Pink Floyd ‘Wish’ comes true on SACD

Pink Floyd appears to have a hit on SACD — or what passes for a hit in that low-profile audiophile format.

The specialty label Analogue Productions released the Pink Floyd album “Wish You Were Here” on a 5.1 SACD late last year, and now reports that it’s “easily the biggest SACD title in the catalog.”

First a bit of history: Super Audio CD (SACD) was introduced in 1999 but failed to catch on with the public, despite quality that’s sometimes billed as four times as good as CDs.

After a burst of activity (2002-2005) that saw releases of classic albums such as Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” and the Who’s “Tommy,” the format staggered and appeared to be pretty much a goner by the end of the 2000s.

“In retrospect, SACD and (rival format) DVD-A never had a chance,” the Guardian duly reported in 2007.

Yet SACD soldiered on, catering mostly to classical music fans. Audiophile label Analogue Productions (aka Acoustic Sounds), now a decade old, also found a market in jazz albums from Blue Note. Longtime audiophile specialists Mobile Fidelity also remains active with SACDs. (Both labels are quite active in high-end vinyl as well.) Now, improbably, SACD has made a comeback.

“Wish You Were Here,” the Pink Floyd album that followed “Dark Side of the Moon,” arrived on SACD as part of EMI’s huge Why Pink Floyd…? campaign that began last fall. The SACD was created via the original analog master tapes with the 5.1 mix done by the band’s producer/engineer James Guthrie, who reportedly worked on the project for several years.

It is first multichannel presentation of “Wish You Were Here,” Analogue Productions says. The label has “exclusive distribution rights” to the album, which comes to SACD with a price tag of $35. (It’s not available on Amazon as of this writing.)

Critics and fans are turning in raves, mostly. “Guthrie’s expert, musically impeccable multichannel remix added depth and clarity to the superb original,” the Audio Beat’s Paul Bolin wrote in November. “How he got Richard Wright’s ARP string to orbit the room several feet above my head has to be the result of some sort of voodoo.”

Guthrie has said he’d like to make “The Wall” the next Pink Floyd multitrack album, if and when there are more SACDs.

On Nov. 4, EMI rereleased the CD of “Wish You Were Here” in “Immersion” and “Experience” editions.

In addition to the two Pink Floyd albums and “Tommy,” currently available SACD titles with a psychedelic flavor include all of the Doors’ studio albums; the Moody Blues’ “On the Threshold of a Dream” and “To Our Children’s Chidren’s Children”; the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds”; and Santana’s “Caravanserai.”

(As with all things audio, the potential for excellence does not always equal excellence, so be sure to check out the reviews.)

Some current Blu-ray players are built to handle SACD signals, as is the PlayStation 3 game console. Hybrid SACDs such as “Wish You Were Here” will play on all CD players since traditional stereo tracks are included, but performance would be the same as from a well-made regular CD.

Paint it Black: a special Record Store Day

Before you know it Record Store Day will be here again (OK maybe it’s already here). But hold on … didn’t we have one back in April?

Yep, but this time out it’s a special Black Friday edition — and the goodies are really good.

Record Store Day, of course, is the festive event in which we celebrate those indie music shops that soldier on in the mp3 era, providing cool physical media such as specialty CDs to those who still want them.

Vinyl records are the coolest of them all these days, and the hipper labels have responded with collectors albums, EPs and singles from artists of quality.

The Black Friday stash includes soon-to-be rareities from psychedelic-leaning acts such as the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett, the Yardbirds, the Byrds and the Who.

We’re spoiled here in L.A. (and in San Francisco) with the massive indie recording purveyor Amoeba, but of course most of the record stores being honored are small shops, run by music-addicted guys and gals. (View list of participating Record Store Day shops.)

Here’s a nod to my closest shop, Freakbeat Records in Sherman Oaks, Calif., where the guys don’t look at you funny if you ask for something by the Ultimate Spinach.

Here are the Black Friday Record Store Day exclusives from bands with 1960s psychedelic connections. Call it the Geezer Collection:

Syd Barrett: “Mick Rock.” Photography of the Pink Floyd founder by his pal Mick Rock, packaged with a 7-inch 45 of “Run Like Hell” and “Don’t Leave Me Now.” Capitol says the package comes “in a picture bag” with the 7-inch single on yellow heavyweight vinyl.”

