Peter Fonda – November Night

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Jane was supposed to pick me up hours ago…

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Listen/Download – Peter Fonda – November Night

Greetings all.

Welcome to a new week here at the Leg of Iron.

The track I bring you today has been sitting in my crates for a good long time, passed along to me by a benefactor (I cannot recall exactly who) close to 20 years ago.

I do remember who turned me on to the song for the first time, since it was none other than Ugly Things honcho Mike Stax, via a cassette trade back in the 90s in furtherance of my Gram Parsons completism.

The song in question, ‘November Night’ is a song that Parsons wrote in the mid-60s but never took past the demo stage.

It was Parsons’ friend, actor Brandon DeWilde, who introduced he and the International Submarine Band to Peter Fonda, who enlisted them to appear in his 1967 film‘The Trip’.

Appear they did, but only after their music was dubbed over with a track by the Electric Flag, but that is – as they say – another story.

At some point in that convoluted interaction, Fonda, who was dabbling in music, picked up ‘November Night’ and recorded it.

As the story goes, none other than Hugh Masekela heard Fonda playing guitar at a party and suggested that he make a record. Fonda went into the studio during 1966 and recorded an album’s worth of songs for Masekela and Stewart Levine’s Chisa label, of which only ‘November Night’ and its flip side, a cover of Donovan’s ‘Catch the Wind’ ever made it to vinyl.

The record, produced by Masekela is,  aside from Fonda’s occasionally flat vocals, pretty cool.

The song itself is quite groovy, and the the arrangement is classic, mid-60s, California folk rock (it was included on Rhino’s excellent ‘Where the Action Is: Los Angeles Nuggets’ set).

Unfortunately the record, released in March of 1967 doesn’t appear to have caught on anywhere, failing to make a dent in the charts.

I hope you dig it, and I’ll see you all next week with the first Iron Leg Radio Show of 2013.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

January 13, 2013
Categories: 45s, cover versions, Culture, folk rock, Iron Leg, Music, pop, Rock . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: Leave a Comment

The Collection – Tomorrow Is a Window

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Writers Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff in their guise as the
Changin’ Times on Shivaree in 1965

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Eddie Simon (left) and some other guy with a guitar…

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Listen/Download – The Collection – Tomorrow Is a Window

Greetings all.

Welcome to 2013…

The tune I have for you today is an especially groovy one, so open up your Sunshine Pop ears and dig.

I haven’t been able to track down anything much on The Collection.

The cut you see before you today – ‘Tomorrow Is a Window’ – was released in 1968, with a great version of ‘Both Sides Now’ on the flip.

I’ve been picking up a lot of Sunshine Pop-type stuff over the last few years, mainly because it’s obscure (I’m always on the hunt for new sounds) and generally very cheap (on account of I’m a cheapskate).

‘Tomorrow Is a Window’ was released in 1968 and as far as I can tell generated absolutely zero chart heat anywhere in the known universe.

This is of course too bad, because if the sunshiney thing is your bag, this is an especially groovy example of the species.

It does come with a rather nice pedigree, being co-written by Eddie Simon (brother of the famous Paul), Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff (of the Changin’ Times) and arranged by Jimmy Wisner.

Eddie Simon is a very interesting guy who was completely unknown to me until about a year ago. I was watching a 1969 Simon and Garfunkel TV special, and at one point I see a guy sitting next to Paul Simon (who  looked just like him), and I say to my wife ‘I wonder if that’s his brother?’ I set to Googling and whattyaknow, it was indeed his brother, who had an interesting career of his own.

In addition to the Collection, he recorded with a group called the Guild Light Gauge, and as one half of the duo Crib and Ben, releasing singles with both.*

The vocalist is a guy with a high voice (maybe Eddie??) , though there are times where he is joined by a female singer.

The arrangement starts out kind of bubblegummy, but soon jums up a few notches on the cool scale, with some sophisticated strings and a soaring harmony vocal that can only be described as Boettcher-esque (I would suggest the use of headphones to get the full effect).

Discogs lists a second 45 by the group, but I see nothing on the label that would suggest that it was in fact the same crew. If anyone has any additional info, please drop me a line.

That all said, this is the kind of stuff that can be described (in a complimentary manner, of course) as ear candy.

