Here's What People Are Saying About Lemon
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HERE’S WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT LEMON DAZE, THEORETICALLY: "Spinal Tap meets Forrest Gump" - a marketing executive, on his game "A sickening obsession with detail, revealing a slavish devotion to a time that never was. The authors need to get out more.” - Some Guy "A magical mystery trip down the lemon brick road to the center of Sixties pop culture. Everyone should buy 12 copies! How was that?" -J. Sycophant "Awesome! This book rulez. I felt stoned after reading it! Actually, I always feel stoned. Huh huh." -Butt-head “I would have liked it a lot better if the authors had quoted me more.” - Marshall Davis, Rock Critic Extraordinaire "It made me want to pull those Freddy and the Dreamers and Pink Floyd albums out of my record collection and slap them on the old turntable for one more spin. What a blast! I had to keep on reading it. Kudos all around for a job well done. So, are you gonna buy that Monkees Japanese pressing or what?" -The dude at the record swap meet “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” - Attributed to lots of people “I couldn’t put it down. Perhaps it was the horse glue I smeared all over the covers. Eggplant.” - (The Late) “Syd” Barrett 2 NOTE : NO ORIGINAL MEMBERS OF THE ELECTRIC LIME PEEL EXPANSION MODULE WERE CONTACTED DURING THE INTERVIEWS FOR THIS BOOK, ALTHOUGH THEY ARE ALL STILL LIVING. THE AUTHORS WANTED TO KEEP AS GREAT A DEGREE OF TRUTHFULNESS TO THIS BOOK AS POSSIBLE. :: LEMON DAZE THE HIGHLY UNLIKELY HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC LIME PEEL EXPANSION MODULE The Unforeseeable Rise and utterly Inevitable Fall Of the Most Famous 1960’s Rock Band of the 21st Century by Scott Mercer & Allan Morgan Published by B Movie Books Los Angeles, California 90014 bmoviebooks.com Keep up with all the latest ELPEM news: go to www.ELPEM.com on the internet. Or don’t. Whatever you feel like. 3 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 9 Memories of ELPEM 12 Excerpt from The En-Psych-Lopedia of Rock 15 Who They Were 17 Part One: In The Beginning... 19 Part Two: Into The Breech 32 Part Three: The Calm Before The Flood 57 Part Four: ...And To America 104 Part Five: Lost in the Wilderness 144 Part Six: The Meek Shall Inherit 178 Part Seven: For One Brief Shining Moment 215 Part Eight: Awake, Arise and Open Your Eyes 228 Part Nine: Let Me Crawl Right Up Inside Your Head 293 Part Ten: The Immortal Quest of Times Forgotten 318 Part Eleven: The Storm Before The Deluge 346 Part Twelve: You Can't Go Home Again; Hell, You Can’t Even Get into the Neighborhood 366 Part Thirteen: The Gathering Storm 403 Part Fourteen: Don't Listen When It's Over 421 Part Fifteen: There But For The Grace of God... 421 Part Sixteen: You Don’t Fit in The Plan 480 APPENDIX A: Complete Discography of The Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module and Related Groups 503 APPENDIX B: Chart Positions for Singles and LPs of The Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module and Related Groups 517 APPENDIX C: Rare Recordings and Bootlegs 520 IMPORTANT NOTICE 538 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 539 INDEX 544 5 6 SONG LYRICS Page “High and Dry” * 84 “Just Try and Stop Us” * 130 “Hey Mister Establishment” * 138 “Surfin’ Gorilla” * 192 “Kites and Tricycles” 244 “Dinosaur Man”(1967) 247 “Lemon Fog” 250 “She Came and Went” 253 “Let Me Blow Your Mind” 286 “O Slipperhead” 295 “We Are The Creatures That Smell With Our Feet” 297 “Today is Our Day” 303 “Raspberry Souffle Sweet” 351 “Mind Toothpaste” 352 “Yesterdaily” 354 “Primrose Hill” 374 “Daily Papers” 376 “Voodoo Doll” 379 “Take A Stand” 381 “If You Ever Let Me Go” 385 “Ian Is Dead” 386 “Might Get It Right” 390 “Dinosaur Man” (1971)* 433 “Detroit Freight Train”* 437 “Free and Wild”* 440 “Gypsy Witch Woman”* 443 “Lost on the Planet of Women”* 447 “Shot Down by Decree”* 452 “When The Nuclear Bombs All Fall”* 456 “(S)Laughter”* 467 (*Originally by artists other than The Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module) 7 8 INTRODUCTION These days, can anyone possibly avoid the eerie, anachronistic specter of The Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module, sometimes known as ELPEM?1 Their videos play almost every day on VH-1 and MTV; their songs have been covered by many hit-making groups of the current music scene; their black light posters clog mall gift shops from Pensacola to Syracuse; their tie-dyed t-shirts are seen on every street corner from Bangor to Solvang; "Lemon Fog" and "Primrose Hill" blast forth from every Classic Rock radio station from