Before he became Patti Smith’s lead guitarist, Lenny Kaye compiled Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era. Released in 1972, the two-LP set covered American garage rock and psychedelia from the years 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 27: It’s A-Happening by The Magic Mushrooms
Release Date: 1966
From: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Rating: 8/10
IT’S-A-HAPPENING – The Magic Mushrooms [2:40]
(Sonny Casella/David Rice)
Personnel/SONNY CASELLA: vocals, guitar * DAVID RICE: guitar * Others unknown
Produced by SONNY CASELLA for WORLD WIDE MUSIC, INC.
Recorded in New York, NY
A&M single #815 (9/66); Pop #93
Working backwards, we’ve finally reached disc one of the Nuggets boxset. The first 27 songs on Nuggets were all selected by Lenny Kaye for the original Nuggets, released in 1972.
Closing the original Nuggets is ‘It’s-A-Happening’, by Philadelphia band The Magic Mushrooms. Their name was suggested by beat poet Allan Ginsberg.
Their first single was ‘It’s-A-Happening’, a psychedelic rocker. It’s something of a mixed bag – there’s some great instrumentation, with nice bass runs in the intro and psychedelic guitar. But the vocal melody is simplistic and the vocals aren’t particularly strong. It might work better as an instrumental, retaining the dorky spoken word bits. Released in September 1966, the Magic Mushrooms were were ahead of the psychedelic curve.
The band didn’t stick around for long. When Herb Alpert, smoother trumpeter and head of A&M Records, found out what magic mushrooms were, he demanded that they change their name. When they refused, the record was pulled from the market.
The Magic Mushrooms released two more singles. They never released an album, a shame for a band with impressive chops.
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I was hoping it was going to be a cover or the original of this song:
https://youtu.be/_VuxfQMsUK4?si=9FAqXFX05IZVf_zC
No such luck lol
Magic mushrooms weren’t a-happening on Ed Sullivan – unless perhaps they would have had a number no 1 hit and boosted ratings. That’s when Mr. Sullivan conveniently may have brushed aside his conservative convictions!
LMAO. Maybe Eddie would have let The Stones sing “Let’s Spend The Night Together” as written!
p.s. Is it just me or is Diana Ross the ugliest of those 3 singers?
That’s funny. I don’t think of Sullivan going that far into the sixties, but I guess he did when I look it up.
I’ve never heard that Supremes song before! There was a lot more covering happening now – it would be pretty weird if today’s major pop stars were releasing different versions of the same songs in close proximity to each other.
The Happening is one of the greatest Supremes records. and probably their most fun one too.
Glad to introduce you to the song, Graham.
I always wondered if The Happening was from the movie because there was a movie called The Happening I think in that same year. It had Faye Dunaway and I think Kirk Douglas. I’m not sure what it was about though.
Herb Alpert dropped the ball on that one. Pulling this song because of the band’s name was ridiculous.
It helps tell the public that they’re psychedelic, right?
Right
This song is a little bit dumb. It’s in the lower echelons of Nuggets for me. But I love seeing the older brown A&M label with Herb Alpert’s little trumpet on it. A lot of my parents’ old vinyl albums had that brown label. I specifically remember it on Cat Stevens albums. But then they changed it later on. I like seeing how the record companies changed their labels over the years. My favorite one was the Beatles records on Capitol with the orange and yellow label. It looked cool when it was spinning around.
Yup, that orange and yellow is cool. It’s on the Beach Boys CD reissues too (although you can’t see it spin).
It’s got a cool sound and is fairly experimental, especially for the time. That said, the song’s melody isn’t particularly memorable. As such, I’m somewhat surprised it charted at all, especially on a mainstream chart!
Yup, it’s pretty weird, although I guess people wanted more of that hot new psychedelic sound at the time?
This one is not one of the top ones. The singing…they either pushed his vocals far back or he tried to double track his voice and didn’t match it. It sounds like more than one person in a few parts.
The talking parts…yea I never liked that. I don’t listen to Are You Lonesome Tonight because of it.
I think I read that the odd double-tracked vocals were on purpose. This is about the only song I can think of where I like the spoken bits better than the sung bits.
Never thought of it that way…but you are right.
Yeah, you can see why recording engineers and producers have historically tried hard to get double tracked performances as close as possible to each other. Doing two tracks that are as deliberately different as the vocal here sounds…kinda terrible.
The mix in general is poor. Still, I mostly enjoyed the song. Cool rhythm section.
Yeah, I can’t think of many double-tracked vocals that are so far out of sync. You’d think someone would have done it well…