The Mighty Lemon Drops

Artist: The Mighty Lemon Drops

LP: Out of Hand
Song: "Out of Hand"

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I've been on a Mighty Lemon Drops kick these past few days, and I've just read someone saying that they sorta' sound like Echo & the Bunnymen. I suppose they do! Originally called The Sherbet Monsters, this English group that formed in 1985 had fortunately changed their name before I first heard of them when "Out of Hand" played on MTV's 120 Minutes, which I watched religiously every Sunday night at some divey pizza joint near BYU campus in Provo, UT during my freshman year at college there in 1987-1988. Unfortunately The Lemon Drops, who were both fabulous and mighty, melted away in 1992. You can read about them here.

 

[ The Mighty Lemon Drops ]

The Flower Pot Men

Artist: The Flower Pot Men

LP: 7" single

Song: "A Walk In the Sky"

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Song: "Am I Losing You"

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I'm still snowed in, with a brand new storm descending upon me now, and then another planned for tomorrow afternoon. So yes, I'm still in the midst of a winter wonderland, but I needed a break from the Christmas music. Today I'm reminiscing about my hot August nights in Barcelona, with my days spent rummaging through dusty Spanish record stores, at one of which I found this 1967 British psychedelic gem from The Flower Pot Men (called The Flower Men in the USA, where we just say no to drugs). 

According to Wikipedia, it was session musicians that recorded "Let's Go To San Francisco," which became a smash hit in the UK. Songwriters and homebodies John Carter and Ken Lewis weren't really the types to go on tour, so they quickly threw together a band made up of hand-picked psychedelic-looking session musicians that would hit the road to perform the hit song and try to keep the momentum alive. "A Walk In the Sky" was The Flower Pot Men's follow-up single, and though it did well in Germany and The Netherlands, it wasn't all that popular in England. After a few more failed attempts to cultivate another hit, The Flower Pot Men wilted and died in 1970, each moving on to greener gardens. And speaking of greener gardens, it's snowing like the dickens outside right now.

[ The Flower Pot Men ]

The Lovin' Spoonful

Artist: The Lovin' Spoonful

LP: Daydream
Song: "Warm Baby"
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Song: "Jug Band Music" 
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Here's a big lovin' spoonful for ya directly from Seattle. Fill the spoon with whatever you want! I can't help but think that jug band music might well be the answer to curing the world of all its ills. Terrorism? Hateful murderous lunacy? Fanatical despotism? Institutionalized racism and discrimination? Apply a few bars of playful jug band music and get some rest; the symptoms should dissipate momentarily. 

Over the past few years The Lovin' Spoonful has emerged as my #1 favorite American pop band of the mid-to-late 1960s. They've got talent, an enviable wardrobe, a sort-of zip-a-dee-doo-dah/laissez-faire about them, and, rarest of all, they've got a sense of humor. You can read about The Lovin' Spoonful here and go here to visit their website. Best-ever LP liner notes are included below.

[ The Lovin' Spoonful ]

The Cryan' Shames

Artist: The Cryan' Shames

LP: Sugar & Spice

Song: "Sugar & Spice" 
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Song: "Ben Franklin's Almanac" 
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It's a Cryan' Shame that these hip '60s psychedelic pop-rockers were never very well known outside their native Chicago. Their biggest hit, "Sugar and Spice," peaked at #49 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966, though I prefer the single's b-side, "Ben Franklin's Almanac." It's neat that their tambourine player, Jim "J.C. Hooke" Pilster, is placed front and center in the photos instead of having his nifty old-style hook-hand 'conveniently' hidden behind someone's paisley bell-bottoms. Pilster and singer Tom "Toad" Doody are the only original members who are still with The Cryan' Shames today. More on Wikipedia here.

[ The Cryan' Shames ]

The American Breed

Artist: The American Breed

LP: Pumpkin, Powder, Scarlet & Green

Song: "Welcome, You're In Love" 
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Vancouver is now a two-record-store town! Once again, a local small-town paper annoyingly reports a vinyl store's opening as if nobody has ever seen or heard of records before. I mean it's not like records are one of these. Do Scott Hewitt's readers know nothing of the world in which they live? I guess it's quite possible that they don't. Anyway, I've heard of records, thankfully, so I stopped in at the fabulous new 1709 Records (at 1709 Broadway Street) in Vancouver and found all sorts of interesting artifacts. 

One of them was this terrific 1968 LP by '60s Chicago pop group The American Breed. Formed in 1962, the band was called Gary & the Knight Lites until 1967, when they picked a new name by pulling it out of a hat. You can read more about The American Breed here. Sadly, singer Gary Loizzo (on the cover in blue) died a few weeks ago of pancreatic cancer; he was 70 years old.

[ The American Breed ]

 [ 1709 Records — Vancouver, Washington ]

Wolfe

Artist: Wolfe

LP: Wolfe

Song: "Time Is Money" 
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Song: "Funny, Funny" 
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Last weekend I met up with some friends at Vera's Restaurant for brunch here in Ballard. That's just around the corner from Sonic Boom Records, so I decided to pack a bunch of LPs into the car and take them in for trade after our meal to see what I could get for them...but not before we went strolling through Ballard's lovely Sunday Street Market! 

 
Well they gave me a lot for my records, and I spent hours (not one, not two, not three, not four) digging through the bins and ended up leaving with some real neat stuff. Just when I thought I'd finished looking, I came across two crates in the corner filled with Japanese pop albums from the '60s, '70s and '80s that someone had brought in—priced at just $2.49 apiece! I'll hopefully be posting some of those here soon. 

This 1972 Wolfe LP was another one of the things I found at Sonic Boom. There isn't much info on the web about the group, but there's a terrific review on the Bite It Deep blog here. Another review, a shorter one, can be found here, where additional musical experts have weighed in with their own opinions of the record. Someone called 'cosmowombo' gives the LP just two stars out of five and reports, "I don't like it"; 'daspmusik' also rates the record two stars and calls it "Below Mediocre"; 'Kanto_Sho' gives the album a single star and says, "Terrible - bro in the band wouldn't help." I don't know what that means, but I do know that those folks must have really shitty taste in music.

The Hobbits

Artist: The Hobbits

LP: Men and Doors—The Hobbits Communicate

Song: "Men and Doors"
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Song: "The Journey"
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Song: "Feeling"
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My friend Chris and I went on a little road trip getaway to the Olympic Peninsula last weekend. We visited the beautiful and fog-shrouded Olympic Mountains, stopped in quaint little towns like Port Gamble, Port Angeles, Sequim, and Port Townsend, and in the Port of Townsend I even found a nice little record store! Mixed in with a few other shops in a subterranean stone passageway, Quimper Sound has been supplying the peninsula with music since 1974. One of the best things I found there is this highly dramatic psychedelic pop record made by The Hobbits in 1968. It's not easy to find online photos of the band since annoying stuff like this keeps popping up. Fortunately, there's a photo of the group on the back of the LP, along with lots of other stuff that I've included below. You can read more about Jimmy Curtiss and The Hobbits on the allmusic website here.

 [ The Hobbits ]

[ Quimper Sound — Port Townsend, Washington ]