UNDER APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR JUNE 2015: HAYMARKET SQUARE
The Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month is HAYMARKET SQUARE, a quartet who provided music for an art exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The CD feels like a real album, however, that has several dreamy pop-psychedelic songs. When trying to finish up this post before the month after its date ran out, I was thinking that I had this album at the office rather than at home; however, I spotted it immediately on my CD rack due to its bright pink color.
Bandmembers in Haymarket Square are Gloria Lambert (vocals), Marc Swenson (guitar, vocal), Robert Homa (bass, vocal), and John Kowalski (percussion). The name of their sole album, Magic Lantern came out in 1968 and had been known in underground circles for several decades. After being bootlegged several times over the years, Gear Fab Records – a reissue label that combines two Beatles-era slang terms – finally put out an authorized release in 2001. My copy, however, is one of the bootlegs; it is dated 1996 and marked “Made in England”. The record label is given as LSD Records, and the catalogue number is LSD-007.
Writing for Allmusic, Dean McFarlane says of the album: “From the opening cut, it is fairly apparent why the original album is so sought after – Magic Lantern is as fine a display of American psychedelia as late-’60s albums by It’s a Beautiful Day and Jefferson Airplane. This will appeal to fans of the fuzzed-out guitar antics of Cream and Blue Cheer.” There is also a long article in the “Biography” section in Allmusic (this time by Stanton Swihart) about Haymarket Square. The band name is taken from a place in Chicago where a famous labor riot took place in 1886.
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While in high school, Chicago teenagers Robert Homa and John Kowalski had been in a garage rock band called the Real Things; the name was in honor of the British band the Pretty Things. Stanton Swihart notes in Allmusic about this predecessor band: “Not your typical amateurs, the Real Things actually played professional instruments and earned professional gigs until they disintegrated in 1967 due to the usual reasons of the season.”
By then students at the University of Illinois – Chicago, Robert Homa and John Kowalski got another band together by advertising in the campus newspaper. Guitarist Marc Swenson – a devotee of the lead guitarist of the Kinks, Dave Davies – was quickly added to the line-up. A pretty blonde 20-year-old, Gloria Lambert also answered the ad, bringing her powerful, classically trained voice to the band. She had previously been in a folk music band called Jordan, Damian and Samantha.
Haymarket Square gained a solid reputation in the local music scene right away; one of their gigs was at the Playboy Mansion. Allmusic says that they began “sharing stages with important international groups like the Yardbirds and Cream, as well as local favorites H. P. Lovecraft, Saturday’s Children, and the Shadows of Knight”. Before long, the bandmembers began writing songs similar to those of their idols Jefferson Airplane, particularly Gloria Lambert (who was the sole author of 4 of the 6 songs).
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In the summer of 1968, Haymarket Square was approached by the Museum of Contemporary Art to provide the music for a work of art on display at that time called The Original Baron & Bailey Light Circus, which had been put together by two college professors. The Facebook and Google+ pages for the museum recently showed some drawings for the exhibit. For the most part though, the exhibit seems to be remembered mainly as the source of the Magic Lantern album.
Stanton Swihart writes of Haymarket Square for Allmusic: “As the music featured on it was initially utilized as live accompaniment and created expressly with that purpose in mind, the album plays much like the records of the [Jefferson] Airplane’s middle, most psychedelic period, as much visceral experiences to fill San Francisco ballrooms as they are objects for home listening, or like early Grateful Dead recordings, intended as soundtracks for Acid Tests and experimental light shows. But as with the work of those bands, Magic Lantern transcends its intended purpose; in fact, it is one of the stronger – not to mention one of the earliest – slices of acid rock from the era, outstanding in every way, from [John] Kowalski’s expert drumming, to [Gloria] Lambert’s impressive, insistent singing, to the intensely mood-filled, darkly textured original songs.”
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Magic Lantern first came out on a small label called Chaparral Records. Shortly afterward, Robert Homa left the band and was replaced by Ken Pitlik; Robert Miller was brought in as a second guitarist. This line-up stayed together for several years, but they evidently did not make any more records. Gloria Lambert and Marc Swenson were married by the time Haymarket Square broke up in about 1974.
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The only song on Magic Lantern not written by the bandmembers in Haymarket Square is one of my all-time favorite songs, “Train Kept A-Rollin’” – in a world filled with great train songs, this might the best of them all for my money. The first time I encountered “Train Kept A-Rollin’” was on the Pebbles, Volume 10 LP, one of the first Pebbles albums that I purchased. This rapid fire rendition by the Bold (also known as Steve Walker and the Bold) – which actually has some train sounds in the intro and at the end – is still the best I have heard; but like the Bo Diddley song “I’m a Man”, the Van Morrison song “Gloria”, and the timeless “Louie Louie” that was written by Richard Berry, I have never heard a version of “Train Kept A-Rollin’” that wasn’t great.
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“Train Kept A-Rollin’” (often given as “The Train Kept A-Rollin’”) dates from the year of my birth (1951) and was originally recorded by R&B singer Tiny Bradshaw. Bradshaw co-wrote the song with Syd Nathan (who used the pseudonym Lois Mann), a King Records executive who is credited with discovering many famous musicians, most notably James Brown.
