[It] a minor masterpiece . . . . the so-called Sgt. Pepper of Washington D.C. Just think of the Left Banke, late night, stoned and producing some serious outsider music. . . . is a killer unknown 60’s album with a lot of great psych moves.
From the depths of despair and angst comes this masterpiece, a howling wail of pain and discomfort embedded in a sophisticated studio effort that sounds like nothing else. Somewhere in here are elements of loner folk, Beach Boys-style pop and psychedelia, but all are used in a unique way that makes this as personal an album as I know . . . . Great songwriting and inventive arrangements throughout. . . . A truly great album . . . .
The Acid Archives (2nd Ed.)
As to the Angels, Dave Furgess tells us:
The[] Fallen Angels were a great psychedelic group who were based in the Baltimore, Maryland-Washington D.C. area and recorded two full length albums for Roulette Records. . . . The . . . debut album failed to cause much attention at the record shops and was quickly deleted. Usually this would have meant certain death to a group like The Fallen Angels. However the good folks at Roulette decided to give the group a second shot and they were even afforded the luxury of complete artistic control. This all resulted in the group’s stunning second album “It’s A Long Way Down” (which sadly suffered the same fate as the group’s debut sales-wise despite it’s obvious quality and inventiveness.) . . . . an exceptional album . . . . that actually lives up to the hype.
Realizing the futility of trying to control this band, Roulette Records allowed “The Fallen Angels” almost total artistic freedom in the production of their second album . . . . The group’s efforts resulted in what many listeners of the Psychedelic genre consider a masterpiece. . . . Although the album was an artistic triumph, “Roulette Records”‘s promotional campaign was practically non-existent. With no top ten hits, “The Fallen Angels” were unceremoniously dropped from the label. Relegated to the status of local legends, “The Fallen Angels” continued creating and performing original music in the Washington D.C. area until the fall of 1969 when the group disbanded. . . . [T]he February 1972 issue of Stereo Review, music critic Joel Vance wrote an insightful article entitled “The Fragmentation Of Rock”, which analyzed the problem of developing new talent in the industry. To illustrate the overwhelming odds against succeeding, he states: “The Fallen Angels, for example, a remarkable band from Washington, D.C., put out two astonishing albums for Roulette Records in 1967/68. But they never made it, even though they were far better than most American groups of the time”.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
813) Edwards Hand* — “Hello America”
The melody and arrangement of this amazing song by the UK psychsters (see #151, 663) is a total rip-off of Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America”! Wait a second, this song came in ‘70 and “Coming” came in ‘80! I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
And I’ll note that a song with lyrics about America such as “You have so much to give” and “I’d really love to see you live” is on an album whose original cover art was pulled by the label in the U.S.:
The line drawing [cover art] of a Southern Sheriff, ties in with the lyrics of Sheriff Myras Lincoln – a song about an American racist policeman – and was subsequently banned and replaced with different artwork by RCA in the US. . . . [It is] a controversial caricature . . . by “Revolver” Beatles artist/friend Klaus Voorman. This artwork was banned by the US label and was subsequently replaced with different artwork on the original US pressing of the album.
Having worked with George Martin on their self titled debut, Edward’s Hand began recording at Morgan Studios in 1970, attempting to create a harder and more progressive sound than before. There where no nervous second album vibes here! The album is comprised of evocative and intelligent progressive pop songs immaculately produced featuring Edward’s and Hand’s distinctive harmonies to the fore. The second half of the album is effectively a concept of alienation and isolation . . . . Clearly more confident and adventurous lyrically on this album, Edward’s Hand also had more time with George Martin during the pre-production stages. This preparation time, an intelligent lyric writing team and George’s complex yet concise orchestral arrangements give their second LP a much worldlier and unique feel. . . . It features some stunning string arrangements by George Martin from the first sessions to be mixed at his then new Air Studios.
* Just to set the record straight, Johnny Depp was not in this band! It was not Edward Scissorhands. The band members were Rod Edwards and Roger Hand. Get it?!
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As to the label and the Brew, Slipcue tells us that:
The Two:Dot label from Ojai, California was named for their initials of its founders (Tom W. Oglesby and Dean O. Thompson) and is one of those legendarily obscure microlabels that uber-collectors salivate over… This LP . . . [is] a hippiedelic blues-roots kinda thing, recorded on the spur of the moment with singer-songwriter Milton Kelley and a few other Ojai locals.
These days, a copy of “Home Brew” that’s still in decent shape will go for hundreds of dollars on eBay — and a sealed, never-played copy might fetch $3,500. . . . The long-vanished [Two:Dot] studio is barely remembered in Ojai [California], but it’s now world famous among collectors of obscure rock albums from the ’60s and early ’70s. Cultish websites make gushing references to the “legendary” Two:Dot, that mythical place where “mega-rare” albums . . . were created. Enthusiasts in Europe and Japan will offer big bucks for vinyl rarities recorded in that converted garage — albums hardly anyone bought when they first came out. . . .
Libbey Bowl was . . . [a] popular venue for local musicians. It was there, early in the summer of 1970, that Dean Thompson met Milton Kelley. . . . Kelley was a singer-songwriter who had grown up in Ojai and was now back in town after serving a tour in Vietnam. He was part of the musical line-up . . . that day, and Dean liked what he heard. “Dean was there recording some live stuff,” Kelley says. “He came up and said, ‘Hey, man, I’ve got a recording studio up on the hill. You should come up and do an album.’ ” The result of that conversation was “Milton Kelley’s Home Brew,” released on the Two:Dot label. . . . Dean was the engineer and the genial host. . . . “We printed 400 LPs and sold every one,” Kelley says. . . .
[A]n astonished Milton Kelley was informed that a pristine copy of “Home Brew” was now worth its weight in gold, and then some. (Alas, Kelley was not in a position to cash in. He has only one copy left, and it’s been played a lot.)
Oh, and the little studio in an Adobe mud brick house had a 16 track recorder before the Beatles did! (Mark Lewis, http://ojaihistory.com/groovy-history-ojais-twodot-studio/, originally published in the Summer 2012 edition of the Ojai Quarterly)
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The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
811) Neo Maya/Episode Six — “I Won’t Hurt You”
If great songs deserve convoluted tales, this pop psych gem, spooky and unforgettable, has got one. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (see #197, 488) recorded two great versions of the song, and then Neo Maya came along and recorded the definitive version, adding a killer female backing chorus and unexpected bursts of horn. Neo? No, I’m not talking The Matrix! The song was laid down by the British group Episode Six (Neo Maya being a pseudonym for member Graham Carter-Dimmock).
Let’s start with WCPAEB and their first version. Stewart Mason writes that:
[It’s] a small gem of lightly psychedelicized folk-rock. Bracketed by double-tracked and highly reverbed 12-string guitars that keep threatening to break into the Searchers’ version of “Needles and Pins,” Shaun Harris’ delicate voice delivers the heartfelt lyrics in an unpretentious, charming way. It’s all rather slight, but it’s really kind of pretty and sweet and nice, and there’s a place for that in pop music.
Happycyclings tells us that the song comes from the band’s LP “Vol. 1, originally issued in 1966 on the tiny ‘FIFO’ label, which was a Hollywood concern specializing mainly in R&B. Probably only 100 or so were ever made.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLDR-LFhhSw)
Then came the second version, on Part One, the band’s debut LP for Reprise. Richie Unterberger says of the album and the song that:
The[ir] first album for Reprise was the best of the group’s career, in large part because it was the most song-oriented. It was still plenty weird, almost to the point of stylistic schizophrenia, but when you got down to it, much of the record was comprised of fairly catchy songs in the neighborhood of two and three minutes. . . . There was an undercurrent of unsettling weirdness and even paranoia, though, in some cuts with otherwise pleasing tunes, like . . . “I Won’t Hurt You,” with its heartbeat bass and disconnected vocals . . . .
