I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night
The Staircase Mystery?
I remember the cover of this album well, I used to spend a lot of time in 'Adrian's Records' in Wickford as a teen in the 80's. I used to head straight upstairs dodging the 'mainstream' record selections to the slightly more 'alternative' collections, on the way up the stairs album covers adorned the walls, mostly of post punk/new wave style bands, you kind of knew you were heading to the right place, a sort of upstairs 'Narnia'. I used to spend ages leafing through vinyl in the various sections, I can still remember the smell of the plastic protection covers (designed to stop the tears of joy from splashing on the actual record covers😉) and the Picture Disc Vinyl's covering the walls. I seemed to always gravitate to bands like The Damned or The Cramps first before heading deeper into more obscure or 'unknown' (at least to me at the time) bands.
What often sucks you into buying is the presentation, the cover of this album stood out, it was weird, slightly garish and also more importantly looked a little out of place, it was in the section of vinyl labelled The Damned? What was going on here? Had some Saturday Job Employee dropped this in the wrong place?
At the time I was studying Art at school and had strange ambitions to go to college and eventually be designing record covers so, I guess this one interested me. The album cover was actually quite psychedelic and looked like a 60's film soundtrack. I loved the 60's style typography as I was very much into that whole calligraphy thing. It was designed by artist Harvey S. Williams, real name Phillip Lloyd-Smee who was founder of 'Bam-Caruso Records' a U.K. based label which captured 'new' garage rock sounds from the U.S. and U.K. and create compilations which also included rare and unknown tracks from the 60's garage rock scene.
I have to say at the time I hadn't heard of any of the tracks on the album and to be honest at that particular time I didn't earn that much money from my own Saturday Job that I could 'take a punt' on what was an 'unknown entity', so I had to leave it, (at least for the time being). I remember sifting through the extensive collection of Damned vinyl 'Adrian's Records' had, I couldn't see any of the tracks on their more well known albums either? It seemed like a bit of a mystery?
It wasn't until a little bit later that the 'penny dropped'. This was a one off by The Damned, an excuse for them to indulge and lay down some 60's style Garage Rock & 60's Psychedelic Sounds that they were influenced by. The actual album is entitled somewhat darkly, but amusingly 'Give Daddy The Knife Cindy' and was released on the independent 'Big Beat Records' label who released material by other bands I liked i.e. The Cramps, The Meteors and even early Motorhead stuff. They tended, as a label to specialise in 1960's re-issues.
The Naz Nomad & The Nightmares Line Up Was
- Dave Vanian (Naz Nomad) - Vocals
- Roman Jugg (Sphinx Svenson/Ulla) - Guitar/Keyboards
- Rat Scabies (Nick Detroit) - Drums
- Bryn Merrick (Buddy Lee Junior) - Bass
They covered many artists of the garage rock era including bands such as 'Them' and 'Paul Revere & The Raiders'. They also, for good measure, threw in a couple of their own penned tracks in similar style e.g. '(Do You Know) I Know' and 'Just Call Me Sky'.
This song encapsulated the 60's Psychedelic Garage Rock sound, and boy did they do it justice! It seems that Dave Vanian's vocals are just made for it. This particular track is 'I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)'. It was originally recorded all the way back in the 60's a year before I was born by a band called 'The Electric Prunes'.
L.A. Psychedelic Rock
The Electric Prunes were an L.A. based psychedelic rock band formed in 1965 and were fairly short lived, this track was their 'big hitter' released on the U.S. 'Reprise Records' label in '66 and scoring #11 Stateside and #49 in the UK in the charts. They recorded a couple of albums, but split during the recording of their third album in 1968. Many of their songs including this one were actually written by American songwriters Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz who also penned songs for another garage rock band called The Brogues in 1965 with 'I Ain't No Miracle Worker', the song to me sounds quite R&B with similarities (at least to me!) to bands from the 'British Invasion' in the 60's like The Animals, perhaps the soulful vocals? Tucker also penned songs for artists as diverse as Sonny & Cher, Tom Jones and The Jacksons.
The Line Up & The Original Version
- Jim Lowe - vocals
- James "Weasel" Spagnola - guitar
- Ken Williams - guitar
- Mark Tulin - bass
- Preston Ritter - drums
Evidently the line up changed fairly frequently though. They started out as a Surf Rock oriented band called The Sanctions in 1965 and later morphed into The Electric Prunes.
Anyway, enough waffle, here is the link to the original version of 'I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)' by The Electric Prunes in all it's 60's Psychedelic Glory, finally from the Naz Nomad album another track which was originally done by Belfast band 'Them' called 'I Can Only Give You Everything', they were a band that had hits with the legendary 'Gloria', 'Baby Please Don't Go' and 'Here Comes The Night' and also launched the career of Van Morrison.
I Just Can't Be Happy Today
I am so glad the Damned did this album. it was a breakaway from the stereotypical punk/goth stuff, they had tried it before with the 'Strawberries' album back a couple of years earlier in attempting to change style and sound.
It didn't sit well with some of the old school punks at the time, but it did broaden the band's sound and definition to a wider audience and, I suspect also made it a whole bunch more interesting for them too, I mean playing 'New Rose' and their other early punk stuff every gig must have been a bit wearing after a while. The album was originally released on the Independent 'Bronze Records' label and also featured my local bass playing hero Paul Gray (also featured on this site at the link). One of my favourites from that album with the amazing 'Sensible' guitar solo is 'Under The Floor Again', the genius guitar work kicking in at about 3 mins 44 on the video. still makes the hairs on my arms stand up, the build up to it something is else again...
...'Give Daddy The Knife Cindy' and admit that the Damned weren't just a Punk Band!🔪
Video Thanks
Picture Thanks
Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash
Info Sources
Wikipedia, Discogs & Me