These two killer tunes are on permanent rotation on Spotify at the moment. Oh for a bit of sunshine…

Iron Leg Digital Trip #36 – 2010 Year In Vintage Pop

Listen/Download 87MB/256K Mixed Mp3

Greetings all.

Hey, look who’s back!

Yeah, not all that exciting, but I had to say something.

The past few weeks – usually while digging for, or recording records – I’d been thinking a lot about getting the old metaphysical crowbar and jamming Iron Leg back into my schedule.

I don’t think I’ll be back to the twice-weekly rhythm that I had been working, but once a week with the occasional mix thrown in seemed perfectly reasonable, so here we are.

Even though my main musical focus happens to be funk and soul (this, the sixteen cornered beast), I have a taste for lots of other things, mos’specially the sounds of 60s pop, garage and psychedelia, thus, this bloggy type thing here.

When I instituted the temporary shutdown a few months back, I had a bunch of stuff backlogged and ready to go, and now, thanks to the fact that I always have time for digging (right up there with eating and sleeping) I now have more groovy stuff that I’d like to share with you good folks, including a couple of longtime want list items (now acquired), new discoveries and the like.

So, starting next week, with the dawn of twenty-eleven, Iron Leg will be back in beez-ness.

On second thought, it’s kind of back in business now, but since this mix is composed entirely of previously shared material (swept from the floors of the massive Funky16Corners/Iron Leg blogging complex), we can say that next week will signal the arrival of new stuff.

That said, the playlist of the mix in question would seem to indicate that 2010 was in fact an excellent year, bringing many groovy things from my record box to your ears, with the fuzzy garage, the happy pop and the dreamy psychedelics, all stirred together into one big, groaning Little Rascals cake of wonderfulness.

So, pull down the ones and zeros (there’s a similar, soulfully inclined mix over at Funky16Corners), give it all a listen and hang in there.

See you next week.

Happy New Year

Peace
Larry

NOTE: There is no accompanying zip file since all of these tracks have appeared here individually in the past year.

PS Make sure to head over to Funky16Corners for a year end funk and soul mix.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

Story behind this band is interesting if you’re into semi-obscure Canadian rock or Sunshine Pop. It features Ian Thomas before he went solo a couple of years later. Here’s a brief summation I was able to garner from a Google search.

Ian Thomas, Oliver McLeod and Nora Hutchinson had been performing as a trio for a few years prior to 1969, when Toronto group Flapping broke up. Two of its members, Nancy Ward and Bob Doidge, joined Ian, Oliver and Nora and the group became Tranquility Base. The singer of Flapping, Buzz Shearman, then joined Leigh Ashford.

Tranquility Base toured Canada, honing their chops and gaining an audience. They became the first rock group in residence with an orchestra, performing regularly with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Boris Brott, and with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
They were signed to RCA in 1970, and released “If You’re Lookin’” in March, produced by Bill Misener (aka Billy Mysner, see under http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUUyXD… ). It entered the RPM 100 on March 28th at #95 and reached #24 on June 27th, at which time it had been #2 for two weeks on the RPM Top 50 Canadian Chart.

In the fall, Tranquillity Base released another single, “In The Rain,” which didn’t do very well. Still, RCA had them record an album. Major differences between the group and RCA A&R over the direction of the music led the album to be shelved. It remains unreleased. The group broke up in 1971, and Ian Thomas went on to become a Canadian music legend, beginning with his first solo album in 1973.

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD Tranquillity Base – If You’re Lookin’.mp3

The Buffoons

Listen/Download – Buffoons – Sunday Will Never Be The Same

Greetings all.

I have returned from the southern(er) regions of the mid-Atlantic, having DJ’d, purchased many records (little and big) driven hundreds of miles in less than 48 hours, eaten good food, eaten shitty food, met some cool people and then returned to my lair where I promptly collapsed.

The tune I bring you today is something I picked up this summer in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Once you take a look at the label I think you’ll agree that once spotted, there was no way it wasn’t going home with me.

I mean, honestly…look at the label, the name of the band, the song that was a hit for a much more familiar group…all of that combined to make it Iron Leg-bait of the first order, so naturally, it went right into the keeper pile and home it came.

When I did finally return home, and found my way onto the intertubes I discovered that the Buffoons were actually Dutch, and released a number of 45s and LPs between 1967 and 1975.