[It is a] pretty psych-pop tune[] with a bizarre edge . . . .
OK, the acclaim was not unanimous. Stewart Mason opines that:
Unfortunately, the [WCPAEB] chose to remake “I Won’t Hurt You” for their 1967 Reprise debut, Volume One, and basically ruined the song by adding discordant percussion and a bass pattern that’s supposed to sound like a heartbeat, plus [Shaun] Harris now sings the lyrics in a halting, disconnected monotone. It’s a pretentious, self-consciously “weird” adaptation of a song that didn’t need to be messed with in the first place.
After seeing the Yardbirds play at a hip Hollywood party, teenage hopefuls Shaun and Danny Harris and Michael Lloyd found themselves locked into a Faustian pact with the host, eccentric millionaire Bob Markley. The deal? He would promote their band and buy expensive equipment if they let him bang a tambourine on stage. According to Lloyd, music was the last thing on Markley’s mind. “He had seen the incredible amount of girls that thought rock and roll was really cool and that was his only motivation.” . . . Bob . . . acquir[ed] an impressive state-of-the-art light show, book[ed] the band into trendy local venues . . . and financ[ed] the release of . . . their debut LP . . . . Better still, he used his society contacts to swing them a prestigious three album deal with . . . Reprise. But things swiftly took a turn fo the worse. . . . Markley had already saddled the band with their ludicrously cumbersome moniker. Soon it emerged that he had registered the name instead of the group’s . . . members — enabling him to replace anyone he chose– as well as channeling all of the publishing and other potential royalties through his own company . . . . [I]t wasn’t long before Bob began demanding more creative input. As Shaun ruefully recalls: “The part that was frustrating was that he had no musical aptitude of any kind and so what he was trying to do to be different and innovative . . . was an embarassment.”
liner notes to the CD reissue of Part One
And Mark Deming adds:
In 1962, the [Harris] family relocated to Los Angeles and the Harris Brothers joined a local rock band called the Snowmen . . . . Danny and Shaun attended the same high school as Michael Lloyd . . . in another, more successful local group called the Rogues; Shaun was recruited to join the Rogues . . . and soon Michael, Shaun and Danny began working together on music of their own. They . . . cut a handful of fine singles under the name the Laughing Wind [and became] acquainted with noted L.A. producer and scenester Kim Fowley [who] introduced the band to Bob Markley, the Oklahoma-born son of a wealthy oil tycoon who had . . . ambitions of making a name for himself in music, having released an unsuccessful single for Reprise Records. . . . Markley was impressed by the attention the band received from the audience of music business insiders and teenage girls, and decided he wanted to form a band rather than work as a solo act. [He] liked the Laughing Wind well enough that he made them an offer . . . .
Let’s skip to Episode Six. Richie Unterberger tells us that:
Most famous for including bassist Roger Glover and singer Ian Gillan before they joined Deep Purple, Episode Six managed to release no less than nine British singles between 1966 and 1969 without coming close to a hit record or establishing a solid identity. Also prominently featuring organist/singer Sheila Carter-Dimmock, the group’s 1966-1967 singles were rather light pop/rock harmony numbers, with an occasional ballad and a bit of a soul influence. Light years removed from Deep Purple, Episode Six was nothing if not eclectic in their choice of material, trying their hands at numbers by the Hollies, the Beatles, the Tokens, and Charles Aznavour, as well as a British hot-rod tune (written by Glover). While their repertoire lacked focus, their singles were actually pleasant and their fine cover of Tim Rose’s “Morning Dew” would have been a deserving hit. In 1967, they began to fuse pop and psychedelia with reasonably impressive results, especially the single “I Can See Through You” (written by Glover), one of the finest British psychedelic obscurities. Their final two singles showed the band going in a much more progressive direction and anticipating some of the most indulgent art rock of the ’70s with “Mozart Versus the Rest,” which assaulted one of the composer’s most famous riffs with manic electric guitars. Episode Six folded in 1969, after Gillan and Glover had joined Deep Purple.
“[Drummer] Harvey Shields left the band to form a duo with a belly dancer he’d met during their spell in Beirut. He was replaced by John Kerrison. The first recording by the new line-up was actually a single, I Won’t Hurt You, credited to Neo Maya . . . . Since no one had heard of Neo Maya very few people bought it”. . . .In April 1969 the band entered the studeo to begin recording tracks for a long-delayed album . . . but it wasn’t to be. Ian Gillan was lured away to replace Deep Purple’s departing vocalist Rod Evans and Roger Glover joined . . . a few days later.
The Tapestry of Delights Revisited
Here is WCPAEB version #1:
Here is version #2:
Here are the Pop Art Toasters, with a quite good version from ’94:
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
810) The Millennium — “5 A.M.”
Sunshine pop* went supernova with the Millennium (see #397, 506, 586, 662), a 60’s sunshine supergroup that created Begin, the greatest sunshine pop album ever recorded. Begin cost more to make than any other album from ’68 other than The Beatles (the White Album)— and no one buys it (at least until era of CD reissues). As Richie Unterberger writes, it was “at once too unabashedly commercial for underground FM radio and too weird for the AM dial.” (https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-millennium-mn0000814312)
An unexpected Top Ten hit in the Philippines, of all places, “5 A.M.” went on to become the closest thing to fame that the Millennium ever achieved. A gentle, yearning folk-style chord progression melts with a beautiful pop arrangement, which is buttressed by the band’s always well-executed harmonies. Lyrically, the feeling of the pre-dawn hour is rendered in a nearly magical style here, and makes it one of Sandy Salisbury’s shining moments.
[It] the only song on Begin that I wrote alone. This song came came to the surface one night in an apartment I lived in. . . . I wanted to write a melodic piece about the quiet early-morning time, the time after a night out, as opposed to the time just after working. I was also influenced hugely by the spectacular compositional achievements of Antonio Carlos Jobim. So this song drew from my love of bossa nova (though [it] is not that) and my emotional attachment to this one specific early-morning ambiance.
liner notes to The Millennium Magic Time: The Millennium/Ballroom Recordings CD comp
Salisbury also says that:
There was a young Columbia executive named Clive Davis who liked “5 AM” and wanted it to go out as a single. I guess it went off to the Philippines, too. That song was on the Billboard top 100 at one point, but in the Philippines it went straight to the top. Boom! Wonder of wonders. This is my one musical claim to fame. Number One in the Philippines! Ho!”
Sandy Salisbury is insanely humble and self-deprecating. On his website, he quips: “Did you know that I was a world-famous rock star? Well WORLD and FAMOUS may be pushing it, but … okay, whatever ….” (https://www.grahamsalisbury.com/salisbury-music) Tim Sendra writes that:
Sandy Salisbury was a honey-voiced member of sunshine pop guru Curt Boettcher’s cast of singers and players responsible for some of the finest pop records of the 1960s. [They] met up in Boettcher’s group the Ballroom and found that their voices blended together magically. The Ballroom had a brief existence and soon Salisbury and Boettcher formed Millennium. Salisbury wrote songs as well as sang, and along with the other members of Millennium, he did work on Sagitarrius’s classic 1967 album Present Tense as well as other Boettcher projects. . . . Salisbury . . . recorded a solo record for producer Gary Usher’s Tomorrow label. The record was to be called Sandy and featured most of the members of Millennium, but sadly it was never released due to problems at the label. In 2000, it was finally issued . . . and instantly became a sunshine pop classic. Also in 2000, Dreamsville released a CD of demos Salisbury recorded in the late ’60s for his music publisher. These wonderful songs never saw the light of day at the time because Boettcher told the publisher he wanted them for future projects. . . . It is a shame that these two released so little music at the time because there were no finer practitioners of California sunshine pop. In later years Salisbury has reverted to his given name of Graham and has written many well-received children’s books.
