the best songs ever

[gabrielle]

(07-11-2016, 11:53 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Astronomy Domine is great, and it's on my top 400 (Ummagumma version is the one I know best), but my favorite of course is the pioneering psychedelic space music gem, Interstellar Overdrive.





It takes a motif from a rock song by Love ("My Little Red Book") as a theme with which to blast off and land.

I have the album Relics, which included See Emily Play and the Overdrive and other early hits and cuts from Piper.

They used to play that number all the time at a place called the UFO club in London when they were starting out, if I remember reading correctly.  I think this is the 1966 recording of this song, and a cool video to go with it, with clips from their early performances.

Edit: Not sure about the date of this sound recording, might have been 1967, but it is not the one on the album.

[Eric the Green]

My favorite by Jefferson Airplane is She Has Funny Cars (not sure what the title means), track 1 from Surrealistic Pillow. This iconic psychedelic classic was released in 1967 but actually recorded in late 1966. Such an amazing moment, it was. So many great songs were recorded at that same time.





It was also the B side of Somebody to Love, also from the album, and also a favorite of mine.





This album was loaded with goodies.

[Eric the Green]

How Do You Feel?





D.C.B.A.-25. Too many days I've left un-stoned!





Based on Bolero by Ravel; more classical/rock confluence! Tell em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call.
https://youtu.be/hWWsfrfq69A

Vintage psychedelia, side B of White Rabbit above, and finale of Surrealistic Pillow. No-one's wise to my Plastic Fantastic Lover.
https://youtu.be/m1Hvp1Z10TI

[Eric the Green]

One of the local FM album-rock stations said that this one song was the impetus for their whole new format. It was so ubiquitous that I was able with hardly any effort to memorize the entire 20-plus minute song and story in every detail. I don't know if it really started a movement, but it represented a movement going on.








They made a movie of it, but the song remained the better experience. Enjoy your meal. Remember Alice?

[Eric the Green]

Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.





First released in 1967, and of course, recorded in late 1966. Written in 1964 by Chet Powers who became Dino Valenti of Quicksilver Messenger Service. I first heard the Young Bloods version on a special Sunday spiritual radio show. It was re-released in 1969 as a hit single.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Togeth...oods_song)

In November 1966, all the planets formed a peace symbol in the sky.

[Eric the Green]

Taramarie might like this very-nifty song by Pentangle, since I think they are wiccans or something like it. According to wikipedia: "Although nominally a 'folk' group, the members shared catholic tastes and influences. McShee had a grounding in traditional music, Cox and Thompson a love of jazz, Renbourn a growing interest in early music, and Jansch a taste for blues and contemporaries such as Bob Dylan." Folk-rock-jazz-baroque.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentangle_(band)





The group formed in 1967, and this song Light Flight was released in 1969; their biggest hit. The girl in the video is no relation to the group, though, even though her poses and attitudes are appropo.

[Eric the Green]

More classical/rock confluence, and rock organ music. Grand and glorious.





The band named after H.P.Lovecraft: above, The White Ship has sailed, and left me here again.

Below: the traditional messianic song rewritten and arranged to reflect the hippie hopes, and Justin Bieber's too! I'm just a poor, wayfaring stranger, looking for a brighter day.





They also did a version of Let's Get Together and love one another right now; all these are from their first album.
https://youtu.be/Nz7marfOwSQ

[Eric the Green]

Sliding back to 1970 to pick up this one; in the long version, it deserves a place here





Another bewitched, rock-organ classic with famous guitar riffs!

[Eric the Green]

1967-1966 is an infinite resource for pop and other music. Here's another little jewel by Tom Northcott from Canada, of a song written and recorded by British folk-rock singer Donovan Leitch in 1965. In 1966 Judy Collins took all the same surrealistic, psychedelic lyrics and gave it the shape of an infectious melody as only she can do. Northcott and Leon Russell then made it into an instrumental and vocal pop-psychedelic extravaganza in 1967, but replacing the reference to hash smokers. It was a West Coast hit, at least.





Judy Collins version:
https://youtu.be/YsH3riem5ek

"On the firefly platform on sunny Goodge Street violent hash-smoker shook a chocolates machine, involved in an eating scene. Smashing into neon lights in their stonedness, smearing their eyes on the crazy cult goddess, listenin' to sounds of Mingus mellow fantastic. "My, my", they sigh, "My, my", they sigh. La, la, la, la etc. In doll house rooms with coloured lights swingin,' strange music boxes sadly tinklin,' drinking the sun shining all around you. "My, my", they sigh, "My, my", they sigh, La, la, la, la, la, la etc. The magician, he sparkles in satin and velvet, you gaze at his splendor with eyes you've not used yet. I tell you his name is Love, Love, Love. "My, my", they sigh, "My, my", they sigh.La, la, la la, la, etc. "

Donovan's "Sunny Goodge Street," which Collins covers here, might be described as surrealist, or, too loosely, "Jazz." In fact, it's what in the 60's we simply called "head music, which coincidentally describes a "scene." Simply put, music to get stoned by. It's all about the drug scene in Britain. A single reference to Mingus does not make it anything like Jazz. The keys to "interpreting" the song lie in phrases like "eyes you've not used yet," i.e. the way you see things on drugs, [often LSD at that time] or "smearing your eyes on the crazy cult goddess."To read that, you need to have seen, as I have seen, people on LSD sitting around and worshipping neon signs advertising, in one instance I remember, exterminator services, with cartoon bugs flashing:-)

[Eric the Green]

Another folk-rock jewel from 1967, Buy for Me the Rain by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.





