Iron Leg Digital Trip #24 – Rope Ladder to the Moon

Playlist

Terry Reid – Superlungs (Epic)
New Zealand Trading Co. – Jam and Anti-Freeze (Memphis)
Wizards From Kansas – Codine (Mercury)
JK and Co – Land of Sensations and Delights (White Whale)
Robin McNamara – Aren’t You Thinking of Me (Steed)
Janis Ian – Son of Love (Verve)
Mighty Baby – Same Way To the Sun (Head)
Jack Bruce – Rope Ladder to the Moon (Atco)
Love – The Red Telephone (Elektra)
Holy Mackerel – Wildflowers (Reprise)
Tommy Roe – Cry On Crying Eyes (ABC)
Association – Birthday Morning (WB)
Kak – Rain (Epic)

Listen/Download 82MB Mixed MP3

Download 64MB ZIP File-

Greetings all.
I hope the beginning of yet another new week finds you well, with plenty of space inside your head reserved for something tasty.
During my last vacation, in addition to a grip of unusual pop stuff, I also managed to score some cool psychy stuff. That, in addition to existing examples of same in the Iron Leg/Funky16Corners archive, provided the fodder for a couple of new mixes, the first of which you see before you today.
Today’s edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip is designed to drill a little deeper withing the cranium, entering via the earholes and ricocheting about recklessly painting the inside of the brainpan with all kinds of groovy stuff. It’s not all dreamy (though much of it is) and there are a number of deliberately rough spots left in the finish so that you might be able to wrap your mind around the whole thing without slipping off.
There’s certainly enough trippy stuff here that you might want to slap it on the next time you journey on the psychedelic plane, but as one who’s all about the natural high these days (as in one produced from within, not like homegrown, though I supposed harvesting of a dreamlike state from within oneself might also be described as such), I can assure you it’s just as enjoyable that way too.
Things get off to a start with a tune by an artist that I’ve known about my entire rock consuming life, yet never actually heard until I picked up one of his albums this year. As you can imagine, I have spent much time since kicking myself in the ass, because Terry Reid had an awesome voice, the ability to write some excellent songs as well as that to interpret those of others as strongly, which is what he does here. Donovan originally recorded ‘Superlungs (My Supergirl)’ for the ‘Sunshine Superman’ LP, but it proved far too controversial, and the original remained in the vaults for more than 30 years, while a re-recorded, expurgated version appeared a few years later on ‘Barabajagal’. Though Terry Reid’s take on the songs isn’t quite as lysergic as the OG by Mr. Leitch, Reid tears into the tune and when he starts telling the tale of his lust for the 14 year old pothead, you’re instantly reminded that this was recorded in the late 60s, where such sentiments might be wrapped in the banner of free love, instead of Terry, and Dono being clapped in irons and hung in the town square.
The next tune is by a group that I’d never heard of before I found their album. The New Zealand Trading Company may have recorded their LP in Memphis (for the label that took it’s name from the city) but they hailed from NZ, with a couple of Maori’s in the group. Though I’ve heard a couple of people rag on this album, they clearly haven’t listened to it with a clear head (or walked into it with any number of incorrect presumptions). Though the NZTC are a rough looking lot, and their album is on a label best known for its rare soul, their music is an interesting mix of psychedelia, harmony pop and slightly harder edged stuff. ‘Jam and Anti-freeze’ (some title, huh?) is a great, late 60s UK psych/prog-like tune which starts out with a rock shuffle and then slips ever so gently into a spacy vibe, with (wait for it, here it comes) some spacy vibes.
I bought the ‘Wizards from Kansas’ LP when I was up in Maine, only because I’d heard of the group, and the record looked cool. When I hit the interwebs looking for info on the band, I saw that the album often trades hands for a couple of hundred smackers. After some investigation, I’m inclined to believe that what I picked up was one of the earlier incarnations of a reissue, which since it only cost me 6 or 7 dollars is not tragedy, since any lack of resale value is more than made up for by the fine music trapped in the grooves. The track I bring you today is their dreamy take on Buffey Sainte-Marie’s oft covered (most famously by the Charlatans) ‘Codine’. Though they hailed from the land of wheat and tornadoes, the Wizards really had that West Coast vibe down pat.
I’ve featured tracks from the ‘JK and Company’ LP here before. It was a very lucky find of mine many years ago, and remains a fave today. The track included here, ‘Land of Sensations and Delights’ is yet another example of why everyone who’s heard the album wishes JK had spent more time in the studio, and less time vanishing into obscurity.
