Here They Come!

Paul Revere & The Raiders - "Here They Come" (1965) - Columbia Records

Hello Friends,

We've got Boise, Idaho's own Paul Revere & The Raiders on the turntable tonight.

Here They Come! would be the Raiders' third LP, their first for Columbia records, the first to get them some attention beyond the Pacific Northwest and the first to chart (it would reach # 71 on the US Charts).   It would also be Columbia Records' first "rock & roll" record. 

Produced by Doris Day's son (and Charlie Manson bud) Terry Melcher, it would be the last Raiders' album released before they really took off and before they started regularly appearing on Dick Clark's American Bandstand spin-off show, Where the Action Is.

This isn't a great album, but its pretty good.  Side One captures the band in a faux-live setting playing pretty rip-roaring R&B standards like "You Can't Sit Down", "Money (That's What I Want)", "Louie Louie" and "Do You Love Me?"  Definitely a great way to get a raucous party started (by 1965 standards!)

Side Two gets a little more folksy, a little more psych-y and a little more expressive.  Over the course of the side of an album they evolve from a middle-of-the-road dance/party band to a tight-sounding, legit rock & roll band.  

There's more cover songs on Side Two, like "Fever" & "Time Is On My Side", but there are also some great songs written by some of their contemporaries like Bruce Johnston/Melcher ("Gone") and Steve Barri/P.F. Sloan ("These Are Bad Times For Me And My Baby").  The album's soulful closer (and our probable winner for best song on the record award), "A Kiss To Remember Her By" was a completely original tune, composed by Lindsay.

History will probably most remember Paul Revere and The Raiders as a gimmicky sort of band as in their early days they would perform dressed up like Colonial Minutemen, however, there was nothing gimmicky about their tight and driving rhythm section, their grinding lead guitar work (by Drake Levin), their heavy, bleeding Hammond organ (by Paul Revere) and singer Mark Lindsay's soulful, raspy vocals.  Like all great rock & roll bands they were a bunch of white kids pretending (wishing) to be black and having a ton of fun doing it! 

FUN FACT: Hey kids, did you know that lead singer, Mark Lindsay, and producer, Terry Melcher, once shared a house at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles's Benedict Canyon? Sound familiar? That's the same house that Sharon Tate & friends would be brutally murdered by the Manson family in August 1969! Melcher Skelter!

RATING: 3.5 kisses to remember you by out of 5 

Hi-Fi Holidays: Psych-Out Christmas

Various Artists - "Psycho-Out Christmas" (2013) - Cleopatra Records

Smoke 'em if you got 'em tonight friends!

Great LP compilation of some really twisted xmas tunes.

Seventeen whacked-out songs to help make your late night holiday chill-out sessions a bit more merry & bright.

SIDE A
1. Intro - Christmas Monster Party (Len Maxwell)
2. Christmas Time (Is Here Again) - Elephant Stone
3. It s Christmas Day - The Cosmonauts
4. Silent Night - Quintron & Miss Pussycat
5. Jul Song - Dark Horses
6. What Child Is This? - Sleepy Sun
7. No More Christmas Blues - The Vacant Lots
8. Time of the Season - Sons of Hippies
9. Santa Claus - The Fuzztones

SIDE B
1. Christmas Tears - Eli Cook
2. Little Drummer Boy - The Movements
3. Jingle Bell Rock - Quintron & Miss Pussycat
4. Frosty The Snowman - The Candy Store
5. Run Rudolph Run - Psychic Ills
6. Mele Kalikimaka - Dead Meadow
7. Jingle Bells - HE 5
8. White Christmas (Guitar Stooge Version) - Iggy Pop


There's some melody-laced Beatles-influence (Montreal's Elephant Stone); VU-inspired guitar rock (California's The Cosmonauts); whacked-out exotica-tinged noise rock (Quintron); warm and cozy dream pop (England's Dark Horses); Pink Floyd-inspired psychedelic jams (California's Sleepy Sun); shoegazing-indie rock (Burlington, Vermont's The Vacant Lots and Sarasota, Florida's Sons of Hippies); and some good ol' fashioned three chord garage rock (NYC's legendary Fuzztones covering a Sonic's classic!)

