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

1,742) Consortium — “The Day the Train Never Came”

“Psychedelic pop doesn’t get much better than [the UK’s] West Coast Consortium[/Consortium] . . . . [who] were responsible for some of the finest light psychedelic pop of the late ’60s.” (Tim Sendra, https://www.allmusic.com/album/all-the-love-in-the-world-collected-recordings-1964-1972-mw0004138712)

Today, they give us this “outstanding slice of British psych-pop” (Technicolour Web of Sound: Sixties Psychedelic Internet Radio, https://techwebsound.com/artist/?artist=138&getletter=c), a “gem” with “[a] psychedelic masterpiece moment at 1:04″. (kevin.dresser, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZgsV36WO7E) “[T]hat haunting beat drive, the wah wah pedal sounds, the fantastic guitar riffs, the great chorus lines, only the sixties could bring us masterpieces like this”. (vogelmandrie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZgsV36WO7E) “[T]hey had quite a few goodies hidden away, like . . . th[is] pounding” number”. (Tim Sendra, https://www.allmusic.com/album/looking-back-the-pye-anthology-mw0000327800)

Tim Sendra writes of the WCC/C:

They magically combined Beach Boys/Four Seasons-style vocal harmonies with lush, string-filled backing to create a sound that was as smooth as paisley velvet and also criminally overlooked. Apart from one medium-sized hit, 1969’s “All the Love in the World,” the band’s singles weren’t hits and they never managed to release an album. Not officially anyway. While they were struggling to hit the charts, they were simultaneously making home demos that stripped away the ornate glow of their singles and replaced it with an intimate, rough-hewn, and fascinating take on psychedelic pop. . . . The[ir] singles are a high-level course in MOR psych, built around the group’s slick harmonies, with arrangements chock-full of strings, keyboards, and polish, and featuring songs that were pitched somewhere between the merrily twee approach of the Ivy League and the rambling glee of the Move. Consortium prove to be pleasing balladeers on tracks like “All the Love,” but they also get pretty weird on the phased psych nugget “Colour Sergeant Lillywhite” and delve into bubblegum sweetness on later songs, especially the insistent “Cynthia Serenity.” All A+ work that when stretched end to end rates right near the top of what was coming out of the U.K. during the era.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/all-the-love-in-the-world-collected-recordings-1964-1972-mw0004138712

Bruce Eder adds:

West Coast Consortium . . . was a British pop/rock group with a harmony-rich, gently psychedelic sound . . . . [T]hey grew into a lush, harmonically rich band, especially after their 1969 hit, “All the Love in the World,” allowed them more studio time and a bigger budget. While they were batting for hit singles, they recorded three albums’ worth of home demos that presented the band in a charmingly intimate fashion. Regardless of the setting, they are one of the great under-rated groups of the era. The band initially coalesced under the name Group 66, featuring lead vocalist Robbie Fair, guitarists Geoff Simpson and Brian Bronson, bassist John Barker, and drummer John Podbury. . . . [O]ne day, they were working on a rendition of the Four Seasons’ “Rag Doll” and discovered that they could harmonize better than they could play. A similarly successful attempt at performing the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” proved to the quintet that vocals were their strong point and could set them apart from most of their rivals. By 1967, Simpson had started writing songs . . . . They were signed by Pye Records . . . . [I]n the interest of emphasizing an American cultural connection, they arrived at [the name] West Coast Consortium. The group’s original sound was rooted in high harmonies and midtempo songs, similar in style to Ivy League. Their first two singles failed to chart, as did a 45 released under the name Robbie[] . . . . The band generated one poppish freakbeat single, “Colour Sergeant Lilywhite[]” . . . [that] didn’t chart, but . . . bec[a]me a minor classic of British psychedelia. . . . [T]he group was given the chance to record an entire LP, despite not having had a hit. They rehearsed and self-recorded an album’s worth of demos, but ultimately decided to focus their efforts on playing live. . . . [I]n late 1968 recorded another album’s worth of demos . . . . The group suddenly found a new fan in the form of the head of Pye Records, the legendary producer/bandleader Cyril Stapleton. . . . [T]hey’d cut a version of Simpson’s “All the Love in the World” that wasn’t coming out right with [producer Jack] Dorsey [who] was taken off production . . . . The band started over with Stapleton  producing; they also shortened their name to . . . Consortium. . . . [“All the Love”] reach[ed] number 22 . . . . [This all got] the group a fresh round of music press coverage, along with better gigs . . . . It also afforded them more time and money for their sessions, the result of which was a series of singles that became the harmony-rich psychedelic pop songs . . . [But] they were unable to build on their previous chart success. The band . . . [recorded] a third album’s worth of home demos . . . in 1969 . . . . [T]hey moved to a label, Trend . . . . [that] didn’t help their sales, and in 1970 the original group’s history effectively ended as Simpson quit, unwilling to leave his wife or their recently born twins for a six-week tour of Italy.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/west-coast-consortium-mn0000207892#biography

Here is a demo:

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

1,741) Georgie Fame — “Pass It Around”

Here Georgie transforms a horrible ‘70 A-side by the Troggs (written by Valerie Avon and Harold “Little Games” Spiro) into a mellow masterpiece that goes down sooooo easy.

I like to think I was named in honor of Georgie Fame (see #103, 169, 634, 695, 721, 1,044) Hey, my mother used to call me Georgie, and we share the same initials (along with gluten-free items!). If only I were so cool! As Oregano Rathbone has said, “[i]t’s imperative not to trust anyone who doesn’t love Georgie Fame, though we can’t begin to imagine what kind of monster such a person would have to be.” (https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/album/whole-worlds-shaking-complete-recordings-1963-66)

Of the LP Going Home, Dusty Groove writes:

Going Home is an album that’s far more soulful and laidback than some of Fame’s earlier sets, and filled with wonderful tunes that really sparkle with warmth and imagination! Georgie didn’t write the tunes himself, but he’s done a great job here of pulling them together – picking out work that’s more mature and a bit less gimmicky than his early hits – and singing them alongside gentle backings from Keith Mansfield [see #599] that often include a bit of electric piano, used in a way that further emphasizes the adult soul side of the tracks . . . .

https://www.dustygroove.com/item/469900/Georgie-Fame:Seventh-Son-Going-Home

Jason Ankeny adds:

Going Home boasts a maturity and subtlety often missing from Georgie Fame’s previous LPs. Its simple approach strips away some of the more gimmicky elements of his earlier efforts, emphasizing the increasingly honest soulfulness of his vocals. Keith Mansfield’s thoughtful arrangements likewise eschew excess in favor of a wonderfully mellow sound that perfectly underscores Fame’s natural warmth and grace. Electric piano grooves further establish the set’s smoky, jazzy atmosphere. Best of all are the songs, each of them covers and impeccably chosen.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/going-home-mw0000738727

 As to Georgie, Max Bell says:

Georgie Fame . . . is one of British R&B music’s founding fathers. . . . [with immense] cultural influence. . . . The black music he championed with his band The Blue Flames brought new sounds to Swinging London and bossed venues like the Flamingo Club and the Marquee where he turned the English mod movement on to a whole bag of soul and authentic US urban and country sounds and also the ska and early reggae he heard in the Jamaican cafes and clubs in the Ladbroke Grove area of London. . . .

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/artist/georgie-fame/

Steve Huey adds that:

Georgie Fame’s swinging, surprisingly credible blend of jazz and American R&B earned him a substantial following in his native U.K., where he scored three number one singles during the ’60s. . . . Early in his career, he . . . peppered his repertoire with Jamaican ska and bluebeat tunes, helping to popularize that genre in England; during his later years, he was one of the few jazz singers of any stripe to take an interest in the vanishing art of vocalese, and earned much general respect from jazz critics on both sides of the Atlantic.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/georgie-fame-mn0000543055/biography

As to Fame’s early history, Bell tells us that:

[He] depart[ed] to London aged 16 to seek his fortune. He touted his talents up and down the legendary Tin Pan Alley area of Denmark Street just off Soho where he was spotted by impresarios Lionel Bart and Larry Parnes who christened him Georgie Fame – somewhat against his will. Working with touring rock and rollers like Joe Brown, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran young Fame became battle-hardened and was snapped up by Billy Fury in 1961 to lead his backing band The Blue Flames for whom he arranged and sang. The Blue Flames and Fury parted company and so Georgie took over . . . .

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/artist/georgie-fame/

Steve Huey again:

The[ Flames’] budding reputation landed them a residency at the West End jazz club the Flamingo, and thanks to the American servicemen who frequented the club and lent Fame their records, [Fame] discovered the Hammond B-3 organ, becoming one of the very few British musicians to adopt the instrument in late 1962. From there, the Blue Flames became one of the most popular live bands in London. In 1963, they signed with EMI Columbia, and in early 1964 released their acclaimed debut LP, Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo. It wasn’t a hot seller at first, and likewise their first three singles all flopped, but word of the group was spreading. Finally, in early 1965, Fame hit the charts with “Yeh Yeh,” . . . . [which] went all the way to number one on the British charts . . . . His 1965 LP Fame at Last reached the British Top 20, and after several more minor hits, he had another British number one with “Getaway” in 1966. After one more LP with the original Blue Flames, 1966’s Sweet Thing, Fame broke up the band and recorded solo . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/georgie-fame-mn0000543055/biography

The Troggs:

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

1,740) The Cleves — “You and Me”

This ’70 A-side is stunning and playful pop rock with more musical nods to the Beatles than you can shake a silver hammer at — by the brilliant Kiwi band the Cleves (see #1,532-34). The Cleves were composed essentially of three siblings that was destined for great things. But it is a b*tch how things ended.

