Archival specialists Rhino Records has announced their first ever “Rocktober” celebration, the label planning on releasing limited-edition vinyl reissue of some classic – and some not-so-classic – rock ‘n’ roll albums throughout the month of October. The party kicks off on Tuesday, October 4th, 2016 with an über-cool slate of titles that includes Deep Purple’s Machine Head and Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry.
The celebration continues throughout the month, each Tuesday bringing a brand new batch of vinyl goodies from the likes of the Stooges, the Small Faces, Iron Butterfly, ZZ Top, and the Flamin’ Groovies, among others. These audio flapjacks will only be available at participating brick and mortar record stores, so fluff up your sleeping bag and get ready to camp out overnight to buy the cheap thrills vinyl of your choice from the handy list below.
October 4th
• Deep Purple – Machine Head (clear vinyl, limited edition of 2500 copies, $21.98 list) *
• Foreigner – 4 (red colored vinyl, limited edition of 2400 copies, $19.98 list) *
• Jet – Get Born (180gr black vinyl, $21.98 list) +
• Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry (pink & black starburst colored vinyl w/band poster, limited edition of 2500 copies, $21.98 list) *
October 11th
• Iron Butterfly – Heavy (stereo version, 180gr black vinyl, $19.98 list)
• ZZ Top – Eliminator (red colored vinyl, $19.98 list)
October 18th
• Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies (green, yellow & orange marble vinyl w/one billion dollar bill insert, limited edition of 3000 copies, $24.98 list) *
• Small Faces – First Step (orange vinyl, $19.98 list)
• The Stooges – The Stooges (gold & brown colored vinyl, $19.98 list)
October 25th
• Buckcherry – 15 (10th anniversary vinyl edition, $19.98 list) *
• Heaven & Hell – The Devil You Know (two-LP set on dark orange & gold colored vinyl w/band poster and etching on side four, limited edition of 2000 copies, $27.98 list) *
• T-Rex – T-Rex (remastered vinyl & CD release, $19.98 list each) +
• The Flamin’ Groovies – Groovies Greatest Grooves (two-LP vinyl set, $27.98 list)
* Only available in the U.S.
+ Only available in North America
It doesn’t surprise the Reverend that the good folks at Cleopatra Records would release a project like the five-CD Psych Box, nosiree! Over the past year, the label has made it their mission to dig up and release undiscovered gems by psych-rock legends like Iron Butterfly and Quicksilver Messenger Service as well as discs by fellow travelers like Curved Air, Captain Beyond, and Hawkwind.
Psych Box is packaged in a 7” x 7” box with individual CD wallets and a full color booklet, the set tracing the history of psychedelic rock from its roots in the 1960s through the present day. The set includes choice music from bands like the aforementioned Iron Butterfly and Hawkwind, the Syn (which featured future Yes guitarist Peter Banks), the Legendary Pink Dots, the Warlocks, the Black Angels, and many more.
The enclosed booklet includes band bios and suggested listening for whatever sort of musical acid trip you’d like to book in the future. The set includes a bonus 7” record featuring a spoken word track by Dr. Timothy Leary with a B-side from Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Just check out the track list below and we think you’ll agree that you’re getting a lot of bang for around $40 for the Psych Box!