Robin McNamara was another New England find. When I grabbed the album, I had no idea that it included a genuine one-hit-wonder (‘Lay a Little Loving On Me’), but I grabbed it because it looked cool. Most of the record is unremarkable pop rock. McNamara was one of the stars of the original cast of ‘HAIR’, and was taken under the wing of Jeff Barry and the Steed label (also home to the Illusion and Andy Kim among others). The one track on the album that really stuck in my ears was the faux-operatic, somewhat psychedelic lament ‘Are You Thinking of Me’. I dig it.
If you get the willies when you see the name Janis Ian – assuming that you’re going to hear something like ‘At Seventeen’- rest easy my friends. As illustrated earlier this year when I posted a track from her first Verve LP, Ian recorded some excellent folk rock and even lite-psyche in the 60s. One fine example of the latter is the dreamy, echoey, fully tripped out ‘Son of Love’ which verily emits the smell of incense from your speakers.
Now, let me tell you about Mighty Baby. Many years back, my man Mr. Luther dropped a copy of the CD reissue of their first album on me as a gift, and it instantly became a favorite. Containing members of the mighty mod/soul band the Action (Alan King, Ace Evans, Roger Powell), Mighty Baby were more like a UK version of the psychedelic era Grateful Dead than they were a Maurice and Radiants tribute band. Their self-titled debut is just about flawless, featuring a grip of amazing tracks (including a couple that I’ll feature separately in the coming weeks). The tune I include in this mix is the trippy-on-the-way-to-heavy ‘Same Way To the Sun’, which has that sun rising over Stonehenge, making the Orange amps cast shadows on the tripping crowd thing going on. The heavy lead guitar by Martin Stone is, as they say, next level. Watch out for that trick ending…
The name Jack Bruce should of course be familiar to anyone that’s ever owned a Cream album. The tune that gives this mix its name, ‘Rope Ladder To the Moon’ is a bit of ever so slightly funky, folky, psych from the album that included the original version of ‘Theme For an Imaginary Western’. I really dig the ringing rhythm guitar, and the strings on this one.
Love, led by the mighty Arthur Lee, is of course my favorite band of all time. ‘The Red Telephone’ is my favorite song, on my favorite Love album, the justly legendary ‘Forever Changes’. “Sometimes my life is so eerie…” says Arthur, and you just kind of get a little chill, as you’re overcome with a wave of recognition. Heavy stuff indeed.
The next tune is a reminder that Paul Williams wasn’t always the co-star in Burt Reynolds movies and a comic foil to the Muppets. He was once (and still is) a brilliant songwriter, who just happens to have recorded an excellent – though rare (but reissued) – psyche-pop album with his first group the Holy Mackerel. One of the finest – and psychiest – tracks on that album is the excellent ‘Wildflowers’.
Going a step further into the world of pure pop, is ‘Cry On Crying Eyes’ by Tommy Roe. Yes, Tommy Roe, the man that brought you ‘Dizzy’ and ‘Sweet Pea’, was also the same cat that went into a studio with none other than Curt Boettcher (and several of his Ballroom, Sagittarius, Millennium pals) and recorded one of the great lost pop-psyche masterpieces of 1967, the album ‘It’s Now Winters Day’. I’ll be featuring a couple of the harder edged tracks from this album in the coming weeks, but dig the trippier side of the record with ‘Cry On Crying Eyes’. If you’re a Boettcher follower (as I am) you’ll recognize several of his trademark vocal accents in this tune. It’s a fantastic album, which has been reissued, so if you can’t find your own copy, grab the CD.
Now, when you’re talking about pure pop soaked in dreamy harmonies, you need go no further than the Association. One of those great bands that manage to have a dual legacy, one side huge chart success, the other enough of an edge for a well deserved helping of hipster cred, the Association made some of the finest pop records of the mid-to-late 60s, and ‘Birthday Morning’ is one of my personal faves from their catalog.
This edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip closes out with the last “movement” of the three-part track ‘Trieulogy’ by West Coast psyche masters Kak. The same group that brought you the classic ‘Lemonade Kid’, Kak recorded on LP and a couple of singles for Epic in the late 60s. The version of the song ‘Rain’ included here is from their LP (not the blazing, and blazingly rare 45 version of the song).
I hope you dig it all, and that you have time to turn out the lights, clamp on the headphones and give this one a nice, deep listen.

Peace
Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a couple of soulful cuts by Lulu.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…

The Zoo – Where Have All the Good Times Gone

Listen – The Zoo – Where Have All the Good Times Gone – MP3

Greetings all.

