DAY 82.
Moby Grape............Moby Grape    (1967)


 

Moby Grape, I found very easy to listen to with no bad tracks imho.

As Pat mentioned earlier, "Hey Grandma" was covered by the Move , and  also by Robert Plant he would  perform "Hey Grandma" live when with his pre-Led Zeppelin Band of Joy, during the 1967-1968 period.

He also covered  "8:05" and "Naked If I Want To" as B-sides to 1993 singles; "8:05" is also included on the expanded reissue of his Fate of Nations album.

I personally think they were all good songwriters, on the evidence of this album anyway and some of the songs reminded me a bit of the Eagles, whether one would think that a good thing is ultimately up to personal opinion?

I won't be buying this album, not because I don't like it but as said before "I can't just buy any record I like"
In saying that, If I was to be given it as a gift ?
I wouldn't be unhappy!

A bit about them;

In many ways Moby Grape’s story is similar to that of a thousand other West Coast bands who fluttered briefly then flopped. Except that the Grape were real contenders. With an embarrassment of riches – five members who could all write, sing and play – they were touted as the Bay Area’s own wet dream team: as scorched as the Stones, dreamy as the Byrds and soulful as Hendrix. Seven major labels were jostling to snap them up by the end of 1966, including Elektra, Atlantic and Columbia. But they still blew it, trapped in a contractual mêlée that haunts them to this day

.Only now, 40 years on, have they achieved closure with ex-manager Matthew Katz. Lesser people would have given up, but the Grape fought on. The four remaining members – Miller, Stevenson, Peter Lewis and Bob Mosley (Spence died in 1999) – have all shared this marathon struggle, bound by a belief in some kind of legal and karmic justice. They wanted what was rightfully theirs.“There may be some redemption to all this,” Lewis offers today. “For us it’s not really over. Everybody has to accept responsibility for what happened. It doesn’t do good to go through all that and learn nothing. Some of us paid a heavy price, Skippy especially.”It had all started so brightly.

Before heading for San Francisco in 1964, Miller, from Tacoma, and Seattle drummer Stevenson had cut their teeth on the hip bar scene of Washington’s Pacific Northwest, alongside garage legends like the Sonics and the Wailers. Guitarist Miller had toured with Bobby ‘I Fought The Law’ Fuller and crossed paths with a young Jimi Hendrix.

Stevenson had held the beat for blues shouters like Etta James and Big Mama Thornton. “When we left for ’Frisco,” Stevenson explains, “it felt like we were off to the promised land.” For their band the Frantics they soon recruited tough San Diego R&B man Bob Mosley, from the Misfits.“I thought he was the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my life,” says Stevenson. “Bob was like some surf god. He had this beautiful energy about him, was about as macho as you could get. And he sang better than any black guy I’d ever seen.”It was short-lived, though. While Miller and Stevenson formed Marsh Gas, Mosley quit for LA, hooking up with future Flying Burrito Brother Joel Scott Hill and Peter Lewis, the brooding son of 40s film actress Loretta Young.Then they met Jefferson Airplane’s ex-manager Matthew Katz. “Katz said for Pete and I to come up to San Francisco and start a band,” Mosley recalls. “So we did that, and got a hold of Jerry and Don, told them that Katz had this amazing guy from Jefferson Airplane, Skip Spence.” Canadian-born Spence – a one-man tornado – had briefly played in Quicksilver Messenger Service, then been the drummer on Jefferson Airplane Takes Off.In August ’66, just as ’Frisco began its acid bloom, Moby Grape was born. “San Francisco was really something then,” Miller remembers. “It was just beautiful to People would come over from the Avalon and the Fillmore. I’d look out from the stage and get freaked. It was like playing music to a buffalo herd. There were a lot of really strange people. The thing was to play 20-minute songs, but we were doing original four minute pop gems.“It was incredible, because we’d be playing there with Lee Michaels, Janis Joplin, Buffalo Springfield and the Grateful Dead. A lot of people nobody had heard of that were just about ready to explode. There was some awesome music going on. Buffalo Springfield were so fucking good. The whole scene had this amazing inertia. Everyone was playing day and night, working their asses off. It was probably the greatest music ever.”


Soon Moby Grape were the most talked-about phenomenon in town. While many of their peers tripped about the cosmos with acid jams and stoned mantras, the Grape hot-wired themselves to the raw soul of rock’n’roll. Urgent and aggressive, they cut through the fug like a flashing blade. “We played into this thing of being punks,” explains Lewis. “With the exception of Skip, we were all club musicians. And club musicians had this kind of subcultural attitude where you pushed everybody around with a sort of controlled foolishness.”Big Brother’s Sam Andrew, an Ark regular, declared them better than the Beatles. Fascinated by the inimitable Spence, Steven Stills and Neil Young became fans too, Buffalo Springfield alternating sets with the Grape during their residency. When they weren’t there, Stills and Young would be off spreading the word.Inevitably, the majors labels soon came calling. Columbia Records producer David Rubinson turned up one night to see headliners the Sparrow (soon to be known as Steppenwolf). As it turned out, they were blown away by the opening act, Moby Grape. A host of others – Elektra’s Paul Rothchild included – were clambering for their signature, too. But when it came to business, things were already turning sour.
“I thought Matthew Katz was cool at first,” admits Stevenson. “He had credentials and did a hell of a job in doing the promotion and getting the Ark going. I guess he called himself the Pied Piper of San Francisco or something. We were all pretty optimistic, but it was probably very naïve of us.”



