RIOTS ON THE STRIP AND LADIES OF THE CANYON
Superb follow-up to 2007’s lavish San Francisco set overflows with goodies. All life is here.
by ANDY MORTEN.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Where The Action Is!: Los Angeles Nuggets
Rhino 4-CD box set/book
www.rhino.com
“City of the dunes / I loved you once but I’ve gotta go”.
So sang Gene Clark in his 1968 song ‘Los Angeles’, but not before helping to re-align the musical trajectory of America’s second largest city forever and subvert the Hollywood dream by becoming one of rock’s first music industry casualties. And this from a guy from rural Kansas.
LA’s position as the musical capital of the world – notwithstanding well-aimed but inadequate challenges from London and then San Francisco – can be in little doubt.
Once The Beach Boys broke in ’63 there was no looking back and for the remainder of the decade the city spewed forth pop music at a frenzied rate unparalleled anywhere else in the world.
Where The Action Is! bravely attempts to condense this monumental outpouring into around six hours of music. By focusing on the period between ’65 and ’68, we’re spared the fumbling, formative years and the subsequent over-indulgence that blighted the turn of the decade, thus leaving us free to revel in 101 examples of pop’s golden years as born in pop’s golden city.
Following the entertaining but flawed British Empire box and the more rock-flavoured San Francisco set we’re back in true Nuggets territory here with the emphasis on folk-rock, garage punk, mutant Britpop, nascent psychedelia and the kind of blinding sunshine pop that could only have sprung up beneath LA’s UV rays.
The four CDs are split thematically with disc one (“On The Strip”) featuring The Standells, Byrds, Love, Buffalo Springfield, Beefheart, West Coast Pop-Art Experimental Band, Rising Sons, Association, Doors, Kaleidoscope, Seeds, Music Machine and Spirit among others. What else do you need to know? This is one of the best mid-60s comps I’ve ever heard and we’re barely off the starting blocks. Next!
Disc two (“Beyond The City”) is a garage and psych-heads’ wet dream. The legion of suburban bands that rose up in the wake of The Byrds, Standells, Love et al are responsible for some of the most out-there cranium-frazzling music of that or any other era. Much of WTAI’s satisfying diversity appears on disc two. The Chymes’ ‘He’s Not There Anymore’ blends girl group vocals with a slick folk-rock backing, ‘Acid Head’ by The Velvet Illusions is a tale of housewives’ drug habits that makes ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ read like a Women’s Institute brochure while Fapardokly’s ‘Tomorrow’s Girl’ could pass as the archetypal LA folk-rock record. That and half a dozen others here.
Disc three (“The Studio Scene”) leaves blue collar rock way behind and takes off in pursuit of the suited puppet masters; the writers, producers and arrangers with one hand on the recording desk and the other on the safe. Step forward cult favourites The Moon, The Yellow Balloon and Thorinshield alongside more obvious candidates The Monkees, P F Sloan and Lee Hazelwood. Plenty of crackers lurk beneath the “Made In Los Angeles” production gloss, not least Hearts & Flowers’ astounding ‘Tin Angel (Will You Ever Come Down)‘, a truly remarkable four minute melange of multi-dimensional string arrangements, seamless Beatlesque harmonies, cutting edge studio trickery and the fiercest drum sound this side of The Millennium’s ‘Prelude’.
Disc four (“New Directions”) follows several of our heroes – Gene Clark, Jackie DeShannon, The Dillards, Boyce & Hart, Tim Buckley, The Beach Boys, Nilsson, Randy Newman – as they negotiate the psychedelic fallout and reclaim country music, folk music and a strange, peculiarly American strand of vaudevillian show tune as their own, pointing the way towards both success and obscurity in the ’70s.
Almost everything on WTAI sounds great – after all, LA was home to some of the world’s best recording studios, session players and producers. Andrew Sandoval’s track selection is as faultless as you could hope for given a project of this magnitude and complexity and the essays, liner notes, timelines and band biogs that accompany the set are uniformly excellent.
I only wish I’d been able to see the final photo-rich coffee table tome that made the SF set such an artefact. The icing on an incredibly delicious cake.