I come to you once more to tear yet another week off the calendar.
This has been one of those ‘it kind of sucks but there’s nothing I can do about it (which kind of makes it suck even more)’ weeks, where physical infirmity keeps chasing me like I owe it money. Things are improving in increments, but I wish the increments were bigger (but isn’t that the way of the world anyway?).
The tune I bring you today is from a 45 that I picked up years ago, by virtue of the songs alone (one side a Beatles medley, the other – the one I’m posting today – a Kinks cover), knowing nothing about the band.
Over the 20 or so years since I found it, all I found out is that the band the Zoo released at least one album, and that there’s another band with the same name, from around the same time.
However, in those two decades passed, the Google arrived, making random bouts of info-seek much more productive. Thanks to the mighty search engine, I discovered a few more pertinent facts.
First off, the Zoo were from Ohio (Akron, I think), and included among its members two cats named Howard Leese and Mike Flicker (more on them later). Founded in 1966 (out of the ashes of a group called the Beau Denturies who had a track comped on Vol 21 of Highs In the Mid 60s), they recorded one 45 for the PKC label (which I’ll assume was a local Ohio imprint), and then a second – the one you see before you – for Parkway (of which there were at least two pressings). They went on to record a full length LP – ‘The Zoo Presents Chocolate Moose’ – and broke up by the end of the decade.
Mike Flicker ended up working at the Mushroom recording studio in Vancouver, where Leese met up with him again, eventually forming the Mushroom record label, wherein Leese met up with a young band named Heart, which of course he ended up joining.
The record itself is quite good, with a rough and ready take on the Kinks classic. I am wholly embarrassed to admit that I knew this as a Van Halen song before I heard the OG by the Kinks, though I be lying if I said I didn’t dig the VH version, Diamond Dave and friends being a major staple of my longhair, late teens, grocery stockboy era.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back on Monday with an (if I say so myself) outstanding new psyche mix.
Have a great weekend.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a new edition of Funky16Corners Radio.

Traffic – Hole In My Shoe

Messrs Wood, Winwood and Capaldi (but where’s Mason??)

Listen – Traffic – Hole In My Shoe – MP3

Greetings all.

As related over at the mothership, I am recovering slowly from surgery performed upon my person Friday last, and am not firing on each and every intellectual cylinder. I’m in one of those bags where everything – mind, body etc – is tired, and needs rest.
However, I couldn’t very well leave you all hanging on a Monday, so I’ll make it short and sweet (and psychedelic).
The tune I bring you today is one that I didn’t hear until after I had heard it ripped off (or paid homage to…).
I was, in my long-haired rock guy years quite a fan of the later, jazzier incarnation of Traffic, once having taken a bus into New York City to procure a copy of the album ‘John Barleycorn Must Die’, then only available as a pricey import.
That said, I was, until my mid-80s garage/psyche road to Damascus moment (of sorts), utterly ignorant of the fact that those neo-jazzers had a seriously psychedelic skeleton in their closet.
The “homage” I reference above was the Dukes of Stratosphear song ‘Have You Seen Jackie’ (there’s also a similar bit between ‘Little Lighthouse’ and ‘You’re a Good Man Albert Brown’), which pretty much takes the spoken interlude from ‘Hole In My Shoe’ and runs with it. Of course I didn’t know this until I found a copy of the first Traffic album, and heard said song, at which point I was all “What ho?” and “Hey, wait a minute…”.
No matter really, since the compleat works of the Dukes (actually XTC) is as fine a bit of tribute to the first psychedelic era as has ever been recorded.
However, you’ve got to eat your broccoli or you don’t get your cake, so you simply must return to the source material in question.
The OG by Traffic, despite the picture above, taken from the back cover of the US release of their first album, was written by none other than Dave Mason, who in an odd bit of Stalinist purge was omitted from the cover (or personnel listing) on said record, which he is, of course, all over.
Mason made significant contributions to the early Traffic catalog, and ‘Hole In My Shoe’ is one of his best, with the sitar, the mellotron and the dreamy pace, and of course when the tot arrives to relate the tale of an albatross and the whole thing erupts into a tidal wave of English toffee, LSD and embroidered waistcoats.
Very groovy indeed.
Interestingly enough there was a cover of this song by Neil of the ‘Young Ones’.
Now I’m going to bed.
See you later in the week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for an outstanding soul 45.

The McCoys – Say Those Magic Words

The McCoys with the host of Upbeat, Don Webster on the drums

The Birds, Ron Wood second from left

Listen – The McCoys – Say Those Magic Words – MP3

Greetings all.

