Sunday Music: The Leaves

I'm listening to a lot of new music this week, thanks to some generous pals and my very BFF, The Internet. Like other forms of pop culture, current music seems to be all over the place; there's a genre and group for every lifestyle segment. He likes Wolf Parade, Pepsi and drives a Jetta. She likes The Mouldy Peaches, Izze's and rides a fixed-gear. It's just another consumer choice.

What's lacking--and I'm a middle-aged fart, so I may very well not know what I'm talking about--is the sense that there's a scene, a place and time where people who make music all know each other, play together, and feed off each other's genius. Maybe that's why I'm continually enthralled by the garage, folk and psychedelic rock that seemed to pour out of Los Angeles and San Francisco in the mid-1960's.

The Los Angeles-based band The Leaves started out as surf-rockers. As noted in Wikipedia, their first gig was in a high-school gym, sharing the bill with Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.* The Leaves' 1966 single "Hey Joe" was later covered by Jimi Hendrix. It's difficult to un-think the iconic Hendrix version, but I like this one quite a bit.

As a published work,"Hey Joe" has a murky history, and is often cited as having traditional folk origins. It certainly is consistent with a long history of American folk and blues ballads devoted to homicide; e.g. "Tom Dooley," "Frankie and Johnny," and "Stagger Lee." Whatever it's origin, singer/songwriter Billy Roberts registered it for copyright in 1962. Since then, "Hey Joe" has been covered by dozens of artists. You must take a minute and listen to the version by a Japanese psychedelic-era band, The Golden Cups. [Link]

Murder Ballad (Wikipedia) [Link]

*An older acquaintance of mine remembers seeing Screamin' Jay Hawkins at a school assembly in Oak Park, Illinois in the late 50s. My high school managed to get the regional touring group of Up With People.

Sunday Music: The Seeds

The 1968 hippiesploitation movie Psych-Out has, judging from the trailer, much to recommend it. It stars a young Jack Nicholson as uber-cool rock guitarist "Stoney,"with a supporting cast that includes Dean Stockwell, Bruce Dern, and indie film maker Henry Jaglom. The plot appears to be a little Easy Rider with a dash of Reefer Madness. Beautiful deaf-mute runaway girl? Check. Rapacious hippie-hating thugs? Check. Bad acid trip where guy tries to cut off his own hand? Check. In contrast, The Trip, made in 1967, has Peter Fonda running wildly through the woods wearing a peasant blouse while the Death character from "The Seventh Seal" chases him. That's a very bad trip.

Psych-Out was supposed to take place in San Francisco, but it featured two well-known Los Angeles bands: The Strawberry Alarm Clock and The Seeds. The Strawberry Alarm Clock are best known for "Incense and Peppermints," which reached number one on the Billboard charts in 1967. The Seeds, with only one national hit, "Pushin' Too Hard," held close to their garage rock roots. Widely admired by other musicians, their blues-inflected sound was not embraced by the general public, at least outside of Southern California.

In 1970, lead singer Sky Saxon joined the Yahowha cult, and released several records as The Yahowha 13. The community disbanded after their leader, Father Yod, died in a hang-gliding mishap. Saxon, who is now called "Sunlight" Sky Saxon, always seems to have several projects going, judging from his Google search results. The most recent seems to be the group King Arthur's Court.

If you were suffering from a far-out deficiency, the preceding paragraph should have set you right. Here's a couple of lesser-known selections:




Trailer for Psych-Out [Link]

Psych-Out at BadMovies.org [Link]