The Human Expression was an American garage and psychedelic rock band from Los Angeles that released three well-regarded singles, and made additional demo recordings between 1966 and 1967. (More from Wikipedia)
Pebbles, Volume 10 is also how I came to find out about the Human Expression, one of several garage-rock and psychedelic-rock bands that I wrote about in Wikipedia in the pre-UARB days. The album also includes a song by the Ides of March that came out before their hit song, “Vehicle”; as well as an early song by the Five Americans of “Western Union” fame. “Primitive” by the Groupies, one of the best songs on this album was later featured on one of the Born Bad CD’s.
(July 2013)
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The writer of the first hit song for Steppenwolf, “Born to be Wild” is listed as Mars Bonfire; but that is clearly no one’s birth name. It is not even the man’s first stage name; when he was a member of the predecessor band to Steppenwolf, the Sparrows, he used the name Dennis Edmonton. He was born Dennis McCrohan; he and his brother Jerry Edmonton (born Gerald McCrohan), who was also in the Sparrows, had changed their surnames at the same time. Interestingly, Mars Bonfire had his song shopped to other bands before Steppenwolf got their shot at it; one was a Los Angeles psychedelic rock band called the Human Expression. Front man Jim Quarles chose one of Bonfire’s songs, “Sweet Child of Nothingness” as the “A” side for the band’s third single; but he wasn’t impressed with “Born to be Wild” and passed on that song.
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The Human Expression is another amazing psychedelic rock band; they are well known for “Love at Psychedelic Velocity” that was included on Pebbles, Volume 10, one of the first two Pebbles LP’s that I bought. Not so well known, but even more highly prized is “Optical Sound”; as the title suggests, the song deals with the synesthesia effects of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs, where someone will seem to see sounds and taste colors. The 45 with “Optical Sound” on it has brought as much as $2,650 at auction.
The Human Expression had a chance to record “Born to be Wild” before the song was made available to Steppenwolf, but the band wasn’t impressed with that song and chose another Mars Bonfire song instead, “Sweet Child of Nothingness”. The Human Expression only recorded a handful of singles, so their retrospective album, Love at Psychedelic Velocity includes several demos of the songs as well as the singles versions. Still, their music is as good as it gets for my money; this Wikipedia article is at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Expression .
(September 2013)