Uploader says: Without a doubt the best of NGDB and one of the best songs ever. Oddly not as well-known as one would expect, but it did penetrate the MOR market.

[Eric the Green]

Are you ready for some really hard core psychedelia?

In Jan.1967 I went to a youth conference at the local Unitarian Church. It was a virtual love-in. Two of the attendees stayed at our house. Down in the basement, an underground EP of psychedelic music was shared to the group; an EP that had been recorded sometime earlier in 1966, consisting of 3 tracks by Country Joe and the Fish from Berkeley. Needless to say, I was blown away. Here's one of them. In the 1980s I got to know Country Joe, and brought him down for performances at the New Age Fair I produced. Quite a priviledge!

When the EP's songs came out commercially as part of their first LP in 1967, along with other new tracks, the words "L.S.D." at the end of this song had been replaced by the title "Bass Strings." Later Joe gave me a CD with the original ending (actually I'm not sure which words were the original).

[Eric the Green]

One of the most famous anti-war songs of the sixties was Country Joe's, released on The Fish's 2nd album.
I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die, aka The Fish Cheer





Live at an anti-war rally and a solo performance, in a video produced by Joe:
https://youtu.be/YHMQKmlpKCM

Sometimes he would replace the "Fish" cheer with a "Fuck" cheer. The word Vietnam can be replaced by whatever war Uncle Sam gets involved in next. As in "next stop, Afghanistan"

I always thought this song was a later version of Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade (concerning the Crimean War) which included the famous lines:
"Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die"
also recited as "Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Charge...ade_(poem)

[Eric the Green]

From Country Joe & the Fish, two outstanding tracks from their 1967 first album "Electric Music for the Mind and Body" which were not on the original underground EP from 1966. More great examples of the psychedelic organ and guitar.

The Masked Marauder




Poetry of Mother Nature, Porpoise Mouth

[Eric the Green]

More from the Fish EP when we get to 1966.

The Byrds were a seminal folk-country-rock-psychedelic band from the sixties. Wasn't born to Follow (late 1967-early 1968 from Notorious Byrd Brothers) features wonderful psychedelic phasing and guitar sounds, and its appeal to freedom and independence made it a natural for the film Easy Rider in 1969, along with Born to Be Wild and The Pusher among others. Lyrics by Gerry Goffin and music by Carole King.

[Eric the Green]

The Byrds recorded this great Bob Dylan song and made it the centerpiece/virtual title track of Younger Than Yesterday




A Byrds original: Have You Seen Her Face, from this same album
https://youtu.be/25YxNSkLDB8

Neither of these made my top 400; apparent oversights. They weren't hits in our neighborhood, and I didn't buy this album, so I guess I just forgot them.

[Eric the Green]

My favorite by folk singer icon Joan Baez is from 1967, from her album Joan. She sang a fantasy poem by Edgar Allen Poe, great music by Don Dilworth.





Baez co-wrote this anti-Vietnam War song from the album:
https://youtu.be/m20Glis_wWE

The album was arranged and conducted by P.D.Q. Bach aka Peter Schickele

[Eric the Green]

The Supremes went on singing Holland, Dozier and Holland songs about lost love, but I think they and the Motown sound reached a romantic height and subtlety in this song that fit in with the psychedelic year.





Then they at least used a hippie title for their next song, which featured quite a trippy dixieland arrangement even though done with conventional instruments, and another catchy tune.

[Eric the Green]

The first Rolling Stones song I really liked, I think it was banned from many radio stations because of its sexual overtones. But why this one and not the countless others? Oh well. Very uplifting song with great arrangement and performance, and with an organ part too. Let's Spend the Night Together was the B side of their big 1967 hit Ruby Tuesday.





I didn't like Ruby Tuesday until Melanie made this wonderful interpretation in 1970:





And Melanie did say that her favorite song was Witchi Tai To

[Eric the Green]

My favorite from the Rolling Stones' 1967 "psychedelic" album "Their Satanic Majesty's Request" (their answer to The Beatles' "Sargent Pepper")





Another one I liked was "Dandelion"
https://youtu.be/LIwJyv2TtvI

There's a rumor that Sgt. Pepper referred to Jim Pepper of Witchi Tai To fame. I actually liked this Stones album better than Sgt. Pepper. Here's another song from "Majesty's Request," in which the Stones match some of Pink Floyd's excursions. A pioneering space music track, which may have influenced Gypsy by The Moody Blues.
https://youtu.be/wcy8o0gj-A0

[Eric the Green]

This Buffalo Springfield song was made a hit by the Mojo Men early in 1967, and I love it for it's wonderful instrumentation. I got to meet one of the members of the band later, the female drummer.