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Considering the Byrds’ great anthem, “Eight Miles High,” takes one in a number of directions.

The song was written by Byrds Gene Clark, David Crosby and Jim (now Roger) McGuinn, with credit at the time – 1965 – going to Clark for the lyrics and Crosby and McGuinn for the music (with Crosby taking credit for one line of the lyrics). That’s according to Wikipedia, which notes that since Clark’s death, McGuinn has claimed credit for the song’s concept as well as some of the lyrics.

Authorship aside, when the song was recorded and released, the Byrds insisted that it was about the group’s trip to England in 1965. And the surreal lyrics were an approximation of a travelogue from a strange and distant land. Clark said the title was a reference to the altitude of the airplane that brought the Byrds to England.

But as has been noted many times in many places, including Wikipedia, commercial air traffic flies at about 35,000 feet, or closer to seven miles high. To which Clark retorted, as I read somewhere long ago: “Eight Miles High” sounded better.

Well, it does. But even if the reference to literal altitude was a starting point, Clark and the rest of the Byrds cannot have been unaware of the winking reference to a different type of high. It may not have been the original source of the phrase, but the drug reference was almost certainly one of the reasons the song was written, recorded and loved. It’s pretty tame stuff as we sit here in the first decade of the next century, but forty years ago, even a winking reference like “Eight Miles High” was enough to get one’s record banned from airplay, and there were some stations that did not air the record for just that reason.

And the record only went to No. 14. Two of the group’s singles to that point had reached No. 1: “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season).” Sandwiched between those two on the group’s Top 40 chart is “All I Really Want To Do,” which barely made the chart, edging to No. 40 for one week. And after “Eight Miles High,” the group got only three more singles into the Top 40: “Mr. Spaceman” at No. 36, “So You Want To Be A Rock ’N’ Roll Star” at No. 29 and “My Back Pages” at No. 30.

So one can read – based simply on the charts – that “Eight Miles High” was the end of the Byrds as a strong chart presence. Now, there were personality conflicts and personnel changes galore in the group, and those were no doubt part of the reason the group’s presence in the Top 40 changed. How much influence should be laid to each bit of truth is one of the unknowns forty years later. I’m sure the surviving Byrds have something to say about it, and maybe I’ll read their accounts of those times eventually.

One other connection popped into my head as I listened to “Eight Miles High” last evening: Just as Muddy Waters’ “Rolling Stone” provided the name for a group of scuffling London-based blues players, so did “Eight Miles High” – in legend, at least—provide inspiration for another collection of musicians. I’ve read a number of times that the phrase “In places small faces unbound” inspired Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Jimmy Winston and Kenney Jones to name their group Small Faces. (Not so; please see the comments and Afternote.)

Wikipedia, on the other hand, says, “the group took their name from a remark by a female friend of Marriot’s, who noted that the band members all had ‘small faces’. The name stuck in part because of the mod slang usage of the word ‘face’ to mean a popular, trendsetting individual.” If that’s the case, then we have here another instance of the truth being decidedly less intesting than the legend. In matters of rock & roll, I guess it’s entirely up to each individual to decide whether to hold to the truth or embrace the legend.

(The mention of the Small Faces almost always cues in my brain their hit, “Itchykoo Park,” which went to No. 16 in the U.S. in early 1968. The record contains one of the more insistent earworms in my life: “It’s all too beautiful” repeated again and again. Then, of course, there’s the “What did you do there?” followed by the exultant “I got high!” And we’re back to pharmaceutical references again.)

Whether “Eight Miles High” was originally meant to refer to drugs or to travel is a question that likely will no longer be answered; again, legend will trump fact no matter what anyone says. It’s an odd song in its construction, of course, with the Byrds’ version being influenced by the music of India as well as – according to McGuinn – by John Coltrane’s saxophone work. Those unique qualities may be why there aren’t a lot of cover versions of the song.

