Along with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and every Steppenwolf album that came out, I bought the first (and arguably only "real") Electric Prunes album.
EP was a an experimental "psychedelic" band, and their song "I had too much to Dream (Last Night)" ended at No. 11 on the top 40, despite the band's laughable name.EP kind of disappeared in the U.S. after than, going through a lot of attrition and wild creative swings before disbanding about '69. There is a current EP, reformed from geezers who comprised one of the last rosters of the band -- none of them original members -- that "reunited" in '99 and began touring Europe (they were big in Sweden).
But for about two weeks in '67, after an American Bandstand appearance, the original EP was considered groundbreaking in the so-called "acid rock" movement.
But come on, Electric Prunes? (What? They give you static regularity?) Not quite the literary props of Steppenwolf, or the poetic quality of Rolling Stones, cool imagery of Led Zeppelin or the dark metaphor of Black Sabbath. The other bands went on to greatness on a path that followed, and eventually overtook/succeeded the Beatles.
So, time travel with me a bit. It's a hot eastern Washington summer afternoon, humid, the windows of a 14-year-old kid's upstairs bedroom open to a limp, ineffective breeze.
You lie on the linoleum floor, sweating, stripped down to an old pair of cutoffs, forgetting for a moment that the longer you try to grow your hair and bushier and curlier it gets, a sort of celtic version of an afro.
The needle drops into the groove, a bit of static erupts from the speakers, one inches from each ear, and this is what you hear.