n October ’66, having already signed management and publishing agreements with Katz, the band unwittingly signed away ownership of their name, too. “We were just stupid young guys,” Mosley admits. “Rubinson had come out from New York to try and sign us to CBS. So Katz told him that if we didn’t sign contracts giving up the name and management and rights to publishing, he’d stop the contract from happening.”Lewis: “We were so young. All we wanted to do was be free. What made us feel worse was that Buffalo Springfield seemed to be getting along fine. They didn’t like Katz at all. Neil Young was up there at the Ark, sitting right there when we were told we had to sign this paper giving away rights to the name. I remember him sitting there, playing this orange Gretsch he had and staring down at his feet. He didn’t say anything. But after that meeting, he told us not to do it. Don’t ask me why, but we did. When Rubinson came along, he said that if we signed with Columbia he’d get rid of Katz for us. Then after he got us signed [in February 1967] he came back and said that the Columbia lawyers couldn’t do it, that they’d made a deal behind our backs. Then we were really screwed.”Nevertheless, in early ’67 Moby Grape headed for Hollywood to record their debut LP.Helmed by Rubinson and made in just 13 days for a paltry $11,000, the results were spectacular. “When you’re broke and prepared, it’s amazing what you can achieve,” Stevenson laughs. “We just didn’t know any better. We’d rehearsed well and knew all our parts.”“The band had a lot of chops,” Lewis explains. “When I first heard Jerry, it was like ‘Fuck!’Skip loved Buffalo Springfield, used to talk about them all the time; this whole idea of having three guitarists. The chemistry was so good. We realised that if we could present that to people, we’d produce something that they’d like.” In the studio, Spence was both catalyst and talisman.“He was a jubilant guy, a real outgoing hippy,” says Mosley. “He really made the music happen. He’d do a lot of arranging during rehearsals. The strangest thing was, his singing voice didn’t shine until we got into the studio. That’s when it really came through.” Crackling alongside Miller/Stevenson rockets Hey Grandma and Changes were Lewis’s roaring Fall On You and patchouli-scented ballad Sitting By The Window.
 Radically realigned by Spence, Miller’s Someday disappeared into the kind of strange harmonic mists usually reserved for the Byrds. Mosley’s soul-searing Come In The Morning and Lazy Me marked him down as a white Wilson Pickett on a Motown tip. Then there was Spence’s rippling Indifference – complete with echoing be in the hub of it.”Lewis says: “There was a magic up there, an innocence about the place, whereas Los Angeles, where I grew up, was always desolation row.” With Katz as self-appointed mentor, the Grape got together in his Polk Street basement. The rapport was instant. With Stevenson and bassist Mosley locking down the rhythm, it was pretty unique, too.“Everybody wrote, everybody sang and everybody played,” Miller enthuses. “What was great was that Skippy played really good basic rhythm, Peter played complementary finger-picking style, and I was left to do my thing. Even though there were three guitars, each one of us had a wide open space to play in.”After an inauspicious start – Moby Grape’s first gig was at California Hall in front of a reported five people – the quintet started playing at an old houseboat-turned-club in Sausalito, the Ark. The schedule was relentless, often stretching until dawn.Stevenson: “We’d play there after hours. guitar riffs and wholly unexpected key change – and perhaps the greatest song in the Grape canon: the devastating Omaha (later covered by, among others, Michael Stipe with the Golden Palominos).As classic debuts go, Moby Grape is up there with Television’s Marquee Moon or The Velvet Underground And Nico. Live on stage, too, the band were exhilarating. “I’d put my vocal mic in front of one of my old basses and get a beautiful natural echo,” smiles Miller. “Then we’d start doing things like Dark Magic and Space Now and get everybody off to what we called the Purple Planet. The eyeballs would be bugging out.”



The Grape didn’t know it then, but they had already peaked. Next came Columbia’s laudable hard sell. For a band that didn’t need it, Moby Grape were hyped to hell. On June 6, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom, CBS threw an outrageously lavish press junket to launch the album. Journalists were flown in from all over the States to witness the Next Big Thing.Mosley: “I remember parking the Porsche, walking in and there were two people at the door who handed you a five-singles box set and a bottle of wine with ‘Moby Grape’ on the label. There were millions of purple orchids flying from the ceiling; they were all over the floor.”In addition to turning the floor into an orchid icerink, Columbia’s smart marketing men also neglected to provide corkscrews for the 700 bottles of wine.And then there was the singles fiasco. Convinced of their marketability, CBS took the unprecedented step of simultaneously releasing five Grape 45s. Inside the purple velvet press pack, they claimed that “the label is convinced that each of the 10 sides has the potential to make it to the top of the national charts”. There was also a Moby Grape Manual issued to sales and promotion execs. Confused by the ploy, radio stations didn’t know which single to play. “That whole thing was nuts,” says Miller. “If they’d just put out Omaha with 8:05 on the B-side, people would have known what to push. That would have been the big hit.”Out in radio land, the backlash began. “In retrospect,” Stevenson offers, “you can see that people thought we were hyped. And we weren’t. That’s a completely unfair assessment of us then and now.” To compound matters, the Avalon night had ended with the arrest of Miller, Lewis and Spence up in the Marin County hills. Caught with three underage girls, they were charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors and – in Miller’s case – possession of marijuana.“It was bullshit,” contends Miller. “The way it came out was that it was just the Grape involved, but it wasn’t. There was a whole bunch of people out there on the mountain looking at the stars. Then everybody scrambled when the police came. I had one of the roadie’s Mustangs at the time. The police ploughed through the ashtray until they found what they thought was an empty marijuana paper. But there was nothing there. And the stuff about the girls was bullshit too. So we spent the night in a holding facility and the papers are full of ‘Moby Grape busted on drug charges!’ They really made it look ugly.” All charges were dropped, but the mud stuck.