Grant Gillanders tells us:

[T]he Brown siblings, Graham, Ron and Gaye, grew up on the family farm [in Clevedon]. . . . In the early sixties, with Gaye learning piano and Graham receiving drum lessons . . . Bill Brown arranged for his three children to have singing and choreography lessons with Pat McMinn of  ‘Opo the Crazy Dolphin’ fame. It was at an early talent quest when Ron and Graham were performing as a duo, that they were first introduced as “The Clevedonaires” . . . and the name stuck. . . . While still at school during 1963, The Clevedonaires started to become a bit more serious about their music and decided to form a four-piece band. School friend and neighbour Milton Lane was recruited on rhythm guitar and took his place alongside Ron (guitar) and Graham (drums), while Gaye was weened off the piano to handle the bass duties. . . . Proud parents Bill and Joy Brown supplied the emotional encouragement and support while physically handling the day-to-day management and transportation duties. . . . Ron [recalls] “Later on when we got a little bit older it wasn’t very cool to have the olds in view, so we used to send them away and arrange for them to pick us up later.” The Clevedonaires quickly built up a good local reputation with a mix of Shadows instrumentals, pop hits of the day and four-part harmony folk numbers. . . . [B]y late 1965 they were mixing it in the competitive Auckland city scene where they played at some of the top venues . . . . [T]hey were spotted by promoter and record label owner Benny Levin, who signed them to his new record label, Impact Records. Local songwriter Darryl Lawrence submitted two songs in a semi folk style to Benny for consideration as their debut single – “How You Lied” and “Rooftops and Chimneys”. Both songs were subsequently recorded and released as the group’s first single. Although not a chart hit the record found favourable reviews . . . . By late 1966 the group had amassed a repertoire of 300 songs with Gaye now assuming the role of musical director . . . . During the day Graham, Ron and Milton helped out on their respective family farms while Gaye finished her schooling. . . . Milton found the workload too heavy and decided to leave. Enter Rob Aickin. . . . [who] took over the bass guitar from Gaye, who in turn introduced keyboards to the group’s sound, which was in the process of changing to a more rockier format. “We decided to drop the folky stuff from our repertoire,” reflects Ron, “and started doing a lot more of the harder edged British stuff from The Animals, The Kinks and The Yardbirds etc.” The new harder-edged sound . . . manifested itself on . . . their second single, released in March 1967. . . . The group auditioned for The We 3, a weekly television magazine show aimed at teenagers. . . . [and were] picked . . . as [the] resident group . . . . [F]our days before their first TV appearance . . . their mother Joy died suddenly. Two further singles were released on the Impact labels . . . The Clevedonaires were approached by an Australian entrepreneur to do a four month tour, entertaining American troops in Vietnam. . . . The group quit their day jobs and canceled all engagements for a month to concentrate on rehearsals . . . . [But] halfway through . . . rehearsals [came] the 1968 Tet Offensive . . . . [T]he group had no option but to pull out of the contract. . . . [They] decided to try their luck in Sydney. . . . head[ing] to the ski resort town of Cooma . . . where Benny Levin had arranged a regular gig at the Cooma Hotel. . . . Gaye recalls . . . . [“]We lasted for about two weeks before it got too much for us, so we rang Benny to get us out of the deal and we ended up playing in the Hume Hotel in the Sydney suburb of Yagoona.” . . . The Cleves (they now shortened their name) built up an unprecedented following among Sydneysiders who nightly would beat a path to the Hume Hotel. . . . [T]he group backed Dinah Lee for several nights at the Hume. Dinah was so impressed that she arranged for her road manager Bobi Petch to hear them perform . . . . [He] worked for Cordon Bleu Promotions, one of the top agencies in Sydney. This resulted in the group becoming the resident band at Lucifer’s, a new discotheque in Sydney, and signing up with . . . Cordon Bleu . . . . [T]he group returned home in December, 1968 . . . . After several engagements in . . . South Auckland . . . the[y] headed to Mount Maunganui for a summer engagement . . . . Once back in [Sydney] . . . they were in constant demand. . . . The Cleves’ first Australian recording was a promotional single made for . . . The Tintookies, a large-scale puppet show on Aboriginal history. The Cleves were approached . . . to perform at the after party for the Australian premiere of . . . Hair on 4 June, 1969 . . . . the party of the decade in Australia, with a veritable who’s who of the Australian music industry in attendance. The Cleves impressed all who attended . . . . [and] were signed by Festival Records shortly afterwards and started working with with ace producer Pat Aulton . . . . The poppy and almost vaudevillian “Sticks & Stones” was released . . . to glowing reviews . . . . Although not a chart hit . . . [it] received enough airplay to keep The Cleves’ name on everybody’s lips and complemented the glowing live reviews . . . . The . . . second single “You And Me” was released during May 1970, the same month that they made their 100th appearance on Australian television. . . . In late 1970 the group started work on their . . . . debut album . . . described by . . . Ian McFarlane as “a prime example of where psychedelic pop gave way to a more progressive aesthetic”. . . . With a heavy touring schedule lined-up, Gaye was exhausted and unwell, so she took four months off and the group recruited Vince Melhouney (ex-Bee Gees) on guitar to fulfill their engagements. With an offer from Helen Reddy’s manager to tour the United States on the table, The Cleves instead took advice from . . . Melhouney who suggested . . . the UK. Recently married, Graham Brown decided to leave and was replaced by Ace Follington . . . The Cleves boarded the ship to the UK with two objectives in mind, first to write a batch of new songs and second to change the group’s name to something a bit more tougher sounding to reflect their new songs.

https://www.audioculture.co.nz/profile/clevedonaires

The new name was Bitch. Gillanders writes that:

Bitch found the biggest PA system they could find and set out to blow the roof off the Speakeasy. This paid instant dividends when several labels started bidding for them before they had even finished their set. In the end Warner Bros. made the best offer and quickly signed them to a NZ$50,000 contract. Warners sent them to Spring Cottage in East Sussex with instructions to take their time, write more material for an album, and – just as importantly – to write a hit record. . . . The single “Good Time Coming’ and tracks for the album were recorded at Morgan Studios . . . . [It] was a regional Top 10 hit in Germany and Holland . . . . With the album in the can and the relative success of the first single, the group was booked into George Martin’s famous AIR Studios in Central London to record the follow-up single “Wildcat” . . . . Bitch did what they did best and hit the club scene with abandon, and as in Australia, soon endeared themselves to fans and journalists alike. . . . Bill Harman, the group’s manager [recalls:] “The band were signed to the Warners arm of WEA records, an English amalgamation of US labels Warner Bros., Elektra and Atlantic. The album had been mastered and was complete, including artwork, when disaster struck. . . . When the A&R department of WEA found a new talent they would, in consultation with the parent companies, sign them to one of their three labels. Around the middle of 1973, when the Bitch album was all ready to go, the bosses of each of the three labels in the US became worried that the next Led Zeppelin would walk through the doors in the London office and promptly get signed to one of the other two labels. Consequently, they agreed to wind up WEA and proceed to operate as three separate labels in the UK. Former CBS UK boss Robbie Robinson, an accountant by trade, was put in as caretaker at Warners . . . . [and] was not prepared to action anything that involved company expenditure. This included distributing the Bitch album. Things dragged on for months and culminated in the Bitch recording deal being scrapped and the album ditched. 

https://www.audioculture.co.nz/profile/bitch

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,739) The Young Ideas — “Barney Buss”

This “ rollicking” (Bad Cat Records, http://badcatrecords.com/YOUNGideas.htm) garage pop “gem” (Craig Stichtenoth https://www.facebook.com/groups/240098362684435/posts/3253665991327642/) is a “cool ‘Secret Agent Man’ mocker was probably written about Barnabus Collins from the Dark Shadows serial that debuted around the same time.” (Tony Sanchez and Mike Stax, liner notes to Tony the Tyger Presents . . . Fuzz, Flaykes, & Shakes Vol. 3: Stay Out of My World)

“[Its] A-side [‘Melody’] went top 20 at WAEB in their hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and it spent no fewer than 7 weeks in the top 40 at WEEX in nearby Easton”. (Craig Stichtenoth https://www.facebook.com/groups/240098362684435/posts/3253665991327642/)

Strange Digs gives us some idea of the band:

The Young Ideas were a band from [Allentown/]Whitehall, Pennsylvania. . . . originally called Kal’s Kids. That group was formed and managed by Frank Fasching and Charles “Kal” Kastelnik SR. Kal’s Kids began performing in 1959. In 1960, the group had  a successful TV appearance on The Ted Mack Anateur Hour. The pre-teen group consisted of Craig Kastelnik on lead vocals and bass guitar, Tony Fasching on guitar, Charles “Butch” Kastelnik Jr. on drums, Alan Gaumer on trumpet, and an unknown lead guitarist. Other members are unclear. Eventually the group cut a single . . . . “Long Lonely Broken Hearted” . . . . co-written and produced by local disc jockey, vocalist, and legendary performer “Frantic” Freddie Mylander. He recorded many singles and even a full length album on his own. Kastelnik co-wrote and sang both numbers on the single. . . . one of the rarest soul records released on the east coast . . . . After the record was made, Charles Kastelnik Jr. and Craig bounced around various local groups after Kal’s Kids broke up. They had a stint with the Pro-Teens, a backing band for Freddie Mylander who released two singles. . . . Craig Kastelnik formed The Young Ideas with Frank Fashcing’s assistance . . . . The band immediately began rehearsing and seeking a record deal. They recorded two sides with another local music legend, Henry Casella who is known most commonly as King Henry. Casella was a lounge musician who operated his own studio in Easton, PA. The Young Ideas recorded Casella’s tracks “Barney Buss” and “Melody”. The single was picked up by Date and was a local chart hit. They were signed to a contract by CBS but nothing came from it. . . . The Young Ideas continued playing throughout the Lehigh Valley, eventually hitting Helffrich Recording Labs in Allentown to produce a full length album. Independently released, The Young Ideas was recorded and produced in 1970.

https://www.strangedigs.com/the-young-ideas

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

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

1,738) Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell — “When Love Comes Knocking at My Heart”

Everybody knows of the classic duets between Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell [see #940], both of whose lives were cut tragically short. But many have not heard this gem, “another could’ve, should’ve been . . . massive hit”. (Scott Blackerby, http://badcatrecords.com/GAYEandTERRELL.htm)

Blackerby adds:

In spite of the clumsy title, [it] was worth hearing for 1.) The James Jameson bass line, 2.) The wonderful refrain and 3.) Hearing Terrell and Gaye blend their voices. . . . I never knew Gladys Knight had co-written the tune !!!

http://badcatrecords.com/GAYEandTERRELL.htm

Direct TV tells us:

Tammi Terrell’s stunningly pure and sweet vocals were unmatched, and [“Loves Comes Knocking”] shows off her range. [It] was featured on You’re All I Need, her second album with Gaye, which is nothing less than a masterpiece compilation of love songs. She was on the cusp of stardom when her life was cut tragically short one month shy of her 25th birthday after she collapsed on stage performing with Gaye from a brain tumor. She was one of Gaye’s closest friends, and the depression he felt inspired much of his introspective, low-key What’s Going On album in 1971.

https://www.directv.com/insider/black-history-month-motowns-biggest-hits-youve-never-heard/

Of You’re All I Need, Scott Blackerby writes:

Even as Tammi Terrell was dying from a brain tumor, give it to Motown management to recognize a good marketing opportunity; hence the decision to release of a second collaboration between Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Of course there were good reasons to finance a second album. As good and successful as they two were as solo acts, there was simply no questioning the heat the two generated when working together. Terrell’s sexy growl was perfectly suited for Gaye’s pleading voice – the results made for what was easily one of the best duos in popular music. The main problem was with Terrell unable to record new material (she would undergo eight surgeries prior to her March, 1970 death), where did one turn for new material? The answer was to visit the recording vaults for previously unreleased material. Exemplified by material like “Baby Dont’cha Worry” [see #940], “When Love Comes Knocking at My Heart” and “Memory Chest”, six of the selections reflected tunes Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol has previously recorded as Terrell solo sides. Gaye’s vocals were subsequently added to the original mixes. Opportunistic? Certainly.  Tasteful? Perhaps not. Good marketing? Certainly. Reflected material recorded during 1966 and 1967, 1968’s You’re All I Need featured twelve tracks produced by three separate production teams. . . . In spite of the fracture history, the album  didn’t sound like it was pieced together. In fact, it’s always struck me as being even better than the pair’s first collaboration. The four Ashford and Simpson tracks . . . have always attracted most of the attention . . . . Given all the classic hits, it was odd the album didn’t sell as well as the first collaboration, peaking at #61 . . . .

