Sixties Pop: Gary Lewis & The Playboys - Hits Again! 1966 (Liberty, Vinyl, Stereo and/or Mono)

It would be difficult to find a rock & roll star -- and that was what he was for two years in the mid-'60s -- less likely than Gary Lewis, or a less probable chart-topping act than Gary Lewis & the Playboys. Lewis himself was possessed of a limited singing range and didn't have what could be considered good looks, yet with a lot of help he managed to make some exceptionally good (and good-selling) records out of Los Angeles, in the midst of the British Invasion, and teenagers loved him. He was the son of actor/comedian/director/producer Jerry Lewis, who was then one of the most popular entertainers in the country. Gary Lewis was born in 1946, before his father's ascent to the top of the entertainment world, but by the time he reached his teens -- and had begun playing drums and leading a combo of his own, which included Dave Walker on rhythm guitar and Dave Costell on lead, Al Ramsey on bass, and John West on the cordovox (a kind of electric accordion) -- Jerry Lewis was a major star and one of the hottest box office and television attractions in the world.

The younger Lewis and his band got a gig during the summer of 1964 playing at Disneyland, and that engagement, coupled with some urging by the elder Lewis, helped get the band a hearing from Snuff Garrett, a top producer based at Liberty Records. Garrett saw some possibilities for the group and encouraged them to work in the studio at developing a sound. Gary Lewis even got some pointers in his approach to his instrument by no less a figure than Buddy Rich. It finally happened for them late in 1964 with a song called "This Diamond Ring," co-authored (with the Drifters in mind) by a young Al Kooper. The resulting record, on which Lewis sang (with lots of doubling of his voice) and he and the Playboys played on some of the basic tracks, but which mostly featured Hal Blaine on timpani and arranger Leon Russell dubbing much of what was left, was a career-making smash.

That song hit number one on the charts in early 1965, right in the middle of the British invasion, and introduced Lewis to the public. It also gave him a singing persona that was especially appealing to preteens and younger teenagers, as a kind of likable nerd, a sort of '60s pop culture Ur-nebbish, not too far from the pose adopted by Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits on songs like "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter." Every boy under age 16 whose voice ever tightened up or even squeaked slightly while pondering asking out a girl they liked -- or who simply feared being unlucky in love -- could identify with the persona that Lewis presented, while girls adored him as someone "safe." In a sense, Lewis was a successor to such teen pop idols as Fabian and Frankie Avalon, with a touch of Beaver Cleaver-ish or Wally Cleaver-ish nerdiness that fit the early to mid-'60s.

It was all a long way from what the Rolling Stones or even the Beatles (apart from Ringo) were doing at the time, but it found an audience that also included parents and other post-teen listeners, who appreciated the smoothness and attractiveness of Garrett and Russell's work as producer and arranger, respectively. Some of the music was a little sappy -- "Save Your Heart for Me" wasn't even soft rock, but what one might call "wimp rock" -- but a lot of it was beautiful AM pop. (excerpts by allmusic.com written by Bruce Eder)

 In December '66 Lewis joined the armed forces. His successful career was over although he made a very good album in '67 called ''Listen'' (in my opinion his best) that got critical acclaim but don't sold well.
Lewis played later the oldies circuit with different musicians who's called the Playboys back then.

Here is the collection called ''Hits Again'' released in 1966. Lot of his successful singles and nice cover songs make this collection really worth a listen. It's here in stereo and/or mono recordings.(Frank)

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Sixties Britpop/Rock ; The Kinks - The Singles Collection (2004 Sanctuary)

To say something about the Kinks is quite unnecessary as the band is now one of the most famous British bands of all time. The band started in 1964 with an absolute world hit: You Really Got Me. In the USA the band had two more Billboard hits and actually nothing stood in the way of the band conquering the USA.

While almost every second-rate British band was successful in the USA, the band slowly lost its fame and also in England the band had great difficulties. Management problems, but also the eternal quarrels between Ray and Dave Davies brought the band into big difficulties. It was only with Waterloo Sunset that the band was able to resume their old successes. The Singles Collection is a good introduction for everyone who doesn't know the band. Enjoy. (Frank)

p.s.: More by the Kinks will follow the next days.

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Psychedelic 60s Pop/Rock Elizabeth - Elizabeth 1968

Elizabeth was made up of Steve Weingart (lead guitar, harp, organ, vocals), Bob Patterson (guitar, vocals), Jim Dahme (guitar, flute, vocals), Steve Bruno (organ, bass), and Hank Ransome (drums). The band originally came from Philadelphia but moved to New York in 1968, where they recorded and released their self-titled album on Vanguard Records in 1969. The album was released with a wonderful psychedelic-styled collage sleeve that gave the record buyer an impression that the band was a baroque-styled act, yet in actuality it is fairly standard late-'60s rock. The highlights of the album are the fuzz guitar-laden track "You Should Be More Careful," the haunting soft psych of the song "Alarm Rings Five," and the final and best track on the album, "When All Else Fails." The album is rounded out by a few less than interesting good-time-styled rock tracks and has a slight jazz feel in places. This legitimate reissue, on the Akarma/Vanguard label from Italy, has been remastered from original tapes and comes housed in a magnificent mini album-styled sleeve that reproduces the original records foldout cover graphics.(allmusic.com)



To me it's a very good album with nearly the complete album full of good tracks.