“Actually,” Lewis asserts, “it was good publicity. The Doors would have just jumped on that. But instead, Columbia got freaked out.”The band were packed off on a US tour with the Buckinghams and the Mamas And The Papas. “That’s really when we started going south,” concedes Stevenson.Mindful of the Marin County incident, some promoters panicked and cancelled dates. To compound things, the Grape (having been promised equal billing) would find themselves in tiny letters underneath the Buckinghams, with the Mamas And The Papas headlining.“At one point, we were beside ourselves,” says Lewis, “so Skippy ran out on stage while the kids were all screaming at the Buckinghams and screwed the whole thing up. When we came on and played, we were crazy and animated. People were saying: ‘What the fuck is that?’” The Grape’s frenzied set would blow everyone out of the water. The Mamas And The Papas’ mellow vibe seemed like extended anti-climax.“It wasn’t the best way to bring them on,” says Stevenson. “We’d end with Omaha and it sounded like a buzzsaw going off. Then they’d come on and do something super-soft like Monday Monday.”Lewis: “By the time they came on, people were filing out. The next day at breakfast, Mama Cass came up to us and said: ‘You guys are a bunch of punks. You should be grateful to tour with the biggest band in America.’ We survived one more date, then The Mamas And The Papas kicked us off the tour.”



With Columbia eager to recoup expenses, Moby Grape were hurried into the studio to record their follow-up album, Wow, with Rubinson again producing.It was too early. Exasperated by their hard partying, the label decided to send them to New York, where there were supposedly fewer distractions. It turned out to be a disastrous call. The band were kicked out of Manhattan hotels for ill behaviour.“Going to New York just brought trouble to New York,” says Mosley.Recordings were disjointed. Only two or three members would be present at any one time. As a counter, Rubinson smothered the songs with horns and strings.Lewis returned to LA to try and save his failing marriage, but failed. “When I went back to the band,” he remembers, “I started medicating myself with downers so I wouldn’t be too upset about it all. The rest of my time with the band was kinda like a Fellini movie. I remember some of it, but most of it was like wandering around in a haze of pot smoke and barbiturates.”Then Skip got into serious trouble, taking up with a white witch called Joanna Stevenson: “He was living down in the Village and taking quite a lot of hallucinogenics. There was an old man hanging out with Skip and Joanna, too, who they’d picked up off the street. It was strange. The old guy was some sort of oracle and Joanna was a self-proclaimed witch. She definitely had powers over Skip.”Lewis: “Skip was a very Messianic character. People would get with him and he’d convert them into these admirers, or sycophants, and get them on Skippy’s trip. But with this girl it was the other way round. She worked him.“In the 60s, there were these chicks who were like sex witches. They used their crank as a whip. There were all these girls who’d been repressed, taken LSD, then all of a sudden it was like the leash was off. And they realised they could use this thing. Skippy was the ladies’ man. He loved women to the point where he’d want to hang out with them more than the guys. So he was the perfect candidate for that – meeting somebody who gives him lots of drugs. Then all of a sudden Skippy shows up with a fire axe and he’s gonna change the whole thing.”Stevenson: “It was kinda like the spirit of Charles Manson. It was around the same time, and there was some strange stuff going on. Cosmic stuff which is hard to explain. And some of these spiritual forces really bought into murder and mayhem. I really didn’t think it was down to Skippy. “We were staying at the Albert Hotel when Skippy came looking for us. Luckily Jerry and I were at the studio. I guess he took a fire axe and took it to the door. It was like, ‘Here’s Johnny!’ When he went to the hotel, we were at the studio, and when we came looking for us at the studio we were back at the hotel. Murder and mayhem never had their way, though the potential was there.”



When Spence eventually arrived at the studio, he was disarmed by Rubinson.Mosley also had a close call. “He freaked out on us,”he recounts. “I went into the office of Bob Cato, CBS’s art director at the time, and Skip and Joanna were there. Skip was going to leave Moby Grape and go off on his own, and he asked me if I wanted to join him.I said: ‘Yeah, but I don’t want your girlfriend around, telling me what to do.’ She jumped up and started firing at me, so I grabbed her hands, threw her against the wall and took off. Then she got a pair of scissors and went after Cato with them. So he called the cops. The cops picked them both up and Skip and Joanna went to jail. I wouldn’t press charges, but Cato did. Next thing I know I’m in a courthouse with [then Grape manager] Michael Gruber and they’re sending Skip and Joanna off to Bellevue [a New York mental hospital]. The Grape were totally shocked. We hauled ass straight back to San Francisco.”Released in June 1968, Wow was hardly a disaster (it peaked at No.20 in the US), but it was a disjointed affair. Mosley’s creepily hypnotic Rose Coloured Eyes and Bitter Wind – despite being drenched in backwards effects – were classic Grape, as was Stevenson’s funked-up Murder In My Heart For The Judge and Spence’s clap of dirty thunder, Motorcycle Irene.With Spence gone, the foursome regrouped in Santa Cruz and began working on what became Moby Grape ’69. Although all concerned admitted it was a rushed affair, today it sounds like the perfect comedown album. Rootsy and introspective, it reads like the distillation of years of broken promises and false dawns.



