spent so much of my life living in France that I had been called up for the French army as a national. Although I was eventually released from it, for a year I couldn’t go in to France and so I was essentially homeless.. . . .

JC: The suicide of Lucien Morrisse led to The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas remaining unheard for over three decades. Even before he died, you, however, imply again in your autobiography that Disc AZ didn’t know quite what to do with you and how to promote you. Do you think that too was a factor in Stanislas remaining undiscovered for so long?

NG: Absolutely, because it was never released at all. It was not as if it came out. No one ever heard it. I would go in to see them. We would talk about it. They would say that it would be in the shops next month and it never was. It went on like that for about six months, at the end of which I had had enough. To be honest as well at that stage I didn’t really like it much either. I didn’t like the arrangements, so after his suicide I gave a couple of copies to my stepfather and for me it was finished. I didn’t listen to it again or even really talk about much for years.

JC: How do you think it stands up now? Do you like it better?

NG: I do like it now, but I still don’t hear it through everybody’s ears. I have had a lot of correspondence with people who really love it, people from all over the world who say how much it has moved them, so it seems a bit churlish to say now that I didn’t really like it. They were songs, however, that I didn’t really recognise at the recording stage and again for a long time afterwards. . . .

JC: There is the story about Eddie Varden introducing you to a fifty six piece orchestra which you didn’t know about until you turned up at the studio. What did you expect the songs to sound like? Were they going to be just you and your acoustic guitar or were they going to involve a band?

NG: . . . . I knew that it wouldn’t be my guitar work because I wasn’t a good enough guitarist. I am still not, but I suspected that would be the basis of it. The first song that I started recording was Stanislas. I had no idea that was what we were playing though. [Eddie] would shove me in the booth and prompt me when and what I had to sing. He was using these mainly classical musicians who were all wearing cardigans and who didn’t think much of me anyway because I was a pop artist. But having said that he was really, really nice and was in many a sort of uncle or father figure to me.

JC: It seems that you had quite an odd relationship with him really because at one level he was very praising and told you that he thought that you would be the next Bob Dylan, but at another level he would do something like that and not tell you what was going on.

NG: I realised years afterwards that it was a terrific investment for them, this orchestra playing for two weeks with this guy who completely unknown completely unknown. I just never expected it and didn’t feel in a position to say very much about it. I think as well that it was just the way it was in those days. . . .

JC: How did The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas gain it audience? Do you know?

https://pennyblackmusic.co.uk/Home/Details?id=18614

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Girl, Don’t Make Me Wait Special Edition: Bunny Sigler/Timebox: “Girl, Don’t Make Me Wait”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 14, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

This Northern soul fave was written by Philly soul master Leon Huff and performed by his compatriot Bunny Sigler and the UK’s Timebox.

1,749) Bunny Sigler — “Girl, Don’t Make Me Wait”

Bunny Sigler’s original ’66 A-side “received both R&B and pop airplay and was a huge tune on the UKs Northern Soul scene”. (Soul Strutter, https://soulstrutter.blogspot.com/2011/01/ns540-bunny-sigler-follow-your-heart.html) The “beautifully bombastic” (Ed Hogan, https://www.allmusic.com/album/let-the-good-times-roll-mw0000846206#trackListing) number is an “[a]bsolute stormer”. (Stives1979, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_20ImUe1to) It’s “perfect for the dance floor” (Daniel Andersson, https://hymn.se/2017/10/08/20-bunnnyy-sigler-favoriter/), as thebouncinghearts can attest: “Just that intro alone sends shivers down my spine. Once it’s in your veins it’s there for the rest of your life. The floor wins every time alright! Yeeeaaahh!!!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_20ImUe1to) — as can smilecal: “[T]his was one of my all time dancers, wherever i was, no choice, where’s the floor … i’d get totally lost inside it and let my feet do the talking”. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_20ImUe1to)

Ed Hogan tells us of Bunny Sigler:

A veteran singer and composer during the classic period of Philly soul, Bunny Sigler was always capable of making striking, memorable soul/R&B material. Debuting in the ’50s with his own group and as a solo performer, he reached the higher end of the R&B charts several times, including in 1967 with “Let the Good Times Roll and Feel So Good,” in 1973 with “Tossin’ and Turnin’,” in 1978 with “Let Me Party with You (Party, Party, Party),” and later that year with a Loleatta Holloway duet, “Only You.” Sigler actually earned much more acclaim for his work as a staff writer and producer. One of the major creative forces behind Philadelphia International’s dominance of ’70s soul, Sigler produced and wrote for dozens of major acts, including Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Lou Rawls, Patti LaBelle, the Whispers, Stephanie Mills, Billy Paul, Curtis Mayfield [see #118, 285, 1,347, 1,544], and Carl Carlton . . . . [A]s a child, little Walter Sigler would walk around singing and making up lyrics and choruses to songs. [H]e became Bunny Sigler when as an infant his mother discovered that he had a fully grown front tooth. She commented that he looked just like a bunny rabbit . . . . His formative years were spent singing . . . at Helping Hand Rescue Mission and at various churches. In his teens, he sang at the Roman Emanuel Baptist Church and joined various doo wop groups like the Opals. Despite all of this involvement, Sigler’s real aspiration was to be a professional basketball player. But that ambition was squelched when he injured his leg. . . . Sigler threw himself into music with a passion, recording for various local labels and singing and playing guitar and piano in area nightclubs. One summer after performing at Atlantic City’s Ambassador Hotel, Sigler began singing and noodling around the piano, searching for ideas. Sigler was brought to the attention of independent producers John Medara and Dave White . . . by Leon Huff who suggested they check out Sigler’s performance . . . . Impressed, they signed him to a deal that lead to the release of Sigler’s first album, Let the Good Times Roll and Feel So Good on Cameo Parkway. The first single, “Girl Don’t Make Me Wait,” received both R&B and pop airplay. The title track (originally a hit for Shirley & Lee) was the second single and was making a respectable showing on the R&B/pop charts (number 20 R&B and number 22 pop) when Cameo Parkway suddenly folded. While waiting for his Cameo Parkway contract to lapse, Sigler began hanging around the hallways of Gamble & Huff Productions, singing, strumming guitar, and practicing his newly acquired martial arts skills with wall punches and kicks. The latter proved unsettling to visiting clients leading Kenny Gamble to suggest that Sigler go into a room with Ugene Dozier and try to write some songs. Up to that point, Sigler hadn’t even though about becoming a songwriter. . . . Around 1970, Gamble & Huff Productions became Philadelphia International Records. . . . Sigler’s songwriting break came when a tune he co-wrote with Phil Hurtt, “Sunshine,” was released as a follow-up single to O’Jays’ million-selling “Back Stabbers.” . . . The O’Jays’ follow-up album, Ship Ahoy, had Sigler’s first solo-written song, “You Got Your Hooks in Me,” and the Sigler/Gamble tune “Don’t You Call Me Brother.” Sigler’s songs, productions, piano, and background vocals are sprinkled throughout the Philadelphia International Records catalog.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/bunny-sigler-mn0000941716#biography

