1967 Rock Band Debut Album POLL

Significant drop off after the first several, but still a packed year. Voted Velvets.

Traffic album should be Mr. Fantasy?

The Spinners - The Original Spinners

Spanky and Our Gang - S/T

Oh wait, Spanky’s on there.

Traffic album should be Mr. Fantasy?

Or Heaven Is In Your Mind, which was what the first US edition was called. The s/t was their second LP.

Sly and the Family Stone. Or was that nixed to being more soul than rock.

My bad on Traffic title!

among the missing are Kites Are Fun, Parson Sound and We Are Paintermen

(Turn On) The Music Machine just misses the cut (12/31/66).

I should’ve included Sly (I didn’t realize A Whole New Thing was their debut).

The Velvets, of course.

Harpers Bizarre.

... not really but I do like that album a lot.

When this thing is over I'm not gonna have been the only Doors voter.

Yeah, the Harpers Bizarre record is wonderful. xp

Syd was a big enough deal to me that picking anything other than Piper, or even sitting this one out, would be terribly dishonest.

'68 is a much tougher choice with Silver Apples, Mutantes, United States of America etc (and Gris Gris, Terry Callier etc if the "bands only" rule is relaxed)

I voted Doors, I know that is the pariah opinion here, but I like jsut about every track.

Pink Floyd a close second I think. "Astronomy Domine" is one of my fave tunes by any band.

One thing I really love about the Doors is how much they annoy David Crosby

The band that is the biggest deal for me is the VU, but the debut lags most of the rest of their catalogue for me. Easy Piper, one of my favourite albums of all time.

PS Pink Floyd Rules

xxxxxp yeah, would be my pick for best 1967 album period.

xxxxxp yeah, would be my pick for best 1967 album period.

xxxxxp yeah, would be my pick for best 1967 album period.

Agh sorry didn’t mean to post 3x

thirdistheword

Floyd vs Kaleidoscope (UK) for me

I’m (re/)visiting some of these. I like how the Deviants album sort of invents the Stooges in the first song, and then… goes off to do other things.

idc going for moby grape

VU over Jimi, but I don’t think I’ve heard any of the others.

VU over Jimi, but I don’t think I’ve heard any of the others.

Probably VU but maybe Moby Grape.

Only four serious contenders for me. Because I’ve been on a little VU kick in the wake of the Todd Haynes doc and related chatter on this board, I’m inclined to vote for them. Could have voted Doors some other time. If pressed I’d say:
1.Velvets 2. Doors 3. Hendrix 4. Floyd

The album that's given me the most repeat plays over the decades is Piper. That's my vote.

Velvets or Doors. Went Doors because they rule.

Tortured over Velvets v. Floyd. Had to vote Velvets in the end because it personally meant do much to me when I was like 15ish.

Safe as Milk. My favourite Beefheart.

Jimi >>>> Doors > VU > Beefheart

Electric Music for rgw Mind and Body is way underrated imo

There are a bunch I haven't listened to in their entirety but

Hendrix > VU > Doors > Floyd > Procol Harum

Beefheart > Hendrix > Floyd > Red Crayola > Traffic > Grape, but there's not much in it.

Pearls Before Swine, Kaleidoscope (US), Electric Prunes, H. P. Lovecraft and a couple of others worth hearing too. Vanilla Fudge less so. VU and Doors I'm indifferent to nowadays tbh.

Actually, I've listened to Procol Harum more than Pink Floyd ngl, even if their biggest hook came from Bach.xp

That's wrt debut albums. Obv anyone within earshot of a radio in this country has listened to loads of Pink Floyd.

Tough call but went with Hendrix

Tough call but went with Hendrix

Tough call but went with Hendrix

Tough Hendrix but went with call

The albums I've heard, least to greatest:

Country Joe and the Fish - smug desultory folk-rock showing what people hated about hippies; "Grace" is OK
Vanilla Fudge - two good singles, some gratuitous noise, and some of the worst cover versions in the history of music
Pearls Before Swine - some nice evocative music occasionally surfaces through the haze, they're only barely a "rock band" though
Grateful Dead - two worthy garage-band originals and some nondescript folk/blues jams
The Doors - not bad but everything they try here is done better on Strange Days
Velvet Underground - my least favourite of their four albums; mostly excellent songs done better elsewhere (by them and others)
Moby Grape - the most consistently pleasant record on the list, maybe a little lightweight overall?
Red Crayola - very daring, not so pleasant; most cerebral debut of 1967
Left Banke - mostly excellent, with a unique melodic sense; a few fillers keep it from being great
Traffic - lots of memorable songs from both Winwood and Mason, especially the US version with "Paper Sun" and "Hole in My Shoe"; some aimlessness too
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - if this record was all he'd done, he'd still deserve to be in the blues-rock pantheon
Pink Floyd - they're one of my favourite groups, but...
Jimi Hendrix Experience - feels to me like the most striking debut, especially the US version with the singles

Kaleidoscope (UK) is a cool album

The main riff in “Dive Into Yesterday” is straight off the first Royal Trux album!

