The Smoke - Half Past The End / My Mama

The Smoke (5) ‎– Half Past The End / My Mama

Label:
Smoke Records (5) ‎– 1316

Format:
Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Single

Country:
US

Released:
1968

Genre:
Rock

Style:
Garage Rock

Tracklist
A Half Past The End 2:20
B My Mama 2:00

Credits
Written-By – Mark Sheldon (3)


The Smoke - Half Past The End

The Smoke - My Mamat

(John) Kongos - Kongos LP - 1972

I haven't been buying many records lately. Money & time have been tight. I've seen this record around a bunch over the years and never bought it, so when i came upon it recently and seeing as things have been dry, and like a junkie needing a fix, i bought it. its not a bad time period piece from 1972. Some hippy God loving soft psych with a few guitar moves and even fewer fuzzy moments. Not bad. Kinda of reminds me of some of the stuff my Uncle Dan would play while he would baby sit me & my sister right around 1972 and have his funny smelling cigarette parties....

Interesting tidbit about this record is that "He's Gonna Step On You Again" is cited in the Guinness Book of Records as being the first song to ever use a sample.... Hmmmmmm i did not know that....

(John) Kongos - Kongos LP - 1972

Time Machine - Turn Back Time - Bird In The Wind

Light and trippy hippy psych by a band who obviously didnt have enough material for this 7 inch so they basically just fipped over the A side and played it backwards. fucking lazy hippies....

Time Machine - Turn Back Time

Time Machine - Bird In The Wind

E. Rodney Jones & Larry & the Hippies Band - Right On , Right On - Chicken On Down

Ok, here is a little something to get your weekend started and something the devil really digs. Funky psychedelic tunes!

Chicago's E. Rodney Jones who later went on to be a successful dj cut this 45 with Larry? & the Hippies Band? and this 45 is right up my alley with some fuzzy funky wah-wah guitar and a real groove on right on that reeks of incense & peppermint while chicken on down is a bit more of a traditional instrumental soul cut that is still nice and breezy with a certain slow walking jazz vibe.

This is just the thing to get your mind set ready for the weekend so please enjoy.

Thanks!
dd

E. Rodney Jones & Larry & the Hippies Band - Right On , Right On
E. Rodney Jones & Larry & the Hippies Band - Chicken On Down

Mimi and Richard Fariña - Reno Nevada - One Way Ticket - Celebration For A Grey Day

A little something different here today, some hippy folk rock via 1965 on Vanguard from Mimi & Richard Fariña.

"Reno Nevada" & "One Way Ticket" are pretty cool rockers with a real 60's vibe, dig Mimi humming behind Richard singing in Reno, while "Celebration For A GreY Day" is an pretty psychedelic instrumental jam that borrows from some very famous melodies.

Here is the straighht dope:

Richard George Fariña ( March 8, 1937 – April 30, 1966 ) was an American writer and folksinger. He was a figure in both the counterculture scene of the early- to mid-sixties as well as the budding folk rock scene of the same era.

Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Cuban and Irish descent. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School. He earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, starting as an Engineering major, but later switching to English. While at Cornell he published short stories for some of the local literary magazines as well as for magazines such as The Transatlantic Review and Mademoiselle. Fariña became close friends with Thomas Pynchon and Peter Yarrow while at Cornell. He was suspended for alleged participation in a student demonstration against repressive campus regulations, and though he returned to campus, he ultimately dropped out just before graduation in 1959.

Back in New York City, Fariña wrote and mixed with the bohemians at the White Horse Tavern, the legendary Greenwich Village haunt frequented by poets, artists, folksingers, and wayfarers, where he befriended Tommy Makem. It was there that he met Carolyn Hester, a successful folk singer. They had a whirlwind courtship and married eighteen days later. Fariña appointed himself Hester's agent; they toured worldwide while Fariña worked on his novel and Carolyn performed gigs. Fariña was present when Hester recorded her third album at Columbia studios in September 1961, where a then-unknown Bob Dylan played harmonica on several tracks. Fariña became a close friend of Dylan's; their friendship is a central topic of David Hajdu's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Positively 4th Street.

In Europe, Fariña met Mimi Baez, the teenage sister of Joan Baez in the spring of 1962. Hester divorced Fariña shortly thereafter, and Fariña married 17-year-old Mimi in April 1963. They moved to a tiny cabin in Carmel, California, where they composed songs on a guitar and appalachian dulcimer. They debuted their act as "Richard & Mimi Fariña" at the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1964 and were signed to Vanguard Records. They recorded their first album, Celebrations For a Grey Day, with the help of Bruce Langhorne, who had previously played for Dylan. Due to his short life, Fariña's musical output was limited. The Fariñas released three albums, one posthumously. Fariña, like Dylan and others of this time, was considered a protest singer, and a number of his songs are overtly political. Several critics have considered Fariña to be one of the top talents to emerge from the 1960s Greenwich Village folk music scene. ("If Richard had survived that motorcycle accident, he would have easily given Dylan a run for his money." -- Ed Ward). His best-known songs are "Pack Up Your Sorrows" and "Birmingham Sunday", the latter of which was recorded by Joan Baez and has become more well-known after it became the theme song to Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls, a documentary about the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama.

