Lee Michaels - Carnival Of Life
Original 1968 USA stereo pressing
A&M Records SP 4140 (Discogs)
~ThePoodleBites rip at 96 kHz / 24 bit + full high-res scans!~
"WTF is that cover?" Now, don't be deceived; if you've never heard this album before, prepare for everything you thought you knew about Lee Michaels to be thrown out the window. "Lee Michaels, on UPV? Seriously?" Yes, I too had a couple of his '70s albums which ended up being donated to the Salvation Army in years passed, but this LP is truly a hidden gem. Disguised behind that stupid face are unexpected fuzz detonations with heroic-dosage-level songwriting, completely in line with other psych rock records of the era. You probably didn't know that Jimi Hendrix and Lee Michaels used to jam the blues together in the 'Electric Church,' nor that Lee Michaels used to share gigs at the Avalon and Fillmore in San Francisco with Country Joe & The Fish and Blue Cheer. Now you do.
Many thanks to my Dutch friend J.T. for turning me on to this great record,
and doubly thanks to the Record Phantom C.F. for his usual essential contributions!
The album begins with the bombastic opener "Hello," complete with
blazing fuzz guitars, psychedelic carnie organ in full tremolo, and
Michaels recanting lyrics which sculpt a psalm of happiness. For anyone with doubts about
this album's greatness, this track should quickly appease them: anyone
with functioning ears will immediately realize that this is a superb west-coast psych rock act that's tight, well-rehearsed, and excellently engineered. The second track, "Another One," is apparently a stream-of-thought poem from the acidified head of an elevated Michaels, complete with an instrumental 'inner trip' section of the journey. After the catchy dynamic track "Streetcar," the opening side closes with the sonorous "Love": in my head I am immediately transported to a live show at the Avalon in 1967, with guitars screaming distorted fuzztones, Michaels hollering along, the organ oscillating while drums thrash along in perfect time. What an experience it must have been to see this short-lived group do their live California stint in those days.
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Lee Michaels in 1968
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One flip and we're treated to five more excellent tracks
("all killer, no filler," as J.T. says). The tracks "Why" and "Tomorrow" are personal favorites, the former using a tack piano during the chorus to excellent effect; it sounds like a carnival indeed. I can't imagine what being at a carnival on acid would be like, going through an existential crisis of personality while half a million enticing lights merge with some clown dressed like a traveling salesman or perhaps something you'd expect out of a John Wayne movie, whirling around as you frantically grasp for a sliver of reality. What a hellish nightmare; it must be like that merry-go-round scene from
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. This album has much, much better vibes: hope, happiness, youthfulness. It's not nearly as tripped out as what Pink Floyd was doing at this time, for example, but simultaneously that fact makes the
Carnival Of Life much more approachable for the layman, yet still very casually enjoyable for the experienced journeyman.
The album continues with "Sounding The Sleeping," building up quietly to the blaring fuzz of before. C.F. pointed out that this song borrows its melodic line from The Mothers' "Let's Make The Water Turn Black," an obvious cue that Frank Zappa and company had influenced nearly every gigging band in the L.A. area. This track eventually fades away much the same way it appeared, before suddenly blasting into the album closer, "My Friends." Drenched in vintage analog reverb and complete with a number of charming backwards sound effects, one must wonder what songs like this sounded like when performed live, which they most certainly were; the closer is quite dreamy and trippy, but I could equally imagine it as a crowd-mover when these guys had their amps cranked up.
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Blurb in Record World, November 11, 1967
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The secret ingredient to this Lee Michaels debut, if indeed there is one, is probably guitarist Hamilton W. Watt, also known as Hamilton Wesley Watt, Jr., who later became the guitarist for Euphoria, a group that recorded one album for Capitol (
A Gift From Euphoria) in the summer of 1968, half a year after Lee Michaels' album had already hit shelves nationwide. Watt's layered guitar tracks on
Carnival Of Life were engineered by one Jim Messina (misspelled Mecina), better known for his association with Buffalo Springfield and as a founding member of Poco. Lee Michaels, a keyboardist, most often just sang with this band, while Gary Davis (later of The Comfortable Chair) covered organist duties. Session drummer Eddie Hoh (who worked with The Monkees, Tim Buckley, Kim Fowley, Harvey Mandel, The Flying Burrito Bros., and others) is credited on the album, although he only played on the closing track, with most of the drumming duties being performed by an uncredited David F. Potter, who later became drummer for the Texan psychedelic band Endle St. Cloud In The Rain, the band who shared a label with the Elevators. Bassist John Keski completed the ensemble, a (relatively speaking) little-known musician who played with some other recording artists in the late '70s.