Psych Box track list:
Disc One
1. The Brian Jonestown Massacre – “Going to Hell”
2. The Black Angels – “Soul Kitchen”
3. The Legendary Pink Dots – “Damien”
4. A Place To Bury Strangers – “Sunbeam”
5. The Warlocks – “You Destroy”
6. Hawkwind – “Opa-Loka”
7. Absolutely Free – “Vision’s”
8. The Movements – “Great Deceiver”
9. Chrome – “Meet You In The Subway”
10. Nikola Tesla & Thee Coils – “Sweet Rays”
11. Rotten Mangos – “Tent Rentals”
12. The Thunderbeats – “Something Inside Me”
13. The Third Sound – “For a While”
14. Sula Bassana – “Lost In Space”
15. Brainticket – “Black Sand”
Disc Two
1. Wild Style Lion – “Love Was In Me” (featuring Kim Gordon)
2. The May Company – “Wrap Around Porch”
3. The See See – “Big Bad Storm”
4. The Syn – “14 Hour Technicolour Dream”
5. Sons of Hippies – “Mirrorball”
6. The Deviants – “Jamie's Song”
7. Cambrian Explosion – “The Sun”
8. Surprise Party – “Cut Me”
9. Siena Root – “In My Kitchen”
10. The Spyrals – “Sunflower Microphone”
11. Studio 69 – “Il Est Juste La”
12. The Litter – “Action Woman”
13. Las Brujas – “Sweaty Windows”
14. Jovontaes – “Forever”
15. Spindrift – “Red Reflection”
16. Dum Dum Girls – “Letter to Hermione”
Disc Three
1. Nico – “All Tomorrow’s Parties”
2. Bonfire Beach – “Black Tinted Moonlight”
3. The Fresh & Onlys – “In The Light”
4. The Altered Hours – “Smoke Your Eyes”
5. Femme Accident – “Everything Goes Wrong”
6. The Ones – “Lady Greengrass”
7. Tales of Murder and Dust – “Laid Bare”
8. Dead Meadow – “The Crystal Ship”
9. The Sonic Dawn – “Japanese Hills”
10. MC5 – “Gold”
11. Tashaki Miyaki – “Take It Or Leave It”
12. Holy Wave – “Do You Feel It”
13. The Tulips – “Winter Winds”
14. Fade In Mona Lisa – “Green Carnations”
15. Electric Moon – “Spaceman”
Disc Four
1. Magic Wands – “Jupiter”
2. Nektar – “It’s All In The Mind”
3. The Chocolate Watchband – “No Way Out”
4. Brujas Del Sol – “Occultation”
5. Calliope – “Iron Hand”
6. Energy 2000 – “Zodiacal Light”
7. The Floormen – “The Place Where The Flat Things Are”
8. The Striped Bananas – “Dark Peace”
9. Indian Jewelry – “Kashmir”
10. Wight Lhite – “Close To Odd”
11. Surly Gates – “Under Your Tongue”
12. Aqua Nebula Oscillator – “Innocent Tu Seras Incandescent”
13. Pink Velvet – “Allez prenons un autre verre”
14. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown – “Devil's Grip”
15. Black Delta Movement – “MacBeth”
16. Aura Blaze – “A Glass of Tears Half Empty”
Disc Five
1. Iron Butterfly – “Possession” (original 7” version)
2. The Fuzztones – “Hallucination Generation”
3. Allah-Las – “Stoned”
4. Love, Hippies & Gangsters – “This Is What We Want”
5. onYou – “National Strings Attached”
6. Secret Colours – “Get To The Sun”
7. The Vacant Lots – “Julia”
8. Black Moon Circle – “The Machine On The Hill”
9. Ttotals – “Life Thus Far Out”
10. Nik Turner – “Time Crypt”
11. Shuggie Otis – “Ice Cream Party” (instrumental)
12. Kim Fowley – “The Trip”
13. Landskap – “South Of No North”
14. The Lucid Experiment – “She’s My Melody”
15. The Raveonettes – “The End”
What is widely considered to be the “classic” Iron Butterfly line-up was together but two memorable years, give or take a month, out of the five decades the band’s lengthy history spans. The foursome of founding band member Doug Ingle (vocals, keyboards), guitarist Eric Brann (nee Braunn), bassist Lee Dorman, and drummer Ron Bushy released a pair of influential albums circa 1968-69 that included a bona-fide classic in the form of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, the first album to be awarded Platinum™ sales status on its way to better than 30 million burgers sold worldwide.