At the time of his death, Fariña was also producing an album for his sister-in-law, Joan (which Baez would ultimately not release, though two of the songs were included on Fariña's posthumous album, and another, a cover of Farina's "Pack up Your Sorrows", co-written by Fariña with the third Baez sister, Pauline Marden, was released as a single in 1966).

Several of his songs were recorded by Fairport Convention in the UK, typically "Reno, Nevada" and "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood".

Fariña is also known for his novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (originally published by Random House in 1966). The novel, based largely on his college experiences and travels, is a comic picaresque story of Gnossos Pappadopoulis. It takes place in the American West, in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and at an upstate New York university. The book has become something of a cult classic among those who follow sixties and counterculture literature. Thomas Pynchon, who later dedicated his most well-known book Gravity's Rainbow (1973) to his friend, described Fariña's novel as "coming on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch... hilarious, chilling, sexy, profound, maniacal, beautiful and outrageous all at the same time." Pynchon also wrote an introduction to a recent paperback version of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. A movie was made of the book in 1971.

On April 30, 1966, two days after the publication of his book, Fariña attended a book-signing at a Carmel Valley Village bookstore, the Thunderbird. Later that day, while at a party to celebrate Mimi's 21st birthday, Fariña saw a guest with a motorcycle and hitched a ride up Carmel Valley Road east toward Cachagua. The bike crashed within a mile or so. According to Pynchon's preface to Been Down..., the police said the motorcycle must have been traveling at 90 miles per hour, even though "a prudent speed" would have been 30 miles per hour. He was thrown from the back of the bike and killed instantly.

Mimi and Richard Farina - Reno Nevada
Mimi and Richard Farina - One Way Ticket
Mimi and Richard Farina - Celebration For A Grey Day

Donovan - Wild Witch Lady

Ok i had my weekend all planed out with some record digging and posting and after a great Friday night out for some sushi and wine with some of my favorite blogging musical peers, DJ Prestige of Flea Market Funk fame, Larry Grogan from Funky 16 Corners and the lovey JJB from Eye Eat Music I though man what a great weekend this is going to be. But after some fine wine, lots of music geek talk and great sushi at Taka in Asbury Park, back over to DJ Pres' house for some more wine and great spun tunes by the DJ himself and then over to the Brick wall for a few pints of Stella to hear DJ Jack the Ripper spin some 80's dance music all should have been right in the world but alas i woke up at 4 in the morning with my throat closed shut and choking on my own uvula and spent Saturday morning in the hospital with some sort of crazy allergic reaction. So no posting and no record digging for the devil...

I'm on some kind of steroids and prescription allergy meds and have to see a specialist to see why this all happened. But any i'm braving this ill feeling to try and put together a little something to hold you good folks over that keep coming back and i really appreciate it as i rapidly close in on 50,000 hits!!!

so keeping in line with my last posting of the Butthole Surfers doing some Donovan i give you Donovan doing Wild Witch Lady one of my personal faves from Mr. P Leitch off his Cosmic Wheels album, a cut i know my man Deacon Brimstone over at Blues for the Red Boy will appreciate.

While Donovan is mostly know for his whimsical Folk songs and mild Psychedelia this track has a bit of a harder edge. Kind of like T. Rex meets The Occult!

Hope you dig...?!?!???

Donovan - Wild Witch Lady

Shawn Phillips - Moon Shine

OK i must admit that this is deffo not something i would have been listening to back in the early 80's. But as i have matured and aged i realized that if i stayed that angry "young" man all my life I'd probably be an angry dead young man or in jail so I've learned to soften my pallet a bit.... That's not to say that i don't bust out the Black Flag or Celtic Frost anymore just that I've learned a time and place for everything....

Anyway, i played this song on my radio show (when it was alive) when i had my kid there and they both really liked it as well. Enough to ask me to record it for them on tape.

and after a somewhat tumultuoius Saturday i need something a little mellow:

So here is the lowdown on this dirty hippy....

Shawn Phillips
Genre: Rock, Country, Roots
Years Active: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s 2000s

Shawn Phillips is one of most fascinating and enigmatic musicians to come
out of the early '70s singer-songwriter boom. The mere fact that he was a
musician as much as a singer and songwriter made him stand out, and helped
him attract a dedicated following. His refusal to shape his music -- which
crosses between folk-rock, jazz, progressive, pop, and classical -- to anyone
else's expectations has allowed him to hold onto a large and dedicated cult
following, without ever achieving the stardom that his talent seems to merit.

Shawn Phillips was born in 1943 in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of best-selling
spy novelist Philip Atlee, who moved the family around the world at various
times, including the South Pacific. After hearing "Malaguena" at the piano,
he took up the guitar at age seven, and by the time he was 12, he was playing
the chords to Carl Perkins songs. Phillips' musical experience transcended
rock & roll, however -- in the course of his family's travels, he got to live
in almost every corner of the globe, including Tahiti, and absorbed the music
that surrounded him wherever he was living. He returned to Texas in his
teens, with some training in classical music but a love for performers like
Jimmy Reed and Ike & Tina Turner, among other blues and R&B performers. He
did a hitch in the Navy, and then went back to Texas before retreating to
California, where he played around the early-'60s folk circuit.