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THE GOLDEN GATE
Year One
Now Sounds CD
www.cherryred.co.uk
Fresh from their stint with The Marshmallow Way – a kind of bubblegummy Four Seasons – singer/songwriters Reid Whitelaw and Billy “Carl” Carlucci formed this outfit. Armed with The Tradewinds on background vocals they recorded this nifty, heretofore undiscovered treat. To be sure, Four Seasons influences abound on ‘Monday After Sunday’ with its ‘Walk Like A Man’ opening, along with ‘Lucky’ and ‘Make Your Own Sweet Music’, but this was no one trick pony, as the ultra-Bacharachian ‘I Never Thought I’d Love You’ and the Northern Soul-ish opening cut, ‘High On The Melody’ would attest. Plus, ‘In A Colorful Way’, with its Partridge Family-esque chorus, will stay in your head for days!
There are several bonus mono versions of album tracks included, some of which sound noticeably different than their stereo counterparts.
David Bash
JAY & THE AMERICANS
The Complete United Artists Singles
Collectors Choice Music
www.ccmusic.com
Now this is how to do a compilation. 66 tracks spread over three CDs, every A and B side in chronological order and in glorious mono just the way they sounded when broadcast by Radio Caroline North in 1964/65. From the first minor hit ‘Tonight’ in ’61 with original lead singer Jay Traynor via “Jay” Black taking over lead vocals from ‘Strangers Tomorrow’ in ’62 through to the remake of ‘Do I Love You’ in ’70 this is an amazing collection of choice US pop.
Many of the B-sides have never been on CD before and only the familiarity not the quality diminishes over the three CDs. Containing the rare Jay Black solo single ‘What Will My Mary Say’ / ‘Return To Me’ and the Phil Spector production ‘Things Are Changing’, a Spector rewrite of Brian Wilson’s ‘Don’t Hurt My Little Sister’ donated to the Advertising Council and their ’66 Equal Employment Opportunities Campaign, this is a wonderful trawl through classic American ’60s pop.
Pat Curran
GARY LEWIS & THE PLAYBOYS
The Complete Liberty Singles
Collectors Choice Music
www.ccmusic.com
Following on from their wonderful Jan & Dean collection of last year Collectors Choice release the complete Liberty As and Bs of Gary Lewis & The Playboys in chronological order and in glorious mono.
Produced in the main by the legendary “Snuff” Garrett and arranged by his right hand man Leon Russell the original master tapes leap out of the speakers. Containing 45 tracks including many rare B-sides never previously on CD and the rare promo only ‘Way Way Out’ this is a double set of classic 60s pop.
Although a virtual hit machine in the USA, Gary Lewis never meant a thing in the UK, which was to my mind our loss. All the hits are here from ‘This Diamond Ring’ in January ’65 through to ‘Rhythm Of The Rain’ in late ’69, pop masterpieces laden with classic hooks and superbly produced and arranged.
Pat Curran
NAZZ
13th & Pine
Renaissance CD
www.renaissancerecords.com
Sometimes collections of unreleased tracks reveal great songs that were inexplicably left in the can. And there are other times when these compilations are made of filler that only the most diehard of fans would want to hear. 13th & Pine falls somewhere in the middle. There’s nothing that makes you jump out of your seat and yell, “how did they not put this on an album?”, but then most of the songs are worth hearing, and if this were an official album you’d have to say it’s just a notch below Nazz’s debut and about as strong as their next two.
‘Under the Ice’ opens with a take-off of Archie Bell & The Drells’ ‘Tighten Up’ rap before soaring off and becoming a bombastic stomper. Some of the best moments, like ‘Sydney’s Lunchbox’ and ‘Some People,’ are their instrumental sections – you find yourself wishing they’d leave the vocals out of it and just let the band play. There’s plenty of Todd Rundgren’s signature Anglophiliac tortured pop on hand, but there’s another side to Nazz where they come on hard and heavy and sound like The Move at their sludgiest.
Brian Greene
PISCES
A Lovely Sight
Numero CD
www.numerogroup.com
Listening to this lovingly assembled set of obscurities, you’d expect Pisces’ home to be somewhere on the West Coast, not Rockford near Chicago.
