The Beach Boys (in watercolor…)

Listen – The Beach Boys – Wake the World – MP3

Listen – The Beach Boys – Passing By – MP3

Greetings all, and welcome to another week of fun and games here at Iron Leg.

The tunes I bring you today is the example of digging a little deeper into a subject that I had unjustly neglected and discovering something revelatory (at least for me).
I’ve discussed my rediscovery and growing appreciation for the music of Brian Wilson in this space a couple of times over the years
Though I always dug the Beach Boys – having worn down a copy of ‘Endless Summer’  as an adolescent, when I got older, and started to collect and study records in earnest, I began to run into a particular species of collector/aficionado, i.e. the Brian Wilson fanatic. These were the people who considered Wilson THE genius of 1960s music, placed up and above the Beatles, which to me was an unforgivable sin. Despite years of reconsideration, it still is, but I’ve come a lot closer to understanding their point of view.
Last summer, in effort to learn a little bit more about Wilson’s work during the Beach Boys era, especially ‘Pet Sounds’ and beyond I picked up ‘Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson’ by Peter Ames Carlin. The book was enlightening, especially in regard to the ever-widening gap between Brian Wilson, the rest of the Beach Boys, and the creative contributions to the band’s sound from both sides of that particular coin. ‘Catch a Wave…’ did nothing to dispel my already low opinion of Mike Love, but it did flesh out my understanding of Brian’s creative life, especially in contrast to his growing psychological problems.
Perhaps the most important effect the book had on my Beach Boys fandom was the introduction (to my ears) of the group’s post-Smile recordings, specifically the ‘Friends’ LP. When I started to read about the record, I headed over to iTunes and picked up the two-fer of ‘Friends’ and 1969’s ‘20/20’. From almost the first note it was obvious to me that I had been missing out on something special, and a few more notes down the line I became aware that a couple of later bands that I dig a lot had spent a lot of time listening to it as well.
‘Friends’ came along at a time when Wilson was becoming untethered, due to both psychological deterioration and the reaction, critical and popular, to what he (and henceforth many others) considered his greatest work. One need only listen to the re-creation of ‘Smile’ to understand how devastating it must have been to have the project fall apart. By the time the band started recording ‘Friends’ in 1968, Mike Love had hopped on the transcendental meditation bandwagon – it shows up in a couple of ‘Friends’ songs, specifically ‘Transcendental Meditation’ (duh..) – and as Brian began to lose hold (of both himself and the band’s music), his fellow Beach Boys started to take more responsibility. Brian only sings lead on four of the album’s twelve songs, with brothers Carl and Dennis, as well as Al Jardine and Mike Love covering the rest. Though Brian is credited with co-writing all but one song on ‘Friends’, the composer credits seem to get longer and longer with every song, including all the other members of the band, and in some instances a number of outsiders.
I was tempted to post a number of songs from the album today, but I figured if you like what you hear you should get yourself a copy of ‘Friends’, since it’s quite literally a lost classic. It’s not well known outside of hardcore Beach Boys fans and didn’t produce a single hit. This isn’t surprising, since there aren’t many songs on it that don’t reflect the band’s descent into SoCal hippiedom. It’s a kinder, gentler Beach Boys you hear on ‘Friends’, with Brian’s Spectorian bombast mostly gone, replaced by the sweet sound of inner reflection. The album is filled with beautiful melodies, and in one instance an amazing, unlikely detour into dissonance (oddly enough on ‘Transcendental Meditation’).
The tunes I bring you today are my favorites on the album, for a number of reasons, first and foremost that they pulled back the curtain on the influence this particular album had on a couple of my favorite modern pop bands, the Sneetches (a group I consider to be the finest pop band of the 80s and 90s) and Jellyfish.
In much the same way my Georgie Fame fandom was forever altered the first time I heard Mose Allison – or in any similar case – when I heard ‘Wake the World’ and ‘Passing By’ for the first time, it was immediately obvious that the Beach Boys had provided bits and pieces of sonic vocabulary employed by both of the aforementioned bands. This is not to suggest that either of those groups had cribbed anything of substance from either ‘Friends’ in general or these two songs specifically, but rather that it was obvious that they had probably heard both and come away from them affected as deeply (or moreso) than I had.
‘Wake the World’ is the second shortest song on ‘Friends’ (‘Meant for You’ is only 40 seconds long), clocking it at just over a minute and a half, but it’s a sweet bit of pop perfection. It features Brian and Carl sharing the lead vocal over a bed of piano, organ and strings, eventually joined in the chorus by a jolly tuba. ‘Friends’ is a very short album, the whole affair running just about 25 minutes, but it’s a great example of economy, packed to the rafters with great hooks and performances, featuring lots of perfectly honed songs. It’s relatively ambitious, but on a much smaller scale than an album like ‘Pet Sounds’. ‘Passing By’ is largely instrumental, though it does feature wordless vocalization by Brian and Al Jardine.
Like I said, if you haven’t heard ‘Friends’ in its entirety, do yourself a favor and grab yourself a copy asap.

Peace

Larry

PS In case you were wondering, my vinyl copy is a weird ‘record club’ edition (another ‘two-fer’) and I have no idea how ‘Friends’, which was released on Capitol, ended up on Reprise

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a great track by Booker T & the MGs.

Paul Williams

Listen – Paul Williams – Trust – MP3

Listen – Paul Williams – Someday Man – MP3

Greetings all.

Hows about we close out the week with something on the soft side?
If you’re anywhere near my age (that would be all of forty and seven years) your recollection of Paul Williams would likely be filled with images of the diminutive singer, songwriter and actor alongside either the Muppets or Burt Reynolds. Williams was for a few years all but omnipresent both in movies, and on TV as a game show and variety fixture.
During that period I was certainly aware of Williams’ accomplishments as a songwriter. He wrote (or co-wrote) numerous Top 10 hits for artists like the Carpenters (Rainy Days and Mondays, We’ve Only Just Begun), Three Dog Night (Just An Old Fashioned Love Song) Helen Reddy (You And Me Against The World) and of course Kermit the Frog (the Rainbow Connection).
It was only in the last ten years, as my interest in soft rock/sunshine pop increased, so did my awareness of the earlier works of Paul Williams.
If you’ve followed the goings on here at Iron Leg you will already have heard a couple of cuts by Williams first band, the Holy Mackerel*, who’s sole album is something of a lost classic of late 60s LA pop.
During that period Williams was collaborating with folks like Biff Rose (with whom he wrote ‘Fill Your Heart’, recorded by both Tiny Tim and David Bowie) and Roger Nichols (of The Small Circle of Friends). Williams and Nichols cowrote a number of great songs (like the Carpenters’ numbers above), two of which are today’s selections.
If I may digress for a moment, one specific reason for the growth of my interest in Williams first fell into my ears more than 20 years ago, that being a song entitled ‘Trust’ as recorded by the Peppermint Trolley Company. I picked up their album back in the day, mainly because it looked like the kind of 1960s pop obscurity I thrived on. Once I got the record home that proved to be a good call. Though most of the album is nice enough, the song ‘Trust’ really made an impression. Packed from end to end with pure pop hooks it impressed me immediately as a song that should have been a huge hit.
‘Trust’ became a featured number on my mix tapes in ensuing years, and it was only in the last five years or so, when I scored the CD reissue of the Small Circle of Friends LP, and heard their version of the song (and did a little bit of searching on the interwebs) that I discovered that the ‘Williams’ credited with co-writing the song was in fact Paul Williams.
It wasn’t long after that that I dug up copies of the Holy Mackerel LP, and Williams first solo effort (from which both of today’s songs originated) ‘Someday Man’.
It may have something to do with what was on the radio when my ears (and musical taste) began to mature, but I have a huge weakness for late 60s/early 70s pop. Paul Williams ‘Someday Man’ isn’t just a lost classic of that era, it is one of its finest albums, period.
There are those that would take issue with Williams as performer, but I’ve always found him engaging as a vocalist. ‘Someday Man’ – every one of its songs co-written by Williams and Roger Nichols – features a who’s who of west coast studio heads, with arrangements by Perry Botkin Jr and Chad Stuart. The title song actually had a life before this album, having been recorded by the Monkees in 1969.
Williams recording of ‘Trust’ is to my ears the finest of the three versions, with the expansive arrangement that the song deserves.
Williams recordings of these songs are layered with sophisticated pop hooks, arrangements which are lush but not overbearing and a vibe that brings the era into musical focus. Williams and Nichols were not only a part of that specific period in time, their music went a long way to defining that very sound.
As I’ve said before, if you’re in a garage fuzz bag, these may not be the sounds that turn you on, but if like myself you are a devotee of pure pop, dig yourself some Paul Williams.
See you on Monday.

Peace

Larry

*Another member of the Holy Mackerel was Paul’s brother Mentor, himself a songwriter, who penned ‘Drift Away’ which was a huge hit for Dobie Gray.

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a hot one by Marvin Gaye.