The Beatles: “The Singles” box set of four 7″ picture-sleeve singles in a flip-top box. The A and B sides are “Ticket To Ride” and Yes It Is”; “Hey Jude” and “Revolution”; “Something” and “Come Together”; “Yellow Submarine” and “Eleanor Rigby.” The tracks are billed as newly remastered.

The Byrds: “Eight Miles High”/”Why.” 7-inch vinyl, 45rpm. Sundazed dug up these first-time-around RCA recordings (the versions most of us know were rerecorded at Columbia). “Eight Miles High” is destined for the top 10 of our Best 100 Psychedelic Songs list.

The Byrds: “The Times They Are A-Changing”/”She Don’t Care About Time.” 7-inch vinyl, 45rpm. This Dylan two-for was supposed to be released in the 1960s, but it never happened. Until now.

The Doors: “L.A. Woman” box set on 7″ Vinyl. Songs include “The Changling,” “Riders on the Storm,” “Love Her Madly” and another single of studio chat. The cover is the original artwork for the “L.A. Woman” album, with a naked woman nailed to a telephone pole.

Grateful Dead: “Live Europe ’72 Vol. 2″ in a four-album vinyl set. With an additional track. The double-disc CD was released in late September. Cover art: A new look at the Ice Cream Kid from artist Stanley Mouse. From Rhino, the Dead’s marketing partners.

Janis Joplin: “Move Over.” Four 7-inch singles with four unreleased tracks. “Magic of Love” and “Call On Me”; “Piece Of My Heart” and “Summertime”; “Raise Your Hand” and “Bo Diddley”; and “”Move Over” and “My Baby.” Some mono, some in stereo.

Janis Joplin: “The Classic LP Collection.” 180 gram vinyl versions of “Pearl,” “I Got Dem’ Kozmik Blues Again Mama,” Big Brother and the Holding Company’s first release and of course “Cheap Thrills.” From Legacy (Columbia). Exclusive to indie record stores until Monday, when orders start being filled at the Janis Joplin web site.

John Lennon: “Imagine 40th Anniversary Box Set.” Vinyl album of the stripped-down 2010 remix job overseen by Yoko Ono. Comes with six-track white vinyl 12″ and a poster. From Apple.

Pete Townshend: “The Quadrophenia Demos, Part 1.” On a 10-inch EP. In a twist, Part 2 won’t be available until Record Store Day 2012. The project was overseen and produced by Townshend. The demo tracks are “The Real Me,” “Cut My Hair,” “Punk,” “Dirty Jobs,” “Is it in My Head?” and “Anymore.” Don’t expect quadraphonic, though.

Pink Floyd: “The Wall.” Box set of three 7-inch singles. “Move Over” and “My Baby”; “Comfortably Numb” and “Hey You”; and “Run Like Hell” and “Don’t Leave Me Now.” The goodies just keep on coming from EMI’s massive Pink Floyd remastering project that began in September. Also just out on SACD.

The Yardbirds: “Ten Little Indians” and “Drinking Muddy Water” on a 7″ single. From the band’s waning days, in which Jimmy Page gets all psychedelic with reverse echo — trying to save the A-side, a strident cover of a Harry Nilsson song. The B-side is an excellent white boy blues workout from “Little Games.” From Sundazed.

The Yardbirds: “Ha Ha Said the Clown” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor” on a 7-inch single. A 1967 record never released in the U.K. Two solid of the best late-period songs — one pop, one rock — with Jimmy Page leading the way on guitar. From Sundazed.

Of course there are quite a few contributions from acts in many genres, across many decades. Check out the Black Friday music collection. See you in the queue.

Dead brings to life Dave’s Pick CD series

Thought the Dead marketing machine was done with live archival releases?

Fat chance. The music never stops. Not fade away. And all that …

Six years after the famed series “Dick’s Picks” was retired — and just weeks after the “Road Trips” series reached the end of the road — the Dead’s live legacy continues with “Dave’s Picks.”

Dick was the Dead’s longtime archivist Dick Latvala. Dave is David Lemieux, the current archivist, who took over the job when Latvala died in 1999.

Dave’s Picks will be a numbered limited edition series limited to 12,000 copies (that number could be elastic, based on previous Dead decisions). The CDs will be close to Dick’s Picks in philosophy, Lemieux says, featuring complete shows.

The Dead’s website promises “the finest unreleased shows from the master tapes, brought to life with HDCD sonics by Jeffrey Norman, period photos, and informative liner notes.”