I hope you dig it, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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*NOTE: Please make sure to stop by my man Danny’s stupendous blog Office Naps, as he beat me to the punch on this one by over a year, and drops some serious knowledge about Eddie Simon’s other work.


PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

January 6, 2013
Categories: 45s, Culture, Iron Leg, Music, pop, Sunshine Pop . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 2 Comments

Iron Leg: 2012 The Year In Vintage Pop

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Why, yes dear! I’d love some fuzz!

Playlist

Woolies – Who Do You Love (Dunhill)
Beauregard and the Tuffs – Ramblin’ Rose (Decca)
Brenda Lee – Is It True (Decca)
Evie Sands – I Can’t Let Go (BlueCat)
The Knack – Time Waits For No One (Capitol)
Monkees – Star Collector (Colgems)
Nat Stuckey – Listen To the Band (RCA)
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart – Smilin’ (Aquarian)
Royal Guardsmen – Leaving Me (Laurie)
WC Fields Memorial Electric String Band – Hippy Elevator Operator (HBR)
Morning Glories – Love-In (WB)
Liberace – Suite Judy Blue Eyes (WB)
Mike Stoller and the Stoller System – Silver Sea Horse (Amy)
Nobody’s Children – I Can’t Let Go (Bullet)
Kitchen Cinq – Codine (LHI)
Spotlights – Batman and Robin (Smash)
Wayne Logiudice – Come On (Let’s Get Some Action On) (Philips)
What-Knots – I Ain’t Dead Yet (Dial)
Bougalieu – Let’s Do Wrong (Roulette)
Connie Francis – Fallin’ (MGM)
The Gosdin Brothers – The Sounds of Goodbye (Bakersfield Intl)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg 2012: The Year In Vintage Pop – 99MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

What you see before you is the annual gathering of the ‘Best of’ Iron Leg for the year 2012.

Every year about this time I go back and comb the year’s posts looking for what I consider to be the finest tracks.

As the track listing above indicates, this has been an exceptional year, both for my record collection and for your MP3 delivery/storage device.

There are hot garage punk tracks, psychedelia, power pop, sunshine pop and all kinds of other goodies for you to soak yourselves in as the new year approaches.

As always, I hope you dig it, and that you join me in 2013 for more of the same.

Until then, stay cool, and I’ll see you when I see you.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners

December 30, 2012
Categories: 45s, Beatles-esque Sounds, British Beat, Country Pop, Country Rock, cover versions, Culture, folk rock, freakbeat, garage punk, Instrumental, Iron Leg, Laurel Canyon, Mod, Music, pop, Power Pop, psychedelia, R&Beat, Rock, Sunset Strip, Sunshine Pop . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: Leave a Comment

Homer and Jethro – (All I Want For Christmas Is) My Upper Plate

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Homer and Jethro

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Listen/Download – Homer and Jethro – (All I Wabt For Christmas Is) My Upper Plate

Greetings all.

I hope everyone had a chance to pull down the ones and zeros for this month’s Iron Leg Radio Show.

I was rummaging wround the record room looking for a Funky16corners-related 45 that I had misfiled, with no plans for an Iron Leg holiday post, when I happened upon a neglected stack of weird old records.

My father-in-law is always grabbing records for me in the field. Sometimes they are very groovy (many of which you’ve seen here and at F16C) and sometimes they are…not.

This particular stack never really got the proper level of perusal, having been composed largely of childrens records and a Fabian side or two.

However, when I picked up the stack to get at something else, what should pop out of the pile but a Homer and Jethro Christmas EP!

Homer and Jethro – if’n you don’t know – were a very successful couple of cornpone comedians who were the hayseed Weird Als of their day, laying a little comedy on the Nashville crowd.

They did song parodies and original material, surfing all kinds of pop-culture waves throughout their long career, lasting from the 40s to the 60s (‘Homer’ aka Henry Haynes, passing away in 1971).

They were very popular, even winning a Grammy in 1959 for Best Comedy Record for ‘The Battle of Kookamonga’ (a takeoff on Johnny Horton’s ‘Battle of New Orleans’).

The EP you see before you –‘Seasoned Greetings’ – was released in 1953, and contains parodies of four very popular Christmas songs.

The one I chose to post today is their parody of Spike Jones’s already comedic ‘(All I Want For Christmas Is) My Two Front Teeth’ entitled ‘(All I Want For Christmas Is) My Upper Plate’.