Listen – Marve and the Tinnon Brothers – I’m a Loser – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the beginning of the week finds you well.
If you are a reader of both Iron Leg and Funky16Corners, make sure to reset your links to reflect the new location for the latter, that being www.funky16corners.com .
The old version(s) of the Funky16Corners blog will soon be closed down for good, so get those changes in now before we recede even further into the interwebs.
The tune I bring you today is something I picked up at a record show years ago, and despite much effort on my part has resisted further discovery.
By that I mean, that no amount of creative Googling has turned up anything of substance on Marve and the Tinnon Brothers. I have seen references that indicate that M.O.C. records was a subsidiary of the storied Hi label, but aside from that, nothing.
I originally picked up this 45 in the hopes that it might be funky, on account of the fact that I already had a copy of Seleno Clarke’s Hammond funker ‘Soulful Drop’ in my record box, but when I got the 45 home, what I actually heard emitting from the grooves was what sounded like a longhaired white band, a la Creedence or one of their ilk getting down in the style of so many bands after the decline of the garage punk years. There’s a bluesy edge, a little choogling (apologies to Mr. Fogerty), some harmonica, some guitar that sounds like it’s being piped through a Leslie speaker and lots of hearty, he-man vocals (I actually dig the singer a lot), but little else to indicate who these people were.
I did find a discography for the M.O.C. label, which ran from 1962 into the early 70s, but I’ll be damned if I recognize any of the artists.
If anyone knows something about Marve, the Tinnon Brothers or both, please to drop me a line.
Until then

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a live mix of Hammond organ burners.

Iron Leg Digital Trip #31 – Drugs, Love and Pot

Download 75MB ZIP File-

Greetings all.
The new week is upon us, and thanks to a little bit of creative time management (part of the Funky16Corners/Iron Leg Ergo-system, in which gaps in the schedule, much like you see when you try to defrag your hard drive, are identified and filled appropriately with blog-related activity, like writing and vinyl digi-ma-tization) the new edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip has arrived.

But first, a programming note…The Funky16Corners blog (aka the mothership) has moved to http://funky16corners.lunarpages.net (www.funky16corners.com should work as well) and, should you wish to read it, you should adjust your linkage appropriately.

Not to get too deep into the process, but as has been discussed before (hither and yon) the mix process has a couple of different MO’s. There are the high-concept, “theme” mixes, in which a very specific topic is addressed musically, in an attempt to put a finer point on something. Then, there are the cumulative mixes, in which, over the course of a few months (or more), as I go through stacks of records, I put things aside in their own little corner of the hard drive that seem to have an affinity, i.e. garagey, poppy, or psychey things, and when a suitable number of them have amassed, a mix is assembled for your (and my) delectation.
Iron Leg Digital Trip #31 is one of those.
The vibe here is a little bit of that late 60s, long hair, pot smoke, blacklight poster, late-night haze, in which the cumulative effects of intoxication have peaked, plateaued and are just about to slide downward into that space where fatigue begins to creep up on you. You know that you’re going to have to succumb to sleep eventually, but you’d much rather feed your head some more sounds, mostly psychedelic, some with an introspective folky vibe, a few with a slightly more confrontational, brain stretching thing, like your brain is fighting back, asking to have a little bit more fun before it puts up the “closed” sign and turns out the lights.
Am I making any sense here? No. Good.
That said, while the elements of this mix may not at first seem to fit together, sit yourself down, slap on the headphones and give it a listen. I think you’ll find that all the right nerve centers start to fire, and maybe some of the old ones, long shuttered and dark, begin to warm up again.
Things get started (and interrupted here and there) with an odd bit of proto-Moog action from the enigmatic Van Dyke Parks. The ‘Music for the Ice Capades’ appeared on an old Warner Brothers sampler, and I’m not sure if they ever saw release anywhere else. They are nothing if not whimsical (like so much of VDPs oeuvre) yet, like most early synthesizer experiments manage also to qualify as psychedelic.
The Kaleidoscope are one of my fave west coast 60s bands, and have appeared in this space before. ‘Keep Your Mind Open’, from their debut LP is probably their most conventionally trippy track.
The Wizards from Kansas may not have been actual wizards (not sure what professional organization issues credentials in that regard) but they did indeed hail from the gateway to Oz. Their version of ‘High Flying Bird’ is a great window into their prairie take on the SanFran sound.
We dropped some Mighty Baby last week in memory of their late bassist Mike Evans. ‘A Friend You Know But Never See’ is another groovy track from their first album.
I’ve been a Bert Jansch fan for a long, long time. I forget where I first heard of him, but I suspect it was somehow related to my early Richard Thompson/Fairport mania. Jansch, as a solo act and as part of Pentangle orbited in the same UK galaxy as Thompson and his mates. Interestingly, all I knew of Jansch for years were his purely acoustic works, many of them in a more traditionalist bent. I was surprised later on when I discovered that he created some more contemporary sounding things. ‘Poison’ is one of those.
Would it surprise you to find out that the Poppy Family (with ‘Shadows on My Wall’) included in its ranks none other than Terry Jacks, the man who attacked the ears of me and my ilk with ‘Seasons in the Sun’ back in the early 70s? It should…
Despite the damage to his rep caused by duff stuff like ‘Abracadabra’, those who know will tell you that early on, Steve Miller made himself a couple of very nice, psyched out albums. ‘My Friend’ is from his 1968 ‘Sailor’ LP, and was co-written by, and features guitar by none other than Boz Scaggs. Dig the vaguely Link Wray/surf vibe of the opening.
If the Yardbirds ‘White Summer’ sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because guitarist Jimmy Page – never one to let the fact that someone else created something stand in the way of taking credit for it himself – borrowed it from the traditional ‘She Moves Through the Fair’ (also recorded under its original title by Fairport Convention).
Fever Tree were one of the cooler Texas psyche bands not related to the International Artists stable. They hailed from Houston and recorded for Uni and Ampex between 1968 and 1970. ‘Death is the Dancer’, which opens with a tip of the hat to the civil rights anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’ sails off into the trippy, suite-like distance with heavy guitars, harpsichord, changes in time signature and vocals that sound like they could have been lifted from a Music Machine album.
The Litter were a Minnesota band that, in addition to creating the garage stunner ‘Action Woman’ recorded a couple of albums (for regional and national labels) that took their garage roots (which included a love for the sounds of the UK) and turned them into something heavier. Their version of the Burt Bacharach classic ‘My Little Red Book’ (made famous by Arthur Lee and Love and Manfred Mann) comes from the 1969 album for ABC/Probe.
The Standells’ ‘Medication’ is one of the earlier tracks in this mix (1966) but is it undeniably psychedelic. It has strong ties to the Standells garage sound, but the inference in the title cannot be denied.
Say what you want about the later recording of Jethro Tull (a major part of my youth) but you really must go back and listen to their first two albums (‘This Was’ 1968 and ‘Stand Up’ 1969) which are truly amazing. Tull combined a fascination with the blues (check their cover of Dr. Ross’ ‘Cats Squirrel’) with serious late-60s UK freakism. ‘Fat Man’, from ‘Stand Up’ blends Ian Anderson’s vocals and flute with a truckload of Middle Eastern-y percussion, with the djoumbek and the finger cymbals and what-not, to the point where you half expect a belly dancer to take the stage. Very groovy indeed.
Clear Light were one of the lesser lights (pun intended) of west coast psychedelia, mainly notable for including in its ranks drummer Dallas Taylor (later of CSNY) and ubiquitous 70s character actor Cliff de Young. ‘Think Again’ is a cool one, and indicative of the sound of a band named after a variety of LSD.
Speaking of International Artists, one of the more successful bands on the label, and one of the most conventional (i.e. falling outside of the influence of Roky and the Elevators) was Bubble Puppy. They had a hit with ‘Hot Smoke and Sassafras’ in 1969 and the excellent ‘Lonely’ appeared on that record’s flipside.
The next cut is something unusual by one of my fave (misunderstood) bands, the Grateful Dead. When I picked up the aforementioned Warner Brothers sampler I was surprised to hear a very different version of 1968s ‘Doin’ that Rag’. The original version appeared on the group’s 1969 LP ‘Aoxomoxoa’. This take is completely different from the LP version, and I don’t know if it ever appeared anywhere else in this form.
‘Karmic Dream Sequence’ is yet another bit of goodness from Curt Boettcher and the Millennium.
This edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip closes out with a track by a band that I know very little about, Mephistopheles. I do know that ‘Take a Jet’ appeared on their 1969 LP for Reprise, and that guitarist Fred Tackett later joined Little Feat.
I hope you dig this mix, and I’ll be back next week with some more cool stuff.

Peace
Larry

PS Make sure to head over to the new home of the Funky16Corners blog for some Northern Soul.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

A very young – pre-Action – Mike Evans

The Action – Mike Evans second from left…

Mighty Baby looking kinda patchouli-y….

Listen -Mighty Baby – Egyptian Tomb – MP3

Listen -Mighty Baby – House Without Windows – MP3

Listen -Mighty Baby – Same Way To the Sun – MP3

Greetings all.