Still, in the annals of “heavy” music, Iron Butterfly is often overshadowed by contemporaries like Steppenwolf, Blue Cheer, and Vanilla Fudge, and when they’re remembered at all, it’s for the seventeen-minutes-plus of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” There’s much more to the band than their most famous song, however. Iron Butterfly’s 1968 debut album, Heavy, featured a different band line-up and is, overall, an unremarkable period piece – a collection of leaden flower-power pop and acid rock that, while curiously entertaining today, was easily lost amidst the late 1960s fray of psychedelia. While In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, released in late 1968, displayed a slight evolution in the band’s sound, it was their third album – the vastly underrated Ball – that showcased Iron Butterfly’s talents and improved band chemistry by moving beyond the band’s psychedelic tendencies to embrace different colors in their sonic palette.
Iron Butterfly’s Ball
Released in January 1969, Iron Butterfly pursued a more melodic song structure for Ball; the album’s material was more consistent than previous, Brann’s guitar solos sharper and more succinct, Ingle’s omniscient keyboard fills more complex and not overwhelming a song’s arrangement. Ball opens with “In The Time of Our Lives,” which was released as the album’s first single. The song disappointingly charted at #96, which is a shame ‘cause “In The Time of Our Live” features a highly atmospheric performance with sudden squalls of fuzzy guitar; Ingle’s chiming, sepulchral keyboards; and haunting vocals that create an eerie but cool Gothic vibe. “Soul Experience,” the album’s second single release, is even better even if it only peaked at #75 on the charts. With psychedelic guitars swirling around Ingle’s somber albeit soulful vocals, and a rumbling of drums, “Soul Experience” was loftier and more musical uplifting than anything the band done before.
By contrast, “Lonely Boy” is a powerful torch song displaying an undeniable R&B influence in Ingle’s torrid vocals and smooth-as-silk, gospel-tinged keys. The song is a striking departure from the band’s normal psych-rock direction, its minimalist but loving instrumentation providing a near-perfect complement to Ingle’s voice. The equally subdued “In The Crowds” is cut from a similar cloth, the band’s complex instrumental backing providing a suitable canvas for Ingle to paint upon, but weak vocals and the song’s shockingly truncated two-minute running time don’t allow for full expression of the original creative idea. Ingle’s “It Must Be Love” is much more interesting, offering textured keyboard patterns and wiry fretwork that are built on a jaunty rhythmic base, and if Ingle’s understated vocals are too low-slung in the mix for most tastes, well, blame the producer.
I Can’t Help But Deceive You, Little Girl
Another Ingle original, “Her Favorite Style,” is an undiscovered psych-pop gem featuring a quirky instrumental arrangement with a memorable hook, an intriguing rhythmic backbone, shots of sharp guitar and keyboards, and an unusual vocal performance that effectively frames the lysergic-fueled lyrics. The odd bodkins “Filled With Fear” shoots for the Goth feel of the album’s opening track, instead achieving a wild head-trip of spacey guitars and martial rhythms that create a whole different style of menace. Brann’s “Belda-Beast” continues to travel deeper into the band’s brave new world. A rare number sung by the guitarist, his breathless vocals are supported by Ingle’s multi-tracked, ethereal keyboards and splashes of colorful guitar.
