Ahhhh, 1967, the summer of love. The birth of psychedelica. Maybe the greatest year for rock-n-roll music. If you were lucky enough to have a good record store near you, the music came at you so fast and furious you could barely absorb it all. We all know the classics: Sgt Pepper’s, Surrealistic Pillow, first albums by the Doors, Dead and Hendrix. Albums that have become icons of the age, music that has transformed cultures, inspired and united individuals and transcended time. Listening to them brings you back to your youth when everything seemed possible and the world was changing all around you at light speed. Most of us know this music by heart and so much has been written about it that nothing needs to be added.

But what about some of the albums from that summer that are deserving of a listen but somehow fell thru the cracks? When you have so much masterful music vying for the space in your brain how do you absorb it all? What albums just didn’t get the right amount of radio airplay, label support or concert exposure to achieve the iconic status that they needed? This month I thought we might take a quick peek at some music by artists that for whatever reason just didn’t quite click at the time but merit another look.

So you think that the Door’s could party do ya? Their reputation for booze, drugs and wretched excess is well documented, but how about some guys who were so out of control that the same record label had to send them out of town to keep them from being arrested? That’s what happened to ”Spider” John Koerner and Willie Murphy as they worked on their LP, ”Running, Jumping, Standing Still”.

Jac Holzman owned a small vacation house called the Paxton Lodge on the Feather River in Keddie, CA that had a recording studio built into it. He also had an arrangement with the local sheriffs’ office to give the house and its guests a wide berth. After Koerner and Murphy had become such madmen that he begin to actually fear for their lives and worry that the album would never be completed, they were sent up to Paxton to finish the job. What emerged from those sessions was one of the wildest, most off kilter albums imaginable.

Spider John Koerner had made his name in the early ’60s with the Minneapolis trio Koerner, Ray, & Glover by picking acoustic urban blues. This record is nothing like that. It’s a swirling mix of psych-folk, blues and free jazz all fueled by Willie Murphy’s repetitive driving ragtime style piano. Elektra thought the album so weird that they initially refused to release it. So, Koerner and Murphy ordered up some test pressings and promo copies and begin spreading them around to their friends. By the late summer/early fall of 67, you couldn’t attend a party where it wasn’t being played. Musicians struggled to get their heads around it, but knew it was something important. One night their Elektra stablemate Jim Morrison told me that he was playing it constantly and that it reminded him of “hillbillies on acid”, a description that sent us both into fits of laughter.

Finally, Elektra relented and released the album in December just before the start of the Christmas selling session (a favorite time for labels to dump stuff that they didn’t know what to do with) and of course it bombed, selling only a few hundred copies. Slowly, word of mouth and some favorable reviews begin to revive interest in it and today it is regarded as one of the cornerstones of the neo-folk, Americana roots school of music. At the time, the music critic at the L.A. Herald-Examiner got it right and gave it this very positive review:

“Running Jumping Standing Still” is one of the most unique and under-rated albums of the folk boom, perhaps the only psychedelic ragtime blues album ever made. It brims over with boisterous energy and stellar playing, driven by John Koerner’s distinctive guitar work and Willie Murphy’s dynamic piano.”

Over time, well regarded artists (Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, etc.) have begun to perform cover versions of some of the songs on the album, always a sign of influence and respect. If you find the idea of Captain Beefheart playing in a jug band intriguing then this might be an album you should check out. Highly recommended.

Another album that fell thru the cracks for entirely different reasons was “Pandemonium Shadow Show” by the late Harry Nilsson. Harry had just signed a three record deal with RCA for the then lofty sum of $50,000 and this album was his first release for them. RCA ignored it so badly that Harry, in disgust, began promoting it himself.

Stealing a stack of black LP boxes, the kind used for multiple record classical sets, Harry had a bunch of hand-made balloons, photos, press releases and buttons made- all proclaiming “NILSSON: the true one”- printed up and began driving around L.A. with them in the trunk of his car passing them out to whoever would listen. He had an enormous crush on my aunt at the time and would frequently stop by the house and quite literally sing for his supper, so I got to know him pretty well.

One day on the lot at Warner Brothers, I saw Harry and Randy Newman talking and he called me over, popped the trunk, and thrust one of these sets into my hands. When I got home and played it my jaw hit thefloor. Of all of the albums that tried to be a response to the Beach Boy’s “Pet Sounds” or the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s”, the “Pandemonium Shadow Show” LP is in a class of its own. Taking Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” technique but using voices instead of instruments, Harry used his remarkable three octave tenor voice and amazing studio skills to create a “symphony of voices” that served to highlight his unmatched songwriting ability. 

While everyone one else was busy writing songs of political protest, Harry had turned inward, revealing all of his hidden hurt, angst and neurosis. Delicate, wistful, childlike but not childish lyrics fill this album with some of the sweetest pop songs ever written. Unlike so much else from the period, 44 years later this stuff all holds up remarkably well. Nilsson’s debut wasn’t the commercial success RCA had hoped for and their lack of promotion really discouraged Harry, but it blew away everyone who came in contact with it. 

The Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor, purchased a case of the LPs which he sent back to England and began passing them out to all of his friends saying he thought Harry was the greatest songwriter of all time. After receiving his, John Lennon famously listened to it non-stop for 36 hours straight.

The Beatles invited Nilsson to join them in the studio during the recording of The White Album and are rumored to have even considered adding him as a 5th member of the group, but he politely declined. If you want to hear where the Beatles got a lot of their schtick from look no further. The Nilsson legend begins here.

Finally a purely guilty pleasure. The Bee Gees “First” album. If you only know this band from their demented disco warbling period then boy are you in for a pleasant surprise. This is a psychedelic rock classic and a masterpiece of production and arranging – easily one of the most melodic albums of original material from the period, from the youngest band to ever record an out and out classic album (Barry was 19 and Robin and Maurice only 17). Incredibly, given their young ages and in spite of the title, this was actually their third album but was the first to be released in the US in July of 1967. The Bee Gees were a real rock band back then, not the high pitched castrati that we all know and loath and that can do nasty things to your hearing. I know it sounds unbelievable but their only peers at this point were the Beatles. 

On this LP the sound quality and production are first rate and can challenge anything that George Martin was doing, the songwriting is superb and the Klaus Voormann cover art is suitably trippy. You must listen to it and judge this LP for yourself. They are the poster children for how a band can be misjudged according to its image, looking like a boy band but performing like seasoned veterans. Mix together the Beatles, some baroque flourishes, a little LSD along with strong songwriting and you get a summer of love classic.

Give one or two of these a quick spin and tell me what you think. Next month we are going to explore a band famous for producing legendary guitar players (and no, it is not the Yardbirds) Till then.

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