And that's just Side One!

Side Two contains even more eclectics with some OKAY modern blues courtesy of Billy Gibbons Eli Cook; some more noisy space rock (The Movements, Quintron, Dead Meadow); some Phil Spector-inspired pop (The Candy Store); and some more retro-sounding garage rock (Psychic Ills & HE 5).

Everything comes to stunning conclusion thanks to Iggy Pop's crooning take on the Irving Berlin Classic, "White Christmas".  

Yowsa! For a second we thought the record was playing on too slow a speed, but that's just Iggy's inimitable baritone (plus whatever drinks we've been ingesting!)

There's plenty of guitars, spacey keyboards, weird sound effects and beats to keep your after hours holiday party rolling deep into the nigh.  This record is a must hear especially for fans of Pink Floyd, space rock, The Flaming Lips, Spiritualized and early 90's indie rock.

As Merry Monster MC Len Maxwell states in the intro to the LP, "you should not play this record when the sun is up!"  Agreed!  Who plays records during the day anyways?

RATING: 4 it just doesn't feel like christmas until iggy pop sings white christmas out of 5

Wallace and Ladmo Show - "Soggy Cereal" (1970)

Hello Friends,

We first heard this song on the Pebbles: Volume 3 - The Acid Gallery LP as performed by a cat named Mike Condello.

A little further research showed that Mike Condello was the musical director on a kid's show out of Phoenix, Arizona called "The Wallace and Ladmo Show".   On the air from 1954 to 1989, it remains the one of the longest running children's shows in U.S. Television history.  We watched a few clips and boy-oh-boy did it look weird!  

Then, holy smokes, we stumbled upon this clip here and its Commadore Condello's Salt River Navy Band performing what song?  You guessed it, "Soggy Cereal", in all its propagandist glory!  Yowsas!

On a much sadder note friends, Mike Condello, who suffered from lifelong depression, took his own life in 1995!

Bummer!

Pebbles volume 3: The Acid Gallery

Pebbles, volume 3 aka "The Acid Gallery" (1979) - BFD Records 

Hello Friends,

Tiki T. and I have recently started collecting the Pebbles LP series courtesy of the BFD & AIP Record labels.  Awesome compilation records, first released in the late 70's, subtitled as "Artyfacts from the First Punk Era".  

They're a good companion to the more popular NUGGETS series-- records filled with 2 or 3 minute punk masterpieces mostly from the years of 1966 thru 1969.  Bands consisting of pimply-faced kids in basements and garages scattered throughout the country.  Some bands (and band members) would go on to bigger and better things, but most would only end up playing local teen centers, VFW Halls, dive bars and local college radio stations.  Only a few would be fortunate enough to open for a touring national act like Herman's Hermits, The Jefferson Airplane or The Animals.  A handful would be fortunate to record a 7" or two and then call it a day fading off into rock & roll obscurity.  

One-Hit and No-Hit Wonders. Footnotes in the Rock & Roll History Books.

Some of the greatest rock and roll songs ever written may have only been heard by a handful of ears. These records provide a time capsule into an honest and less-cynical past.  Behind every band, there's a story; some are triumphant; some are tragic; many are uneventful... but who doesn't love a good rock & roll story?    

Tonight we've got the third Pebbles LP on the turntable, also known as "The Acid Gallery".  Eighteen tracks that are out there!  Waaaaay out there! Enjoy!  

Side One
1. "Diamond Mine" - Dave Diamond & the Higher Elevation.  Dave Diamond was a rock DJ hailing from South Dakota who made his mark in the late 60's playing records by then burgeoning psychedelic bands.  (He was the first DJ to play "Light My Fire" by The Doors!) This spoken word psychedelic poem sounds a bit muddled and doesn't really make a whole lot of sense but it kicks the record off in quite the trippy fashion!  (Dave Diamond passed away in May of last year!  RIP Dave! We hardly knew ye!)

2. "Suzy Creamcheese" - Teddy & His Patches.  Great acid punk from San Jose garage band doing their interpretation of Frank Zappa & the Mothers. 

