Listen: Break On Through (To The Other Side) / The Doors
Break

Summer nights in July bring back a handful of records I recall from ’67, when the AM Top 40′s in many major markets were feeling a change in the air and responded to it on the air. Albums were becoming youth culture’s most important statement. I guess the Viet Nam War and the tail end of Britain’s music/fashion invasion created a perfect storm. The 45′s role morphed into a vehicle for edited airplay, and the album became the premier sellable asset for bands.

Nothing could have made me happier. All the drug riddled groups, whose names alone appealed to me greatly, still required a 7″ for radio exposure, often promo only. Miracle.

Let’s be serious, every one of them secretly wanted a hit. Generally, their first few singles became loss leaders, and were therefore scarce even when current. The Doors ‘Break On Through (To The Other Side)’ being a prime example. Originally released on January 1, 1967, the record got zero airplay initially. But by early summer, it was one of several I flew around the AM dial in search of nightly during the very late hours, after TV had basically shut down.

In small town upstate New York, you hardly ever heard a car driving by past midnight. Every hour on the hour, a New York Central freight train would sub woofer shake our village, but otherwise, silence. Sorry, silence and crickets. All in all a romantic contrast to the pulse of far away metropolises spilling from my transistor radio, which lay permanently buried beneath the pillow. Yes, those AM Top 40′s by day leaned very underground by night, spinning the records which had begun to crawl onto BILLBOARD’s Bubbling Under The Hot 100 chart.

It must be why I associate The Doors with the night. That and Hunter Thompson’s FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. I read that high on acid while The Doors’ WAITING FOR THE SUN played repeatedly, meaning the spindle arm on my automatic changer was left in the upright position, allowing one’s last selection to track endlessly.

To be accurate, WBZ Boston gave me my first exposure to The Doors. When the deejay front sold ‘Break On Through (To The Other Side)’ my heart nearly stopped. I’d waited six months to hear this record, desperately craved the picture sleeve, and just wanted badly to love The Doors. Good instincts as they turned out.

I never did get that sleeve, well not for seventeen more years. Fast forward to ’84, and I’m working at Elektra in New York. Mark Cohn, our resident runner, tips his head into my office one afternoon, announcing a storage closet full of 45′s had been unearthed and needed clearing. Did I want them?

Turns out the cupboard’s contents were a deep library of every Elektra single, both US and UK, starting with the very first release and continuing through to ’74. Praise be the Lord. Jah Live. Etc.

Listen: Can’t Seem To Make You Mine / The Seeds
11 Can't Seem To Make You Mine.mp3

GNP Crescendo not only possessed a great label name, turns out they were one of the small indies with enough taste to issue several of their singles in quality color picture sleeves. Biggest sellers, The Seeds, certainly benefitted most.

Not unlike London’s maraca drenched blues knockoffs epitomized the English sound, The Seeds ruled roost as to what life sounded like in L.A., at least to a little kid growing up in small town New York State.

Never did I hear The Seeds on daytime radio when current, but certainly heard them at night. Whether by choice or reality, my recollection associates the band with summertime ’67, when The Seeds original debut single, ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’ got re-released. Yes, late night, warm weather airplay, when the AM Top 40′s went all underground rock in the evenings. Those non hits by Lothar & The Hand People, Big Brother & The Holding Company, The Leaves and Country Joe & The Fish rubbed shoulders with The Seeds on every nighttime playlist that summer, both locally and as far off as WBZ from Boston and WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The band’s interest was peaking, certainly in the world of radio. Depending on the market, each were playing The Seeds, whether it being ‘Mr. Farmer’, ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’, their latest, most psychedelic record yet, ‘A Thousand Shadows’ or ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’.

Just imagine this intro beaming through my transistor for the first time. I tell you in all honesty, the memory is as plain as day. It, and the song, were one listens. I desperately needed the record on the spot.

Praise be, the thrill of finding it in my weekly pile of airplay rejects from WMCR that very Friday. Yet another single which didn’t fit into their adult, easy listening format, much to my miraculous luck.

Pianist Daryl Hooper, already carving the initial model of playing bass on a separate keyboard, not only dominated the overall sound of The Seeds, he also wrote some of their most powerful hooks, all based on simplicity. In my fantasy world, that break in ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’ soundtracked driving through the desert by night, heading into the creepy unknown, speeding west on Route 66, just like The Doors long keyboard middle in ‘Light My Fire’. Hearing both for the first time, late on hot summer nights, clearly left deep impressions.