Rubinson’s laughably apologetic sleevenotes attest to the guilt implicit in CBS’s handling of the band: ‘Few recording acts get the initial build-up which the Grape got when they started. They themselves demanded the enormous hype… but they didn’t know what they had started (nor did I) and, logically, they couldn’t ever live up to their notices.’“Rubinson’s whole trip was in going up to Bob and telling him it was all about him,” says Lewis. He caused a lot of dissension. With Moby Grape, when you get all these energies together, you come up with these great songs. But soon as you start manipulating these guys and turning one against the other, it’s over. That’s how I explain our demise.“Around Moby Grape ’69 we were all going through a period of introspection, trying to make sense of everything. The other records we’d made had been to get an effect from everyone, so they’d think we were great. Moby Grape ’69 reminded me of The Notorious Byrd Brothers. You can achieve greatness with those kinds of songs, but it depends if you’re willing to make that step. Sometimes, all you want to do is go to bed and start sucking your thumb.”After a tour of Europe (during which the Beatles declared themselves Grape fans), Mosley had had enough. He quit for the Marines. Miller: “That was really strange. He was 26 years old. I would have thought Woodstock would have been more fun. I guess it was a stability thing with Bob. He wanted to be as far away from any hippies as he could.”Mosley: “After Moby Grape ’69 it just started getting boring for me.I didn’t have nothin’ to do. I wasn’t sick of rock’n’roll, it was the fact I wasn’t doing anything. I was just trying to move on. So I went back to college, then I got a draft note from the army.” Developing schizophrenia, Mosley was discharged on a medical in July 1970.“They’ve been paying me ever since,” he says. “I take some medication once in while and I’m in pretty good shape.”



For the Grape, their career was nearly all over. Recorded over three days in May 1969, Truly Fine Citizen (with just Miller, Stevenson and a reluctant Lewis) was little more than contract filler. Meanwhile, ex-manager Matthew Katz – given the boot by the Grape in September ’67 – had launched a lawsuit against the band, claiming he still had ownership of the name. In 1970 the California Labour Commissioner voided all Katz’s contracts with Moby Grape, but his appeal meant the issue lay dormant for another three years. Meanwhile, Katz formed a fake version of the band and sent them on the road.An appalling cock-up at the August 1973 trial – in which a Moby Grape attorney fraudulently executed a settlement of the claims, effectively handing ownership of name and songs back to Katz – meant the bogus group could carry on indefinitely.Miller: “People knew they weren’t the real Grape. It never worked for Matthew. He thought he was Moby Grape. If Matthew found out about us trying to do something,he’d put an injunction in. And it’d end up being a nightmare for the promoter. He’d have to run to the court. We didn’t want to keep putting people through that, so we’d play around with names, like the Melvilles.”Mosley: “Katz was just an asshole to begin with. We also did a movie for 20th Century Fox called Sweet Ride. He got his fingers into that, so we didn’t get paid either. It’s been going that way for a long time. He’s got his own record label and he’s been putting out his own Moby Grape stuff that’s been leased to him by CBS. He’s made a lot of money off that and all the fake versions of the Grape he’s been putting together over the years. We never made any money from Moby Grape.”No band has fought harder to preserve their identity and purify their legacy than the Grape. There have been various reunions down the years, although they cite 1990’s Legendary Grape – all four members, with Spence in spirit only – as their true follow-up to 1967’s debut. Spence, whose troubled life ended when he died of lung cancer in 1999, aged 52, never saw justice done. Which fiercely strengthens the resolve of Lewis, Miller, Stevenson and Mosley today.“We’ve definitely bonded over the Katz litigation,” Stevenson says. “If you have something you’re all united against, it can unite you together. The Katz thing is what’s always put this band and its purpose at the forefront of our minds and lives at any given moment. When you look at what guys like [current Grape lawyer] Glen Miskel have done to try and get us our publishing rights and royalties back, it’s an amazing thing. It’s an important issue in all our lives.And ironic that Matthew, of all people, is the one who’s ultimately been responsible for us to unite at any given moment.”Some time in 2000, Lewis came face to face with Katz in court: “Katz was there, hugging me and saying that we shouldn’t have lawyers to decide everything.I told him: ‘I don’t want to hug you, Matthew. But I’ll say this: I buried your protégé last year. I felt his hand go cold in mine. This guy died like a mouse without his cheese while you were spending his publishing money on whatever you spend your shitty money on. I want to say this on his behalf: if this whole thing was about your redemption, so that you could see that what you did to us wasn’t a cool thing, then I think he would have told you it was worthwhile. Because that’s the kind of guy Skippy was. But Matthew, go and sin no more.’ So he leaves the court, weeping. Then the next day he calls the court and tries to vacate the settlement because he didn’t think he got what he wanted!”A breakthrough came, however, in a San Francisco court in March 2005. All four survivors and the estate of Spence filed a suit against Katz to finally resolve the litigation that has stretched across four decades. The five-day trial found favour with the Grape.In its final statement of decision on July 20, the Superior Court Of California decreed that all ownership rights relating to recordings and songs prior to 1973 are the sole property of Moby Grape. It also stipulated that Katz was to pay back royalties. And that the band members now owned the Moby Grape name.Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the history, Katz appealed. But on July 7, 2006, the Court Of Appeal upheld the original verdict. It was a momentous day for all concerned. 