The first release comes from a May 25, 1977, show at the Mosque in Richmond, Va.

Dead.net offers an advance subscription package with a lower price ($95) and a bonus disc.

“This is the most excited we’ve been since the ‘View from the Vault’ (DVD) series,” says the excitable Lemieux, who says 90 percent of his personal listening time is spent on Dead audio.

“Mostly it’s going to be two-tracks (as with the Dick’s Picks and Road Trips series).”

The archivist invites fans’ input: “We not only welcome your input, we need your input. … There’s too many shows and too many hours. … Everyone’s opinion matters to us. If you think that such-and-such is a great show, we’re going to listen to it.”

To contact the team, email vault@dead.net — put “Grateful Dead” subject line.

In other Dead product news:

• The 2011 edition of the Grateful Dead Almanac no longer will be printed on paper. “Yes, here in the second decade of the 21st Century (and after a bit of screaming and kicking), we’ve (gone all digital),” the editors say. View the online Grateful Dead Almanac.
• Rock book author Paul Grushkin (“Grateful Dead: The Official Book of the Dead Heads”) takes another look at the band’s hardcore fans with “Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail.”
• The “Road Trips” CD series has come to an end with No. 4. Vol. 5, capturing the Boston Music Hall show from June 9, 1976, and (partly) June 12. The series ran four years and released 17 discs.
• Lemieux’s massive “Europe ’72, Vol. 2″ had a cup of herbal tea on the Billboard album charts, topping out at No. 193 in the week of its release.

Mickey Hart’s world of music, collected

Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart has teamed up with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings to release his expansive archive of world music recordings.

“The Mickey Hart Collection” is set for release Oct. 11, via on-demand CDs, downloads and audio streams.

Releases begin with 25 albums from Hart’s previous series “The World” (originally on Rykodisc). Six of those recordings comprise “The Endangered Music Project,” done with the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. Hart said he donated the recordings to the museum because “there will always be a Smithsonian (and) Folkways is the premier indigenous music label.”

Hart began his recordings as world musicians began to perform in San Francisco in the 1960s, but his interest dates back well before his Grateful Dead days.

As a young boy, Hart heard an album of field recordings of pygmies from the Ituri Rainforest “that made my world disappear. … I was entranced by the rhythms of West Africa, by way of Cuba and Haiti. … They were dance music, and I loved music that made you dance. …

“I treated each recording as if it would sell a million copies. So I always always recorded it at the highest resolution and had it mastered at the same place I was mastering the Grateful Dead material.

“It was very important that all this music was released first-rate so that people could understand the importance of it.” (text continues …)

Among the initial recordings are “The Music of Upper and Lower Egypt,” made during the Dead’s 1978 tour of the country. Nigerian artist Babatunde Olatunji is the focus of two albums, as is Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira (Return to Forever). Other artists hail from American Indians, the rainforests of South America and the Caribbean, the Indonesian archipelago, Tibet and Cuba.

The Mickey Hart Collection includes his “Rhythm Devils: The Apocalypse Now Sessions” and the delivery-room album “Music to be Born By.” It also includes recordings made by other musicologists and producers.

Hart was a member of the Grateful Dead from 1967-1971 and 1974-1995. He continues to play with other Dead members, principally fellow drummer Bill Kreutzmann (as the Rhythm Devils).

Mickey Hart
recorded numerous albums of his own work and led several bands.

Check out the Folkways Recordings amazing record catalog and listen to a stream of its world music.

‘L.A. Woman’ set for massive reissue

On Sunday, the 40th anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death, two of his surviving bandmates — Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger — visited the singer’s grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where they lit candles and posed for pictures.

Drummer John Densmore, out of synch with his fellow ex-Doors, as usual, wasn’t attending: “I don’t even know the date (of Morrison’s death),” he said. “I prefer to celebrate Dec. 8, his birthday.”

Nostalgia for Morrison and his dark brew of psychedelic rock and collegiate poetry never abated, really, with the 1960s band’s commercial machine cranking out repackaged music and merchandise at a pace surpassed only by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Manzarek and Krieger have other musical affiliations, but by and large their careers have been spent chasing the ghost of the Morrison-fronted Doors.

2011 also marks the 40th anniversary of the Doors’ last studio recording with Morrison, “L.A. Woman.” Rhino and the Doors several months ago released a vinyl version of its most celebrated song, “Riders on the Storm” (for Record Store Day), but the motherlode comes this fall.

