Concerts

Rocking the Whisky with SAC: photo gallery

The Strawberry Alarm Clock played its second gig since the release of the new CD, this time at the Whisky a Go Go.

Surprisingly, the July 19 concert was the first time the veteran L.A. band played the rock club.

As with the April Silver Lake concert, the show kicked off with a long driving “Mr. Farmer.” The band played fan favorites such as “Strawberries Mean Love,” “Rainy Day Pillow” and of course “I&P.”

The encore was a unique instrumental take on the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” (in 6/8 time), cooked up by singer-bassist George Bunnell.

The new songs from “Wake Up Where You Are” are well integrated into the show at this point. Highlights included “World Citizen” (Randy Seol) “Drifting Away” (Mark Weitz) and the CD title song, “Wake Up” (Howie Anderson). (Get a copy of the new Strawberry Alarm Clock CD.)

Harmonica ace Robert Cowan sat in with the band, as well as Kevin Dippold on flute.

Top left photo: The band during rehearsals for the Sunset Strip show.

Below is the photographic evidence of SAC at the Whisky! (Most photos by Janet Anderson).

Strawberry Alarm Clock in concert

The Strawberry Alarm Clock at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. July 19, 2012.

Howie Anderson backstage at the Whisky.

More Strawberry Alarm Clock photo galleries!

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

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.

1960s concert dates

Back in the day

Some of the key shows played by the Strawberry Alarm Clock in the late 1960s:

July 1, 1967: With the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Country Joe and the Fish, and Captain Speed. Earl Warren Fairgrounds, Santa Barbara, Calif.

July 22, 1967: With the Yardbirds, Moby Grape, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and the Stone Ponys (Linda Ronstadt). Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Sept. 8, 1967: With the Who, Herman’s Hermits and the Sundowners. Anaheim Convention Center.

Sept. 29, 1967: With Spirit and Linda Ronstadt (Love canceled). Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Oct. 15, 1967: With Jefferson Airplane, Spirit, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Hour Glass, Sunshine Company, Hamilton Streetcar, New Breed. Sacramento Pop Festival at Hughes Stadium.

Nov. 17-26, 1968: With the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and (some shows) the Soul Survivors. Beach Boys’ Fifth Thanksgiving Tour, various venues primarily in Northeast.

April 6-24, 1968: With the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and Bobby Goldsboro (some shows). Various venues, primarily in the South and Texas.

April 1968: With the Animals, the Rascals, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Honolulu International Center.

July 22, 1968: With the Seeds. Melodyland Theater, Anaheim.

View list of recent concerts (2007-12) by the Strawberry Alarm Clock

Thinking of a Strawberry Alarm Clock concert you attended in the ’60s? Feel free to add to the list via the comments section below!

On the road: Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield

Back in the day, home

In the later part of 1967 and the spring of 1968, the Strawberry Alarm Clock toured the country with the Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield.

“Everyone traveled on the Beach Boys’ private plane,” SAC keyboardist Mark Weitz says. “It was an amazing time.” Then-SAC guitarist Ed King recalls: “The tours with the Beach Boys in ’67 and ’68 outshine any other period in my life.”

The talent assembled on that tour still boggles the mind: Carl Wilson, Neil Young, Steven Stills, Jim Messina, Richie Furray, Mike Love and of course the guys in the Alarm Clock.

(Photo, top left: Dennis Wilson learning the flute intro to “Sloop John B.” To his right are SAC bassist George Bunnell and Carl Wilson.)

“We played colleges, giant county fairs, all over the South,” Weitz says. “Often we did two shows the same day. I remember driving around in a car in New Orleans with Stephen Stills next to me in the back seat and Neil Young up front.”

SAC guitarist King, who would go on to more rock stardom in Lynyrd Skynyrd, recalls one amazing moment on the tour: “(Beach Boy) Carl Wilson coming over to my room to show me the chords to ‘God Only Knows.’ The memory “far outweighs any Skynyrd experience,” King says.

The April tour with the Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield came to a halt, briefly, when news came of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis. About a half dozen tour dates were cancelled in the ensuing national emergency. George Bunnell says the band was in Alabama or Atlanta at the time: “We were told to stay in the hotel and not to step foot outside.”

Incredibly, during the tour’s swing through Florida, the SAC was booked for Miami and Honolulu on the same day.

“The Beach Boys let us leave their tour and fly to Hawaii for the day,” Bunnell says. “We played at the (then) Honolulu International Center on a Dick Clark show with the Animals, the Rascals, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. We flew straight back to Florida after our performance and from the airport were driven straight to the Beach Boys show. Insane!”

Shortly thereafter, the Strawberry Alarm Clock fired their manager.

The Beach Boys were still playing surf music and their monster hits, but the band was in transition, with leader Brian Wilson back home in L.A., trying to counter the Beatles’ next masterful recording with one of their own — following up on the transcendent “Pet Sounds” and “Good Vibrations. (Singer Mike Love wasn’t thrilled with the new music, preferring the “Fun, Fun, Fun” formula.) The band sought a place with the hipster elite that dug the Buffalo Springfield, no easy turnaround for the gents from “Surf City.”

Buffalo Springfield performed the same songs they played on the 2011 reunion tour, many classics of country/alt rock. The band was nearing the end of its two-year lifespan, with Neil Young (pictured on the plane, right) in hurry to exit in favor of a solo career. “The band was not a group in 1968,” the liner notes from the Buffalo Springfield box read. One fan who took a photo of the band on the tour recalls Young walking away from his camera, not wanting to be pictured with the others. Buffalo Springfield played its last concert on May 5, 1968.

The Strawberry Alarm Clock enjoyed chart success with the single “Tomorrow” during this period and reconnected with their audience with the classic album “Wake Up … It’s Tomorrow.” The group had just recorded many of its best songs, including “Sit with the Guru” and “Barefoot in Baltimore.” This was primetime for the SAC (but bassist George Bunnell and singer/drummer Randy Seol would leave the band months after the second Beach Boys tour).

Fans, no doubt, were amazed by the tour’s trifecta of now-legendary bands.

“It was a great night of music for me, and a night that remains burned in my heart and my head forever,” recalls Tim Pollard, a fan who posted recently about his experiences at the April tour stop in Charleston, S.C.

The Strawberry Alarm Clock were inspired by the Beach Boys’ experiments with transcendental meditation. “It seemed the cool thing to do,” Weitz says. “So before each concert we always meditated for 10 minutes sitting Indian-style doing our mantras.”

Here are some of the key stops on the Beach Boys’ fifth annual Thanksgiving tour of 1967 with the Strawberry Alarm Clock and Buffalo Springfield:

Nov. 17-26: Detroit, Syracuse, Buffalo, Richmond, Washington D.C., Hartford and Fairfield (Ct.), White Plains, Pittsburgh, Boston, Providence, West Point, Jamaica (N.Y.), South Orange (N.J.), Baltimore.

(The Soul Survivors played some of the tour stops. The Pickle Brothers also found their way onto the bill.)

Here are some key cities played on the April tour with the Beach Boys and and Buffalo Springfield:

April 6-24: Clemson (S.C.), Orlando, Daytona Beach, Gainesville, Jacksonville, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Miami (Fla.), Oklahoma City, Baton Rouge and New Orleans (La.), Birmingham and Montgomery (Ala.), Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston (Texas), Little Rock (Ark.) and Memphis.

(Bobby Goldsboro was an added act on some Florida dates.)

View list of 1960s concerts by the Strawberry Alarm Clock