Sopwith

From the fertile San Francisco ballroom scene, the Sopwith Camel emerged in 1966 with a refreshingly melodic spin on the overamplified electric kool-aid coming from their psychedelic peers the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The band's name was almost snatched by Bay Area concert impresario Chet Helms, who was looking for a catchy moniker to promote the new blues-based group being fronted by Janis Joplin and eventually settled on Big Brother & the Holding Company. Unfortunately, the band has suffered the double indignation of either being cast in the same lot as its trippy hippie counterparts or as sunshine pop lightweights - neither of which is wholly accurate. Their one hit - the title track, "Hello, Hello" - did reach the Top Ten…

Some refer to The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon as the greatest album of all time! The story behind this LP, according to legend, is that when Hello Hello from Sopwith Camel's debut lp was used for a TV commercial, the band became inspired to make a new record. They supposedly went to Hawaii, enjoyed the herbal splendors the island is known for, then returned to California to record The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon. The record does indeed sound like a band drifting through clouds, as the cover illustration suggests. The lead track, Fazon became a minor FM radio hit, (when FM radio was still underground). It sounds like Traffic's Low Spark meets Steely Dan's Dr. Woo meets Flying off of the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. It's breezy, cool, subversive fun…