I come to you at the end of the week bearing an example of that rarest of animals, the American freakbeat 45.
Though the genre itself is somewhat amorphous, with all that “I know it when I hear it” collector-speak, the vast majority of records so classified have been UK and Euro.
The tune I bring you today is extra special in that regard, since it was written by some of the greatest US rock songwriters*, recorded by one of the great Nuggets-y bands of the mid-60s, and then covered by one of the greatest UK R&Beat acts.
The tale of ‘Say Those Magic Words’ is interesting. The tune as you will hear it today, reduced to the digital ones and zeros so that you might pull it through the strainer of the interwebs and into your earholes, is by the mighty McCoys. Though I doubt seriously anyone needs to hear them bash out ‘Hang On Sloopy’ again, I’ll step up to tell you that I ride rather strongly for their burning version of ‘Fever’, as well as today’s selection which I consider to be one of the great “lost” 45s of the 60s.
I’ve always been a collector of 60s era Bang 45s, first for the Strangeloves, and later for the McCoys and whatever obscure acts I could find on the label. The odd thing is, I first heard ‘Say Those Magic Words’ via its cover version, by the UK group Birds Birds.
If that name is not familiar, halve it so you’re only getting one (Birds that is) and you’ll have (of course) the Birds, the band that created some of the hottest examples of UK R&Beat, including their versions of ‘Leaving Here’, ‘No Good Without You Baby’, and ‘You’re On My Mind’, all of which are as unfuckwithable as those things get. The Birds, featuring Kim Gardner and a young bloke by the name of Ron Wood (who’s biggest claim to fame at the time was that his brother Art was in the Artwoods**) recorded some absolutely blazing stuff in their short tenure (and painfully brief discography). By 1966, at the urging of Robert Stigwood, following some legal hassles when the US Byrds alit in the UK, changed their name from The Birds to Birds Birds (huh???) and recorded their last 45, that being ‘Say Those Magic Words’ backed with the tune ‘Daddy Daddy’.
So, this was – via Mr Luther – the first version I heard of the song, and if memory serves I did not know initially that it had already been recorded by the McCoys.
This tale turns on the fact that when I did eventually find out, and dug up a copy of the McCoys 45 I was stunned to discover that my assumptions about “coolness” were off base, as the original version was – at least in my opinion – light years better than the UK cover.
The McCoys version is a killer on every level, earning its “US Freakbeat” label by virtue of it’s pop underpinning mixing in with the birth cries of psychedelia, all placed upon a rough, garagey foundation. It’s nothing like anything they did before, and about a hundred times better than most of what they did after. This, if you believe me, and why not, is the very zenith of the McCoys career.
Back in the olden days, when I was writing in paper fanzines (many years before the eruption of the interwebs) I wrote about this 45, basically saying that the McCoy’s version of ‘Say Those Magic Words’ is the kind of record that, if played in a frat party in 1966, would verily divide the room in two, one half unaware of the lysergic (or at least marijuanderful) filigree, and the other half suddenly set upon a path of longer hair, freakier threads and rather uncomfortable interactions with the campus underground in which they attempt to purchase mind altering substances for home use.
It’s that good.
The odd thing is, neither version of the song was a hit.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday.

Peace

Larry

*Oddly, sometimes this song is credited solely to Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and sometimes to those two giants, as well as the Strangeloves troika of Feldman, Goldstein and Gottehrer

**Gardner and Wood would both go on to join the Creation, and Wood would of course have a long and wrinkly career with the greatest of all zombie bands, Rolling Stones

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some hammond groove grease.

The Gants – My Baby Don’t Care

The Gants

Listen – The Gants – My Baby Don’t Care – MP3

Greetings all.

Welcome to another week of goodness here at Iron Leg.
The annals of the 60s garage sound operate on two basic levels.

1. Strictly local, obscure acts that pounded their gee-tars, drums and combo organs for the delectation of high school dances, basement parties and liquor store openings
2. The Nuggets-level acts that had some impact beyond their own (literal and figurative) backyards, many of whom made some mark on the national charts.

The Gants – hailing from the deep and sweaty South (Greenwood, Mississippi to be exact) – fall firmly into the second category.
They formed in 1963 as the Kingsmen (a name that had to be changed for obvious reasons) and renamed themselves the Gants (after a brand of shirt). Their first 45, ‘Road Runner’, which was backed by today’s selection ‘My Baby Don’t Care’ was released in 1965 on the local Statue label, before being picked up for national distribution by Liberty later that year. They released a bunch of 45s and a couple of albums before cashing in their chips in 1967.
Where the Gants’ version of ‘Road Runner’ is pure, unadulterated R&B fuzz, ‘My Baby Don’t Care’ is a prime example of why the Byrds were one of the most important influences on the American garage punk movement. The group lays down a harmony vocal over a cascading wave of amplified 12-string jangle, which along with the rattle of a tambourine is pretty much all you hear on the record. While the verses are all very groovy, you need to hang in for the bridge (which reminds me of ‘Can’t Explain’ by Love)  where things get a little bit darker and more interesting (chord-wise anyway).
The weird thing is that when I listen to this song I swear that I heard another version of it back in the 80s garage revival days. I haven’t been able to turn up any recorded cover versions, so I must have heard it played live by someone (it would have fit nicely in an Optic Nerve set list). If anyone out there has a clearer recollection, please drop me a line
That of course is neither here nor there, and the bottom line is that ‘My Baby Don’t Care’ is first rate folk punk.
I hope you dig it and I’ll be back later in the week with perhaps the greatest example of US-based freakbeat.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some funky Florida soul.