Sorry if it seems to long, but I couldn't shorten it without losing some of the important details about the story of Moby Grape..

Last edited by arabchanter (31/10/2017 12:25 am)

arabchanter wrote:

 
This was the groups second album, and the use of a single track lasting the entire second side of the LP was regarded as audacious at the time.

"Revelation" which was apparently originally titled "John Lee Hooker," lasts somewhat longer than all the other tracks combined, and is frankly only worth listening to once.    (Amen to that)

However the first six tracks are more than adequate compensation, making a perfect suite. The contrast between the subtle beauty of the first half and the excesses of "Revelation" makes this one of the most schizophrenic albums ever released.

 

Dunno if these are your words or from elsewhere arabchanter, but broadly agree regarding this album. I'm familiar with it, my big sister ;acquired' it when we finally got a record player.

The long jam on side two doesn't appeal too much to me, it's okay but I'd imagine it was seen as a breakthrough at the time, while being favoured by folk smashed out of their brains as they didn't have to keep changing the record and could keep on toking up.

It wastes the disc, for me: in any case this isn't even the best Love album.

However the first side has a couple of classic songs, and the others are okay.

Big variety of styles on this album............

First track was covered by The Move (they must have been covering every first song on American albums they could get their hands on.) It's a classic, imo.

The next two are a bit slow, the first a gentle hippie song, the next a poppy number, lyrics well out of place with the melody.

"7 and 7 Is"  is great, and was a single release, influential to future punk bands (like the opening track).

The semi acoustic fifth song is my least favourite on this side, but the last track........"She Comes in Colors"...... who copied who in this one, Love or The Stones? Well, it was written and released before 'She's a Rainbow' and, to me, the Stones wrote a clear rip-off as 'She's A Rainbow'.
 

Last edited by PatReilly (31/10/2017 3:58 pm)

Day 83.
Love...............Da Capo    (1967)





Da Capo didn't make a very good impression on me, there were a couple of tracks that I would maybe listen to again, "Stephanie knows Who" and "7 and 7 Is," but I really wouldn't go out of my way to find them.

Side 2 Jesus!  How many of these musicians in the '60s thought they were "erchie?"
17 minutes of utter keech, for me just noise, the moothy playing constantly for no apparent reason and as for the flute which seems to be a must on '60s albums I really can't abide It ( could have something to do with that manky mob down Govan Way, right enough)



So basically two songs on the first side are ok,and a load of self indulgent pish on side two, adds up to never coming near my collection.



A little bit about them (not necessarily my views)


 No West Coast band put a deeper psychedelic spin on the mid-60s’ burgeoning folk-rock scene than Love. And during a twelve-month period between late 1966 and 1967, no group rivaled Arthur Lee and company’s freewheeling imagination and musical blend. Love’s tenure was brief, but its impact and influence will forever loom large.


  Home to the collective’s lone Top 40 hit, Da Capo is psychedelia at its best: a thoroughly original, vivid, unrestrained canvass for Lee’s beautiful, eclectic ideas and pioneering sonic journeys.Arriving shortly after its debut, Da Capo established Love as psychedelia visionaries.


  A cult classic since its original release in January 1967, the record greatly expands on the experimentation of the Beatles’ Revolver and predates the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, Fab Four’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn by months. Executed by an expanded seven-piece lineup, Da Capo encapsulates baroque pop, proto punk, bossa nova, garage rock, and hard-driving jazz. Its limits are bounded only by Lee’s scope, and the Memphis native remains unbounded throughout.


  Accurately tabbed by critic Lillian Roxon as “an amusing paradox,” Lee’s identity as an African-American channeling the sound of a white Englishman expressing the Southern blues gives Da Capo added mysticism and muscle. From the tumbling house of mirrors that is the opening “Stephanie Knows Who” to the galloping, heavy, reverb-appointed “Seven & Seven Is”—a hit tune that confirmed Love’s identity as Los Angeles’ baddest street toughs—the effort swings and surprises, each turn leading down new corridors.



  Such discovery lies behind the groundbreaking “Revelation,” a 19-minute jam that occupied the entire second side of the LP and strongly rumored to have been produced by an uncredited Neil Young. Originally titled “John Lee Hooker,” it progresses as a free-for-all boogie that, according to myth, soon inspired the Stones to pen “Goin’ Home.” Similar tradition is tied to Love’s harpsichord-fragranced “She Comes In Colors,” a baroque gem that led to the Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow.”



 

DAY 84.
The Beau Brummels.............Triangle (1967)





Triangle, is an album that has me pretty stumped.
I liked it but there was just something, I'm finding hard to put my finger on 

The lyrics were very good, so I don't know if Sal Valentino's voice didn't match the lyrics or the arrangements didn't hook up well with the lyrics or Valentino's voice,but there was something there, that for me was a bit askew.

In saying that, I did enjoy "Magic Hollow" and "Painter of women," but these too  had moments where they seemed to go awry, maybe someone who knows music better than I can explain?

Anyways this album won't be going into my collection as it left me somewhat anguished,

A little bit about them;

Formed in San Francisco, California in 1964, The Beau Brummels were the first nationally successful Rock group to emerge from the Bay area. Vocalist Sal Valentino had previously led his own group, Sal Valentino And The Valentines, which issued a flop single called "I Wanna Twist" in 1962. Guitarist Ron Elliott, bassist Ron Meagher and drummer John Petersen joined him in a new act, taking the name Beau Brummels in deference to their love of British beat music. (Beau Brummel was a dashing young Englishman who lived from 1778-1840 and was known for his wit and fancy clothes) Playing a steady diet of current hits, the quartet enjoyed a committed following within the city's Irish community prior to adding guitarist Declan Mulligan to the line-up. Spotted by local DJ Tom Donahue in a club in San Mateo (just south of San Francisco), the group was signed to Donahue's small San Francisco-based label, Autumn Records in 1964. Before the hits started coming, Mulligan quit the band, a decision he would later regret.