As to Begin, Dominique Leone says the album, “probably the single greatest 60s pop record produced in L.A. outside of The Beach Boys . . . found itself very much outside the times that year.” (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5546-pieces/) Noel Murray sagely adds:
On the surface, the music . . . is right in the mainstream of radio-friendly pop from 1966-68. [The] songs had the angelic harmonies of The Association and The Mamas & The Papas, the aspirational naïveté of The Beach Boys, the live-inside-the-music atmospherics of The Beatles, and the lysergic tinge of every California band from San Francisco on down. But [Curt] Boettcher and [Gary] Usher were also interested in the avant-garde and classical music, and their highbrow approach to the sweet and fluffy didn’t connect in an era where rock ’n’ roll was getting harder and rowdier. . . .
“5 A.M.” (written by Sandy Salisbury), and “To Claudia On Thursday” (written by Michael Fennelly and Joey Stec) are more openly optimistic and romantic. Whatever the tone, the songs teem with chime, shimmer, and background “la la la”s, creating a world of wonders for listeners to fall into.
The Millennium’s Begin is a bona fide lost classic. The brainchild of producers Curt Boettcher and Gary Usher, the group was formed out of the remnants of their previous studio project, Sagittarius — which had been preceded by yet another aggregation, the Ballroom. On Begin, hard rock, breezy ballads, and psychedelia all merge into an absolutely air-tight concept album, easily on the level of other, more widely popular albums from the era such as The Notorious Byrd Brothers, which share not only Usher’s production skills, but similarities in concept and construction. The songwriting . . . is sterling and innovative . . . . Begin is an absolute necessity for any fan of late-’60s psychedelia and a wonderful rediscovery; it sounds as vital today as it did the day it was released.
[Begin] is notable as being the second album to use 16-track recording and the group made the most out of that here. Wonderfully lush music that sweeps you in with its fantastic harmonies, both in the instruments and in the vocals, and with the individual melodies that grab your attention instantly and have you singing along by the end of the song. . . . [It] manages to capture a wonderful part of the the era that is was created in, but also remains timeless through its use of gorgeous melodies, harmonies and instrumentation.
* The best definition of sunshine pop that I have come across was penned by Noel Murray:
Influenced by the pretty sounds of easy-listening, the catchiness of commercial jingles, and the chemically induced delirium of the drug scene, the sunshine pop acts expressed an appreciation for the beauty of the world mixed with a sense of anxiety that the good ol’ days were gone for good.
Here are the Hep Stars. Bruce Eder tells us that:
The chances are that, had ABBA never come along making Benny Andersson) and his three partners in the group) an international pop/rock star, no one outside of Sweden would ever have heard of the Hep Stars. They were the hottest rock band of the mid- to late ’60s in Sweden . . . . chart[ing] 20 singles in their own country”.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
809)Heinz & The Wild Boys — “I’m Not a Bad Guy”
A wild freakbeat version of a Crickets tune — OK, post-Buddy Holly Crickets, but still the Crickets! On the Flip-Side tells us that:
“I’m Not a Bad Guy” was written by Jerry Allison of The Crickets who released the number on Liberty in 1962. The Heinz cover removes The Crickets’ Everly-like harmonies and goes straight for the darkness. . . . [T]he impressive guitar work on I’m Not A Bad Guy features none other than Ritchie Blackmore . . . .
The professional music story of Heinz, born Heinz Burt in Germany, is inextricably intertwined with producer Joe Meek. Heinz played bass for the Joe Meek produced instrumental band, The Tornados, who struck gold in 1962 with the Meek composition, Telstar. By all accounts, Joe Meek was deeply infatuated with Heinz and decided to craft Heinz into a solo star replete with peroxide blonde pompadour, leather vests and, to paraphrase The Ruttles’ Leggy Mountbatten, with some very tight trousers.
[Heinz] was born . . . in . . . Germany in 1942, and came to England at age seven . . . . In 1961, he was playing with a local band called the Falcons, who were good enough to get an audition with . . . Meek, who didn’t think much of the band but was attracted personally to the bassist’s blonde, Teutonic good looks — so involved was he in Heinz Burt’s physical appeal, that he eventually persuaded the musician to dye his hair bleach-blonde, to make him stand out even more in any band he worked with. . . . Meek assembled a . . . new group called the Tornados . . . [with] Heinz on bass. They initially played as a backing band to Billy Fury . . . . [and] scored a huge international hit . . . with “Telstar.” . . . Meek began recording Heinz for releases of his own, billed simply as “Heinz.” This was an instance where Meek’s romantic fixation outstripped his musical judgment, at least at first. Heinz’s singing . . . was overpowered by the typically ornate Joe Meek production sound on his debut single, “Dreams Do Come True” . . . . [F]or Heinz’s second single, Meek gave him a demo . . . of a tribute song to . . . Eddie Cochran — [who] had been a huge star in England, and had died in a car crash in 1960, while on his way to the airport for a return to the United States . . . . “Just Like Eddie” . . . featuring superb playing by the Outlaws (including a young Ritchie Blackmore on guitar) — . . . [had] a confident, even bold lead vocal from Heinz, it soared into the British Top Five in the summer of 1963 . . . . But . . . Heinz’s record of success beyond this point was more sporadic. Meek was unable to write or find songs that were right for him, and despite the organizing of a new band — Heinz & the Wild Boys, which included Blackmore . . . he never saw another [big] hit of . . . . Adding to his troubles was his split with Meek, over personal and professional differences. The producer/manager had lavished attention on Heinz, in hopes of a romantic attraction developing, but [he] . . . was not oriented that way. Meek was willing to hold out hope until Heinz introduced him to his girlfriend . . . . The end of any personal side to Meek’s interest in his career was complicated further over his reportedly less-than-forthright payment of royalties, which led to an angry confrontation between the two, long after the personal split, at the end of 1966. . . . On February 3, 1967 . . . the producer, long troubled in his personal and professional life, took the shotgun that Heinz had left behind and killed his landlady and then himself with the weapon.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
808) Tyrone Davis — “She’s Looking Good”
This song was co-written and released by Rodger Collins in ’67 and reached #101 (#44 R&B). Wilson Pickett then had a #15 hit with it (#7 R&B). But to me, Tyrone Davis made the definitive, most propulsive version. Kildare John calls it “a sort of Stax gone so far into overdrive it might take weeks to find it again on the radars – it’s an area Davis laps up like a cat who found the dairy at 4am before the milk trucks arrive.” (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/tyrone-davis/can-i-change-my-mind.p/) “I’m gonna steal your daughter!”