3. "Suicidal Flowers" - Crystal Chandelier. Awesome fuzztone on this Doors-inspired song courtesy of a little known garage band from either Texas or Providence, RI. 

4. "Swami" - William Penn V. Fucking fantastic San Francisco British Invasion-influenced acid rock.  Opened up for the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Them & Paul Revere and the Raiders. Mickey Hart played drums with them for a while before joining The Grateful Dead.  They were supposedly about to sign a record deal with Fantasy Records before disbanding and becoming another rock & roll footnote!

5. "I'm Allergic to Flowers" - Jefferson Handkerchief. What a band name!  We don't know a thing about the Jefferson Handkerchief except that they released this one novelty single in 1967 in order to poke holes in the whole "Flower Power" movement!

6. bonus track "Prana (excerpt)" - Unfolding.     

7. "Flight Reaction" - The Calico Wall.  Psychedelic garage punk from Minnesota band! Great trippy & paranoid song about fear of flying... Chorus: "And I swear I'll never fly again!"

8. "Loose Lip Sync Ship" - The Hogs.  Weird tune, heavily influenced by Zappa.  Starts out as a great garage instrumental, then moves into a druggy doo-wop spoken word section, before winding up as an abstract space jazz hymn!  Fun Fact: The Hogs were better known as The Chocolate Watchband!  

9. "The Reality of (Air) Fried Borsk" - The Driving Stupid. More whacked-out psychedelic garage rock, this time from the state of New Jersey.  The acoustic stomp-blues part is fine, but the screeching, screaming vocals seem to be a little overboard!  This band's biggest "hit" was called "Horror Asparagus Stories", included on Side Two!  Oh boy! 

Side Two
1. "I'm Five Years Ahead of My Time" - The Third Bardo.  Releasing just one single in their short career, New York's The Third Bardo were certainly about quality and not quantity with this killer psychedelic classic!  We're hearing more than a little Roky Erickson on this one!  

2. "Voices Green and Purple" - The Bees.  West Coast acid rock.  This time hailing from Los Angeles.  Not much else is known about The Bees.

3. "Spider and The Fly" - The Monocles.  This is the sound of good clean-cut neighborhood kids from Colorado forming a garage band and then discovering drugs! Yowsa! 

4. "Let's Take a Trip" - Godfrey.  L.A. Disc Jockey Godfrey takes on this Kim Fowley classic.  Sounds a little bit square compared to the original which was the original ode to psychedelics! 

5. "Faces" - T.C. Atlantic.  Minneapolis in the house!  Decent garage band that really never made it out of their home state of Minnesota. Nice fuzzy guitars and snaky vocals!

6. "Soggy Cereal" - Mike Condello.  Oh boy.

7. "Dom Kallar Oss Mods" - The Lea Riders Group.  Fantastic garage rock straight from Stockholm, Sweden and doing it up right!  This was the title track of the 1968 Swedish documentary about streetwise Stockholm teenagers, "They Call Us Misfits". 

8. "Horror Asparagus Stories" - The Driving Stupid.   "My father was a big ol' toad / He lived in a hole in the middle of the road"... it seems this collection is leaning a little too much to the Dr. Demento side of things!

9. "Like a Dribbling Fram" - Races Marbles.  Oh boy, Bob Dylan is turning in his grave! (and he's not even dead yet!) Canadian band with their take on Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" that sounds like an 1960's Weird Al on psilocybin.

And "Weird" would be the best way to describe much of this record!  But, like we always say, "Weird is good", friends, and there's plenty of weirdos on Pebbles volume 3! 

RATING: 3.5 commie cereal, soggy cereal, they're one in the same out of 5

Its a Cryan' Shame!

The Cryan' Shames - "Synthesis" (1968) - Columbia Records

Hello Friends,

Straight from the rough streets of Hinsdale, Illinois, we've got the Cryan' Shames on the turntable tonight.

Synthesis is the band's third and final album and it definitely takes a more psychedelic approach than their first two records.

