The Changing Times on Shivaree
Listen – Changin’ Times – Pied Piper – MP3
Greetings all.
I figured I’d start the week with something I’ve been holding in abeyance for a little while (waiting for a suitable lapse in time after I last ran a tune by this band).
Last we heard from the Changin’ Times, it was via their smoking slab of garage fuzz ‘How Is the Air Up There’, a personal fave of mine that I chased like Ahab for many a year.
You can catch up on that group’s history back at the original post, and regard the tune I bring you today as a supplement of sorts (like a folk rock multivitamin). Once you pull down the ones and zeros, the tune may sound simultaneously familiar, and un, on account of it’s the obscure OG of a song taken high up into the charts by another artist entirely. And, as is often the case in these situations, I feel that the original is superior.
The hitmaker in this case was a singer from the UK named Crispian St. Peters. St. Peters had had a hit in the UK in 1966 with a version of the Ian & Sylvia tune ‘You Were On My Mind’ (a hit in the US the previous year for We Five). His fourth 45 was his cover of the Changin’ Times ‘Pied Piper’, which became a major Top 10 hit in the summer of 1966.
The original – which I bring you today – was recorded and released by the Changin’ Times in 1965, and promptly went nowhere. Fortunately for the bank accounts of Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff, the cover was a little more successful.
Where St. Peters version sounds like a middle of the road crooner attempting to crash the youth market, the Changing Times OG is a very tasty slice of 1965 Sunset Strip folk rock, with the jangle, and the Dylan-esque whine and what not.
I dig it, and I hope you do too.
I’ll be back later in the week with a drug induced freakout.
Peace
Larry
PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a solid funk 45
PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…
5 Comments
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Well, at last someone has made a decent-sounding digital transfer of this track! It has been comp’d a couple of places–specifically Turds on a Bum Ride , Vol. 5 and Before They Were Hits, Vol. 2. Both sound like they were recorded off an AM radio in the ’60s, or (more likely) with severe digital clipping that ended up just getting normalized on the computer. No dynamics; no highs; no SPACE, man! The original mono was no doubt highly compressed as it was, but your transfer is almost like hearing the tune for the first time. Many thanks!
Thanks! Glad to hear you’re digging it.
L
This is SO cool! I’d heard this version before, but never knew who did it. A keeper for sure!
I bought, and enjoyed, this single for years. I also believe that this version is far superior to the remake, which sounds completely undernourished in comparison. Glad someone still has it around. Too bad someone hasn’t remastered this on a CD collection.
I remember this version from AM radio in the 60s — I didn’t even know that somebody else had a hit with it. Thanks for posting!