A couple of days back a reader forwarded me the sad news that bassist Mike Evans,a founding member of both the Action and Mighty Baby had passed away.
I’ve mentioned it here at Iron Leg and over at Funky16Corners numerous times, but allow to reiterate the importance of the Action to my musical education. Not only did the mightiest of Mod bands record some of the finest singles of the 60s (produced by no less a light than George Martin) but they carried the mod love for American soul music very far, covering number by (and introducing me and my mod/garage cohorts to) a variety of soul classics.
Their anthemic version of the Marvelettes ‘I’ll Keep On Holding On’ is one of the greatest soul covers ever committed to wax, and their covers of Martha and the Vandella’s ‘In My Lonely Room’ and Bob and Earl’s ‘Harlem Shuffle’ were killer as well.
As the 60s moved on and their mod vibe morphed into something much more psychedelic, Evans and a few of his fellow Actioners went on to become Mighty Baby. Their debut album was a truly inspired classic, mixing psychedelia (with a San Fran twist) with a progressive vibe.
I’ve posted cuts from that album in this space before, and I’ll add a third today, in memory of Mr. Evans.
Below is a repost of my original write-up of Mighty Baby’s ‘Egyptian Tomb’ from September of last year.
I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll be back on Monday.
Peace
Larry

Originally posted 9/2009:

The weekend is hovering like a cobra, ready to strike, so like a swami of the mystical east, I will now attempt to soothe it with some tunage, so that we may all ascend to the next level, with happy ears and a smile on our faces (individual smiles, or maybe one big collective one, I’m not sure).
The tune I bring you today was passed along to me many years ago by my man Mr. Luther as (if memory serves) a birthday gift, and what a gift it was.
Then, the connective tissue at work was the fact that a number of members of Mighty Baby had also done time in one of the greatest of the Mod bands, the Action. I had heard of Mighty Baby, and has seen the album cover in a coffee table book, but was woefully unfamiliar with their music.
When I got home, and slid the CD into the player and slapped on the headphones I was – to rehash an old cliché – blown the fuck away.
The first song on the album (and the CD, natch) is the tune I bring you today, ‘Egyptian Tomb’.
When ‘Egyptian Tomb’ started flowing from the phones into the earholes, my head began to spin.
Though I spent a fair amount of time digging the fuzz, the mod beat and the lo-fi, look sharpery of the mid-80s retro scene, I was a couple of years older than many of my compadres and as a result had spent a goodly amount of time, previous to those years ingesting a somewhat higher grade of freaky post-psychedelic progressive-ness, perhaps a little too caftan and long bearded for the Beatle-booted, mop tops of ’86.
Back in the day, during the waning moments of my Beatles obsession, when I was playing in actual (non fuzz-oriented) garage bands, and partaking in the leafy goodness of the cannibis sativa, my buddies and I tended to shovel into our ears as much of the dreamy prog-type stuff as possible. This included everything from Traffic to Yes, to King Crimson to whatever records we could find with long, dreamy songs that would – how do they say? – facilitate the dreamier effects of the intoxicants at hand.
As my tastes became punkier, and I spent more time digging on the Sonics and the Gonn, it wasn’t that I gave up on the vibe, as it were, just that I replaced ‘The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys’ with stuff like ‘Slip Inside This House’ and ‘Vacuum Cleaner’, drilling deeper into obscurity.
When I was handed the Mighty Baby CD, and informed of the Action connection (the disc also contained some very cool unreleased psychedelic Action tracks) I assumed that what I was going to hear was also stylistically Action-like.
When I actually heard the album, I was stunned at how un-Action-y Mighty Baby was, and how close they were to the things I’d been listening to at the end of my teenage years.
‘Egyptian Tomb’ is in many ways the perfect opening track for Mighty Baby’s debut album because in its roughly five and a half minutes it manages to act as a statement of purpose and style for the entire record. It is in turns spacey, jazzy, tuneful and trippy in a way that doesn’t hew to closely to any of those styles but manages to mix them all into something completely new. Though there was a taste of Traffic in there, there was also bits of California mellowness, as well as traces of the UK psyche underground that was at that time mutating into something much looser (since you could spread out more in a caftan than in a tightly tailored, ruffled, satin dandy-suit).
The grooviest thing of all about Mighty Baby, is that they managed to stitch together everything that was cool about that transitional era while simultaneously dispensing with everything that sucked about it. Mighty Baby were the prog band for people that have learned to despise the mewling of once groovy musicians who felt it necessary come 1969 to work out their “classical training” 25 minutes at a time while wrapped in a sequined cape (I’m looking at you Rick Wakeman…).
It was only earlier this year that I got my mitts on an original copy of the Mighty Baby album, which was actually one of two records released on an obscure, short-lived subsidiary of Chess Records called Head (check out that crazy label). Give this song a listen, and if you dig it, get yourself a copy of the CD, on account of it’s really, really good.
That is all.
Have a great weekend.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some groovy soul jazz

The New Breed – Tim Schmidt on the right…

Listen – The New Breed – Want Ad Reader – MP3

Greetings all.

Welcome to another week at Iron Leg.
The tune I bring you today is – like so many other selections herein – something I’d known for years (decades) and only managed to get an original of relatively recently.
The HBR label (those initials standing for Hanna-Barbera Records, yes, the same folks that brought you the Flintstones) is one of the more interesting one for collectors. They released all kinds of stuff, from soul (the Packers, Scatman Crothers, Jean King) , to pop (Laurie Johnson Orchestra) to a surprising amount of hard edged garage punk (Guilloteens, Unrelated Segments, Five Americans, and the ultra-rare HBR issue of ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators).
All the years I’ve been digging have proven one thing, that being that the more obvious titles turn up with a much greater frequency than the coolest stuff, which could probably be said about any record label. The good thing is, that even with that part of the equation in place, the HBR discography was so limited, and the label so distinctive and easy to spot, than even the run of the mill discovery tends to be fairly interesting.
This past summer, during one of the Asbury Lanes record/garage sale, while flipping through a box of one-dollar 45s, I happened upon the HBR label, and instead of yet another busted Tidal Waves 45 I pulled out a mint copy of the New Breed’s ‘Want Ad Reader’.
I can’t recall the exact comp I heard it on, but I can say without question that I first encountered this song back in the garage/mod days of the mid-80s. I always dug the nascent power pop cum garage vibe of the song, and my historian/digger instincts were fired up when I discovered that one of the members of the New Breed was none other than Timothy B. Schmidt, who went on to join both Poco and the Eagles.
The New Breed were a product of the greater Bay Area in California (actually hailing from Sacramento), and the ‘Want Ad Reader’ 45 was originally released locally on the World United label. I don’t know exactly how they were picked up by HBR, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was another one of those regional success stories that piqued the interest of a nationally distributed label.
‘Want Ad Reader’ is a dynamite bit of fast-moving, fuzzed out, yet bright pop. The flipside ‘One More For the Good Guys’ – which was included in Iron Leg Digital Trip #26 – is a really surprising stylistic switch, sounding more like something from the stage of a San Fran ballroom than anything remotely garagey.
I hope you dig the record, and I’ll be back later in the week with something groovy.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a soul jazz vibes mix.

Herman’s Hermits as drawn by Frank Frazetta

Listen – Herman’s Hermits – The Man With the Cigar – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the end of this cold, cold week finds you well.
The tune I bring you today is an old, old favorite, something that I discovered quite by chance.
Many years ago, back in the garage/mod days, I happened to have picked up a couple of Herman’s Hermits 45s at a record show. Though the musical selections posted herein might not lead you to believe that I would be a fan of Mr. Noone and his friends, it pays to remember that alongside dreck like ‘Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’, the Hermits were, like so many of their British Invasion contemporaries, beneficiaries of some of the finest songwriting available. A quick look at an HH greatest hits collection reveals the handiwork of Graham Gouldman, PF Sloan and Steve Barri, Goffin/King, Carter/Lewis and others.
I picked up one of the 45s in question in order to get the Barri/Sloan song ‘A Must To Avoid’. The 1965 Top 40 hit is one of the groups best moments, with ringing, folk-rock guitars, beat group harmonies and a very interesting melody (especially in the verse). When I got the record home, I flipped it over and saw a title I didn’t recognize, so I decided to give it a spin.
Good thing I did, because if I hadn’t we wouldn’t be here today, discussing ‘The Man With the Cigar’.
‘The Man With the Cigar’ is a haunting number that quickly became a fixture of my mix tapes, and remains a fave these 25 years later. I haven’t been able to find out much about the writers Larry Kusik and Barry Richards, nor have I been able to confirm whether or not this is the same song that appears on an early 45 by soul great Lou Courtney. In addition to the aforementioned b-side, ‘The Man With The Cigar’ also appeared on the album ‘Both Side of Herman’s Hermits’, which also includes a cover of ‘Bust Stop’ and a jacket illustration by none other than Frank Frazetta(!?!).
Either way, it’s a great record that ought to be better known, instead of languishing as an obscure Herman’s Hermits album track (and b-side).
Oddly enough, despite having pulled out the 45 some time back, specifically to digimatize it and post it here, it has become lost in the mighty sea of wax in my record room, so I bring you the song recorded from the LP (in which case you get the cool Frazetta picture, so it all balances out).
I hope you dig the song as much as I do, and I’ll be back on Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some Chitown funk.

The Fugs

Listen – The Fugs – Group Grope – MP3

Greetings all.

Last week I was wandering around the interwebs somewhat aimlessly and I happened upon the announcement for a benefit to help the ailing Tuli Kupferberg.
If that name is unknown (or only vaguely familiar) to you, allow me to mention the group of which he was a founding member, The Fugs.
Kupferberg, now an unbelievable 86 years old has suffered two strokes recently that have left him blind. There will be a concert for his benefit on January 22nd St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, featuring performances by Ed Sanders, Lou Reed, Philip Glass, Sonic Youth, John Zorn and others (further details below).
Back in the day, Kupferberg, and his fellow just-post-Beat poet Sanders (also known as the author of ‘Tales of Beatnik Glory’ and ‘The Family’) formed the Fugs as a kind of rock/poetry/performance art/provocation/general nuisance in Greenwich Village. They succeeded on all levels, crafting a number of cool albums, including a couple for the storied New York alternative label ESP-Disk, of which ‘The Fugs’ from 1966 was their second.
Though I certainly knew who the Fugs were, I didn’t actually hear any of their music until the late 80s, when I picked up their first two albums on CD. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since long-term ingestion of 60s/70s rockcrit spew seemed to indicate that the Fugs were punk (in the truest sense), offensive (though that is certainly a matter of perspective, since their lyrics wouldn’t raise many eyebrows today) and completely insane.
I had arrived at a time where I had investigated all the obvious 60s garage/psyche avenues and was peeking down every back alley I could find. When I took a turn down Fugs St I was pleasantly surprised to find it lined with many of the usual 1965/66 type sounds, whipped into a crazed meringue, closer in spirit to Little Richard than William S Burroughs.
The tune I bring you today, ‘Group Grope’ hails from that 1966 album and sounds like Sanders and Kupferberg hijacked Dylan’s ‘Highway 61’ band and stuffed them full of LSD. The vocalists spend just over three and a half minutes going buck wild over a foundation of guitar, electric piano, bass and drums.
It’s all about…

“Dope, peace, magic gods in the tree trunks and GROUP GROPE BAY-BEEEE!!!!”

