The Zombies - Call of The Night

 

The Zombies - Call of The Night

(soniclovenoize “1966 Album” reimagination) 

Side A:

1.  Indication

2.  I’ll Call You Mine

3.  Out of The Day

4.  Is This The Dream?

5.  Goin’ Out of My Head

6.  A Love That Never Was

Side B:

7.  She Does Everything For Me

8.  Call of The Night

9.  How We Were Before

10.  This Old Heart of Mine

11.  Gotta Get A Hold of Myself

12.  I Don’t Want To Worry

This is the second entry in my reimagining of The Zombies discography, which attempts to reorganize the band’s output into five separate albums.  This album attempts to collect The Zombies’ material from 1966, as a stopgap between my previous reconstruction Remember You (which collected their 1965 singles) and their legendary psychedelic masterpiece Odessey and Oracle (1968).  Using the band’s Spring 1966 single sessions as the base of the album, this represents what I believe is a very specific micro-era of The Zombies: the transition from their early pop singles into a more psychedelic album-oriented direction.  I’ve also made some unique edits to some of the tracks in order for this collection to sound more like a unified and cohesive album.  

After the double-punch of back-to-back hits with “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No”, pop-rock darlings The Zombies spent the majority of 1965 attempting to replicate their success.  Despite a great number of original songs penned by bassist Chris White and keyboardist Rod Argent, nothing seemed to stick, and the band focused on touring.  One final attempt at a single was recorded in November 1965 and showed a slight change in musical direction: “Is This The Dream”.  A great pop single with a decidedly beefy, Motown flavor, the song did not make a dent in the charts as it was hoped.  

By the time the band regrouped to try to create another hit, rock music was already changing.  In May 1966, entered the studio to record the more colorful and uptempo “Indication” and “She Does Everything For Me”, the piano jaunt “I’ll Call You Mine” and the moody “Gotta Geld a Hold of Myself.”  “Indication” failed to chart when released the following month, despite being up to snuff and showing the band developing musically, akin to the Rolling Stones’ Between The Buttons and The Beatles Revolver.  Returning to the studio that fall, the band shifted gears completely and recorded the Dianne Warwick cover “Goin Out Of My Head”, with a decidedly lounge atmosphere, complete with vibes and horns.  For good measure, the band also recorded studio demos of several new compositions, such as Argent’s ballad, “A Love That Never Was”, White’s garage rocker “Out of the Day”, White’s dirge “Call of the Night” (which was later rewritten into "Girl Help Me” for the RIP sessions).  Additionally, the band produced group home demos without drummer Hugh Grundy, such as Colin Blunstone’s scant original “I Don’t Want To Worry”.  

Seeing the ending was near, The Zombies decided to go out on a high note, and self-produce one final album they could be proud of.  After relentless rehearsals throughout 1967, the band entered into EMI Studios in June–directly after The Beatles, who had just finished Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band–and quickly tracked the perfect psychedelic pop album, on their own terms.  The resulting album Oddessey and Oracle, although a masterpiece, was completely overlooked and its lead single “Care of Cell 44” did not chart.  Going their separate ways, Argent and White continued their musical partnership into the progressive rock band Argent, with Blunstone, Grundy and guitarist Paul Atkinson all resorting to day jobs.  It wasn’t until legendary American keyboardist Al Kooper rediscovered the album and gave “Time of The Season” a push as a single, that the album got its due: becoming a hit in 1969, a year after the band had broken up!  

The purpose of this series of Zombies album re-imaginings is to reconstextualize their discography away from singles and into albums for appreciation, and the goal of Call of The Night is to represent this specific transitional era of the band that typically gets glossed over.  Being a fan of “Indication” and its associated 1966-era tracks, I’ve always felt it unfortunate that there was not a full album’s worth of material from this era to collect together as its own thing (the songs are usually clumped together with The Zombies’ 1965 singles, which I feel is its own era in itself).  But are we actually able to construct a 1966 album?  We actually can!  