Oswego to Azusa; and their compact discs are, today, decades after their break-up, selling hotter than they ever have. This begs a question. Huh? A better2 question probably is: Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the mythical qualities that ELPEM, as an emissary and totem of Sixties Rock represents. Most people will acknowledge that there's something magical about rock and roll.3 The music tends to keep old people young, make grown men feel underage, and brings dead mojo back to life, praise Elvis!4 And while some may gripe about the inappropriateness of old men prancing about on the stage like a bunch of teenagers, that attitude is nothing more than rampant jealousy. Most of us would like to remain young forever, with few cares, responsibilities or worries to bog us down. To have our imaginations forever fresh. To be trusting and naive. To have our lives in front of us and the world at our feet. To harbor hope in our hearts and rock and roll in our souls, whether that rock and 1 For short(er). 2 I.e., less addled. 3 But, ironically, there’s almost nothing rock-and-roll about magicians. 4 Rock and roll: the original Viagra. 9 roll originally came from a malt shop jukebox, a music video on MTV, a Walkman mix tape, or an Ipod playlist. Perhaps we're romanticizing things a bit. All right, more than a bit.5 But at its best, rock and roll can represent all the best qualities of youth. We live in a culture obsessed with youth, and so it follows that rock and roll, the music of youth, as maligned as it was at its beginning by The Establishment, harbored within its humble origins a dramatic destiny that was about to play out on the world stage. In the 1960’s, Rock and Roll made this inevitable transition, morphing from mere disposable entertainment for adolescents, to a cultural force; a force for propagating art, fashion, thought, and even greasing the skids for social change. And right at the cusp of this epochal transition,6 was The Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module. We have, in the following tome, offered a possible7 explanation and exploration8 of The Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module's seemingly inexplicable popularity. But, strangely, this popularity has come late, a roaring fire seemingly stoked by a generation who was not even present at the spark. It is the purpose of this book to redress that balance; to answer those questions that beg to be answered. 5 Okay, you got us. Won’t be the last time, either. 6 Let’s be honest, there were a few other groups in the mix there. Guess you got us on that one, too. That was quick. 7 And overly detailed! 8 Not to mention exploitation. 10 Every fan of Sixties music knows something about ELPEM's iconic albums, has a passing familiarity with many of their more important songs, and may have even seen some of their music videos that have been exhumed from dusty archives across The Continent. But very few people know much about their origins, history, and influence. And to quote the old joke, if you can remember the Sixties, then you weren't there. Those who knew about ELPEM, or were involved with them during their brief but potent existence have seemingly forgotten about them today, or, at least, aren’t willing to talk about them. So. What exactly was the Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module? What wasn’t it? How could it come to be? Why did it make the impact that it did? Was it merely gravity? Why did it die, and why couldn’t it live? How did ELPEM shape the Sixties, and what shape did it most approximate? Was it a rhombus? A torus? And how exactly did this group become, at this late date, representative of the best of Sixties Rock, when during its life span the group was fairly well ignored? We spent untold hours, months and years, even seconds, researching and writing this book to answer these difficult but important questions. Also to capitalize on the current popularity enjoyed by ELPEM, and make quite a load of money on the whole thing. Book tour, talk show appearances, movie rights, the whole shebang. Yes, sir. Watch for us on the tube. As for the book: read it, enjoy it, and most importantly, believe it. - The Authors 11 MEMORIES OF THE ELECTRIC LIME PEEL EXPANSION MODULE: We asked various people, selected at totally at random, to give us their favorite memory about The Electric Lime Peel Expansion Module. We now present a few of the anecdotes we accidentally captured during the writing of this book. Morton Coffee, Investment Broker, New York, NY: Oh yeah, ELPEM! I've got all their 24-karat Gold Plated CD reissues. They're excellent. I play them on my Bang & Olufson Mediacenter all the time.