Listen: My Best Friend / Jefferson Airplane
My Best Friend / Jefferson Airplane

Wintertime record. I recall it being played, late at night, on those AM stations that would switch transmission direction around 9 pm (it was some FCC rule back then), and we’d all get to hear distant programming from cities far away. I’d pick up Boston (WBZ) and Fort Wayne, Indiana (WOWO). Boston radio, in particular, was playing some adventurous west coast stuff back then like Love, The Seeds and The Leaves.

But yeah, definitely hardcore winter, which in upstate New York was most unpleasant. The freezing wind howling outside, me needing to be up for school but nonetheless listening to the transistor radio under the pillow deep into the night. (The Ramones ‘Do You Remember Rock And Roll Radio’ captures it perfectly). ‘My Best Friend’ was part of that soundtrack.

I was so excited about seeing Jefferson Airplane not long after SURREALISTIC PILLOW got released. Besides ‘My Best Friend’, ‘White Rabbit’ and ‘Somebody To Love’ were sure to be show stoppers. But oh dear, their live performance was terrible. Grace Slick could not pull off these songs whatsoever. None of them could. I still wonder if they even played on this record.

Given the turnout was very small, the band seemed arrogantly comfortable with being mad at those of us who did show up.

“Where are all your friends tonight”, Grace Slick dismissively spat as she glared at a guy quite close to the stage. I would think she should have been pissed at the ones who didn’t bother to buy a ticket, instead of that poor chap.

Yes, a most disrespectful bunch. I was miserably deflated and never returned to see them again.

Still, Jefferson Airplane had a few great singles through the years, yet never quite topped this one in my book.

Listen: Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine / Country Joe & The Fish CountryJoeMarthaLorraine.mp3

Listen: Who Am I / Country Joe & The Fish CountryJoeWhoAmI.mp3

Listen: I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die-Rag / Country Joe & The Fish CountryJoeFixin.mp3

Along with Big Brother & The Holding Company, Tim Rose, Moby Grape and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, I finally heard Country Joe & The Fish on Boston’s WBZ very late one night, summer ’67. I would lie awake for hours, a truly twisted little kid, listening to music from cities and towns only reachable after 9pm, when the FCC’s regulations at the time (maybe still) allowed their daytime ‘directional’ antennas to relax, and beam wider and farther. It was a smorgasbord of great late night radio – the kind you only hear about existing so long ago. All this music was actually there for me to hear by searching my pocket sized handheld device. Every kid had one even then: an AM transistor radio.

By summer ’67 I was an old pro at this – the previous spring/summer ’66 brought me the same privilege, but that year the bands were almost exclusively English. Boston and the whole Northeast was pretty UK centric when it came to radio programming. At night you’d hear The Moody Blues, The Small Faces, The Pretty Things, non-hits by hitmakers (Hollies/Troggs/Searchers/Swinging Blue Jeans/Zombies/Them) – loads of stuff. WBZ heavily played Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich’s ‘Hold Tight’ that year, but so did the local Syracuse stations. If it weren’t for Billboard, I’d of had no idea it wasn’t a national smash.

Well by summer ’67 we were at the very front end of what, by ’68, would become FM radio – all the fireside closeness that your pal, the pot head DJ, would exude. But just before it all got commercial, the late night Top 40′s were a Godsend.

I really wanted some records by this band though – and you couldn’t buy their singles for love or money then. Like The Seeds and Moby Grape, they seldom found their way east so it was all about patience in getting any exposure to them – unless you sprung for the album. I finally got ‘Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine’ via my scam with the adult station in town (they’d give me all their unplayable rock singles believing I was indeed from the local children’s hospital). Not until years later did I notice the annoying Farfisa that seemed to be so prevalent. How did I miss it then? I guess they just sat nicely as part of the San Francisco sound due to production and guitar style. Very Quicksilver like tones from Barry Melton (I think it was him).

‘Who Am I’ was the real clincher – hearing this one late at night – it really sounded fantastic. I’d clamp that radio to my ear as soon as it came on. Couldn’t play it too loud for fear of waking up my Mom & Dad – the music battling crickets and the sonic backdrop of the Thruway in the distance. Beautiful ambience.

Woodstock took ‘I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die’ mainstream – FM underground mainstream that is. By then (’69), the band was fried – it didn’t matter. But these singles: classic period pieces.