Tag: rock

652. The Grass Roots

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Episode 652 is THE GRASS ROOTS. You will recognize the songs “Let’s Live for Today,” “Midnight Confessions” and “Sooner or Later” as AM radio staples, but you probably didn’t know the band behind them. That’s the Grass Roots. Music fans will know that songwriter P.F. Sloan got his start here. And fans of The Office may know it as the band Creed Bratton was in in the 1960s. They offered some decent LA-style late 60s pop, but with changing lineups and sounds, they come down to us in some obscurity.

Favorite album: Let’s Live for Today

Favorite song: Let’s Live for Today

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: A greatest hits record is more than you’ll need.

649. Tim Buckley and Jeff Buckley

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Episode 649 is TIM BUCKLEY and JEFF BUCKLEY. Tim is an acquired taste, and he hasn’t acquired mine. His five-octave voice is impressive, but I’ve never warmed to the crooning way he employed it. It often feels discordant to the music underneath, even as he varies his style from folk to avant-garde to pop. I appreciate the experimentalism of Starsailor, which has become a cult classic. It may seem odd to append Jeff here, as he was never part of his father’s life, but it’s the only way I could review him as he had only one studio album, Grace, but what a fine album that is. His “Hallelujah” is among the best covers that surpasses the original. Jeff inherited his father’s many-octave voice, but uses it more pleasantly.

Favorite Tim album: Tim Buckley

Favorite Tim song: Pleasant Street

Favorite Jeff song: Hallelujah

Compared to expectations: Tim ↓, Jeff same

Recommendation: You should know Jeff’s Grace. Try Tim’s more conventional eponymous album or Goodbye and Hello, or the weird Starsailor, to see if it fits your taste.

647. Captain Beyond

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Episode 647 is CAPTAIN BEYOND, a B-list supergroup from the mid-70s (with former Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly and Johnny Winter members). It’s a weird mix of heavy, prog rock, space and yacht rock, and thus a lesser-known archetype of the period. Their first of three albums has the heaviest sound, and thus the best.

Favorite album: Captain Beyond

Favorite song Mesmerization Eclipse

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Probably only relevant for 1970s rock completists

646. Violet Mindfield

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(April 2025) Episode 646 is the VIOLET MINDFIELD, a contemporary Southern California-based retro-psychedelic band. While their stated intention is to recreate 60s psychedelic and garage band sounds, what I hear is a call back to acts of previous retro generations, such as Olivia Tremor Control and Oh Sees. There’s a fine line between reverent homage and derivative mimicry, which they straddle. Their most recent album, California Burning, appears to be original songs based on classic 60s riffs (not unlike what the Rutles did).

Favorite album: The Forgotten Streetlamps of Time

Favorite song: Autonomous Overdrive

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: It’s an interesting listen if you like 60s psychedelic and garage music.

639. Peter and Gordon

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(March 2025) Episode 639 is PETER AND GORDON. Very like Chad & Jeremy from a couple episodes ago: a UK duo featuring Everly-ish vocals in the early British Invasion. What Peter and Gordon had going for them is proximity to the Beatles, socially and musically; Paul wrote their early hits and dated Peter’s sister Jane Asher. They offered fine, middle-of-the-road 60s pop, but struggled to keep up with trends. Peter and Gordon didn’t go as far as Chad & Jeremy’s full-bore attempt at tudor psychedelia, just venturing into baroque pop. Both duos were done by decade’s end. Peter became a long-time producer.

Favourite album: In London for Tea

Favourite song: A World Without Love

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The Ultimate Peter & Gordon (compilation)

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636. UFO

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(March 2025) Episode 636 is UFO. There’s a category of rock bands that start out with interesting/innovative stuff in the late 60s/early 70s but then descend to decades of boring, rote hard rock. Think Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Status Quo … and UFO. Their first two albums were consummate space rock, followed by two good albums of heavy 70s rock, which was their commercial peak. But then their output flattened out into album after album of the most banal hard rock. I assume this is evidence such pablum sells, but not to me. That part was a slog (I listen so you don’t have to). However, UFO is cited as paving the way for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which is why I did this episode. The only song I recognized from classic rock radio was “Too Hot to Handle,” a cock rock gem.

Favourite album: UFO 2: Flying

Favourite song: Flying

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The first four albums, especially the first two space rock ones.

635. Chad & Jeremy

~ ernopepper ~ 1 Comment

(February 2025) Episode 635 is CHAD & JEREMY. Coincident with the first wave of the British Invasion, Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde offered light-pop/folk rock songs. “Yesterday’s Gone” puts them in the Merseybeat mode, while their most famous piece, “A Summer Song,” is in the vein of Simon and Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. This approach characterized their 1963-66 recordings, which is fine, but put them out of step with the emergent R&B bands. Chad & Jeremy regrouped with 2 ½ psychedelic albums, a sound that I personally favor, although not it’s representative of what they were known for.

Favourite album: The Ark

Favourite song: A Summer Song  

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Albums: A best-of is fine. But those who dig 60s psychedelia should check out their baroque-pop stylings on Of Cabbages and Kings and The Ark.

634. Parquet Courts

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(February 2025) Episode 634 is PARQUET COURTS. Take equal parts 80s college rock, 90s indie/alt, 00s angular rock, add a pinch of 60s Velvet Underground, and you have Parquet Courts. They were a very welcome find, running counter to my general disappointment/lack of interest in 21st century ‘rock’ bands. Their music is creatively quirky, with clever or snarky lyrics. Their 2018 album Wide Awake! is their most accessible, but that signaled an incorporation of electronic beats that dominated 2021’s disappointing Sympathy for Life. I prefer the off-kilter simplicity of earlier albums.

Favorite album: Light Up Gold

Favorite song: Stoned and Starving

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Albums: Light Up Gold, Sunbathing Animal, Human Peformance and Wide Awake!

629. The Mops

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(January 2025) Episode 629 is THE MOPS. I recall my parents telling me when they went to Japan in the mid-1960s they heard a bunch of bands singing Beatles songs, aptly reproducing the words even though they likely didn’t know the meaning. I thought of that when I heard The Mops’ first album, Psychedelic Sounds in Japan, which includes a number of covers of classic mid-60s songs. They are known as the “first psychedelic band in Japan,” although it’s more garage rock than hippy. I first heard them via their contribution to the Nuggets II collection, the quirky “I Am Just A Mops.” They recorded through the early 1970s with a similar heavy and fuzzy sound to rock music coming out of the US and UK at the time. They deliver with a manic energy, but overall, the most interesting thing is that they were making this music in Japan and singing mostly in Japanese. On their own the covers are meh and the originals are just OK.

Favorite album: Psychedelic Sounds in Japan

Favorite song: Iijanaika

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: The compilation album The Mops: 1969-1973 isn’t bad.

623. Strawberry Alarm Clock

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(December 2024) Episode 623 is STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK. The ubiquity of their Summer of Love anthem “Incense and Peppermints” might lead you to think they were a one-hit wonder. But they were a real (albeit dysfunctional) band with three good albums of psychedelic-flavored LA-style sunshine pop. There’s a manufactured intentionality to the psychedelia (I mean, look at the album covers) but it’s still a good hippy trip. The fourth album goes into forgettable proto-boogie rock and there was a reunion album decades later.

Favorite album: Incense and Peppermints

Favorite song: Incense and Peppermints

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Any of the first three albums are a fun trip back to the Summer of Love