By the time these 15 tracks were recorded in 1968/69, the band had released a single as The Seeds Of Reason on Chess Records’ pop subsidiary Lakeside. Retreating to their tiny studio in Rockford, in between recording commercials for local businesses and renting out studio time to other local bands they set about creating haunting psychedelic experiments replete with DIY studio trickery.
Their first single for local label Valiant was the untypical ‘Genesis II’, where the singer intones in pompous hippie-thespian fashion about the creation of Adam and Eve and the downfall of man. Second single ‘Motley Mary Anne’ comes across as bubblegum pop not a million miles away from that of the Kasenetz-Katz stable
But to discover Pisces’ true identity, you need to listen to some of the previously unreleased tracks. ‘Children Kiss Your Mother Goodnight’, ‘Circle Of Time’ and ‘The Music Box’ are stunning adventures in psychedelia, rock and folk while ‘Sam’, ‘Say Goodbye To John’ and ‘Are You Changing In Your Time’, all fronted by 17 year old wild child vocalist Linda Bruner, suggest Bruner could have found her natural home as one of the ladies of Laurel Canyon recording heart-rending songs of love and loss.
Carl Tweed
ELVIS PRESLEY
From Elvis In Memphis
RCA/Legacy 2-CD
www.legacyrecordings.com
Sometimes you can go home again. In January 1969, after 13 years of recording studio albums and movie soundtracks in Nashville and Hollywood, the Memphis Flash set foot once again in a Memphis studio for sessions that would yield more than a year’s worth of “comeback” smash singles — ‘In The Ghetto’, ‘Suspicious Minds’, ‘Kentucky Rain’ and “Don’t Cry Daddy’. They’re all here as well as everything else Elvis laid down at Chip Moman’s famed American Studios that winter — the majority of which was issued on a pair of artistically satisfying RCA albums: From Elvis In Memphis and Back In Memphis.
Disc one has four interesting bonus tracks including soulful versions of ‘Hey Jude’ and the gospel nugget ‘Who Am I?’ Disc two is fleshed out with 10 bonus mono single cuts highlighted by the moody bluesy ‘The Fair’s Moving On’, the reckless ‘Rubberneckin’’ and the anticipatory ‘Any Day Now’.
Gary von Tersch
CHARLIE RICH
Charlie Rocks!
Bear Family Records CD
www.bear-family.de
Charlie Rich was a great talent who also was always a bit of a lost musical soul. He did rockabilly, soul, jazz, blues, gospel, country, and, in the end, smooth crossover pop. He wrote for Johnny Cash, was one of Sam Phillips’s favourites of his famed Sun Records roster, he was a whiz on the piano and a crack songwriter. But he never stuck with one particular genre long enough to fully master it.
This collection of some of Rich’s more upbeat tracks – all cut between 1958 and ’66 and recorded for Sun, RCA, and Smash – show him to be fully adept at cranking out the kind of songs that could get a crowd up on a dance floor at a honky tonk. Rich standouts like the Lonely Weekends title track, ‘Mohair Sam’ and ‘Big Boss Man’ are surrounded by more obscure, but equaling rocking, numbers from The Silver Fox’s purest era.
Brian Greene
SAGITTARIUS
Present Tense
Rev-Ola
www.rev-ola.co.uk
This all-star studio project came into being in the wake of what was intended as the one off 1967 single ‘My World Fell Down’, which featured contributions from The Firesign Theatre, Bruce Johnston, Terry Melcher and a lead vocal from Glen Campbell. Having secured a gig as a staff producer at Columbia, courtesy of Gary Usher Curt Boettcher then invited aboard members of The Millennium along with members of the recently disbanded Ballroom to swell the ranks of an already diverse pool of session players on what eventually became this hugely ambitious West Coast pop extravaganza which originally surfaced on Columbia in ’68.
An added bonus was that Boettcher brought with him tracks from the then unreleased Ballroom album – four of which magically appeared on Present Tense remixed for stereo. Additionally, this lovingly assembled reissue comes with nine bonus tracks including mono single versions and session out-takes.