A 40th anniversary edition of “L.A. Woman” sprawls across two discs, one with a remastered version of the original album and the other with alternate versions of its songs and some studio chatter. The liner notes come from Rolling Stone archive guru David Fricke and the album’s producer, Bruce Botnick. A separate vinyl release contains the disc 2 material.

The big bang for the Doors-obsessed comes in the 40th anniversary app (for various computer platforms), billed as “a redefining of the album reissue using today’s most current technology.” This appears to be the definitive study of the Doors in their final days.

Editorial topics include:

• Setting the Scene: Los Angeles in 1971.
• The “cast of characters” involved in the creation of the album.
• A multimedia re-creation of the “in the studio with the band” experience.
• The recording sessions/technical background/the creative process.
• Geo-mapping of the landmarks/places mentioned in accompanying essays, which are written by Fricke, Botnick, Holly George-Warren, Michael Ventura, Barney Hoskyns and Kristan McKenna.
• Audio and/or video interviews with the surviving Doors plus Botnick, Jac Holzman, Bill Siddons, Marc Benno, and Jerry Scheff.

A four-CD box set, the “super deluxe” edition, picks up much of the content from the Doors app with Rhino-style collectors packaging and adds some other materials.

The 40th anni promotion also sees the release of “Mr. Mojo Risin’: The Story Of L.A. Woman” on DVD.

No specific release dates or presale information was released by the Doors’ management. The four-CD box set will be sold exclusively by the Doors’ web site, apparently.

CD background: The surviving Doors remixed “L.A. Woman” a decade ago, but those tracks weren’t included on on single CD release until 2007 (part of another 40th anniversary celebration, for the band itself). The last mega-Doors release was the six-CD, six-DVD box set “Perception,” unleashed in 2006 and again in 2008.

More immediately, there’s the covers project “All Wood and Doors,” from folk veteran James Lee Stanley, who created “Wood and Stones” (with John Batdorf) in 2005. Doors drummer Densmore was a fan of that album of acoustic Rolling Stones covers, and told Stanley he’d be happy to play on a similar project with Doors material.

Stanley, given to two-man band projects, teams up this time with Cliff Eberhardt. Also playing on the album are Doors guitarist Krieger, Peter Tork, Timothy B. Schmit, Paul Barrere and Batdorf.

Krieger and Densmore recorded separately, no surprise because they’ve long been at odds over the Doors’ name and recordings. Keyboardist Manzarek, usually eager to get in on any Doors-related project, is MIA on this guitar-driven project.

“All Wood and Doors” is set for release on June 12 via Stanley’s own Beachwood Records.

The dozen Doors cover songs are “Break on Through,” “Love Me Two Times,” “Take It As It Comes,” “Strange Days,” “Light My Fire,” “Touch Me,” “Crystal Ship,” “Soul Kitchen,” “People Are Strange,” “Moonlight Drive,” “Riders on the Storm” and (short and sweet) “The End.”

Brains! Flaming Lips seal songs in skull

The Flaming Lips want you to eat their brains. The band’s continuing explorations of odd ways to distribute psychedelic music in the new century have led to songs hidden inside gummy candy skulls.

Four new Lips tunes will be implanted in a USB drive (memory stick) deep within the sticky brain. Listeners are encouraged to eat the candy skull, and then the brains (more than 7 pounds of gelatin, enjoy.) Extract the USB drive, find a way to clean it (good luck) and then insert into computer.

The band’s last release, “Two Blobs Fucking,” came out as a streaming single, with 12 separate mono parts designed to be played simultaneously on iPhones. The result: “lo-fi symphonic joy.” Lips fans have spent the past month and a half coming up with unique ways to play that one.

“I’d just like to release music all the time and just put it out in all kinds of weird formats and not just collect it until we’re ready to put out [an album] every two years or so,” Coyne told billboard.com. The songs also will come out on iTunes.

The Flaming Lips also plan to release “Heady Nuggs: The First 5 Warner Bros. Records 1992-2002″ on Record Store Day, April 16, 2011. The five catalog recordings are “Hit to Death In the Future Head” (1992), “Transmissions From the Satellite Heart” (1993), “Clouds Taste Metallic” (1995) and “The Soft Bulletin” (1990) and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (2002).

