Haley's Friday Spotify lists (of song inspirations for album #3)

[Miguel]

Thanks for taking the time to post those videos. I've been listening to them. Many are familiar. Quite a few of those that were unknown to me seem more straightfoward and slower paced than I would have imagined. I could see such songs putting an emphasis on the softer side of Haley's voice. They could be very soothing.

Did a quick search and found some trivia about Strawberry Alarm Clock and "Incense and Peppermints."

"Incense and Peppermints" initially appeared on the B-side of Thee Sixpence's fourth single, "The Birdman of Alkatrash", released on All-American Records in April 1967. However, local radio stations began playing "Incense and Peppermints" instead of the A-side and the song began to gain in popularity in and around Los Angeles.

"Incense and Peppermints" reached #1 on the Billboard chart. That would likely never happen today because most modern DJs don't have the autonomy to play what they like.

During recording sessions for "Incense and Peppermints", Slay expressed a dislike for the song's lyrics as sung by songwriter John S. Carter, so the lead vocals were sung by a friend of the band, Greg Munford, (a 16-yr-old) who was attending the recording session as a visitor. The regular vocalists in the band were relegated to providing background and harmony vocals on the record.

...Ed King would go on to greater fame as a member of the 1970s Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I looked this group up because they were all dressed in similar period-specific fashion and I was struck by the thought that they these musicians came together to form this group but probably went their separate ways and became part of other groups not long after.

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Greg Munford: “I was 16 and living in Southern California. I had my 15 minutes.”



Born in 1949 when rock ’n’ roll was in its infancy, Munford started taking guitar lessons at age 7. By high school, he was spending his evenings jamming with friends or listening to bands at Whiskey a Go Go on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. He admits to owning a pair of paisley bell-bottoms and a shirt with ruffles down the front.

“Ruffles,” he sighs, shaking his head. “We had no shame back then.”

Munford wasn’t actually a member of the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the group he would go on to record the hit song “Incense and Peppermints” with in the mid-’60s. His band was called the Shapes. But both bands shared the same manager in Bill Holmes and happened to be in the studio at the same time one day. “[Holmes] was a supermarket manager before hitting ‘the big time,’ ” Munford says.

Enter music producer Frank Slay, who had heard the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s catchy tune as an instrumental. Sensing its potential, he brought in his own people to flesh out some lyrics. There was just one problem in Slay’s mind: He felt the Alarm Clock’s lead singer had the wrong sound. “[Holmes] said, ‘Well I’ve got this kid from another band. He sounds all right,’ ” Munford recounts with an easy laugh.

The next thing he knew, he was laying down the tracks. The single was released as a B side, then rereleased as an A side. Munford recalls driving into the California hills after school to drop it off at small radio stations. “That was the way it worked back then,” he says. “You started a record in places like Bakersfield and Fresno. Their signal carried to Santa Barbara. If you could get your album to play in Santa Barbara, the signal would carry to L.A.”

After making its big debut on “Dave Diamond: The Diamond Mine,” a late-night radio show in Los Angeles, “Incense and Peppermints” crept up the Billboard charts, hitting No. 1 on November 25, 1967. (A week later it was trumped by the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer.”) Munford remembers his parents dropping dimes in the jukebox at a local coffee shop and proudly telling the waitress, “That’s our son.”

Setting his sights on rock stardom, he toured for a short time with the Strawberry Alarm Clock, opening for bands like Herman’s Hermits and The Who. But ultimately the dream didn’t pan out.

In 1970, Munford was asked to do a stint in Vegas as guitarist for an upbeat singing group called the Doodletown Pipers. “They wore dickeys,” he grimaces, referring to those detachable shirt collars that poke out of V-neck sweaters. That’s when he had an epiphany that a career change might be in order. “I’ve still got a Doodletown Piper album,” he says. “I look at it every now and then and say, ‘Whew. Close call.’ ”

Returning to college, he majored in music composition and theory at the University of Southern California, then earned a graduate degree in musicology at the University of Chicago. It was there that he met his wife and decided to pursue a career in advertising. Soon, he was working as a copywriter for agencies Marsteller Advertising and Maxwell Sroge, penning catchy lines about everything from freight train slack adjusters to jewelry and Maytag appliances.

...Today he plays guitar with the local band Out of the Blues, which performs occasionally at the Mason Inn in Glover Park. “We play out just enough to have a reason to rehearse,” he jokes. “And get this: I just applied for Medicare.”

Every now and then, he’s asked to sign an old album, or explain the lyrics of “Incense and Peppermints,” which he describes as “a bunch of psychedelic non sequiturs.” Once in a while, he’s pressed to perform the song, though he has come to prefer Chicago blues, and has traded his frilly shirts for a leather jacket.

“The one thing you don’t want to do is look like you’re still trying to relive the glory days,” he says. “But I love talking about old times. I had a ball.”

http://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/July-Au...g-Munford/