They were apparently quite popular in their home country, something that cannot be said of their records here in the US.

I haven’t heard anything other than this 45, but I really dig their sunshine pop reworking of Spanky and Our Gang’s ‘Sunday Will Never Be the Same’, wherein they mess with the harmonies a little bit, adding an interesting edge missing from the pure pop of the original (one of many records I happen to love by Spanky et al).

Bright Orange (which was originally called ‘Power’, and released at least one 45 by Pacific Gas and Electric) was a subsidiary of Kent/Modern. I’m not sure if it was the same label that reissued a bunch of trad jazz, but the catalog numbers seem to intersect, so who knows.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something cool.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for two new live funk mixes!

Iron Leg Digital Trip #35 – Vibrations

Listen/Download 96MB/256K Mixed Mp3

Download 72MB Zip File

Greetings all.

Welcome back to the Iron Leg thingy, wherein we all get together and rap about the grooviest, pop, psyche, garage and all possible combinations therein.

This edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip is something a little psychey for the head (and the ears, natch) engineered to keep everyone happy for the duration of the week.

I’m coming off an incredibly busy weekend, followed by another busy week, so I figured I’d get a nice selection of tunes all mixed up and blended so that I could take the time to concentrate on the real world for a few days.

This mix features a number of artists you’ve seen and heard on Iron Leg before, as well as a couple you haven’t who will be appearing by themselves in the coming months.

I hope you dig the mix, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace
Larry

PS Make sure to head over to Funky16Corners for a new mix of organ 45s.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

The Cowsills

Listen/Download – The Cowsills – We Can Fly

Greetings all.

I hope that everything’s all hunky dory in your corner of the world.

The tune I bring you today is one of those twenty-five cent, flea market/record show ‘I don’t know it but I’ll grab it ‘cuz I dig the group’ things, and is also one of those ‘turned out to be groovy’ records as well.

The very first time I heard the Cowsills was probably some time around my eleventh birthday, for which I received a beautiful portable, multi-band radio that I clutched tight to my breast for years, day and night, until it’s antenna got snapped off in some tragic mishap or another.

The day that radio came into my life marked the beginning of my love affair with music that had come out before I was old enough to dig it, via a radio station in New York City called WCBS-FM.

During the heyday of progressive FM rock, WCBS-FM was an ‘oldies’ station, which is an odd name since in 1973 most of the music they played was between three and fifteen years old (imagine a station today that played only music from between 1995 and 2007 calling itself an ‘oldies’ station). They had lots of TV commercials, a nice big transmitter which provided a nice clear signal, great DJs (many of whom were giants of New York 1960s AM radio) and a fantastic playlist that stretched from doowop to psychedelia (or at least what passed for psychedelia in the Top 40).

I used to put my cassette deck up against the radio speaker and record 30 minute chunks of airtime, hoping to either catch a favorite song or discover new ones (oh how I wish I still had some of those tapes).
It was during one such taping session that I first heard (and had my mind blown by) ‘The Rain, The Park and Other Things’ by the Cowsills.

As you may have surmised by the prevalence of pop – pure, Sunshine, and otherwise – on this blog, I have a ‘sweet ear’ i.e. I love bits of pure harmony and great hooks, which the Cowsills produced in abundance.
It would be years before I read about their connection to the ‘Partridge Family’ (a big TV show of my childhood) and even longer before I heard about the unpleasantness in the Cowsill kids lives, but even with that knowledge, all I could ever really register about the group was their sound.

Much like the best of Curt Boettcher’s catalog, the finest Cowsills records pack a real sonic punch.
Today’s selection ‘We Can Fly’, written by the group and Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff (who had written ‘The Rain, the Park and Other Things’ and lot of the group’s other material) is a brilliant (literally and figuratively) bit of sunshine pop, with a chorus that’ll blow the top of your head off.

The Cowsills, who had their fair share of big pop hits, are one of those groups that deserve to have their albums – which are filled with cool stuff – explored as well.

I hope you dig it as much as I do.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a remembrance of one of the great New Orleans soul singers.

Brian Cole, American musician (The Association) (d. 1972)

Free Design

Listen -Free Design – Kites are Fun – MP3

Listen -Free Design – Jack In the Box Radio Spot – MP3

Listen -Free Design – Bubbles – MP3

Listen -Free Design – You Could Be Born Again – MP3

Listen -Free Design – 2002 a Hit Song – MP3

Listen -Free Design – The Proper Ornaments – MP3

Greetings all.

I just heard yesterday that Chris Dedrick, leader of one of my favorite pop groups the Free Design had passed away at the age of 62. He was living in Canada.
I was going to write something new, but realized that I’d already said what I wanted to about the group in this post from last year.
I am however adding a couple of tracks I haven’t had up in this space before, including what may be, if not the rarest track by the band, the weirdest, that being an early 70s commercial jingle for the Jack In the Box burger chain.
The quality isn’t fantastic, but I don’t imagine there are many copies of this one floating around, so take it for what it is.
If you haven’t picked up any of their stuff, iTunes features a couple of nice ‘best of’ comps, as well as all of the full albums.
My sympathies go out to his family.

Originally posted June 2009

The tune I bring you today has been sitting in my “to be blogged” folder for a while, waiting for just the right time to be posted. A few weeks ago a reader wrote asking if I would ever post said song, and since it was burning a hole in my hard drive, I took the request as a sign, said yes, and here we are.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, there was once a time where my taste for the twee side of pop was, for lack of a better term, undeveloped. If you had played a Free Design (or Curt Boettcher) track for my long-haired, Led Zeppelin listening to self, I would have choked on the sugar and perhaps beaten you soundly (though in that same period I was often stoned and sluggish, so you probably would have gotten beyond my grasp without much effort).
When I look back on it, this seems odd because the band that got my head into music in the first place was the hookiest of all, that being the Beatles. My sensibilities have always been hooks and harmony attuned, but like any youngster (which believe it or not I once was) I had a head full of roadblocks that only time and tide would erode. Now that I am at an age my 18 year old self would likely consider my dotage (I’m 46), many of those walls have been torn down, some by myself, some by the urging of others and some all by themselves.
If memory serves I first found my way to the Free Design via the mid-90s Japanese fascination with them and their sweet sounding ilk, via the pricey reissues put out by Cornelius, and the homage by groups like Pizzicato Five. At some point I got my hands on the compilation by Varese Sarabande, and my mind was, in short order, good and truly blown.
It’s only in the last few years that I finally acquired some OG Free Design vinyl (there are still a couple of albums I’m looking for) and I was pleasantly surprised that much of the material that I hadn’t heard yet was up to the standards of the ‘greastest hits’.
Like many of the groups I would group with the Free Design, like Sagittarius, the Millennium, early Paul Williams (all faves, and barely scratching the surface of the genre), I would hesitate to push them on anyone that wasn’t already somewhat attuned to the sound. The digestion of this kind of music requires a certain amount of context and preparation for proper appreciation. Where the Curt Boettcher sound is based in a conventional pop/rock setting, the Free Design drew from Now Sound and sophisticated harmony singing like the Hi-Los and the Swingle Singers before touching on rock tangentially, sounding like a high school swing choir led by a pop visionary. Though their arrangements were often dense with ideas, and the backing tight and energetic, at first listen some of their recordings sound like so much candy floss.
There were times when I was first exposed to the group where the music seemed to radiate earnestness that at times struck me as a put on. However, repeat listening, especially to the right songs, reveals that the group really had a lot going on.
Formed in the mid-60s by the Dedrick siblings (Chris, Bruce, Sandy, Ellen and Stefanie) the members of the Free Design came from a musical family. Their seven albums (most of which were released on Enoch Light’s Project 3 imprint) were a mixture of brilliant original material and interesting covers (Bacharach/David, Turtles), all delivered with the group’s intricate harmonies and backing from the same group of crack session players that recorded for Enoch Light’s other projects.
The tune I bring you today is the title track from their first LP, 1967’s ‘Kites are Fun’. An ode to the pure, childlike pleasure of kite flying – something that would have been assumed to have lysergic roots in other hands – ‘Kites are Fun’ features cascading, madrigal-like harmonies and a relatively spare backing (bass, tambourine, acoustic guitar and recorder), and lyrics that defy any attempt at interpretation on anything but face value. No one was going to hear ‘Kites are Fun’ and jump to conclusions that what the Free Design were blending their heavenly voices about was a euphemism for anything stronger that a little exercise in a windy field.
That vibe is one of the things I dig so much about the Free Design. Like the narrator in ‘Bubbles’ (featured in Iron Leg Digital Trip #18), the person singing about kites is undeniably a kid. This may be hard for someone from 2009 to understand, but Free Design were operating in an irony-free zone. This is not music delivered with a wink and a knowing smile. To paraphrase a then popular phrase, with Free Design, what you hear is what you get.
If you get a chance to scan their entire catalog, it is clear that they were capable of delivering more adult themes – they did a wonderful version of one of my fave Bacharach songs ‘Windows of the World’ – and despite the childlike subject matter, the music of Free Design was nothing if not sophisticated. If I ever get my hands on the rest of their records, I may have to do an all Free Design edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something Free Design-related.

Peace

Larry

*Keeping things kid, on an episode of the very groovy ‘Yo Gabba Gabba’ I was surprised to hear a cover (with a short, animated video) of ‘Kites are Fun’ as performed by the Parallelograms. Back in the 60s the song was covered by another Project 3 artist, guitarist Tony Mottola.

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some classical jazz funk (really).

Yesterday, out of the blue (more specifically, on WVUD), I heard a new(ish) song that instantly earned a spot on my mental list of lushly-arranged 70s-influenced pop-soul confections (previously listed here): "She Needs Me" by Fyfe Dangerfield. Hooky melodies, a beat reminiscent of Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes", peppy orchestral backup a la First Class' "Beach Baby", ELO-like chord changes: it's in there!

Unfortunately this song seems to be an anomaly on Dangerfield's debut solo album, the remainder being more sparsely-arranged, slower tracks that are probably meant to be "deep" but that I don't find very engaging. His current claim to fame is a cover of Billy Joel's "She's Always A Woman" which was used in a UK TV commercial for John Lewis department stores, so it looks like his path is set for Balladeer instead of Confectioneer. More's the pity.

Fly Yellow Moon

Fyfe Dangerfield

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The Sugar Shoppe (Victor Garber 2nd from left)

Listen/Download – The Sugar Shoppe – The Attitude

Greetings all.

Welcome to the new week.
The tune I bring you today is by a group that I was completely unaware of until last year, when I stumbled across their album in the midst of a bleary-eyes sunshine pop binge.
I saw the album cover, and one of the group members looked awfully familiar. It was a few seconds before the face registered and I realized that I was looking at actor Victor Garber, who I remembered from the movie of ‘Godspell’ (in which he portrayed Jeebus) and countless TV and movie appearances.
I hit the old Google-matic, and discovered some positive writing about the group, so I figured as soon as I found an affordable copy of the Sugar Shoppe album I grab one and give it a listen.
When I finally did, I liked it (to a point).
The Sunshine Pop oeuvre, while packed with underappreciated gems, is also jam packed with sugary junk, i.e. glassy-eyed, overly twee, insubstantial, stuff that only the most hard-core collector of the stuff would be able to tolerate.
Fortunately, 30+ years of listening to music has (if nothing else) provided me with a sense about these things, and a quick appraisal of an unheard record (i.e. material, producer, arranger etc) can give some idea of what you might be in for.
Since the album in question wasn’t very expensive, and since the group did covers of Donovan’s ‘Skip-a-long Sam’ (their version adding an unnecessary dollops of saccharine to the original) and the theme from the film ‘Privilege’ I figured I’d give it a go.
There were a couple of things that strayed a little too close to the universe of show-tunes, but there were also a couple of real gems, so on balance I’d say I like the record.
The Sugar Shoppe were a foursome, mixed between US and Canadian residents that released some 45s (for the Yorkville label) before recording the Capitol album that gave us today’s selection.
The tune I bring you today, ‘The Attitude’ starts with an Eastern touch, mixing sitar with what sounds like a call to prayer, before turning into a great pastiche of the Mamas and Papas Cali-folk rock sound. I’d go as far as to say that the female singers were doing their best to duplicate the harmonies of Cass Elliot and Michelle Phillips (wait for the phrase ‘beyond your years’ which sounds like it was spliced in from a Mamas and Papas album).
It’s sweet without being cloying and has enough kick to keep it interesting.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back later in the week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for both sides of a southern funk 45

Iron Leg Digital Trip #34 – Symphonie du Sneetch

Listen/Download 98MB/256K Mixed Mp3

Greetings all.
I hope everyone is digging, and digging into the summer, soaking up as much sunshine as possible (barring the slow incineration of sunburn).
I was driving home the other day, filled with tourist-related road rage, when I came to the Manasquan River bridge on RT70 (which will mean nothing if you’re not from the area, but bear with me), and as the car started up the span a vista opened up before me of absolutely surreal loveliness.
There was a gigantic blue sky, spotted with what seemed like uniformly sized, cottony white clouds. It was almost as if I was headed into a matte painting from an early technicolor movie, and in a split second all the anger evaporated.
Of course it all came back a few minutes later when some knucklehead cut across three lanes of traffic to make a turn they hadn’t planned for, but that’s the way it is here at the shore. You take the good with the bad, hoping that the good actually remembers to repeat it’s part of the cycle before you snap.
I got up early on Saturday, and while I was trying to ease into the morning, sipping a delicious iced coffee I was wandering around YouTube when I happened upon something remarkable, that being a video of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands.
It was ‘Heloise’ by the Sneetches.
I can’t remember how I first heard of the Sneetches (it was well over 20 years ago) but I do remember how I fell in love with their sound the second the needle hit the record.
If you follow things here at Iron Leg or over at Funky16Corners you’ll know that aside from my wife and kids, there is little in this life I love more than discovering new (to me) music.
It’s like a drug.
Really.
I get cranky when I don’t have it and when I find something new, and the notes and tones start to fill my ears the pleasure centers in my brain are activated and something (endorphins?) is released and all is at least temporarily well with the world.
The discography of the Sneetches is packed from end to end with sounds that have that effect on me.
Aside from my early years of Beatles appreciation, I can hardly think of an artist/band that seemed as if every note they played had been engineered for my specific enjoyment.
That idea is of course absurd, with the truth being a lot closer to an accidental simpatico wherein the musical sensibility of the Sneetches (as creators) and myself (as listener) intersected on almost every level.
The grooviest thing of all, is that while the sounds that they made during their time together were evocative of the 60s (and the 70s), they rarely (despite an eagerness to record cover material) sounded like any one band. They were in turns Beatle-y, Zombie-ish, Buffalo Springfield-esque (and on, and on ad infinitum with added touches of Raspberries-osity) but unlike the vast majority of bands that arose in the mid-80s 60s revival scene, they managed to distill their many influences into a modern sound.
Despite this fact, and that the music they made between roughly 1985 and 1995 is consistently brilliant, they never really broke through to a mainstream audience (or even a significant indie contingent). I’d go as far as to say that during the time they were active, the Sneetches were pound for pound the finest pop band in the world.
I never really understood their inability to break through to a major audience, and from almost the very first time I heard the Sneetches I did what I could to turn people on to their music, whether it was passing tapes on to friends, or writing about them in my zine(s), all to no avail (though I did get a nice note from Matt Carges once).
Every once in a while I’ll cross paths with someone similarly enthusiastic about the Sneetches (my brothers both dig them too) but not nearly enough for my tastes.
You see, good music (or art, or movies or whatever else it is you dig) shouldn’t be filed away, especially when it hasn’t been exposed to everyone who might find within it the kind of spiritual ‘fuel’ that I find in a band like the Sneetches.
They took the time to channel their considerable talents into creating something beautiful, and while it might be rediscovered in a hundred years making them the musical Vermeers of their day, it would be nice if people could hear it and dig it while they are still here (not together as a band, but here with us in the corporeal plane) to be appreciated.
I’m putting together this mix so that those of you that stop by here, and haven’t heard/heard of the Sneetches might get a taste s it were and head over to iTunes to consume (thus the absence of a zip file of individual tracks). Though much of their discography is out of print, you can get their masterpiece ‘Sometimes That’s All We Have’ (and the comp 1985-1991) on iTunes, and backstock and used copies of their other albums at Amazon and elsewhere. I think that once you get a taste you’ll be out there, beating the figurative bushes of the interwebs so you can obtain copies of your own.
So take some time and appreciate the Sneetches.

Peace

Larry

PS Make sure to head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

The Trade Winds

Listen – The Trade Winds – Mind Excursion – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the end of the week finds you well.
This has been a weird week, running the gamut from chilly, fogbound mornings to blazingly hot afternoons, i.e. a typical New Jersey spring, during which almost any kind of conditions can be expected. I wouldn’t be all that shocked to look out the window and see fluffy snowflakes drifting toward the ground.
The tune I bring you today is a light, breezy, sunshiney bit of pop with just the finest bit of psychedelic filigree pasted around the edges.
I only heard ‘Mind Excursion’ by the Tradewinds in the last year, but loved it from the very first. It took a little while before I realized that this was the same group that recorded ‘New York’s a Lonely Town’, the New Yorkiest Brian Wilson cop of all time, recorded for Leiber and Stoller’s Red Bird label.
‘Mind Excursion’ grazed the outside of the Top 40 in the fall of 1966. A pure pop confection, the song is only tangentially psychedelic (most via the lyrics) sounding like a cross between the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Cowsills. The arrangement by Jimmy Wisner (who worked on so many great Philly records) manages to use harp and glockenspiel as the perfect complement to the sweet melody without ever going over the top. The song is ‘light’, but in a perfectly balanced way. The lyrics, namechecking ‘Keds’ and ‘injuns’ (?!?) are naïve but not stupid, paving the way for a lot of what would later be known as ‘sunshine pop’.
Oddly enough ‘Mind Excursion’ – like Gary Lewis and the Playboys equally innocuous ‘Green Grass’ – was banned by overly cautious programmers in some markets. In retrospect this seems insane, but the airwave were a much more sensitive place in 1966.
I hope you dig the tune as much as I do, and I’ll be back on Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul jazz.

If only there was more of this uber-cool Jackie and Roy live stuff online but alas there is not as I have searched. But thier sunshine pop classic Didnt Want To Have To Do It does appear in a totally appropriate groovy context on both of these completely essential sunshine pop compilations that you need in your life … trust me…

Love – Sunshine Pop Compilation on La Troisieme Note (its an obscure French label but I found a copy at JB Hi Fi – wow!!) – Here’s a pleasant little bauble, existing for no other reason than to spread beauty (but one could imagine something that fell from the pages of a not-quite-New Wave obsessed Sofia Coppola’s diary). Love is a collection of late ’60s soft-rock chestnuts, compiled by the D.I.R.T.Y. Soundsystem (“selector” Guillaume Sorge, and “sound designer” Catherine Piault). The mixtape ethos at the heart of Love keeps things consistent with its theme, intoxicating numbers running the gamut from orchestral pop to jazz-pop. Harpers Bizarre, an often brilliant studio pop ensemble, opens the disc with their mesmerizing single “Witchi Tai To,” its tinkling bells, pre-Kraut motorik rhythms and breathy vocal harmonies paving a direct path to… read more

The Trip St Eitienne
This is the album Saint Etienne would dearly love to have created themselves: it distills practically all their influences into one glorious folk/soul/prog/pop stew…read more

Jimmie Haskell

Denny Doherty

(Above) Front cover unfolded (Below) Inside cover unfolded

Listen – Jimmie Haskell – Prelude – MP3

Listen – Jimmie Haskell/Denny Doherty – To Claudia On Thursday – MP3

Greetings all.