After the release of Ball, which rose to #3 on the Billboard albums chart and would later be certified Gold™, the band reconvened in the studio to record a pair of songs, the last from this Butterfly line-up. “I Can’t Help But Deceive You, Little Girl” displays a funkier, more soulful and entirely welcome new facet to the band, Ingle delivering a strong vocal performance, pounding his keys with reckless abandon while Brann lays down some imaginative guitar licks above a busy, jazz-flecked rhythm track. Released as a non-album single, the song only inched its way up to #118, which is another damn shame because its flip-side, “To Be Alone,” combines the best of the old-school acid-rock Butterfly sound with the more adventurous musical direction displayed by Ball, clever syncopated rhythms laid down by Dorman and Bushy providing a foundation for Brann’s soaring guitarplay and Ingle’s rapidly-evolving vocal style.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
The so-called “classic” Iron Butterfly line-up would only appear on one other album, 1970’s Live concert recording. Brann left the band after Ball, replaced by guitarists Mike Pinera (from Blues Image) and Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt for the studio album Metamorphosis. After Doug Ingle left the band in 1971, Iron Butterfly broke up, with Dorman and Reinhardt forming space-rock cult favorites Captain Beyond and Pinera forming the short-lived outfit Ramatam before landing in Alice Cooper’s band. Brann and Bushy put together a new Iron Butterfly in 1974 with various musicians, releasing Scorching Beauty and Sun and Steel – two albums featuring a vastly different sound – to overwhelming commercial indifference in 1975. Various permutations of Iron Butterfly, helmed by drummer Bushy, have toured ever since, often including Brann, Ingle, and Dorman in the line-up.
While the band’s meager fame rests entirely on the notoriety heaped upon In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida – the song and the album – Ball provided a rock ‘n’ roll blueprint that bands like Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep would subsequently build upon. The album’s hybrid sound of forward-thinking, guitar-driven rock and lingering psychedelic influences have withstood the test of time, Ball an underrated collection that foreshadowed future possibilities for the band had they held it together. Although undeniably a document of its time, the album’s charms remain intact better than 45 years after its release. If you’re a fan of hirsute, late 1960s hard rock, you owe it to yourself to rediscover Iron Butterfly and Ball. Grade: B (Real Gone Music, released June 2, 2015)
Our friends at Real Gone Music have announced their June release schedule, and for rockers like us, there are a couple of real gems to be found! On June 2nd, 2015 Real Gone will be reissuing an expanded version of Black Oak Arkansas’s classic Raunch ‘N’ Roll Live album and Ball, Iron Butterfly’s 1969 follow-up to their breakthrough In-A-Gadda- Da-Vida LP.
Southern rockers Black Oak Arkansas were a Dixie-fried boogie band, but with a little more grease and a lot more twang than contemporaries like Foghat or Humble Pie. Three early 1970s studio albums earned the band a well-deserved reputation as beer drinkers and hell raisers; while hovering in the upper regions of the charts, BOA was a mid-tier but sturdy live band, hard-touring wild men that always delivered a good time. Led by wild-ass frontman Jim “Dandy” Mangrum (David Lee Roth before he was David Lee Roth), Black Oak Arkansas mixed up hard rock, rockabilly, blues, and country with a spirit and energy unlike any other Southern band (save for Molly Hatchet, perhaps).
Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live was released as a gatefolded single LP back in 1973, and it provided fans outside of the BOA touring radius with a fair-to-middlin’ representation of the band’s raucous live show. Many critics believe it to be the band’s best album, and I’d agree – it’s certainly their most consistent, with Jim Dandy bellowing out high-octane live takes on studio tracks like “Hot and Nasty,” “Hot Rod,” and “When Electricity Came To Arkansas.” Real Gone has dug deeply and found the master tapes from the two 1972 shows used to source the original album, and they’re releasing an expanded two-disc version called The Complete Raunch ‘N’ Roll Live. Blown up to 17 songs, the reissue includes new tracks like “Fever On My Mind,” “Keep The Faith,” and “Lord Have Mercy On My Soul” that were previously unreleased.
We’ve written about the mighty Iron Butterfly before, and the recent slate of vintage live recordings have been proverbial manna from heaven for long-suffering fans of the band. Sadly, much of Butterfly’s back catalog has been in shambles, a criminal oversight partially redeemed by Real Gone’s reissue of Ball. The band’s third album, Ball was recorded by what is considered to be the classic Butterfly line-up – singer/keyboardist Doug Ingle, guitarist Erik Brann, bassist Lee Dorman, and drummer Ron Bushy – and with another year of touring under their collective belts, Ball featured tighter, shorter, and punchier songs with a hard rock edge and more melodic undertones than their previous acid-rock dirges.