http://badcatrecords.com/GAYEandTERRELL.htm

Jason Ankeny tells us of Tammi:

Singer Tammi Terrell joined forces with the immortal Marvin Gaye [see #229] to create some of the greatest love songs ever to emerge from the Motown hit factory; sadly, their series of classic duets . . . came to a[] . . . halt with her premature death. . . . Thomasina Montgomery . . . by the age of 13 . . . was regularly opening club dates for acts including Gary “U.S.” Bonds and Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles. In 1961, she was discovered by producer Luther Dixon and signed to Scepter. Credited as Tammy Montgomery, she made her debut with the single “If You See Bill[]” . . . . After James Brown caught [her] live act, she was signed to his Try Me label, issuing “I Cried” in 1963 and also touring with his live revue. . . . While performing with Jerry Butler in Detroit in 1965, [she] was spotted by Motown chief Berry Gordy, Jr., making her label debut with “I Can’t Believe You Love Me.” When subsequent outings . . . earned little notice, she was paired with Gaye, who previously recorded duets with Mary Wells and Kim Weston. His chemistry with Terrell was immediate and in 1967, they entered the pop Top 20 with the magnificent “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” the first in a series of lush, sensual hits authored by the husband-and-wife team of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson. “Your Precious Love” cracked the Top Five a few months later and in 1968, the twosome topped the R&B charts with both “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” and “You’re All I Need to Get By.” [A]fter an extended period of severe migraine headaches, in 1967 she collapsed in Gaye’s arms while in concert . . . and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Although the tumor forced Terrell to retire from performing live, she continued to record with Gaye even as her health deteriorated; however, as time went on, Valerie Simpson herself assumed uncredited vocal duties on a number of hits . . . . [Terrell] . . . died . . . on March 16, 1970 [age 24]. Gaye was so devastated by her decline and eventual passing that he retired from the road for three years; her loss also contributed greatly to the spiritual turmoil which informed . . . What’s Going On.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tammi-terrell-mn0000164093/biography

Here is Tammi’s solo version:

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

1,737) Ennio Morricone: “Adonai”

All good, no bad, no ugly by Ennio Morricone, just the sacred and the profane. Jonathan Broxton tells us:

[“Adonai” is] a driving piece of orchestral rock music led by a heavy electric guitar riff, modern percussion, a screaming trumpet, and an incongruous but brilliantly-incorporated harpsichord. The whole thing is topped off by yelping vocals performed by I Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni. It’s quite brilliant. . . . a maniacally upbeat rock track . . . .

https://moviemusicuk.us/2020/07/09/ennio-morricone-reviews-1961-1967-supplemental/

The Listening Post Blog adds:

[This] Ennio Morricone piece [was] originally composed for Silvano Agosti’s 1967 flick Il Giardino delle Delizie (a.k.a The Garden of Delights) . . . . Despite the fact that the film was an existential flick based around a man’s ruminations over marriage and childhood, Morricone still managed to get at least as much drama and energy into his original “Adonai” as a track for a – say – a spaghetti western about multiple bounty hunters all trying to get the drop on one another.

https://thelisteningpostblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/24/song-of-the-day-ikebe-shakedown-adonai/

John Bender rhapsodizes:

“Adonai” from Ennio’s score for the extremely bizarre socio-psychological rumination, Silvano Agosti’s 1967 film . . . . [It] still represents, practically alone and unchallenged, an iniquitous fun-house mirror distortion of 20th Century popular music, a magnificent idea that both melds and mutates the mundane with the ethereal, the vulgar with the sacramental. It will forever be the ultimate irreverence, the final blasphemy, the most ecstatic and enduring insult. Morricone left us “Adonai” so that we may never forget just how ludicrous we were, we are, and we will be. “Adonai” exists as a lasting portrait of the succulent abnormalities of a tempestuously advanced species.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/retroeurocultfilmscore/posts/3662773690633393/

As to the movie, Jonathan Broxton writes:

Il Giardino Delle Delizie is an introspective Italian drama written and directed by Silvano Agosti. It stars Maurice Ronet as a man named Carlo, unhappily married to Carla (Evelyn Stewart), who begins to question his life, his relationships, and the ethical and moral and ramifications over the course of a surreal night with his wife; as the night progresses he struggles with the decision over whether to stay with Carla, or leave her for his mistress (Lea Massari). It’s all very Italian, and never gained much of an international reputation.

https://moviemusicuk.us/2020/07/09/ennio-morricone-reviews-1961-1967-supplemental/

To learn more about Morricone’s life and musical career, check out: https://cnmsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/ennio-morricone/

Here is a cool clip from the film:

Here is “Magic and Ecstasy”, Morricone’s devilish reinterpretation:

Here is Ikebe Shakedown’s cover:

Here is Snakefinger’s:

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

1,736) Bryan & The Brunelles  — “Jacqueline”

I love this “tasty slice of British beat”. (EdwinJack64, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU41o2svmxM) How was this slow burn classic of betrayal not a hit, both in the UK and the U.S.? It’s almost like it came straight from That Thing You Do!

“Jacqueline, where have you been? What you doing out this late at night?”

“This Luton based band played lots of gigs between 1964 & 1966 covering the northern Home Counties, London and East Anglia. The prize for winning a News of the World ‘Beat Contest’ was a session at Abbey Road where they recorded ‘Jaqueline’ c/w ‘Louie Louie’.” (Old Melodies Dream’s Mirror, https://allmusic-wingsofdream.blogspot.com/2010/06/bryan-brunells-louie-louie-jacquelline_63.html)

Mikey Dread tells us more:

Albert Burke, manager at one of the largest hat factories in the world at the time, became manager of his son’s group, initially named Bryan And The Hangmen before settling on Bryan And The Brunelles. After a few months, Mr. Burke decided to reorganise the instrumentation of the group – out went the rhythm guitar, in came the organ. In late 1964, Mr. Burke saw an advert in ‘The News Of The World’ for a beat group contest. Bryan and the boys had already made a taped demo disc, so Mr. Burke sent it off to the newspaper without telling anyone he had done it. By return post came an invitation to a recording test at E.M.I’s St. John’s Wood, London, studios. . .

https://www.45cat.com/record/pop1394)

That does sound like That Thing You Do!

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,735) John and Beverley Martyn — “Stormbringer!”

From John Martyn (see #1,400), “[t]he Glasgow raised Scottish/Belgian folk legend” (Graeme Thomson, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/15/nick-drake-john-martyn-complex-friendship-small-hours-extract), here is a song “[v]ery much in the mold of the electric Fairport Convention of this period . . . sizzl[ing] with acoustic interplay and an almost jazzy feel”. (James Chrispell, https://www.allmusic.com/album/stormbringer%21-mw0000709927) It is off John and Beverley Martyn’s album Stormbringer!.

Ross Palmer writes:

[“Stormbringer!” is] the album’s most indelible track, on which John’s guitar takes a backseat to the piano of Paul Harris, the sessions’ musical director. . . . [It] features New York jazz player Herbie Lovelle on drums . . . . Harris’s piano owns the song. His 16-bar solo, sounding like a more pastoral Richard Wright, may be the most beautiful passage on any John Martyn record; playing this graceful and empathetic is rare in any form of music.

https://songsfromsodeep.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/stormbringer-john-beverley-martin/

As to the LP, John Martyn’s website says:

In 1969 John met and married Beverley Kutner who was signed to Joe Boyd’s Witchseason label. John was originally hired to be Beverley’s backing guitarist for recording sessions. . . . John and Beverley were inspired by The Band [see #823, 1,133, 1,162, 1,495] and the album included Levon Helm on drums. John began to experiment to find a distinctive guitar sound. “Would You Believe Me” is the stand out track which featured the introduction of the echoplex guitar technique which John pioneered . . . . “John The Baptist”/“The Ocean” was released by Island as a single in January 1970 . . . . The album was cut in the summer of 1969 under the direction of Paul Harris. Joe Boyd rented John and Beverley a house in Woodstock. John felt that the album was just a little bit ahead of it’s time, saying “…a whole lot came from that record…like people started using drum ideas and stuff, and nobody had really thought of using drums with acoustic instruments before. But it’s difficult to say that sort of thing without being conceited.” John said, “It was the year of the festival. We just lived there and worked with Paul Harris very quickly and very briefly and we just went into the studio and did it very one-off, very swift. Levon Helm and Harvey Brooks we met in Woodstock and used them, just because they were friends. It seemed obvious that they should be on it.”

https://johnmartyn.com/discography/1970s/stormbringer/

https://www.soundohm.com/product/stormbringer-lp

Ross Palmer adds:

In July 1969, John Martyn was a folkie who’d put out two records on Island – London Conversations and The Tumbler  – neither of which were anything remarkable in an era where Fairport Convention and Bert Jansch had already done much of their best work, redefining the forms that British folk music was capable of taking in the process . . . . Beverley Martyn (nee Kutner), meanwhile, had fronted a jug band called the Levee Breakers, and put out a single written by Randy Newman (and featuring John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Nicky Hopkins and Andy White), with a Cat Stevens B-side. She’d played at Monterey Pop and been invited to the Bookends  sessions by Paul Simon [see #1,621] where she contributed the immortal (spoken) words “Good morning, Mr Leitch, have you had a busy day?” to “Fakin’ It”. She was, in short, more of a “name” than her new husband and probably expected no more than yeoman musical support from John when they began work on what would become Stormbringer! . . . . Somehow or other – and opinions and recollections vary – the project morphed into a duo record, with John’s songs as well as Beverley’s being recorded. In no time, by sheer force of personality and pushiness, John’s voice became the dominant one; he wrote and sang six of the album’s ten tracks, and the album, when it came out, was credited to John and Beverley Martyn. It’s hard not to feel sympathy with Beverley for having been elbowed aside by her husband in this way, and the record’s producer, Joe Boyd, probably viewed the path that the record took with some regret, too; he seems not massively enamoured with John Martyn as a person, and not terribly impressed with him as a musician – “When John started living with Beverley Kutner, I was stuck with him”, he recalled in his 2006 memoir,  White Bicycles. But by any reasonable assessment, John was much the greater talent (at least at that time – we can’t know what Beverley might have been capable of later in her career had she continued with it into the seventies), and Stormbringer! is a far greater record than a Beverley Martyn solo album with a bit of John’s guitar would have been. . . . John Martyn[‘s] guitar playing I can honestly call life-changing. . . . [Y]ou can’t help but think wistfully of what Martin and Harris might have done in a longer partnership . . . .

https://songsfromsodeep.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/stormbringer-john-beverley-martin/

As to John Martyn, Brett Hartenbach writes:

With his characteristic backslap acoustic guitar playing, his effects-driven experimental journeys, and his catalog of excellent songs as well as his jazz-inflected singing style, John Martyn is an important and influential figure in both British folk and rock. Martyn started out as a folk artist with jazzy leanings that were highly unusual for the mid-’60s. He made a couple of albums with then-wife Beverley that were very much of their time before embarking on a musical journey that combined folk, blues, jazz, and rock, with a tendency towards electronic and atmospheric experimentation. His early-’70s albums . . . are as distinctive and striking as anything in the singer/ songwriter canon. Alcohol problems and commercial concerns found him adopting a slicker, more pop-oriented sound as he moved toward the ’80s, but Martyn came out on top again both personally and artistically with his ’90s releases and performances. . . . He began his innovative and expansive career at the age of 17 with a style influenced by American blues artists such as Robert Johnson and Skip James, the traditional music of his homeland, and the eclectic folk of Davey Graham . . . . With the aid of his mentor, traditional singer Hamish Imlach, Martyn began to make a name for himself and eventually moved to London, where he became a fixture at Cousins, the center for the local folk scene . . . . Soon after, he caught the attention of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who made him the first white solo act to join the roster of his reggae-based label. . . . His voice . . . started to take on a jazzier quality as he began to experiment musically. While on the road, Martyn continued to experiment with his sound, adding various effects to his electrified acoustic. One such effect, the Echoplex, allowed him to play off of the tape loops of his own guitar, enveloping himself in his own playing while continuing to play leads over the swelling sound. This would become an integral part of his recordings and stage performances in the coming years. He also met Beverley Kutner . . . who later became his wife and musical partner. The duo released two records in 1970 . . . . The next couple of years saw Martyn continuing to expand on his unique blend of folk music, drawing on folk, blues, rock, and jazz as well as music from the Middle East, South America, and Jamaica. His voice continued to transform with each album while his playing became more aggressive, yet without losing its gentler side. . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-martyn-mn0000196969#biography

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

1,734) The Mamas & the Papas — “Got a Feelin’”

This “ethereal” (Bruce Eder, https://www.allmusic.com/album/if-you-can-believe-your-eyes-and-ears-mw0000650447), Mamas & Papas song is “one of the[ir] most treasured . . . album tracks”, with a “bittersweet melody . . . coupled with some positively beguiling vocal counterpoint gymnastics”, “one of the finest examples of both John Phillips’ vocal arranging genius, as well as the singers’ overall vocal symbiosis” (Matthew Greenwald, http://albumlinernotes.com/All_The_Leaves_Are_Brown.html), “their best track ever as a flipside . . . with some of the most compelling harmonies to be featured on a non-Beach Boys or Delmore Brothers record”. (Alex_Linden, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/the-mamas-and-the-papas/monday-monday-got-a-feelin/reviews/2/)  

“Feelin’” was written “by both John [Phillips] and Denny [Doherty] . . . possibly suggesting that they’re both being played by the winsome beauty [Michelle Phillips]?” (The Pop History Dig, https://pophistorydig.com/topics/tag/got-a-feelin-song/)

“Got a feelin’ that I’m wasting time on you babe Got a feelin’ that you’ve been untrue”

Bruce Eder writes of the Mamas & the Papas’ first LP — If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears:

In the spring of 1966, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears represented a genuinely new sound, as fresh to listeners as the songs on Meet the Beatles had seemed two years earlier. Released just as “California Dreaming” was ascending the charts by leaps and bounds, it was the product of months of rehearsal in the Virgin Islands and John Phillips’ discovery of what one could do to build a polished recorded sound in the studio — it embraced folk-rock, pop/rock, pop, and soul, and also reflected the kind of care that acts like the Beatles were putting into their records at the time. “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreamin'” are familiar enough to anyone who’s ever listened to the radio, and “Go Where You Wanna Go” isn’t far behind . . . . But the rest is mighty compelling even to casual listeners, including the ethereal “Got a Feelin’,” the rocking “Straight Shooter” and “Somebody Groovy,” the jaunty, torch song-style version of “I Call Your Name,” and the prettiest versions of “Do You Wanna Dance” and “Spanish Harlem” that anyone ever recorded. If the material here has a certain glow that the Mamas & the Papas’ subsequent LPs lacked, that may be due in part to the extensive rehearsal and the exhilaration of their first experience in the studio, but also a result of the fact that it was recorded before the members’ personal conflicts began interfering with their ability to work together. The work was all spontaneous and unforced here, as opposed to the emotional complications that had to be overcome before their next sessions.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/if-you-can-believe-your-eyes-and-ears-mw0000650447

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

1,733) Thomas and Richard Frost — “Gotta Find a New Place to Stay”

From another contender for the greatest lost album of the 1960’s — Thomas and Richard Frost’s (actually Thomas and Richard Martin) psych pop classic Visualize  (see #209, 211, 247, 385, 595, 775, 967), here is a ’69 B-side that shifts back and forth between being 1) bouncy and vivacious and 2) dirge-like — the story of a down on his luck guy who ends up in jail.

Richard Frost recalls:

We always referred to this song as our The High and the Mighty. Al Capps’ string arrangement on the chorus remined us of the tune John Wayne whistled at the end of that movie. I remember doing this song on The Real Don Steele dance show and noticing that it was a very difficult song to dance to. As I lip-synched the record, I saw the kids were having trouble. I was thinking that choosing this song to perform on a dance show was not one of our better decisions. The last line in the song is “This world is only meant for a sucker!” A girl . . . looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face, as if to say “What the hell are you singing about?” I started wondering the same thing myself!

liner notes to the CD “reissue” of Visualize

Alec Palao says that “[t]he unreleased album Visualize . . . taken with its attendant singles . . . is a sparkling and heartwarming gem of late 1960s pop”. (http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2013/12/thomas-and-richard-frost-visualize-1969.html?m=1)

Palao gives some background:

[T]he thundering mod sound of the Martins power trio Powder; whose own LP, recorded while the group was based in Los Angeles and employed as Sonny & Cher’s road band, remained frustratingly unissued, and indeed acted as a precursor to the creation of the masterpiece [Visualize]. [A]fter the Powder debacle, the Martins returned to northern California to lick their wounds and demo some more introspective material. . . . [Their] innate . . . pop sensibility lingered in new compositions like “She’s Got Love” [see #211]. It was to be the latter tune that caught the ear of promo man John Antoon, who signed the Martins to his . . . publishing imprint, assumed managerial duties and got the duo signed to Imperial Records under the nom de disque Thomas & Richard Frost. As a single, the simple, catchy “She’s Got Love” was to achieve a modicum of success as a turntable hit, reaching only the lower half of the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1969, but with strong regional airplay across the country, upon the back of which the Frosts were able to tour. Back in LA, Rich and Tom made the scene with their pals Rodney Bingenheimer and Frank Zinn, enjoying a brief but eye-opening spell as bona fide pop stars. Plans were big for the Frosts, with a full, lavishly orchestrated, album release, but it was all to fall apart as the follow-up singles stiffed and parent label Liberty/UA decided to wind down Imperial.

The proceedings are imbued with the Zeitgeist of Los Angeles in its last throes of pop innocence, and the Martins heart-on-their-sleeve Anglophilic sensitivity is less derivative then remarkably refreshing, with superbly recorded arrangements that any late 1960s pop fan will cherish.

http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2013/12/thomas-and-richard-frost-visualize-1969.html?m=1

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

1,732) Focal Point — “Tales from the GPO Files”

This ethereal delight by Focal Point is not about Mulder and Scully! “GPO used to be the only telephone company in the UK during the ’60s and this song reflects it.” (Stefan Granados, liner notes to the CD comp Focal Point: First Bite of the Apple: The Complete Recordings 1967-68)

It is by one of the greatest coulda/shoulda-beens in the annals of British pop psych (see #4, 43, 198, 538, 747, 991, 1,094, 1,549). “Despite . . . being given a high profile Soho launch party, the[ir only] single sold only modestly, and . . . [the Beatles-backed] Focal Point returned to Liverpool soon after, never to return to London.” (Stefan Granados again)

It all started out like a fairy tale when two guys cornered Paul McCartney walking his sheepdog Martha in Hyde Park . . . . As guitarist Paul Tennant recalled:

It was . . . the summer of 1967 . . . . We knew which house Paul lived in due to the large amount of girls hanging about outside. . . . Then all of a sudden the gates opened and a mini shoots out and away. Without a second thought we were on his tail, and there in the back of the car was a large sheepdog . . . . I never let it out of my sight . . . [W]e were at Hyde Park, the mini stopped and out stepped Paul, let the dog out and waved to the driver – Jane Asher and he was away walking the dog. . . . [W]e shouted to [Paul] and he turned around. We then told him . . . we were writing songs and didn’t know what to do with them, could he help? . . . [H]e said to us “I could get you a recording contract just like that” and flicked his fingers. “But why should I?” It was then that he proved to be human by planting a finger up his nostril. Dave [Rhodes] laughed and he laughed. Dave then said . . . “Because we are good, our songs are good.” It was just like that, Paul then wrote down . . . a phone number . . . . “Phone this guy and tell him I sent you[]” and he was then gone . . . . [W]hen we got back to Liverpool, Dave and I phoned . . . . Terry [Doran] listened and told us Paul had told him we were going to ring and when could we go down to London. . . . Out came the guitars and we sang four of our best songs . . . . He said he liked our songs and would like to get acetate done of them. . . . “John loves your songs, he is absolutely going mad over them” said Terry. We were . . . gob smacked. He wants me to play them to Brian”. . . . “Brian agrees with John, your songs are fantastic.” . . . Brian . . . suggested that we should form a band [and] call [it] Focal Point.

http://www.marmalade-skies.co.uk/focalpoint.htm

Then it all came crashing down. I often talk about the singer/songwriters and bands that became collateral damage in the collapse of Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate Records. Focal Point, however, fell victims to the demise of Apple and the Beatles.

To read about it all, check out Paul Tennant’s fabulous interviews at Marmalade Skies and in Beatles Unlimited (http://www.meetthebeatlesforreal.com/2022/07/focal-point.html?m=1) and bassist Dave Slater’s great interview at the Strange Brew: https://thestrangebrew.co.uk/interviews/dave-slater-focal-point-apple-the-beatles-pt1; https://thestrangebrew.co.uk/interviews/dave-slater-focal-point-apple-the-beatles-pt2/.

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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

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

1,731) Shag — “Stop & Listen”

From Milwaukee, the greatest garage anti-drug song (written after a bad trip). A “totally awesome freak out” (eoj2495, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow_e3i6zgSM), “[f]uzzadelic!” (resistor27, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSDdKfgTRwI)

Mike Tiefenbacher writes:

One of my favorite . . . Milwaukee-area records, this song was the portent of…absolutely nothing. No follow-up, nothing. The group went out to California and broke up. Meantime, it made it to #12 on WRIT’s chart and #17 on WOKY’s over the fall of ’67. What a wasted opportunity!”

https://www.45cat.com/record/5995p5995

“Everybody’s goin’, everybody’s trippin’ Everybody tells you what ya been missin’”!

