Here is a little section of the book to whet your appetite. I hope you love it enough to want to read more.
- Pebbles Vol. 3 – The Acid Gallery
Following the success of Nuggets there were three more series of Nuggets, followed by Boulders and then Pebbles. All over the planet people were scouring through the dusty tapes of tiny record labels to turn up the most obscure tracks by the most obscure bands.
There was a treasure trove of unheard youthful genius waiting to be exposed to the light of day (or the sound of ear). More importantly, as far as the compilers were concerned, there was money to be made.
The most interesting thing to come out of this as we found ourselves buried under collections of multiple volumes like Collecting Peppermint Clouds, Electric Lemonade, Nederland Nuggets, Gravel, Coloured Lights and Sounds, Back from the Grave, Aliens Psychos and Wild Things, Acid Visions, Acid Queens, A trip to Toytown, A trip through the sugar cube, A Deadly Dose of Wylde Psych, Circus Days, Flower Power, Garage Mechanics, Girls in the Garage, Mindrocker, Oceanic Odyssey, Psychedelic States, Syde Trips, Tripzone, Turds on a Bum Ride, Ugly Things, and We can Fly, was that there was so much of it. Not only that but it was global. Seemingly all over the world in the most unlikely places, such as Peru, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, young kids had been turned on by the Beatles and Stones, donned flares and beads, grown their hair and formed Beat groups, psychedelic outfits and aped what was going on in the States and Britain. It was universal. All the kids in Russia were dying to get Western Rock Music. Turkey was aflame with psychedelia.
Forget your cold war and global politics this was the unifying force of music, fashion and rebellion. Everyone wanted to be in a band from Australia to Iceland, Brazil to New Zealand. It brought the Berlin wall down, smashed the Iron Curtain, bulldozed the Bamboo Curtain, and breached the religious divides.
All we need to solve all the world’s problems is to create another Beatles and spark off a new social rebellion on the lines of the sixties.
Anyway, enough of those flights of whimsy and back to reality, or at least the unreality of Pebbles Vol. 3 – The Acid Gallery.
If you are looking for weird and wonderful then look no further. This is what happens when groups of young kids get their hands on ridiculously strong hallucinogenic substances which they indulge to extreme, learn the rudiments of an instrument, become exposed to a lot of new sounds created by their slightly older and more competent compatriots and find themselves in a recording studio with the means to indulge and experiment. Their efforts are collected here on Pebbles 3.
There are hilarious parodies such as the one of Jefferson Airplane by Jefferson Handkerchief – ‘I’m allergic to flowers’; horror stories based on a psychedelic Kafka story with ‘The Spider and the Fly’ and just psyched out weirdness like ‘Let’s take a trip’, ‘The reality of (air) fried Borsk’ and the parody of Dylan in the wonderful ‘Like a dribbling Fram’.
If you’re looking for something outlandish and different this might well be it.
- Sam & Dave – Soul Man
Both Sam and Dave started off singing Gospel in their churches before joining Gospel Bands. They met up in a Gospel band and then, after discovering that their disparate voices could gel, headed off into secular R&B. Sam had the smooth voice and Dave the more aggressive and raw. Together it worked well when doing both call-and-response or harmonising.
They soon got themselves a reputation for a dynamic act. They had their dance moves and put everything in so that they came off-stage drenched in sweat. It got them numerous nick-names like ‘The sultans of sweat’ and ‘The dynamic duo’.
It was moving to Stax and working with the MGs with people like Steve Cropper that got them their break-through as major players on the Soul scene. They had numerous hits with songs like ‘Soul Man’, ‘Hold on I’m Coming’, ‘When something is wrong with my baby’, ‘Brown sugar, Soul Sister’ and ‘You don’t know what you mean to me’.
Seemingly there was lots of tension between the two of them which led to splits, periods of time when they did not talk and even open fisticuffs.
It seemed to me that the whole Blues Brothers act was based on Sam & Dave.