…as well as other, similar sentiments.
It’s a great sound, and if it were just a little stoopid-er and a little younger and a little less urban it might pass for garage punk.
If you dig it – or were hopefully already hep to the Fugs – and you’re in the area, go to that benefit and hobnob with some of the giants of New York underground history, and help Tuli pay his medical bills. Surely that man that helped created something as solid as ‘Group Grope’ deserves a little peace in his golden years.
I hope you dig the song, and I’ll be back later in the week.

Peace

Larry

A Concert for Tuli Kupferberg
January 22 – St. Ann’s Warehouse
Lou Reed, Philip Glass, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, John Kruth; Ed Sanders, Mr. Kupferberg’s fellow Fug; and Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders
Tickets are $75 to $125 and are available at stannswarehouse.org or (718) 254.8779.

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some upbeat southern soul.

The Hangmen

Listen – The Hangmen – Faces – MP3

Greetings all.

The end of another week is upon us, and I thought I would dip into the archive and pull out a little bit of the fuzzy, garagey, good stuff, i.e. a cut by Washington, DC-area killers the Hangmen.
I first heard the Hangmen back in the 80s, during my garage/mod days when I was lucky enough to score a copy of their Monument LP at a dying record store in Red Bank, NJ. It was a banner day (for me, not the record store) because after some concentrated digging I came up with a handful of excellent, fairly rare (some rarer than others) garage, pop and psychedelic LPs, and when I got up to the cash register, discovered much to my delight that everything in the store – by virtue of its oncoming dissolution – was selling at half the sticker price.
Barely able to conceal my glee, I paid the now greatly reduced price and took my records home so that I might drop the needle and wallow in the goodness.
Not long after that I was rapping with some of my equally fizzed out compadres, mentioning that I had found a copy of the Hangmen LP, and was digging the song ‘What a Girl Can’t Do’. Much to my dismay I was informed in short order that the version on the LP was what – years later – my funk and soul brethren would refer to as ‘weaksauce’, and that if I were in search of the real thing, I ought to find myself a copy of the 45 which contained a much cooler version of said song.
Well my friends, I never did score that particular 45, but last summer, while plowing through a bunch of one-dollar 45s at a local record show, I was lucky enough to find another of the group’s singles, that being today’s selection ‘Faces’.
Now, I won’t go into the Hangmen’s long and convoluted history here, but I will send you over to the excellent and comprehensive Garage Hangover entry on the group, featuring a look at their early incarnation as the Reekers, the group that recorded the superior version of ‘What a Girl Can’t Do’ that was eventually issued on 45 under the Hangmen name.
What I will do is tell you that ‘Faces’ is a killer in its own right, with some fuzz, some jangle and lots of that heart, delicious garage punk flavor. The vocals are snotty, in that post-Dylan, post-Jagger, white-boy bluesman bouillabaisse that you all know and love so well, and the tempo is right for you to slip on your Cuban heels, shake your Prince Valiant cut and spill your beer (not necessarily in that order).
It is indeed a groover, and just the kind of record you might want to get your weekend started.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a remembrance of the great vibraphonist Freddie McCoy.

Asylum Choir – Marc Benno and Leon Russell

Listen – Asylum Choir – Welcome to Hollywood – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the dawning of both a new week and new year find you all well.
I spent New Years Eve amongst with my wife, kids and in-laws up in frosty upstate New York, playing Go Fish, drinking ginger ale and going to bed before midnight.
Last night, after the children had retired the wife and I were having a discussion about the pros and cons of New Years Eve as a celebratory milestone, eventually agreeing that aside from hanging with the family, we had both endured too many disappointing parties (as a couple, and before we were together) to get revved up about the night. It just seems that outside of an opportunity for binge drinking and an ugly peek into the mass psychology of crowds, the night is better spent amongst those you love.
That said, the tune I bring you today is a look at an early side of the mighty Leon Russell, one of my all time favorites, who I have rhapsodized about in this space before.
Russell came west from Oklahoma in the early 60s, eventually carving himself out a place as an in-demand session player (and member of the Shindogs) in the studios of Los Angeles (including those of Phil Spector) as a keyboardist and arranger.
He teamed up with guitarist/bassist Marc Benno in 1967 to form the band Asylum Choir, and their debut album ‘Look Inside the Asylum Choir’ was released on the Smash label the following year.
The tune I bring you today was the lead-off track from that album. ‘Welcome To Hollywood’ has hints of Russell’s rootsy heart (the guitar and piano could have come off of one of his Shelter LPs), but is marked by psychedelic flourishes. His easily recognizable voice is front and center, but where his later work would be enveloped in waves of Americana, the Asylum Choir tracks feature all manner of timely baroque filigree, including phasing, ringing Beatle-esque trumpets and the like.
‘Welcome To Hollywood’ is a typically jaundiced look at the mean streets that awaited those who were drawn west (but a little further south) during the Summer of Love. It’s a groovy look (listen?) to the world of Leon Russell just prior to his hirsute escalation into rock’s first rank alongside the various and sundry Cocker/Delaney/Bonnie/Clapton conglomerations, and his own amazing solo work.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.

NOTE: I just updated my post about Steff’s ‘Where Did She Go’ thanks to some info from someone close to the story.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some sweet Brazilian jazz!

Iron Leg Digital Trip #30 – The Year In Vintage Pop 2009

Download 86MB ZIP File-

Greetings all.
It’s that time again, with the current 365 day cycle expiring and a new set of 24-hour segments is on its way.
The family and I are going to hit the road for a little bit of year-end visiting with the relatives, so after posting this mix I will be refraining from blogging until the beginning of next week/year.
As a result, I have dipped back into the Iron Leg archives (at least that segment that falls between January 2009 and today) and selected about an hour’s worth of my favorites as something of a refresher course in the whole Iron Leg “thing”.
There’s all kinds of stuff here, from sunshine pop, film music, garage punk and psychedelia to pure pop.
A look at the playlist above reveals that this has been another groovy year at Iron Leg, and while not everyone (besides myself) is going to dig everything in this mix, there’s certainly something there for everyone to dig (if you get what I’m saying, and I think that you do).
If you seek more information on any of the above listed tracks, you need only dip into the Google-verse, placing both Iron Leg, and the name of the artist in quotes, and search away. You could also start with this post and then click on the ”next page” link at the bottom of the page and scroll backwards through the year, entering a low-powered intertubes time machine of sorts.
I hope you dig the mix, and that the previous years posts have been to your musical and historical edification.
I’ll be back next week with some more groovies.
Happy New Year.

Peace
Larry

NOTE: The Iron Leg Digital Trip Podcast Archive (see link in sidebar) has been brought up to date, with all twenty nine previous mixes listed.

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a special year-end funk 45 mix!

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Free Design

It’s actually the other side of this 45, which I didn’t feel like digging for,
but you get the idea, right?

Listen – Free Design – The Proper Ornaments – MP3

Greetings all.
As previously stated, Christmas is upon us once again, and I wouldn’t be a fit member of the bloggerati were I not to provide something seasonal for your delectation.
I’ve gone into this many times before (here and at Funky16Corners) but to recap briefly, I’ve never been a big collector of holiday music, and as a result diving into the crates in search of same is rarely fruitful.
Sometimes – however – I get lucky and get myself a holiday record by accident, which is how I came upon today’s selection.
I’ve been a big fan of the Free Design since I first heard their music back in the 90s when the easy/sunshine pop savants over in Japan got wise to their particular brand of wonderfulness and started to rerelease their 60s and 70s albums.
If you’re not familiar with the Free Design sound, working with Easy maestro Enoch Light, the Dedrick brothers and sisters created a mix of intricate harmony singing and progressive pop that was ahead of (and outside of) its time when it was first released. It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that there are probably a lot of people today that wouldn’t cozy up to their sound, put off by its seeming naiveté and polished veneer. I am not one of them.
Enoch Light’s mini-empire of easy/space age pop was staffed with lots of talented musicians and singers, and while some of the output on his Command and Project 3 labels was in fact disposable, there is lots of gold in them thar hills for those willing to dig a little deeper.
I found today’s selection, ‘The Proper Ornaments’ when I picked it up on the flipside to the 45 for the Free Design’s best known song, ‘Kites are Fun’. The tune is a Christmas song, but it takes the Charlie Brown-ian tack of indicting the commercialism of the season. Check out the lyrics….

Ornaments of Life, ornaments of life
There’s your brand new car, sir, here’s your hat and gloves
There’s your pretty wife, sir, whom you almost love

There’s your color TV set and your impressive pad
There’s your little baby girl you’re almost glad you had
Such a pretty dress, miss, such a graceful walk
Bubbling femininity, authoritative talk
There’s your man he’s prominent; treats you like a queen
All your little secrets kept, your reputations clean
The proper ornaments of life.

Gotta have status
have a paid vacation,
have an intellectual education
ornaments of life
proper ornaments of life

fur coats, jewels and laces, bright red lipstick, big cars, money, tuxes and top hats
hide behind the mask of clothes and makeup: ornaments
There’s your brand new car, sir, here’s your hat and gloves
There’s your pretty wife, sir, whom you almost love
There’s your color TV set and your impressive pad
There’s your little baby girl you’re almost glad you had

What’s behind that countenance
What’s behind the lace,
What is in your mind and heart
Thats hidden by your face
Behind the ornaments in your life?