“The recorded version of ‘Stop and Listen’ is rather timid compared to live versions The Shag used to do at O’Brad’s. Take it from a guy who was there in the late sixties.” (gordonbrossell1796, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X33V9wEe-J0) Wow, I would have loved to have been there!

Caleb Westphal tells us of the Shag:

When I think of garage rock songs from the 1960s that have a conspicuous anti-drug theme . . . there was a song . . . . [r]eleased as a single by Capitol Records in September 1967 . . . . “Stop and Listen” . . . features vocalist Ray McCall―who also wrote the song and contributed its fuzz-tone guitar . . . . The Shag, originally called The Shags, were formed in Milwaukee in 1963 by Layton School of Art students Paul “Green” Greenwald (drums, vocals, flute), John Sahli (guitar, vocals harmonica), Mike Lamers (various instruments), and Don Luther (bass). According to Greenwald . . . Sahli was the only musician when the band formed, “But upon hearing the Stones, then the Beatles, we had to be a band. . . . I’m pretty sure we were the first band to not wear uniforms in Milwaukee, and being in art school, we already had the long hair and scruffy look[]” . . . . He also said they wrote their own songs because they couldn’t play any others. They put out “Cause I Love You,” backed with the Bo-Diddley-beat driven “Dance Woman” on Milwaukee’s Raynard label in 1965. Later that year, Ray McCall joined the band, replacing Sahli. . . . McCall sang, played guitar, and wrote songs for the ensemble. By this time, the group had become the house band at O’Brad’s, a basement-bar venue . . . . Although the owner of O’Brad’s had at first turned away the group because of their appearance, they eventually were given the keys to the place, could decorate it as they pleased, and played gigs there five nights a week . . . . According to Greenwald, Sunday’s performance included a “special psychedelic third set,” where the band would surround the stage with wet sheets, shoot food dye, and use pulsing lights and impromptu sounds. Both RCA Records and Chess Records came to see them there and wanted them to record, but the band did not accede to their overtures, as they wanted to do a live recording—something the record companies were not keen on. Greenwald mentioned that some time after McCall joined the group, everyone in the band was going to try a “psychedelic experience. . . . Ray had a bad time and wrote ‘Stop and Listen’ about not taking those kinds of drugs.” After the band drove out to New York City to open for The Blues Project [see #1,411, 1,709], they were signed to Capitol Records. . . . Capitol released “Stop and Listen” . . . . It was at this time that The Shags became the “The Shag,” so they wouldn’t be confused with some other groups with the same name. A review . . . in the September 17, 1967, edition of the Milwaukee Journal said “Judging by live performances, though, this deck is a lame rendition. It doesn’t have the animation of the stage.” . . . [I]t makes me wonder just how entrancing and spellbinding the band was live. . . . “Stop and Listen” failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 . . . . Ray McCall soon left the band and was replaced by Gordon Elliot. The group visited, and later made the move to California. In 1969, they recorded at San Francisco’s Pacific High Recording Studios . . . . [but these recordings] did not see the light of day until Gear Fab Records put it out in 2005. . . . Within a few years, The Shag would split.

https://milwaukeerecord.com/music/mke-music-rewind-the-shag-stop-and-listen/

PSYCHOGARAGE adds:

The band developed a local following based on their reputation for a rocking sound with outlandish costumes and special effects. Ray left the band . . . and was replaced by Gordon Elliott when they relocated to California. After dissolving in 1971, Gordon went on to form a group called Elixir, with fellow Chicagoans George Edwards and Michael Tegza, previously of the band H. P. Lovecraft [see #829, 1,073].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_N3YX_8L2s

“The Shag tune ‘Stop and Listen’ . . . is featured here along with a video of the Shag filmed about the same time during a live performance at O’Brads Lower Lounge, Milwaukee, WI” (TheSahliMan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X33V9wEe-J0):

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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

1,730) Queen Anne’s Lace — “The Happiest Day of My Life”

This “groovy” (liner notes to the CD comp Soft Sounds for Gentle People 2) and stunning sunshine pop number is “[s]oft-rock magic. . . . breathy, light, and perversely sad-sounding” (gregcaz, https://musicaltaste.com/showsong.php?song_id=1081&performer=Queen%20Anne%26%238217%3Bs%20Lace&songtitle=The%20Happiest%20Day%20Of%20My%20Life), “a wistful, almost melancholy song taking a view from a considerable distance that is not at all the sugary confection that one might expect.” (https://underappreciatedrockbands.com/archive/underappreciatedrockbands/home/uarb-articles/queen-anne-s-lace.html)

The Lace’s sole LP — Queen Anne’s Lace — is the work of “the hip duo” (liner notes to Soft Sounds for Gentle People 2) of Anne and William Phillips. “The album is in the finest Free Design-sounding tradition, including covers of Beatles, Bacharach, Paul Simon, “Sally Go Round The Roses,” and such top-shelf originals as [“The Happiest Day of My Life”]. Truly splendid.” (gregcaz again)

Anne Phillips’ website states that:

Ms. Phillips career has covered almost every area of the music business. In addition to recording several solo albums, from the classic Born to Be Blue, to her most recent release, Ballet Time on which she sings with such old friends as Dave Brubeck and Marian McPartland, she has worked as a singer, choral arranger and conductor with many of the music world’s leading artists and is widely known in the industry as the writer/arranger/ producer of many national commercials. Ms. Phillips’ Christmas show, a jazz opera, Bending Towards the Light — A Jazz Nativity, tells the traditional story though jazz and has featured such greats as Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck and Tito Puente.  It is performed in New York and other cities annually.

https://annephillips.com/about-anne-phillips/

Wikipedia adds:

Phillips …. played piano growing up but didn’t hear jazz until she was a senior in high school. Phillips studied at Oberlin College where she sang with the school’s big band and had a radio show. She then moved to New York at age 19 and played piano and clubs. [She] started working in demo recordings for songwriters in the 1950s. . . . . [and] was a member of the Ray Charles Singers on the Perry Como Show. In 1959, she recorded her first pop album, Born to Be Blue, for Roulette Records. Phillips has worked as a singer, music arranger, conductor, writer, and producer for national commercials including Pepsi, Revlon, and Sheraton. . . . [She] composed music for a Pepsi campaign with BBDO in the 1960s called “The Taste That Beats the Others Cold, Pepsi Pours it On”. The spot included The Turtles, The Four Tops [see #1,148, 1,429], The Hondells, and the Trade Masters. Phillips worked on demo recordings for Carole King, Burt Bacharach, and Neil Diamond. In 1962, she sang background vocals on Carole King’s It Might as Wll Rain Until September. Phillips is the founder of Kindred Spirits, a not-for-profit organization founded with her husband, Bob Kindred. The organization sponsors a yearly performance of “Bending Towards the Light – A Jazz Nativity,” composed by Phillips. They also have an educational program for inner-city children called The Kindred Spirits Children’s Jazz Choirs which teaches jazz music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Phillips_(singer)

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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

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

Future superstar Stax songwriter Homer Banks sings an Isaac Hayes/David Porter classic. Incredibly, it wasn’t a hit in the U.S., but became a Northern Soul classic (reaching #55 in the UK) and received superb horn-driven cover treatment by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. And then, Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet did it Tex-Mex soul style. Here is 60 minutes of a song I love!

1,727) Homer Banks: “60 Minutes of Your Love“

“There are mere records and then there are RECORDS…Tunes that reach epic proportions of energy and verve. This is one of the latter, a song so hot that it can melt the brain if not a stylus!” (Derek See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKttVu26YZw) Indeed.

Jason Ankeny tells us of Homer’s odyssey:

Composer and producer Homer Banks was one of the unsung heroes behind the rise of Stax Records; though a fine soul singer in his own right, he never recorded for the label, instead teaming with Bettye Crutcher and Raymond Jackson as We Three, the songwriting troika responsible for a number of the company’s classic singles. Born . . . in Memphis, Banks co-founded the gospel group the Soul Consolidators before joining the office staff of the local Satellite Studios, later re-christened Stax. He dwelled in relative anonymity during his early years with the company, although co-workers Isaac Hayes and David Porter proved instrumental in landing him a session with the Genie label, resulting in the 1965 release of Banks’ debut single “Sweetie Pie.” The much-imitated and oft-covered “A Lot of Love” followed on the newly-revived Minit imprint in 1966, and over the next two years Banks issued four more singles for the label — “60 Minutes of Your Love,” “Lady of Stone,” “Round the Clock Lover Man” and “(Who You Gonna Run To) Me or Your Mama?” — all to little notice outside of the Memphis area. As his singing career floundered, he increasingly focused on writing, teaming with Crutcher and Jackson . . . to author hits for Stax artists Johnnie Taylor [see #191, 390, 979] (“Who’s Making Love”), the Staple Singers [see #680, 1,452] (“Be What You Are,” “If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me)”, and Isaac Hayes (“[If Loving You Is Wrong] I Don’t Want to Be Right”). . . . Banks also wrote the Sam and Dave classic “I Can’t Stand Up (For Falling Down) . . . his other hits include “Touch a Hand (Make a Friend)” and “Woman to Woman.”

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/homer-banks-mn0000223549#biography

Stax Records adds:

Returning to Memphis in 1964, he tried his hand at solo stardom, working with David Porter and Isaac Hayes at Genie Records, a short-lived venture led by the two soon-to-be hitmakers while they were on a break from the fledgling Stax Record Company. Banks’ association with Porter and Hayes’ dissension from their home label served as a source of tension between Banks and Stax co-founder Jim Stewart, who dismissed his viability as an artist. Nevertheless, Stewart’s sister and business partner, Estelle Axton, encouraged Banks to practice his songwriting while working at her Satellite Record Shop, adjacent to the Stax recording studio. Deanie Parker, Johnny Keyes, Packy Axton, and Allen Jones all co-wrote tunes with Banks. Naturally, though, he’d team up with his longtime friend, Raymond Jackson, who’d also recently come home from military service, to begin a fruitful and longstanding partnership at the label, beginning with “Next Time,” a song they co-wrote for Johnnie Taylor in 1968. In the same year, Banks and Jackson would team with Bettye Crutcher to write what would become Stax’s biggest selling single at that time, “Who’s Making Love,” also performed by Johnnie Taylor. The song reached number one on R&B charts and top five in pop . . . [eventually] reach[ing] two million copies sold. Other notable compositions by Jackson, Banks, and Crutcher include Johnnie Taylor’s “Take Care of Your Homework, and “I Could Never Be President,” as well as Jeanne & The Darlings’ “It’s Time to Pay (For the Fun We’ve Had)” in 1969. . . . Carl Hampton’s arrival at Stax Records coincided with the de facto dissolution of the partnership between Crutcher, Jackson, and Banks. Hampton took to working alongside Jackson and Banks. Hampton helped the two veteran songwriters to craft “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right” with the intent of placing the song with The Emotions, although the song’s message of infidelity would be deemed too racy for the group. . . . [I]t wouldn’t see a release until 1972, when Luther Ingram recorded the song. . . . spen[ding] four weeks at the top of the Billboard R&B chart while netting Ingram a spot at number three on the U.S. pop music chart.

https://staxrecords.com/songwriter/carl-hampton-and-homer-banks/

Here is an “audition record”:

1,728) Simon Dupree and the Big Sound — “60 Minutes of Your Love”/“A Lot of Love”

SDBS’s (see #51, 96) “early soul-oriented sides are killers, exciting, totally convincing pieces of British-made R&B that, in the case of . . . “60 Minutes of Your Love/A Lot of Love,” should have placed them head-to-head with the likes of Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis Group.” (Bruce Eder, https://www.allmusic.com/album/part-of-my-past-mw0000465383) it is so sweet.