Speaking of the psychedelic “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” it could be the next rock album to try its luck on Broadway. The long-delayed project appears to be in pre-production.

The Flaming Lips are working with Southern California stage director Des McAnuff (“Jersey Boys”). He’s the guy who work-shopped the Who’s “Tommy” at the La Jolla Playhouse and brought the production to Broadway for a long successful run.

The “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” musical “really has become a perfect combination of my fantastical robot-world vision and (McAnuff’s) little, internal, humanistic version of what that music is,” Coyne told Billboard the other day.

The plot revolves around a dying girl (“Her name is Yoshimi, she’s a black-belt in karate”) who enters another dimension with a boyfriend and takes on her disease, which lurks there in the form of pink robots. Lips frontman Wayne Coyne told Entertainment Weekly (which apparently broke the story) in 2007 that the madness should play out along the lines of Terry Gilliam’s bizarre “Brazil.”

The Lips have continued to wave their freak flag over the years. They released a remake of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” in April 2010, billed as the Flaming Lips & Stardeath and White Dwarfs With Henry Rollins and Peaches.

‘John Barleycorn’ lives, on double CD

Here’s a toast to “John Barleycorn Must Die,” the 1970 album that bridges the two Traffics.

The first band, of course, specialized in hip pop and gentle psychedelic sounds such as “Paper Sun.” Traffic the sequel served up a strong jazz-rock brew that utilized a revolving cast of musicians.

Short but sweet, Traffic’s “John Barleycorn Must Die”
returns remastered in a double-disc edition from Island-Universal. The new release has the good sense to restore the album to its original six-song presentation. (Previous CD versions inserted two other tracks from the sessions to slug out the running time.)

Hugely influential and widely appreciated at the time, “John Barleycorn” cracked the top 5 in the U.S and went gold in its first year.

Disc 2 of the new set provides a trio of alternate takes* from the hit album and then digs into the good stuff — more than 40 minutes of the band playing the Filmore East in support of “John Barleycorn.” The CD concludes with a 15-minute workout on “Glad/Freedom Rider.”

Traffic fans have been teased for decades with the possibility of an album covering those Nov. 18-19, 1970, concerts. The Filmore shows has been extensively bootlegged and a few of the performances were included on a 1999 version of “John Barleycorn.”

The title song, “John Barleycorn Must Die,” was a traditional English folk song that reflected the band’s rural beginnings — the original members famously found their sound in a distant cottage — as well as the back-to-the-land vibe of the day.

The instrumental “Glad,” however, opened the album with a jazz-rock jolt powered by a jump piano riff from Stevie Winwood. (text continues)

The “John Barleycorn” album started life as a solo project for Winwood, who had just left the free-form supergroup Blind Faith. Traffic broke up in 1969, but when Winwood hit a creative block he turned to ex-bandmates Jim Capaldi (drums) and Chris Wood (woodwinds) for backing on “Glad.”

“It was obvious to all of us that we should really give Traffic another go,” Winwood said at the time. That “go” did not include Dave Mason, who had worn out his welcome. Traffic was back in business and carried on for another four years.

No doubt the album’s fresh sounds can be credited in part to Winwood’s involvement at the time with Ginger Baker’s Air Force, a conglomeration that introduced many rock fans to African music.

Traffic’s new sound no doubt influenced Steely Dan, which released its first single in 1972.

Not everyone liked the new flow of Traffic. Rolling Stone’s reviewer thought it was OK, but cited “control-board masturbation” and mused, “Maybe the trio is still just getting together again, feeling each other out.” Robert Christgau missed Dave Mason and crabbed about “feckless improvised rock.”

The expanded “John Barleycorn Must Die” received high marks for its remastered sounds when it was released in Europe on Feb. 28. The double CD came out in the U.S. on March 15. The collection also is available as MP3 downloads.

The Traffic albums received a round of rereleases in the early part of the new century. Let’s hope this release is the vanguard of a catalog-wide upgrade.

* Disc 2′s alternate takes are of “John Barleycorn Must Die,” “Stranger to Himself’ and “Every Mother‘s Son.”

Arthur Lee’s ‘Black Beauty’ surfaces

Calling it among the “rarest of rock artifacts — a never-before-released full-length studio album from an undisputed musical genius,” High Moon Records has set Arthur Lee and Love’s “Black Beauty” album for a June 7 release.