1,750) Timebox — “Girl, Don’t Make Me Wait”

Timebox’s (see #1,285, 1,355) cover is “a perfect approximation of Philly Soul”. (Jon “Mojo” Mills, https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-deram-anthology-mw0000968588) I really don’t know which version I like better.

As to Timebox, Jon “Mojo” Mills tells us:

[The band] turned professional and headed towards London. . . . [T]hey were soon working on package tours . . . as well as striking up a residency at the legendary the Whiskey a Go Go. With two singers leaving . . . U.S. singer John Henry was drafted in and the band changed their name to Timebox — an American term for a prison cell. Signed to Piccadilly in February 1967, their debut single, “I’ll Always Love You” . . . was released and displayed an early jazz-tinged, soulful talent. . . . [E]x-G.I. Henry [was] whipped back off to the U.S.A by officials . . . . Mike Patto . . . after a few illustrious jams and took on a prominent role as vocalist and songwriter. . . . Timebox soon became a hot live act. . . . claimed Timebox to be one of the first rock bands in London to really explore jazz in a rock context. A wonderful performance at the Windsor Jazz Festival on August 12, 1967, caught the eye of Decca producer Gus Dudgeon, who immediately signed them to the label’s subsidiary Deram. The first 45, a fantastic version of Tim Hardin’s “Don’t Make Promises,” was backed by the even better Ollie original “Walking Through the Streets of My Mind,” which combined sharp blue-eyed soul harmonies with a psychedelic arrangement. The follow-up — again a classic example of British soul — was a cover of the Four Seasons’ “Beggin” and reached number 38 in the charts . . . . Deram viewed Timebox as a pop band, and so the more experimental songs were left in the can while the silly sing-a-long tune “Baked Jam Roll in Your Eye,” written for fun when the band members were drunk, was the next release in March 1969. It’s styling was a little too late for the era of novelty psychedelia, and of no interest to the more rock-oriented record buyer . . . . By the summer of 1969, things were turning sour. The final release, “Yellow Van,” was a great record . . . but was banned due to the nature of the lyrics. This really was the end of the road . . . . The nucleus of the band merged into Patto, who released three albums in the 1970s.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/timebox-mn0000602690#biography

Barry Monks adds:

They worked solidly on package tours with The Kinks, The Small Faces, Tommy Quickly, Lou Christie etc. and landed a Wednesday night residency at London’s Whisky a Go Go, a trendy and prestigious venue . . . . [Vocalist Frank] Dixon contracted tuberculosis . . . . In November 1966, a replacement vocalist was found in US singer John Henry . . . . who, as a GI deserter, was shortly to be unceremoniously carted off by two large military policemen! . . . [Mike] Patto . . . had begun to carve a promising solo career with a single . . . on Columbia in December 1966. After fronting the final version of the Bo Street Runners . . . Mike formed Patto’s People (later The Chicago Blues Line) . . . . After a late-night jam at The Playboy Club, Mike agreed to join Timebox . . . . A prestigious gig at The Windsor Jazz Festival on 12 August 1967 caught the eye and ear of ace Decca Records producer Gus Dudgeon who immediately signed them to their new subsidiary Deram. In October 1967, they released a splendidly raga-esque cover of Tim Hardin’s ‘Don’t Make Promises’ . . . . [The next A-side was] a finely crafted cover of The Four Seasons ‘Beggin’ . . . . The B-side, ‘A Woman That’s Waiting’, was penned by Mike Patto and guitarist Ivan Zagni from the Chicago Blues Line days. . . . The February/March 1968 sessions which produced the ‘hit’ also spawned . . . Patto/Halsall collaborations for a projected album provisionally titled Moose on the Loose . . . . Ollie’s ‘psychedelic’ masterpiece “Gone is the Sad Man” [see #1,285] remains an icon of it’s time [with “Girl, Don’t Make Me Wait” its A-side]. . . . [A] cult following developed around their Marquee Club residency . . . . The self-penned A-side was finally achieved in March 1969 with the rather silly but, nevertheless, endearing “Baked Jam Roll in Your Eye” . . . . Having finally begun to establish their own material, it seemed that Timebox had, effectively, run its course.