Not exactly a cup of warm yuletide cheer, is it?
The tune appeared on their debut LP (also called ‘Kites Are Fun’). You can pick up the Free Design’s best stuff in reissue, and their original albums are still not too hard to find (if you’re willing to dig).
I hope you like the song, and that – if you celebrate the holiday – you have a most excellent Christmas.
I’ll see you next week.

Peace
Larry

Head over to Funky16Corners for some soulful Christmas cheer…

Greetings all.
The Yuletide is upon us, and to get things going I’m going to bring back last years Christmas post/track, followed on Monday with something new for the holiday season. I would have been more proactive but I suffered through a root canal this morning.
I hope you dig the track and I’ll see you all next week.
Peace
Larry

Originally posted December 2008

Bob Seger (top left) & the Last Heard

Listen – Sock It To Me Santa – MP3

Greetings all.
I hope all is well on your end.
Today I bring you the very first Iron Leg Christmas post (hopefully the first of many).
Though this blog has a much smaller audience than Funky16Corners, I’m having a tremendous amount of fun working on it. Though soul and funk are the main focus of my collectors mania, my musical interests – accumulated over all my 45 years – are much broader.
As I’ve related in this space a bunch of times, during the mid-80’s I was pretty deeply involved in the garage/mod bag, both as an active (fanzines, bands) and passive (fan, collector) participant. It is the music I was digging through during that period (and before and after) that I cover here at Iron Leg.
One of the positive aspects of doing a music blog is that it kind of forces you to go back into your crates and dig, rediscovering and more importantly re-appreciating music that may not currently occupy the center stage. In that respect, Iron Leg definitely fits the bill.
If you’re a Funky16Corners reader, you’ll already know that I’ve never been a big collector of holiday music. Certainly someone that consumes music as voraciously as I do is bound to grab a couple of Christmas sides, but it has never been my focus.
I was originally going to post something quiet and meditative for Christmas, on account of that’s the kind of mood I find myself in these days.
However…
The bygone 60’s punk that still dwells within took over and I decided that we would all be better served with something from the kick-ass side of the menu.
In service of that notion, I bring you one of the punkiest Christmas records this side of the Sonics, Bob Seger & the Last Heard’s ‘Sock It To Me Santa’.
I’ve touched briefly on the dynamic pre-Night Moves career of Seger before (and will go even more in depth in the future). I don’t have the original 45 of this number (I ripped it from a 20 year old Euro bootleg of his Cameo 45s, but for those of you interested in the early Last Heard sides there are a few of them (including ‘Sock It To Me Santa’ on the recent Cameo-Parkway boxed set, which I believe is available via iTunes).
Here we see the 1966 model Seger, in which later pretensions to arena-rock-osity were preceded by just a touch of that Detroit suburban whiteboy James Brown wannabee-ism, which by the way predates a similar (though not Yuletide) sonic assault a year later by his fellow Motorcity rocker Mitch Ryder.
That all said, I ride for early Seger up through his Capitol years and ‘Sock It To Me Santa’ is a fine example.
I hope you dig it.
I have two more Iron Leg podcasts in the bag, as well as a large supply of individual bangers, so stick around kids. I won’t be posting again til up and around New Years Eve, so you all have yourselves an excellent holiday.
Peace
Larry

Les Reed

Listen – Les Reed – Man of Action – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the beginning of another new week on the sphere finds you well.
I had a busy weekend, traveling here and there, the opening ceremonies of Chanukah (during which much delicious pastrami and matzoh ball soup was consumed, including the mandatory half-sour pickles) and a quick getaway for the wife and I.
The tune I bring you today was a very recent acquisition, having been scooped up last week at the Allentown Record Show. Oddly enough it was pulled from a box of funk and soul 45s, and unless I’m missing a sampling hereof, this record fits neither of those categories.
I grabbed it – unheard – because I knew Les Reed from his soundtrack to ‘Girl on a Motorcycle’, and because the title ‘Man of Action’ was intriguing, and all that having been tallied, it was a cheapo, so I tossed it on the keeper stack and took it home with me.
Reed was a soundtrack/Easy/Library type cat who had a lot of success in the UK and elsewhere as a composer/arranger and recording artist, and is best known to diggers for the aforementioned OST. He got his start playing keyboards for none other than the John Barry Seven.
When I started digging up info on ‘Man of Action’ I was pleasantly surprised to see that in addition to being a cool bit of instro-pop, it was the longtime theme song for pirate radio station Radio Northsea International (anchored off the Dutch coast during the 70s).
Also cool is the fact that the jaunty pop melody is intersected twice by some groovy organ, which has a decidedly Hawkshaw-ian bent. I have not been able to confirm that the library master was indeed massaging the keys, but my ears suggest that he was.
If anyone knows for sure, drop me a line.
I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a new funk 45 mix!

Stone Country

Listen – Stone Country – Love Psalm – MP3

Greetings all.

This week I’d like to close things out with a record that is a very recent – and happy – discovery for me.
If you follow all things Iron Leg you’ll already be aware that I am a huge fan of the music coming out of Los Angeles in the mid-to-late 60s, especially the sounds that erupted as rockers started to weave a little country into the musical fabric. The Byrds, Gene Clark and the Gosdin Brothers, Dillards, Monkees (Yes, the Monkees), Buffalo Springfield, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Stone Poneys, Rick Nelson (again, YES Rick Nelson) etc etc on and on ad infinitum, or at least I wish it went on forever, so deep is my thirst for these sounds.
It was only very recently, during an extended bout of E-digging that I heard a sample of today’s selection by Stone Country. I have to be honest and tell you that before I came across this particular auction I had never even heard of Stone Country, which it turns out is a shame since the music they made is very groovy.
Founded in 1967 by Steve Young – who went on to a substantial solo career as a country rock pioneer – Stone Country recorded four 45s and an album for RCA before splitting up soon after. They also managed to make an appearance in one of my favorite bizarre movies of the 60s, ‘Skidoo’ (which if you haven’t seen, you simply must since it features Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, Carol Channing and a soundtrack by no less a light than Harry Nilsson).
The tune I bring you today is the top side of their third 45, written by bassist Dan Barry and songwriter Diane Hildebrand. ‘Love Psalm’ is the kind of record that nobody was making outside of LA IN 1967, a perfect mix of psychedelia, folk rock, lush production (the record was produced and arranged by Rick Jarrard and George Tipton who worked on Nilsson’s early albums) and pop sensibilities. There are touches of the Kaleidoscope (though not as far out), Gene Clark (not quite as countrified) and the great early sounds of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, all blended together into a perfect, almost flower power-ish mixture.
I really dig this record. Now I have to start looking for the album.

NOTE: Head over to Flower Bomb Songs for a very comprehensive post about Stone Country

I hope you dig it too, and I’ll see you all on Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some more Northern Soul.

Gary Puckett and the Union Gap

Listen – The Union Gap feat. Gary Puckett – Don’t Make Promises – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope everyone is well, and that you had a chance to check out the last edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip.
It was very interesting week here at the Leg, with comments posted by not one but two original members of the Millennium, Sandy Salisbury and Michael Fennelly. It’s an honor whenever an artist stops by to say hello, but especially so when it’s two members of one of my favorite bands.
The tune I bring you today is something I pulled from that big lot of 45s I won a while back. Normally I wouldn’t give a Gary Puckett and the Union Gap record a second look. Though Puckett had one of the great voices of late 60s pop, they’ve always been one of those bands that blended too easily into the wallpaper of oldies radio.
However, decades of digging have taught me a number of important record collector lessons, not the least of which is “turn the record over”. The flip sides of 45s are often a wellspring of hidden treasures, something I have often discovered after having a record languish in the crates for years.
This time out I just happened to have picked the 45 up with the b-side facing up and discovered that Puckett and the Union Gap had recorded a version of one of my all time favorite tunes, Tim Hardin’s ‘Don’t Make Promises’.
Naturally I had to give it a spin, and was pleasantly surprised when the Union Gap’s take on the song turned out to be pretty cool.
Appearing on the flipside of 1968’s mega-hit ‘Woman Woman’, this version of Hardin’s classic is taken at a brisk pace, with a horn section and a typically rich vocal by Puckett. It’s nothing profound or life-changing, just a quality performance of a great song.
I hope you dig it and I’ll be back later in the week with something groovy.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some drum heavy Northern Soul.

Iron Leg Digital Trip #29 – How To Pop!!!!

