FOMM: Listen to the Flower People

After the birds and the bees, this Friday it's the flowers.



The Flowerpot Men - Let's Go To San Francisco
The Flowerpot Men were a British studio band created by Ivy League songwriters John Carter and Ken Lewis to capitalize on 1967's flower power fad. The band name came from the same children's show that inspired Peter Gabriel to dress like a flowerpot on his head a few years later, plus there's that "flower"+"pot" pun. The single sleeve calls them "The Flower Potmen" and also misspells the city name as "San Fransisco"!. The singer is the legendary Tony Burrows and the keyboards and bass are played by future Deep Purple members Nick Simper and Jon Lord. I suspect that this song provided direct inspiration for Spinal Tap's "(Listen to the) Flower People" (video)

The Great Society - Somebody To Love
Translator - Today
The Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow album was released in February 1967, so it's 40 years old now. Both of the hits from that album ("Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit") came from Grace Slick's former band, the Great Society, but the former was the only one recorded while Grace was in the band. The Society's original version of "Somebody To Love" sounds like a demo for the Airplane's hit version, it's not quite as powerful, but also not as played to death on classic rock radio. Twenty years later, San Francisco's own Translator covered another Pillow tune, "Today", as a bonus track on their Everywhere That I'm Not compilation. Translator's four albums are set to be reissued on Wounded Bird later this year, but this cover isn't on any of them. One recent observer described Translator as "sort of a harder-rocking, less Stipe-y R.E.M.". This next S.F. Summer of Love cover song probably won't meet with this observer's approval.

The Golden Palominos - Omaha
This is a cover of a Moby Grape song from the 1985 Visions of Excess LP, with lead vocals by Michael Stipe of R.E.M. The Golden Palominos were a rotating cast headed by drummer Anton Fier (who probably thought those MIDI drums were a good idea), bassist Bill Laswell, and others. The guitars on this song by Henry Kaiser and Chris Stamey. Rolling Stone's album review of Visions said that this group had "enough combined hipness to make even a Moby Grape song sound cool and contemporary". I eschew any definition of "cool" that excludes Moby Grape. Their 1967 debut still sounds great in 2007, while this contempo 80s cover sounds silly and dated in spots (especially those spots with MIDI drums).

Pop Art Toasters - I Won't Hurt You
The Pop Art Toasters were a one-off duet with David Kilgour of the Clean and Martin Phillips of the Chills doing a 5-song EP of 60s covers. Hopefully this will put me back on the Translator observer's good graces. "I Won't Hurt You" was originally by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band in 1966, but I didn't hear the original version of this song until much later. The Pop Art Toasters EP is long out of print, but someone posted "I Won't Hurt You" just a few days ago.

"Dolphins, eskimos,.. it's all a bunch of tree hugging hippie crap!" - Eric Cartman