Brett J. Bonner tells us that:
Tyrone Davis possessed one of the great voices of the classic soul era. Davis presented himself as a wounded romantic whose vulnerability and lack of overt machismo made his a fan favorite among women. . . . In 1961 he landed a job as Freddie King’s valet and was struck by the desire to be an entertainer himself. He began sitting in with groups at various clubs around [Chicago] and was soon being mentored by vocalist Harold Burrage. Burrage helped arrange Davis’ first recording session at Willie Barney’s Four Brothers label, where he was billed as “Tyrone [The Wonder Boy].” In 1968 Davis was singing at a club when Brunswick Records’ Otis Leaville heard him. Leaville suggested he come to their offices and meet influential producer Carl Davis. Davis had produced Jackie Wilson, Gene Chandler, the Chi-Lites and many other hit groups for Brunswick and was always looking for new talent. But Carl was not impressed with Tyrone and told him so. Fortuitously, house songwriter Floyd Smith heard something in him that piqued his interest. Smith secretly recorded Davis singing his song A Woman Needs to Be Loved. Carl Davis was furious and said the song was promised to Jackie Wilson—end of discussion. But Smith was also Carl’s limo driver, and that evening when he drove his boss home he sneaked the tape into his house and put it on while Carl was upstairs. Suddenly the producer burst into the room asking who was singing the song. Carl . . . . agreed to record Tyrone but insisted that he couldn’t put it out on Brunswick for eight to nine months. However, he did have a small label of his own, Dakar Records, through which he could release the recording. Tyrone acquiesced and the single was released but didn’t catch fire. By chance, Houston DJ Wild Child began playing the B-side Can I Change My Mind and to everyone’s surprise is was a smash hit that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart in late 1968. Davis and Davis followed with 23 chart hits over the next decade . . . .
The king of romantic Chicago soul, Tyrone Davis’ warm, aching vulnerability and stylish class made him especially popular with female soul fans during a lengthy hitmaking run that lasted throughout the 1970s. Davis was a versatile baritone singer who could handle everything from pop-soul to funk to bluesy chitlin-circuit R&B, but smooth soul was his true bread and butter. Once Davis broke through in the late ’60s, he never really stopped recording; although the R&B chart hits dried up by the early ’80s, he was still going strong into the new millennium, decades after his first single was released. Tyrone Davis . . . moved to Chicago in 1959 . . . . He befriended the likes of Bobby “Bluye” Bland, Little Milton, and Otis Clay, among others, and began to pursue his own singing career in the clubs on the city’s West and South Sides. Singer/pianist Harold Burrage took Davis under his wing and helped him refine his craft, and the budding blues shouter got his first shot in 1965 on the Four Brothers label. . . . He found a home at Carl Davis’ new label Dakar in 1968, when a Texas DJ flipped his first release over and started playing the B-side, “Can I Change My Mind.” Showcasing Davis’ lovelorn pleading to best effect, the song went all the way to number one on the R&B charts, and reached the pop Top Five as well. Teamed with producer/arranger Willie Henderson, who’d masterminded “Can I Change My Mind,” Davis capitalized on his breakthrough with a string of orchestrated hits that emphasized his new, smoother style, and helped point the way for Chicago soul into a new decade.
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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. 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
807)Caleb Quaye — “Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad”
A “magnificent” (liner notes to the Chocolate Soup for Diabetics Volumes 1-5 CD comp) and “very fuzzy guitar driven song” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited), that is an “over-phased slice of distorted guitar, power drumming and wacked-out vocals”. (liner notes to Mojo Presents Acid Drops, Spacedust & Flying Saucers: Psychedelic Confectionery from the UK Underground 1965-1969) David Wells rhapsodizes:
[W]hat a record it is. If Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane is rightly regarded by the proverbial man in the street as the classic double-sided British studio psych pop record, then Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad/Woman of Distinction is, as far as the cognoscenti are concerned, its nearest subterranean equivalent. Distant disembodied vocals, fried lyrics, lashings of phasing, reverb, distortion and backwards tapes — what’s more, Caleb even remembered to write a couple of pretty good songs as well. Possibly he never issued another solo single because this one was impossible to top; then again, maybe it was just that nobody was interested (with the notable and curious exception of pirate station Radio Scotland, apparently). . . .
Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era
Some might have whispered to Caleb “Baby, your phasing is bad”, but they were jerks!
Of Caleb, Mojo tells us that:
Born in London, but of Ghanaian descent, Caleb Quaye enjoyed a long and successful career as a backing musician and session player (Nilsson, Lou Reed, The Who, Elton John) for the best part of two decades. . . . [Elton John] is rumoured to have played keyboards [on “Baby”] . . . . He and Quaye . . . in 1969 would together record a (still unreleased) album under the name of The Bread and Beer Band [see #175].
liner notes to Mojo Presents Acid Drops, Spacedust & Flying Saucers: Psychedelic Confectionery from the UK Underground 1965-1969
Wells adds that:
Back in the second half of the 1960s . . . he was employed as resident guitar-prodigy-cum-teenage-studio-whizzkid-producer for Beatles publisher Dick James’s company . . . . Quaye . . . would play on pretty much every recording made by . . . Elton John, from such heavily psychedelic late 60s demos as Regimental Sergeant Zippo to million-selling releases like the 1976 double album Blue Moves. . . . When he found religion in the early 1980s . . . Caleb sold what, according to drummer Roger Pope, was the biggest private record collection in the country to Elton . . . .
Record Collector: 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records: High Times and Strange Tales from Rock’s Most Mind-Blowing Era
“In 1968, Quaye played guitar in Elton’s touring band, a position he occupied on and off for the next decade, as well as forming Hookfoot.” (liner notes to the Chocolate Soup for Diabetics Volumes 1-5 CD comp)
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The Huge World of Emily Small [was] in the lightest and poppiest side of the British pop-psychedelic style. . . .
[It is] one of the recordings that most epitomizes what has been retrospectively dubbed the “toytown” school of British psychedelia . . . . the songs bounce along daintily; the vocal emphasis is on high harmonies; the lyrics are sometimes populated with observations of British everyday life and characters, sprinkled with a coat of whimsy; and the arrangements benefit from touches of baroque orchestration. It’s executed here, however, with a fey, twee touch that makes the Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle, for instance, sound rough ‘n’ ready by comparison. It’s thus going to be too light even for some British psychedelic pop enthusiasts, but it’s not quite the most saccharine entry in the genre, though it’s undeniably precious. There’s a folky lightness that keeps this from being too wide-eyed and childish, sometimes sounding a bit like Simon & Garfunkel gone toytown, though with some similarities to both the 1967-era Beatles and ’60s California pop in the vocals and arrangements.
As to the Picadilly Line, Peter Marston explains that:
[The band] was essentially a duo, consisting of Ron Edwards (guitar/organ/vocals) and Roger Hand (guitar/vocals). . . . [who] met up while students at London University, and began performing in local clubs in the mid-’60s. After securing a residency at the influential folk club Les Cousins, they signed a management deal with Roy Guest who quickly landed them a contract with CBS Records. The duo decided a suitably swingin’ named was required . . . finally settling on the misspelled Picadilly Line, the misspelling chosen due to a fear that they might be sued by the London Transport system. Sessions began almost immediately, produced by Guest and John Cameron, the arranger on Donovan’s Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow. The players on the album were largely drawn from the same pool of musicians that recorded Sunshine Superman, including, perhaps most famously, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Herbie Flowers on bass. . . .
The Huge World of Emily Small did not receive a heavy promotional push from CBS and failed to generate any traction in either sales or airplay. Sessions for a second album were begun, but when two follow-up singles failed to chart, the band folded—well, not folded so much as regrouped, this time emerging as Edwards Hand [see #151, 663], best known for being produced by none other than George Martin.
