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Fan has Strawberry Alarm Clock covered

signed strawberry alarm clock album cover — Click image to view larger version of cover.

Strawberry Alarm Clock fan Jerry Bozajian writes about his quest to have his copy of the first SAC album cover signed by all band members from that time:

About 10 years ago, I wanted to buy a fish tank for the house. My friend told me that his uncle, Mark Weitz, had a fish and aquarium store close by.

I had heard stories over the years about Mark, how he was in the band Strawberry Alarm Clock, and how he played those awesome keyboard riffs in the song “Incense And Peppermints.”

So before I went to buy the tank, I found a copy of the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s first LP — I figured it would be cool to have him sign it. The cover is a classic, and the signed album looked great on my wall.

Several years later, in 2007, I heard that most of the band was getting back together for a show. I did a little research, and I discovered that in addition to the six guys on the cover of the LP, there were actually three more guys that played on the album.

I wasn’t exactly sure yet who did this or that, and I didn’t know who would be appearing at the show either. But I figured what the hell, so I grabbed my album off the wall and went to see the band in Malibu that June.

That night I managed to get five more signatures on the album. George Bunnell, Randy Seol, and Lee Freeman are pictured on the cover. Gene Gunnels and Steve Bartek are not on the cover, but they’re playing on the album.

So at that point, I had six out of nine. Mark pointed me in the right direction for the next two signatures. Greg Munford, who isn’t on the cover but sang lead vocals on “Incense,” was on the East Coast. Ed King was in Tennessee.

One left, with no real leads to go by. After a bit of searching, Gary Lovetro was the final piece, and I was lucky to find him too.

Three different times I packaged up the album and mailed it out, and three times it came back to me with a beautiful signature added on.

Everybody was glad to sign the LP, and I am thankful for that.

So 10 years later, the quest is over.

— Jerry Bozajian

Live at the Whisky, the Strawberry Alarm Clock

Upcoming shows

Following up on the success of its recent L.A. concert, the Strawberry Alarm Clock continues the momentum with a show at the historic Whisky a Go Go.

Surprisingly, the Thursday, July 19, concert will be the first time the veteran L.A. band played the rock club on the Sunset Strip.

The late April concert at the Satellite Club in Silver Lake and the upcoming Whisky gig are in support of the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s first album in more than 40 years: “Wake Up Where You Are,” now available on Amazon.

The Whisky a Go Go is located at 8901 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood (view map). It is an all-ages club.

While the Alarm Clock never played the club, bassist George Bunnell, singer-drummer Randy Seol and longtime collaborator Steve Bartek performed there as Buffington Rhodes in 1968, on an eye-popping bill that included Ten Years After, Chicago Transit Authority and Alice Cooper.

The Strawberry Alarm Clock did play the Hullaballoo Club on Sunset in 1967, the same year the young musicians found fame with the hit single “Incense and Peppermints.” They opened for Arthur Lee’s Love, the top band on the Strip.

Later Hollywood-area gigs were at the Knitting Factory, the Palace, the Viper Room, and the Pig and Whistle.

1960s rock groups that made multiple appearances at the Whisky a Go Go included the Doors, the Byrds, Love and Buffalo Springfield.

Review: SAC’s ‘fantastical wonderland vibe’

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Linda Rapka’s review of the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s show of April 25 first appeared on L.A. Record’s web site and is reposted here with permission.

Though they weren’t delivered to the stage upon mystical Persian rugs, as was their usual mode of transport in the late 1960s thanks to some hulky roadies, Strawberry Alarm Clock did conjure plenty of magic at its show at the Satellite.

The vintage psychedelic rockers, best known for their 1967 gold hit “Incense and Peppermints,” which saw newfound revival thanks to the stellar musical taste of Austin Powers, performed a rare live show at the popular Silver Lake club in support of its first album of new material in 42 years.

“Wake Up Where You Are,” released in March, keeps in the vein of guitar-fuzzy peace and love pop and sounded pleasingly fitting alongside the band’s classic ’60s gems like “Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow” and “Sit With the Guru.”

With a live lava-lamp light show appropriately flooding the stage, drummer/percussionist Gene Gunnels (the only remaining member of the band’s earliest incarnation when it was known as Thee Sixpence) donned his signature magician’s top hat, further adding to the fantastical wonderland vibe.

Accompanying Gunnels was madman percussionist Randy Seol and a wall of junkyard metal drums so high it all but obscured him from view — because the only thing groovier than one drummer on stage is two drummers on stage.

Howie Anderson, who joined as lead guitarist in the 1980s, played alongside SAC mainstays Mark Weitz on keys and bassist George Bunnell. Sitting in on flute and guitar was Steve Bartek, formerly of Oingo Boingo and Danny Elfman’s current orchestrator, who began writing songs and playing with SAC in his early teens.

The band made touching remarks on friends gone but not forgotten: former SAC frontman Lee Freeman, who died in 2010, and dear friend Mark Tulin, bassist of the the Electric Prunes, who died early last year.

It may have just been the special “incense,” but as they sang “There’s no place that can be better, when you’re up in clouds forever,” a certain presence filled the room, and the band’s pure magic was fully realized.

Photos by Linda Rapka

Fan review: ‘Wake Up Where You Are’

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Longtime fan David Chirko wrote this online review of the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s new CD “Wake Up Where You Are.” It’s reposted here with his permission.

The Strawberry Alarm Clock’s 2012 “Wake Up Where You Are” CD sports a front cover with the slogan “Its (sic) About Time” and the band’s moniker, in big green/blue/red shagadelic lettering, with small, coloured flowers atop and (of course) centrepiece alarm clock with black Roman numerals encircling a large strawberry in its face, and outside of it left and right, more, smaller berries, all over an orange background.

