Can we talk about early-mid70s West Coast post-psych/pop/rock/folk-rock/country-rock?

I saw this thread title and immediately did a command-F for "homestead" to see if anyone had mentioned the Homestead & Wolfe album.

and, folks, Tim Ellison is right. It's kind of Poppy Family-ish with Mamas-and-the-Papas harmonies? Gorgeous, in other words.

also btw/fyi, there are people who call this genre of music "rec. room rock" which is pretty appropriate. not as derisive as dadrock.

Humble Pie's first LP is pretty damn cool: acoustic blues and folk with a solid rhythm section -- plus, some ballads and a rocker or two. It's more low key than "Afterglow" and more "natural" sounding, if that makes sense. I say you get that Lost and Found LP, which has the first twi Pie record packaged as one. I actually dig the second LP a bit more. Their version of Steppenwolf's "Desperation," with three lead vocalists, is sweet.

I got Town & Country this weekend - haven't listened to all of it yet, but preferred what I heard off the second album. is it me or is there some weird Led Zep quote at the beginning of the first song...?

"changes, circles spinning" from Truly Fine Citizen.

ian I love this song too.

scott I tried some poco albums, liked the debut & live one best.

I'm down with you guys on ian matthews/southern comfort, only have one track from amelia earhart on my computer but it's amazing. listened to one of his later 70s albums tho and it was surprisingly stinky.

Truly Fine Citizen album I have on LP--the "circles spinning" song is great and the title track is one of the finest things ever, such concision. I don't know if anyone mentioned this upthread, but I've been way into the Gosdin Brothers' '68 Songs of Goodbye LP--Big Beat reissued it about ten years ago with extra tracks. Great country-rock, Byrds-like, but the Gosdins sing way more country than the Byrds or Gene Clark. They're excellent singers and they even do a cool version of Ewan McCall's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"! And a funny '67 social-consciousness tune called "Uncommitted Man." Plus, the Clarence White guitar throughout is stunning.

i just got this the other day:


http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00006BC4U.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SS500_.jpg


(on vinyl though. unfortunately, collector's choice cds have a bad habit of sounding like poop.)

just can't find a good picture of this stoneman family album, which is a shame cuz it rules and they is all hippied out and i LOVE the album. they do great creedence covers:

http://www.lpdiscography.com/s/Stonemans/stonemans_inallhonesty.jpg


i need to get a copy of their California Blues album from the same time:


http://www.lpdiscography.com/s/Stonemans/stonemans_californiablues.jpg

that first one looks like its by "The Dullards"

re: ian/iain matthews - look for THE SOUL OF MANY PLACES - a comp of the Plainsong record and 2-3 of his ealy 70s west coast albums - it's about 80% of all you'd need from him (i like If You Saw Thro' My Eyes too)

i like the ian matthews track "road to ronderlin", also from later that same year. the line that goes "oh, my wife, i have been such the fool..." is in my head an inexplicable amount of the time.

right now i'm listening to unhalfbricking, and though it's not my favorite fairport record (or is it? huh. it used to be the first album indisputably) i love it so much. it just kills me, the attention to detail in the arrangements. absolutely gorgeous.

Wow!! This thread went kerrrazy!! That Quinaime album was disappointing, yeah. One track sounded like WAR, which is no bad thing, but no stand-out tracks.

I'm makin a vow to stop passing on Poco albums.

(i like If You Saw Thro' My Eyes too)

this one and Matthews Southern Comfort are the ones I keep going back to. "Morgan the Pirate" from Eyes is haunting "one or two hard feelings left behind." recently deduced that it's a cover of Richard & Mimi Farina. there's a live re-recording of Eyesthat I keep meaning to listening to, tho it might be kinda redundant?

I got a couple of Poco albums yesterday--From The Inside and A Good Feelin To Know. They're pretty good, but not as good as the Fotheringay record I'm listening to now!

no fair comparing sandy denny to poco!

sandy was genius. poco were simply entertaining stoner cowboys.

even the non-denny songs rule!

But what about the album Poco made with Bob Ezrin?!? That track "Crazy Eyes" is amazing, 9 minutes of Alice Cooper Goes Country Rock!!!

I am kinda non-plussed by the Humble Pie. Some good moments, but in general the songwriting seems really lazy, or not fully formed or something.

... actually, what it's kinda like is Lou Reed's "Berlin" crossed with "Buffalo Springfield Again" (xpost)

I was just thinking about Delaney & Bonnie and realized that that we've forgotten about one of their buddies:

http://music.iupui.edu/albright/encyclopedia%20of%20rock/r/leon.jpg

got this album by Future today from 1969. some good stuff on it. VERY country-ish rock. having red rhodes on almost every track helps. very cool and often pretty strange three-part harmonies.


http://www.geocities.com/badcatrecords/FUTURE.jpg



no info on the web, though this dude selling a copy on the web speaks for me pretty much:

"Label: Shamley SS-703
Genre: country-rock
Item Number: 4782
Release Country: Usa
Release Date: 1969
This one originally caught my attention for the label (Shamley) which recorded a couple of cool psych acts and the fact I'd never heard of this trio, nor could I find any real information on them.



