Nuggets: Codine by The Charlatans

Before he became Patti Smith’s lead guitarist, Lenny Kaye compiled the 2 album set, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era. Released in 1972, the two-LP set covered American garage rock and psychedelia from the years from 1965-1968 and was a major influence on punk rock. Rhino Records reissued an expanded version of the set in 1998, with 118 tracks in total. I’m profiling and rating each of these 118 tracks, working backwards.

Track 100: Codine by The Charlatans
Release Date: 1966 (but release cancelled)
From: San Francisco, California
Aphoristical Rating: 7/10

The song ‘Codine’ is known by a number of different titles, including ‘Cod’ine’, ‘Codine Blues’, and ‘Codeine’, and it was much-covered during the 1960s. It was written by folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, an indigenous Canadian-American artist who’s also known for writing ‘Universal Soldier’, ‘Until It’s Time for You to Go’, and ‘Up Where We Belong’. Sainte-Marie spent time in the early 1960s playing in coffeehouses in Toronto and New York’s Greenwich Village, alongside fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Leonard Cohen. In 1963, after a throat infection, she became addicted to codeine. The song ‘Cod’ine’ (as Sainte-Marie originally titled it) was written about her experiences with addiction and recovery and is an anti-drug song.

The foreknowledge of death and the recapitulation of the life which made that death inevitable; a tale of drug addiction told within the mind but in the voice of the ancient (or prematurely aged) addict desperately seeking some justification for her existence; the pathetic repetition that she has avoided the additional sin of alcohol, thus keeping faith with the creed of her parents; a characterization so extraordinary and many-levelled that all consciousness of its having been “created” is lost; a macabre waltz which tetters on the edge of the grave.

Producer Maynard Solomon, on ‘Cod’ine’

The Charlatans were among the earliest bands to emerge from the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury scene. They wore 19th-century clothing – they look like they’ve beamed out of the Wild West in the ‘Codine’ cover art. They Charlatans were reportedly the first band to take LSD immediately before performing, but don’t play the kind of psychedelic rock you’d expect based on that factoid. Their music is more traditional than their San Francisco contemporaries, based around acoustic country, folk, and blues.

The obvious precedent for taking a song by an acoustic folk artist and transforming it into electric folk-rock is The Byrds’ 1965 hit with Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’. The Byrds supercharged Dylan’s tune with their sublime harmonies and Roger McGuinn’s jangling 12-string electric guitar. But The Charlatans’ version of Sainte-Marie’s tune isn’t as effective – they lose the intensity of Sainte-Marie’s original and don’t offer enough pop accessibility in compensation. They planned to release ‘Codine’ as a single in 1966, but it was vetoed by their record company who misread it as a pro-drugs song. Despite their pioneering reputation in the San Francisco scene, the group’s career faltered – they didn’t record a studio album until 1969, by which time they’d lost key members and their sound was out of date.

The Charlatans spawned several successful careers, most notably Dan Hicks who started as the group’s drummer but moved to rhythm guitar and vocals in 1967. Hicks found post-Charlatans success with Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, playing a music he labelled as “folk swing”. George Hunter became a graphic designer, with his work appearing on the LP covers of other notable bands, while Mike Wilhelm went on to play lead guitar with the Flamin’ Groovies in the late 1970s. The band reunited periodically – in 2015 they played their final two dates – Hicks and Wilhelm have since passed away. They’re not the most famous band named The Charlatans – a West Midlands alternative rock outfit with the same name have released 13 albums to date, with three topping the UK charts.

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41 Comments

  1. This is different. His voice was not the usual garage band Jagger/Morrison type. It doesn’t better the original but it has its charm. I do like the tremolo guitar sound.

  2. I’ve never actually listened to this group. I am, however, a pretty big fan of the other band with the same name that was forced to take on the ‘UK’ to differentiate themselves from these guys. Maybe one day I’ll give this lot a listen.

  3. I really like this one. Strangely enough, I only recently became aware that The Charlatans were called The Charlatans UK in the US as a result of these guys.

  4. Idk. I think this is one of those Nuggets that’s kind of in the mediocre category. It’s not like the great Nuggets that you wanna listen to a million times in a row and it never gets old. But I like the sounds of all the guitar effects and stuff. Sounds cool. I would probably rate this one 6/10 or something.

  5. I prefer the Charlatans from England to these ones. And they weren’t such hot shit either. Lol

      • They were kind of mediocre like most Brit-Pop bands of the 90s. But the lead singer Tim Burgess sang on a bunch of great Chemical Brothers records and he sounded great on those. Same thing with Oasis. The guy sounded great with The Chemical Brothers but not very good with Oasis. And also Richard Ashcroft the guy in The Verve . It was the strangest phenomenon.

        • I was reading somewhere recently that the 1990s bought in click tracks for rock music – possibly one reason I don’t like rock music from there on as much.

          • I never thought of that. Could be. I think most of the problem was songs. It’s not like they couldn’t play their instruments or sing, but their songs just weren’t good enough. Even all of those britpop bands had really good guitar but that was it. On album after album the guitars were really good and you wondered why nothing else was. They should have called It Brit Rock instead of Brit Pop because they were pretty good rockers but not very good popsters.

          • If Radiohead’s The Bends counts as brit-pop, I think they’re miles ahead of most of the other bands in that scene. I think the first couple of Supergrass records have some good tunes too.

          • I love Supergrass. the first few albums were great. Sun Hits the Sky is one of the greatest songs ever. There were other good Britpop bands I liked too. The Boo Radleys and Spacehog and even Blur. And most of them had at least one great single. Or at least a good one or two. I usually don’t think of Radiohead as Britpop but I guess they were. At least at the beginning.

  6. I actually have that Buffy album (no idea where it came from).Very good tune. I’m probably one of the biggest Hicks fans that read your stuff. Few covers of it kicking around. Definitely a “nugget”.

      • One of my personal favorites. There’s an album out there where folks like Costello pay homage. His music is kinds jazzy western swing with some Grappelli Django thrown in with great vocals and musicianship. Some humor on the side. I did a take on “Fave Solos’ and it was Sid Paige doing Hick’s ‘I Scare Myself’ Fantastic piece of music in my book.

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Aphoristic Album Reviews is almost entirely written by one person. It features album reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.

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Graham Fyfe has been writing this website since his late teens. Now in his forties, he's been obsessively listening to albums for years. He works as a web editor and plays the piano.

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