The Cryan' Shames biggest "hit" came out in 1966.  A cover of The Searcher's "Sugar & Spice" and there's nothing on Synthesis that really comes close to the succinct sweetness of that garage rock nugget!

But there's a certain over-reaching charm to this record. 

Our pick for the record is the first track, the garage-y, "Greenburg, Glickstein, Charles, David Smith & Jones" (written by Isaac Guillory).

RATING: 3.5 Kisses Sweeter Than Wine out of 5

R.I.P. "Louie Louie" singer Jack Ely

Last week, the lead singer of the 60's garage rock classic, "Louie Louie", passed away. Three chords, incomprehensible lyrics and plenty of sneering, punk attitude.  Overused? Sure!  But the song probably launched tens of thousands of suburban wannabe rockstars in the garages and basements across America! 

from bbc.com...

Jack Ely, lead singer of The Kingsmen, who were best known for 1960s hit Louie Louie, has died at the age of 71.

His son Sean Ely said the musician died at home in Redmond, Oregon, after a long battle with an illness.

"Because of his religious beliefs, we're not even sure what (the illness) was," he said.

Ely's incoherent singing on Louie Louie led the FBI to investigate the famous track on the grounds that it might be obscene.

The law enforcement agents concluded, in a lengthy investigative report, that the song was "unintelligible at any speed".

Ely had a falling out with the band shortly after the song was recorded and later trained horses in Oregon.

Louie Louie was originally recorded in 1957 by Richard Berry, who had written it two years earlier.

The song is written from the perspective of a man who wants to sail to Jamaica to return to a girl he loves.

But it was Mr Ely's rendition that popularised the song.

His son said: "Right out of his mouth, my father would say, 'We were initially just going to record the song as an instrumental, and at the last minute I decided I'd sing it. It's all of this is in a 10-by-10 room with one microphone. I'm standing on my tippy toes yelling into the microphone: Louie Louie! Louie Louie! We gotta go!'"

The sound engineer working on the track raised the studio microphone to several feet above Ely's head and placed him in the middle of a group of musicians to create a better "live feel" for the recording.

The result was that Ely - who was 20 at the time - had to shout as loudly as he could to be heard over the drums and guitar.

It might not have helped, either, that Ely was wearing braces at the time, although he maintained that the main problem was trying to sing with his head tilted back at a 45-degree angle.

The song has been widely recognised by organisations including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Grammy Hall of Fame for its influence on the history of rock and roll.

Ely co-founded The Kingsmen in 1959. The band primarily recorded cover versions of songs. Four years later, the group recorded Louie Louie. The Kingsmen had a couple of other minor hits, Money and The Jolly Green Giant.

However, Ely was content with his legacy as a one-hit wonder, according to his son.

"He wanted to try on different occasions to pursue other endeavours in the music industry, but I think when it was all done and said he was pretty happy that he did Louie Louie."

Chesterfield Kings - "99th FLOOR" (1980)

Great cover of The Moving Sidewalks song from 1966... a garage-rock classic!  

The song originally was written by The Sidewalks' frontman, Billy Gibbons, who would later go one to form ZZ Top.

Anyone else think a young Martha Quinn looks a lot like Sandy Hook-shooter* Adam Lanza?

* allegedly

13th Floor Elevators: Easter Everywhere

The 13th Floor Elevators - "Easter Everywhere" (1967) - International Artist

Hello Friends,

The year 1967 marked a turning point in music and culture, especially in these here United States.  There was no shortage of good music either.  Bands began pushing the envelope with sounds and instruments.  1967 had debuts from The Doors, The Grateful Dead, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Moby Grape, Big Brother & the Holding Company, The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd & Leonard Cohen.  Frank Zappa & The Mothers released Absolutely Free.  The Kinks gave us Something Else.  The Beach Boys cut & pasted together, Smiley Smile. Cream, Disraeli Gears. The Who Sell Out.  The Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request. And the grandaddy of them all, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Released just one year after their amazing debut, The 13th Floor Elevators released Easter Everywhere, another psychedelic masterpiece.  Like the times themselves, there's a definite evolution here as well.  Not only was the band continually expanding their minds through living the Rock & Roll lifestyle, but by '67 they were more worldly & world-weary.  Also, by most reports, they were probably ingesting more psychedelics than your average, run-of-the-mill Texas garage band!  Just say no, kids!