Jim Bunnell, Jim Burdine and Jim Odom ... The liner notes say "They all grew up in Santa Monica, California, went to the same schools, romanced the same girls, and have been singing and playing together for almost ten years. They are all only sons, all twenty-two years old, and are as close brothers."



Produced by Norman Gregg H. Ratner, 1969's "Down a Country Road" may disappoint some in that it isn't a psych effort. That said, the set has its own particular charm. Backed by an all star collection of studio players including Jim Burton, Jim Gordon, Mac Rebennack, and Red Rhodes most of the set has an early country-rock vibe. Largely penned by Bunnell and trumpet player Wally Holmes, material like 'Raggedy Jack', 'Bittersweet' and the title track will readily appeal to Gram Parsons-era Byrds or Flying Burrito Brothers fans. The three Jims are all pretty good singers and they're harmony vocal work is nothing less than excellent. In the interests of full disclosure there are actually a couple of more rock oriented numbers that are okay ('Grabbers and Takers' and ''Girls Around the World). There are also two odd psych moments - 'Silver Chalice' starts and ends with a weird trumpet propelled vibe that's punctuated by a Gospel-ish chorus ... yeah, too weird to accurate describe. Equally bizarre, 'And Have Not Charity' sounds like a Gregorian chant that's been heavily dosed. Not ground breaking by any stretch of the imagination, but surprisingly attractive in spite of its genre limitations. There was also at least one single from the album: 'Raggedy Jack' b/w 'Love All You've Got' b/w '' (Shamley catalog number 44011)."

i was all about this thread today. got that humble pie double album reissue of the first two albums on vinyl for four bucks. got two gene clark albums that i've never heard. one just called gene clark on A&M and *no other* on asylum. also got another cowboy album on capricorn. this one is actually credited to Boyer & Talton, the two main cowboy dudes. it's really good. they actually had a Cowboy compilation on cd. probably out of print. if you see it cheap, BUY IT. nice history lesson here:


http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/57477.jpg


Charles Scott Boyer II (17 October, 1947), professionally known as Scott Boyer, a consummate guitarist-singer-songwriter, gained acclaim internationally as a founding member of the seminal folk-rock group Cowboy, and as the songwriter of hits for Gregg Allman, Eric Clapton, and Bonnie Bramlett. Boyer spent his youth in Upstate NY and Kentucky, before settling in Jacksonville, Florida, where his musical skills were honed. He played piano and viola, before gravitating to the guitar. In 1965, Boyer and, following Dylan and the Lovin’ Spoonful’s foray into electrified folk, put together a band two high school friends, David Brown and Butch Trucks (Allman Bros.), blending folk and rock elements.
Boyer had an early hit with “Sandcastles”; encouraged by Duane and Gregg Allman, Boyer and trio found a club gig in Daytona Beach, and then cut a cover “Let’s Get Together,” later a huge hit for The Youngbloods, another folk-rock trio. Changing the name from The Bitter IND, to the 31st of February their early singles paved the way for a 1967 session at Criteria Studio in Miami resulting in an eponymous album on Vanguard Records, reaching No. 98 on the Billboard charts.
During this period, Boyer participated in open-air groundbreaking concerts at Riverfront Park in Jacksonville, witnessing the emergence of what would be labeled Southern Rock; on scene were bands such as The One Percent (later known as Lynyrd Skynyrd), The Second Coming (with future Allman Brothers members Berry Oakley and Dickie Betts), and Duane Allman, himself (Gregg would remain in Los Angeles a while). The 31st of February expanded to a quintet briefly to include Duane and Gregg Allman; that quintet cut demos under the name The 31st of February, which were sent to Vanguard but declined; the session reappeared in 1971 as Duane and Gregg Allman, The Early Years on Bold Records.
In 1968, Boyer was living in Gainesville, FL, and playing with keyboard player Bill Pillmore; the two co-wrote “Living in the Country,” which appeared on the first Cowboy album Reach for the Sky on Capricorn (1970), which also featured Boyer’s song “It's Time,” the title song of Bonnie Bramlett’s first solo album (1974) on Capricorn Records. The band, Cowboy, formed in Orlando in late 1968, cut four albums for Capricorn Records between 1970 and 1977: these were Reach for the Sky (1970); the second album, 5'll Getcha 10, was cut at Muscle Shoals Sound’s 3614 Jackson Highway Studio in 1971, which featured Boyer’s “Please Be With Me” featuring Duane Allman; the song was picked up by Eric Clapton, who covered it on his Grammy-winning 461 Ocean Boulevard, in 1974. A double album on Capricorn titled Why Quit When You’re Losing was released in1975 featuring material culled from the first two Cowboy albums.
Boyer and Talton emerged as the driving force behind Cowboy, touring with the Allman Brothers Band for six weeks in 1973. Boyer and Talton were also recruited as members of the house rhythm section with Bill Stewart and David Brown, at Capricorn Studio in Macon, often working with producer Johnny Sandlin (Hour Glass). With Cowboy, Boyer was involved in two further album projects for Capricorn before the label’s 1977 demise: Boyer & Talton (1975) and Happy to Be Alive (1976). Boyer and Talton’s involvement in the Capricorn house band, yielded fine sessions for Bonnie Bramlett, Martin Mull, Alex Taylor, Kitty Wells, and Gregg Allman.

