Powder - Ka-Pow! An Explosive Collection 1967-68

Powder - Ka-Pow! An Explosive Collection 1967-68 - 2014

Bay area mod rockers Powder were incredibly short-lived, quickly running through a bizarre time line that included a brief stint as backing band for Sonny & Cher, several name changes, and the recording of a few undeniably great tunes that got lost in the shuffle of the endless stream of Anglo-pop bands sprouting up in the wake of the British Invasion. Inspired to the point of obsession by the Who circa Sell Out, the Zombies, and the janglier side of psychedelia, the band was formed by brothers Richard and Thomas Martin (known under the stage names Richard & Thomas Frost), going through various Beatles-indebted incarnations before arriving at the lineup that would be Powder in 1967. One of those acts, Ray Columbus & the Art Collection had a minor garage psych hit with the loopy 13th Floor Elevators-ish "Kick Me (I Think I'm Dreaming)," which was buried in obscurity for a future Nuggets crowd to unearth decades later. Once Columbus left the band, they re-emerged as a more clean-cut entity simply known as the Art Collection, offering up bubblegum sides like "I'm a Boy & You're a Girl" and an especially sunny reading of the Who's "So Sad About Us." Somewhere in the middle of all this came the next phase of the band, with Powder leaning heavily on the pop sweetness of the sound they spun as the Art Collection, but weaving in darker themes on tunes like "Do I Love You" and the Love-meets-the Turtles weirdness of "What the People Said." All of these various phases are chronicled in Ka-Pow! An Explosive Collection 1967-1968, with 26 tracks in total digging into the archive for an impressive cross-section of the band's largely unreleased recorded material. The majority of the disc focuses on a shelved album from Powder recorded just before they imploded, turning in a fair amount of Who knockoffs like "Rodeo," but also some seemingly accidentally tender tunes like "Flowers" or the jangly and juvenile "Ruby Red Lips." These naive and tuneful Powder songs and the unabashedly innocent tunes recorded under the Art Collection moniker are a fantastic complement to the more heavy-handed freakbeat tracks that fill much of the album, though both offer a glimpse of the Martin brother's enthusiastic appropriation of the new sounds that were exploding from all sides in the late '60s. 

01. Turn Another Page (Version 1)
02. Gladly
03. Do I Love You (Version 1)
04. Magical Jack
05. I Try
06. Ruby Red Lips (Alternate Mix)
07. Grimbley Leitch
08. What The People Said
09. Rodeo
10. Flowers
11. Hate To See Her Go
12. Let's Look At The Moon
13. Too Many Miles

Ray Columbus & The Art Collection
14. Kick Me (I Think I'm Dreaming)
15. Snap Crackle & Pop

The Art Collection 16. Millicent
17. I Go To School
18. I'm A Boy & You're A Girl
19. So Sad About Us
20. She's My Girl
22. Morning

Powder23. Turn Another Page (Version 2)
24. Grimbley Leitch (Alt Vocal)
25. Do I Love You (Version 2)

Ray Columbus & The Art Collection
26. Kick Me (I Think I'm Dreaming) (Alt Version)

+@192

Powder - Biff! Bang! Powder

Powder - Biff! Bang! Powder - 1996

from AMG

After the Beatles broke big in America in 1964, plenty of young American rockers began following the lead of their peers in the U.K., and very few did so with greater enthusiasm than Powder, a California-based combo whose explosive style was rooted in their enthusiasm for the Who, the Small Faces, the Creation, and other similar acts. The Powder story begins with guitarist Richard Martin, aka Richard Frost, who grew up in San Mateo, California, not far from San Francisco. Frost became a rock & roll fan at an early age, and had already played in a handful of local acts with his brother Thomas Martin (aka Tom Frost) when the British Invasion struck in 1964. The Frost Brothers formed a band called the Newcastle Five, whose jangly style was informed by the new British sounds and early folk-rock. The Newcastle Five were playing clubs in San Francisco when they were spotted by Ray Columbus, a rock & roll singer from New Zealand who had come to the United States in hopes of advancing his career. Columbus invited the Newcastle Five to be his backing band, and the new combo took on a new name, the Art Collection. The Art Collection released a fine example of fuzztone proto-punk, "Kick Me," in 1966, but Columbus didn't stay with the group long, and as the first waves of the San Francisco psychedelic sound began to appear, the Frost Brothers relocated to Los Angeles in search of an audience for their louder, wilder sounds. Teaming with drummer Bill Schoppe, the Frosts caught a lucky break in 1967 when they were hired to be Sonny & Cher's backing group for a nationwide tour. In addition to a well-paying road gig, the Sonny & Cher tour also gave the Frost Brothers connections with Sonny Bono, who had launched his own music production concern, Progress Production Company, with producer Denis Pregnolato. When the Frost Brothers and Schoppe formed a new band called Powder -- short for gunpowder, with the name a play on their explosive musical approach -- Progress signed them to a deal, and the group cut an album at Hollywood's Gold Star Studio, with Bono and Pregnolato as producers, that they planned to lease to Atco Records. However, the deal went sour when Progress demanded the publishing rights to the songs, and the album was shelved. Powder soon broke up, and the brothers began performing as Thomas & Richard Frost, cutting an album of introspective singer/songwriter material for Imperial that failed to see the light of day when the label was sold, and later a country rock set for Uni Records in 1971. In time, the Powder material became legendary among fans of '60s garage rock and freakbeat, and a collection of rare and unreleased Powder and Frost Brothers material, Biff! Bang! Powder!, was released in 1996; another Powder anthology, Ka Pow! An Explosive Collection 1967-1968, was issued by the British label Big Beat in 2014. 

01. Turn Another Page
02. Gladly
03. Do I Love You
04. Magical Jack
05. I Try
06. Ruby Red Lips
07. Rodeo
08. Grimbley Leitch
09. Hate to See Her Go
10. What the People Said
11. Flowers
12. Let's Look at the Mood
13. Too Many Miles
14. Turn Another Page [Gold Star Version]
15. Grimbley Leitch [Alternate Vocal]
16. Magical Jack [Backing Track]
17. Kick Me - Ray Columbus & The Invaders
18. Snap Crackle & Pop - Ray Columbus & The Invaders
19. I Go to School - The Art Collection
20. So Sad About Us - The Art Collection
21. Morning - The Art Collection
22. She's My Girl - The Art Collection
23. Millicent - The Art Collection
24. Bluey Blues Blue - Richard Frost
25. It's So Simple - Richard Frost
26. Would You Laugh - Richard Frost
27. Gypsy Girl - Richard Frost






+@320

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