[The album] was released at the height of Flower Power in the summer of 1967 but, despite its immediate charms and psychedelic flower girl cover, failed to set the pop world alight. [P]lastered [over] the whole of London w[ere] fluorescent pink posters but that didn’t save the album from its fate at the bottom of the CBS list of priorities. They were too busy frying bigger fish such as Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel who had just hit the big time with Sounds of Silence.
liner notes to the CD reissue of The Huge World of Emily Small
David Wells notes that the Line was “too commercial to appeal to underground audiences, but they were nevertheless an integral part of the club scene, with regular appearances at such venues as UFO, Middle Earth and the Marquee.” (liner notes to Let’s Go Down and Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967 CD comp)
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
805) Nocturnal Day Dream — “I Had a Dream Last Night”
This B-side of the band’s only single (’68) is a “melodic [garage] gem” (Rog Brown, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7mz3EK932w), not so much moody as eerie/otherwordly. Now that’s a sub-genre! The song deserves to be more widely known — too bad David Lynch never used it. The band is from Michigan, but I’ve come up dry trying to find anything else out. Anyone know?
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. 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
804)Al Kooper — “Love Theme from The Landlord“
This ’70 album track and ’71 B-side and soundtrack track is a gorgeous and “haunting” song (Lindsay Planer, https://www.allmusic.com/album/easy-does-it-mw0000740238) by Kooper (see #642, 705) Kooper, the victim of a bloody, sweaty and tearful coup d’état, somehow got to score Hal Ashby’s first film — The Landlord — “an acclaimed social satire starring Beau Bridges as a wealthy young man Elgar who leaves his family’s estate in Long Island to pursue love in a Brooklyn ghetto.” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065963/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_stry_pl)
As Alfie Hitchie describes the flick:
At the age of 29, Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) “runs away” from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert it into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday’s urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind. He’s grown fond of the black tenants and particularly of Fanny . . . the wife of a black radical; he’s maybe fallen in love with Lanie . . , a mixed race girl; he’s lost interest in redecorating his home. Joyce . . . his mother has not relinquished this interest and in one of the film’s most hilarious sequences gives her MasterCharge card to Marge (Pearl Bailey), a black tenant and appoints her decorator.
How did Kooper get this gig? He says “I wish I knew”!, going on to say:
[Ashby] was a fan, so that had a contribution. Being that it was his first film, I couldn’t really judge him from anything, but I spent a lot of time with him. And he was a very unusual guy. [laughter] And I enjoyed the time I spent with him. And I hoped that he liked the score.
Kooper should have long ago been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Bruce Eder says that he “by rights, should be regarded as one of the giants of ’60s rock, not far behind the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon in importance” and goes on to say:
[H]e was a very audible sessionman on some of the most important records of mid-decade . . . . Kooper also joined and led, and then lost two major groups, the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He played on two classic blues-rock albums in conjunction with his friend Mike Bloomfield. As a producer at Columbia, he signed the British invasion act the Zombies just in time for them to complete the best LP in their entire history; and still later, Kooper discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced their best work.
When it comes to Al Kooper’s storied career in rock, the multi-instrumentalist man checks every rock box. Hit songwriter? Check. His credits include “This Diamond Ring,” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys and “I Can’t Quit Her” by the group he created, Blood Sweat and Tears. Session player? Check. That’s him at age 21 playing the Hammond B-3 organ on Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” French horn on the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” piano on Jimi Hendrix’s “Long Hot Summer Night” and guitar playing with Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield on Super Sessions, a live album that cost $13,000 to make, sold over 450,000 copies and made it to #11 on the Billboard Top 20. The follow-up LP, The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, even had cover art done by Norman Rockwell—a fella not known to rock particularly well. Producer? Check. More like multiple “checks” for producing The Tubes’ debut and the first three Lynyrd Skynrd albums, the soundtrack to the John Waters’ movie Cry Baby and co-producing Dylan’s New Morning album. . . . Yet, for all of his years of being a “secret weapon” that rockers frequently utilized, this rock and roll “Zelig” remains pretty much a secret to the general public, especially to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame voters who have yet to put him on a ballot.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
803) Dreams — “New York”
The dream of nuclear fusion, achieved! This jazz-rock barn burner is hardly a love letter to NYC (where all the lonely, uptight people do come from). The band — filled with a Murderer’s Row of future fusion Hall of Famers. And the cacophony of what sound like blaring car horns at the end is a hoot.
“Dreams is a legendary pioneer jazz-rock group that included such young players as trumpeter Randy Brecker, guitarist John Abercrombie, drummer Billy Cobham and the 19-year old tenor Michael Brecker”. (Scott Yanow, https://www.allmusic.com/album/dreams-mw0000274057) “This is what happened in the 60s and 70s when you brought together jazz and rock musicians. They did not know they were playing ‘fusion’. The difference here is the vocals, unusual for such a powerful ensemble.” (Le West, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fusZWH7Q4M0)
John O’Regan says of the album that:
All [the] . . . tracks were original compositions . . . , highlight[ing a] talent[] for writing catchy jazz/pop/rock songs and the band’s . . . musical expertise. The album was recorded mostly live which added to the fresh spontaneous atmosphere of the recording. Dreams featured a mix of catchy songs with great horn licks and impassioned vocals from Edward Vernon . . . . Dreams deserve to be more than a footnote to beginning the careers of Billy Cobham, John Abercrombie and the Brecker Brothers among others. . . . their distinctive jazz/rock/funk crossovers encompassing commerciality and musical dexterity . . . .
Dreams . . . was founded in late sixties as [a] trio, but soon added [a] brass section and became the brass-rock band in a manner of Chicago or Blood Sweat and Tears. Even if they didn’t [achieve] popularity in their time, they became a great starting place for some well known fusion musicians . . . . Differently from other brass-rock bands of the time, their music was more improv based in New Orleans tradition. The band released just two studio albums and was disbanded, but many members became great musicians in [the] future.
Dreams . . . became a popular live band in the New York and Chicago areas and headed to Los Angeles. There they played a battle of the bands [with the] J. Geils Band for a recording contract with Atlantic Records as the prize. The boisterous rhythm and blues-based J. Geils Band . . . was signed to Atlantic but Dreams made their own reputation. . . . [tearing] the place down . . . . [and] received a contract from CBS Records . . . .
I couldn’t have picked a better time. I was in the first generation to be exposed equally to jazz and pop. We listened to Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, rhythm-and-blues, the Beatles, Hendrix. We developed a whole new approach and it gave us so much freedom. The rock context meant that you could play complex ideas and not be met by a bunch of puzzled or hostile faces.
I’m full disclosure, Scott Yanow thought the band was more of a nightmare:
[Dreams’] music has dated very badly. This CD reissue finds solos being de-emphasized in favor of erratic and often unlistenable vocals. While trombonist Barry Rogers had a feeling for jazz, the remainder of the group . . . weighs down the recording with mundane pop sensibilities. Only a spirited “New York” and the 14-minute “Dream Suite” allow the horns a chance to blow a bit and even there the results are quite forgettable and disappointing.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
802) Mojo — “New York City”
’68 sunshine pop A-side/’69 album track is a California tourist’s itinerary for New York City. “I want to go down to the Village . . . . take in a coffee shop or two.” NYC should have ditched “I Love New York” and picked this for an ad campaign! It could have persuaded Lou Reed to play it!
The Mojo Men were certainly fluid. They were great when they were all men (see #140). They were even better when singer Jan Errico joined from the Vejtables (see #84) (and they eventually dropped the “Men” to become simply “Mojo”). They were best (see #275, 720, 787) on their and Jan’s first and only album — ‘69’s Mojo Magic (including “NYC”). Jud Cost’s liner notes to the Mojo Men comp Sit Down . . . It’s The Mojo Men states, the album was “[s]addled with one of the most hideous album covers in music history — colored blossoms layered over a group mug shot [and it] sank without a trace.” The group folded soon after. A shame, because Mojo Magic is one of the most glorious sunshine pop albums ever released.