okay i'm digging the first two humble pie records so much i'm a little ashamed that i've never heard them until now. but they don't really belong on this thread. that mix of acoustic/electric, gahhhhhhh, kills me every time. so good to me.

i listened to the bob mosley record today, and man that record is wildly inconsistent and usually not very good.

there is still some good stuff on it though. or at least i've played it like a dozen times, so there must be something i like about it.

there are some good country rock/ballads. the stuff that tries to be hard rock is really really bad i think.

i thought there was one guitar track with some fuzz and stuff on it that i liked, but maybe i'm thinking of something else.

either way, it's a great cover
http://www.woundedbird.com/mosley/2068.jpg

i got another poco record from the dollar bin today but i haven't listened to it yet.

I got Poco's Deliverin' in the Reckless closing down sale. Played it while I cooked a vat o' Jambalaya.

I also found two a Mike Nesmith produced Red Rhodes album called Velvet Hammer in a Cowboy Band. There's a track called Jay's Song that sounds like a pedal steel version of Midnight Cowboy. Awesome. Funny self-deprecating inner sleeve, joking about the extensive back catalogue of the label, consisiting of a single record by a guy called Garland Frady. Is it wrong to wish that was my name??

Red is a great name too, for a dog or a guy, but if Red was my name, I'd be Red White, so folks would call me Pink.

The other Red Rhodes-related album I half-mentioned was actually Brewer and Shipley's Weeds. Cool song called 'Boomerang', that starts off with some weed-happy hippy lyrics about 'it' being 'alright'. Just as you'd hope, really.

"Velvet Hammer in a Cowboy Band"


i'm glad someone else on ilm has finally heard this! i love that album. so strange in its way.

i wrote this on that van dyke parks thread. seems to fit on here too as far as the cali vibe goes:


"when i listen to velvet hammer in a cowboy band by red rhodes i think of song cycle. mostly cuz it's such a strange and slippery take on country, olde-tymey, bluegrass, americana. it is NOT normal. velvet hammer came out on mike nesmith's label and red played on all of mike's equally hard-to-categorize solo albums. red also played on song cycle, so that's another reason why i think of it when i'm playing velvet hammer. he also played steel guitar on notorious byrd brothers, millenium's begin album, curt boetcher's solo album, john philips' wolfking of la album, bert jansch's la turnaround album, and ian matthews' valley hi album and harry nilsson's son of schmilsson. along with lots of other albums. i could probably connect all of this stuff really easily if i felt like it. red is the kevin bacon of stoner patriotism."

Didn't know he was on Song Cycle! But you're right about Velvet Hammer not sounding straight country or rootsy or whatever. That track Lunar Nova sounds like something off of a library record. Almost exotic. Closer to how I imagine BJ Cole sounding like.

oh, i wanna hear it now! i am not really into van dyke parks though.

i watched that townes van zandt doc "be here to love me" last night when i got home from the roky show. there's some great stuff in there, some great stories and amazing performances. i wish his LPs weren't so expensive; i went to check ebay and they're all pretty much beyond my means.

ian, u don't like Song Cycle?

i'm not wild abt it, but i wouldn't say i "don't like it."

i may be drunk, but scott is totally OTM. poco rules. jammin "from the inside" now and i may as well be listenin to the burritos.

anyone care to do a POX crucial-must-hear based on the topic of this thread? i am looking for granola or luxe psychedelic 70s pop-rock with unique or very good production but also lots and lots of hooks and good lyrics to match. kind of like what jaxon was searching for in the starter post to this thread.

i just found this blog. he seems to be into this kinda stuff (along w/way too much indie rock crap that i don't care about).