Lesley Gore – Off and Running / California Nights

Lesley Gore, appearing on Batman

Listen – Lesley Gore – Off and Running – MP3

Listen – Lesley Gore – California Nights – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the end of the week finds you all well.
Things are tip top hereabouts, with some new mixes in the offing, and lots of other groovy stuff in the wax silo waiting for delivery to you.
The tunes I bring you today are by an artist that – had you asked me if they would ever be featured here – I would have rolled my eyes and then kicked you out of my house for sullying the air with a suggestion so patently absurd.
But, as you well know, things change, and one cannot know all there is to know (at least not all at once), and new things find their way to my earholes all the time, some of them decidedly unexpected.
Thus, I bring you a couple of tracks by Lesley Gore.
Yes, you heard me, Lesley Gore.
It all started a short while back when I posted a couple of tracks by the Mindbenders, both from the soundtrack of the film ‘To Sir With Love’. One of those tracks, ‘Off and Running’ was – as pointed out to me by a reader – a cover of a song that had been recorded by Lesley Gore. This factoid caused me to raise my eyebrows, making just enough room inside my head to file it away where I figured I’d never use it again.
However…while I was on vacation, I made an unexpected (there it is again) stop to dig for vinyl in New Hampshire (?!?!), in a store that turned out to be a gold mine of unusual pop stuff, including (and who didn’t see this coming) the Lesley Gore album that featured her version of ‘Off and Running’.
So, I get the record home, drop the needle on the wax and discover that the LP in question ‘California Nights’ was something of a transitional record for Gore, including material recorded with her original mentor Quincy Jones, as well as with Bob Crewe, some of which included arrangements by none other than Jack Nitzsche.
Her recording of ‘Off and Running’ (one of the Quincy Jones produced tracks), while not as hot as the Mindbenders version, is very cool, with elements of Gore’s girl group vibe mixed in with a harder edged rock sound. I especially dig the footstomps/handclaps during the verses.
There were other tracks on the album along these lines, one of which will be included in an upcoming edition of the Iron Leg Digital Trip.
The second track featured today is the title track from the album. ‘California Nights’, co-written by Marvin Hamlisch was one of Gore’s last big hits (Top 40, Top 10 in many markets in early 1967). Though there’s a ‘show tune’ vibe creeping in, if you listen closely the opening chords of the arrangement are right out of the Brian Wilson code book, and the chorus of the song takes a couple of interesting turns, proof once again that in the mid-60s, everything was, through some mysterious form of musical osmosis, getting a little bit groovier.
While it’s not going to make me run out to get myself a copy of ‘Judy’s Turn To Cry’, it will cause me to open my ears a little bit wider.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back on Monday with something groovy.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some Hammond groove.

PSS I just heard that Vern Gosdin of the Gosdin Brothers just passed away. Make sure you check out the post I dod about their work with Gene Clark

Yes – Everydays

“Look!” said Jon. “An elf on a hollow log!”

Listen – Yes – Everydays – MP3

Greetings all.

I hope the beginning of a new week, in which we appear to have been gifted by some (so far) lovely and unseasonably toasty weather, finds you all well.
The tune I bring you today is something that I ought to have known, but didn’t hear for the first time until very recently.
If you follow the goings on hereabouts, you’ll already be familiar with the fact that I’m a huge fan of the Buffalo Springfield (my favorite US 60s band next to Arthur Lee and Love). My favorite tune from their unfortunately brief discography is a hazy little bit of sunshine called ‘Everydays’.
I featured the BS version in this space a little less than a year ago, at which time a regular reader hepped me to the fact that the song had been covered on one of the early Yes albums.
If you’re not already aware, Yes recorded a few interesting psych on the way to prog albums before they jettisoned Peter Banks and Tony Kaye and replaced them with Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman for that full on, sequined cape, Escape to Wizard Mountain vibe so beloved of a generation of the more pretentious members of the stoner community.
Well, after ingesting the Yes/Buffalo Springfield factoid, it was shuffled away into one of the many cobweb infested corners of my memory, where it sat idly until a month or so ago, when something (which I have since forgotten) led me to check out the Yes LP ‘Time and a Word’ (it was probably something to do with the Byrds/Beatles covers from their 1969 debut), where I discovered that they had in fact covered a Buffalo Springfield tune. I went out onto the interwebs, picked up a cheapo copy of the Yes album in question, digi-ma-tized the song, and here we all are today.
The Yes version of ‘Everydays’ manages to remove a certain amount of the SoCal sunshine from the original, replacing it (successfully, I think) with a sort of delicate, UK hippies in a cathedral nave feeling, in which the group sound is layered with a string section. Naturally, this being Yes (and more importantly 1970), things take a sudden turn into the stormy seas of unusual time signatures, and for a moment veer dangerously close to ‘Spinal Tap in Jazz Fantasy’ territory. It’s an especially jarring transition when you consider the gentle feeling at the beginning of the song. However, the bombast only lasts for about two minutes, returning once again to the land of hashish and unicorns at the 4:40 mark.
I suppose you’re affinity for the track may have a lot to do with your tolerance for Yes. I happen to like a lot of their stuff, going as far as to have listened to most of ‘Yessongs’ while reading the other night. No matter, it’s a wonderful song, and you can always edit it down if you’re feeling creative.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back later in the week with something very unusual.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some funky soul.