“Black Beauty” is no label reject. It was produced by Paul Rothchild, famed for his work with the Doors, Janis Joplin and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Rothchild also produced Love’s second album, “Da Capo,” for Elektra.

“Black Beauty” was to come out on indie label Buffalo Records, owned by Michael Butler (producer of the musical “Hair”). The label went belly-up before Lee’s “Black Beauty” was released. Bootlegs have long been circulating, but no legitimate release of the LP ever materialized.

Lee’s widow, Diane, has been trying to get the album out there in the years since his death. “Arthur Lee fans won’t be disappointed,” Lee biographer John Einarson writes in his (excellent) 2010 book “Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love.”

Among the tracks recorded at the “Black Beauty” sessions were a hard-rock cover of the jangly folk hit “Walk Right In” from 1963 and “Beep Beep,” Lee’s first attempt at reggae. The Lee songs “Good & Evil” (aka “I’m Good & Evil (Do What I Do),” “Midnight Sun” and “Product of the Times” were resurrected from a 1971 Love session at CBS — compiled by Sundazed Records in 2009 as the album “Love Lost.”

The “Black Beauty” band was all-Afro American, led by longtime pal Robert Rozelle (bass). Rozelle put the band together for the album because Lee’s “Vindicator” band fell apart due to money disputes. Drummer Joe Blocker, from Lee’s old neighborhood, recalled of the new group: “We got all very well. It was all fun. There were no disputes with Arthur.”

Rolling Stone writer David Fricke recently did a blog post on bootleg Love tracks. He wrote: ” ‘Black Beauty’ might have been received as a strong comeback for Lee, a turn to steamy R&B with heavy-guitar punch — if it had come out.”

‘New’ music from Valenti, Choc. Watchband

“Lost’ recordings from Quicksilver founder Dino Valenti and a newly recorded “hits” package from psychedelic-garage band Chocolate Watchband have bubbled up from the underground.

The late Valenti, songwriter of the hippie anthem “Get Together,” left a bunch of unreleased recordings in storage in Northern California, leading to the new album “Get Together: The Lost Recordings Pre-1970.”

The ItsAboutMusic.com site, which is releasing the collection, is coy about the matter, but it’s quite possible the Quicksilver Messenger Service plays on some of the tracks.

“We really don’t know who’s playing on it besides Dino but some of these songs sure sound like Quicksilver Messenger Service — you decide,” the indie label says on its pitch page.

Dino Valenti played with the earliest version of Quicksilver but landed in prison shortly thereafter. (He sold his rights to the song “Get Together” while raising money to fight a pot bust.) He didn’t play on Quicksilver’s classic psychedelic albums, but rejoined in late 1969, writing most of the albums “Just for Love” and “What About Me” (both 1970) under the pseudonym Jesse Oris Farrow.

The new “Get Together” album features Valenti singing the title song, a massive hit for the Youngbloods. Several of the unreleased tracks top 10 minutes, including the spooky-heavy “Ain’t That a Shame” that flows like Quicksilver.

ItsAboutMusic’s Dino Valenti page offers downloads of sample songs with excellent musicianship and good clear sound. The indie label notes that the “lost” tapes came directly from Valenti’s son Joli and “you can rest assured that Dino’s family is getting paid.”

* * * *
“You don’t know how hard it is to be an unknown legend of rock and roll,” the Chocolate Watchband laments in song these days.

“Unknown Legends” (MP3 download) pretty well sums up the band’s legacy. Many 1960s music lovers know the band’s name; far fewer know the music. Like L.A.-based Love, the band from San Jose performed mostly in California, preferring familiarity to fame.

The band is loosely affiliated with the psychedelic movement, partly because of their stoned ’60s name and their gigs with the San Francisco heavies.

The band actually dwelled in the limbo between garage rock and the newer psychedelic sounds — see the Leaves, the Shadows of Knight, the Seeds, the Music Machine and Count Five.

The band’s live sound was reminiscent of their British idols such as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, while the studio work veered toward the psychedelic sounds favored by their producer, Ed Cobb (the Standells). One of the Watchband’s signature songs, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else,” is a Kinks cover.

Their best-known number, “Let’s Talk About Girls,” found the charts with vocals from a guy in another band. Lead singer David Aguilar’s vocals had been wiped out, part of a long chain of indignities suffered by the Watchband as producer Cobb used various studio musicians and even other groups on their three 1960s albums.

