Uploaded September 2010 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
The earliest San Francisco bands, The Great Society (Grace Slick's first group), The Charlatans, and The Sopwith Camel, experimented with many musical styles -- pop and classical; Western and Non-Western. Here are two examples of such experimentation from The Sopwith Camel's first album, recorded in 1966 and 1967 (re-released on CD as "Frantic Desolation.") "You always tell me baby" apparently got some air play in France. Here are some excerpts from an interview with the Camel's producer, Eric Jacobson, and Peter Kraemer, principal singer, lyricist and wind player:
"We'd formed around the same time as Big Brother & The Holding Company (pre-Janis)... in fact, we got together in the same room. It started out with me and Terry, who I'd met at a hangout called the Big Little Bookstore on Polk Street in San Francisco, writing songs together. So the Camel was evolving at a time when there was very little rock in the city. In 1964, I shared a house on Page and Masonic with a thespian called John McIntyre (later manager of the Grateful Dead). I lived at one end of the attic and a girl called Laurie had the other end... and I should guess there were less than a dozen longhairs in the whole of San Francisco.
"Then, one day, Chet Helms came to town; he'd just got out of El Paso jail, where he'd been held on suspicion of being involved in the assassination of President Kennedy! The only basis for his arrest had been the length of his hair... it's true!
"Anyway, that house was a sort of nucleus in the developing San Francisco psychedelic scene. The first rock dances were in the basement of 1090 Page, which was organized by Chet -- all the longhairs used to go there. It was an amazing experience for me, because I knew just about every single person in the place -- and there were three or four hundred people! There was such a spirit at those gigs... I can't tell you!
"Mind you, the San Francisco thing happened soon afterwards and eventually most of that core of 400 people moved out... I can walk around now and not know a soul."
"Artie Ripp, from Kama Sutra, who were putting out our records, came into the studio [in New York] the day that I had a temperature of 102. We were finishing up 'Postcard from Jamaica' (the only tune we managed to write at the Albert Hotel in New York), and I was having to use three microphone stands: two to support me as I sang in the general direction of the third. I had bronchitis, actually. Anyway, Artie, who came in to see how his boys were doing, thought I should go to the Luxor Uptown Men's Club sauna baths to get myself in shape. So at two in the morning, we left Bell Studios and Artie Ripp just leapt out in front of some limousine, flagged it down, and gave the guy 20 bucks to take us to this sauna bath . . . . "
(Interview with Peter Kraemer, Zizzag Magazine. Date unknown.)
[In a radio interview on KMPX, San Francicso, on the release of their first album, members of the Sopwith Camel commented that this two tracks were most representative of the music the work they were doing at that time. Shortly thereafter the group broke up, to reform in the early 1970s to record their second album, "The Miraculous Hump Returns from The Moon." If you search on YouTube under SopwithCamelExtant or the account of Nandi Devan (fka Terry MacNeil) you will find some fine videos from the current incarnation of this band, still rocking in 2011. They continued to play until around 2017. I always attended the annual Halloween show they did at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and you will find videos on my channel filmed there by me of two songs not on their albums, both favorite of mine: "Look Into My Heart (aka The Chant)" and "Leave the Light on for Linda")
The earliest San Francisco bands, The Great Society (Grace Slick's first group), The Charlatans, and The Sopwith Camel, experimented with many musical styles -- pop and classical; Western and Non-Western. Here are two examples of such experimentation from The Sopwith Camel's first album, recorded in 1966 and 1967 (re-released on CD as "Frantic Desolation.") "You always tell me baby" apparently got some air play in France. Here are some excerpts from an interview with the Camel's producer, Eric Jacobson, and Peter Kraemer, principal singer, lyricist and wind player:
"We'd formed around the same time as Big Brother & The Holding Company (pre-Janis)... in fact, we got together in the same room. It started out with me and Terry, who I'd met at a hangout called the Big Little Bookstore on Polk Street in San Francisco, writing songs together. So the Camel was evolving at a time when there was very little rock in the city. In 1964, I shared a house on Page and Masonic with a thespian called John McIntyre (later manager of the Grateful Dead). I lived at one end of the attic and a girl called Laurie had the other end... and I should guess there were less than a dozen longhairs in the whole of San Francisco.
"Then, one day, Chet Helms came to town; he'd just got out of El Paso jail, where he'd been held on suspicion of being involved in the assassination of President Kennedy! The only basis for his arrest had been the length of his hair... it's true!
"Anyway, that house was a sort of nucleus in the developing San Francisco psychedelic scene. The first rock dances were in the basement of 1090 Page, which was organized by Chet -- all the longhairs used to go there. It was an amazing experience for me, because I knew just about every single person in the place -- and there were three or four hundred people! There was such a spirit at those gigs... I can't tell you!
"Mind you, the San Francisco thing happened soon afterwards and eventually most of that core of 400 people moved out... I can walk around now and not know a soul."
"Artie Ripp, from Kama Sutra, who were putting out our records, came into the studio [in New York] the day that I had a temperature of 102. We were finishing up 'Postcard from Jamaica' (the only tune we managed to write at the Albert Hotel in New York), and I was having to use three microphone stands: two to support me as I sang in the general direction of the third. I had bronchitis, actually. Anyway, Artie, who came in to see how his boys were doing, thought I should go to the Luxor Uptown Men's Club sauna baths to get myself in shape. So at two in the morning, we left Bell Studios and Artie Ripp just leapt out in front of some limousine, flagged it down, and gave the guy 20 bucks to take us to this sauna bath . . . . "
(Interview with Peter Kraemer, Zizzag Magazine. Date unknown.)
[In a radio interview on KMPX, San Francicso, on the release of their first album, members of the Sopwith Camel commented that this two tracks were most representative of the music the work they were doing at that time. Shortly thereafter the group broke up, to reform in the early 1970s to record their second album, "The Miraculous Hump Returns from The Moon." If you search on YouTube under SopwithCamelExtant or the account of Nandi Devan (fka Terry MacNeil) you will find some fine videos from the current incarnation of this band, still rocking in 2011. They continued to play until around 2017. I always attended the annual Halloween show they did at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and you will find videos on my channel filmed there by me of two songs not on their albums, both favorite of mine: "Look Into My Heart (aka The Chant)" and "Leave the Light on for Linda")