The band has broadened their sound as well, playing a slightly more developed version of their signature psychedelic blues with more folk, jazz & Eastern influences thrown in.  For their sophomore effort, the rhythm section would also be updated.  Bassist Ronnie Leatherman and drummer John Ike Walton would be replaced by Dan Galindo and Danny Thomas, respectively.  Of course, each song on the record is enhanced by Tommy Hall's ubiquitous and fluttering electric jug playing! 

Frontman Roky Erickson is in especially fine form.  His barbaric yawp never sounded better! With whacky stream of consciousness lyrics, he's equal parts Syd Barrett & Jim Jones. William Blake & Charlie Manson.  Whimsically menacing.  Almost like a crazed Bob Dylan leading a religious cult while ingesting healthy doses of lysergic acid.

Things get kicked off with "Slip Inside This House" which typifies everything that's to follow on the record.  Blistering psychedelic rock with equal parts drugs & blues. Erickson's manic philosophy invites the listener in to "slip inside this house as you pass by". At over 8 minutes, it sounds more like a Sermon than a follow-up to "You're Gonna Miss Me".

"Slide Machine" was written by frequent Elevators pal & muse, Powell St. John.  Now we're not exactly sure what a slide machine is except that "it sweeps bones right off the road" and the image of a slide machine headed our way with Stacy Sutherland's angry fuzz guitar and Hall's maniacal jug is enough to scare the crap out of anyone, stoned or otherwise!

"She Lives (In A Time of Her Own)" is a fantastic little 3 minute psych-pop gem which sounds like it would have sounded perfectly at home on their debut record, The Psychedelic Sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators.

On Surrealistic Pillow (also 1967), The Jefferson Airplane asked "Don't You Want Somebody to Love"?  On Easter Everywhere, Stacy Sutherland channels both the Airplane and The Byrds (two West Coast-influences) on the lamenting and fuzzy, "Nobody to Love". 

Side One wraps up with a grungy, desperate-sounding version of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue".  Erickson channeling Dylan is equal parts triumphant and heartbreaking!  

Side Two opens up with another rollicking psychedelic thrill ride, "Earthquake" (think "Roller Coaster" from The Psychedelic Sounds Of).

This rager is followed by one of the band's most raw and vulnerable-sounding songs, "Dust". A quiet and mostly acoustic ballad with cryptic, haiku-type lyrics is about as close to a "love" song as the band would ever get!

In a much cooler alternate Universe, "I've Got Levitation" would have been Easter Everywhere's "hit" single. Once again, it sounds a little like The Byrds or even more like The Monkees on LSD.  (It also contains the lyric, "The waves of higher bodies soon dazzling in my ears / Will center my vibrations with the music of the spheres" inspiring the name of the box set!)

Clementine Hall (Tommy's wife) would co-write and harmonize on the gorgeous-sounding, "I Had to Tell You" which has Roky sounding a lot like Michael Stipe. (Just listen to the way he sings, "I'm feelin' fine" at the end of the each chorus!) Clementine was no Yoko however, as this song is fantastic, as is the song she co-wrote on the first record, "Splash 1".

The album's last track is, unfortunately, the album's only weak song.  "Postures (Leave Your Body Behind)" provides a Motown-influenced backdrop to Roky's meandering lyrics about out-of-body consciousness.  Its all rather new age-y.  It probably would have worked much better against noisy, fuzzy guitars, feedback and drums that sound like they might be tumbling down a set of stairs.

As part of the MUSIC OF THE SPHERES BOX SET, this updated & remastered vinyl edition of Easter Everywhere is presented as a double LP with both Mono & Stereo versions of the record.  I'm sure somewhere else someone has done a pretty thorough breakdown of the differences between the two versions.  What we basically notice is that the Mono version has a fuller sound with a deeper bass mix and more prominent jug-playing.  (Imagine the Saturday Night Live sketch with Christopher Walken telling Will Ferrell/Tommy Hall, "More Jug!") 

