VINYL SHOW & TELL VOL 6 - CRAZY ELEPHANT...

Crazy Elephant
"Gimme Gimme Good Lovin' / Dark Part of my Mind"
(1969 Bell Records / USA)

(B-side plays first this time...)

So much deception surrounds this seemingly simple 45rpm single. With a title like "Dark Part of My Mind" and Crazy Elephant, a record from 1969 implicitly lets the buyer know of its psychedelic content. Bell Records, moderately successful pop label branching into rock, nothing conspicuous right? Oh shit, wait, there's another credit at the bottom, "Kasenetz-Katz Assoc". Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz, two guys responsible for some of the cheesiest, wannabe, safe for kids, Top 40 bubblegum psych pop. "Manufactured" pretty much all their bands, traded members like baseball teams, assigned songs, faked names/bios, used studio musicians, and so on...

So how is it that the B-side here is so damn good?? This is the dirty kind of stuff that pops up on Bomp Records compilations and sends junkies like me into the crates, scouring bins for one trace of some impossibly rare slab. Well, I'd venture to say that this is the Super K production team's take on Vanilla Fudge and the like; heavy fuzzed out psychedelic rock & soul. Apparently they were proud of this tune and used it again for another studio band titled Cpt. Groovy and his Bubblegum Army, further highlighting the interchangable nature of Kasenetz-Katz songs. It's not exactly rare either, just keep looking.

The A-side, "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'", is catchy and was a chart hit, but who cares, the real business is happening in back here. "Dark Part of My Mind" knocks the door right the fuck open, immediately ripping your belongings off the shelf, looking for a drug stash while some long-haired freak blares his Vox Tonebender in your girlfriend's startled face, no hesitation. Eventually everyone is crazy-eyed and snarling at the ceiling, "Outta the dark part of my mind, yeah, aaaahh!!!". A personal fav.

this one gets a 9 out of 10 on the "Oh, word?" scale...