Richie Unterberger tells us that:
One of the earliest San Francisco rock bands, the Mojo Men had local hits on the Autumn label with “Dance With Me,” “She’s My Baby,” and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Off the Hook” in the mid-’60s. Their early sides displayed a raunchy but thin approach taken from the mold of British Invasion groups . . . . In 1966, after female drummer Jan Errico joined from the San Francisco folk-rock group the Vejtables, they moved to Reprise and pursued folky psychedelic pop directions, and had a Top 40 hit with a Baroque arrangement of Buffalo Springfield’s “Sit Down I Think I Love You” in 1967. In their later days, they developed more intricate arrangements and harmonies that reflected the influence of the Mamas & the Papas and Jefferson Airplane . . . .
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. 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
801) Country Weather — “Fly to New York”
I’ve never played a jam before, but today I give you a cool one by Country Weather, the great San Francisco band that never quite made it despite being a mainstay at the Filmore, the Avalon Ballroom and Winterland. As Alec Paleo says, it “has the distinct whiff of Syd-era Floyd, though melded to a spaced guitar-scape that could have only evolved from late 1960s San Francisco” (liner notes to the Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970 CD comp), and as William Ruhlmann says, the band “echoes the spacier aspects of the Dead on psychedelicized tunes such as . . . the group-composed improvisation ‘Fly to New York'”. (https://www.allmusic.com/album/country-weather-mw0001433141) The song was never officially released, as the band never snagged a record contract, but was on a one-sided promotional LP that the band made.
As to the disc, guitarist Greg Douglass explains that:
After our name change to Country Weather, we needed a promotional tool to get us gigs and to, with any luck, get some airplay on the newly formed underground rock FM stations KMPX and KSAN. We . . . cut five tunes, including “Fly to New York”. We had 50 copies of our efforts made. We got lots of airplay on both radio stations, which helped our budding career immensely. Our manager, Bob Strand, was a brilliant and aggressive promoter of the group and he made the most of the records. There were six EPs given to band members and two to the radio stations; I have no idea where the other 42 ended up. They are worth a great deal of money now. I wish I’d kept my copy. . . . In the end, “Fly to New York” . . . got a lot of airplay. . . . . It was basically just a demo, meant for getting gigs and hopefully gaining airplay on the radio. . . . It was carried by hand from place to place by our manager. . . .
The group was formed in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, CA, by high school students . . . as a cover band called the Virtues in 1966. . . . In 1967, they auditioned for promoter Chet Helms, who suggested they change their name and stop playing covers. Soon after, they became Country Weather. Over the next few years, they played frequently at such San Francisco venues as the Avalon Ballroom, the Fillmore Auditorium, and Winterland, opening for many of the renowned acid rock bands of the day, as well as up and down the West Coast. But they were never signed to a national record contract. In 1969, they recorded their own one-sided, five-song disc, which earned airplay on local radio stations. Country Weather disbanded at the start of 1973 . . . .
For decades, [it] was known, if at all, as a band name on several of the eye-popping psychedelic posters advertising rock concerts in San Francisco in the 1960s and early ’70s, alongside better known performers scheduled to play halls like the Fillmore. . . . Country Weather was an eclectic outfit with at least two distinct musical identities, which may have foreshadowed its eventual breakup. On the one hand, there are the pop-oriented songs written by rhythm guitarist and singer Steve Derr. . . . The band also echoes the spacier aspects of the Dead on psychedelicized tunes . . . . Contrasting with these styles is the blues-rock approach of lead guitarist Greg Douglass (the only one who went on to significant recognition later on). . . . [who] seems to want to turn Country Weather into Cream, and indeed the band’s dissolution was precipitated by his and drummer Bill Baron’s departure to form a Cream-like power trio.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
800) New York Public Library — “Got to Get Away”
After yesterday visiting “the freaked-out, drugged-up street world of New York’s Lower East Side” circa 1968 (Mister Mark, http://thedirtymindofmistermark.blogspot.com/2010/11/lotti-golden.html?m=1), I thought I’d let us listen to New York Public Library — a British band! — appropriately play “Got to Get Away“, a ‘68 UK A-side. A lovely tune — as Anhalter Udo puts it “so simple & so powerful – this was a great flower song on the way to more peace in the dreams of this time” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhWR95X6LK8)
As to the NYPL, it was a “BBC session band . . . [that] debuted in ‘66 with a Rascals cover and then disappeared for two years, returning with this aggressive pop tune, like a milder Wimple Winch [see #49, 384].” (liner notes to the English FreakbeatVol. 5 CD comp)
The liner notes to the Piccadilly Sunshine: Volumes 1-10: A Compendium of Rare Pop Curios from the British Psychedelic Era CD comp, give us a few more details:
[The band] hailed from Leeds in 1961 as The Cherokees who [had] . . . a handful of minor hits after debuting with Seven Golden Daffodils in 1964. After their 1966 attempt at Chris Kenner’s Land of 1,000 Dances and battling it out with the Loose Ends with a version of the Rascals’ “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” . . . [they] changed their name to New York Public Library. . . .
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[Lottie Golden takes us] to Fay’s, the meet-up spot for her coterie of malcontents. Anabell’s gonna be there, Silky’s gonna be there, Billy is gonna drop by, Celia’s gonna come by. But for Fay, whose French poodles keep her satisfied, it’s her doctor’s pills that keep her high, and she’s in trouble with the meds. “Hey man, did you hear what happened to Fay? Yeah, it’s really a drag, what a bring-down. So where do you want to go? Rosie’s? That’s cool. Out of sight man, we’ll dig it!” And so the whole party up and moves to Rosie’s. No pause for introspection on poor Fay’s demise, no lessons learned, none of that crap; the good times must roll on. That’s kind of the M.O. of Motor-Cycle. If something heavy happens, slow the music down for a second, give a wail, then move on. With a crowd this colorful, there’s always another story to tell.
An amazing LP released on Atlantic Records in 1969, signed to the label by the legendary Jerry Wexler, “Motor-Cycle,” has remained a cult favorite for 45 years . . . . The album’s lyrics are autobiographical giving us a time-capsule glimpse into art and street life in NYC in the late 60’s . . . Golden pays homage to girl groups with an eclectic jazz, soul, funk, rock montage like nothing you’ve heard. . . . Kerouac meets psychedelic masterpiece . . . .
By the end of high school in 1967, Lotti had sung with bands up and down the East coast, taken up acting and entered the freaked-out, drugged-up street world of New York’s Lower East Side. “It was sort of like daring myself to see how far I could go.” . . . Lottie began writing songs about it all, then split. In late 1968, with producer-arranger Bob Crewe, she recorded an autobiographical album called Motorcycle, a synthesis of funky singing and honest, hip lyrics about urban teenage trauma. The music was a sometimes satiric melange of rock, jazz, blues and soul. . . . A whole underground world is candidly described, down to the last Seconal capsule.