The Barbarians – Are You a Boy Or Are You a Girl

The Barbarians (Moulty on the left)

 

Listen – The Barbarians – Are You a Boy Or Are You a Girl – MP3

Greetings all.

Friday is here, and as always, it’s fine time to head back to the old school.
In a strange twist, I was aware of the Barbarians years before I heard their music, or had developed a taste for all things Nuggets-y.
Back in my teen years, the local record store was a Music Den at the Steinbachs Mall. If you wanted something to listen to, it was either that, or a trip to the flea market on the weekend.
I was conflicted in my feeling about this store for two basic reasons.
First, about half their stock consisted of cut outs and remainders, so there was always something interesting and cheap to be had when the coffers were almost empty.
Second, the clerks (20 something deadbeats to the last) always gave me the stink-eye when I was browsing, terrified that I was filling the pockets of my overcoat with purloined merchandise.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who digs for records that when I go into stores like that – to this very day in fact – I rarely have something specific in mind, other than the extremely general idea of “something/anything” music. I do the same thing in book stores, i.e. wandering the aisles waiting for something interesting to catch my eye.
Unfortunately, when you’re a long-haired teenager walking around in an Aqualung-ish overcoat (inherited from my grandfather), covered in rock badges and a fake sheriff’s star (I was nothing if not a fashion plate), wandering aimlessly in a record store sets off all kinds of alarms in regard to potential thievery (something I assure you I never engaged in, unlike some people who shall remain nameless…ahem..).
Anyway, I only drag you down this back alley of Memory Lane because one of the prominent features of the cut out bun at Music Den in those days (say 1978/79-ish) was a compilation (German I think…) of a band called the Barbarians, one member of which sported a hook-like appendage where his hand ought to have been. I probably browsed past this particular record a hundred times, completely unaware of the gold hidden in its grooves.
This was after all the 70s, an era in which record companies were so deep into cocaine consciousness that they would literally release ANYTHING (like countless solo albums by the various and sundry keyboard players from Yes and the Moody Blues), with an elaborate gatefold/die cut package.
I can’t say for sure, but it’s likely that I saw that one-handed gent on the album cover and assumed that it was just another insane late-70s gimmick.
Little did I know.
It was probably another five or six years before I realized who the Barbarians were, and then regretted not having purchased that record while Music Den was still open (instead of Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits and at least two copies of the ‘All This and WW2’ soundtrack boxed set).
The Barbarians rolled out of Cape Cod in Massaschusetts in 1964 with their be-hooked drummer (?!?) Moulty, armed (no pun intended)  with a taste for the grittier side of the British Invasion.
The story goes that Moulty (Victor Moulton) had become separated from part of his arm during a fireworks accident (pay attention kids!!). Fortunately his handicap did not prevent him from learning how to abuse a drum set, and the Barbarians crafted a couple of very tasty proto-garage 45s like ‘Hey Little Bird’ (which they performed at the T.A.M.I. Show) and today’s selection, the heartwarming tale of anti-rocker prejudice, ‘Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl’.
The tune is something of a missing link in the cranky old bluesman > UK R&Beat > US Garage Punk continuum, with the Barbarians borrowing liberally from their T.A.M.I. show castmates the Rolling Stones (referencing ‘Off the Hook’ rather liberally). The whole fuzztone, screamo, sexual confusion of prime 1966 garage punk has yet to fully form, with Moulty and his pals keeping one foot securely on Eel Pie Island and the other on the curb on Snot Street (never committing completely to either side).
When you come down to brass tacks the sound of this record isn’t even its most important aspect, that being the lyrics in which the preternaturally hairy Barbarians (their locks approaching Dave Davies/Pretty Things levels of 1965 social unsuitability) are taunted by an unnamed source in what is clearly preamble to a fist fight, during which they are compared to monkeys and Beatles. Of course the whole thing comes off as a primitive treatise on homophobia, especially when the taunters take extreme notice of the Barbs “skin tight paaaaaaaannnnnntttttts”, which is, I mean REALLY.
It all makes me wonder if the Shades of Knight’s snotty, extremely defensive garage punk classic ‘Fluctuation’ wasn’t an “answer record” of some kind, picking up the gauntlet and descending into a frenzy of hyper-masculine chest thumping.
No matter. The history of garage punk – American and otherwise – is riddled with juxtapositions of wailing music, over which packs of just post-teenaged goons roll their eyes and pronounce themselves the baddest, razor toting, hard loving thing since Muddy Waters combed a handful of Dixie Peach into his mighty conk. In the end that’s kind of what makes garage punk so groovy, with countless aficionados (and imitators) of the sound missing out on the joke by a country mile. No matter how ridiculous the “artists” were, if they didn’t mean it, the music wouldn’t be half as interesting, with the whole genre (at least in its original form) being some kind of postmodern excercise, i.e. artifice and posing taken to the extreme.
The best garage punk records are the musical equivalent of great junk food. Not really good for you in any meaningful way, but delicious and packing a sugar rush will leave you with both a splitting headache and a lust for more of the same.
In that spirit, think of the Barbarians as a kind of UR, proto-Yodel (or Ring Ding, or Ho Ho or whatever…).
That said. Have a fuzzed out boner of a weekend, and I’ll be back on Monday to field the hate mail and whip something on you from out of left field.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some solid New Orleans soul.

