Truly bizarre 137 seconds from Pete Giles – one of the founding members of King Crimson.
Tag Archives: 1967
The Smoke – My Friend Jack (1967)
This english band never really broke internationaly, despite being big in Germany. The biggest hit of the quartet was “My Friend Jack”, which was interpreted as LSD anthem. The band eventually became more legendary for being banned in the UK than their actual recorded output.
[via Nils Lassen]
Captain Beefheart – Electricity (1967)
Safe as Milk is the debut album by Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, originally released in 1967. It is a heavily blues-influenced work, but also hints at many of the features — such as surreal lyrics and odd time signatures — that would later become trademarks of Beefheart’s music. The album is also notable for the involvement of a 20-year-old Ry Cooder, who plays guitar and wrote some of the arrangements. Before recording Safe As Milk, the band had previously released a couple of singles through A&M Records, and it was to this company that the group first proposed their debut album in 1966. They presented the label with a set of heavily R&B-influenced demos, which the label apparently felt were too unconventional, and A&M decided to drop the band. Don Van Vliet later claimed the label dropped them after hearing the song “Electricity” and declaring it “too negative.”
[via Henrik Queitsch]
Margo Guryan – I Don’t Intend To Spend Christmas Without You (1967)
Happy Holidays and New Years everyone! Here is one of my favorite Christmas songs from the 60′s. It was written by the great Margo Guryan, and she sings it here in this demo from 1967. It was also later recorded by Claudine Longet.
The Beatles – A Day In The Life (1967)
1The final track on The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon/McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with orchestral additions. While Lennon’s lyrics were inspired by contemporary newspaper articles, McCartney’s were reminiscent of his youth. The decisions to link sections of the song with orchestral crescendos and to end the song with a sustained piano chord were made only after the rest of the song had been recorded. The supposed drug reference in the line “I’d love to turn you on” resulted in the song initially being banned from broadcast by the BBC. It was arranged for the orchestral session to be filmed by NEMS Enterprises for use in a planned television special. The film was never released in its entirety, although portions of it can be seen in the “A Day in the Life” promotional film, which includes shots of studio guests Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Donovan, Pattie Boyd and Michael Nesmith. Reflecting the Beatles’ taste for experimentation and the avant garde at this point in their careers, the orchestra players were asked to wear or were given a costume piece on top of their formal dress. This resulted in different players wearing anything from fake noses to fake stick-on nipples. George Martin recalled that the lead violinist performed wearing a gorilla paw, while a bassoon player placed a balloon on the end of his instrument. In April 1967, McCartney played a tape of the song to Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, in Los Angeles. The song deeply affected Wilson, who was suffering growing emotional problems. Soon after, Wilson abandoned his work on the Beach Boys’ album Smile, and would not return to complete it until 2003. Van Dyke Parks later said, “Brian had a nervous collapse. What broke his heart was Sgt. Pepper.”
[via Bo Hr. Hansen]
The Specials – A Message To You Rudy (1979)
Rudy, A Message to You is a 1967 rocksteady song by Dandy Livingstone. The song later achieved broader success when in 1979, The Specials cover, titled A Message to You, Rudy, reached Number 10 in the UK chart. Veteran trombone player Rico Rodriguez played on both Dandy’s and The Specials’ versions.
[via Henrik Føhns in Copenhagen and Petri H. Lundén in Gothenburg]
MC5 – Black To Comm (1967)
Their name, The MC5, reflected their Detroit roots (it was short for “Motor City Five’), was vaguely reminiscent of a sports car name (like the GTO), and echoed the Dave Clark Five, at the peak of their popularity in 1964–1965. In some ways the group was similar to other garage bands of the period, composing soon-to-be historic workouts such as “Black to Comm” during their mid-teens in the basement of the home of Wayne Kramer’s mother. The music also reflected Fred “Sonic” Smith and Kramer’s increasing interest in free jazz — the guitarists were inspired by the likes of Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra and late period John Coltrane, and tried to imitate the ecstatic sounds of the squealing, high-pitched saxophonists they adored. The MC5 even later opened for a few U.S. midwest shows for Sun Ra, whose influence is obvious in “Starship”. Kramer and Smith were also deeply inspired by Sonny Sharrock, one of the few electric guitarists working in free jazz, and they eventually developed a unique interlocking style that was like little heard before: Kramer’s solos often used a heavy, irregular vibrato, while Smith’s rhythms contained an uncommon explosive energy, including patterns that conveyed great excitement, as evidenced in “Black to Comm” and many other songs.
[Inspired by Jesper Nielsen and Patrick Bird in London - dedicated to Allan Vegenfeldt in Copenhagen and Mogens Toudahl in Berlin]
Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood – Summer Wine (1967)
“Summer Wine” is a song written by Lee Hazlewood. It was originally sung by Suzi Jane Hokom and Lee Hazlewood in 1966, but it was made famous by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood in 1967. This version was originally released as the B-side of “Sugar Town” the previous year before featuring on the Nancy & Lee LP in 1968. It was the first of Sinatra and Hazlewood’s string of popular duets. Lyrically, “Summer Wine” describes a man, voiced by Hazlewood, who meets a woman, Sinatra, who notices his silver spurs and invites him to have wine with her. After heavy drinking, the man awakens hungover to find his spurs and money have been stolen by the mysterious woman; the subtext of which being they experienced intercourse and as repayment she misappropriated them (them being his “silver spurs a dollar and a dime”).
[via Henrik Quietsch]
Dean Carter – Jailhouse Rock (1967)
1Out of his time and clean out of his mind, Dean Carter was a true original. Born Arlie Neaville, he was a blonde Rock’n’Roller who bore more than a passing resemblance to Heinz, Heino and a far younger Spike Jones all at once while possessing a unique songwriting flair that cut across a ridiculous gamut encompassing rockabilly, garage punk, soul, gospel to country-based Rock’n’Roll and back again. Carter’s treatment of remodeling styles into customised flame jobs jacked up into a hairy array of sounds that were all shook up, had nowhere to go and was impressive in its unflinching gaze on the eight ball that never swerved. Carter accomplished this all decked out in a variety of guises: from a grimacing, pick axe-wielding miner (in promotion of his cover version of “Sixteen Tons”) but for most of the time as a tiger-skinned Daddy-o armed with that most unlikely of Rock’n’Roll axes: a 12-string dobro. [Source]
[via Mogens Toudahl in East Berlin]
The Loved Ones – Sad Dark Eyes (1967)
The Loved Ones‘ promo-film for the hit single ‘Sad Dark Eyes’ (January, 1967), taken from the 1967 album ‘The Magic Box’.
[via Lars Top-Galia via Ed Kuepper]
