Author: Kim Simpson

“I’m Flying Home” (1968) – Merrell Fankhauser and HMS Bounty * Written by Merrell Fankhauser * 45: “Girl (I’m Waiting for You)” / “I’m Flying Home” * Produced by Glen MacArthur, Jack Hoffman, and Norman Malkin * Label: Shamley

Merrell Fankhauser’s pleasurable late sixties/early seventies recordings with Fapardokly, HMS Bounty and Mu still fly below the radar, but they take tuned-in listeners from the sparkling Southern California of the mind (late sixties) to the mythical jungles of Hawaii (early seventies) and beyond to where UFOs hover. “I’m Flying Home” is a psych rock nugget that showed up on the flipside of an HMS Bounty single, in which it sounds like they’re actually spinning farther away from home by the second. Shamley Records was a very short-lived imprint that branched off of the Universal Studios label (UNI), which had taken over Alfred Hitchcock’s Shamley Productions in the mid-sixties.

“Rock Against Romance” (1981) – Holly and the Italians * Written by Holly Beth Vincent * LP: The Right to Be Italian * Produced by Richard Gottehrer * Label: Epic

The cover photo on Holly and the Italians’ debut album, depicting Holly Beth Vincent as some sort of eighties-rock Connie Francis, misrepresents the enduring appeal she could have on listeners. So, too, does “Tell That Girl to Shut Up,” the album’s best-remembered song that once earned her group a touring gig as openers for “Rip Her to Shreds” Blondie. A better representation is “Rock Against Romance,” the album’s last song, that engulfs you in teen symphonics and gives you a clear sense of Vincent’s urban Ronettes/Shangri-Las foundation. Better still is her performance of the song on the British Old Grey Whistle Test show, playing lead guitar, standing on a plastered leg, and looking like the real deal.

“King Kong Song” (1974) – Abba * Written and produced by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson * LP: Waterloo * Label: Atlantic

Those who’ve invested emotionally in Abba as songcraft sophisticates likely wince at songs like this, in which they instruct listeners to “let your arms hang down and waddle all around.” Those who experienced the sugar high of the 1974 Abba invasion as kids, though, will regard it as novelty gold. On the Swedish foursome’s first US album, “King Kong Song” happened to follow a track called “Sitting in the Palmtree,” in which Björn Ulvaeus sings of living like “a monkey in the zoo.” The Beach Boy “bom bom” vocals locate it smack in the middle of the seventies nostalgia boom.

“Letter from Hiro” (1980) – The Vapors * Written by David Fenton * LP: New Clear Days * Produced by Vic Coppersmith-Heaven * Label: United Artists (UK)/Liberty (US)

England’s Vapors released one of their era’s most satisfying power pop albums with New Clear Days, but the novelty notoriety of “Turning Japanese” overshadowed it and likely shortened the band’s lifespan. That song was too clever—a nuanced self-identity exercise that translated to the masses strictly as cultural mockery. The album ends, though, with a six-plus-minute track called “Letter from Hiro” that handles the Japanese theme with comparative sensitivity. The koto in the outro (playing notes in the ryosen scale) has an emotional effect directly opposed to the brazen oriental riff that opens up “Turning Japanese.” The sequence that closes “Letter to Hiro” probably seeped into Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” during a time when Lindsey Buckingham was scarfing down new wave records. (On the US version of New Clear Days, “Letter from Hiro” ends side one.)

“It’s Still Warm (long version)” (1987) – Dramarama * Written by John Easdale * LP: The Days of Wayne and Roses (The Trash Tapes) (1992) * Produced by John Easdale, Mark Ettel, and Chris Carter

This longer version of Dramarama’s 1987 single, which turned up on a 1992 fan club-only release called The Days of Wayne and Roses, intensifies its wistful vibe. They were a New Jersey band who became KROQ darlings in Los Angeles but couldn’t convert that notoriety into commercial success. So by extension, “It’s Still Warm” can feel like a poignant wallow in the lost promises of youth, especially for listeners who spent their teen years in the late ’80s. The long version, with its quiet merry-go-round intro doing a I-IV-VIIb pattern, brings to mind the Motors’ “Dancing the Night Away,” which also had a long and short version, either being essential in its own way.

“In the Midnight Hour” (1965) – Wilson Pickett * Written by Steve Cropper and Wilson Pickett * 45: “In the Midnight Hour” / “I’m Not Tired” * LP: In the Midnight Hour * Label: Atlantic

As a song, “In the Midnight Hour” is an irresistibly coverable soul primer. As a recording, Wilson Pickett’s original version is untouchable. The stories told about it involve uncredited producer Jerry Wexler demonstrating dance steps to insure that Al Jackson (drums), Steve Cropper (guitar), and Donald “Duck” Dunn (bass) would punch the backbeat hard on the 2 and 4. They also tell of Cropper and Pickett composing it in the Lorraine Motel (later the assassination site of Martin Luther King, Jr.), and of Cropper claiming to have secularized an early Pickett gospel recording that had also included the words “in the midnight hour.” (He was likely remembering Pickett’s already secular “I Found a Love” with the Falcons.) The record’s ultimate power, though, is Pickett’s vocal, which sounds like a man manipulating hurricane winds.

“I Found a Love” (1962) – The Falcons * Written by Wilson Pickett, Willie Schofield, and Robert West * 45: “Swim” / “Lu Pine” * Label: Lu Pine

Guitarist Steve Cropper has been quoted as having taken inspiration for “In the Midnight Hour” from one of Pickett’s gospel tracks, in which he sings, near the end, “I want to see Jesus in the midnight hour!” It’s almost certain he was thinking of this track, though, which sounds gospel and features Pickett saying at 2:25, “and sometimes I call in the midnight hour!” The only record Pickett had appeared on before the Falcons (who also included Eddie Floyd and Mack Rice) was called “Sign of the Judgement” (1957), in which he sang second lead with the Violinaires in Detroit, featuring nothing Cropper could have even misheard that way. (Tony Fletcher, in his In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett, dispels other rumors that Pickett had recorded with a group called The Spiritual Five.)

“Very Nice of You to Call” (1970) – Aardvark * Written by David Skillin * LP: Aardvark * Produced by David Hitchcock * Label: Deram Nova

A London prog band with no guitar, Aardvark (who once included Paul Kossoff and Simon Kirke of Free) released a lone album, and it mostly gurgled under heavy torrents of Hammond organ. The second track on side one, though, in spite of its ambiguous lyrics, glides into your memory banks on ruminative piano and handclaps, sounding more ’67 than ’70.