The basis of Call of The Night are the five studio tracks recorded in 1966: “Indication”, “I’ll Call You Mine” (the original, ‘undubbed’ version), “Goin Out of My Head", "She Does Everything for Me” and “Gotta Get A Hold of Myself”.  Additionally, we will use the three studio demo tracks recorded around this time that seem to work well as singular songs: “Call of The Night”, “Out of The Day”, “A Love That Never Was”, as well as the home demo “I Don’t Want To Worry” (I have added reverb to the last one to smooth it out and make it sound less demo-y).  Struggling to fit more material, we will use the live BBC session of “This Old Heart of Mine” from November 1966, in which I have re-edited to omit the audience and announcer to make it seem like a standard studio recording.  With only ten of the necessary twelve songs for an album, we’ll have to look backwards into 1965 for two ‘filler tracks’ that were previously unused in my 1965 Album reimagining Remember You: “Is This The Dream”, a late 1965 single that to this ear sounds more at home on this 1966 album than with the 1965 singles; and Blunstone’s quaint ballad “How We Were Before”--which in itself wasn’t actually released until 1966 as the b-side to “Indication”, as the band held it over too!  

 

 

Sources used:

• The Zombies - Zombie Heaven (1997 CD release) 

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Pink Floyd - The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes (UPGRADE)

Pink Floyd – The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes

(soniclovenoize “The Man & The Journey” studio reconstruction)

October 2024 Upgrade

Side A:

1.  Daybreak, Pt 1

2.  Work

3.  Afternoon

4.  Doing It!

5.  Sleeping

6.  Nightmare

7.  Daybreak, Pt 2

Side B:

8.  The Beginning

9.  Beset By Creatures of the Deep

10.  The Narrow Way

11.  The Pink Jungle

12.  The Labyrinths of Auximenes

13.  Behold The Temple of Light

14.  The End of The Beginning

After long last, this is an upgrade to a studio reconstruction of the never-recorded experimental performance piece of “The Man and The Journey”, often titled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes.  This reconstruction attempts to present a version of the performance that would have taken the place of the More soundtrack and Ummagumma album, only utilizing studio recordings and condensing the performance down to two sides of a vinyl album.  This upgrade changes two aspects I thought were missing from my previous versions of this reconstruction: 1) each side is more concise, spanning 20-minutes each, and 2) I have utilized and manipulated vintage-era sound effects from the EMI library to replicate the Azimuth Coordinator from the original The Man and The Journey performances, what I feel is essential for the full listening experience of these theoretical recordings.  I have also used some slightly different song choices to replicate the final fourth of the album.  And finally, this reconstruction is meant to co-exist and complement my previous 1969 Pink Floyd re-imagination, Vantage Point.  

Musical soul-searching was the predominant mindset in 1969 for Pink Floyd.  The previous year had seen the band attempt to mimic their former bandleader’s singles-oriented approach to psyche-pop with their second release A Saucerful of Secrets as well as the single releases “It Would Be So Nice” and “Point Me At the Sky”.  While both singles failed to make any significant chart impact, it was actually the latter’s instrumental b-side “Careful With That Axe Eugene” that garnished some underground FM-radio play, prompting the band to make it a live staple.  Following the cues of their audience’s reaction to the one-off track, Pink Floyd switched gears and focused on what the remaining four members could do the best without Syd Barrett: sprawling, experimental psychedelic jams. 

The perfect opportunity to test these waters came in February 1969, recording the soundtrack for the film More at Pyre Studios in London.  For several months, the band tracked a few songs and a number of musical themes for director Barbet Schroeder that ranged from Pink Floyd’s typical space rock to pastoral ballads, from exotic influences to even proto-metal hard rock.  The soundtrack album was released in June and while not a critical nor commercial success, several of the album’s highlights were added to their current set, including “Green is The Colour” and “Cymbaline”.  But More was not all; by then Pink Floyd had also been working on their own proper follow-up to A Saucerful of Secrets. 

That Spring, each member of Pink Floyd entered Abbey Road studios alone to record solo material, intended to be collected together as the next Pink Floyd album.  Although Nick Mason and Richard Wright’s material was largely instrumental and experimental, Roger Water’s and David Gilmour’s material each featured a song that had already been performed live with the full band, “Grantchester Meadows” and “The Narrow Way”.  Paired with exquisite live recordings from The Mothers Club on April 27th and the Manchester College of Commerce on May 2nd, Ummagumma was released in October and cemented Pink Floyd’s status as a cult band, prepared to push rock’s envelope, even without hit singles.

While both More and Ummagumma tell a story of Pink Floyd’s progress in 1969, it is not the complete story.  With new and original material spread across two separate albums essentially recorded simultaneously, as well as another two albums-worth of material in their back pocket, the band pondered how to present the material in a cohesive live setting beyond the typical rock band performance.  Choosing to cull the highlights from both projects as well as their favorite instrumental jams from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets (as well as the b-side that was the catalyst for it all), Pink Floyd designed a series of performances from April to June, sometimes entitled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes but usually titled “The Man and The Journey”. 

“The Man & The Journey” was arranged as two 40-minute movements, and utilized the newly-built Azimuth Coordinator, a primitive incarnation of a surround sound system which played pre-recorded samples meant to fit into the performances itself.  The first set—called “The Man”—seemed to follow the events of a typical person throughout his mundane, British, post-Industrial life.  The set included the members of Pink Floyd actually building a table on-stage (to represent ‘Work’) and being served tea (to represent ‘Teatime’).  The concept, as explained by Gilmour, was inspired by graffiti near Paddington Station, which said “Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, [repeated]... How much longer can you keep this up?  How much longer before you crack?”

The concept of the second set is less clearly defined and seemed to be largely instrumental and improvisational.  Called “The Journey”, sketches from the performances’ playbill—and even the songs themselves—seem to suggest the piece follows a pilgrim’s quest.  A member of Pink Floyd’s crew even appeared in a sea creature’s costume, moving through the audience and appearing on-stage near the end of the set.  Is there some greater meaning or metaphor beyond this?  Is this the Man’s own spiritual journey through existence?  Knowing Pink Floyd’s conceptual pretensions, that very well might be the case. But Pink Floyd has never given any hints of what the journey nor its prize was, the task apparently left to the imaginations of the listeners.  My own interpretation is that “The Journey” is the evolution of agricultural mankind into industrial mankind, the quest for knowledge and technology; while there isn’t an actual Greek name Auximines, it could be stemmed from the Latin auxiliāris (to help) and the first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes (whose name translates to “he who endures”), literally a metaphor for the king (of humanity) who is assisted by gadgets (our technology) as he endures (history). 

After two seasons of performances of “The Man & The Journey” which concluded with a final performance in Amsterdam on September 17th professionally recorded by VPRO Radio, Pink Floyd retired the conceptual pieces in time for Ummagumma’s release in October.  Unfortunately, the music assembled as “The Man & The Journey” was never formally recorded in the studio, suggesting that it was simply a way for the band to present the disparaging More and Ummagumma material in a live setting, rather than “The Man & The Journey” being the true genesis of either albums.  But is there a way to construct a studio version of “The Man & The Journey”, to condense and create some sort of conceptual order to Pink Floyd’s 1969 output? 

For my newest iteration of “The Man & The Journey” will have several guidelines:  

1) We will only use 1969-era studio recordings of Pink Floyd.  This will exclude both live material and anything after 1969.  The problem that arises from this rule is that some of these pieces (“Work” and “Behold The Temple of Light”, for example) were never properly recorded by Pink Floyd.  The solution to this is… 

2) We will substitute some unavailable tracks for other similar ones, assuming they are still from this same era.  Likewise we will try to avoid using previously-released tracks (“Pow R Toc H” or any section of “A Saucerful of Secrets”, for example) so that this album reconstruction can fit into any continuity you desire.  Note that this iteration once again uses slightly different songs to replicate the final fourth of the album.  