https://www.pattofan.com/Timebox/tb_deramcd.htm (liner notes to the CD comp Timebox: The Deram Anthology)

Oh, and here are Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods (’74):

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The Creation — “Biff Bang Pow”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 13, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,748) The Creation — “Biff Bang Pow”

The Creation’s (see #129, 165, 1,502, 1,643) “glorious pop-art B side” (happening45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJCPK8ztCSE) to their only top 40 hit in the UK, the #36 “Painterman”, is “an anthemic touchstone of sorts for the entire swinging mod scene”. (Lindsay Planer, https://www.allmusic.com/song/biff-bang-pow-mt0001523078) “If I were faced with the thankless task to pick only one song that epitomizes what my idea of mod represents, it would be this track.” (Derek See, https://dereksdaily45.blogspot.com/2011/07/creation-biff-bang-pow.html)

Mike Stax writes:

With its loud, crashing, primary-color power chords and comic-book imagery, a more definitive statement of rock as pop art does not exist. . . . The “My Generation”-like main riff and unmistakable Nicky Hopkins piano work invoked Who comparisons that The Creation found hard to shake, but the ultimate compliment was paid when Pete Townshend joined their fan club.

liner notes to the CD comp Nuggets II: (Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969)

Lindsay Planer adds:

[The Creation’s] brash brand of freakbeat is certainly evident on the dynamic “Biff! Bang! Pow!” . . . . Immediately striking are similarities to early Who tracks “My Generation” and “A Legal Matter,” with common elements of both being producer Shel Talmy and prolific session pianist Nicky Hopkins. Drummer Jack Jones’ deft bashing likewise bears a resemblance to the frenetic timekeeping of Keith Moon . . . . [T]he vigorous rhythm and unrelenting beat — coupled with the title’s unmistakably bold interjections lifted from Batman — were enough to make the Creation’s minor masterpiece stand on its own. Vocalist Kenny Pickett matches the intensity with a spirited reading, perfectly complementing the high-energy accompaniment. The instrumental break gives the quartet a chance to cut loose and features an outstanding solo from guitarist Eddie Phillips. . . . The song’s lasting effects were cemented when D.I.Y. artist turned record exec Alan McGee named his outfit Biff Band Pow! and his label Creation . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/song/biff-bang-pow-mt0001523078

Mark Deming talks of the Creation:

One of the most powerful and forward-thinking British bands of the 1960s, the Creation fused mod style to a freakbeat sound in a manner that anticipated psychedelia and boasted a sonic impact that was matched in their day only by the Who. Rooted in the adventurous guitar work of Eddie Phillips, whose bracing use of feedback and work with a violin bow gave him a unique sound, and the impassioned vocals of Kenny Pickett, the Creation also incorporated the influence of pop art in their music, and they attracted a loyal cult following. However, the group’s popularity in Europe far outstripped their following in England or the United States . . . . [The Mark Four] got signed to Mercury Records’ British division in 1964, but the resulting two singles failed to sell. Though audiences in the U.K. were slow to warm to their music, German audiences were greeting their performances at the Big Ben Club . . . with rousing enthusiasm. . . . [T]he band chanced to cross paths with a local band called the Roadrunners who were wowing fans with their use of guitar feedback in their songs. Eddie Phillips made note of the effect and started working out how he might assimilate it . . . . The Mark Four got a second crack at recording success with Decca Records, which resulted in the single “Hurt Me (If You Will)” b/w “I’m Leaving.” Sales were disappointing, but [“I’m Leaving”] did establish the beginning of a new sound[.] Phillips incorporated his own approach to guitar feedback. . . . [T]he band’s rhythm guitarist, Mick Thompson, and their bassist, John Dalton quit (soon to join the Kinks . . . ). The Mark Four finished their history with a temporary lineup and one last single in early 1966. During the weeks that followed, Pickett and Phillips, along with drummer Jack Jones . . . began rethinking their precise image and direction . . . . By the spring . . . the group had evolved into the Creation, with ex-Merseybeats bassist Bob Garner filling out the lineup, and they had also signed with an ambitious young Australian-born manager . . . named Robert Stigwood. The Creation burst on the British pop/rock scene that June with “Making Time,” a single that seemed to have everything going for it . . . . In portent of their future, “Making Time” soared to number five in Germany but peaked at an anemic number 49 in England, even as the Creation were getting enthusiastic press for their stage performances, which included artists creating and destroying “action paintings” on stage. . . . The group finally saw some slightly significant chart action at home in the fall of 1966 with “Painter Man,” a cheerfully trippy pop anthem with a feedback-oozing guitar break that made the Top 40; predictably, the same record hit number one in Germany. The B-side, “Biff Bang Pow[]” . . . jumped into a pop/rock idiom with a psychedelic edge that should have earned it airplay on its own. By the start of 1967, however, the Creation had hit a crisis point, as Kenny Pickett quit over creative differences and frustration over constant touring in Europe, where their biggest audience was rooted. He was eventually replaced by Kim Gardner, late of the group the Birds. . . . Still struggling for a commercial foothold in England despite being one of the most widely touted live acts of the time, the group’s German label decided it was time to release a Creation LP. We Are Paintermen was highlighted by the titular hit plus a surprisingly good, crunchy rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone,” and a jagged, powerful version of “Hey Joe.” . . . One more single, “Life Is Just Beginning” b/w “Through My Eyes [see #129],” showed up in the fall of 1967 — the A-side was a rousing psychedelic showcase, with elements of Indian raga and a catchy, chant-like main body, plus forceful guitar and a string orchestra. “Through My Eyes” was no throwaway, either, with a lean, crunchy guitar, beautiful choruses, and a great central tune, with three-minutes-and-change of spacy sensibilities ending in a feedback crescendo. Eddie Phillips apparently felt that the single was as good a showcase as he would ever get, and in October of 1967 he quit the Creation. His departure was followed by Kim Gardner’s decision to exit the group for a team-up with Ron Wood, Jon Lord, and Twink in what became known as Santa Barbara Machinehead. The Creation was kept “alive” into the spring of 1968 when their U.K. label, Polydor, released a single of “How Does It Feel” b/w “Tom Tom” on both sides of the Atlantic, with the U.S. version tarted up with all sorts of dubbed-on psychedelic effects. They were both impressive but failed to chart, and that might have been the end of the group, but for the sudden re-emergence of Kenny Pickett, who got Gardner and Jones back together to form the core of a new Creation. That band went through a couple of lineup changes, played around Europe for a bit with Ron Wood as a member, and then dissolved.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-creation-mn0000110341#biography