Not that Ball doesn’t include its flights of psychedelic fancy, but singles like “In The Time of Our Lives” and “Soul Experience” proved that Iron Butterfly had more talent and vision than critics had previously given them credit for possessing. Ball rose to #3 on the Billboard album chart, beating its predecessor and representing the peak of the band’s commercial fortunes. The Real Gone reissue of Ball is also an expanded edition, with two bonus tracks (non-LP single sides), re-mastered sound, and brand spankin’ new liner notes by writer Bill Kopp.
Interesting trivia for fellow fanatics – Iron Butterfly’s Lee Dorman and Mike Pinera (who joined the band in 1970) produced Black Oak Arkansas’s self-titled 1971 debut album. Small world, innit?
Iron Butterfly is both one of the most notorious and yet one of the most obscure of 1960s-era psychedelic acid-rock bands. Their name will live on in infamy merely on the reputation of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” the title track of the band’s second album. Released in 1968, shortly after the first wave of psychedelic influence had washed across the U.S. garage rock scene, the seventeen-minute mostly-instrumental jam anchors the band’s best-selling album and is so integrated into American pop culture that it even became a joke on The Simpsons.
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
It was immensely successful, though, the album eventually selling some 30 million copies worldwide, the song ubiquitous on classic rock radio. To drive my point home, however, what is the name of any one of the other five songs on the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album? Yeah, I thought so…unless you’re a stone cold Butterfly fan (or maybe just stoned), that’s the only song you’ll ever know. The band was about more than just its most famous tune…not much more, but more than they’re often given credit for…and Iron Butterfly is often overlooked by classic rock fans and hardcore collectors of psychedelic music in favor of more obscure, less notorious bands from the era. Worse yet, they’re often dismissed as a one trick pony, and it’s quite an absurd trick at that. Thanks to the good folks at Purple Pyramid, the psychedelic-leaning imprint of Cleopatra Records, we now have three live albums with which to reconsider the Butterfly legacy.
Iron Butterfly was formed by singer, songwriter, and keyboard player Doug Ingle in 1966 in San Diego, the original band line-up also including guitarist Danny Weiss and a couple of guys that were replaced when the band moved a few hours north to Los Angeles. After running through a number of members, the “Summer of Love” line-up of Iron Butterfly solidified with Ingle, singer Darryl DeLoach, guitarist Weiss, bassist Jerry Penrod, and Ron Bushy on drums. It’s this version of the band that gigged steadily around L.A. and would record the band’s 1968 debut, Heavy.
Iron Butterfly's Live At The Galaxy 1967
Iron Butterfly’s Live At The Galaxy 1967 is a curious memento of the short-lived line-up that recorded the band’s debut album. Capturing a July 4th, 1967 performance at the notorious L.A. club, the track list features half-a-dozen songs that would be recorded later for Heavy, three that wouldn’t be waxed until two years later for their 1969 album Ball, and a handful that would never be heard from again. The sound quality of Live At The Galaxy 1967 is par for an audience bootleg; befitting the (relatively) primitive recording gear at the time, the performances are hollow and cavernous, rife with distortion, and often seemingly out of sync. Still, for this rare a performance, it’s tolerable overall, and even with the sonic drawbacks, what is striking is how “heavy” the songs actually are.
After roaring through the strident, instrumentally-busy “Real Fright,” which would re-surface on Ball, “Possession” is the first of the Heavy tracks. Opening with Ingle’s chiming organ and Bushy’s martial rhythms, Weiss embroiders his guitar on top of the almost-chanted vocal harmonies. It’s a gothic-sounding performance, with plenty of hallucinogenic overtones, dense and yet you can still pick out and admire the individual instrumental contributions amidst the swirls of sound. Of the other Heavy tracks, only “Iron Butterfly Theme” and “You Can’t Win” stand out; the former is a cacophonic instrumental that was definitely acid-inspired and noisy, pre-dating a similar chaotic art-rock trend by a decade. The latter is a riff-heavy rocker with some nice guitar playing and Ingle’s ever-present keyboards.