In 1956, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio released “Train Kept A-Rollin’”; a cool video showing them playing the song is available on YouTube. Wikipedia reports: “The Trio’s version features guitar lines in what many historians consider to be the first recorded example of intentionally distorted guitar in rock music.” This record came out 2 years before Link Wray introduced power chords to rock music with his hit instrumental “Rumble”, where he also included considerable distorted guitar.
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The Yardbirds recorded “Train Kept A-Rollin’” while they were on their American tour in 1965. In her biography of Jeff Beck, who was lead guitarist for the band at that time, Annette Carson notes (as quoted in Wikipedia) that their “propulsive, power-driven version, however, deviated radically from the original. . . . [Their] recording plucked the old Rock & Roll Trio number from obscurity and turned it into a classic among classics”. Cub Koda writing for Allmusic notes of the Yardbirds’ version that they made “Train Kept A-Rollin’” a “classic guitar riff song for the ages”.
The Yardbirds included “Train Kept A-Rollin’” on their second American album, Having a Rave up with the Yardbirds that is absolutely chock full of classic songs; in addition to their major hits “I’m a Man” and “Heart Full of Soul”, Having a Rave Up includes “Evil Hearted You” and “Still I’m Sad”, plus a full side of the Yardbirds in concert featuring Eric Clapton on lead (taken from their British debut album, Five Live Yardbirds) that includes “I’m a Man” again plus their devastating cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning” that I first heard on their 1967 collection The Yardbirds’ Greatest Hits. Anyone who thinks that the British Invasion began and ended with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones needs to hear this music post haste.
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Many people don’t realize that Led Zeppelin is a successor band to the Yardbirds. After Keith Relf and Jim McCarty left the Yardbirds in mid-1968, lead guitarist Jimmy Page was about the only bandmember left. He set about finding new musicians for his next band that was sometimes called the New Yardbirds. When the four bandmembers in Led Zeppelin started played together, the first song they did was “Train Kept A-Rollin’”. Jimmy Page recalls of that session (as quoted in Wikipedia): “We did ‘Train’ . . . It was there immediately. It was so powerful that I don’t remember what we played after that. For me it was just like, ‘Crikey!’ I mean, I’d had moments of elation with groups before, but nothing as intense as that. It was like a thunderbolt, a lightning flash – boosh! Everyone sort of went ‘Wow’.”
While Led Zeppelin opened their concerts with “Train Kept A-Rollin’” throughout 1968 and 1969 (and later brought the song back to their shows in 1980), a studio version of the song was never recorded.
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Probably the best known version of the song is by Aerosmith; “Train Kept A-Rollin’” is included on their second album, Get Your Wings (1974), but the band’s connection with the song dates back much further than that. As quoted in Wikipedia, Joe Perry recalls of this song: “‘Train Kept A-Rollin’’ was the only song we had in common when we first got together. Steven [Tyler]’s band had played ‘Train’, and Tom [Hamilton] and I played it in our band. . . . It’s a blues song, if you follow its roots all the way back. . . . I always thought if I could just play one song, it would be that one because of what it does to me.”
Steven Tyler was in a band that opened for the Yardbirds in 1966 and says of their performance (again from Wikipedia): “I had seen the Yardbirds play somewhere the previous summer with both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page in the band. . . . In Westport [at their supporting gig on October 22, 1966] we found out that Jeff had left the band and Jimmy was playing lead guitar by himself. I watched him from the edge of the stage, and all I can say is that he knocked my tits off. They did ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’’ and it was just so heavy. They were just an un-f--kin’-believable band.”
“Train Kept A-Rollin’” was featured in early concerts by Aerosmith, and they often closed their shows with the song, including at their first gig in 1970. A live version of the song is included on three different concert albums by the band, and they have also performed the song with several other musicians over the years. In 2012, they played “Train Kept A-Rollin’” live in Hollywood with Johnny Depp; this performance is included on a bonus disc in the Deluxe Edition of Aerosmith’s most recent studio album, Music from Another Dimension!.
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Oops! I forget to do Step One when writing one of these posts: Check Wikipedia first. I was already through writing this post when I realized that Haymarket Square has a pretty good entry in Wikipedia already. Too late; they are already an official UARB!
(June 2015)
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These are the UARB’s and UARA’s from the past year (2014-2015), and as usual, I am pleased with the variety:
December 2014 – 2000’s American surf revival band THE SILENCERS
January 2015 – 1970’s American garage-rock revival band THE CRAWDADDYS
February 2015 – 2000’s-2010’s American singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist BRIAN OLIVE
March 2015 – 1970’s-2010’s American singer/songwriter/guitarist PHIL GAMMAGE
April 2015 – 1970’s Russian R&B band BLACK RUSSIAN
May 2015 – 1960’s British R&B band MAL RYDER AND THE PRIMITIVES
June 2015 – 1960’s American psychedelic band HAYMARKET SQUARE
July 2015 – 1960’s American garage/psychedelic band THE HUMAN ZOO
August 2015 – 1970’s American psychedelic/R&B band CRYSTAL MANSION
(Year 6 Review)
