THE STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK
Strawberry Alarm Clock is a psychedelic rock band from Los Angeles best known for their 1967 hit “Incense and Peppermints”. Strawberry Alarm Clock charted five songs including two Top 40 hits. (More from Wikipedia)
Among the many 1960’s psychedelic bands are the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Brother and the Holding Company, 13th Floor Elevators, the Chocolate Watchband, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Iron Butterfly, and Tomorrow. Our local newspaper, the Sun Herald reported over the weekend about a previously unreleased album by Arthur Lee’s band Love that is supposed to hit the stores shortly; I didn’t expect such hip news from them frankly.
(March 2011)
* * *
After Homer’s 45 “I Never Cared for You” started getting extensive radio play and peaked at #2 on the radio station KONO’s playlist, the band began opening for national acts that came to the area, including Blood, Sweat and Tears, Vanilla Fudge, and Strawberry Alarm Clock.
(September 2011)
* * *
American teenagers (mostly white suburban kids) were also invigorated by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and all the rest; and they responded by launching a counter-assault, when seemingly every kid in America wanted to be in a band. This era is now known as the garage rock era (that was the most available practice space for most of these would-be rock stars, hence the name); this time period also saw the beginnings of the psychedelic rock movement on both sides of the Atlantic. I didn’t know exactly what I was hearing at the time, but the music by bands like the Seeds, Blues Magoos, the Electric Prunes, Question Mark and the Mysterians, the Standells, Count Five, and Strawberry Alarm Clock (among many other bands) was grabbing me almost immediately. I don’t know that I even realized immediately how bizarre many of these American band names were, as compared to those of British Invasion bands like the Animals, Freddie and the Dreamers, and the Dave Clark Five.
Thankfully, in 1972 (though if I’m not mistaken, the album was actually not released in the US until 1976), Lenny Kaye – later the guitarist for the seminal Patti Smith Group – helped assemble hit songs by all of these diverse bands plus plenty more into what is now regarded as one of the greatest compilation albums of all times: Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. It remains one of my favorite records, and I have spoken of it several times before in these posts.
* * *
The Skywalkers learned about the 1960’s music scene through early Pink Floyd albums and the Soft Machine, and no doubt the rich musical heritage in their home country. Their musical vision was to fuse garage and psychedelic music together, but always with a pop sensibility; as they put it in the interview: “We like psychedelic music but it has to have a pop character as well. Think of bands like the Electric Prunes, Love and Strawberry Alarm Clock, Tomorrow. Our favorite years in music are 1966 and 1967, where garage and psychedelic music just came together. Our favourite subgenre is Baroque Pop with artists like Billy Nicholls, Sagittarius, the Millennium and of course the Zombies.” I would add to that list a rather under-appreciated American band called the Left Banke, who had a lovely hit song in 1967, “Walk Away Renee”.
(January 2013)
* * *
Their manager, Huffman & Hathaway lined Homer up as the opening act for several national bands in this time period, including Blood, Sweat and Tears, Vanilla Fudge, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
(April 2014)
