My Generation of Sunday 28 Feb.: The Royal Guardsmen, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, The Electric Prunes [Ed’s Show 2015-08]

Specials: The Royal Guardsmen, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, The Electric Prunes ** Radio 68: All the sounds and all the voices that made the sixties ** Happy To Be Different  

SHOWTIME Sundays at 12:00 noon  CET (UK: 11 a.m.), repeated 16:00, 20:00 and 24:000 hrs midnight CET (UK: 3 p.m., 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.). Ends 04:00 CET / 3 a.m. UK  (Monday morning)

MY GENERATION  & BLUESIDE: THE PLAYLISTS
NEW SHOW MY GENERATION
SPECIAL THE ROYAL GUARDSMEN ** AND ALSO: JOE JONES ** ZOOT MONEY & THE BIG ROLL BAND ** DEE DEE SHARP  ** 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS *THE ELECTRIC PRUNES:cd  CALIFORNIA, 2004**  NILS LOFGREN ** THE ROLLING STONES ** Voice Malcolm X
NEW SHOW BLUESIDE
SPECIAL: BOB WEIR , JERRY GARCIA ** AND ALSO: THE JIMMY ROGERS ALL STARS feat.  Lowell Fulson  **BORIS KARLOFF **CHRIS FARLOWE **

REPEATED SHOW

MY GENERATION: SPECIALS PLASTIC PENNY, RONNIE BIRD
SPECIALS: PLASTIC PENNY: Two Sides Of A Penny (LP, 1968) ** SPECIAL RONNIE BIRD ** AND ALSO: THE TEMPTATIONS ** THE OUTSIDERS ** SIMON & GARFUNKEL ** NEIL DIAMOND ** THE PRETTY THINGS ** RARE EARTH ** DOBIE GRAY  **

BLUESIDE: SPECIAL  TAJ MAHAL
SPECIAL: TAJ MAHAL’s debut album with Ry Cooder and Jesse Ed Davis, TAJ MAHAL with THE ROLLING STONES (the Circus!) , RY COODER with Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts,  JOHN LEE HOOKER and Ry Cooder, JESSE ED DAVIS & BOBBY JAMESON ** AND ALSO: LONNIE MACK  (album The Alligator Years, thanks to Alligator Records and Airplay Direct ) ** JOHNNY SHINES & SNOOKY PRYOR (album: BACK TO THE COUNTRY , thanks to Airplay Direct) **

MY GENERATION, incl. BLUESIDE: THE SHOW 
MY GENERATION: each week, a new 60 minute episode followed by the previous show, totalling two hours of all the sounds and the voices that shaped the 60s. Each show includes a special highlighting one artist, release, topic or trend. BLUESIDE: a new 60 minute episode every week, followed by the previous show, totalling two hours of the blues that influenced and inspired the sounds of the sixties – from the originators till the present day. Each show includes a special highlighting one artist, release, topic or trend.

SPECIALS 

THE ROYAL GUARDSMEN

Mainly remembered for their novel tyhit “Snoopy vs The Red Baron”, The Royal Guardsmen originally played entirely different material. They were more of a tough beat band (now called ‘garage’) like The McCoys, at times they even producing  light psych, organ-based tunes.
Radio 68 plays those songs– and their hit…

“The Royal Guardsmen formed in Ocala, Florida in 1966 with Bill Balough on bass, John Burdette on drums, Tom Richards on guitar, Billy Taylor on organ, Barry Winslow on vocals and guitar and Chris Nunley on vocals. They started out, as many groups do, playing at proms, dances and at a local teen club called Johnson’s Beat.In the mid-to-late ’60s, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip was at its peak of popularity. This had a lot to do with its light-hearted philosophical edge that was in tune with the heightened awareness and social consciousness of the latter part of the decade. The unexpected focal point of the strip was Charlie Brown’s beagle Snoopy, who evolved into less of a pet than a voice of conscience. One of the recurring themes of the Snoopy strips was his fantasy exploits as a World War I flying ace trying to defeat Baron Von Richthofen, aka “The Red Baron.” His doghouse doubled as a Sopwith Camel biplane. One night, while opening for Monte Rock the Third in Tampa, The Royal Guardsmen were seen by a producer named Phil Gernhard, who had been involved in Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs hit, “Stay”. He approached the band backstage and handed them a legal pad with just the lyrics to “Snoopy Vs The Red Baron” with a note that said “give me a military feel or cadence.” After talking for a while, The Guardsmen agreed to give it a shot. They went back to Tommy Richards house and with a two track tape recorder running, laid the song down. When they played it back, the band members hated it, but still sent it Gernhard who loved it. The band re-recorded the song at a recording studio and Gernhard took it to Bob and Gene Schwartz at Laurie Records in New York, who were interested enough to release the song as a single”. Source: http://www.classicbands.com/royalguardsmen.html