I had an idea for a similar poll, 1968 Debut Albums by Eclectic Post-Psychedelic Bands; "eclectic" because I wanted to exclude bands that were too much associated with a particular genre, like blues or heavy music. The actual inspiration was comparing the debuts by Family and Spirit; we'll see them next if this poll becomes a series.

You should definitely do that next!

(This poll was inspired by me mentally comparing the first three on the list, and wondering, “how many others?”)

Missing:

https://img.discogs.com/cKFkudZCyoqqD-Hx8Llx_qN8GqU=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(webp):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9545925-1484116552-9086.jpeg.jpg

Box Tops: The Letter/Neon Rainbow

Glad that someone mentioned Kites Are Fun by the Free Design. That and the Captain Beefheart and Traffic LPs would be my faves just below the Big 4

Pärson Sound were named above, but it doesn't appear that their record was released until 2001.

oh right theres 2 - the UK one

The US one would be great if they hadn't bothered with all the jugband stuff - mind you it only lasts 26 minutes as it is!

Jugband tracks are the US equivalent of UK psych bands including music hall pastiches, I think there's a thread on this very subject somewhere.

i'm voting The Doors here but only know a handful of these

Going through these again, if The Velvet Underground & Nico wasn't on the ballot (IIRC, the release was delayed by about a year, which would've made 1966 even more ridiculously awesome), Are You Experienced? would have gotten my vote, either in the U.S. or U.K. configuration though I generally listen to a combined version of both anyway (pretty much how it's always been available on CD since the mid '90s). Runner-ups would have been Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Moby Grape. Those four in total are easily among my very favorite albums. After that, I like Safe as Milk and Traffic's debut quite a bit, but they're not on the same level - Beefheart's made much better albums, and I usually listen to a Traffic compilation than any their albums. The first side of The Doors is excellent, but everything goes to shit on the flip side. (I do like "Back Door Man" though.)

They don't qualify for this poll, but Surrealistic Pillow and I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You are debuts in their own way: the Jefferson Airplane of legend on the former (with Grace Slick on board) and the Aretha of legend, i.e. the Aretha of Atlantic, on the latter. Both are two more favorites from this year, especially Aretha's album.

Save those latter comments for the upcoming 1967 Rock Band Second Album POLL and 1967 R&B Solo Artist Tenth Album POLL.

Lol, I actually thought about JA in the same context; though I love their actual debut even more than their first few LPs w Grace.

http://www.beefheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/lennonsam.jpg

I love this photo.

This is a fascinating interview with the mysterious Herb Bermann, who by his own account wrote most of the Safe As Milk lyrics:

http://www.beefheart.com/i-was-a-scribe-for-captain-beefheart-herb-bermann-speaks-part-1/

I emailed my dad about this topic – he said, I saw the US Kaleidoscope at the Whiskey a go go when I was there in December of 1968, they were the opening act for Love. Don't remember anything about them other than the bass player used a fretless bass which at the time I didn't know existed.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I actually tried Traffic's debut again and it was a lot more uneven than how I remembered it being. (Also listened to the self-titled follow-up, and THAT album was solid, much better overall than the first. Maybe I was thinking of that one?)

The original US version of the first Traffic album was strong from start to finish; the three Dave Mason songs on the UK version drag it down some.

I was curious about this: of the eight UK-based albums on this list (including Hendrix) that were issued in the US at the time, five had different track listings and running orders.

It seems as if in the UK it was considered a bit crass to put recent hit singles on your new album thus making your fans buy these songs twice, whereas in the US hit singles were used to promote album sales (often having stickers on the shrink wrap noting the hit single(s) the album contained), though I wasn't around then so not sure. Also, rock was just starting to be regarded as an artform suited to album-length musical statements rather than just collections of songs that could be sliced up and served in any order on albums (or at least that was how the labels saw it). Earlier in the decade, albums like "(Band) sings (Big Hit) and 12 other songs" were still commonplace. 1967 was the first year a Beatles or Rolling Stones album appeared in the US in original UK form.

Left Banke or Kaleidoscope (uk) imo

better make a choice - poll ends in 2 hrs! :D

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

About the most predictable result possible.

I should have voted for "Gorilla".

The Dead got shut out!

LOL zero votes.

this seems about right to me, I am def team VU

They only got zero votes in the ILM 1967 Rock Band Debut Album POLL but every one of their fans went on to....say "this band SUCKS!" after the acid wore off.

Top 5 or seven are very, very solid. 108 votes, ILM somehow always pulls through and reminds me that when to topic is right, we are all still around.

