The Electric Prunes: I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night (1966)

Recorded at the end of 1966 and almost tipping into the US top 10 in January of the following year, this implosion of garageband rock, backwards guitar and tripped out intentions ushered in a year which was going to be full of such stoner delights.

But the Prunes -- like New York's Blues Magoos -- had always been more raw rock than some of their colleagues although, as with so many bands at the time, their ambition outran their ability to pull it off. Witness their subsequent religious rock concept album Mass in F Minor.

But here, in exactly three minutes, they nailed down a plank between the California garageband they had been and the psychedelic rock era to come.

Oddly enough, the weird guitar part was recorded in a most unexpected place, at Leon Russell's home studio, before they took it to American Recording Studios in North Hollywood. The song also wasn't an original but had been a ballad by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz.

So this was light pop turned into psychedelic rock, although bassist Mark Tulin was later to say, "It wasn't psychedelic. It became psychedelic afterwards".

True enough. The times and zeitgeist caught up with them.

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