Download 73MB ZIP File-

Greetings all.
I hope the new week finds you all well.
The mix I bring you today is an assemblage of a wide variety of mid-to-late 60s pop, hailing from an area of the pop spectrum that is not (ironically) all that wide. Though there are contributions here from genuine, accepted past masters of the pop world (i.e. messrs Nilsson, Rhodes y los Turtles), many of the artists here (and I use the term loosely, to be explained forthwith) fall so far from what might be described as musical legitimacy as to be artificial (if not fraudulent).
As discussed in this space previously, concepts of artistic ‘realness’, especially in the 60s were especially flexible. Where many of the bands/performers included in this mix were ‘serious’, if marginalized by their obscurity, some are considered less so because they were presented as teen idol fodder (which should not necessarily tarnish the music they made), and others were little more than studio fabrications, the sounds they made produced by faceless professionals, their songs provided by equally faceless craftsmen/women.
The purpose of this mix – aside from obvious the obvious musical pleasures therein – is to illustrate how easily those lines are blurred with 40 years of time. To many people, a look at the playlist above will produce little or no recognition. To aficionados of lesser known pop, some of the names will ring more bells than others, but that doesn’t matter much either because when you ‘drill down’ below the surface of a lot of this stuff you discover that while some of the records are truly obscure (i.e. written, performed and produced by people lost to the ages), many of the others bear the marks of the involvement of names that are, or should be familiar.
Once you start deconstructing some of these records and drawing tangents between them you start to realize that a lot of those barriers we music snobs throw up between artists are as artificial as the lines on an old map, and the more you learn the more the lines need to be moved, or in some cases, erased.
The connective tissue in Iron Leg Digital Trip #29 is good pop songs. The vast majority of this stuff (just like most of what you hear any day on Iron Leg) comes from between 1966 and 1970, maybe the greatest era of pop music (in America or anywhere else) in which the sounds, no matter how crassly commercial showed the influence of the headiest artistic pretensions.
This little bouillabaisse de pop, in addition to the obvious and inescapable influence of the Beatles, has threads of psychedelia, soul running through it accented by bits of Tin Pan Alley fillagree.
The first tune in the mix is the flipside of one of the biggest hits of 1969, ‘Sugar Sugar’ by the Archies. If you didn’t already know, the Archies were literally a cartoon, starting in comic books and ending up animated on Saturday morning. The music on their records was created by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, and sung by Ron Dante. ‘Melody Hill’ has a uncharacteristic roughness (though ‘rough’ might be overstating the case a bit), highlighted by a fuzzed out guitar solo.
The Candymen were a Georgia group with connections to the people behind the Classics IV. Their albums are hit and miss, but did have their moments. One of those, on the poppier end of the scale was ‘Ways’, with a great reverbed piano opening.
The Turtles of course were one of the great 60s pop bands. They were one of those bands that managed to mix a ‘good time’ pop vibe with just enough serious artistic weight that their music holds up quite nicely 40 years on. ‘Sound Asleep’ was a Top 40 hit in 1968 and shifts gears from sunshine pop to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ psychedelia and then back again.
Lee Mallory was part of the Curt Boettcher ‘galaxy of stars’, performing with, and being produced by him through the second half of the 60s. ‘Many Are the Times’ hails from one of his two Boettcher-produced 45s for the Valiant label.
The Love Generation were another sunshine pop group (featured here recently) that combined Free Design-like harmonies with pop hooks on their albums. ‘The Love In Me’ is packed with tight harmonies and baroque touches.
The Merry Go Round are best known as the first taste of manstream fame for singer/songwriter Emitt Rhodes (not counting his time with the Palace Guard). Their 1967 A&M LP is a wonderful taste of Sunset Strip pop on the wane. The band was poppy, yet always managed to keep it real with folk rock and country touches, even edging up to (if not committing to) psychedelia. They seem to have been marketed mainly to teenage girls, but their music was much better than that.
Mark Eric – and I’ll feature more of his music soon – is utterly obscure (outside of hardcore Beach Boys/sunshine pop nuts) yet his 1969 ‘Midsummer’s Day Dream’ album for Revue is truly a lost work of pop genius. To make a long, involved story short, when the rest of the world was letting their hair get long and greasy, plugging in and turning on, Mark Eric was writing and recording music that was perhaps the greatest tribute to 1965/66 era-Brian Wilson ever laid down. When I first read about him, he sounded interesting in theory, but when I finally got my hands on, and listened to his album, I was blown away. It was nothing less than a work of devotion, doomed to obscurity by the fact that it was so ‘not of its time’. ‘Night of the Lions’ is probably the ‘rockiest’ track on the album and is presented here in its slightly different 45 mix.
The Clique are best known as having recorded the original version of ‘Superman’, later made famous by REM. Their 1968 LP for the White Whale label is packed with sunshiney pop, from which ‘Hallelujah’ is a blue-eyed soul departure.
The Hardy Boys were another studio creation, set up to provide the music for the imaginary Saturday morning cartoon version of the old Franklin W. Dixon characters. Though they were portrayed by actual humans on their album covers, as far as I know there is no correlation between those models and the actual people on the records, though I’ve seen a reference that suggests that there may have actually been a touring version of the ‘Hardy Boys’. Their records are once again connected to the Jeff Barry hit factory, and ‘I Can Hear the Grass Singin’ – despite any lysergic suggestions in the title – is actually a very nice bit of sunshine pop.
The Holy Mackerel were Paul Williams’ first band, and their one album for Reprise is really quite good (it has been reissued). ’Scorpio Red’ is one of their more psyched out numbers.
Harry Nilsson was, of course, a true genius of pop music. Gifted with the voice of an angel and the ability to write brilliant pop songs, Nilsson was beloved by the Beatles (and his music shows that love to have been requited). The version of ‘Daddy’s Song’ presented here is the remix from the ‘Aerial Pandemonium Ballet’ album and is one of my faves.
Now, when it comes to ‘manufactured’ bands, they don’t get any krazier than the Klowns. A real Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey tie-in, with music by the Jeff Barry hit factory, the Klowns were created out of whole cloth, appeared on a 1970 TV special and are rumored to have included both Barry Bostwick and John Bennett Perry in their ranks (you can actually see Perry – father of none other than Matthew Perry – on the record cover). They wore clown makeup and mod-ified clown outfits, and their music was pure AM pop. ‘Yellow Sunglasses’ is a really cool pop-rocker, and is about as heavy as the Klowns got.
I know little about the Racket Squad. They appear to have roots in a Pittsburgh, PA band called the Fenways, and recorded two LPs for the Jubilee label in the late 60s. ‘That’s How Much I Love My Baby’ is a great slice of pop.
The Wildweeds were a Connecticut band that recorded a number of 45s for the Chess label in 1967, and featured the singing, guitar and songwriting of Al Anderson who went on to join NRBQ. ‘Someday Morning’ is my fave Wildweeds tune, with just a taste of soul, and a musical shout out to Bach.
The Beethoven Soul are another largely anonymous band that made an interesting pop album for the Dot label in 1968. Their album was produced by James Griffin, who went on to join David Gates in Bread.
Chicago’s New Colony 6 are an example of a group that had the talent to be much bigger than they were. Starting out with a sound that was a garagey take on the British Invasion, moving on to bubblegum and then sophisticated AM pop (where they had their biggest successes), they recorded a lot of good music in their time. If the title didn’t tip you off, ‘Treat Her Groovy’ was one of their more bubblegummy efforts.
Orpheus were a Massachusetts band that recorded a number albums for MGM in the late 60s/early 70s. I featured my fave Orpheus track ‘Lesley’s World’ in an early Iron Leg mix, and ‘Congress Alley’ is another taste of their jazzy sophistication.
The Byzantine Empire are best known (at least around here) for recording an early version of Tandyn Almer’s ‘Shadows and Reflections’ more famous in a version by the Action. ‘You’ is the flipside of that very 45 and has touches of the Association.
The Peanut Gallery recorded one 45 for the Canterbury label. The A-side ’Out of Breath’ is a mind-bending slice of Sunset Strip garage mania. The flip ‘Summer’s Over’ is a much poppier number that bears the influence of the poppier side of the British Invasion.
The Moods are a band that I picked up back in the day when I was grabbing everything I could on the Bang label. ‘Gotta Figure Out’ is a gritty number with shades of the Rascals.
This edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip closes out with an album cut from the Southwest FOB. The Texas band, best known for their cover of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s ‘Smell of Incense’ recorded their sole album for the Stax subsidiary Hip records.
I hope you dig the mix, and I’ll be back next week with some cool stuff.

Peace
Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some bluesy soul.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Illustration from the cover of the ‘Smashing Time’ OST

Listen – Lynn Redgrave – While I’m Still Young – MP3

Greetings all.

This weeks ‘end of week’ post is coming a bit early on account of it’s a holiday and I’m taking the rest of the week off, on account of that’s how I roll on Thanksgiving.
The tune I bring you today is something I dug up onmy recent trip to the Berkshires.
I should start by informing you that the song you are about to hear is nothing less than a demented work of genius, and should be covered by a punk band (garage or otherwise) as soon as humanly possible.
The strangest thing of all is that ‘While I’m Still Young’ is basically a parody to start with, composed to be sung by Lynne Redgrave’s character ‘Yvonne’ in the 1967 film ‘Smashing Time’.
‘Smashing Time’ was always a touchstone of sorts back in the mod days, mainly because it was packed wall to wall with Carnaby Street type scenery, and that it provided an odd little snapshot of the short lived ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ fashion craze in the UK, AND (dig this) a cameo by no less a band than Tomorrow (Keith West, Twink, Steve Howe et al) as a band called the Snarks.
The main thrust of the film is Yvonne and Brenda (Rita Tushingham) heading into the big city in search of stardom, where the former, discovered as a “typical teen” is taken and injection-molded into attempted pop stardom by a cynical record industry.
Today’s selection’While I’m Still Young’ is the highlight of the soundtrack, with a bright, brassy 1967-centric vibe (as seen through the prism of middle aged showbiz types) and an absolutely insane lyric.

I can’t sing but I’m young
Can’t do a thing but I’m young
I’m a fool, but I’m cool
Don’t put me down
I don’t read but I’m young
I’m built for speed cause I’m young
I’m a fool, but I’m cool
I’m not a clown
Don’t give a fig if you don’t dig
That I’m around
I don’t walk but I’m young
I never talk cause I’m young
I won’t cry, if I die
While I’m still young

Yeah baby I’m so young
Yeah baby I’m still so young

The lyrics were written by English satirist/surrealist (and jazz singer) George Melly, and they’re really amazing. ‘While I’m Still Young’ reads like the long lost bridge between raw 1966 punk and snotty 1976 punk, all delivered through Lynne Redgrave’s shrill vocal, laid on top of a cool, sitar tinged arrangement.
I dig it a lot, and I hope you do too.
Have a great holiday and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for heavy bit of Latin funk.