here's a post w/a few John the Wolf King songs http://aquariumdrunkard.com/?p=1341

and here's his burnouts of La posts. all of the mp3s are gone, but they're a good starting point for searching out.
http://aquariumdrunk.blogspot.com/2007/01/la-burnout-part-one-of-three.html
http://aquariumdrunk.blogspot.com/2007/01/la-burnout-part-two-of-three.html
http://aquariumdrunkard.com/?p=8

MP3: Loudon Wainwright III :: Hollywood Hopeful
MP3: Johnny Darrell :: Mae Jean Goes To Hollywood
MP3: The Mamas & The Papas :: Safe In My Garden
MP3: Standells :: Riot On Sunset Strip
MP3: Jackie DeShannon :: Lurel Canyon
MP3: The Fun & Games :: Topanga Canyon Road
MP3: John Mayall :: Laurel Canyon Home
MP3: Spirit :: Topanga Windows
MP3: Mama Cass Eliott :: California Earthquake
MP3: The Birds :: Precious Kate
MP3: Albert Hammond :: It Never Rains In California
MP3: Jack Nitzsche :: Lower California
MP3: Guy Clark :: L.A. Freeway
MP3: Thomas Jefferson Kaye :: L.A.
MP3: The Beau Brummels :: Bless You California
MP3: LOVE :: Maybe The People Would Be
MP3: Gene Clark :: Los Angeles
MP3: The Byrds :: Bad Night At The Whiskey
MP3: David Soul :: Topanga
MP3: Neil Young :: L.A.
MP3: The Mamas & The Papas :: Twelve Thirty
MP3: Neil Young :: Sweet Joni
MP3: Joni Mitchell :: For The Roses
MP3: Jackie DeSahannon :: L.A.
MP3: Mickey Dolenz :: Beverly Hills
MP3: Flying Burrito Brothers :: Sin City
MP3: Dennis Wilson :: Pacific Ocean Blue
MP3: Gene Clark :: From A Silver Phial
MP3: Jackson Brown :: Before The Deluge
MP3: Neil Young :: Revolution Blues
MP3: Warren Zevon :: Desperados Under the Eaves
MP3: Phil Ochs :: The World Began In Eden And Ended In Los Angeles [Live]
MP3: Flo & Eddie :: Keep It Warm
MP3: Steely Dan :: Babylon Sisters
MP3: John Philips :: Topanga Canyon
MP3: John Philips :: Malibu People

he's also got a bunch of CSNY outtakes & demos that i haven't listened to yet, but am very interested in.

Check out this group Relatively Clean Rivers.

Yes. Jeff Tweedy just gave an interview where he said that Wilco's new record is heavily influenced by these guys. The record is incredible. Search it out, you're in for a treat.

Tweedy namedropping Relatively Clean Rivers. Oy vey. That will actually make me check out the new Wilco disc.

Y'know, there really needs to be some more yapping about New Riders of the Purple Sage. They really did nail cosmic-America with a mix of American Beauty and Obscured by Clouds. It doesn't get more space cowbody than these lyrics!

IF YOU GO DOWN ROUND THE BEND IN THE RIVER
YOU’RE GONNA FIND A FEW CHANGES
BEEN GOING DOWN THERE
‘CAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE
ROUND THE BEND IN THE RIVER
HAVE FORGOTTEN THEIR DREAMS
AND THEY’VE CUT OFF THEIR HAIR

AND TAKE A LAST, FLYING LOOK
AT THE LAST LONELY EAGLE
HE’S SOARING THE LENGTH OF THE LAND
SHED A TEAR FOR THE FATE
OF THE LAST LONELY EAGLE
FOR YOU KNOW THAT HE NEVER WILL LAND

IF YOU GO DOWN WHERE THE LIGHTS
PUSH THE NIGHTTIME
BACK FAR ENOUGH SO YOU CAN’T FEEL THE FEAR
REMEMBER THE BOY WHO YOU LEFT ON THE MOUNTAIN
WHO’S SITTING ALONE WITH THE STARS AND HIS TEARS

IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE GAS-POWERED FLATLAND
WHERE MOST OF THE PEOPLE JUST THINK
THAT THEY’RE FREE
REMEMBER THE PEACE THAT YOU HAD
ON THE MOUNTAIN
COME BACK TO THE LOVE THAT YOU HAD HERE WITH ME

FOR YOU KNOW THAT HE NEVER WILL LAND

C'mon, dudes. Shed that tear, damn it!

I wondering which I'd rather be: a cocaine cozmic-cowboy from L.A. or a acid-fried rural rocker from the Bay Area. I lean towards the latter, but it's a tough decision.

thanks jaxon. i am reading the joe boyd book and i'm curious because i'm very much a dilettante when it comes to this stuff, but what i've heard i like very much (partially because i grew up on it like others here). i suppose i could use the book as a guide, but second opinions from ILxperts are always good.