The new “Chocolate Watchband’s Greatest Hits” presents “Let’s Talk About Girls” as it probably would have sounded back then with singer Aguilar.

Bassist Bill Flores and drummer Gary Andrijasevich are the other two remaining members from the classic Chocolate Watchband lineups.

The band appeared in the movie “Riot on Sunset Strip,” performing “Don’t Need Your Lovin” and “Sitting There Standing.” The movie mostly featured the Standells, whose great hit “Dirty Water” was written by Cobb.

The Watchband also contributed “Are You Gonna’ Be There (At the Love-in)” to an even more exploitative movie, “The Love-Ins.”

The band’s revolving door of musicians finally stopped spinning in 1970.

All Music’s article on the Chocolate Watchband called their post-breakup situation “non-existence juxtaposed with a burgeoning cult of admirers around the world.” They reformed at the dawn of the new century and have toured off and on.

The new recordings were made last year at KVP Studio in Santa Clara, Calif. The concept was to re-create the sound found on the group’s Tower Records albums in 1966, ’67, and ’68. The recordings (based on audio samples) are the real deal, garage rock all the way.

Sixties music compiler Alec Palao (the “Nuggets From the Golden State” series) vouches for the new stuff: “The Greatest Hits package is as authentically Watchband as any of this singular group’s vintage recordings.”

If you’ve read this far, be sure to check out singer Aguilar’s hilarious history of the Chocolate Watchband. Here he is on playing the Fillmore with the Grateful Dead:

I always thought of them as a really bad country and western band that had accidentally taken too much acid. … The rest of the group thought the Dead was just about the most amazing bunch of drug addicts to ever hit the stage together at the same time.

Here is the lineup on “Chocolate Watchband Greatest Hits”:

1. Expo 2000
2. Gone and Passes By
3. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
4. Are You Gonna’ Be There (At the Love-in)
5. No Way Out
6. Misty Lane
7. I Ain’t No Miracle Worker
8. Sitting There Standing
9. Sweet Young Thing
10. Don’t Need Your Lovin’
11. I’m Not Like Everybody Else
12. Let’s Talk About Girls
13. Inner Mystique

Dead’s ‘Euro ’72′ box set sells out, but …

That big gooey box set of the Grateful Dead’s European tour of 1972 is gone and nothing’s going to bring it back. Sort of.

The limited-edition box set — stuffed with “memorabilia and ephemera” — sold out in four days, but Dead.net now offers a “music only” collection for the same price: $450. The sets should ship in the fall.

Dead.net still promises that no more than 7,200 copies of the original box set will be created. The first lucky 3,000 Deadheads who preordered will get box sets personalized in some way. A hardcover coffee table book goes along with the memorabilia and more than 60 discs.

“Although perhaps not as cool as the boxed set, the bottom line is that the most important aspect of “Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings” is going to be made available to all, the music,” Dead.net said over the weekend. The site, exclusive seller of the Dead/Rhino box set, notes that the decision to sell the music separately came after “lengthy discussions.”

The music-only collection will house each concert in separate packaging.

Of course there’s no shortage of Grateful Dead albums on the planet, but this one hits the motherlode:

More than seventy hours of music spread over the 60-some discs. Every show, “every note” of the historic tour, mastered from the original 16-track tapes.

No doubt you recall that we’ve had a Europe ’72 set for decades. The one with the kid and the ice cream cone attached to his forehead. That three-LP album captured the Dead at their peak, as anyone who saw the group in the early years of that decade can attest.

Ron “Pigpen” McKernan left the band shortly thereafter; Keith and Donna Godchaux joined shortly before. The Grateful Dead’s previous studio albums were “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty,” both classics and signposts to the band’s future. And the Dead were … straight?

Bob Weir says a lack of dope helped the musical focus. “For that tour, everybody was pretty damn clear,” he told Rolling Stone. “Unlike in America, you couldn’t get pot over there. They had hashish. and nobody liked it much. … All we had was the music.” That didn’t stop the band from hourlong workouts on “Dark Star.”

While the old “Europe 72″ brought the band many of its fans, it wasn’t the real deal. The album had heavy overdubs on the vocals. This time out, it’s a pure shot from the sound board. Project producer David Lemieux calls the recordings “pristine.”

The news came about a week after plans for a Grateful Dead online video game were unveiled.

In other Dead recording news, “Workingman’s Dead” makes a return Feb. 1 via a Japanese import with extra tracks.

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