Sandy Salisbury (bottom row, left side) with the Millennium

Listen – Puppet – Best Friend – MP3

Greetings all.

I had an interesting weekend. How’s about you?
The short version is, I started to feel sick (like kidney problem sick) on Friday, went to the hospital, had a brief (yet unpleasant) surgical procedure and was sprung by Saturday afternoon. All in all not the worst episode in recent memory, but honestly, who the fuck wants to spend a night in a hospital bed when you could be somewhere (anywhere) else?
Fortunately the ‘out by Saturday afternoon’ aspect of the deal was the crucial part, that and the fact that I’m not feeling too poorly overall, allowing me to return to my appointed rounds in a timely fashion.
The tune I bring you today is the first in a series of Millennium-related tracks that I amassed during the approach to the recent Curt Boettcher project. Though Boettecher is the name most closely associated with that group, the ranks of the Millennium included a surplus of songwriting and performing talent. Starting today, and going forward I’ll be featuring a number of interesting cuts by members of the band.
The inaugural post features a song that I chased for years by virtue of it having occupied a place in my childhood memory.
Back when I was a kid, there was a show called ‘The Courtship of Eddie’s Father’ (which itself was a remake of a 1963 Glenn Ford movie). It ran from 1969 to 1972, starred Bill Bixby (known to slightly younger viewers from the ‘Incredible Hulk’) and most importantly featured an incredibly catchy title song performed by none other than Harry Nilsson.
Flash forward 15 years or so to a much older me browsing through the crates at some record show or other and what do I turn up but a Nilsson LP called ‘Aerial Pandemonium Ballet’. An interesting artifact, ‘APB’ was in fact (and I did not know this at the time) something of an ur remix project, in which Nilsson took tracks from his first two LPs, 1967’s ‘Pandemonium Shadow Show’ and 1968’s ‘Aerial Ballet’ and engaged in often subtle bits of reworking/rerecording. He was essentially taking advantage of the fact that most of his 1971 audience – who came to him via his 1969 mega-hit ‘Everybody’s Talkin’ would have been unfamiliar with his largely overlooked early work, and presenting some of that work in a new setting.
Of course I knew none of this at the time, and it would have been aside the point except for the fact that one of the tracks on ‘APB’ sounded eerily familiar. The first time I heard ‘Daddy’s Song’ the archetypal light bulb went on over my head and I thought to myself, ‘This sounds an awful lot like the theme to ‘The Courtship of Eddie’s Father’, which it did. It was only years later that I discovered that the theme song in question ‘Best Friend’ was actually an amalgam of ‘Daddy’s Song’ and an unreleased (originally planned for inclusion on ‘Aerial Ballet’) song called ‘Girlfriend’.
Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I always wondered if there had been a commercial release of Nilsson’s ‘Courtship’ theme song.
There was not (unless you count a one-minute long version of it that surfaced on a ‘TV Theme’s’ comp years later).
However, back in the day, knowing a good song when they heard one, some enterprising souls put together a group – from what I can tell a one-off studio conglomeration – called Puppet, to record and release a (very faithful) cover of ‘Best Friend’. That group just happened to feature the lead vocals of none other than long-time Boettcher accomplice and Millennium member Sandy Salisbury.
Salisbury, who recorded a 45 (and an excellent unreleased LP) for Gary Usher’s Together records had worked with Curt Boettcher on a number of projects through the 60s. He had a wonderful voice and wrote songs like ‘Lonely Girl’ (recorded but originally unreleased for the Sagittarius sessions) and ‘5 A.M.’ from the Millennium’s ‘Begin’. I have no idea how Salisbury got involved in Puppet. The vast majority of his known credits were Boettcher-related, and as far as I can tell (at least by the label) Puppet was not one of those projects. It’s certainly not out of the question – considering his talent – that Salisbury (like Boettcher) did other similarly ‘anonymous’ work to make a buck.
Either way, it’s a groovy record, never straying too far from the original, which I assume was intentional since the assumption here is that Puppet were essentially trying to cash in on the popularity of the TV series. Naturally, as often happens with such projects, Puppet went absolutely nowhere, rendering their one 45 both obscure and rare*. I looked for this one for a long time, eventually stumbling on it in an unexpected place and grabbing it for a pittance.
I hope you dig the song, and I’ll be back later in the week.

Peace

Larry

*’Best Friend’ was included on the ‘Preparing for the Ballroom’ CD comp

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a deep soul ballad

Kak

Listen – Kak – Rain (45 edit) – MP3

Greetings all.

The end of yet another week is here and I’m just glad to get here in one piece.
In celebration of that fact, I bring you one of the awesomest, most brain bending-est, psychedelic sonic blasts ever committed to seven inches of vinyl.
The record in question is one that I chased for years, never finding one at a decent price until a few months back when I caught a copy as part of a big lot of 45s. In addition to the wondrous 45 we’ll all be hearing today, I also got a bunch of soul and 60s pop in the deal, some of which have already appeared in this space.
I first heard of Kak way back in the early days of CDs when I got two of their tracks (including today’s selection) on an import comp of 60s psyche. I bought that comp (three CDs at a relatively high price) to get one specific track, that being Love’s ‘Your Mind and We Belong Together’, which was not yet available on compact disc (anyone else here remember those days???).
Anyhoo, the comp – the title of which I can no longer remember since it was long ago lost after being loaned out and never returned – ended up turning me on to a couple of bands I later dug into deeply, namely Pearls Before Swine, and today’s artist, Kak.
Some time after acquiring those CDs, I blew a wad of cash on an import bootleg repressing of Kak’s sole Epic LP. I liked the record a lot, but was pole-axed when I discovered that the version of ‘Rain’ on the LP was a much tamer affair than the one I had grown to love on the CD comp. That this was in an era when the interwebs were in their infancy, I was at a loss as to why the versions didn’t match up, and it wasn’t until years later that I discovered that the version of the song that I loved so much had appeared only on a 45 release.
Thus began the search….
I was never able to grab a copy in the field, and seemingly every time it would pop up on E-Bay I would end up getting outbid.
As is always the case, I saved the search and bided my time. When the lot of 45s popped up (with no individual records graded) I knew I was taking a chance, but that’s part of the record game. Sometimes you have to leap before you look in the hopes that you will be rewarded when you land.
Fortunately for me, this was one of those times.
I won the auction, the box of records arrived at my door, and I opened it only to discover that the seller had packed everything in huge wads of shredded newsprint – which, since it’s one of the shittiest grades of paper imaginable – had (post-shredding) deteriorated even further, leaving my house coated in small scraps of paper, paper dust and god knows what else.
That said, the added labor of the clean up paid off in the end because the one 45 I actually wanted in the lot (the one by Kak) was in decent shape, and there was a nice stack of extras to make the value of the purchase all the better.
Now, at the beginning of the piece when I described the 45 edit of ‘Rain’ in glowing terms, I suspect (having listened to it yet again while I was writing this) that I was not quite effusive enough. ‘Rain’ is nothing less than two solid minutes of ass-kicking compressed into 45 form, guaranteed to set your hair on end, while you leap from your chair, air-guitar in hand, leaping about your house like a goofball.
It’s that good.
Where the LP version (which can be heard here) is a relaxed bit of San Francisco sunrise, the 45 edit of ‘Rain’ is a blistering and unrelenting mixture of late period garage powered, speed-freakery with just a pinch of soul added for flavor. The lead guitar by Dehner Patten is a fluid, wah-wah soaked wonder and the rhythm section is uncharacteristically powerful with over modulated drums and even at one point pushed even further by a round of handclaps, and just when it gets up to full speed, it’s over almost as soon as it started.
I listen to ‘Rain’ and the first thing that comes to mind is to question why not this wasn’t a hit, at least in the limited world of the FM underground. Perhaps it was too intense, whether for the Golden Gate Park hippies or the general AM radio audience. It’s entirely possible that ‘Rain’ may have made it’s only impact amongst the amphetamine sodden, leathered and chained motorcycle set where it provided the soundtrack for any number of nocturnal chain-whippings. Could it be that the band (or the label) witnessed the unholy explosions unleashed by the record, then changed their tune (literally) retreating into the version of the song that appeared on the LP?
The world may never know.
I hope you dig the song as much as I do, and I’ll be back on Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a Jamaican funk 45!

Peter we hardly knew ye….

