“LSD-25” by the Gamblers is one of several surf instrumentals toward the end of the Pebbles, Volume 4 CD.  This track dates from 1961; the allstar line-up includes Bruce Johnston, Larry Taylor (later in Canned Heat), Elliot Ingber (Fraternity of Man, Captain Beefheart, Little Feat, etc.), and famed drummer Sandy Nelson.  According to the CD’s liner notes (by Nigel Strange):  “Actually, surfers were the first subculture to embrace LSD, at a time when it was almost exclusively the plaything of the academics.  With their footloose existence, and a sometimes mystical rapport with the ocean, the early surfers (we’re talking years before the craze, of course) were in many ways the true inheritors of the beatniks’ existential tradition, standing outside normal society and contemplating the void.  In any event, this must surely be the first acid reference to appear on a record by several years.”  

(December 2014)

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Fleshing out the details (via Wikipedia), Kim Fowley’s first venture into music was to become the manager in 1957 for a band called the Sleepwalkers that included Bruce Johnston and drummer Sandy Nelson; future superstar record producer Phil Spector was also occasionally with the band.  Last month I mentioned a band called the Gamblers which released an instrumental in 1961 called “LSD-25”; Johnston and Nelson were both in that band also. 

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The following year (1958), Phil Spector assembled the Teddy Bears (the only vocal group that included Spector as a member); Sandy Nelson was a last-minute addition, with other bandmembers including Marshall Leib and lead singer Annette Kleinbard.  Phil Spector wrote a song for the group called “To Know Him Is to Love Him”, based upon an inscription on his father’s tombstone, and the song became a Number One hit in December 1958.  As Wikipedia put it:  “At 19 years old, Spector had written, arranged, played, sung, and produced the best-selling record in the country.” 

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Kim Fowley’s first producer credit was on the song “Charge” by the Renegades, a band that was composed of Bruce Johnston, Sandy Nelson, Nick Venet – yet another future record producer, specifically at Capitol Records – and Richard Podolor, whose later credits as a record producer include “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night.  

(January 2015/1)

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