It conjures the blissful musing of a sultry summer day. The also orange back cover showcases a top-right-corner photo — interestingly, the album’s name above it — of our minstrels gazing down, but somehow back, into a time tunnel. It, as well, under the group name, lists down the left side the album’s 14 songs; all but a handful penned by Clock alumni and most being rerecorded numbers from their earlier albums.

Listening to this new SAC CD I mentally ensconced myself back in the 1960s, when I first heard them. I asked myself: Would the same sound landscape I found so captivating then, recrudesce now, crafting an ariose déjà vu?

Whether SAC does psychedelic, sunshine pop, jazz oriented pop or rock, there is always something irresistibly arcane reflected in the cogency of their poetic/musical renderings. Their lush, often gossamer, vocal meshes are adroitly combined with taut harmonizing of a plethora of florid instruments, delivering a flower power orchestra. Like scintillating keyboards and warm, inviting, fuzz tone guitars that evoke what has become de rigueur in the Clock’s oeuvre: calm confidence.

Some of the disc’s works have a heavier, but pleasant, grittiness to them, while some pieces are served with aplomb, in cocktail lounge phraseology. Let the listener delve this mature band’s derring-do by comparing the originals with the redone tracks, whose altered tempi and newly inflected lyricism are yours to discover. To absorb the total impact of this more delicately performed album — with a hitherto unrealized dynamic range — it must be played LOUD.

Let me now exemplify, what I’ve asseverated thus far, with a few of my favourite opuses on this disc:

“Charlotte’s Remains”: Can’t you just envision go-go dancers in shimmering short shorts, gyrating in their cages? Okay, the captivating tale of a femme fatale; her “remains ” being the aftereffect upon the men she jilted. And where did Charlotte disappear to? For the answer, we’re taken into the psychedelic wonderland of ghosts.

“Drifting Away”: Commences with calescent tintinnabulation. The melody echoes, like a condor sailing over a bluff. The elocution, well timed. “Drifting away and taking my chances … ” — ah … dreaming leads the smitten awry. Drift away at the end as the volume decreases with strumming akin to a slowed clock or metronome.

“Hummin’ Happy”: The chorus opens this chestnut ballad of a “sadist” (long “a” this time) visually transforming the felicitous sights of an impetuous downtown into devastation: “Evil things make me laugh so … ” Compared with the old version, this offering is more liquid, without sacrificing SAC’s ebullient sardonicism.

“World Citizen”: Behemoth songwriting effort. A paean to the wonderment of camaraderie. Its enchanting flute is like the serpentine rising of a hand, there to sonically seduce us. The redolent percussion escorting us to a tribal culture.

I’ll stop here, leaving the rest up to you, curious listeners.

Yes, “It’s About Time,” as this comeback album’s subtitle announces, we, as SAC aficionados, “Wake Up Where We Are” and savour this fresh Strawberry treasure; praying there is a follow-up in the offing.

David Chirko is an abstract artist from Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. He has published three poetry books and is an international affiliate member of the American Psychological Association.

More about the Strawberry Alarm Clock CD:

New Strawberry Alarm Clock CD is out

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“Wake Up Where You Are,” the first new album from the Strawberry Alarm Clock in over 40 years, is now available.

The CD can be purchased via the “Wake Up Where You Are” product page (Global Recording Artists web site). Or via Amazon..

The album is a mix of new SAC songs and reinterpretations of their psychedelic rock classics. “Wake Up Where You Are” kicks off with the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s blistering cover of the Seeds’ “Mr. Farmer.” The album was produced by longtime Strawberry Alarm Clock collaborator Steve Bartek.

Ed King, the Strawberry Alarm Clock guitarist who went on to fame in Lynyrd Skynyrd, had this to say about the album: “The album is a labor of love. I wish I lived closer so I could take part. The guys play better than ever and the addition of Steve Bartek makes it now the way it should’ve been. I think his parents wouldn’t let him join the band! ‘Mr. Farmer’ is my favorite track. Mark Weitz NAILED it.”

The band — currently Mark Weitz, George Bunnell, Randy Seol, Howie Anderson and Gene Gunnels — will perform a rare L.A. concert on April 25 in support of the CD. The Strawberry Alarm Clock last performed publicly in November 2010.

More about the Strawberry Alarm Clock CD:

Strawberry Alarm Clock rocks Silver Lake

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The Strawberry Alarm Clock will ring in another era with a rare L.A. show on April 25.

“We are gonna kick some psychedelic ass,” keyboardist Mark Weitz vows.

The concert is in support of the iconic rock band’s new album, “Wake Up Where You Are,” released in March.

(Update: Read a review of the Strawberry Alarm Clock show in L.A.)

The band last performed publicly in November 2010.

(Update: The group played the show before a youthful and appreciative audience, with Steve Bartek sitting in.)

The Strawberry Alarm Clock are Mark Weitz, George Bunnell, Randy Seol, Howie Anderson and Gene Gunnels.

The concert will be at the Satellite Club, in the Silver Lake area. The venue used to be known as Spaceland. Show time is 9 p.m. with support from Swedish psych-rockers La Fleur Fatale.

Get tickets for the Strawberry Alarm Clock concert. Get directions to venue.

Fan has Strawberry Alarm Clock covered

Live at the Whisky, the Strawberry Alarm Clock

Review: SAC’s ‘fantastical wonderland vibe’

Fan review: ‘Wake Up Where You Are’

New Strawberry Alarm Clock CD is out

Strawberry Alarm Clock rocks Silver Lake

About the band

Recordings

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