Easter Everywhere would be the Elevators' penultimate release as well as their masterpiece.  In that much cooler, alternate universe that we mentioned earlier, The 13th Floor Elevators are so much more than just rock & roll footnotes.  If there was any justice in the world, it would be Roky Erickson's meddlesome mug gracing posters in teenagers' rooms in the late 60's and 70's instead of that creep Jim Morrison!  Lizard king, my ass!

RATING: 4.5 Three-eyed Men Are Not Complaining They Can Yo-Yo Where They Will Out of 5

 

13th Floor Elevators: Live in California

13th Floor Elevators - "Live in California" (1966) - International Artists

Hello Friends,

We're enjoying another record from our Music of the Spheres Box Set tonight. 

Recorded "live on LSD" in San Francisco in the fall of 1966, the Live in California LP captures rock & roll's first psychedelic band at the height of their demonic powers and its presence in the box set marks the first time that this LP would be officially released on vinyl.  

Live in California is much better quality than most of the bootleg-type live stuff that we've heard from the Elevators. The rhythm section gets a little muddy-sounding at times but still the vocals, guitars and electric jug come across sounding crisp and alive!   (Its much better, for example, than the official 1968 release "Live" which is basically outtakes of songs "enhanced" by fake crowds and overdubbed clapping!)  

Presumably recorded from a series of gigs at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom, the exact dates or locations of these recordings remain a mystery.  What is known is that in the Fall of 1966, the Elevators migrated from Austin, TX to San Francisco, CA and shocked/awed/inspired audiences in the Bay Area.  During their tenure, they played with bands like Big Brother & The Holding Company, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Jefferson Airplane & The Sir Douglas Quintet.  A real who's who of what was to become known as the "San Francisco sound."  There's no doubt that the Elevators presence in this scene was hugely influential not only because of their ground-breaking sound, but because of their LSD-fueled frenzied live performances. Like demons slithering in Eden.

Kicking things off on the record is a raucous cover of Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"-- an R&B song covered by practically every garage band from 1964 to 1968-- however in Roky Erickson's hands it becomes a demented-druggy sermon to his eager parishioners: "So glad to be here tonight / It's so good to be home / And I've got a message I want to tell everybody tonight..."  Intense and furious.    

Another oft-covered blues tune, Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me", is next.  If you were on acid seeing these guys perform, no doubt by the second song you were convinced that ringleader Roky Erickson, with fire in his eyes, was some sort of rock and roll demon and that maniacal boop-boop-boop-boop sound being made by the kid with the ceramic jug was actually sounds emitting from the innards of your own subconscious!

The originals "You Don't Know (How Young You Are)" and "Splash 1" are next and sound pretty close to the record versions.  By this time in their young career, they've probably knew these songs inside-out but considering the generous amounts of mind-altering substances they were ingesting on a daily basis, they do a great job holding things together!

The Buddy Holly hit, "I'm Gonna Love You Too" makes an appearance and wouldn't be heard from again until Blondie covered it in 1978.

"You Really Got Me" closes out Side One and the Kinks have never sounded so threatening and dark!

Side Two begins with a howling version of "Fire Engine" with some extra crazy-sounding electric jug!  

Next up there's two more cover songs, the oft-covered Chuck Berry classic, "Roll Over Beethoven", followed by the Rubber Sole classic, "The Word".  Not your typical cover song in 1966, but in the Roky Erikcson and the Elevators' hands it sounds less like a pot-influenced love song and much more like a fiery, drug-fueled, Revelation-inspired sermon. Charlie Manson would be proud!    

The side closes out with "Monkey Island" and an excellent, extended version of "Roller Coaster" complete with start-stops, tempo changes and more Erickson howling litanies: 

"You've gotta open up your mind and let everything come through..."

Kinda funny how "You're Gonna Miss Me" is absent from the set considering how it would have been the band's biggest (and only) "hit" of the time and you think the band would have been playing it any chance they got!  We're not really complaining though because we really like this record as is!

RATING: 4.5 starts like a roller coaster ride so real it takes your breath away out of 5