Thursday, August 25, 2011

August's "Forgotten" Music: WHERE THE ACTION IS: Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968


I've been flensing the carcass of the most convenient Borders, and just bought this last night for slightly less than you can get it from an Amazon vendor, at least...there aren't Too many collections that range quite as widely over a pop landscape, even given how many of the just-out-of-the-garage bands, when they were, sound alike on disc two. Meanwhile, while it was unnecessary to offer all the recordings in mono (a common complaint about this package), as opposed to most which were recorded only in mono, and the sleeves for the discs are less than optimal for protection, this does give a sense of the "scene" in those years, as well as offering a decent selection of orphaned or otherwise rare items...so, if this music is of interest, here's an opportunity to find The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band cheek by jowl with the Bobby Fuller Four...and, happily, that's not the 1980s Knack, below. But, yes, that Kim Fowley. (Somehow, I thought Spirit was a San Francisco band...seems more fitting, somehow.) For that matter, it's a pretty rare album which features both Beefheart and the Magic Band and the Mamas and Papas...though the lack of The Mothers of Invention is another flaw (I can only imagine there was some intransigence on the part of the copyright holders)...


Track Listings
Disc: 1
1. Riot On Sunset Strip (The Standells)
2. You Movin' (The Byrds)
3. You I'll Be Following (Love)
4. Dr. Stone (The Leaves)
5. Go And Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield)
6. Zig Zag Wanderer (Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band)
7. Gentle As It May Seem (Iron Butterfly)
8. Candy Cane Madness (Lowell George & The Factory)
9. If You Want This Love (The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band)
10. Baby, My Heart (The Bobby Fuller Four)
11. All Night Long (The Palace Guard)
12. It's Gonna Rain (Sonny & Cher)
13. For My Own (The Guilloteens)
14. Take A Giant Step (The Rising Sons)
15. One Too Many Mornings (The Association)
16. Time Waits For No One (The Knack)
17. Take It As It Comes (The Doors)
18. Pulsating Dream (Kaleidoscope)
19. Tripmaker (The Seeds)
20. The People In Me (The Music Machine)
21. Saturday's Son (The Sons Of Adam)
22. Eventually (The Peanut Butter Conspiracy)
23. Swim (Penny Arkade)
24. The Third Eye (The Joint Effort)
25. Girl In Your Eye (Spirit)

Disc: 2
1. Jump, Jive & Harmonize (Thee Midniters)
2. Back Up (The Light)
3. To Die Alone (The Bush)
4. Get On This Plane (The Premiers)
5. Little Girl, Little Boy (The Odyssey)
6. Hideaway (The Electric Prunes)
7. Listen, Listen! (The Merry-Go-Round)
8. She Done Moved (The Spats)
9. Grim Reaper Of Love (The Turtles)
10. See If I Care (Ken & The Fourth Dimension)
11. He's Not There Anymore (The Chymes)
12. Back Seat '38 Dodge (Opus 1)
13. Eternal Prison (The Humane Society)
14. Revenge (The Others)
15. Come Alive (Things To Come)
16. Acid Head (The Velvet Illusions)
17. Guaranteed Love (Limey & The Yanks)
18. Love's The Thing (The Romancers, aka The Smoke Rings)
19. Underground Lady (Kim Fowley)
20. Pretty Little Thing (The Deepest Blue)
21. You're Wishin' I Was Someone Else (The Whatt Four)
22. Hippy Elevator Operator (The W.C. Fields Memorial Electric String Band)
23. That's For Sure (The Mustangs)
24. Tomorrow's Girl (Fapardokly)(Merrell & The Exiles)
25. Everything's There (The Hysterics)
26. Our Time Is Running Out (The Yellow Payges)