Here the boys wax wistful about a missing denture, and it’s all worth it if only for the deeply reverbed ‘mashed per-taters’ line in the middle of the song.

You get some cool mandolin (the country gravy on the plate) and a couple of sound effects as well.

The whole affair is kind of tame by today’s standards, but funny nonetheless.

I hope you dig it, and I’ll see you next week.

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

December 23, 2012
Categories: 45s, Christmas Music, Country Pop, cover versions, Culture . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 3 Comments

Iron Leg Radio Show Episode #20

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Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Opener – Action Scene – Hawkshaw/Mansfield (KPM)
Spirit – I Got a Line On You (Ode)
Spirit – Taurus (Ode)
Spirit – Girl In Your Eye (Ode)
Spirit- Straight Arrow (Ode)
Spirit – Topanga Windows (Ode)
44th St Portable Flower Factory – Let’s Get Together (Scholastic)
44th St Portable Flower Factory – The Letter (Scholastic)
Esko Affair – Morning Dull Fire (Mercury)
Roy Buchanan – Down By the River (Atlantic)
Spirit – Clear LP Promo

Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich – Shame (Fontana)
Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich- You Make It Move (Fontana)
Bang Girl Group Revue – Drink In Hand (Psychedelphonic)
Bang Girl Group Revue – Love’s Gone Bad (Psychedelphonic)
Dino Desi and Billy – I’m a Fool (Reprise)
The Finnz – East Side Story (Finnz)
Heather Black – Bill The Black Militant (Double Bayou)
Kitchen Cinq – Determination (LHI)
Terry Knight and the Pack – Got Love (Lucky Eleven)
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – Heart Full of Soul (Liberty)
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – The Flake (Kelloggs Corn Flakes Ad)

The Critters – Mr Dieingly Sad (Kapp)
East Coast Left – My Child (Kapp)
Epic Splendor – It Could Be Wonderful (Hot Biscuit)
Giant Crab – Help Yourself (Uni)
Giant Crab – It’s Getting Harder (Uni)
Hourglass – Power Of Love (Liberty)
Music Machine – Some Other Drum (Original Sound)
Tom Northcott – Blackberry Way (Uni)
Peter Fonda – November Nights (Chisa)
The 10:15 – Joe’s Acclamation ()
Semicolons? – Beachcomber (Cameo/Parkway)
Poco – Hurry Up (Epic)
The Rockets – Hole In My Pocket (White Whale)
Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere LP Promo

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 20 – 184MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

I hope all is well in your part of the world.

It’s time once again for the Iron Leg Radio Show, episode 20!

This time around we start the show with a tribute to the late, great Ed Cassidy of Spirit, move on into some top shelf freakbeat and garage and finish up with a solid set of pop.

I hope you dig it all, and that you come back next week for the annual Year In Vintage Pop mix.

Until then…

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners

December 16, 2012
Categories: 45s, acoustic, Beatles-esque Sounds, Bob Seger, British Beat, Country Rock, cover versions, Culture, folk rock, freakbeat, garage punk, Iron Leg, Michigan Rock, Music, pop, Power Pop, psychedelia, Punk, R&Beat, Rock . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 1 Comment

Ed Cassidy RIP – Spirit: I Got a Line On You

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Spirit – Ed Cassidy at left

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Listen/Download – Spirit – I Got a Line On You

Greetings all.

It was with great sadness last week that the world heard about the passing of the mighty Ed Cassidy.

Cassidy, who was 89 and was best known as one of the founders of Spirit has been playing drums professionally for more than 70 years.

With his ever-bald pate and his black wardrobe, Cassidy never really seemed to age over the years.

He got his start playing jazz and pop in dance bands, eventually gigging with cats like Art Pepper and Gerry Mulligan.

He co-founded the Rising Sons in 1964 with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder, though he was eventually replaced by Kevin Kelley after breaking his hand.

The year later he founded the Little Red Roosters with his then 14 year old stepson Randy California, the group that morphed into Spirit in 1967.

If you haven’t heard anything but the hits, the first few Spirit albums, filled with jazz and world music tinged psychedelia are pure genius.

Oddly enough, I wouldn’t discover those albums until the Sony ‘Time Circle’ collection which was issued in 1991.