3) Although my previous iterations had 24-minute side lengths, I have trimmed the sides down to a more concise 20-minutes each.  This keeps the album moving and becomes a much tighter listen, something I enjoyed much more over my previous versions, which sort of dragged.  

4) After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided that the Azimuth Coordinator is an essential part of this album.  Here I have used a lossless rip of some of the actual EMI sound effects library.  This would have been the same recordings actually used by the band to create the relevant sound effects originally heard in 1969, although often heavily manipulated.  

Side A–The Man–begins with my own personal “short” edit of “Grantchester Meadows” as “Daybreak”.  This edit significantly cuts the intro, solo and outro, making the song just over four minutes in length.  This is followed by a train whistle from the EMI sound effects library slowed down to sound like a factory steam whistle–what I am fairly sure Pink Floyd actually did for their performances–then goes to “Work” (since this musical piece was never recorded by Pink Floyd, we will use a similar-sounding track, “Sysyphus Part III” from Ummagumma).  In this iteration, I chose to use a fragment of “The Narrow Way I” (aka “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major”) to represent “Tea Time”, and acting as an outro to the song.  “Afternoon” follows (“Biding My Time” from Relics), as well as the track “Doing It!” meant to represent sexual intercourse (often a Nick Mason drum solo, Pink Floyd often used either “Up the Khyber”, “Syncopated Pandemonium” or “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party (Entertainment)” for this; here I use the later from Ummagumma).  Next the Man falls asleep (using a new short edit of “Quicksilver” from More) and slips into a “Nightmare” (as represented by “Cymbaline” also from More).  The side concludes with the Man waking from his dream to the next day’s “Daybreak” (a short edit of "Grantchester Meadows") and the sound effect of an alarm clock from the EMI effects library.  

Side B—The Journey—begins with the pilgrim leaving the British pastoral countryside (“Green is the Colour” from More) by sea, when they are soon “Beset By Creatures of The Deep” (depicted by “Careful With That Axe Eugene” from Relics).  Using storm sound effects from the EMI sound library–as Pink floyd originally did–as a crossfade between the two, the pilgrim’s ship plows through a 'horrid storm' (as depicted by “The Narrow Way III” from Ummagumma).  They finally arrive on land, moving through a “Pink Jungle” (while Pink Floyd performed “Pow R Toc H” for this piece, here we will substitute a different ‘tribal’ track based around a rolling bass riff: an edit of “Main Theme” from More with the animal vocalizations from “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict”).  Our adventurers next creep through the “Labyrinth of Auximenes” (this piece often featured the bassline to the verses of “Let There Be More Light” juxtaposed with guitar effects and ominous drums; when stripped of the bass line, we are left with a track reminiscent of the first few minutes of “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party II” from Ummagumma, which I used here) and “Behold The Temple of Light” (the chord sequence from “The Narrow Way II” also from Ummagumma).  “The End of The Beginning” is a problematic conclusion to the album, as any use of “Celestial Voices” would be reusing an old track, not to mention an anticlimax if using the subdued studio version that lacks the bombast of how it was performed for “The Man and The Journey”.  Here, we will substitute a different song that features a very similar design of a climaxing organ phrase: “Sysyphus Part IV” from  Ummagumma.  Although I had previously used “Cirrus Minor”, this, I feel, creates a more inspiring and strange ending to a likewise inspiring and strange album.