According to All-Music Guide, there are currently eighty-seven CDs available that have a recording of “Eight Miles High.” More than half of those recordings are by the Byrds, usually the original version but sometimes the much longer (16:07) version that showed up on the 1970 album Untitled.

Among those who’ve covered “Eight Miles High,” there are some interesting names: Crowded House, the Folkswingers (that album was posted here recently), the Floorjivers, Les Fradkin, Golden Earring, Joe Goldmark, Rufus Harley, Hüsker Dü, Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians, R.E.M., Roxy Music, the Leathercoated Minds, the Magic Mushroom Band, Shockabilly, Dave Stewart, the Ventures, and various individual members of the Byrds.

I’ve heard a few of those versions, and – as is par for this course – have never heard at all of some of the performers and groups in that list. The first cover I heard of “Eight Miles High,” however, remains one of my favorites. It was on one of the few albums my sister owned that I have not yet been able to replace on either LP or CD: Leo Kottke’s Mudlark, released in 1971. (In the past twenty years, I’ve never seen a copy of the LP in any used record store; the CD is available online fairly easily, and I’ll no doubt go that route soon.) The rip of the song I’m offering here is one I found at the Groovy Fab forum about a year ago.

I’m also providing a rip of Kottke performing “Eight Miles High” live in December 1968 at the No Exit coffeehouse, which was located in the basement of the student union of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. The performance was recorded by Alan Peterman, who offers “Eight Miles High” and six other songs from the performance at his own website. (Despite the low bitrate, it’s worth a listen.)

Leo Kottke – “Eight Miles High” (Mudlark, 1971)
4.46 MB mp3 at 171 kbps

Leo Kottke – “Eight Miles High” (Live at the No Exit, 1968)
2.00 MB mp3 at 64 kbps

Afternote: As reader plasticsun notes, the Small Faces were in existence before “Eight Miles High” was released. I should have checked the dates, but I didn’t and I missed that. The reference idea makes more sense anyway. Thanks, plasticsun!

Even as I wrote my post for last Tuesday’s Vinyl Record Day, I knew something was wrong. I sorted through the 45s in the two cases I mentioned, finding some interesting things, but there were some things missing.

What, I wondered, had happened to the Trini Lopez single, with “The Hammer Song” on one side and “Unchain My Heart” on the other? Where was the silly John F. Kennedy spoof, “I Really Wanted To Be A ‘Singar’” by Joel Langran? And where was Frank Gari and his “You Better Keep Runnin’”?

The more I thought about it as I prepared my Vinyl Day post, the more I was sure there had to be more 45s somewhere in the apartment. And, indeed, a box came down from the closet shelf Saturday afternoon that had more than a hundred singles in it. As I looked through them that evening, I had the vague memory of sorting through the 45s sometime during my days in south Minneapolis and placing the better ones – both esthetically better and less damaged – in the two cases I’d used for material for my post. I don’t think the post of thirteen singles for last week’s Vinyl Record Day would have altered significantly had I looked in the box from the closet beforehand.

But just as archeological discoveries from time to time make us revise our views of ancient civilizations, so does my closet discovery force me to change my personal mythology. I’ve long said that the first single I remember buying was the 5th Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In” in 1969. That still remains the first serious single of music I bought. But the box of records from the closet holds clear evidence, seven-inch vinyl testimony that reminds me that I bought with my own hands and my own cash at least one earlier record.

In the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Dickie Goodman made at least a little money and had a few hits with what Wikipedia says were called “break-in” records:

In 1956, says Wikipedia, “His first song, ‘The Flying Saucer,’ was co-written with partner Bill Buchanan, and featured a description of a news-covered invasion of earth from a Martian space ship. While Goodman asked questions of pedestrians, scientists, and even the Martian himself, their responses were ‘snipped’ from lyrics of popular songs of the day, including tracks from Fats Domino. Elvis Presley and Little Richard.”