Some of the other tracks on Live At The Galaxy 1967 are much more interesting. “Lonely Boy,” which would be recorded later on Ball, suffers from probably the worse sound on the album, but it’s an affecting ballad with the slightest of melodies, featuring instrumentation that is more subtle than anything else on the album. Another Ball track, “Filled With Fear,” offers appropriately muted vocals, squawks of terrifying sound, scraps of wiry guitar, and Bushy’s deliberate, marching drumbeats. Of the “lost” tracks, “Evil Temptation” shows the most life, with livewire guitar licks that sound like broken shards of glass, up-tempo organ riffs, bombshell percussion, and an overall punkish intensity that rivals the Stooges.
Iron Butterfly's Live In Sweden 1971
After the recording of Heavy, the band fractured when three members left, leaving only Ingle and Bushy holding the bag. When informed by Atlantic Records that their debut album wouldn’t be released if there was no band to tour behind it, the pair recruited bassist Lee Dorman and guitarist Eric Brann, a 17-year-old musical prodigy. It was this line-up that recorded the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Ball albums, representing the band’s commercial apex, the former LP selling millions of copies, the later certified Gold™ for a half-million in sales. When Brann left the band in 1969, he was replaced by a pair of talented guitarists – Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt and Mike Pinera, previously of one-hit-wonders Blues Image (“Ride Captain Ride”); this is the line-up that would record the band’s 1970 album Metamorphosis.
Live In Sweden 1971 offers better sound quality than Live At The Galaxy 1967, not only because of the passage of four years and improved sound technology, but also because it was taped for a live radio broadcast rather than from the middle of the audience. The album consists, primarily, of two lengthy live tracks – the first, “Butterfly Bleu,” was drawn from Metamorphosis. While the song clocks in at slightly more than fourteen minutes on vinyl, on stage the band would extend that running time considerably with acid-drenched instrumentation; here on Live In Sweden 1971, the song runs better than twenty-three minutes. It’s everything you might expect from a psychedelic-rock band at the dawn of the 1970s – lengthy passages of squalid sound, raging guitars, steady drumbeats, and Ingle’s trademark keyboards buried in the mix. Although it’s an exhilarating ride the first time you take it, two or three listens later it just becomes tedious.
Which leaves us with “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The song was a consistent crowd-pleaser among stoned audiences worldwide; it’s performed here at half-again its original studio running time, beginning with Ingle’s throaty vocals and sepulchre organ riffs before dancing into a free-form jam. The addition of guitarists Pinera and Reinhardt, neither of whom played on the original studio recording, brings a new texture and sound to the song that had been missing before. Although Lee Dorman’s familiar and notorious walking bass line still holds down the bottom end, the two guitarists weave various interesting patterns throughout the song. Their skills add a dimension previously lacking to the song, one that holds up better after a few listens than does “Butterfly Bleu.”
Live In Sweden 1971 is topped off by a trio of rare 7” singles, including “Possession,” which was originally the B-side of “Don’t Look Down On Me,” and later released in 1970 as a single on its own. The song is more effective in this shorter, punchier studio version than the drawn-out live performance on Live At The Galaxy 1967. “Evil Temptation,” which was so killer on the aforementioned live disc, does not disappoint on the studio-derived 45 version, with stunning fretwork that veers into the exotic at times, crashing drumbeats, and a locomotive tempo that should have made the song a big hit; it’s a shame it wasn’t included on any later Butterfly albums, and rumors abound that this single version wasn’t even recorded by the band, but by studio musicians, although Butterfly would perform the song live. “Don’t Look Down On Me,” the band’s first single circa 1967, is a pre-Atlantic indie release by the Heavy line-up, the song itself displaying a subtle psych-pop touch, an engaging melody, and fine (if unspectacular) vocals by DeLoach.