With Sly Stewart (later Sly Stone) as their producer, the band's first single, Ron Elliot's "Laugh, Laugh" soared to number 15 in the U.S. just a few months after they had played their first show together. The melancholy, minor-key original sounded so much like the British bands flooding the airwaves, that many listeners initially mistook the Brummels for an English act. For a follow-up, the group released the Ron Elliot - Robert Durand composition called "Just A Little". This loosely recorded song, with a casual beginning and a sloppy fade at the end, reached number 8 in early 1965 and would prove to be the band's only Top Ten hit.


 The Beau Brummels issued two albums in 1965, both dominated by strong original material that featured the band's ringing guitars and multi-part harmonies. Much of their early work was outstanding, yet the band was losing ground commercially, partially because Autumn Records, being such a small label, lacked promotional muscle. "You Tell Me Why", which reached number 38, was their only other Billboard Top 40 hit, though "Sad Little Girl" and "Don't Talk to Strangers" were excellent singles. The band also shuffled personnel a few times, and Ron Elliott was unable to stay on the road because of diabetes.


 Autumn Records was sold in 1966 to Warner Brothers, who made the mistake of forcing the band to record an entire album of Top 40 covers called "Beau Brummels 66", ignoring the fact that original material was one of the Brummels' strongest assets. A new member, Don Irving, was included on this collection, but the LP was a marked disappointment, and failed covers of "Mrs. Brown," and "Louie, Louie" undermined the quintet's credibility. After this glaring flop, Don Irving left the band. As the Brummels started concentrating on live appearances, drummer John Petersen also quit the group. He would join a band called The Tikis, who later became Harpers Bizarre. They would have a huge hit of their own in 1967 with Paul Simon's "Feeling Groovy".


 The remaining trio recorded a critically acclaimed, more experimental album called "Triangle", one of the era's most cultured and delicate LPs, but the loss of Meagher in September 1967 reduced the band to the central duo of Elliott and Valentino. The former undertook several outside projects, producing and/or writing singles for Butch Engle And The Styx, before donating songs and arranging skills on albums by Randy Newman, The Everly Brothers and Harpers Bizarre. In 1968 the pair enlisted the help of several top studio musicians to complete "Bradley's Barn", an early and brave excursion into Country/Rock, before embarking on separate careers. Valentino issued three solo singles before founding the band, Stoneground. Elliott completed an LP called "The Candlestickmaker", formed the disappointing group Pan, then undertook occasional session work, including a cameo on Little Feat's "Sailin' Shoes".


 The original members of The Beau Brummels regrouped in 1974, but bassist Ron Meagher dropped out soon after. He was replaced by Dan Levitt, formerly of Pan and Levitt And McClure. A new album simply called "Beau Brummels" was in the works in 1975 when Petersen opted to assist in a Harpers Bizarre reunion. Peter Tepp provided a temporary replacement, but the project was later abandoned. Since then the Beau Brummels enjoyed several short-lived resurrections, but conflicting interests, coupled with Elliott's ill health, denied them a long-term future. Numerous archive recordings, many previously unreleased, have nonetheless kept the band's name and music alive. In 1994, the album "Autumn Of Their Years" was released, which included material recorded from 1964 to 1966.


 The band also performed at shows such as the Baypop 2000 Festival and the 2002 Summer of Love Festival, both in San Francisco. In 2006, Sal Valentino released his first solo album, "Dreamin' Man". Another effort, "Come Out Tonight", followed later that year, and his third solo album, "Every Now and Then", was released in 2008. Drummer John Petersen died of a heart attack on November 11, 2007.


​Although they are mostly remembered for their two garage band style hits, The Beau Brummels are still a favorite of classic rock lovers and the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame has chosen "Laugh, Laugh" as one of the 500 greatest songs in Rock history. 

Prefer The Monkees to The Beau Brummels, maybe due to familiarity (TV series).

I used to look forward to their tv programmes, which seemed to use, as a main instrument of comedy, speeded up action shots as utilised by Benny Hill in later years.

Wouldn't waste any money on these two albums though.

DAY 85.
The Monkees.................Headquarters    (1967)





"Headquarters" was a funny one for me, although I have never heard the album before all the tracks seemed familiar, and "Dirty Scouse Git" was one I have heard before but didn't realise it was by the Monkees.

Whether all the songs were indicative of the style of songwriting of the time or I've just heard too much of a much of a muchness in the '60s I'm not too sure,but they all tended to sound familiar for some reason.

Another thing I've found in a lot of the '60s stuff I've listened to, now this may well just be me, but the amount of times I've been enjoying a song, plodding away quite merrily, then for some reason when you get to the chorus (which I have always believed was supposed to be the catchy bit) it all goes Pete Tong and weird, then again that could just be me, who knows?

All in all it wasn't bad, but never really got going for me, so this album won't be getting added to my collection.

some bits and bobs;


The group was created for a NBC television Show 437 young men auditioned for the roles - mostly struggling musicians and actors. Steven Stills and John Sebastian both auditioned and were turned down for roles on the show. It was rumored that Charles Manson tried out, but this was not true


58 Episodes of the TV show were made. It lasted two seasons and aired from 1966-1968. The idea for the fictional group came from the 1965 Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night.