Bruce Eder writes:

“Simon Dupree” was vocalist Derek Shulman, one of a trio of brothers (Ray and Phil being the other two) from Portsmouth, England, who started out in music as R&B fanatics and first formed a group in 1964. . . . [T]heir repertoire was focused . . . on the songs of [soul artists like] Wilson Pickett, Don Covay, and Otis Redding. . . . Simon Dupree & the Big Sound came about in the course of their search for a flashy name. . . . [which] worked locally, because the group prospered on the club scene, its earnings reaching £300 a night . . . . [T]hey were signed to EMI’s Parlophone label . . . and cut a pair of powerful R&B-style songs in 1966, “I See the Light” [see #96] and “It Is Finished.” Success on the club scene didn’t necessarily result in serious record sales, however, and the group’s debut, as well as its follow-up records, “Reservations” . . . and “Day Time, Night Time” [see #51] . . . didn’t make much of an impression. Their debut album, Without Reservations, containing the first fragmentary examples of the group’s original songwriting, was released in August of 1967, just in time to be overlooked as cheerfully irrelevant . . . . Then, in October of 1967, the group’s management and record label decided to try moving Simon Dupree & the Big Sound in the direction of psychedelia. . . . The result was “Kites,” a song recorded in the early fall of 1967 . . . . The bandmembers were unhappy with the new song and the sound they were being asked to create, but they tried to make the best of it . . . . The melody was Asian-sounding, and the presence of actress Jackie Chan reciting some poetry over the music didn’t detract from the single’s “Eastern” sound. “Kites” wasn’t R&B, but it was the right song at the right time, and it made the British Top Ten, a major commercial breakthrough for the group. Unfortunately, the band was never able to follow it up, and after several abortive attempts at another psychedelic-style single . . . called it quits in 1969. . . . In 1970, the Shulman’s were back at the core of a new group, having made the leap past psychedelia and far from R&B in the progressive rock group Gentle Giant.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/simon-dupree-the-big-sound-mn0000036893#biography

1,729) Sir Douglas Quintet — “Sixty Minutes of Your Love”

This “knockout cover of [the] lost Hayes/Porter gem suggests the quintet wouldn’t have had any trouble getting work in Memphis”. (Christopher Gray, https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2002-12-13/115009/)

Ah, Doug Sahm (and the Sir Douglas Quintet (see #383, 1,061)) — he had soul. As Adrian Mack muses: “Sahm’s good vibes weren’t just some artifact of his ’60s roots . . . .  Sahm was internally groovy. It was fundamental to his nature. It’s partly why we love him so much”. (https://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2011/03/24/TheGroover/)

Of Sahm, Gary tells us that:

Sahm was a child prodigy — a pop-music Mozart who began performing at age six and released his first record when he was 11. He was on stage with Hank Williams, Sr., in Austin, Texas, on December 19, 1952. It was Williams’s last performance — he died in the back seat of a car on New Year’s Eve. The story goes that Sahm was offered a chance to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry, but that his mother said no — she wanted him to finish junior high school. As a teenager, Sahm joined a band that performed blues music, mostly at black R&B clubs in San Antonio. He also got to know a number of Mexican-American musicians. In 1964, Sahm assembled a band and persuaded record producer Huey P. Meaux (a/k/a/ “The Crazy Cajun”) to record them. Meaux named the band the “Sir Douglas Quintet,” hoping to capitalize on the popularity of British invasion bands. . . . The Sir Douglas Quintet dressed the part of a British invasion band when they appeared on Shindig and Hullabaloo, but no one with half a brain would have been fooled. For one thing, two of the band’s members were Mexican-Americans. For another, Sahm had an unmistakable Texas accent. Not only that, the Sir Douglas Quintet sounded nothing like a British band. . . .

https://2or3lines.blogspot.com/2012/03/sir-douglas-quintet-at-crossroads-1969.html?m=1

What did the Sir Douglas Quintet sound like? Michael Paquette tells us:

[Sahm] began his career as a country singer as a young boy . . . . He crafted his musical skills and style in the barrios, dance halls, juke joints, and parking lots across the Lone Star State. He formed his first band, the Knights, in high school when he realized he’d rather play music than football. He assembled the Sir Douglas Quintet with his childhood friend Augie Meyers . . . in 1964. Their musical style was heavily influenced by the sound of bluesmen Jimmy Reed, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Lightnin Hopkins. . . . [A]n emerging blues and TexMex sound [was coming from Fort Worth and San Antonio] that was also influenced by the Texas swing of Bob Wills, the guitar blues of T-Bone Walker, and the Mexican-American rockers like Don Santiago Jiménez of San Antonio . . . . With its rolling Chicano rhythms and pumping Farfisa organ SDQ influenced numerous new wave acts including Elvis Costello who patterned both his band and his vocals after the SDQ. . . . [Sahm’s] fusion of Texas C & W, Western Swing, Texas Blues, South Texas German polkas, and Tex Mex music lives on in artists who remain devoted to his sound.

https://rockremnants.com/2021/10/23/song-of-the-week-at-the-crossroads-sir-douglas-quintet/

Steve Huey adds that:

Arguably the greatest and most influential Tex-Mex group ever, the [SDQ] epitomized Texas’ reputation as a fertile roots music melting pot and established the career of Tex-Mex cult legend Doug Sahm. The [band] mixed country, blues, jazz, R&B, Mexican conjunto/norteño music, Cajun dances, British Invasion rock & roll, garage rock, and even psychedelia into a heady stew that could only have come from Texas. Although they went largely underappreciated during their existence (mostly in the ’60s), their influence was far-reaching and continues to be felt in Texas . . . and beyond . . . . According to legend, the [SDQ] was the brainchild of Houston producer Huey P. Meaux, who at the height of the British Invasion took a stack of Beatles records into a hotel room and studied them while getting drunk on wine. He found that the beats often resembled those of Cajun dance songs and hit upon the idea of a group that could blend the two sounds well enough to fool Beatles fans into giving a local band a chance. . . . Meaux told Sahm his idea and Sahm quickly formed a band . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-sir-douglas-quintet-mn0000018708

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Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise

Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,726) Rick Price — “Top Ten Record”

Birmingham’s Rick Price (see #1,299, 1,606) dropped this hilarious and rocking take on the pursuit of a chart hit, which did not become a top ten record but should have! “Of course, I can always join an underground band!”

An unidentified newspaper review enthuses that:

[A] tongue-in-cheek fun-poking number about the rat race to attain Chart status. Delivered in a semi-spoken drawl, and with a few amusing asides and distortion effects thrown in for effect, it’s the sort of disc that could well make his fellow musicians fall about with laughter. The fans may not appreciate the subtleties so readily, they’re more likely to approve of the dual-tracked chorus and the rolling beat. Produced and co-written by Rick, and a thoroughly entertaining track.

https://images.45cat.com/rick-price-top-ten-record-1971-3.jpg

David Wells notes that “apart from the drums, Rick did everything on this track, including the girlie backing vocals” (liner notes to the CD comp Rick Price & Mike Sheridan: This Is to Certify: The Gemini Anthology)

Bruce Eder writes about Rick Price:

Rick Price was probably the least-known member of the Move, if only because he never really established a well-defined musical (or personal) identity of his own . . . . Price was born in Birmingham .. . . . His earliest band of any note was the Cimarrons, who sounded a lot like the Shadows (or tried to). . . . [H]e moved on to the Sombreros, who changed their name to Sight & Sound a little later. Their original focus was harmony vocals, their influences the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, but by 1967 they’d started doing songs in keeping with the psychedelic boom. And by that time, Price had started a songwriting partnership with Mike Sheridan, the former leader of Mike Sheridan & the Nightriders. The group recorded three singles, “Ebenezer,” “Little Jackie Monday,” and “Alley Alley,” all co-written by the duo and none successful. The group eventually deteriorated into more of a musical comedy outfit. One day in early 1969, after a performance in front of a club audience that included Roy Wood, the leader/principal composer of the Move . . . offered him a spot in the group. He joined just as “Blackberry Way” was making its way up the U.K. charts to number one. He was with them through the brief period of cabaret performances, plus their first (and only) tour of the United States, and lasted two years with the group. Price even recorded most of the original bass parts to the first Electric Light Orchestra album, although the latter were re-recorded by Wood . . . . From there, Price moved into an ultimately unhappy contractual relationship with Gemini Records, recording This Is to Certify . . . . Then he was . . . in an outfit called Light Fantastic, who showed a lot of promise but could never get it together in terms of recording. This was followed by a stint in the progressive rock band Mongrel . . . . From there it was on to Wizzard, Roy Wood’s new band . . . . last[ing] through 1975, then Price moved on to the Wizzo Band, playing pedal steel guitar, no less.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/rick-price-mn0000357165#biography

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

1,725) Pasha/The Searchers — “Pussy Willow Dream”/”Pussy Willow Dragon”

This dreamy, ethereal B-side written by Kenny Young (who wrote “Under the Boardwalk” with Art Resnick) is one of the Searchers’ (see #352, 394, 636, 1,278) great songs from the latter half of the 60’s. They recorded it under the name Pasha, “named after the producer’s dog”. (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) It was “[e]rroneously credited as ‘Pussy Willow Dragon’ on the label. (Popsike.com, https://www.popsike.com/PASHA-SEARCHERS-Somebody-Shot-The-Lollypop-Man-Pussy-Willow-Dragon/351328292922.html)

Popsike remarks snarkely that “There are two possibilities for choosing a pseudonym: Either the Searchers wanted to try it with another name, thinking that Searchers was totally out of date or they found both songs so bad that they didn’t want to use their own good name.” (Popsike.com,https://www.popsike.com/PASHA-SEARCHERS-Somebody-Shot-The-Lollypop-Man-Pussy-Willow-Dragon/351328292922.html) Moondog writes:

This record is atrocious and little wonder that The Searchers did not want their name on the label so picked another one. You can’t even tell it’s The Searchers although the B-side has a slightly more Searchers sound to it. I sold my copy to a Searchers completist and he was very welcome to it.

https://www.45cat.com/record/lbf15199

I don’t get the hate — this song is great!

