Paul Butter

If you want to know why producer Gary Usher is revered in some circles, play The Peanut Butter Conspiracy Is Spreading next to the pretty much self-produced For Children of All Ages. A name as trendy as the Jefferson Airplane - and a sound that is absolutely the Airplane - meets the Mamas & the Papas; the '60s guitars sound smart; the 1967 liner notes by Lawrence Dietz tell you nothing about the group; and the front cover looks like something Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper encountered during Easy Rider. "It's a Happening Thing," like much of this record, tries too hard. Decades after it was recorded, there is charm in a band like the PBC (which rhymes with PCP) being such an authentic figment of someone's countercultural imagination. Sandi Robison is stunning on "Then Came Love," and the production by Gary Usher really is impressive - it makes the record something special…

Four-hour, 72-track anthology of the Laurel Canyon music community that became a dominant worldwide force in the late 60s/early 70s. Tracing the scene's development from The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Love and The Doors through to early country-rock and the singer/songwriter boom that defined the early 70s. By the end of the 60s, the international music world's nexus had shifted from such previous hotspots as Liverpool, London and San Francisco to Laurel Canyon, a rural oasis in the midst of the bustle of Los Angeles. Just minutes from Hollywood, the Sunset Strip and the LA record companies/studios, Laurel Canyon became home to a folk, country, rock and pop hybrid that encompassed everyone from early players The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield to The Doors, Frank Zappa, Glen Campbell and manufactured pop kingpins The Monkees.

Ennio Morricone’s work on The Hateful Eight aside, most of Quentin Tarantino’s movies famously don’t have much in the way of traditional scores. The songs that have played a starring role in so many of his iconic scenes aren’t original compositions—they’re vintage gems, often dug up from the crates by the director himself. The music from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, captured on this soundtrack, is a prime example. Like the film itself, the songs—from José Feliciano’s cover of “California Dreamin’” to Vanilla Fudge’s take on “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”—are a time capsule of late-’60s Los Angeles, tracks Tarantino himself heard on the radio growing up in the city’s South Bay region (although there are, as usual for the director, lots of deeper cuts, like The Box Tops’ “Choo Choo Train”).

This is a great collection of rare and hard to find tunes compiled by Jeffrey Glenn. Hundreds of odds & ends by little known groups, famous singers, and famous singers before they became famous.