Welcome back to the second entry in the ongoing Iron Leg ‘Sounds of the Millennium’ series. This time out, the definition is stretched a little bit, since the “sounds” in question are actual songs, not performed by anyone that was in the band. Since covers of Millennium songs are few and far between, and the record in question is so interesting, and the numbers are sung by one of my all time favorite singers, well, I couldn’t resist.
Last summer I was down in Washington DC, DJing and getting in a lot of quality digging with my man (and newly minted father, congrats!!)  DJ Birdman. On the last of these vinyl safaris, in an unassuming record store on the outskirts of town, he pulled a strange record out of a one of the crates.
He called me over to who me this unbelievable package, in which the cover (not really a self-contained record jacket at all) unfolded into a huge poster with an alternative history map of the USA on one side and a series of odd black and white photos on the other. That – in and of itself – was very cool, but when he refolded the cover something unusual caught my eye. I asled him to pass me the record, and after a closer look I confirmed that I had indeed seen a songwriting credit of ‘D. Rhodes/R. Edgar’ on one of the songs, those being Doug Rhodes and Ron Edgar, first of the Music Machine, and then later of the Millennium.
A split second later my eyes bugged out when I realized that the song that bore those credits was in fact the Millennium’s ‘Prelude’!! An even closer look revealed that record also included a version of ‘To Claudia On Thursday’ (written by the Millennium’s Joey Stec and Michael Fennelly) , which blends with ‘Prelude’ as the medley that opens the Millennium’s sole LP ‘Begin’.
It took a bit of examination before I concluded that the album in question was called ‘California ‘99’ and the artist was someone named Jimmie Haskell. Birdman was taking this one home, so as soon as I returned to home base, I set out into the wilds of the interwebs to find myself a copy. A few weeks later it came sailing through the mail slot.
Jimmie Haskell was a very busy arranger who worked on all kinds of records, from pop, to jazz, to heavy rock, eventually winning Grammys for his arrangements of Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode To Billie Joe’, Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and Chicago’s ‘If You Leave me Now’.
‘California ‘99’ is an at times bizarre concept album, mixing audio collage, original songs and interesting cover material all wrapped in a strange, post-apocalyptic alternate history of the United States in which social upheaval, mixed with a series of natural disasters literally and figuratively change the landscape of the country. It’s the kind of record, both musically and physically that could only have come out in the early 70s, when record companies, their senses dulled by mountains of pot and cocaine seemed to be green-lighting every single cockamamie concept album with elaborate packaging that was brought to them.
I always love when I find a record like Isaac Haye’s ‘Black Moses’ or an OG of Led Zeppelin’s III or ‘Physical Graffitti’ and the original ‘package’ is still intact. There was always something special back when I was a kid, when I’d come back from the flea market having found copies of Cheech and Chong’s ‘Big Bambu’ with the giant rolling paper intact. Back then you really felt you were getting something extraordinary, even if more often than not the music inside the package was substandard (having been produced inside the same narcotic tornado that allowed the package to be created in the first place.
Though Haskell wrote all the new material and arranged the album, ‘California ‘99’ features appearances by a number of guests, including Joe Walsh (then of the James Gang, which he would leave later that year), legendary blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon, vocalists Clydie King and Merry Clayton, Max Buda of the Kaleidoscope and on the Millennium covers, Denny Doherty of the Mamas and Papas.
While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that ‘California ‘99’ succeeds as a self-contained work – though it’s far from the worst/weirdest concept album of the time (1971) – it does features some great individual tracks, the finest of which are ‘Prelude’ and ‘To Claudia on Thursday’.
The ‘California ‘99’ versions of these songs are fairly faithful remakes with the addition of some Moog synthesizer. They are presented in reverse order, i.e. ‘To Claudia On Thursday’ closes out side one of the album and ‘Prelude’ opens side two. ‘Prelude’ includes a bit of narration from the album’s story, a snippet of which appears at the beginning of ‘Claudia’ as well. The ‘Prelude/To Claudia On Thursday’ medley is my favorite part of the Millennium’s ‘Begin’, and the fact that Haskell chose a vocalist of the caliber of Denny Doherty to perform ‘To Claudia…’ on ‘California ‘99’ has a lot to do with why the cover is so satisfying. I’ll post the songs here in the ‘Millennium’ order. You can listen to them however you like.
Interestingly, Doherty’s version of ‘To Claudia On Thursday’ was included as an extra on the 2004 UK Mamas and Papas ‘Complete Anthology’ boxed set.
I hope you dig the tunes, and I’ll be back later in the week with something psychedelic.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for the first in a week of Hammond Organ killers!

PSS The Iron Leg Digital Trip Podcast Archive has been updated, now with 31 mixes!

Matthew was invited into London Fields Radio this week to play some sunshine pop ahead of this weekend’s shows at Notting Hill Arts Club. Their write up (and tracklisting) can be found here, suffice to say you can listen below to have ‘Telstar’, ‘Nostalgia’, ‘Gloomy Sunday’ and others inflicted upon your unwary ears.

Many thanks to Sarah and Dom for making it happen, and the superb Wilton’s Cafe for the many caffeine fixes.

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.

[http://DianaCretu.deviantart.com/art/Sun-91776105]

The sun made a cameo today. Seattle sighed.

Hey! So, pretty much completely last minute I decided to put together a New Year’s-themed mix for the blog. I’m not sure if I had to type that out, or if you’d be able to infer the “last-minute-ness” from the wretched Photoshop accident above? Huge pink old-style lettering! What the hell was I thinking?

Either way, the mix is pretty solid, however it’s not as much a “songs to party to on New Year’s Eve mix” (à la Andrew WK) as a collection of songs about the passing of time and renewal. These aren’t all happy tunes though. For instance, David Bowie’s “Golden Years” sits right up next to a song by the truly wonderful and underrated late-80s Cleveland indie-rock band My Dad Is Dead called “Year of Loss”. The unifying theme here is simply that every song is about reflection on both positive and negative events, and then finding or not finding the strength to move on. Oh, sorry to my friend Ricky for not including his very apt suggestion “Movin’ On” by Blur, even though it was a totally good idea. Like “Movin’ On”, I happen to love every song on here. Well, except the Bowie tune (I”m not actually crazy about Bowie), but he’s a crowdpleaser…So, what are you gonna do?

The cover art and banner are from a painting called “New Year Celebration” by Russian artist Lidia Davidenkova. Don’t be turned off by my hideously cheesy Photoshopping of her work, she’s really quite talented. Also, I would love to here from people about songs that I’ve neglected. Can you think of any great additions to a New Year’s mix? Do you have one of your own that you can post? My only request: please don’t say “New Year’s Day” by U2. Thanks, enjoy. (Download Slow, Slow Music’s New Year’s 2009/2010 Mix.)

1. All Those Years Ago – George Harrision
2. Last Year – Akron/Family
3. Happy New Year – Camera Obscura
4. That Year – Uncle Tupelo
5. The Bright New Year – Bert Jansch
6. New Years – Codiene
7. Happy New Year – ABBA
8. Happy New Year – Lightnin’ Hopkins
9. New Year’s Eve – The Walkmen
10. It’s Not the End of the World – Super Furry Animals
11. This Time Next Year – Paul Burch
12. Year of Loss – My Dad Is Dead
13. Golden Years – David Bowie
14. The Year Begins to Be Ripe – John Cage as Performed by Theater of Voice with Terry Riley
15. Reelin’ In the Years – Steely Dan
16. This Will Be Our Year – The Zombies

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

This mix can be heard in the Iron Leg Digital Trip Podcast Archive

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…

On the other hand, a lavish arrangement (i.e. with lots of instruments) can be very enjoyable, conjuring up classic soul from the 70, sunshine pop of the 60s, and bittersweet areas in between. Platters That Matter Records turned me on to Liam Hayes and Plush, whose "Take A Chance" would be right at home on Ronco's landmark Get It On! hits compilation LP:

Tom M. hipped me to Brendan Benson. I've finally figured out that he is the "other" singer of the Raconteurs, the one who isn't Jack White, the one whose lead-vocal tracks I skip over in favor of the Jack White tracks. On his own, though, he can do the retro trip quite creditably, as on "Garbage Day":

Brent Cash of Athens, Georgia, packed his debut album full of catchy pop hooks and sunny arrangements, with some Bacharachian chord changes thrown in for good measure:

And finally, while synthesized strings and flutes barely count as lavish arranging, Josh Rouse's "Come Back" closes out this set rather nicely, I think:

Bright Penny

Liam Hayes & Plush

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

This mix can be heard in the Iron Leg Digital Trip Podcast Archive

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…

First of all, Jackie DeShannon is very new to me, and I am by no means an expert. I suppose that I’ve recognized her name for at least a few years, but I didn’t associate it with much of anything until recently. A few months ago I was having drinks with a friend of mine and gushing over his band’s song “Splendor In the Grass” when he told me that, unfortunately, that hadn’t written the song at all. In fact, it was very old, somewhat rare Jackie DeShannon tune recorded with the Byrds as her backing band.

Determined to get ahold of this tune in the original context, I finally tracked down the album Me About You from 1968. Quite simply, I’ve been rather surprised at DeShannon’s ability to ride the fence between a number of seemingly contradictory roles in popular music. As a songwriter, she’s been credited with the success of a varied palate of artists including the amazing Brenda Lee, Marianne Faithful, and even Kim Carnes. As a performer she’s created music almost as varied.

Her first album, released in 1963, was a hybrid of the Brill Building pop that she had a hand in establishing, and more serious folk music that was just beginning to take hold of college campuses at the time. By the time Me About You arrived she’d managed to create a fully-formed folk-rock sound with the light, enjoyable flavor of girl-group pop, but with enough substance to add an extra emotional heft.

To be fair, I must admit that this record is not a life-affirming masterpiece, or a work of staggering vision or genius. It is, however, an extremely pleasurable listen that has the power of reminding you of when life was, or at least seemed to be, simpler, brighter, and more full of promise. (Download Jackie DeShannon’s – Me About You.)