Grahame Bent
SALT WATER TAFFY
Finders Keepers
Rev-Ola CD
www.revola.co.uk
I’m not a great one for bubblegum but I love sunshine and baroque pop, and I promise no sweet-toothed pop fan will emerge from this particular candy store unsatisfied.
Songwriters Johnny Giametta and Rod McBrien almost scored a 1968 hit on Buddah with the title track, a syrupy and insidious playground chant. Following this near-success they assembled a quintet with the aim of becoming an East Coast “white Fifth Dimension”, the result being this album.
Highlights are the beautiful ‘He’s Still In My Heart’, the sitar-embellished ‘The Girl Is Broke’, a superior version of The Innocence’s ‘Whence I Make Thee Mine’ and the light bossa-pop of ‘Suddenly I See’. This is a straight reissue of the original 12-tracker with a rare follow-up single tagged on.
They don’t conquer the heights of the fantastic 5D, but this falls not far short of the very best in boy-girl pop.
Vic Templar
THE UNITED TRAVEL SERVICE
Wind And Stone
Break-A-Way LP
www.break-a-way.de
The United Travel Service made just two singles; ‘ Wind and Stone’ and ‘Gypsy Eyes’ (compiled several times) during their lifetime. However, more has now been discovered. UTS existed from ’67 to ’70 and were primarily influenced by San Fransisco bands.
Eight of the 11 songs are studio recordings (produced by New Tweedy Brothers producer Rick Keefer) eliding effortlessly between subliminal folk-rock and light psych. The last three tracks are home-recorded rehearsals and, although sonically muddier, the quality of the songs easily compensates.
Songs such as ‘Snow’, ‘Like Me’ and ‘The Slightest Possibility’ are mid-paced and plaintive West Coast delicacies (the latter segues into a characteristically period backwards taped version). Singer, lead guitarist and songwriter Ben Hoff narrates the history of the band over the four pages of the glossy LP sized insert.
An attractively packaged slice of summertime listening. Soft pop fans and those who favour the West Coast sound need this.
Paul Martin
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Up All Night: 20 Heavy Nuggets From The Golden Age Of Hard Psych
Past & Present CD
Wooooaaaa, heaveeeeeey dude! OK, substitute “rock” for “psych” and the strap line is a pretty accurate description of the contents. A 72-minute aural assault of American Gillan and Plant wannabes yodelling over barrages of guitar riffage and drum thunder. There is no reprieve across this compilation’s 20 tracks, just a relentless sonic attack so prepare for your ears to bleed.
Familiar ground shakers include Sir Lord Baltimore, SRC, Power Of Zeus and The Damnation Of Adam Blessing. Add obscurities from Highway Robbery (whose ‘Fifteen’ is a standout), Steeplechase, The House and Jamul and you have a recipe for fireworks.
I doubt I would listen to a whole album by any one of the groups here but as a variety pack, it provides a hell of a savage kick!
Paul Martin
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Chartbusters USA Special Edition: Sunshine Pop
Ace CD
www.acerecords.co.uk
Suspend your disbelief if you will and cast your minds back to a time long ago... a time before the internet, blogs and everyone and his aunt running their own reissue label... a time when our journey of musical discovery was just beginning and 30 years of popular music was still out there and ripe for picking.
I don’t think I’d be over-clocking the nostalgometer if I posited the notion that finding a K-Tel double album comp of ’60s sunshine pop hits in a cardboard box outside a record shop for a quid once qualified as a life-affirming experience. It certainly did for me aged 15.
And it’s with this in mind that I find myself listening over and over and over to Ace’s Chartbusters USA set as if it’s 1984 and I’ve just become obsessed by The Turtles and The Association for the very first time.
“26 Hot 100 hits guaranteed to gladden the saddest heart” reads the tagline with the same kind of direct simplicity as The 5th Dimension, Lemon Pipers, Mamas & Papas, Young Rascals and Cowsills perennials contained within. Just perfect.
Andy Morten
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Wednesday Morning Dew: Realistic Patterns Volume 2
Psychic Circle CD
This is the second volume in Psychic Circle’s sub-series of American orchestrated pop. Orchestrated here means both horns (as in The Stony Brook People’s driving ‘There’s Tomorrow’) as well as strings. Some like Peter Courtney’s ‘Dr David’s Private Papers’ are barely orchestrated at all.