Through the Sixties and into the Seventies, the spoof records went on, taking on horror movies, the U.S. Senate, President John F. Kennedy (the spoof by Joel Langran I mentioned above), the Berlin Wall, the television show Bonanza, James Bond, ecology, Watergate, the 1970s energy crisis, the movie Jaws and more.

Along the way, Buchanan left, new sidekick Mickey Shorr came and went, and Goodman went on. And in 1966, he took on one of the biggest pop culture crazes of the time, the television show Batman, a half-hour of satire and mild adventure that ran two evenings a week. Among the recording artists whose records were sampled this time were the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Righteous Brothers, Petula Clark, Lou Christie, SSgt. Barry Sadler and – I think – Mrs. Miller.

And having heard it, most likely on WJON, I took advantage of a trip to Crossroads mall, where I went to Musicland and laid down my coins for Goodman’s latest creation, “Batman & His Grandmother,” the first record I ever bought.

Dickie Goodman – “Batman & His Grandmother” (Red Bird 10-058, 1966)
3.66 MB mp3 from vinyl at 192 kbps

During the recording of ‘Statues’, The Open’s Steven Bayley split from his long-term girlfriend. Upsetting for them, but great news for us. The Open always sounded huge, but manageably huge in an early U2 and The Verve way rather than anything too exciting. Well, not anymore.

The Open have never lacked ambition, but you still have to applaud ‘Forever’, a gravity-free piece that combines Miles Davis-like trumpet with spectral piano chords and precious few words. First single, ‘We Can Never Say Goodbye’ (“Curtain’s coming down on our love”) is absolute glumness personified, but, somehow, feels strong enough to crush pain and doubt on contact. How do they do that?

The title track (“I broke you down, no sight nor sound”) is just Bayley’s voice and a guitar and is all the more startling for it. ‘Alone’ could have been pulled from the soundtrack of some existentially dour, Left Bank tragedy from 1970. ‘Season Of The Change’ is stadium-sized in its desire to reach out and touch everyone, ‘Two Lovers In The Rain’ is piano jazz-bo craziness, if you please.

‘Statues’ is, frankly, all over the shop. Too many ideas, too much energy, too many possibilities, too many wide open roads to ever settle and become boring. Or keep their girlfriends. But that’s not our problem
Tracks
1. Forever
2. We Can Never Say Goodbye
3. Moment In Time
4. Lovers In The Rain
5. Statues
6. My House
7. She's Mystery
8. Seasons Of The Change
9. Fallen Tree
10. Alone
Download.

Impressive debut with a mysterious, religious, weird electronic album about human being, where man becomes man. Florian Fricke experiments the opportunities of the Moog synth to create a whole album around atmospheric, strange electronic effects. The result is unique and the approach was new in popular music. The “Dream” series are enigmatic titles, a manifesto of experimental sounds treated by the “electronic”. The first track starts with concrete noises taken from the nature, then comes bizarre long continuous forms augmented by circular “cosmic” sounds. The second track directly follows the previous composition without any transition. Frantic “ethnic” drums dominates the tune, it’s purely shamanistic.” Dream part 3” delivers abstracted, meditative, scary sounds produced by the Moog synth (very closed to the seminal “zeit” by TD). “Affenstunde” is absolutely magic; a captivating “ethnic” composition which provides an immersive dialogue between possessed acoustic percussions and electronic loops, textured patterns. The second part of the tune reminds me Terry Riley’s “Persian surgery dervishes” with its endless hypnotic organ loops. The bonus track ("train through time") on the SPV reissue is a powerful, percussive / repetitive track which progressively meditatizes the listener. The track has similar psycho-acoustic effects than Gottsching’s marvellous guitar trance-like work in his “inventions”. To sum up things Affenstunde is milestone in progressive electronic music, culminating at the top of the most creative rock albums of the last century.
Tracklist:
1. Ich Mache einen Spiegel — 3:32
2. Dream Part 4 — 5:12
3. Dream Part 5 — 4:41
4. Dream Part 49 — 7:37
5. Affenstunde — 18:35
Download.