Phillips made his first record, an overproduced single of Bob Gibson's
version of "Frankie and Johnnie" for Columbia, which he followed with two
albums, I'm a Loner and Shawn, neither of which was successful. Phillips went
to England, where he performed and wrote songs with Donovan, in a
professional relationship somewhat clouded in controversy. Phillips claimed
in interviews during the 1970s that he co-wrote "Season of the Witch," as
well as a major portion of the songs that finally surfaced on the album
Sunshine Superman, but only ever received one co-author credit for "Little
Tin Soldier" on the Fairy Tale album. While staying in England, the range of
his work vastly expanded, partly with the help of the use of various
controlled substances.

He was ejected from England for playing without a work permit, and tried
living in Paris for before he headed for Italy. He settled in Positano, a
tiny fishing village. By the late 1960s, Phillips' musical expertise had
broadened to include not only different kinds of guitars, but also the Indian
sitar. After a few years of trying, he recognized that he'd started too late
and would never master the sitar in the traditional manner, and instead began
learning to make his own music on the instrument.

In 1968, he went to London with a the idea for a trilogy of albums and
recorded a major portion of it in collaboration with Traffic members Steve
Winwood, Chris Wood, and Jim Capaldi, and Caleb Quayle. No record company was
willing to commit to such an ambitious body of work by an unknown artist, and
the material languished for more than two years, until Phillips came to A&M
Records. Producer Jonathan Weston listened to his work and decided to try and
release an edited version of the music.

This became his A&M debut album, Contribution, which ranged freely between
uptempo folk-rock ("Man Hole Covered Wagon") to introspective quasi-classical
guitar pieces ("L Ballade"), and works mixing sitar and acoustic guitar
("Withered Roses"). The album got positive reviews, but it was when Phillips
embarked on his first U.S. tour, in conjunction with his next album, Second
Contribution, late in 1971, that he was discovered by much of the press.
Critics in the New York Times and other publications displayed unbridled awe
at Phillips' prowess on a range of instruments, including electric and
acoustic six- and 12-string guitars and the sitar, and his singing range, a
full three octaves from baritone to counter-tenor, as well as his
songwriting. He was one of the few singer/songwriters to play double-necked
six- and 12-string guitars (a standard feature of progressive and metal
bands) on stage, in intimate locales such as New York's Bottom Line, and to
test the full range of the hybrid instrument.

Writers lavished praise on Phillips for his unusual lyrics, haunting
melodies, daunting musicianship, and the ambition of his records -- he was a
complete enigma, American-born but raised internationally, with a foreigner's
keen appreciation for all of the music of his homeland and a seasoned
traveler's love of the world's music, with none of the usual limits on his
thinking about music. He slid between jazz, folk, pop, and classical sounds
-- it was nothing for Phillips to segue from a progressive-style mood piece
with a 50-piece orchestra into an R&B-based number driven by his electric
guitar, and back again. "The Ballad of Casey Deiss," from Second
Contribution, was a case in point, a song about a friend who died when he was
struck by lightning, scored for acoustic guitars, electric guitars,
vibraphone, and the horn section of a full orchestra, as well as
multi-layered vocals.

A third album, Collaboration, followed, along with another tour, and then
Faces, Bright White, and Furthermore. His collaborator was conductor/arranger
Paul Buckmaster, the man responsible for the choral accompaniment on the
Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." On tour, he was booked
into clubs with artists such as comedian Albert Brooks, singer/songwriter
Wendy Waldman, and Seals & Crofts, and usually worked solo, surrounded by a
half-dozen guitars, or sometimes with a single accompanist, Peter Robinson,
on keyboards.

Phillips never achieved major stardom, despite his critical accolades. He
never courted an obvious commercial sound, preferring to write songs that, as
he put it, "make you feel different from the way you felt before you started
listening," primarily love songs and sonic landscapes. He made nine albums
for A&M before moving on to RCA with Transcendance in 1978, which mixed his
guitars with a 60-piece symphony orchestra and members of Herbie Hancock's
band, produced in collaboration with arranger/conductor Michael Kamen. He
also contributed to movie music by Manos Hadjidakis, and appeared in the
movie Run With the Wind.

With 15 albums behind him since the mid-1960s, Phillips has a following, in
America, Europe, and Japan, and he has performed at different world music
festivals. A cult figure whose peers include Van Dyke Parks and, perhaps,
Leonard Cohen (though Cohen's public profile is enhanced by his following, as
an established poet and author, in the literary community), he remains an
enigmatic figure on the music landscape. His work remained sufficiently in
demand in the 1990s, however, to justify a best-of compilation from A&M in
1992 that included notes by Phillips and one new song. In 1998, eight of his
LPs were re-released via the Wounded Bird label.
~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

Never fear I will be back soon enough to balance out the "Hippy"....


Shawn Phillips - Moon Shine