Iron Butterfly's Live In Copenhagen 1971
Recorded on the final night of the band’s 1971 European tour, Live In Copenhagen 1971 is another hollow-sounding, bootleg-quality tape albeit with slightly more presence than its predecessor. Unrestricted by the demands of a radio broadcast like on the previous night in Sweden, the band rips and snorts through a lengthy set list that draws five of its seven songs from Metamorphosis. Although Pinera and Reinhardt were considered hired guns in the studio, by this time they had been fully integrated into the band, and their addition not only upped the quality of the musicianship, but also the band’s potential.
Sadly, that potential wasn’t always fulfilled, as shown by “Best Years of Our Life.” The bluesy number relies too heavily on Pinera’s vocals and ample six-string diddling and never evolves far beyond its mundane bar band construction. “Soldier In Our Town” is much more intriguing, a mid-tempo dirge that nevertheless offers more depth to the band’s individual performances; the song’s dark ambience is supported by a subtle percussive rhythm and jolts of electrifying guitar. Pinera takes front and center again on “Stone Believer,” a funky lil’ romp built on Ingle’s riffing organ and Bushy’s steady drumrolls. The band’s lone single from Metamorphosis was “Easy Rider (Let The Wind Pay The Way,” a turbo-charged rocker that benefits from the band’s increasingly harder rock sound. Aside from an infectious Asian-tinged riff, the song’s odd time changes and fractured fretwork show more imagination than most of the tracks from Metamorphosis.
The dreaded “Butterfly Bleu” is revisited once again, at virtually the same excruciating length as before, and while it may have been a highlight of the band’s live performances, it doesn’t translate well to disc. This version has slightly more depth to it than the previous night’s performance, albeit with worse sound. It wouldn’t be Iron Butterfly without “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” performed here with a raucous intro that shows the band shaking its collective groove thang to a vaguely Latin rhythm before roaring into the familiar church organ kicks in. This reading of the song seems a bit more energetic, the guitars more crushing, the banging of cymbals more frenetic, Ingle’s vocals deeper, spookier, and somber…sort of like late-night horror movie host Sir Cecil Creape singing an operatic aria.
The rarity factor of Live In Copenhagen 1971 is increased by the inclusion of “Goodbye Jam,” an almost eleven-minute jam with Tony Kaye and Bill Bruford of Yes. The then up-and-coming prog-rock legends were on the tour as the second opening band (the Top Ten chart successes of Butterfly’s previous two albums putting them in headlining position), and several members of Yes became friendly with their tourmates. The result is an invigorating, if cacophonous extended miasma of instrumentation that, while short on melody or even recognizable song structure, is nevertheless a heck of a lot of fun, featuring a lot of screaming guitars and screamed vocals, fluid rhythmic play, and explosive percussion.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Truth is, Iron Butterfly wasn’t a great band even on its best of days, and its earliest incarnations tended to be too seeped in psychedelia to make much of an impression. Doug Ingle was a monochrome vocalist at best, and an often unimaginative keyboardist in light of talents like Keith Emerson, Ken Hensley, and Jon Lord. Lyrics were an afterthought for most of the songs, which relied instead on riffs and amplification. Still, the band managed to put together a strange sort of magic on a handful of songs on which their reputation rests, an influential combination of psychedelic sounds, heavy instrumentation, and heavier ambiance that is both dated and alien at once.