The familiar (Bloomsbury People, Hearts & Flowers, Peppermint Rainbow) are interlaced with less well known artists such as Jeff Monn (formerly lead singer with The Third Bardo), Five By Five, The Second Time and Wayne Stewart. The Jimmy Curtiss connected The Bag hit hard with their strident soul-rock ‘Nickels And Dimes’ whilst The Fallen Angels’ ‘Room At The Top’ lights the psychedelic way.
Paul Martin
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Wild Thing: The Songs Of Chip Taylor
Ace CD
www.acerecords.co.uk
The latest instalment in Ace’s examplary songwriters series is this long-overdue round-up of the work of Jon Voight’s brother, better known as Chip Taylor.
We all know ‘Wild Thing’ (written for The Wild Ones, a hit for The Troggs), ‘Angel Of The Morning’ (ditto Evie Sands and Merrilee Rush) and ‘I Can’t Let Go’ (again Evie Sands, the hit going to The Hollies). Evie is a touchstone here. As well as the above, she cut the original versions of ‘Picture Me Gone’ and ‘Any Way That You Want Me’ while others had the hits.
Taylor penned great soul as well as pop with Lorraine Ellison’s ‘Try (Just A Little Bit Harder’), Walter Jackson’s ‘Welcome Home’ and Barbara Lewis’ ‘Make Me Belong To You’ highlights of this female-centric songbook.
Andy Morten
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Woodstock: 40 Years On - Back To Yasgur’s Farm
Rhino 6-CD box set
www.rhino.com
With Woodstock fever thick in the air with the re-release of the original documentary on DVD, the two original soundtrack albums, the release of The Woodstock Experience live sets and the publication of Michael Lang’s book The Road To Woodstock it’s also time for the appearance of the Woodstock: 40 Years On box set. Boasting six CDs, 77 tracks and a total playing time of seven hours and 48 minutes, it offers the most comprehensive collection ever assembled of the music performed at Max Yasgur’s farm on the historic weekend of August 15th-17th, 1969.
While neither the previous Warners Woodstock soundtrack albums nor Michael Wadleigh’s epic documentary strictly adhered to the actual running order of the festival (which is here documented for the first time in the accompanying booklet along with the full set lists for each of the artists) Andy Zax, co-producer of the box, has sequenced the performances – newly remixed by original Woodstock engineer Eddie Kramer – to run in the order they were actually recorded during the self-styled three days of peace and music. Notable exceptions to this more historically accurate approach being the absence of any tracks from Ten Years After, The Band and Keef Hartley, apparently due to contractual issues.
What really sets the 40 Years On box set apart from all that’s gone before is the unprecedented access given to the Warner Brothers tape archive, which has allowed co-producer Andy Zax to unearth a stash of 38 previously unreleased tracks, which, when heard alongside the previously released material, gives a much more complete sense of the festival unfolding – especially when punctuated with the numerous stage announcements and pronouncements from John Morris, Chip Monck, Abbie Hoffman, Wavy Gravy and Max Yasgur.
The previously unreleased material falls into two groups – tracks from artists not included on any of the previous Woodstock soundtrack compilations (Bert Sommer, Tim Hardin, Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, Quill, The Incredible String Band and Blood Sweat & Tears) and tracks from those artists already featured on previous Woodstock releases (Sweetwater, Melanie, Joan Baez, Country Joe,
Canned Heat, Mountain, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Johnny Winter, The Butterfield Blues Band and Sha Na Na). Most spectacular among the previously unreleased material are Ravi Shankar’s ‘Raga Puriya - Dhanashri’ / ‘Gat In Sawarital’, Canned Heat’s monster 28-minute ‘Woodstock Boogie’ and The Grateful Dead’s complete 19-minute wander through ‘Dark Star’.
These impressive new arrivals now sit comfortably alongside the weekend’s other long established iconic performances.