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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

1,724) The Montanas — “A Step in the Right Direction”

This fantastic propulsive beat number, written by Jackie Trent and Tony Hatch, “easily had the potential to be a hit”. (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) Alas, “[t]here was a big buildup and considerable radio interest . . . but as usual, the heavy sales in and around Wolverhampton failed to spread out nationally. . . . Its UK failure led to its relegation to B-side status in the US”. (Roger Dopson, liner notes to the CD comp You’ve Got to Be Loved (Singles A’s & B’s))

Birmingham’s Montanas [see #1,245] were “essentially a mainstream harmony-pop band. . . . They issued a series of beautifully crafted mid-sixties singles that marked the development of beat into summer pop with even a hint of psychedelia, without getting the success they deserved.” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) Their “Pye Records recordings . . . [constitute] one of the more self-consciously beautiful bodies of music that one is likely to cross paths with from mid-’60s England.” (Bruce Eder,  https://www.allmusic.com/album/youve-got-to-be-loved-mw0000229331)

Bruce Eder tells us more:

A middleweight outfit from England’s Midlands, their sound was a kind of high-energy pop/rock, with chiming guitars and seriously elegant and robust harmonies, somewhere midway between, say, the Hollies and the Ivy League. . . . generally runs toward fairly punchy beats, chiming rhythm guitars, and high harmonies. . . . By 1967, they’d evolved a bright sunshine pop sound that, had they been based in America on a reasonably strong label, might’ve had them breathing down the necks of the Association . . . .

The group originated in Birmingham in 1964 . . . . The group had a very theatrical presentation, which included bits of comedy between the songs. The Montanas were managed by Roger Allen, who was able to get them a contract with Pye Records, which brought them under the wing of songwriters Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent. . . . [who] also wrote hits for Petula Clark . . . . They had three songs, “Ciao Baby,” “You’ve Got to Be Loved,” and “Let’s Get a Little Sentimental,” that were favorites among reviewers, and got very heavy radio play, all without scoring any major chart action in England. Somehow, however, “You’ve Got to Be Loved” managed to make the American Top 50 — but they lacked the resources to come to the United States to promote the record, and watched as it rose and fell from the sales listings, all under its own power. . . . Everyone who ever saw the Montanas perform live respected and admired them as one of the top bands in Birmingham; they were first-rate musicians and had a powerful sound playing live, and were deserving of a break and a hit. . . . Their reliance on outside songwriters, which had been a mere detail . . . in 1965, had become a liability by 1967, and their records, for all of their excellence, didn’t reflect the group’s actual sound, which was a lot less pop-oriented than their singles would have led one to believe.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/youve-got-to-be-loved-mw0000229331, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-montanas-mn0000891434#biography

Singer Johnny Jones ponders:

Tony Hatch was convinced he was going to get us away eventually . . . he spent an enormous amount of time and trouble with us. He produced all our releases . . . and he wrote some really strong songs for us. But in hindsight, we really should have gone over to The States once we found out “You’ve Got to Be Loved” was moving . . . that would probably have made all the difference . . .

liner notes to You’ve Got to Be Loved (Singles A’s & B’s): The Montanas

Finally, Brian Nicholls notes that:

Their unique blend of R&B, pop, and classic covers together with their close harmony versions of Beach Boys and Four Seasons hits ensured sell-out crowds, particularly in the Midlands area where fans would literally queue before the venue opened to ensure a seat. . . . The Monts were also constantly in demand for live radio broadcasts on Radio One Club with the shows hosted by Jimmy Young, Dave Lee Travis and Simon Bates. On 16 July, 1967 they appeared on ‘Easybeat’ performing ‘River Deep Mountain High’, ‘Morning Dew’ and ‘Take My Hand’ and were told it was one of the finest live performances in the history of the show.

http://www.brumbeat.net/montanas.htm

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

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

1,723) Sandy Salisbury — “Spell on Me”

Infectious, brass-infused sunshine/bubblegum pop “[f]rom one of the best sunshine pop partnerships of all time”, Sandy and Curt Boettcher. (Scott Homewood, https://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2017/07/sandy-salisbury-do-unto-others-1969-us.html) “When they sing in harmony, it’s a sound that no other act of the time, or since, has quite managed to capture. . . . ma[king] simple, tough garage rockers [like] “Spell on Me”[no way is it a garage rocker!] go down like honey . . . and generally makes them sound like the featured performers at a coffeehouse located somewhere on one of the rings of Saturn.” (Tim Sendra, https://www.allmusic.com/album/try-for-the-sun-mw0004043481, https://www.allmusic.com/album/try-for-the-sun-mw0004043481)

“[T]he question of why [Salisbury] isn’t a household name becomes inevitable as [his] great sunshiney songs fill your head with melodies a surgeon would have a hard time removing. Just sublime bubble-gummy pop.” (Scott Homewood again) As to Salisbury’s solo songs, most unreleased at the time, “The sense of hook, the clean, gorgeous vocals, the sappy melodies, and the Baroque stylings . . . make them all ready for pop heaven. . . . This is magical, beautiful, and yes, sappy pop music. It’s lush, textured, and overly sentimental, as innocent as it gets, and as pretty as it gets.” (Thom Jurek, https://www.allmusic.com/album/falling-to-pieces-mw0000663715)

Tim Sendra tells us of Salisbury:

Sandy Salisbury is a singer and songwriter whose main claim to fame is being one of the integral members of sunshine pop guru Curt Boettcher’s cast of singers and players, appearing on records by the Ballroom [see #707] and the Millennium [see #397, 506, 586, 662, 810, 1,002] in the late-60s. He also recorded solo during that time, though most of his work, like the 1969 album Sandy, remained unreleased until they were discovered and issued decades later. Salisbury was born and raised in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, but moved to Santa Barbara, California to pursue his musical dreams. After playing with a group called the Chances for a year, touring the state and cutting an album that was never released, he moved to Los Angeles. Once there, he met . . . Boettcher, who was riding high off his work on the Association’s [see #1,264] “Along Comes Mary.” The two found that their musical sensibilities and high, angelic voices were a good match and decided to pair up in a new group Boettcher was starting called the Ballroom. The group blended vocal harmonies and baroque melodies to come up with a singular sound, but their existence proved shortlived and soon Salisbury and Boettcher formed the very similar-sounding Millennium. Salisbury wrote songs as well as sang, and . . . did work on Sagitarrius’s classic 1967 album Present Tense as well as other Boettcher projects. The Millennium released only one album before the members went their separate ways. Salisbury went solo and tracked a record for producer Gary Usher’s Tomorrow label that featured most of the members of the Millennium . . . . to be called Sandy, but it was never released due to problems at the label. Also consigned to the vault were numerous songs written and performed by Salisbury over the years. He thought that Boettcher was sharing them with his music publisher, or that he might be able to record them himself, but instead the songs were kept under wraps to be used on future Boettcher-helmed projects. These imagined projects never happened, mainly because the producer lost favor with the music business and pretty much disappeared as the decade ended. Salisbury, too, put his musical career on the back burner. After reverting to his given name of Graham, he began writing well-received children’s and young adult books. . . .

[Boettcher] worked with a core group of musicians, and none of them were more talented than Sandy Salisbury. His pure-as-a-Hawaiian-beach singing was a key part of the Boettcher sound, and . . . the producer used him on a variety of sessions for artists like Tommy Roe and Paul Revere & the Raiders [see #109]. Salisbury was also a strong and prolific songwriter, and the duo worked on writing and demoing tracks at a furious pace for a few years in the late ’60s. Almost none of the songs were released . . . . and Salisbury quit the music business thinking that his songs weren’t good enough. . . . Both Boettcher and Salisbury possess high and clear voices that sound untouched by care or wear.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sandy-salisbury-mn0000833169#biography , https://www.allmusic.com/album/try-for-the-sun-mw0004043481

Thom Jurek adds in dismay:

[Salisbury] wrote dozens of songs and recorded them demo – style on a sound – on – sound tape recorder in his California beach house before turning them over to his publisher, who did absolutely nothing with them because he was instructed by the band’s producer and arranger, Curt Boettcher, to shelve them for further band productions. What Boettcher essentially accomplished was keeping under wraps pop songs that would have . . . landed Salisbury near the top of the pop heap.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/falling-to-pieces-mw0000663715

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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

Just click on the first blue block for a month to month subscription or the second blue block for a yearly subscription.

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

1,722) Maitreya Kali — “Music Box”

An “[a]chingly beautiful, haunting acoustic folk song[]” (Forced Exposure, https://b2b.forcedexposure.com/onesheets/MAM202CD_ST.pdf) displaying “a gentle yet spooky mysticism” (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/apache-mw0001148319), “delicately rendered psych-folk” (Midnight to Six, https://midnighttosix.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/craig-smith-maitreya-kali-apache-inca-maitreya-apache-music/) from “budding pop wunderkind [Craig Smith, who] travelled down the hippie trail* and ended up an acid casualty in an Afghan insane asylum”, leaving us “[t]he psychedelic masterpiece nobody heard” (see #1,016). (Forced Exposure, https://b2b.forcedexposure.com/onesheets/MAM202CD_ST.pdf) “The album peaks on . . . tunes like . . . ‘Music Box Sound,’ which sound like they were both cut at the same session and answer the question, ‘what would it sound like if Arthur Lee recorded Harvest instead of Neil Young?'” (Midnight to Six again) Truly his last farewell.