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3’s a Crowd — “Coat of Colors”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 12, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,747) 3’s a Crowd — “Coat of Colors”

This delightful Canadian sunshine pop B-side lit up Hamilton, Ontario, reaching #9 there. (https://vancouversignaturesounds.com/hits/bound-fly-3s-crowd/) The A-side, written by Bruce Cockburn, reached #61 in Canada-wide (schijnsmusic, https://www.45cat.com/record/d4120ca)

Canadian Bands tells us of the in-Crowd:

Vocalist Brent Titcomb sidelined as a comedian was a staple on the Vancouver scene when he met up with fellow singer and comedian Donna Warner. By August 1964 they were writing together, when guitarist Trevor Veitch, who knew them from the local coffeehouses joined. They began playing together under the name The Bill Schwartz Quartet, although there were only three members, and none were named Bill Schwartz. They changed their name to 3’s A Crowd by the following spring . . . . After sending out demo tapes . . . they caught the attention of Sid Dolgay . . . heading up his own company, Universal Performing Artists. Dolgay brought them to Toronto, where they quickly became a fixture on the Yorkville circuit. They moved on to the Maritimes and in early ’66 added bassist Ken Koblun, ex of Neil Young & The Squires. His stay was initially short, as he moved to LA to join Buffalo Springfield [see #1,555], but didn’t even have time to unpack before he was back in Toronto with 3’s A Crowd . . . . [He] would have to leave again that April, suffering from drug related programs. He was replaced by Comrie Smith, who’d filled in while Koblun chased his Buffalo Springfield dreams. The group landed a deal with Epic Records, and was shipped off to New York that fall, where they recorded their debut single, “Bound To Fly,” shortly before Koblun rejoined the group. But by January ’67, he left again to try his hand with Buffalo Springfield again. Smith once again replaced him, and they added singer/writer David Wiffen and drummer Richard Patterson (ex Esquires) . . . . They released a second single, “Honey Machine,” which did relatively well on the charts. But while the band was touring, making several TV appearances along the way, their onstage raport with the crowd ended up casting them as a comedy/musical group, which didn’t sit well with the members. After an argument with Epic execs about their direction they were pushing the band in, they severed ties with the label. They continued on the circuit during the summer of ’67 and found their way across Canada . . . . By that fall they inked a new deal with ABC-Dunhill Records. And with Koblun once again in the band, they appeared at Expo ’67 in Montreal that summer . . . . There they were introduced to Cass Elliott of The Mamas & The Papas [see #1,734], who agreed to produce some demo sessions . . . . But shortly after returning home, Warner was forced to leave the group due to health concerns. She was temporarily replaced by Colleen Peterson by the time the band was shipped of to LA to begin recording . . . . After a month of studio time . . . they returned to Toronto in time to host their own national CBC TV special called, Our Kind of Crowd . . . . [T]heir first single, “Bird Without Wings,” written by Bruce Cockburn . . . and the b-side “Coat of Colours,” written by Murray McLauchlan, entered the charts . . . . The single was still climbing the charts when their debut album, Christopher’s Movie Matinee was finally released in February 1968. The band set out on a western swing of Canada, and then into California . . . . A second single, a cover of Dino Valenti’s “Let’s Get Together” found its way on to the charts that spring . . . . But by that May, the threads holding the band together were unwinding. Warner dropped out permanently due to her failing health, and Peterson was unable to join again on a permanent basis, so the band in effect folded. The problem though was the investors who financed the group’s album, and much of their career to that point, wanted their money back. The group remained disbanded until July 1968, when Dolgay convinced Wiffen and Patterson to reform the band. Patterson was now available, and guitarist Sandy Crawley . . . and bassist Dennis Pendrith joined. Since Bruce Cockburn wrote four of the songs on the album, and his group Olivus was going nowhere, he seemed like a natural addition, too. . . . [O]ne of the investors looking to recoup his money, took the group into the studio . . . . A video for the new Cockburn-penned song, “Electrocution of the Word” was produced. . . . Crawley dropped off the roster before a series of US college gigs could be finalized for the spring of ’69. The remaining members completed the two-month tour, and called it quits that April, when everyone went their separate ways. Most prominent of the after tales was Cockburn’s, who would go on to mega stardom as a crossover pop and folk artist.