I love that Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry are all represented!

(also, that Chocolate Watch Band album is quite excellent, even though few bands have been mucked with as badly by their label/producer as this one).

Did any of these bands other than Hendrix and the Doors also release their second albums before the end of 1967?

5th Dimension and Harpers Bizarre.

... and the Electric Prunes.

Thanks, I thought asking would be easier than research!

5th Dimension and Prunes' albums much better than their debuts.

definitely agree w/ that

VU also released White Light/White Heat in December 1967

5th Dimension's' The Magic Garden LP from Dec '67 prob my fave of all their albums. For that matter the 2nd Doors' LP is my fave thing in their discography.

"The Magic Garden" would be perfect but for that godawful shitty Beatles cover in the middle of it.

It's out of place for sure. Wikipedia says it was supposed to go on their first album.

It's like "Across the Universe" on "Young Americans", shite.

I'm really surprised the Velvets did that much better than Hendrix. That album is good, but Are You Experienced? is groundbreaking.

For that matter the 2nd Doors' LP is my fave thing in their discography.

No, I didn’t even know there was a Moog on it until you alluded to it

Electric Music For teh Mind & Body got no votes. I thought the lp was all pervasive like eveywhere at the time. Not that that is anything necessarily to go by. But I do remember hearing about it being one of the most popular psychedelic lps of the time.

I considered voting for that one.

Coming over to note how The Trip soundtrack is an example of an extremely early use of the Moog.

Country Joe & the Fish is another one of these groups that also released their second album in 1967: I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die.

In the Vanguard Records catalog that Country Joe album comes just two numbers after Perry & Kingsley's first Moog album, Kaleidoscopic Vibrations. I just noticed that when I was trying to figure out when the latter was released. #onethread

*Perrey

iirc from childhood, Electric Music for the Mind & Body got as much play at our house as Hendrix and the Doors; Big Brother & the Holding Company was in rotation too, though not as often as Cheap Thrills. I don't think I heard the VU, Floyd, Beefheart, or other albums until the 80s.

i would have voted for red crayola / krayola if i had seen this poll

prob would have voted for VU and N, as innovative in its way, art-pop-rockwise, as the Hendrix debut---which seemed too subdued on first listen, after all the hyle, but second listen---! JH at his own most art-pop: psych-pop that was really psychedelic, expanding the perimeters, mile markers, permanently--really a tie w VU & N, so I'm glad I didn't see this and have to decided.
Agree that Floyd, Doors debuts are excellent too, for the most part, Dead is okay cloudy West Coast folk-rock, US Kaleidoscope's Sidetrips has its keepers, and I've always liked Big Brother's s/t debut: think it was a demo recorded for (mostly jazz, r&b) Mainstream Records in Chicago, only released after they became famous--but played with a lot of verve, if sounding like in a cave or shed, and some stoner cartoon songwriting by non-Joplin bandsters, also old timey, unmistakably Joplin, no matter who wrote it, "Bye Bye Baby"---and others appropriate for her, def. incl. Moondog's round "All Is Loneliness," with slammin' Moondog-appropriate drums---that's my favorite!

Have now heard Country Joe & the Fish's debut and am actually very impressed. The lead guitar work on it is quite fierce; instrumentally this is superior to the Dead's first LP and comparable to the Airplane's first two LPs, though I'd say Jack Casady's bass playing elevates the Airplane somewhat. The Fish have this tendency to abruptly switch up their grooves midsong - as on the single "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine," which is a quirk but I suppose acceptable in terms of adding more psychedelic flavor. The songwriting is kind of all over the place and there will be certain tracks that I won't want to go back to as much as others, but it's all less hokey than I had feared. You can tell the band doesn't want to be a coffee shop type folk act and really want to play loud electric rock.

Reading up on them I never realized that the lineup that played Woodstock was 3/5 different from the lineup that played Monterey Pop two years earlier.

Their guitarist (Barry Melton?) was a big favourite of John Peel's, funnily enough.

I have The Life and Times of Country Joe and the Fish, the double best-of that came out in '71, so I don't know the studio albums; their greatest song, for me, is "Janis" from their second LP.

Barry Melton yeah, and you can see in Monterey Pop that he really was pretty good. Not often celebrated though, afaik

"Grace" is on the first album and "Janis" is on the second

I'll give the 2nd Country Joe album a listen to see if I like it any better than the debut.

I've been listening to Tangerine Dream by Kaleidoscope, about the most 1967 record imaginable. The singing and strange lyrics are reminiscent of Piper, but the melodies recurrently remind me of the Who. The ballads are twee to the extreme, they're better when they allow themselves some aggression. It's listenable and imaginative although I don't know if I'd say they surpass any of the better-known records of the year that they emulate.