Forced Exposure writes of Smith’s sad journey:

After a suffering an LSD-induced mental breakdown, Los Angeles-based songwriter Craig Smith renamed himself Maitreya Kali and custom-pressed Apache/Inca, a double-LP documenting his musical, personal, and spiritual journey. His message to the world, encoded on the album jackets in rambling, quasi-mystical Messianic verse, was urgent, desperate, delusional, and disturbing. Recorded between 1967 and 1971, the music tells a different story. Achingly beautiful, haunting acoustic folk songs; luminescent psychedelic folk-rock; eerie, off-kilter acid rock; fragments; field recordings — all meticulously woven into a magical, mesmerizing whole. Apache/Inca is an extraordinary work. Not the dark, self-indulgent ramblings of a cracked Messiah, but a thoughtfully-crafted collection of work by a singer and songwriter of remarkable depth and talent whose world was falling apart. Soon afterwards Maitreya — and Craig — disappeared into the shadows. He died homeless in a North Hollywood Park in 2012.

https://b2b.forcedexposure.com/onesheets/MAM202CD_ST.pdf

Richie Unterberger tells us more:

[The two albums] are among the more interesting rare late-’60s folk-rock psychedelic relics, alternating between full electric band arrangements and solo acoustic guitar ones. . . . The mixture of folk-rock with harmonies, a slight country influence, and sunny Californian pop is . . . reminiscent of Merrell Fankhauser [see #10, 235, 327] . . . . The acoustic cuts, while still pretty, are a bit creepy and odd in the manner of a somewhat less cutting-edge Dino Valente or Skip Spence. . . . There are also some pretty ambitious meditations upon religion, loneliness, and mysticism, although in general the tone is upbeat, the melodies accessible, and the singing pleasantly normal. . . . The electric material . . . was not recorded by Maitreya Kali, but by a Southern Californian 1967 pop-folk-rock-psychedelic band, the Penny Arkade. And the rest of the songs were recorded a few years later by one of the two singer/songwriters in the Penny Arkade, Craig Smith, aka Maitreya Kali. . . . [T]he record covers . . . [were] crudely patched together from photos of the apparent perpetuator, taken on his travels around the world; hand-drawn inscrutable symbols for religious deities and planetary bodies; and rambling written dedications and musician credits. . . . Maitreya Kali was a pseudonym for Craig Smith, a guitarist and songwriter . . . . The liner notes are in a scrambled syntax that only renders them inscrutable, but is of a style that one associates with the mentally ill. For all that, however, the music is often fairly well-produced, well-played, and likable, not at all the kind of acid-damaged mush you’d suspect from the packaging. . . . [A]bout half of the LPs, were unreleased recordings done by the Penny Arkade in 1967, before Smith traveled around the world and got much weirder. . . . [T]hat group recorded quite a bit of material that never came out, produced by Mike Nesmith of the Monkees [see #1,718]. Smith was not the sole singer/songwriter of that band; he shared equal time with Chris Ducey, with whom he’d done an obscure [and quite good] single for Capitol in 1966 as half of the duo Chris and Craig. When the Penny Arkade broke up without having released anything, Smith took off on travels around the world, funded by his songwriting royalties from covers of his songs by the Monkees (“Salesman”), Andy Williams (“Holly”), and Glen Campbell (“Country Girl”). . . . When he returned to the States, he combined a bunch of unreleased Penny Arkade tracks with more recent, sparer, and spookier recordings he’d done on his own, most likely in the early ’70s. The results were . . . pressed in extremely small quantities, essentially as vanity pressings credited to Satya Sai Maitreya Kali. . . . [I]t’s odd but accessible Californian country-influenced folk-rock. On the most acoustic ballads, there’s a gentle yet spooky mysticism . . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/maitreya-kali-mn0000195282#biography, https://www.allmusic.com/album/apache-mw0001148319

I now turn to the great Mike Stax, who wrote a book (Swim Through the Darkness: My Search for Craig Smith and the Mystery of Maitreya Kali, https://a.co/d/cVyefT6) on his 15-year quest to get to the heart of Smith’s darkness:

It was the music that first hooked me. I acquired reissued copies of his solo records Apache and Inca. I didn’t really know what to expect because the cover art was so mysterious, deranged, and disturbed. I expected some kind of spacey, incoherent psychedelic folk music, so I was surprised to find that the music was coherent, and the songwriting and playing accomplished. . . . Some of it sounded like the Byrds [see #1,430, 1,605] or Buffalo Springfield [see #1,555], other tracks were desolate acoustic folk music—and then there were weird interludes with snippets of dialogue. I couldn’t stop listening to it. . . . [T]here was no information out there, just some speculation among collectors. The only known fact was that this strange loner guy who called himself Maitreya Kali had originally been known as Craig Smith . . . . His change around from this very wholesome, talented, happy-go-lucky guy into this very dark, almost Manson-like figure was absolutely fascinating to me. . . . His parents were dead, and I made every effort to reach out to the remaining family, but they were reluctant to talk. At the time, I didn’t know that Craig had badly assaulted his mother in 1973. The family wanted nothing to do with him, and didn’t even want to claim his remains when he died . . . . I talked to tons of people who knew Craig before he left—right up until he had a going away party at [the Beach Boys’] Mike Love’s house—and he was fine at that point. Prior to the trip, he had been happy, outgoing, gregarious . . . . But when he came back . . . he was completely different. Nobody knew what had happened. . . . I found out that Craig’s lawyer . . . had to help Craig get back from Afghanistan, where he’d allegedly been put in a lunatic asylum and couldn’t even remember who he was. He had changed completely. . . . He was now Maitreya, and he believed he was Christ and the Buddha reincarnate, the next messiah. . . . [A]t some point he had a black widow spider tattooed on his forehead . . . . His friends were deeply concerned about the disturbing changes in him. They tried to help him, but eventually they had to push him away once he seemed dangerous. . . . Craig’s mental state was so unbalanced that he had alienated all of his old contacts. Nobody wanted to help him. Reportedly, he managed to arrange a meeting with Mike Curb [see #57], who had been his high school classmate and was, at the time, president of MGM Records. But when Curb saw what Craig had become, he had him forcibly removed from his office. With no record deal possible, Craig decided to have the records pressed himself. He sold them on the street or gave them to friends and they were quickly gone. It’s my firm belief that Craig knew that his mental state was declining rapidly. For that reason, he wanted to gather all of his music together onto these records as a kind of last will and testament to the world, while he still had the faculty to do so.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7bmxzx/swimming-through-the-darkness-the-hunt-for-craig-smith-psychedelic-messiah

Finally, from Stax:

His story . . . is perhaps the most unusual and tragic I’ve come across in all my years writing and reasearching the musicians of the 1960s. I was hoping it would have a much happier ending. One last farewell, Craig, one last goodbye.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=501460159878995&id=89900510433

* Wikipedia tells us that the hippie trail was “an overland journey taken by members of the hippie subculture and others from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, travelling from Europe and West Asia through South Asia such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh to Thailand.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail)

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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

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

1,721) Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band — “Barefootin’”

From “quite simply the biggest character on the British rhythm and blues scene since the early 1960s” (see #726, 727, 1,106, 1,269) (http://zootmoney.org/bio/), “a romping cover” (Bournemouthbeatboom, https://bournemouthbeatboom.wordpress.com/zoot-money/) of Robert Parker’s #7 hit (#2 RE&B) “Barefootin’”. It is a “song Zoot would frequently take literally and remove not only his shoes but those of as many members of the audience he could, a procedure that invariably turned to chaos as Denson’s and Mary Janes flew through the air.” (monkey, https://monkey-picks.blogspot.com/2018/02/zoot-moneys-big-roll-band-big-time.html)

Bournemouth Beat Boom talks of the LP — Zoot! in the UK and Live at Klooks Kleek in the U.S.:

[T]hey left the confines of the studio and decamped to Dick Jordan’s Klooks Kleek club above the Railway Hotel in West Hampstead on Tuesday, 31^st May 1966. The band had set an attendance record there the year before and could guarantee a packed house. On the evening of recording, hundreds of people were turned away, but the lucky few who gained entry joined invited guests Chas Chandler, Eric Burdon [see #513, 949], Georgie Fame [see ##103, 169, 634, 695, 721, 1,044], and Brian Auger [see #1,031-33, 1,312] for a night of high-octane entertainment. Future Elton John [see #1,598] producer Gus Dudgeon . . . captured the Big Roll Band at the top of their game, whipping up a storm with twelve slices of raw R&B . . . . The Record Mirror reported, “This is quite an exciting album. One of those live LPs where the artist has succeeded in putting across a variety of atmospheres, instead of just the usual frantic beat and muzzy vocals”. Downbeat, the bible for jazz buffs, gave the album five stars. This time the reviews were reflected in sales, as it climbed to a respectable number twenty-three in October 1966.

https://bournemouthbeatboom.wordpress.com/zoot-money/

Bruce Eder writes of Zoot:

[A]dmired, respected, and sought after by his colleagues, and able to fill halls in England nightly, he never managed to sell lots of records, even in England. . . . During the mid-’50s, he discovered rhythm & blues and its younger offshoot, rock & roll, which quickly consumed his interest in music — he switched to the keyboard under the inspiration of Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles, and by the beginning of the ’60s was developing a distinctive technique on the Hammond organ. He’d also picked up the nickname by which he’d be known for most of his career after attending a concert by Zoot Sims. . . . He passed through the lineups of a few groups as a keyboard player . . . . [Then] classic version of the Big Roll Band . . . . took root in London, consisting of Money on vocals, piano, and organ, [and including] Andy Somers [yes, the Police’s Andy Summers] on guitar . . . . They quickly became a popular attraction on London’s burgeoning R&B and jazz scene, partly owing to Money’s impassioned interpretations of American R&B standards and his wild sense of showmanship, coupled with the band’s overall excellence . . . . They were good enough to attract the attention of England’s Decca Records . . . . [and by] the following year, they’d moved over to EMI’s Columbia Records imprint . . . . [By] late 1966. . . . the audience for American-style R&B and soul was already giving way to a growing listenership for psychedelic sounds, and the name “Big Roll Band” sounded like something just a little bit too far from the wafts of incense . . . . [I]n 1967, they transmuted, almost Doctor Who-style, into Dantalion’s Chariot [see #727, 1,106, 1,269].

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/zoot-money-mn0000229289

Chris Welch:

Money . . . was a charismatic personality, a soulful singer and an excellent Hammond organist. He was much loved by the mods who flocked to his band’s shows at London clubs such as the Flamingo in the swinging 60s. Members of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Animals were also among his greatest fans. . . . On leaving school Money trained to be an optician but lost his job when he kept turning up late for work after nights gigging with his Big Roll Band, formed in 1961. By 1963 the Big Rollers featured Andy Summers on guitar, Nick Newall on saxophone and Colin Allen on drums. Money also switched from piano to the funkier sounding Hammond organ. When spotted by Alexis Korner’s manager, Money was invited to play with Alexis in Blues Incorporated and moved to London. The Big Rollers rejoined him and began to play regularly at the Flamingo, where they replaced Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames as the resident band in 1964. . . . The Rollers . . . began touring extensively and released a debut single, “The Uncle Willie” (1964), followed by an album, It Should’ve Been Me (1965). . . . Money recalled the Flamingo as “a really groovy place … We loved playing to black American servicemen that came to the club and were familiar with the soul and R&B music we were trying to play. For them, it was like being at home. We also backed visiting American blues men like John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. They were surprised we were so good.” . . . The Big Rollers packed out clubs such as Klooks Kleek in West Hampstead . . . . Money loved to entertain the crowds with his extrovert showmanship, pulling fans’ shoes off while singing “Barefootin’” and dropping his trousers on stage; but it was difficult to crack the all important singles charts and his only hit was “Big Time Operator” [see #726], which got to No 25 in 1966.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/sep/13/zoot-money-obituary

Here is a cool clip of of the band performing “Barefootin'” before a celebrity-studded audience: https://www.facebook.com/modmayday/videos/zoot-moneys-big-roll-band-performing-barefootin-to-a-celebrity-audience-in-a-lon/545298944988147.

Live on the BBC:

Here is Robert Parker:

Here is Parker performing on THE!!!! BEAT in ’66:

Here is Wilson Pickett:

Here is Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers:

Here are the Rationals:

I have added a Facebook page for Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock! If you like what you read and hear and feel so inclined, please visit and “like” my Facebook page by clicking here.

Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise

Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).

The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,100 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.

All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.

When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.

Just click on the first blue block for a month to month subscription or the second blue block for a yearly subscription.