https://canadianbands.com/3s-a-crowd/

“In 1966 and 1967, 3’s a Crowd received RPM Awards (later to become the Juno Awards) as best folk group.” (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/3s-a-crowd-emc)

Victoria Freeman adds that:

[B]the time the album was released in early 1968, some of the original members were getting tired. [Brent Titcomb recalls] “By that time, we’d been together about three years and we were worn out. Also . . . The Christy Minstrels were after Donna and were offering her all kinds of enticements, and we had to struggle to keep her in the band.” Initially, Dunhill had planned a major promotional effort for Christopher’s Movie Matinee, but once they sensed the group was not secure, they scaled down their promotion. In the meantime, Donna Warner had repeated throat and other general health problems, and Colleen Peterson began subbing for her and eventually became part of the band.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080828021607/http://www.brenttitcomb.com/crowd.html

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I Shall Be Released: Dickens — “Sho’ Need Love”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 11, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,746) Dickens — “Sho’ Need Love”

This “tripped out magic” (Expo67, https://purepop1uk.blogspot.com/2011/02/dickens-dont-talk-about-my-music.html?m=1), “trippy ethereal” (happening45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh_KpNCN7Hk) almost A-side “reaches haunting heights of psych Pop glory”. (Robin Wills, https://purepop1uk.blogspot.com/2011/02/dickens-dont-talk-about-my-music.html) And it was all a joke! While the B-side “features inane bashing on a basic, two-chord riff, with minimalist drumming, dive-bombing bass, a pointlessly swirling Hammond organ[, as to the A-side,] ‘We wanted to do one pretty song, just to make people wonder what in the world was wrong'[.”] (Phil Milstein, https://www.spectropop.com/Dickens/index.htm)

Us/Them Group tells us about the single:

The 1971 single only exists as a demo, printed as a white label promo pressing for Scepter Records. Dickens were, essentially, a mockery of the era’s hard rock shenanigans, comprised of NRBQ’s [New Rhythm and Blues Quartet] road crew and some band members all playing instruments they didn’t know how to play. This recording happened essentially by accident when studio time became available after Gomer Pyle actor and balladeer Jim Nabors cancelled a session. The group quickly cut a few songs, which an enthusiastic A&R man had pressed up, before the label president nixed it and fired the VP for allowing such nonsense. It’s believed that only about 50 copies survived. It’s a shame, since this Flipper-before-Flipper dirge-metal freakout was way ahead of its time.

https://usthemgroup.com/blogs/latest-news/posts/6608339/brown-acid-series-12th-trip-of-rare-lost-60s-70s-pre-metal-singles-streaming-via-dangerous-minds-ah

A “music industry insider” explains the rise and fall of “Sho’ Need Love”:

We had three hours in the studio . . . . The Dickens came prepared with two virtually identical songs from their concerts: “Don’t Talk About My Music” and “Pollution Revolution.” . . . Despite Donn[ Adams’] clunky drumming and [Dom] Placco’s stunningly bad guitar playing, the group chose to move on rather than redo anything, so there was time for a third song. The studio has a weird sounding rinky-tink piano, and Keith and Joey composed a song for it in about five minutes. They had a lot of fun putting tons of echo on the piano and manipulating the tape speed to get bizarre effects. The whole song was done in layers with everything, including Placco’s hauntingly inept guitar break and Joey’s multitracked vocals, thought of on the spot. Coming up with a title took longer than composing the song, but they wound up taking the key word from each verse, (“Show” “Need” “Love”), and calling it “Sho’ Need Love.” Scepter was owned and run by a woman named Florence Greenberg, the lady who signed the Shirelles, Chuck Jackson, Dionne Warwick, and gave Bacharach/David their first real shot at making records. She ruled with an iron hand, making her overweight, blind son, Stanley . . . their figurehead director of A&R. Since Scepter had first refusal rights on anything Michael recorded for himself or his friends in the Scepter studio, our three Dickens songs . . . were played for Stan Green who passed on everything until the last song . . . “Sho’ Need Love”! Stan was convinced that this was a hit sound and he had us sign contracts . . . . After the DJ copies were pressed, the record was played at Scepter’s weekly singles meeting for Florence and the rest of the staff. . . . Florence hit the ceiling when she heard the Dickens single, refusing to let it come out on her label and ordering all copies destroyed! . . . Every copy of the Dickens 45 you’ve ever seen . . . came from the original two boxes (50 records total) of promo 45s that were snatched from the trash . . . . Commercial copies were never pressed and don’t exist.

https://www.zeroto180.org/scepter-45-by-nrbq-alter-ego/

Phil Milstein writes of the Dickens;