Sources Used:

Relics (1996 remaster)

Soundtrack to the Film ‘More’ (2011 remaster)

Ummagumma (2011 remaster)

EMI Productions - Sound Effects (1970)

 flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

 

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Nazz - Fungo Bat

 

Nazz - Fungo Bat

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:

1.  Forget All About It

2.  Only One Winner

3.  Magic Me

4.  Gonna Cry Today

5.  Meridian Leeward

6.  Under The Ice

Side B:

7.  Some People

8.  Rain Rider

9.  Resolution

10.  Old Time Love-Making

11.  Featherbedding Lover

12.  Take The Hand

13.  How Can You Call That Beautiful

Side C:

1.  Loosen Up

2.  Sing You A Song/Good Lovin’ Woman/Sing You A Song (Reprise)

3.  It’s Not That Easy

4.  Plenty of Lovin’

5.  Letters Don’t Count

6.  Kiddie Boy

7.  Christopher Columbus

Side D:

8.  Hang On Paul

9.  Not Wrong Long

10.  You Are My Window

11.  A Beautiful Song

A leap-year post seems appropriate for this album that never was!  This is a reconstruction of the unreleased 1969 Nazz double-album Fungo Bat.  Recorded amidst the actual disintegration of the band, the album was paired down to the single-album release of Nazz Nazz, with the remaining material seeing the light of day as the posthumous Nazz III in 1971.  This reconstruction those two albums and attempts to present what a finished Fungo Bat would have sounded like, using Todd Rundgren’s personal acetates as a blueprint.  I’ve also personally remastered the tracks to not only function as a cohesive whole, but to be a more listenable album with a more balanced high-end and more articulated low end, what I perceived as sonic limitations of the original album.  

Philadelphia hometown kids making good, teenaged garage-rockers Nazz miraculously scored a record deal with Colgems and some high-profile gigs opening for such luminaries The Doors and The Bee Gees.  Although stifled by performance venues for being underage, the quartet was also marketed as a heavier alternative for teeny-boppers and scored their first hits in 1968 with “Open My Eyes” and “Hello It’s Me”, penned by their prodigal guitarist: one Mr. Todd Rundgren.  Being simultaneously influenced by the electric Blues of the British Invasion, yet also distinctly (and curtly) American, Nazz seemed to have a fast and high trajectory behind their self-titled debut, effortlessly courting Garage Rock and shades of Psychedelia and creating the template for Power Pop.  But some things were just simply not meant to last, as the cracks in the band began to show upon the sessions for the sophomore album.  

Taking cue from the newly-released Beatles The White Album, Rundgren planned Nazz’s follow-up also as a double-album of newly composed songs.  Additionally, much of the material was ballad-heavy, influenced by his current obsession with keyboardist Laura Nyro– much to the chagrin of the rest of the band, who just wanted to rock!  While on tour in Europe in January 1969, Nazz booked studio time at Trident Studios to start tracking the album.  With one song in, the British Musicians Union immediately shut the four 19-year old Americans down and ejected them from the studio.  

Returning to their home base of ID Sound Studios in Hollywood with The Electric Prunes’ James Lowe behind the board, the quarter restarted sessions for the double album, with the intention of self-producing the album entirely.  Political divisions between the band members further hampered progress– a Rundgren resolved to refine his vision of the sprawling double album by secretly replacing singer/keyboardist Stewkey’s organ parts with session musicians, and a Stewkey who outright refused to sing on Rundgren’s pop ballads that, to him, sounded more like solo efforts.  

Stewkey and drummer Thom Mooney pleaded with their label to intervene with the as-yet unnamed double album (although the inside-joke “Fungo Bat” had been used to designate recordings meant for the album, it was not actually meant as the album title proper, contrary to general belief!).  Colgems Records put the hammer down on Rundgren and made the executive decision to trim the double album down to a single LP length, claiming it too pretentious for such a new band to release such a mountain of material as their second-ever release.  Rundgren acquiesced and the “Fungo Bat” material was reduced to a single LP of the most band-oriented songs and released as Nazz Nazz in April 1969… but not before the outright resignation of bassist Carson Van Osten, who had tired of the band drama.  