BOB WEIR & JERRY GARCIA: two Grateful Dead guitarists
“Bob Weir was a rhythm guitarist for the legendary rock band the Grateful Dead from 1964 to 1995 and later reunited to tour with former members as The Other Ones. Guitarist Bob Weir was born on October 16, 1947 in San Francisco, California. In 1964, he started a band that was eventually called the Grateful Dead, with Jerry Garcia and Ron McKernan. In 1972, Weir put out his first solo album. He also performed with other bands throughout his time with the Dead. After Garcia died in 1995, Weir toured with RatDog, and later reunited with former Dead members to tour”. Source: http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671

Jerry Garcia started as a banjo player, playing American folk music. He was known for his guitar playing with The Grateful Dead, but he really was a Multi-instrumentalist”: “He was known as Captain Trips for his prototypical psychedelic persona, and Uncle Jerry for his amiable onstage demeanor. He was adored by Deadheads and jeered by critics who considered his extended guitar jams with the Grateful Dead ponderous and aimless. But Jerry Garcia’s stinging, lyrical guitar sound was utterly distinctive, and his delicate, mournful, rough-around-the-edges vocals helped define the psychedelic music of 1960s San Francisco. He was a cultural and musical icon, his ethos and improvisatory style emulated and expanded on by generations of followers”. Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/jerry-garcia/biography#ixzz416F8tgKv

RADIO 68 PLAYS tracks from  Jerry Garcia’s solo album “Compliments” (1974) and Bob Weir’s solo anthology “Weir Here: The Best Of Bob Weir” (2004)

PLASTIC PENNY

Most original members of Plastic Penny had known each other for years, performing as Screaming Lord Sutch’s backing band The Savages and playing in a highly successful dance and ballroom band called Chris Lamb and The Universals, aka The Universals and The Circles. They were Brian Keith aka Brian O’Shea (trombone, guitar, lead vocals), Paul Raymond (organ, who later joined Chicken Shack, Savoy Brown and UFO) and Tony Murray (who went on to The Troggs). They recruited a young Nigel Olsen (later drummer with Elton John) and MIck Grabham (he formed Cochise, joined Procol Harum, etc.). The soulful lead vocals are by Brian Keith, who would score again as The Congregation and as a songwriter.
Their first LP, Two Sides Of A Penny (1968), relies heavily on Raymond’s organ and Brian Keith’s soul voice in slow to mid-tempo songs à la The Box Tops, but with a slight psychedelic touch and some Englishness to it. They scored one huge hit, “Everything I Am”.

RONNIE BIRD
“During the mid-’60s,  Ronnie Bird was the only French artist to successfully emulate the sounds of the British Invasion across the channel. Hewas one of the few French singers with a facility for singing rock & roll in French without sounding strained or embarrassing. His first few discs were crafted with the help of expatriate guitarist  Mickey Baker, the same  Mickey Baker who was half of Mickey and Sylvia (…) For a time, Brid’s band included guitarist Mick Jones, who went on to fame with Foreigner in the ’70s”. (review by Richard Unterberger, allmusic.com) . Ronnie Bird opened for The Rolling Stones in Brussels, 1966.

TAJ MAHAL
“Taj Mahal‘s debut album was a startling statement in its time and has held up remarkably well. Recorded in August of 1967, it was as hard and exciting a mix of old and new blues sounds as surfaced on record in a year when even a lot of veteran blues artists (mostly at the insistence of their record labels) started turning toward psychedelia. The guitar virtuosity, embodied in Taj Mahal‘s slide work (which had the subtlety of a classical performance), Jesse Ed Davis‘s lead playing, and rhythm work by Ry Cooder and Bill Boatman, is of the neatly stripped-down variety that was alien to most records aiming for popular appeal, and the singer himself approached the music with a startling mix of authenticity and youthful enthusiasm (…) . one of the most quietly, defiantly iconoclastic records of 1968” (www.allmusic.com, review by Bruce Eder).