luni, 9 martie 2009

The Lemon Pipers - Jungle Marmalade (1968)

The Lemon Pipers were a 1960s /psychedelic pop band from Oxford, Ohio known chiefly for their song "Green Tambourine", which reached number one in the United States in 1968. The song has been credited as being the first bubblegum No.1 hit and ushering in the bubblegum pop era.
The band, formed in 1966 from two Oxford bands, Ivan and the Sabres and Tony and the Bandits comprised singer Ivan Browne (b. 1947), guitarist William Bartlett (b. 1946), keyboardist Robert G. "Reg" Nave (b. 1945), drummer William Albaugh (1948-1999), guitarist Ron Simkins (b.1948) and New Zealand-born bassist Steve Walmsley (b. 1949).
The band played a mix of blues and rock jams regularly in Oxford clubs and a Cincinnati underground rock venue, the Ludlow Garage, and released a single on the Carol Records label, "Quiet Please". In late 1967 they were offered a recording deal by a talent scout from Buddah Records and moved to New York.
Working with producer and songwriter Paul Leka, the group’s debut on Buddah was a Bartlett composition, "Turn Around and Take A Look". When the song failed to make the charts, the label approached Leka and his songwriting partner, Shelley Pinz, who were working out of an office in the same Broadway building as Buddah, to come up with a song. The pair wrote "Green Tambourine" and the band reluctantly recorded it. The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 at the end of 1967 and hit No.1 in February 1968. The song peaked at No. 7 in the UK and was also a hit worldwide.
Its success led to pressure being placed on the band by the label to replicate the song with an identical follow-up and in March the band released another Leka/Pinz song, "Rice Is Nice", which peaked at No. 46 in the US and No. 41 in the UK in May. The band had little enthusiasm for either song, however, dubbing them "funny-money music" and recording them only because they knew they would be dropped by Buddah if they refused.
Their pop success created what Nave has described as "the duality of the Lemon Pipers": "We were a stand-up rock 'n' roll band, and then all of a sudden, we're in a studio, being told how to play and what to play."
The chasm between the label’s aspirations and the band’s own musical tastes became apparent on the Lemon Pipers’ debut album, Green Tambourine (1967). Produced by Leka, the album contained five Leka/Pinz songs and the band-written free-form and extended blues-inspired tracks "Fifty Year Void" and "Through With You" (the latter bearing influences of The Byrds and running to more than nine minutes). Writing in Bubblegum is the Naked Truth, Gary Pig Gold commented: "It was the Pipers’ way with a tough-pop gem in the under-four-minute category which was most impressive by far: 'Rainbow Tree', 'Shoeshine Boy' and especially 'Blueberry Blue' each sported a taut, musical sophistication worthy of The Move and, dare I say it, even the Magical Mystery Beatles."
The band recorded a second album for Buddah, Jungle Marmalade, which again showed both sides of the band – another Leka/Pinz bubblegum song, "Jelly Jungle", (released as a single and peaking at No. 51 in the US), a version of the Carole King/Gerry Goffin song "I Was Not Born to Follow" (released in 1968 by the Byrds) and an 11-minute, 43 second epic, "Dead End Street/Half Light".
The band left the Buddah label in 1969 and later dissolved.


Tracklist :
1. Jelly Jungle
2. I Was Not Born to Follow
3. Everything Is You
4. Catch Me Falling
5. Hard Core
6. Love Beads and Meditation
7. I Need Someone
8. Mirrors
9. Wine and Violet
10. Dead End Street/Half Light

2 comentarii: