Arthur Lee

The Sons Of Adam—a lean, mean rock’n’roll machine from the Hollywood rock scene of the mid-1960s—quite literally blew the competition off the stage. Led by influential lead guitarist Randy Holden (Other Half / Blue Cheer), the Sons boasted an affable frontman in Jac Ttanna (Genesis) and an incomparable rhythm section in Mike Port and Michael Stuart-Ware (Love). Schooled in surf, emboldened by the British Invasion, the band had a fearsome reputation as a live act. In this unprecedented anthology, Saturday’s Sons features a previously unreleased 1966 full concert performance from San Francisco’s famed Avalon Ballroom, a recording so powerfully dynamic that few listeners will doubt the band’s masterful live presence. The quartet enjoyed a brief but incandescent three-year career which is fully documented on this compilation with rare 45s, studio outtakes and demo recordings, including fiery surf material from their early incarnation The Fender IV, and the legendary single “Feathered Fish”, donated to the band by Love’s Arthur Lee.

The second (and arguably most fully realized) album from Texas psychedelic band Fever Tree, Another Time, Another Place (1968) owes less to the sound of roots-based contemporaries like the 13th Floor Elevators, Moving Sidewalks, or the Sir Douglas Quintet and more to heavier West Coast acid rock. One of the most underrated '60s psych bands, Fever Tree comes off like a coincidental midnight meeting of Jim Morrison, Steppenwolf, Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, and Jimi Hendrix at the tail end of a drug and whiskey binge. Luckily, however, the group transcends its influences by sheer force of attitude. The material here (mostly written by producers Scott Holtzman and Vivian Holtzman) is of generally pretty high quality, wisely avoiding too much of the drippy "ice cream cones and cosmic smiles" type stuff that bogged down the work of pretenders like Ultimate Spinach and Tricycle…

Love's Forever Changes is the psychedelic folk-rock pioneers’ finest achievement. The set features a few firsts for the album, including the CD-debut of a remastered version made by its original co-producer and engineer Bruce Botnick, as well as the first-ever release of the mono version on CD. Also included are alternate mixes of the album, as well as a selection of rare and unreleased singles and studio outtakes.
Forever Changes made only a minor dent on the charts when it was first released in 1967, but years later it became recognized as one of the finest and most haunting albums to come out of the Summer of Love, which doubtless has as much to do with the disc's themes and tone as the music, beautiful as it is…

Recorded in the midst of 1966, naturally after the spring release of their debut but before "Pushin' Too Hard" climbed into the national charts in the spring of 1967, A Web of Sound finds the Seeds pushing their sound into new dimensions, happily keeping pace with their Los Angeles contemporaries Love and the Doors. That the Seeds never received the respect accorded to their peers, either then or now, may be partially due to their lack of lyrical ambition, or it could be due to the Hollywood teenage sleaze that seeped out of this quartet led by garage rock icon Sky Saxon. Whatever the Seeds did, it sounded somewhat dirty, a maxim that applies to A Web of Sound even if it lacks singles as hard and filthy as "Pushin' Too Hard"…