Graham Bond – Love Is the Law b/w The Naz

Bond. Graham Bond

Listen – Graham Bond- Love Is the Law – MP3

Listen – Graham Bond- The Naz – MP3

Greetings all.

I’m back from the road with a bellyful of lobster and a stack of new (old) vinyl.
The digging aspect of our journey was especially fruitful for the coffers of Iron Leg, with the acquisition of a fair amount of pop, rock and psych stuff, including a couple of want list items that will surely be featured in this space as soon as I get it all digi-ma-tized.
The tune I bring you today is something I picked up years ago because of the label.
Pulsar records was a California based imprint that was a home away from home for a number of New Orleans expatriates like Mac Rebennack (aka Dr John) and Jesse Hill.
When I saw a Graham Bond* 45 on Pulsar, my first instinct was that it might contain within its grooves a helping of Hammond Heat. Bond was one of the first wave of UK R&Beat organ masters with the Graham Bond Organisation (which included a young pair by the names of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker) recorded some true heat, including one of my all time faves, the scorching ‘Harmonica’.
Bond’s early work is truly deserving of a wider audience, lacking in his own time likely due to his own anti-rockstar persona – Bond was a portly Oliver Hardy lookalike – and today to a lack of proper representation on the reissue market.
After tearing it up with R&B and the blues, Bond immersed himself in the occult (a devotee of Aleister Crowley) and moved to the US, where he met (and later married) singer Diane Stewart (also an occultist and the composer of today’s selection) and recorded two LPs for Pulsar.
The tune I bring you today , ‘Love Is the Law’ takes its title from one of the main precepts of Crowley’s cosmology, which he called Thelema.
The tune itself is a vaguely psych-y number with a typically wailing vocal by Bond. The music itself is atypical for those familiar with Bond’s earlier work. Though Bond does work the Hammond here, the most prominent sound is that of the Mellotron (which I’ve seen a reference which claims Bond was the first rock musician to use one), and the overall vibe is a lot more hippy and trippy. I’ve read that Bond played all of the instruments on this album, aside from the drums which were played by session master Hal Blaine.
The flip side of the single, and instrumental entitled ‘The Naz’ (one would assume that Crowley was borrowing from the mighty Lord Buckley) is a touch jazzier, with Bond doubling on organ and saxophone**.
After his time in the US Bond’s drug and psychological problems worsened. His life ended in 1974, an apparent suicide under the wheels of a train.
I hope you dig the tune(s) and I’ll be back later in the week with some proto-garage.