At first, the group did not play their own instruments - their vocals were recorded over tracks recorded by a group of session musicians who played on many hits from the '60s. The turning point came in 1967 when they insisted on playing their own material and getting producer credit as well.

The Monkees were the object of scorn among some music fans who felt they were a product of deceptive corporate entertainment, taking up airspace that would be better suited to more authentic musicians. There wasn't much controversy over the use of session musicians on their albums, however, as manufactured bands were fairly common and The Monkees didn't keep it a secret. Mickey Dolenz explained how word got out: "Somebody just asked us. I don't remember who - exactly what moment, but somebody probably asked me, "So are you playing on all those early records?" And I said, "Well, no. Some of them were made before I was even cast." And I think, again, from my point of view, the whole confusion came, and still exists, if you think of the Monkees as a group, as a band, it gets very confusing. And it just isn't accurate. The Monkees was not a band. It still isn't a band. It was this television show about this band that wanted to be the Beatles. We wanted to be the Beatles. That's what all - that was what it was about. And we represented all those kids around the United States and the world that were in their basements and garages playing, you know, songs and trying to make a living. That's what the heart and soul of the show was about. That's what made us successful."


Dolenz almost got the part of The Fonz on Happy Days. He was beaten out by Henry Winkler.


Nesmith is the most accomplished musician in the group - he wrote "Different Drum," recorded by The Stone Ponies (Linda Ronstadt), "Propinquity" and "Some Of Shelley's Blues" recorded by The Nitty Gritty Dirt band. The Monkees may have been designed as a "Prefab Four," but Nesmith is a stand alone artist. 



This one sounds like an urban legend, but it's true: Michael Nesmith's mother invented Liquid Paper (Tipex). She got the idea when she was a secretary, making small bottles of water-based paint that she called "Mistake Out" and gave to other typists. She sold her company to Gillette in 1979 for $47 million.


Tim Buckley and Frank Zappa both appeared on their TV show. Zappa was a big fan, and even asked Dolenz to play in his group after their show was cancelled.


As a child, Micky Dolenz starred in the TV series Circus Boy. It was a Walt Disney production



Headquarters was the only Monkees album recorded with all four in the studio at the same time. On all the other albums each member recorded their part separately and then the whole was mixed by the engineers.


Like Nesmith, Peter Tork thought of himself as a musician, while Dolenz and Jones considered themselves actors. This caused some tension in the group when Tork and Nesmith wanted to take more control of their musical output, which Dolenz and Jones eventually went along with.


Tork taught Algebra and coached baseball at a private school in the late 1970s. He also worked as a singing waiter at the Sleeping Lady Cafe in Fairfax California in the mid '70s. An accomplished musician, he plays 12 different instruments.


Mickey Dolenz owned the first Moog synthesiser on the West Coast, and when he played it on the 1967 Monkees track "Daily Nightly" he became the first person to use one on a pop record. Dolenz recalled to Uncut: "One night I had a party and John Lennon came over, and he sat there at the Moog all night long making flying saucer sounds!"


Peter Tork was persuaded to audition for The Monkees by Stephen Stills, a friend from their Greenwich Village folk days. Stills had tried out for the show and been rejected, but thought Tork might succeed.




Micky Dolenz got his place in the band after answering a newspaper ad. He was not at that time a drummer and needed lessons even to be able to mime credibly, but eventually he learned to play.



In 1967, their albums out-shined two of the biggest names in the music industry when their sales topped both bands output combined.



They're Banned From The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame

Co-founder Jann Wenner bases his refusal to admit them on the fact that they were hired as actors, not musicians, despite the fact that they have had critical acclaim supporting their musical achievements and advocating on their behalf. Peter has called Jann’s actions an " abuse of power.”


JACK NICHOLSON WROTE THEIR BONKERS 1968 PSYCHEDELIC MOVIE. This madcap movie was a colossal flop at the time, pocketing a mere $16,000 at the box office. In the five decades since, Head's dark, surprisingly political tone has made it a cult classic, and one of the most emblematic films of the late 1960s. It's non-linear structure and surrealism would profoundly influence MTV videos. Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson were the brains behind the postmodern high jinks. Nicholson purportedly hammered out the screenplay on acid.


The Monkees 1968 movie, "Head" is widely considered one of the worst movies ever made. Cast members included Annette Funicello, boxer Sonny Liston, stripper Carol Doda, musician Frank Zappa, Teri Garr, Victor Mature, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson.


The Monkees were the first group to use the Moog Synthesizer on a pop album. The Doors were second



Peter plays a 5 string banjo on George Harrison's "Wonderwall" soundtrack. He borrowed the banjo from Sir Paul Macca himself.


Frank Zappa once asked Micky to be the drummer for The Mothers of Invention


Between October 1966 and November 1967, the Monkees put out four albums. All four went to No. 1.



 Between November 1968 and June 1970, the Monkees put out four albums. None of them cracked the Top 30.



The band had six Top 5 singles, but its signature tune, “(Theme from) The Monkees,” wasn’t one of them. It made No. 8 in Australia but didn’t chart in the U.S. or England.


The Monkees played "The Old Jacksonville Coliseum" on July 8, 1967. Their opening act? Jimi Hendrix. It was his first night on the tour. He lasted just seven shows.