Frank
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Early pop sounds of the Tages! Tages - Tages 1964 - 1968 (1992 EMI)

Definite double album anthology, including all their hit singles and many other tracks. "Especially "The One for You","Crazy Bout My Baby","The Man You'll Be Looking For" and "Miss McBaren" are accomplished mod rockers who can compete with some of the best materials of their kind produced in the mid-1960s in the UK.(R.Unterberger)

Tages was a Swedish rock and roll/psychedelic/folk band formed in the early sixties near Gothenburg.
The band released a number of singles and LPs in their native Sweden to considerable success, making the Swedish Top Ten more than a dozen times. Though remembered as one of the finest non-English speaking bands of the 1960s, they failed to ever really break into the US or UK markets. Tages also produced one of the world's first psychedelic albums, named "Extra Extra" in 1966. Their next goal was to create a style of pop music that was totally Swedish.

To accomplish this they learned traditional Swedish folk music, and based their pop compositions on that. After this, they produced their fifth and last album, "Studio", in Abbey Road Studio 1967. This album is sometimes referred to as "The Sgt Pepper Of Sweden", not because it sounds like The Beatles but because it is a very original musical experiment. In 1968 the band released the single "Fantasy Island", which was followed up by their last single, "Halcyon Days". Several band members went on to form Blond, a short-lived pop band that released one LP in US before disbanding in 1970.(wiki)

If you are a lover of 60s pop music you will like this. 32 songs from '64 to '68 with all the popular genres of the sixties pop music. 

Frank

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Bon Scott - The Early Years 1967-1972 (1988 See For Miles)

Talking about Bon Scott doesn't necessarily mean talking about AC/DC. There was a time before AC/DC, which is shown here in 22 songs and an interview. And there's a lot to discover here, if you just musically connect Bon Scott with the blues rockers from Australia.
There are a lot of great songs from 1967-1970 with The Valentines and from 1970-1972 with the band Fraternity.

The CD starts directly with the Spector classic'' To Know You Is To Love You'' and continues with really fine pop songs. I don't know how successful The Valentines were in Oceania but they were definitely a great pop band.
In the works with Fraternity you can already hear the typical Bon Scott style of the later years clearly. With Fraternity Scott has already indicated the direction in which he would later be very successful (until his tragic death) with Blues Boogie Rock.
This is an absolutely great compilation about the Scott years before AC/DC.

Frank

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Psychedelic Pop of the sixties! The 31st Of February - The 31st Of February 1968 (HSM 2009)

 While there's nothing particularly objectionable about the 31st of February's sole album, there's nothing exciting or memorable about it either. It's average late-'60s pop-psychedelic/folk-rock, dominated by the songs of either Scott Boyer or David Brown, though they also cover Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Cod'ine," Jackie DeShannon's obscure "The Greener Isle," and the Dan Penn-Spooner Oldham-Chips Momancollaboration "Sandcastles." Light, reflective folk-rock is the primary color, slightly more downbeat than upbeat (heard to its best effect on "Porcelain Mirrors" and the lugubrious "Cries of Treason"), with a faint Baroque tinge to some of the arrangements and the occasional orchestration. There's a bit of California psychedelic freakout as well on "A Nickel's Worth of Benny's Help," though again this doesn't get too far out or interesting.(Richie Unterberger)

Very nice popsike music of the sixties and my opinion is completely different as what Mr Unterberger said about the album. But that is no news :-)

Frank

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Pop Rock/Psychedelic Pop/Mod Pop; Powder - Ka-Pow! An Explosive Collection 1967-68 (2014 Big Beat)

Bay area mod rockers Powder were incredibly short-lived, quickly running through a bizarre time line that included a brief stint as backing band for Sonny & Cher, several name changes, and the recording of a few undeniably great tunes that got lost in the shuffle of the endless stream of Anglo-pop bands sprouting up in the wake of the British Invasion.

Inspired to the point of obsession by the Who circa Sell Out, the Zombies, and the janglier side of psychedelia, the band was formed by brothers Richard and Thomas Martin (known under the stage names Richard & Thomas Frost), going through various Beatles-indebted incarnations before arriving at the lineup that would be Powder in 1967.

One of those acts, Ray Columbus & the Art Collection had a minor garage psych hit with the loopy 13th Floor Elevators-ish "Kick Me (I Think I'm Dreaming)," which was buried in obscurity for a future Nuggets crowd to unearth decades later. Once Columbus left the band, they re-emerged as a more clean-cut entity simply known as the Art Collection, offering up bubblegum sides like "I'm a Boy & You're a Girl" and an especially sunny reading of the Who's "So Sad About Us."