Lotti Golden leads us into the bizarre excursions of the late-’60s underground freaks. So fertile was the music scene of that period that an album of restlessly epic roadhouse suites could be released on a major label. Golden gets help on Motor-Cycle from an impeccably arranged Atlantic Records session band. They give the album a wall-of-sound heft when called for and lay the foundation, in the midst of all that brass, with a flawless, swinging rhythm team. Then, at key moments, the curtain goes up and they’ve got rows of saxes, trumpets, vibes, and churchf*ckingbells behind them . . . . [T]he emcee for this aberrant cabaret is Lotti Golden, nexus of the intemperate adventure starring a cast of sex fiends, drug addicts, and other proponents of the In The Now school of living. Motor-Cycle is exactly the sort of hazy deviant party you always hoped the late-’60s was. It plays out roughly like this: Lotti’s got a thing for this kid Michael, who “lets me ride his motorcycle.” But Michael’s truth machine was starting to breakdown, so she heads to Fay’s . . . . [The album] is that rare party record that’s got a bizarre story behind it while still being a freak-show record that you can throw on at dance parties. To make a crude comparison, it’s as if The Velvet Underground recorded for Motown. In short: debauchery with a beat. Dig it.
New York’s East Village, is the home of the Fillmore East, the Electric Circus, the dubious refuge for strays, of communal-living, where the hippies congregate and the summer air is heavy with the sweet smell of marijuana. It was a strange, way-out scene for pretty, 19-year-old, middle-class Lotti Golden, who lived there for eighteen months and recorded her experiences on MOTOR-CYCLE . . . . “I began to meet kids who were part of the street life . . . . They groove, like my friend Wesley, who can go to Central Park and dig the trees. I mean really dig them. . . . But Lotti discovered evil too in the East Village. “Like there would be somebody saying, ‘I’ve got this new LSQ’ and you’d take it and you’d be paralyzed.” So her songs are the saga of that drug-ridden experience, a season in hell, with Lotti sounding like a “woman wailing for her demon-lover.” Her songs are like her voice, strong, natural, honest, unflinching. . . . in Gonna Fay’s, the whole crowd searches for where the drugs are—the “tuies” (Tuinal), “secies” (Seconal), “Scag” (heroin), “snow” (cocaine). . . . Lotti, who lives uptown now, has no regrets. “I found music in buildings, in sidewalk cracks,” she says. “You get flashes of perceiving differently, of doors opening, with drugs. But drugs are only a tool. And you can’t abuse the tool. I got out when I saw a lot of my friends getting hooked. It was nowhere.”
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The song comes from Hyman’s ’69 album The Age of Electronicus, which Matthias Kirsch calls:
[A]n amalgamation of hippie culture and avantgarde, spiced up with live drums on the tunes of the day . . . . Hard on the brink of sounding too hilarious, Dick Hyman always understands that the synthesizer ‘is not about to replace any instrument or orchestra’, but ‘when the synthesizer is used to create its own thing, the new aural events are remarkable for both the player-arranger and the listener.'”
Dick Hyman’s 1969 opus . . . [is] a visionary, funky excursion into the vast potential presented by the newly developed Moog synthesizer – stands as a shining example of the post-war avant-garde’s infiltration of the popular realm. Awash with creative optimism about the role of progress, change, and technology in society at large, it’s one of those obscurities that’s long been championed by diggers across the world, but has never fully gotten its rightful due. . . . [It] belongs to roughly the same canon of recordings as Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach, Morton Subotnick’s Silver Apples of the Moon, Mort Garson’s Electronic Hair Pieces, and Raymond Scott’s Soothing Sounds For Baby. It encounters a forward-thinking artist harnessing the new possibilities presented by synthesisers, deploying it as progressive aural signifier within the popular realm, playfully diving in with covers of the Beatles’ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Blackbird; Booker T. & The M.G.’s Time Is Tight and Green Onions; Aquarius from Hair, James Brown’s Give It Up or Turn It Loose; Burt Bacharach’s Alfie; and Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. Joyous, funky as hell, and peppered with humor, The Age of Electronicus stands at the lofty heights beyond the exotica and kitsch temperaments that retrospectively burden many of its peers. Pushing the Moog to its limit – blended with primitive drum machines, repetitive bass lines, and robotic beats – it ventures into a world of space-age utopianism that presents a dreaming vision of a possible future that still might come. An absolute blast from start to finish, and a total immersion into the ’60s dream . . . .
One of the all-time great moog albums of the 60s – served up by pianist Dick Hyman, who’d cut a fair bit of more standard material in the years before – but who also turned out to be a wizard with the new electric instrument, helping it to find a very fresh sound! Unlike some of the more offbeat moogy records of the time, Hyman’s approach focuses right in on the groove – using lots of influences from both soul and pop, but also exploding the electronics at a level that take the moog way past some of the more simple moog cover records of the period.
While Robert Moog’s invention tends to time-stamp music with as much finality as Auto-Tune has done in this century’s first two decades, some of the former material has endured beyond cheap nostalgia thrills. And that includes this cover-heavy opus. . . . He applied his dexterity and ingenuity to the then-novel Moog synthesizer with both virtuosity and opportunistic glee. . . . Sure, Electronicus smacks of Moog-hysteria cash-in, but Hyman’s inventiveness with this familiar and relatively eclectic material raises the record high above most of its counterparts now moldering in bargain bins.
All that being said, Electronicus wasn’t as successful as Hyman’s first Moog album:
When the LP was released, the previous “Moog – The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman” was still in the Billboard Top 100 LP Chart. Surprisingly, “The Age of Electronicus” failed to repeat the success experienced by its predecessor . . . . [T]he now legendary “The Minotaur” . . . was the track [from Electric Eclectics] which got picked up by radio stations months earlier and was fundamental to the success of the previous album, becoming the very first single featuring a Moog synthesizer to chart. . . . The album only spent 11 weeks in the Billboard Top 200 LP Chart – peaking at #110 – and the poor performance of the “Green Onions b/w Aquarius” single, which peaked at #126, didn’t help the LP to reach the success I think it deserved. Furthermore, by the time “The Age of Aquarius” was released, record shops were also offering many other Moog albums . . . .
A very versatile virtuoso, Dick Hyman . . . . can clearly play anything he wants to, and since the ’70s, he has mostly concentrated on pre-bop swing and stride styles. Hyman worked with Red Norvo (1949-1950) and Benny Goodman (1950), and then spent much of the 1950s and ’60s as a studio musician. He appears on the one known sound film of Charlie Parker (Hot House from 1952); recorded honky tonk under pseudonyms; played organ and early synthesizers in addition to piano; was Arthur Godfrey’s music director (1959-1962); collaborated with Leonard Feather on some History of Jazz concerts (doubling on clarinet), and even performed rock and free jazz; but all of this was a prelude to his later work. In the 1970s, Hyman played with the New York Jazz Repertory Company, formed the Perfect Jazz Repertory Quintet (1976), and started writing soundtracks for Woody Allen films.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
797) The Crazy World of Arthur Brown — “Nightmare”
The most demented (and greatest) music video ever made, from the crazy mind of Arthur Brown (see #783), for a song that actually hit #56 in the UK and #107 in the U.S. Don’t just listen to me. CosmikDebriis says it’s “[t]he best rock video on Youtube” and doccyclopz calls it “[p]ossibly the greatest music video in the history of music videos.” (both at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpRG83Hi5q) Bert Spivey is spot on: “The parties back then must have been epic if someone walks into the room with his hat on fire and no one notices.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpRG83Hi5qA) Oh, and Gery Hatrix recalls “I was a camp counselor in 1969 and would play this at night in my cabin to quiet down the campers after ‘Lights Out”. It worked every time!!! They were scared sh*tless.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpRG83Hi5qA)
As to the song, Jason calls “Nightmare” “a powerful piece of early progressive rock with crazed vocals, thundering drums and soulful organ via Vincent Crane – a true classic.” (http://therisingstorm.net/the-crazy-world-of-arthur-brown/) 23 Daves says:
“Nightmare” is even more threatening than “Fire”, consisting mostly of a determined, full-on organ riff topped off with Brown’s demonic screaming. It’s not a bad record at all, but had Radio One played this during the daytime, it would have terrified the wits out of most of the nation – gone is the almost groovy hook, and instead there’s a lot of terror and minimalism in its place. No horn section this time, I’m afraid.