Disc: 3
1. Action, Action, Action (Keith Allison)
2. The Rebel Kind (Dino, Desi & Billy)
3. High On Love (The Knickerbockers)
4. Fan Tan (Jan & Dean)
5. Halloween Mary (P.F. Sloan)
6. Somebody Groovy (The Mamas & The Papas)
7. Daydreaming (Thorinshield)
8. Just Can't Wait (The Full Treatment)
9. Yellow Balloon (The Yellow Balloon)
10. The Times To Come (London Phogg)
11. No More Running Around (The Lamp Of Childhood)
12. Little Girl Lost-And-Found (The Garden Club)
13. Mothers And Fathers (The Moon)
14. My Girlfriend Is A Witch (October Country)
15. Montage Mirror (Roger Nichols Trio)
16. Flower Eyes (Pasternak Progress)
17. Come Down (The Common Cold)
18. Jill (Gary Lewis & The Playboys)
19. Daily Nightly (The Monkees)
20. Night Time Girl (Modern Folk Quintet)
21. Don't Say No (The Oracle)
22. Tin Angel (Will You Ever Come Down) (Hearts And Flowers)
23. Rainbow Woman (Lee Hazlewood)
24. Poor Old Organ Grinder (Pleasure featuring Billy Elder)
25. Baby, Please Don't Go (The Ballroom)

Disc: 4
1. Sit Down I Think I Love You (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay)
2. Splendor In The Grass (Jackie DeShannon with The Byrds)
3. November Night (Peter Fonda)
4. Roses And Rainbows (Danny Hutton)
5. Lemon Chimes (The Dillards)
6. Here's Today (The Rose Garden)
7. I Love How You Love Me (Nino Tempo & April Stevens)
8. Words (Demo) (Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)
9. (You Used To) Ride So High (The Motorcycle Abeline)(Warren Zevon & Bones Howe)
10. Life Is A Dream (Noel Harrison)
11. Los Angeles (Gene Clark)
12. Once Upon A Time (Tim Buckley)
13. Darlin' You Can Count On Me (The Everpresent Fullness)
14. I'll Search The Sky (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)
15. Come To The Sunshine (Van Dyke Parks)
16. Heroes And Villains (Alternate Take) (The Beach Boys)
17. She Sang Hymns Out Of Tune (Jesse Lee Kincaid)
18. Sister Marie (Nilsson)
19. Last Night I Had A Dream (Single Version) (Randy Newman)
20. I Think I Love You (Del Shannon)
21. Change Is Now (The Byrds)
22. The Truth Is Not Real (Single Version) (Sagittarius)
23. Marshmallow Skies (Rick Nelson)
24. You Set The Scene (Love)
25. Inner-Manipulations (Barry McGuire)

Please see Scott Parker's blog for links to other music choices for this month...though a few need to be focused a bit (you'll have to dig into Bill Crider's busy blog for his entry, for example).

9 comments:

  1. Like you, I've been buying books, CDs, and DVDs from BORDERS at discounted prices. This is a great collection, but someone must have beat me to it. Our BORDERS are selling everything 50% to 70% off.

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  2. That's today's new discount range nationally...they were starting to put those signs up as I left at closing last night (the last day of three wherein cardholders could use their cards again for 15% off the totals).

    It's quite the temptation for a junkie like myself. I hope, for selfish and unselfish reasons, that Books-A-Million takes the Bryn Mawr Borders space...Bryn Mawr being pretty good territory for bookselling.

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  3. If I had time, I would have written up Half Man Half Biscuit's "Len Ganley Stance" as surely the only song dedicated to a snooker referee, but time does not permit.

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  4. You're in love with those folks...I will take the time to listen soonly...

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  5. Somehow and for reasons I can't explain, I am not at all familiar with a lot of these songs. I think old lady memory strikes again.

    But all is not lost, I do recognize a few.

    Good music coup, Todd.

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  6. Well, Yvette, a lot of these are notably obscure, even when recorded by major or commercially potent artists. The second disk includes a few hit-makers, such as the Turtles, but is mostly, as noted, just out of the garage bunches of kids, mixed in with a few vets who never made much of a national splash. And if you never dug into the PREFLYTE album or the Byrds' complete works assemblies, it was easy to miss at least one or two of the Byrds' tracks here...for obvious example...

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  7. I would have said Disc 4 #1 was by Poco ... it appeared on one of their albums and they were most of that band.

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  8. Indeed, but I don't think they'd formally shaped up the band, or been spurned by Walt Kelly in their attempt to be named "Pogo," yet by '68...

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  9. Well, they were together, in '68, in initial form in the wreckage of Buffalo Springfield, but didn't release a record as Poco till '69.

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