After a handful of replacement bassists and several gigs to support Nazz Nazz, Rundgren, too, tired of the drama–or probably what he considered artistic compromises in his burgeoning solo career–and quit the band as well.  Stewky and Mooney continued until 1970 as a trio and with fill-in musicians, only to officially call it quits shortly thereafter.  But record labels being record labels, Colgems wouldn’t let it rest and went searching for the remaining, partially unfinished leftovers from Nazz Nazz.  Still in possession by Mooney, he reunited with Stewkey and Lowe to finish the material, which was ill-advised by the pair yet ultimately released as Nazz III in May 1971, leaving a most puzzling epitaph to a short-lived band.  But is it possible to take a second swing at Fungo Bat, to hear the album Todd Rundgren originally wanted to release?

Luckily, a set of extremely rare production acetates have survived over the years, which blueprinted  Rundgren’s vision of how the 24 songs were to be constructed.  Those rough-ish mono acetates were only recently released in December 2022, demonstrating that the Rundgren-helmed Nazz had actually intended to create a fairly impressive double album that covers a majority of the pop landscape in 1969, and even veers into Progressive Rock territory!  For this reconstruction, we will use the aforementioned acetates as merely a guidepost, and combine the final Nazz Nazz and Nazz III albums into a more-or-less finished Nazz Nazz double-LP as Rundgred envisioned; this includes Stewkey’s 1970-overdubbed vocal versions rather than Rundgren’s original guide vocals, as they sound more complete and, well, finished.  Although the record has also been recently corrected that the material was never intended to be named “Fungo Bat”, we will use this title regardless in the name of historical continuity of music nerdity.  

It is also of note, that I have extensively re-EQed this album, as I thought this was a really great double-album ruined by very curious ear-piercing equalization choices.  In trying to make a more listenable master, I have significantly calmed down the high end– specicily 3dB cuts at 1kHz, 2kHz and 5kHz, with some songs even receiving an additional cut at 3kHz.  Conversely, there was a severe lack of low end on this album, so I have added some bottom to it as well.  It is conceivable that I have eliminated some of this album’s charm; to them, I say you are free to listen to the originals at any time.  

Side A opens with the fantastic “Forget About It All” from Nazz Nazz, which hard-edits into the Stewky-vocal version of “Only One Winner” from Nazz III, as demonstrated on Rundgren’s acetates.  This is again hard-edited into “Magic Me” from Nazz III, also as mapped out on Rundgren’s acetates.  This is followed by the killer trio of “Gonna Cry Today”, “Meridian Leeward” and “Under The Ice” from Nazz Nazz.  Side B opens with Nazz III’s “Some People”, followed by Nazz Nazz’s “Rain Rider”.  This is followed by the superior Stewkey-vocal version of “Resolution” and “Old Time Love-Making” from Nazz III, “Featherbedding Lover” from Nazz Nazz, and the record concluding with the Stewkey-sung versions of “Take The Hand” and “How Can You Call That Beautiful”.

Side C goes a bit down the rabbit hole, opening with the banter of “Loosen Up” and the chatter of “Sing You A Song”; note that although Rundgren’s acetates contain the entire four minutes of the “Good Lovin’ Woman” interlude, but I am only using the 40 seconds of it as heard in the bonus track from The Fungo Bat Sessions– and we are all better off for that!  This is followed by the Stewkey-sung versions of “It’s Not That Easy” and “Plenty of Lovin” from Nazz III.  Next is “Letters Don’t Count” and “Kiddie Boy” from Nazz Nazz and the highlight of the album, “Christopher Columbus” from Nazz III.   Side D opens with the manic psyche-pop of “Hang On Paul” and “Not Wrong Long” from Nazz Nazz, followed by “You Are My Window” from Nazz II and “A Beautiful Song” from Nazz Nazz, crossfaded as originally intended to become one 17-minute epic album closer.  

Sources used:

Nazz - Nazz Nazz including Nazz III - The Fungo Bat Sessions (2006 Sanctuary Records) 

 

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