- Animals – Animals
The Animals came crashing out of Newcastle on the back of the Beat R&B boom of 1964 led by the Rolling Stones et al. They quickly established themselves as one of the rawest most authentic R&B bands in the country and stormed into the charts. Eric Burdon’s gravelly Geordie voice seemed not only well suited to the Blues but also well beyond his tender years. Amply backed by the likes of Alan Price on organ, Hilton Valentine on guitar, John Steel on drums and Chas Chandler on bass they created a unique Blues sound which can be heard on this first album. They even backed Sonny Boy Williamson on a tour of England. That album was similar to the one he did with the Yardbirds.
They specialised in cover of Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker and Chuck Berry but varied that with some Ray Charles and even Fats Domino.
This more eclectic approach led them into the rather extraordinary field of Bob Dylan. Impressed by the early Dylan albums they were taken to do a cover of a Folk song and ended up doing a traditional one by the name of ‘House of the Rising Sun’. It was so successful with the amplified guitar and Eric’s great vocal delivery that it became enormous.
Sadly, for me, that signalled the end. Instead of continuing with great R&B stuff such as the brilliant ‘Story of Bo Diddley’ which told the story of how Bo Diddley had come into their club in Newcastle with the gorgeous Duchess to listen to them play his material only to declare that they were rubbish, in favour of a more commercial sound.
This first album is them with their rawer sound and I like that best.
- Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup – That’s Alright Mama
Arthur was a street busker and blues singer from the late forties and early fifties and was supposedly quite a large man. He did not make much of a living out of it and at one time was supposedly living in a packing crate under the platform at the Chicago railway station.
He played acoustic guitar and sometimes electrified this to record with a little combo.
His big claim to fame is that he recorded a handful of songs that were destined to become massive.
Elvis Presley came from a poor share-cropping family in Tupelo Mississippi. He was brought up in a poor area with a mixed black and white community. His musical style did not come out of nowhere. He stole it from the local blues singers that he used to love listening to.
When he recorded for Sam Philips he was doing covers of old Blues and Country songs that he’d absorbed. His genius was to give them that extra zip that changed them from Blues and Country into Rockabilly.
One of the guys that he covered was Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup. Elvis’s first release was ‘That’s alright Mama’ and he also recorded ‘My baby left me’ and ‘So glad you’re mine’.
Arthur was much more than just those three numbers and other interesting tracks include ‘Mean old Frisco’, ‘Rock me mama’ and ‘Katie Mae’.
- Big Three – Cavern Stomp
At the time when the Beatles were emerging from Liverpool on to the world stage arguably the best band in the city was the powerhouse trio called The Big Three. They consisted of Johnny Hutchinson, Johnny Gustafson and Brian Griffiths. They were reputedly the loudest and most aggressive and something of their dynamic stage act can be heard on the fabulous four track EP ‘At the Cavern’. Supposedly the whole show at the Cavern was recorded but the tape was subsequently wiped! What an act of criminality!
Unfortunately they got a big brushed to one side and short-changed as the attention swept to the Beatles and they were never fed with good enough material or received a sympathetic recording production and so never really captured their live form on record.
There were a couple of good singles including a great version of Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring it on home to me’ and their signature tune ‘Cavern Stomp’ but never made that break-through.
That wonderful EP makes it all worthwhile though and that plus all the rest is on this album.
- Carole King – Tapestry
Carole King was half of the song-writing duo of Goffin and King who wrote tens of hits out of their little cubby-hole in the Brill building in New York during the late 1950s and early sixties before they got blown away by the Beatles.
She went on to great success as a singer-songwriter with the release of Tapestry in 1971.
I was working as a dishwasher in this Deli on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston at the time. The radio was always blaring out amid the steam, heat and chaos behind the scenes. It kept my family of cockroaches who lived behind the dishwasher entertained.
I remember the radio station constantly playing tracks from Tapestry. I knew the whole thing backwards by the time I left that place to hitch-hike round the States. It’s indelibly imprinted and always conjures up that sweaty heat, shouting and laughs of working in that place. I made some great friends.
The album was great and had some stand out tracks – ‘I feel the earth move’, ‘So far away’, ‘It’s too late’, ‘You’ve got a friend’, ‘Will you love me tomorrow’ and ‘You make me feel (like a natural woman)’.
Whether you agree with the choices or not you’ll love the journey.
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