The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 12/03/11
The Lemon Pipers - "Green Tambourine" (1967)
If I had to pick a favourite period of rock and pop music, I think I would have to plump for the second half of the 1960s. I would define the boundaries of that time (chronologically if not stylistically) by the first Mothers Of Invention album at the beginning and Led Zeppelin II at the end.
It seems to me to have been a time when boundaries were being stretched up to - and beyond - breaking point, and there was a sort of cross-pollination effect where all sorts of different styles were merging in ever more baffling and dazzling combinations.
A lot of it never made the mainstream, but some of it did, and what did had a wide impact on pop music in general. This is one such example.
The Lemon Pipers were a psychedelic rock band from Ohio who - after their initial release failed to chart - were handed over to producers/songwriters Paul Leka and Shelley Pinz, who wrote what went on to be a classic bubblegum-psych song (much to the chagrin of the band, who didn't think of themselves in that vein at all).
Nonetheless, this track epitomises a certain feeling, a certain something in the air at that time.