Somewhere in the middle of all this came the next phase of the band, with Powder leaning heavily on the pop sweetness of the sound they spun as the Art Collection, but weaving in darker themes on tunes like "Do I Love You" and the Love-meets-the Turtles weirdness of "What the People Said." All of these various phases are chronicled in Ka-Pow! An Explosive Collection 1967-1968, with 26 tracks in total digging into the archive for an impressive cross-section of the band's largely unreleased recorded material.

The majority of the disc focuses on a shelved album from Powder recorded just before they imploded, turning in a fair amount of Who knockoffs like "Rodeo," but also some seemingly accidentally tender tunes like "Flowers" or the jangly and juvenile "Ruby Red Lips." These naive and tuneful Powder songs and the unabashedly innocent tunes recorded under the Art Collection moniker are a fantastic complement to the more heavy-handed freakbeat tracks that fill much of the album, though both offer a glimpse of the Martin brother's enthusiastic appropriation of the new sounds that were exploding from all sides in the late '60s. (Fred Thomas, allmusic.com)

This is a great collection of an american band who sounded very very british. All of their incarnations had very tuneful songs and i think if they were a british band they would have had more success. Enjoy. (Frank)

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Folk Rock/Pop Rock; Pete Dello & Friends 1971 (1989 See For Miles)

The '60s spawned so many psychedelic bands that the reissue has become its own genre. Audiophiles flock to conventions worldwide to pay exorbitant amounts of money for obscurities that your average music fan would recoil at. This passion has unearthed horrible artifacts, intriguing oddities, and the occasional gem. After tasting success in 1968 with the single "I Can't Let Maggie Go," Honeybus founder Pete Dello left the band after only one album to pursue a more settled lifestyle. His distaste for the rigors of touring left him with a surplus of un-recorded material that would eventually steer him back into the studio to record his first and only solo record. Into Your Ears features 14 songs, each under three-and-a-half minutes long, that prosper through a winning combination of goofy psychedelia and Beatlesque beauty. The sweet melodies and gentle harmonies of "It's What You've Got" and "Taking The Heart Out Of Love" are timeless, devoid of irony, and begging for placement in a Wes Anderson film. "Do I Still Figure In Your Life," which has since been covered by the likes of Joe Cocker, conveys the same irresistible form of melancholy that permeates a great Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson recording, and more than makes up for the wince-inducing "Uptight Basil" and "Harry The Earwig (the latter inspired the horrific Roger Dean cover art). Dello's voice is sweet and clear, with only a tinge of the British folk throatiness that ruled the era. The songs, while never complex, benefit from strategically placed string arrangements that rarely disappoint, and crisp production as exemplified on the set closer "Arise Sir Henry." Also included are the Magic Valley versions of "Taking The Heart Out Of Love" and "Uptight Basil," which differ only in sound quality (poorer) from the album renditions, and provide collector's with the definitive edition of this highly sought after (almost) masterpiece. (J.C.Monger, allmusic.com)

Masterpiece is certainly the right word for this album where every song is a little diamond. The whole album have not one moment of boredom, quite the contrary every song is a new surprise and it shows what a great musician and artist Pete Dello was. Highly recommended. Enjoy. (Frank)

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Beat/Folk Rock/Psychedelic/Garage Rock; 126 - Graveyard Paradise - The Complete 1 2 6 & Taboo Recordings 1966-68 (2008 UT Records)

Combining “verbal paintings” of Dylan-ish surrealism with the Northerners’ “extreme sense of humor”, unlike most of their continental contemporaries, these Norwegian beatsters opted not to record any covers, providing a vast variety of originals during their short time span.

Recorded throughout ’67, and released early ’68, their sole LP Curtains Falling ranges from orchestrated Pacemakers-like ballads (That’s Why I’m Here, I Don’t Want Love and the title song), at one point taken to the happy-go-Murray-est level with Today, along with the upbeat Tony-Hazzard-through-Manfreds hit potential of Mirror For Sale, to more serious folk-rocking entries, such as the Gene Clark reminiscent mood of MES (Mailbox Execution System).

Just as “serious” are the full-on Dylan impersonations heard in their national breakthrough single Graveyard Paradise, as well as in Wake Up, Johnny and We’re Too Young, while the two of my own faves are Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed?, a funky r’n’b number, halfway between the early ‘Stones and Them, and Sing And Smile, with equal input from the ‘Stones once again, along with some Hollies-like harmonies.

Of the singles-only sides (all included), the ’66 debut couples Veto and it’s punkier approach to the forthcoming folky protesting, with the superb Mersey Beatlism of Little You, which along with the third single’s flip I’m Jokin’ wouldn’t really sound out of place on With The Beatles, while I’m Poisoned from their post-album (and last) 7”, takes us back even farther, as far as their Cavern days.(pop diggers.com)

The band was strong influenced by the Beatles and the british invasion but had a wide range in musical styles. They wrote very nice ballads like ''Elisabeth'' but nearly all they recorded is really fine sixties pop music. The band sounded very british but came from Norway. Have fun. (Frank)

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Missing Badfinger Track

Hello friends and fellers,

Carlos, a reader here wrote a comment and told me Track nine is missing. I am very sorry for that. I will post new links in a few minutes. Sorry again for the inconvenience.

Cheers
Frank