NRBQ’s response was to give the kids exactly what they wanted, and then some: they would send their road crew out to play instruments they’d never played before, through amplifiers set as loud as they could go. After all, what could be more galling to a crowd of stoned hippies out for an afternoon of mud-rattling megarock than to be confronted with a band “that didn’t know how to play, didn’t know how to play at all,” as Dom Placco, road manager for NRBQ, characterized that band’s hair-shaking hellspawn, The Dickens. Intimates and observers remain divided as to whether The Dickens’ prevailing force was as a straight-up heavyrock parody or as a loving evocation of musical recklessness. . . . [S]ometime in 1969 Donn[‘s] and Dom[‘] . . . idea was to put on the heavyrock bobos who, following Woodstock . . . had taken rule of the rock roost. . . . [For t]he Beatles’ “Rain”. . . . the band would just sing the chorus — “Rain, I don’t mind” — over and over, polishing it off with an epic feedback jam, highlighted by Donn and Dom rolling around on the stage smacking and rubbing their guitar necks together. . . . [R]oad manager Placco — who eventual Dickens producer Marty Pekar says “had never done anything more with a guitar than carry one” — strapped on a Gretsch solid-body . . . . [M]ost of their appearances were mainly limited to short, spontaneous sets following NRBQ performances, sometimes as punishment meted out to an unresponsive audience. . . . Headquartered at the time in upstate New York’s bucolic Hudson Valley, NRBQ spent the summers of 1970 and ’71 playing regular Sunday afternoon outdoor gigs at Folly Farm . . . . It was . . . at one of their Folly Farm appearances, that The Dickens were, in essence, discovered. NRBQ was signed at the time to Columbia Records, where they had a fan in staff copywriter Earl Carter. . . . Carter was blown away by The Dickens . . . . and was deputized as manager. . . . Carter returned to New York determined to help The Dickens become the Next Big Thing. . . . He assigned his friend and Columbia colleague Pekar to take the band into the studio. . . . Pekar . . . turned to Michael Wright, a friend who was a staff engineer for Scepter. After an amazing run of hits in the 1960s, by the early ’70s Scepter was flailing around . . . . [and] were anxious to move into rock, and so Wright allowed Pekar to record The Dickens for the label on spec. . . . Placco visited Scepter’s offices some months later on a mission to discover the record’s fate. He recalls conferring there with an A&R exec . . . . [“]He said, “You’re The Dickens?” He was nearly trembling. . . . We asked what happened to the guys who OK’d it for release, and he said they were no longer with them. The vice president had been fired, and the guy made it sound like it was because of us.[“] . . . In a perversely Dickensian way, this was a moment of überrock triumph. “We thought it was great!,” Placco concludes. Since the whole thing had been a lark to begin with, the band was hardly crestfallen over the non-release of their record. “We never believed it in the first place,” Donn says. “We were surprised that somebody actually pressed the thing.” Oddly, the pressing on “Sho’ Need Love” sounds significantly sped up, producing unnatural tones and cadences, an occurrence that everyone involved is at a loss to explain, and not everyone agrees is even the case. Again, for a band that was designed to be wrong from its very inception, such ultimate wrongness seems perfectly fitting.

https://www.spectropop.com/Dickens/index.htm

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Wallace Collection — “Daydream”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 10, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,745) Wallace Collection — “Daydream”

Warning: If you are from Belgium (or the rest of the continent, for that matter), read no further! For this was a #1 hit in Belgium, #3 in France, and #14 in the Netherlands. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daydream_(Wallace_Collection_song) It “became a hit in 21 countries . . . and sold millions of copies”. (Adamus67, https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2012/10/wallace-collection-laughing-cavalier.html) Even if you’re from the UK or the U.S., it may sound familiar: “Some songs become so widely used as samples in other hit songs that we often lose track of their origins. One of the shining examples of this is . . . “Daydream” – popularized in television commercials featuring acts like I Monster and rapper Lupe Fiasco.” (https://www.thelonelynote.com/2009/02/behind-sample-wallace-collection.html) Here is a list of the covers/samples: https://www.artandpopularculture.com/Daydream_(Wallace_Collection_song).

“Daydream” is one of those grand unforgettable pop rock songs that simply wash over you. I know Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky would have like it — after all, he contributed a few melodies. Radio France tell us (courtesy of Google Translate) that:

An ascending phrase comes from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The first theme of the second act, when Siegfried goes to the shores of Swan Lake in the middle of the night. . . . The entire second part of the song is an onomatopoeic chant. For more than two minutes and building to a crescendo, they sing Lalala that really gets stuck in our heads! This melody is taken from the second movement, the andante cantabile, of Tchaikovsky’s first String Quartet. It is the second theme of the movement.

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/podcasts/maxxi-classique/daydream-et-la-melancolie-de-tchaikovski-1491449

As to the Wallace Collection, Discogs writes that:

Wallace Collection was a [Belgian] group that was founded [in ’68] on the remains of the group Sylvester’s Team. Three of the original members (namely Sylvain Vanholme, Freddy Nieuland and Marc Herouet) then went on to form the band 16th Century, together with bass-player Christian Janssen and the classical musicians Raymond Vincent and Jacques Namotte. These two were members in the Belgian National Philharmonic Orchestra, but had been flirting with popular music already in a band called Stradivarius.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/296490-Wallace-Collection

The band’s manager Jean Martin explains (courtesy of Google Translate):

Sylvain had told me about his idea of trying a musical experiment that would combine rock, jazz, and classical music in the same band. . . . You could tell Sylvain was really into it. When they started playing, from the very first notes, I swooned! I was overjoyed. I told them straight away that I agreed to take their careers into my own hands.

https://www.memoire60-70.be/RockBelge/Wallace_Collection_1969_1.htm

Adamus67 adds:

The band’s name has its prototype in the London museum of the same name, which was in the immediate vicinity of EMI. The dream of the group was to record an album in the studio. . . . Their debut studio album, Laughing Cavalier, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios and was released in 1969. . . . [I]n the wake of its success, the group toured Europe, the United States, Mexico, and South America. They also composed the soundtrack to a French film, La Maison, in 1970. Later singles, such as “Love” and “Serenade”, were hits in Belgium and some other countries but did not reach the level of “Daydream”.

https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2012/10/wallace-collection-laughing-cavalier.html

Lisa Sinder explains the song’s repercussions for the band:

Sylvain Vanholme recalls how this breakthrough was also responsible for the downfall of the band in Wit-Lof from Belgium: “There was chaos. One day we would be playing in the North of Holland, the next day in Spain. We didn’t have time to rehearse or write new material. Between . . . concerts, they booked us a studio and said: quickly record a song like “Daydream”. The quality of the singles that followed went steadily downward. “Love” and “Serenade” at least made it to the Belgian Top 30. In 1971 the band decided to call it a day. . . . The biggest future for the ex-members of The Wallace Collection would be for Sylvain Vanholme, who has had huge hits with Two Man Sound and has produced a large number of Belgian records since . . . .

https://ezhevika.blogspot.com/2006/03/wallace-collection-laughing-cavalier.html

Go to this site for the unbelievable inside story of the Wallace Collection: https://www.memoire60-70.be/RockBelge/Wallace_Collection_1969_1.htm.