The band had some of the hottest songwriters in the business writing for them, including Neil Diamond, Carole King, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and Harry Nilsson


. The band’s first album,  “The Monkees,” hit No. 92 on the Billboard Album Charts in 1986, just over 20 years after it had been released. The first time around, it spent 195 weeks — nearly four years — in Billboard’s Top 200.







 

Tek wrote:

Just dipping my toe back into this mammoth thread (for some reason I like reading it in bulk once or twice a week rather than every day).

​Sgt.Peppers - Well what can you say?Thought Mr Chanters analysis of it was really good.

​And what you guys said about 'She's Leaving Home' also struck a chord (pun very much meant).It was always a track that could make me feel tearful but since becoming a parent a few years back.....well.

​Love - De Capo - Bit disappointed the book never recommended 'Forever Changes' or 'Four Sail' both if which are VASTLY superior Love albums.Infact they are two of the best albums of the 60's.

​'De Capo' is too loose and improvised as others alluded to.Like a studio jam.One or two highlights nonetheless.

Never cared for Beefheart.

Will check the rest out.

P.s. ;ike the Nico album.

Good to see you checking in Sir, as for Love you could be in for a surprise in the coming days, as the book is in chronological order.
 

I preferred the sound effects to the songs on that Tim Buckley album. 

Pleasant Street was pleasant, Phantasmagoria in Two also, but the style of music is a bit twee in my view.

Buckley had a good voice right enough, but the album isn't for me.

DAY 87.
LOVE...............Forever Changes    (1967)






In 1967 Love were the hippest band in LA after the Byrds
The latters hit making days were coming to an end however, but Love were ill equipped to take there place, they were ethniically mixed with two black front men playing music unlikely to appeal to a black audience; songs that stretched out for entire LP sides; and their drug use had spiralled.

By the Summer of '67, The Doors and Jimmy Hendrix were stealing the kudos.So Love went back to basics, dreaming up an album that would be all about the songs.  (how visionary)

This sounds more appealing than their last offering I heard, we'll see?

DAY 87.
LOVE...............Forever Changes    (1967)







"So Love went back to basics, dreaming up an album that would be all about the songs"

Bloody marvellous idea, this to me, doesn't seem like the same band who done Da Capo. 
I listened to it once, then thought that really wasn't to bad at all, then listened to it again.

I'm really glad I listened to it again, as from "Alone Again Or" what for me was the pick of the tracks, all the way through to "You Set The Scene" certainly wouldn't be a waste of anybodys 37 minutes (or in my case 74 minutes,)

Listening to this I keep thinking what the hell were they thinking about with that Da Capo nonsense, when they can come up with this gem?

Anyways after careful consideration,I will be looking out for this on yinyl, and adding it to my collection.

Bits & Bobs;

The cover art of Love’s Forever Changes, a kaleidoscopic mosaic of the group’s faces in the shape of a heart, is one possible indicator as to why the album was a commercial disappointment upon its release in 1967. See, it’s the kind of heart that pumps in your chest, not the cute kind that teenage girl-hippies drew next to flowers and peace symbols in their notebooks. Forever Changes might have been recorded during the Summer of Love, but despite the band’s name and psychedelic iconography, Love was no flower-power act. In fact, the flower vase that lead singer Arthur Lee holds in his hands on the back cover is decidedly broken in two. Lee also happened to be black, and though his friend Jimi Hendrix found success making rock music, Lee’s brand was less of the blues and soul variety and more aligned with the shiny pop style that was closely associated with white bands like the Byrds and the Beatles. But it was Love’s sheer laziness (Lee seemed content with medium-sized L.A. fame—as evidenced by “Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale,” his ode to the part of the Sunset Strip where they played his records regularly—and a few of his fellow band members seemed content getting high) that truly prevented them from achieving the same level of national success and notoriety that those bands, as well as Love’s Elektra labelmates the Doors, enjoyed.

The album ends with a six minute epic that seamlessly links three songs (two years before Abbey Road) beginning with a section that simmers until the chilling, dramatic, urgently stated, idealistic anthem delivered with unabashed sincerity, wherein Lee declares "This is the time in life I'm living and I'll face each day with a smile" and "everything I've seen needs rearranging." Clearly a guy coming apart at the seams. The anthemic musical bravado filled with trumpet flourishes and string waves Lee's freak flag declaration high as the album fades out. It produces chills and watery eyes every play.
 

Last edited by arabchanter (05/11/2017 7:56 pm)

arabchanter, I'll attempt to post after you've put your views here from now on (if I remember!). 

I liked both the last two albums, probably The Cream album slightly better of the two. Never owned either, my sister had 'Forever Changes'. It has that great opening song, covered later by The Damned. In the past I've found it too acoustic: I like noise. Probably like the songs with woodwind instruments and/or strings more to my taste on this Love album.


Cannae agree with you about Tales of Brave Ulysses. Great song, only in my view of course. I quite enjoyed hearing the album again. The last song is a traditional dance hall tune from many years before. It's shite, right enough.


 

 

DAY 89.
Pink Floyd..............The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn   (1967)







As the house band at the UFO club in the mid '60s, Pink Floyd launched a psychedelic musical revolution in London rivaling that which The Grateful Dead created in San Francisco.

Despite the deceiving moniker, stolen from bluesman Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, Pink Floyd were not a group of shabby hippies expanding on black music, but a band of fashionably dressed architecture and art students searching for there own sound.

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn achieved that goal with spellbinding results.