Listen -The Monkees – Teardrop City – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope all is well on your end and that you’re all ready to weather yet another week.
The tune I bring you today is yet another 45 that emerged from my giant, everlasting, pulsating record stash of a few summers ago, whence my father-in-law brought me down a heap of records, thousands strong, which even today is still giving up the goods (albeit at a much slower rate).
I still have a couple of crates of stuff from that haul down in the basement, and every once in a great while, when I’m moving the wash, emptying the humidifier or hunting the huge, mutant crickets that have moved into the cellar, I stop by those boxes, grab a handful of records and pick a couple of things that look like they merit further investigation.
These days, the amount of records that meet that criteria is getting smaller and smaller. The wife and I made a pretty thorough pass through the initial mountain of vinyl, so the pickings are relatively slim, however, there always seems to be something lurking down there, and today’s selection is one of them.
The Monkees have made a couple of appearances at Iron Leg over the years. I’m a fan, and there are still a couple of LPs by the group that I go back to on a regular basis. When I happened upon a copy of the ‘Tear Drop City’ 45, I thought the song title was familiar but could not recall anything of what it might sound like. As it turns out that was perfectly reasonable because I’d never actually heard the song.
I gave it a spin an really liked it, which sent me out onto the interwebs where I was surprised to discover that this was actually some of that late-period Monkee goodness, so late in fact that it is, how do they say, ‘Tork-less’.
That’s right, Peter Tork had left the band (no doubt to devote his time to beaded buckskin jackets and daisy chains) by the time the ‘Instant Replay’ LP was released in 1969. ‘Tear Drop City’, with its ‘Last Train to Clarksville’-ish guitar riff had actually been recorded the previous year by its authors, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart on their ‘I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight’ LP. The Monkees version is a much rougher take on the tune (though the 45 was arranged by Boyce and Hart) with heavier guitars and a more aggressive pace.
Following ‘Instant Replay’ there was one more Tork-less LP ‘The Monkees Present’ before Mike Nesmith got wise and tore himself loose, leaving Mickey and Davey to slog it out for one more LP as a duo, 1970s ‘Changes’.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a new mix of funk and soul for the kids!

The Love Generation

Listen -The Love Generation – Not Be Found – MP3

Greetings all.

How’s by you?
The end of the week is nigh, and since it’s grey, gloomy, cold and windy outside, I figured I’d brighten things up a bit with a glittery little slice of sunshine pop.
It bears mentioning that had I been out digging in the field – sans portable – I would have been duty bound to pick up an album by a group calling themselves the Love Generation (assuming of course that some deluded flea marketeer wasn’t trying to get $25 bucks for it).
That said, when I finally did get the first album by said Love Generation, I was aware of them in name and reputation, and needed only to venture out into that great digital flea market known as the interwebs to secure my copy.
I hadn’t heard any of their music, and truth be told the group shot on the album cover screamed “corny”, but I had heard enough positive things about them that it wasn’t going to kill me to grab the record. Good thing too, since the album in question contained some excellent examples of the great, sunshiney harmony pop that I love so much.
When it comes to the subject of what the collector geeks of the world refer to as “sunshine pop” the range of quality is fairly wide, encompassing everything from visionary pop like the Millennium to one-off cartoon show soundtracks recorded by anonymous collections of studio professionals. How much an individual is willing to dig into the genre is guided both by a love for pure pop, and by a willingness to follow that love down all kinds of back alleys, some stranger than others.
Sometimes an obscure album yields nothing more than a bright cover and another worthless slab of vinyl to throw on the growing heap in your record room.
Other times – and I’m happy to report that this is one of them – you pick up a record, apply the needle to the wax and get a rush when what comes out of the speakers is in fact quite good.
The Love Generation were by and large the work of the brothers John and Tom Bahler. They, along with Mitch Gordon, Ann White, Marilyn Miller and Jim Wasson, took the sounds of groups like the Mamas and Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the Association (among others) as a starting point and ran off into what can only be described as a groovy sunset wrapped around a licorice rainbow (sure, most people wouldn’t use those specific terms, but this is my blog…).
It’s important to give this music a serious listen, because a casual pass at a song like today’s selection ‘Not Be Found’ might impress the casual listener as light and disposable. The truth of the matter is, groups like the Love Generation, while wrapping themselves in the external trappings of the hip world, were in fact applying the pop vocabulary of the day to a much more conventional framework. They were using the same kinds of hooks as many more ‘serious’ rock bands, but delivered them in a decidedly non-rock fashion. This isn’t to say that they were square – because I can’t imagine anyone outside of the youth demographic enjoying this stuff – but rather that they were proudly un-hip. Where any number of rock bands that people might consider more ‘legitimate’ would have presented themselves with a rougher, cooler vibe (in both looks and sound), the Love Generation took some of the same energy and applied it to both songcraft and performance. Unfortunately for them – at least as history goes – is that their efforts landed them much closer to a commercial, even bubblegummy vibe that 40 years down the road endears them only to specialist collectors, rendering them disposable to pretty much everyone else. Had they come along a few years later they may very well cut a much wider commercial swath.
It should come as no surprise to you that I think this is unfair.
Say all you want about the ‘deeper’ bands of the day, but I’m here to remind you that even the brightest pop confections had their artistic moments.
The song I bring you today, ‘Not Be Found’ has a folk rock base, wrapped, again and again in layer upon layer of bright, lush harmonies. Like Curt Boettcher, the Bahler brothers knew the value and power in the human voice, making it the most prominent instrument on their records.
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Bahler brothers were involved in the early albums by the Partridge Family, as both writers and performers. Tom Bahler went on to write both ‘Julie Do Ya Love Me’ for Bobby Sherman, and ‘She’s Out Of My Life’ for Michael Jackson.
I hope you dig the tune and I’ll be back on Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some dance floor grooves.

The Maestro – Enoch Light

Listen -Enoch Light & the Glittering Guitars – You Showed Me – MP3

Greetings all.

Welcome to another fantabulous autumnal week, in which my attempts to do psychic battle with the leaves in my yard result only in their repeatedly mocking me by falling to the ground.
In an attempt to soothe my shredded nerves I figured I’d get things started this week with something on the mellow side.
I have previously described my ongoing fascination with the sounds of Mr. Enoch Light.
Light spent the 30s, 40s and 50s as the leader of a popular big band, but it wasn’t until that last decade that he carved himself out a place as one of the true leaders of the ‘Now Sound’ with his work creating hi-fi masterworks engineered for full exploitation of the topography of the American bachelor pad.
Light, via his Command and Project 3 labels pioneered hi-tech stereo recording to 35mm sound and built a significant and widely varied catalog of albums. On the surface many of these records – especially the earlier ones – seemed aimed exclusively at hi-fi nuts who liked to sit between expensive loudspeakers listening to sounds bounce back and forth between the channels.
However, as Light and his army of crack session players (including keyboard whiz Dick Hyman, guitarist Tony Mottola and drummers like Bobby Rosengarten and Ed Shaugnessy) moved on into the swinging sixties, the material they covered on these records, under a variety of names, began to lean toward the hip side of the street.
And – wonder of wonders – the recordings of this material started to sound just as hip. The records by Enoch Light and the Light Brigade (or the Brass Menagerie, or as in this case the Glittering Guitars) and Hyman especially began to reflect less exploitation and more empathy with the material, so much so that if their interpretations sometimes sounded a little far out (listen to some Hyman’s visionary moog recordings of the 60s) they were more often that not very interesting.
The tune I bring you today hails from the compilation LP ‘Enoch Light Presents Patterns In Sound Vol. 6: The Now Scene’, which features selections from of number of the instrumental groups in the Command roster as well as the two best known vocal groups in Light’s stable, the Free Design and the Critters. The tune I bring you today is by Enoch Light and the Glittering Guitars, a cover of the Turtles classic ‘You Showed Me’.
The Light version features an ‘easy’ background, over which are layered a couple of very fuzzy, very sustained lead guitars (one by Vinnie Bell). Delivered at a familiar tempo, the juxtaposition of strings and fuzzed guitars sounds like the backing track for a mod boudoir scene in a period exploitation film.
It’s very groovy and I hope you dig it.
I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a funky 45

The Standells

Listen -The Standells – Little Sally Tease – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope all is well on your end as another week comes to a close.
The daylight savings time thing has come to an end, and this year (as opposed to all those in the past that I can still remember with any clarity) it doesn’t seem to be causing me any trouble. Usually I find my self dragging my ass around for at least a week as I pull myself into synch with the clock.
I’m putting this post up a little early since the fam and I are hitting the road for a couple of days of R&R.
The tune I bring you today has been a favorite since back in the garage revival days of yore. Back then, next to the Chocolate Watchband, the Standells loomed over the mid-60s like some kind of garage punk colossus, having created several anthemic tunes and having the added benefit of having recorded for a major label and having their moving image captured on film a number of times.
Though for most garage heads the go-to Standells numbers are ‘Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White’ and the Nuggets-y ‘Dirty Water’, my faves by the LA combo have always been lesser known killers like ‘Why Did You Hurt Me’ and today’s selection, their ramped up cover of Don and the Goodtimes PNW classic ‘Little Sally Tease’.
Originally waxed by D&the GTs, then later covered by the Kingsmen, ‘Little Sally Tease’ is one of those stompers that seems as if it were created in the lab of a mop-topped mad scientist attempting to formulate the perfect garage punk record, having exhumed and stitched together pounding drums, throbbing combo organ, fuzz guitar and snotty adolescent girl trouble lyrics of the first order.
The original version of the song is no small potatoes, but the Standells took it into the studio and beat it like a rented mule until every single drop of snot and bad attitude was placed on display like a hood ornament on their own high powered muscle car. Things get off to a strong start with heavy bass and witch doctor drums, but it isn’t until the chorus, shredded guitar solo and combo organ workout that things reach a truly explosive climax.
‘Little Sally Tease’ is a cut on the 1966 LP ‘Dirty Water’ which may pack more garage punk power than any full length in the history of the genre. Alongside the title cut, ‘..Good Guys’, ‘Medication’, ‘Little Sally Tease’ and ‘Why Did You Hurt Me’, you also get slamming covers of ‘19th Nervous Breakdown’ and ‘Hey Joe’, as well as the cover photo of the Standells looking positively badass.
It’s just that heavy.
As your physician I recommend you get this on a CD (or patch the MP3 thingy into the car radio) and drive around with the stereo at full blast and the windows wide open. No sense in hiding the fact that you’re a fuzz addled freak from the rest of the neighborhood, is there? Hmmmm?
Dig it and I’ll see you all on Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for the second half of the the 5th anniversary celebration.