Here is the Wallace Collection live:

Here is the Wallace Collection in French:

Here is Claude François:

Here is the Gunter Kallman Choir:

Here is I Monster:

Here is Lupe Fiasco (featuring Jill Scott):

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I Shall Be Released: The Natty Bumpo — “Ballad to Jake”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 8, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,744) The Natty Bumpo — “Ballad to Jake”

Sunshine out of Washington D.C.?! Well, yes, unreleased sunshine pop from the legendary folkies turned psychsters to brighten your day.

Sunrise.music tells us of the Natty Bumpo’s unreleased songs:

A mighty fine collection of American Sunshine Psych at its finest. At times this band reminds one somewhat of Pink Floyd, but they combine that with Association-esque vocal treatments. Great vocals, a real sense for the psychedelic touch, and a talent for composition and skilled musicianship sets these folks apart from a mere garage phenomenon. Unfairly dissed by Philips Records, they recorded a full LP’s worth of great music . . . . A bit rough and lo-fi in places, but it is miraculous we still have it all.

https://www.discogs.com/release/10361935-The-Natty-Bumpo-1967-68

Mike Apichella:

Hippies, bohemians, teenagers, college kids, and local entertainment mavens from all over the mid-Atlantic flocked to the nation’s capital to witness . . . 24-year-old [Jimi Hendrix (see #1,577)] . . . from August 9th to August 13^th, 1967. . . . [T]hese gigs were revolutionary. . . . The Natty Bumpo . . . . was booked as the support act for every night of the . . . five-night stand. . . . [T]heir appearances with Hendrix solidified them as major local proponents of the DC hippie scene. Marty Baum and Charles Smith formed The Natty Bumpo as a folk group during the early-1960s while still in college, living together and jamming . . . . Their name came from the main character in James Fennimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, a book whose rustic themes complimented Bumpo’s organic early work. By the mid-60s folk musicians were turning on and plugging in. With an ever-changing support group of musicians, Baum and Smith quickly moved from folk to folk-rock and finally found a unique voice through psychedelia. It was at this point the band gained a strong local following and attention from ambitious twentysomething music promoter [Leonard] Schwab and local music legend Ray Vernon.

Leonard Schwab: “I never had a contract . . . my work with them was based on an admiration and trust that was more important than paper. . . . I went to hear them at a recording session . . . . I thought they were trying to sound too much like The Mamas and Papas [see #1,734] but did hear some things that interested me, especially in their creativity. I arranged for them to make some demo tapes[.”] . . .

[T]he . . . sessions sound nothing like The Mama’s & The Papa’s. . . . a long-lost holy grail of experimental psychedelia. Their mesh of dissonance, ambience, and pop craft equals the weirdest sides of The Velvet Underground, Lothar & The Hand People, Pearls Before Swine [see #1,408] . . . . Once the . . . demo was mastered and replicated, Schwab helped propel the innovative group toward stardom. . . . “I spoke to my friend in New York who was the agent for The Toys and asked if he’d be interested in hearing their tape. He said okay, so Marty [Baum] and I boarded a Trailways bus . . . and headed for NYC. The agent . . . suggested we go see a friend of his [at] Mercury Records. He liked what he heard also and said that he would like to hear the band in person. Marty said that they were going to do a small concert in a DC church and arrangements were made to see them in person at the concert. They were signed to the label shortly thereafter.” . . . Bumpo’s 1967 gig at Christ Episcopal Church in southeast DC. Marty Baum and [Washington] Star writer Ann Groer gave a spirited outline of the concert’s program of music and events in a late ’67 edition of the paper: “. . . . [S]ingers and sanctuary will be bathed in kaleidoscopic color from films, slides, and stroboscopic light…” The Bumpo wowed their audience with standard rock instrumentation augmented by bells, and wind instruments. They performed a psychedelic version of “Neverland” from the musical Peter Pan. Charles Smith contributed the B-side to their first major label single, a tribute to fairy tales and child-like wonder called “Legends”. With glittering production from psych-pop titan Hugh McCracken, the song contrasts its A-side (a noisy cover of . . . “Theme From Valley Of The Dolls”). Walls of clustered harmonies and reverb effects make “Legends” yet another prime showpiece for Bumpo’s more lysergic elements. As the happy late-1960s turned into the seedy 1970s, Natty Bumpo’s psych-pop shimmer had trouble maintaining its glow. Before splitting up in the early-70s the band issued an obscure second single on Phillips in 1968.

https://www.splicetoday.com/music/detour-on-the-road-to-fame

Bassist and drummer William Havu recalls:

“We were a pretty big deal in D.C. in ’67,” Havu reminisces. “We were part rock, part folk. There were anywhere from four to seven of us at any given time, depending on additional musicians that we needed. We wrote our own material; we didn’t cover anybody. We had a couple of songs that got pretty popular on the East Coast.” The band was set to make its big break…and then Dionne Warwick got in the way. “The big blow was our manager at the time for Mercury bought the rights to the theme song for Valley of the Dolls, and so we recorded a version of that with a fourteen-piece backup orchestra that was pretty elaborate,” Havu explains. “And Dionne Warwick, much to our chagrin later, had also gotten the rights. Our manager delayed the release of our single because the movie was going to be delayed, and he wanted it to coordinate with the release of the movie. Well, Dionne didn’t wait.” Not long after she stole the band’s thunder, the members of Natty Bumppo parted ways . . . . But [Havu] still looks back on those days fondly. “It was heady times. It was a lot of alcohol and a lot of drugs,” he says with a chuckle.

https://www.westword.com/arts-culture/william-havu-gallery-fifty-year-arts-career-17622597/

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חלונות הגבוהים (The High Windows) — “ אינך יכולה”/”You Can’t Go”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — October 7, 2025

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,743) חלונות הגבוהים (The High Windows) — “ אינך יכולה”/”You Can’t Go”

Dreamy folk rock from “the most perfect pop [rock] album in the history of Israeli music”. (Yair Etziony, https://www.textura.org/archives/articles/etziony_top10.htm)

Yair Etziony writes about the LP:

Shmulik Kraus was already recognized as a known composer in his own right when he returned from the US, heavily influenced by the American psychedelic rock scene. Together with Arik Einstein, probably Israel ‘s most beloved singer, and Josie Katz, they created what to my opinion became the most perfect pop album in the history of Israeli music. Vocal harmonies à la the Mamas and Papas and spectacular arrangements and lyrics by the finest songwriters combined to create an album in which every track became a hit song. This album signaled the beginning of an era in which Israeli culture became more and more engrossed by international culture and music.

https://www.textura.org/archives/articles/etziony_top10.htm

Jazzis adds:

Only album by the Israeli vocal trio, which included Arik Einstein, Shmulik Kraus and Josie Katz, and which is considered as the first original Israeli Pop album ever recorded. Strongly influenced by the Beatles and other (then) contemporary Pop and Rock groups, the High Windows recorded a superb set of songs in Hebrew (all written by Kraus), using vocal harmonies and instrumental arrangements, which were completely revolutionary at the time. Israeli music up to that point was based mainly on East-European melodies and folksy approach and this was the first attempt to create a local scene modeled after Western Pop. The musical “establishment” at the time received this music with harsh criticism (The Beatles were not allowed to play in Israel to avoid the “bad” influence on local youth) and some of the songs were banned by the censor from being played on the radio. But the public loved the songs and the album soon became one of the most popular Israeli albums of all times. It had a crucial influence on the local scene and soon after an entire new generation of local musicians would start to create original Israeli Pop and Rock, including Progressive Rock. It is interesting to notice that the instrumental work and arrangements on this album were done by a brilliant piano player Ziggy Skarbnik, a legendary figure of the early days of both Israeli Rock and Jazz, who unfortunately died of cancer at an incredibly young age. The drummer was no other than Zohar Levy, another legendary figure. Listening to this album 40 years after it was recorded can be quite revealing and the realization of how brilliant this stuff was and still is becomes inevitable.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/%D7%94%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%92%D7%91%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9D/the-high-windows-2/

And ViperAces tells us that:

It is the album that revolutionized the entire Israeli Rock and Pop scene, much like Rubber Soul did globally. The lyrics were so controversial, criticizing both the religious population and the military, that some of the songs were labeled offensive and banned to play on radio. Nonetheless, some of the songs became Israeli classics, and are loved to this day. The High Windows was also revolutionary musically. Taking a lot from many British acts, and especially The Beatles, the album utilizes vocal harmonies and fresh instrumental arrangements. The dreamy guitar lines . . . are executed perfectly, and fit just right. The sad ballads . . . are extremely gloomy and bleak, marking another high point of the album. . . . The band was firstly named The Windows, as a tribute to The Doors . . . . The High Windows was both musically amazing and very influential on the music scene, starting a Pop, Rock and even Progressive Rock culture in Israel. The album led to the forming of other great Israeli bands like Tamouz and Churchill’s [see #975]. It is an essential piece of history, and a fun album to listen to on its own.

https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/56995/The-High-Windows-The-High-Windows/

Wikipedia tells us of the High Windows (courtesy of Google Translate):

In 1966, Shmulik Kraus and Josie Katz– then a married couple – used to perform as a duo. One day, Kraus invited Arik Einstein to their home to play him songs they were working on at the time and melodies he had written. Einstein heard and spontaneously joined them in singing, the three voices matched, and about a week later, Arik’s wife Alona . . . suggested that they become a band. . . . In April 1967, the band’s only album . . . was released. . . . Many of the songs on the album became hits. Ziggy Skrebnik is responsible for the musical arrangements on the album and also played piano and organ on it. The collaboration came about after Kraus and Einstein were enthusiastic about his playing in one of the nightclubs in Tel Aviv. The band’s style was characterized by unique, innovative and harmonious production and arrangement experiments, unusual in the musical landscape of that time . . . . After the album’s release . . . the band enjoyed great success and was invited to perform in Israel and abroad. The three recorded several more songs . . . . Professional disagreements, mainly between Einstein and Kraus, over the continued activity and promotion of the band internationally, led Einstein back to Israel. In 1968, after about two years of activity, the band disbanded.

https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%92%D7%91%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9D

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