The song that I grew up on – the one that blew my mind the very first time I heard it on FM radio, probably a few years after it was originally released in 1968 – is the mighty ‘I Got a Line On You’.

Written by Randy California, ‘I Got a Line On You’ is a juggernaut that gains steam consistently through its roughly two and a half minutes.

The opening piano/guitar riff never fails to set my hair on end, mainly because I know what’s coming, that being a severe headrush of a chorus.

Much like the Kinks’ ‘All Day and All of the Night’, the chorus of ‘I Got a Line On You’ seems to test the limits of the recording studio, with the bass, guitar, piano and Cass’s drums expanding like a mushroom cloud in your ears.

I was probably no older than 10 when this song drilled into my head, causing it to shake every which way.

I don’t recall when I picked up the 45 you see before you (an Epic reissue, the OG is on Ode) but it’s probably been at least 20 years.

I’ve played this 45 out a couple of times,mixing it in with soul and garage stuff, and it never fails to get people moving, because it is so bad-ass.

It was a little over 20 years ago when I saw the then-current version of Spirit (with Cass and Randy) play ‘I Got a Line On You’ on the Dennis Miller Show (yes, the now-right wing crank had a short-lived late night show), and even then, the song brought a tear to my eye.

It’s that good.

I hope you dig it too.

RIP Ed…

Peace

Larry

 

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

December 9, 2012
Categories: 45s, Culture, Iron Leg, Music, Obituary, Rock . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 4 Comments

Manfred Mann – 5-4-3-2-1

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Uh, huh, it was the Manfreds…

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Listen/Download – Manfred Mann – 5-4-3-2-1

Greetings all.

Welcome to yet another week in the annals of all manner of pop.

The tune I bring you today should be – assuming that you have a taste for UK R&Beat – a familiar one, but the disc it appears on might not.

Manfred Mann is one of those bands that I have certainly known about all my life (via the big hits) , but it was only during the mod/garage days of the 80s that I discovered and developed a serious taste for their music.

So much so, in fact that I would gladly go on record as stating that aside from Scott Walker – who exists in a class by himself – Paul Jones is my favorite vocalist of the British Invasion.

Manfred Mann were ostensibly part of the blues-based British vibe, but one need only scratch the surface a little bit to discover how important jazz was to their sound.

Thanks in large part to Manfred Mann’s (the man, not the band) keyboards and Mike Vickers work on guitar, flute and sax, the Manfreds laid down some of the deepest, most exciting sounds of the early to mid 60s.

Today’s selection was commissioned by the producers of Ready Steady Go as the theme for their 1964 season and the song made it into the UK Top Ten of the UK charts.

The song was released as a single in the UK on the HMV label in January of 1964.

This of course brings up the question of, where did the 45 you see before you come from?

Fans of soul jazz/mod jazz will already be knee deep in the Prestige Records 45 discography, a wellspring of Hammond organ sides and all manner of harder edged soul jazz. How Manfred Mann – who had all of their early US 45s released on the Ascot label – got this one 45 issued on Prestige is a complete mystery to me.

If you take a look at a Prestige 45 discography, there is one interesting clue, that being that the next single released in the catalog was a record by a duo named Brett and Terry with the tunes ‘Beatle Hop’ b/w ‘Beatle Fever’.

Aside from that, all the releases before and after these two 45s – this being perhaps a very short lived attempt to cash in on the longhair/teenage market – are regular Prestige label bread and butter, i.e. jazz and blues.

The record itself is a banger of the first order.

‘5-4-3-2-1’ has been a fave of mine since I first heard it roughly 30 years ago. It sees the band in top form, moving forward like a buffalo stampede led by Jones’s harp and Mann’s electric piano.

The flip side, ‘Without You’ is a bluesy grinder with some remarkable flute work.

Oddly, the writing credit on the 45 is messed up, with Mike Hugg listed as ‘Hugo’ between Jones and Mann.

It’s a great disc, and if anyone has any deeper info on the Prestige connection, please drop me a line in the comments.

I hope you dig it, and I’ll see you next week.

Peace

Larry

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PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

December 2, 2012
Categories: 45s, Culture, Iron Leg, Mod, Music, R&Beat . . Author: funky16corners . Comments: 2 Comments

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