[It has a] melodramatic horror-movie vibe, complete with funereal organ and what sounds like a psycho’s heavy breathing. . . . Sinister mood established, the rock trio bursts to life driven by the Hammond organ of Vincent Crane. The story appears to concern young Hieronymous and the gods who visit him in his nightmares. The subject is hell, sin and a search for salvation.
The video comes to mind when reading Perry Jimenez’s contention that:
If it wasn’t for this underrated one-hit-wonder we wouldn’t even have Shock Rock, That’s Right, as in No Alice cooper seducing snakes and Killing chickens, No Ozzy Osburne biting off the heads of Bats and turning into a werewolf, no Kiss and Gene Simmons Bleeding from his tongue and breathing fire, and no Marylin Manson turning into a demonic hermaphrodite, let’s take some time to truly appreciate the legacy this man had made, and to think he did it by singing with fire in his head, Thank Mr. Arthur Brown, you have changed Rock and Roll for generations.
[He] was undoubtedly one of the memorable figures of British psychedelia. . . . [The Crazy World] had become a very popular attraction around London’s underground clubs, like the UFO . . . . They had a flamboyant stage act which often involved Brown appearing in a flaming helmet with bizarre facial make-up. Indeed, their act was so expensive to stage that Brown eventually [went] broke.”
The Tapestry of Delights Revisited
Mark Deming gives us some Crazy World history:
Arthur Brown burst out of obscurity in 1968 with “Fire,” an energetic and forceful fusion of blues, jazz, psychedelia, and embryonic hard rock . . . invoking the dangers of the dark side. . . . [I]t was the defining song of his career, but Brown’s oeuvre was impressively diverse. . . . The common thread that ties [it] together is his big, booming voice, over-the-top vocal theatrics, and a willful eccentricity that boosts the power of his music. . . . He was a member of the Ramong Sound [later to become the Foundations of “Build Me Up Buttercup” fame] . . . . [E]ager to launch a project that would match his outsized stage persona, he left the band to form the Crazy World of Arthur Brown . . . . Kit Lambert and Peter Townshend were part of the production team for their self-titled debut album. . . . [and] captured a grandiose sound full of drama and menace . . . . “Fire” . . . became a major hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The[ir] live show, which featured Brown wearing a helmet that spit fire and occasionally taking the stage naked, help spread the word about the group, and Brown became one of the most talked-about characters in British rock. In the wake of the success of their debut, [they] cut a second album, Strangelands. It was originally slated for release in 1969, but executives at Atlantic and Track felt it was too experimental for mainstream listeners, and it was shelved. (It received a belated release in 1988.)
The video is actually a scene from the British film The Committee, of which IMDb gives a brief synopsis — “A hitch hiker decapitates the man having picked him up while stopped by the side of the road to fix the car’s engine. A few day’s later he gets summoned to a committee, where he engages in different conversations, yet fears that his summoning is linked to the previous incident.” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062820/) — and a fuller analysis:
This short experimental feature follows a young man (Paul Jones, vocalist for the band Manfred Mann) who is picked up by a successful but self-satisfied businessman (Tom Kempinski) while hitchhiking. Bored and exasperated with the businessman’s prattle, the young man succumbs to temptation while the mogul checks the engine of his Mercedes Benz, bringing the car’s hood crashing down on the man’s head. Feeling remorse later on, he sews the businessman’s head back onto his body, with the victim seeming no worse for wear. Years later, the young man is working with an architectural firm when he’s called upon to join a committee led by a powerful government official (Robert Lloyd). It soon becomes obvious that along with his other duties, the man is asked to account for his actions, which could easily have led to another man’s death. The Committee was shot on location at the London School of Economics, and features a musical score by Pink Floyd, which was composed and recorded shortly after Syd Barrett left the group. Influential theatrical rock combo The Crazy World of Arthur Brown also performs in the film. You’re probably expecting some silly, psychedelic curiosity (ooh, Pink Floyd and Arthur Brown!), but this film’s goals are surprisingly highbrow. The script’s dark, surreal satire is more likely to recall Camus, Orwell and Kafka than Timothy Leary. The heart of the tale involves a world where, similar to jury duty, people are called away to serve on philosophical committees for varying lengths of time. (One experienced participant remembers that his past group simply had to decide which of five oranges was the roundest.) Along the way, some vaguely drawn ideas about non-conformity and the individual’s place in society dart in and out of the frame. The film’s short duration doesn’t allow such themes to be fleshed out, but perhaps it’s just as well. Note that the lead character (credited only as “Central Figure”) is portrayed by Paul Jones, the ex-Manfred Mann singer who starred in the equally bleak, rock-star satire “Privilege” around the same time. The Pink Floyd aspect is minimal (some organ-led noodlings such as heard on Ummagumma and More), but you do get an outrageous, onscreen performance from Brown, complete with flaming helmet.
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Its lack of success can perhaps be put down to its subject matter and fluffy hippy-isms seeming antiquated as the seventies dawned, but it’s still one of the finest pop examples of the psychedelic genre. Penned by John Carter and Russ Alquist . . . it appears to be a ballad on the subject of materialism backed with shimmering effects, gut-thudding, plunging basslines, and Eastern-styled instrumentation. For all that, at no point does it seem like a cheap novelty item, nor over-the-top – it’s just a marvellous piece of songwriting and production which earworms you immediately after the first listen.
Bassist Chris Randall recalls that “[w]e didn’t do all that many live gigs but spent out time writing stuff, being silly and worrying our parents almost to death.” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited)
Band members Steve Gould and Andrew Curtis went on to prog band Rare Bird.
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Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
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23 Daves delves further into the song and the Answers:
There seems to be a misconception in some circles that the minimal, wiry, angular, paranoid rush of a noise frequently associated with amphetamines only occurred when punk broke. . . . “Just A Fear” is, it has to be said, a startlingly forward-thinking single, combining many of the kind of minimalist, dischordant structures and production techniques post-punk would utilise many years later. The skeletal, persistent main riff here could just as easily grace an early Fall single, and whilst the track does occasionally find its way back on to the main roads of convention at points, it’s still as uncommercial as sixties beat pop ever got. [I]ts astonishing this ever got released at the time. The Answers only released two singles, both this and “That’s What You’re Doing To Me”, before their guitarist Tony Hill was poached by cult psychedelic legends The Misunderstood.
The Answers from South Shields in the North East of England . . . . Tony Hill . . . left The Answers to join the definitive line-up of psychedelic legends the Misunderstood and after that formed heavy progsters High Tide. J. Vincent Edwards went solo after the band split, appeared in the London production of Hair, and later went on to be a successful songwriter and producer.
J. Vincent Edwards himself says that: “IT WAS GREAT FUN BEING PART OF THE ANSWERS WE LEFT SOUTH SHIELDS FOR FRANCE PLAYING ON US ARMY BASES FOR 3 YEARS AND BACKING A FEW FRENCH SINGERS IN THE STUDIO LOVE AND PEACE VINNY” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfdV22pyru8). Oh, and 67 Supernaut says “Wow! Far Out Man. Great Song Man. Really Crankin This one Up!” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfdV22pyru8)
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. 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.
Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 