JANIS JOPLIN
The Woodstock Experience
SANTANA
The Woodstock Experience
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE
The Woodstock Experience
SLY & THE FAMILY STONE
The Woodstock Experience
JOHNNY WINTER
The Woodstock Experience
All Columbia/Legacy 2-CDs
www.woodstock.com
The spirit of ’69 lives on with these five 40th anniversary editions (each with a large fold-out poster) that, collectively, commemorate what each festival headliner was experiencing as the revolutionary decade was fast drawing to a close. In each case, disc one reissues whatever album each artist released in 1969 (debuts for Santana and Winter) while disc two provides, for the first time, each performer’s complete Woodstock stage set. The sound, throughout, couldn’t be better and previously unissued tracks abound.
Janis Joplin had recently split from her long-time band, Big Brother & The Holding Company, adding large doses of Stax/Volt-styled soul and funk to her sound with the newly formed Kozmic Blues Band. Although extended delays beset the diminutive belter’s appearance, she rallied like a trouper and delivered a dynamite ten song performance that mixed old favorites like ‘Piece Of My Heart’ and ‘Ball And Chain’ with vivid material from her forthcoming solo debut, including ‘Work Me, Lord’ and ‘Try’. Three unissued cuts include a particularly rowdy cover of Otis Redding’s ‘Can’t Turn You Loose’.
For Carlos Santana, his 45-minute Woodstock set,
highlighted by an exhilarating version of the now classic ‘Evil Ways’ (previously unissued) and a bruising 11-minute take on ‘Soul Sacrifice’, was a career-making performance as the group’s narcotic blend of Afro-Latin rock, fiery blues and jazzy, jam-like instrumentals paved the way for the issue of his self-titled debut only weeks later. Other Woodstock standouts encompass a freewheeling rendition of Olatunji’s primal ‘Jingo’ and an in-the-moment arrangement of Willie Bobo’s gustatorial ‘Fried Neck Bones And Some Home Fries’.
Disc one of the Jefferson Airplane set reissues the politically-orientated Volunteers, their sixth and final album with the original band line-up. Three album songs, including the anthem-like title tune and ‘Wooden Ships’, were previewed on their wee-hours Woodstock set. In fact, at over 21 minutes in length, the previously unreleased ‘Wooden Ships’ proved to be a festival highlight. Among the other five unheard cuts are sensuously expansive versions of both ‘The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil’ and ‘The House At Pooneil Corners’ along with a poignant cover of Fred Neil’s ‘The Other Side Of This Life’. Reckless brilliant versions of early hits such as ‘White Rabbit’ and ‘Somebody To Love’ make one yearn for the good old days when they shared the Fillmore bill with The Grateful Dead or Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Released in May, Sly & The Family Stone’s fourth album Stand!, containing songs like ‘Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey’, ‘Everyday People’ (an immediate crossover smash), the apocalyptic ‘I Want To Take You Higher’ and the title tune, was an insightful snapshot of the social and political unrest that was affecting the nation at the time. Buoyed by the album’s success, black rocker Sylvester Stewart and company performed the last three titles mentioned on his triumphant, early morning Woodstock set along with his classic dance single ‘Dance To The Music’ and extended jams on both ‘Music Lover’ and ‘Love City’. All proffered an ecstatic synthesis of pulsating funk, soul, psychedelia and rock underpinned by an explosive, Pentecostal gospel fervor that became a highlight of the resultant film and soundtrack. Five unissued concert cuts include incandescent versions of ‘M’Lady’ and ‘You Can Make It If You Try’.
Albino blues rocking guitarist Johnny Winter and his brother Edgar had been performing and recording one-off singles for a decade or so in their native Texas before being “discovered” by New York club owner Steve Paul in ’68. Winter’s eponymously titled major label debut album, that paid tribute to blues pioneers Robert Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins and B B King while including retro sounding originals like ‘I’m Yours And I’m Hers’ and ‘Dallas’ had been released only weeks prior to his Woodstock appearance. Their eight-song set is just as accomplished as the album yet, amazingly, a full five tracks (including a stunning cover of King’s ‘You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now’ and John D Loudermilk’s ‘Tobacco Road’) are seeing the light of day for the first time here. Other revelations are a red hot ‘Leland, Mississippi Blues’ and the closing, delirious cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’.
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