Live At The Galaxy 1967 (Grade: C+) is worthwhile mostly for its rarity and its avid reflection of the psychedelic culture of the era. Dave Thompson throws in some informative liner notes, and with packaging artwork that mimics the psychedelic era, it’s an album that Iron Butterfly’s small but loyal fan base will want to add to their collections. Live In Sweden 1971 (Grade: C) is, honestly, a bit of a chore. Although it features my favorite Iron Butterfly line-up, twenty-something minutes of “Butterfly Bleu” is more than any soul should have to bear. The addition of the rare 7” singles boosts the grade slightly. By contrast, Live In Copenhagen 1971 (Grade: B-) offers a much more fleshed out set of songs that take better advantage of the band’s talents, while the inclusion of the “Goodbye Jam” with Yes offers a rarity factor unshared by the other two albums. Both of the 1971 albums also include liner notes by Thompson with plenty of quotes from Ron Bushy.
The first incarnation of Iron Butterfly would break up months after the shows represented by the two 1971 discs here. Pinera formed the short-lived Ramatam with former Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell before joining the equally ill-fated New Cactus Band before spending several years as part of Alice Cooper’s touring band. Reinhardt and Dorman would form psyche-prog outfit Captain Beyond before later re-joining a re-formed Iron Butterfly in 1977. Bushy originally put together a new Butterfly together in 1975 with guitarist Erik Brann, recording two final albums – Scorching Beauty and Sun and Steel – before hitting the nostalgia circuit, where they’d perform with a revolving door of past members and other musicians, including Doug Ingle, well into the new millennium. Regardless, the band’s legacy was sealed by “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida;” everything else was just icing on the cake…
They’ll forever be known as the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” band, but Iron Butterfly released six studio and a live album over the course of their initial ten-year run. Formed in 1966 by keyboardist/vocalist Doug Ingle and guitarist Danny Weiss, Iron Butterfly became known as one of the leading progenitors of the era’s psychedelic-rock sound. Unlike almost all of the pop-psych bands of the 1960s, though, Iron Butterfly evinced a sound befitting its name, bringing a sonic tonnage to its material that was shared only by a few like-minded fellow travelers as Blue Cheer.
Aside from a lone 1970 album and 2011’s Fillmore East 1968, there hasn’t been a heck of a lot of live Butterfly recordings floating around collectors’ circles. That oversight will be corrected on May 27th, 2014 when Purple Pyramid – a subsidiary of Cleopatra Records – releases Live At The Galaxy 1967, a rare concert document from the psychedelic-rock legends. The album was recorded at the historic Galaxy Club in Los Angeles, just a few doors down from Whiskey A Go-Go on the infamous Sunset Strip and features the early band line-up which recorded Iron Butterfly’s 1968 debut album Heavy.
The band at the time included Ingle on lead vocals and keyboards, guitarist Weiss, bassist Jerry Penrod, percussionist and singer Darryl DeLoach, and drummer Ron Bushy. Live At The Galaxy 1967 will be released on both compact disc and, in June, on glorious colored 180 gram vinyl. The album is of special interest to fans as it’s a rare document of the early band; Weiss, Penrod, and DeLoach left Butterfly shortly after the January 1968 release of Heavy, replaced by guitarist Erik Brann and bassist Lee Dorman who, along with Ingle and Bushy, represented the best-known and most successful band line-up that recorded the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968) and Ball (1969) albums.
“Every big name act that was in L.A. came to see us play at the Galaxy,” Ron Bushy remembers in a press release for the album. “There was Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, etc.” A&R reps from Atlantic Records were also at the show, and promptly signed the band and hustled them into the studio to record Heavy. Six of the twelve performances captured by Live At The Galaxy 1967 are from Heavy, including the band’s signature “Iron Butterfly Theme,” while only two of the other half-dozen songs would be released later, providing long-time fans with some previously unreleased gems from the enigmatic band.
Live At The Galaxy 1967 track listing:
1. Real Fright
2. Possession
3. Filled With Fear
4. Fields of Sun
5. It’s Up To You
6. Gloomy Day To Remember
7. Evil Temptation
8. So-Lo
9. Gentle As It May Seem
10. Lonely Boy
11. Iron Butterfly Theme
12. You Can’t Win
October 11th