Peace

Larry

*I don’t know why, but the Pulsar 45s have his name spelled with an “e” at the end…

**Like the great Charles Earland, Bond was initially a sax man before moving on to the Hammond

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Iron Leg Digital Trip #23 – Turned On Vacation

Playlist

Baker Knight & the Knightmares – Hallucinations
Manfred Mann – 5-4-3-2-1
Rattles – Come On and Sing
Del Shannon – Little Town Flirt
Dave Berry – Don’t Gimme No Lip Child
Herman’s Hermits – No Milk Today
Turtles – Outside Chance
Jacques Dutronc – Et Moi Et Moi Et Moi
Yardbirds – Over Under Sideways Down
Peter Lee Stirling – 8:35 On the Dot
Thane Russal – Drop Everything and Run
Changin’ Tymes – How Is the Air Up There
Choir – I’m Going Home

Listen/Download 52MB Mixed MP3

Download 93MB ZIP File-

Greetings all.
The week of the vacationing is upon us (or at least ‘me’), so in the spirit of all things space-holding, like the jelly that keeps a donut from caving in, I have quite literally slapped a mix together so that we all might have something to groove to until I get back in the saddle.
This is not to say that anyone depends on what they find here to keep their ears filled, but that the presentation of an additional option to do so, especially with groovy sounds, is why the Iron Leg exists, so mix I shall.
That said, I must begin with a caveat, that being that there are a couple or three tunes herein which I do not posess on original vinyl sources, but since they make my ears tingle, and ought to do the same for you all, I figured it couldn’t hurt (and it won’t). It helps that the whole stew is glued together with a series of vintage commercials.
The first of those (and the first song in the mix) is the brain bendingly cool ‘Hallucinations’ by Baker Knight and the Knightmares. Aside from the obvious sonic power of the song, it’s cool when you find out that Baker Knight had a long and varied career, making rockabilly, pop (including writing hits for Dean Martin) and this awesome slice of Californ-a-delica.
Next up is the song that is not only one of the finest things the Manfreds ever laid down, but waqs also for a time the theme song to ‘Ready Steady Go’. I remember quite well how my mind was blown when I first realized how much R&Beat was there underneath stuff like ‘The Mighty Quinn’ and ‘Pretty Flamingo’. Not to mention what an amazing singer Paul Jones was…
The version of Kraut-punkers The Rattles ‘Come On and Sing’ that I include here is from a soundtrack to a German TV movie. It sounds like a weird mix, but I’ll have to depend on those more versed in Rattle-iana to fall by with the facts on this one.
Things take a brief detour into my all-time favorite slice of proto Merseybeat, Del Shannon’s ‘Little Town Flirt’, before running head on into the nasty flip side to ‘The Crying Game’, Dave Berry’s ‘Don’t Gimme No Lip Child’, long rumored to feature a certain Mr. Page on lead guitar.
Say what you want about Peter Noone’s leaping, buck-toothed, innocent appeal to a whole generation of twelve year old girls, but Herman’s Hermits weren’t all ‘Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’. They – like many of their peers – had access to the golden pen of Graham Gouldman, and used this access to create true brilliance like ‘No Milk Today’, still one of my favorite UK 60s tunes.
Over here in the US, probably down the street from Baker Knight, were the Turtles, who started out working the Bob Dylan cover-go-round and morphed into one of the truly great pop bands of their era. Back in the day when I hammered the drums with the Phantom Five we often whipped out ‘Outside Chance’ as a combination Chesterfield Kings/Turtles tribute.
I felt the mix wasn’t redolent enough of garlic butter, so I brought back the previously posted, and always brutal, Franco-garage of Jacques Dutronc’s ‘Et Moi Et Moi Et Moi’. I think you’ll agree that it is a song worth hearing again.
Despite the fact that it is currently being used to sell a Seth Rogen movie, the Yardbirds ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ will always be one of the greatest, fuzzed out bits of freaky, beaty, proto-psychy, wanna be a sitar-y goodness to ever come down the pike. That opening guitar riff still makes my hair stand on end, nearly forty years since I first heard it.
I know almost nothing about Peter Lee Stirling, other than that he seems to have released a number of poppy 45s before ending up fronting Alan Hawkshaw’s supergroup Rumplestiltskin. ‘8:35 On the Dot’ is a fine bit of late 60s UK pop.
Coming from th every same comp is a song that I’ve been chasing on vinyl for years (unsuccessfully), ‘Drop Everything and Run’ by Thane Russal and Three. Russal recorded a bunch of much harder-edged Mod stuff before this, but there’s a certain pop naivete in the grooves of this number that I find appealing in an underappreciated mid-period Rolling Stones-y way.
I’ve already gone into depth describing the blood-curdling, 1965-ish, awesome-osity of the Changing Tymes’ ‘How Is the Air Up There’, which is record of unique power and fuzz.
The last cut here is one that has appeared in this space before, in a post dedicated to spanking the Choir for the unabashed thievery herein (with apologies to the Nashville Teens). That said, ‘I’m Going Home’, yet another record I first heard via the Chesterfield Kings (aka Rochester’s Newest Hitmakers) is still a killer.
I hope you dig the mix, and with any luck I will return to you in a week, stuffed to the gills with lobsters and fresh New England air.

Peace
Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a jazzy/funky edition of Funky16Corners Radio.

PSS Check out Paperback Rider too…