Carnival Of Life first debuted on the west coast around November 18, 1967, to
much excitement in the local music press. A review in Record World
hailed it simply as a "masterpiece." To put this date in context, well-known S.F. hard rockers Steve Miller and Quicksilver Messenger Service would sign their first record contracts with Capitol a month after this record had already hit California turntables. A nationwide release of Lee Michaels' debut came the following January, with positive reviews appearing in various publications over the next few months. Promo posters were created to hang in some record shops where the album was sold, but lack of psychedelic styling coupled with an ugly cover photo were unhelpful in promoting sales. Some generic "Winter Sköl from A&M Records" ads were placed in Billboard, Cash Box, and Record World that February, but no other promotion was done. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the record failed to chart.
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Review in Record World, January 13, 1968
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Review in Cash Box, March 16 & 23, 1968
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Review in Billboard Magazine, 10 Feb 1968
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Lee Michaels, it seems, was not discouraged;
Carnival Of Life's pop-oriented producer Larry Marks, who also worked with Sagittarius and Harpers Bizarre, would be dropped as Michaels himself signed a producer contract with A&M in April 1968, a few short months after this album's release, and would move to self-produce his second album
Recital later that year. Unfortunately for us, Michaels' sound immediately became quite different. Hamilton Watt was replaced by Drake Levin (later of Brotherhood), that is, on the one(?) track where any guitar appears at all. The rest of
Recital was filled with material more in the singer/songwriter and pop-rock vein, and while he would experiment with hard rock later in his career, Michaels' style would never return again to the acid-influenced style found here.
1967 and 1968 were a tumultuous time in music as well as audio engineering, as record companies plotted the public execution of the mono format. At one point, the United States government even launched a probe to investigate the price difference between mono and stereo records as suspected collusion. Cue engineer Howard Holzer, with an invention he called the "compatible stereo generator" (CSG): by applying a relative phase rotation between the two channels of a stereo recording, Holzer claimed that his machine -- which record labels could rent at the mere price of $1000 per month, with a minimum year-long contract -- eliminated the need to make separate mono and stereo mixes, fixing the problem of bloated center channel information in stereo fold-downs. Atlantic (and its subsidiaries) were immediately keen to this, and started preparing new releases using the CSG system, as well as preparing remasters of their back catalog with the same system. A&M was slightly more modest in their approach, but they used this CSG methodology first on a mono version of this very Lee Michaels recording, to prepare a 45 RPM single ("Love" b/w "Sounding The Sleeping") for nationwide release. In the end, three different mono singles from this album appeared, as well as a very rare mono LP, all apparently using the CSG process: therefore, nothing too unique is found upon them. We are now left wondering what Carnival Of Life could have sounded like if an engineer like Jim Messina had been given the opportunity to make a dedicated mono mix for AM radio listeners, which is a question we shall never know the answer to. On the other hand, it makes one less thing for me to have to clean up, which is always a plus.
Original promo-only mono pressing. Above: front and back cover, below: labels
This album has been reissued from the master tapes before. The first digital reissue appeared in 1996 on One Way Records, and largely preserved the dynamic range of the original recording. However, the EQ is noticeably different from the original pressing, which sounds more laid-back and natural by comparison. The last two tracks also suffer prominent noise reduction, which damaged the treble response. A digital remaster has also recently appeared on various streaming platforms, including Qobuz and Deezer, which overall more closely approached the original's sound than the 1996 CD, but was vastly more compressed and dynamically limited. Therefore, despite the tapes of this release clearly still being available, I would argue that original pressings, now 55 years in age, still present the best available sound quality for this California acid excursion.
Since this package apparently had a release on the west coast which preceded its appearance nationwide, one might assume that the Monarch pressings of this LP were the earliest ones on the market and thus have superior sound. The Monarch plant is well-known by audiophiles for their pressings, which were often the best that appeared for many of the California bands (yet people ignore the plethora of terrible styrene 45s that appeared from this facility). This album, in any case, is an outlier. A white-label promotional copy pressed at the Monarch plant was lent to me by the Record Phantom for ripping, which I quickly discovered had high levels of background noise from the use of inferior vinyl. The mono copy pictured above was also from the Monarch plant, and suffers from the same problem. Due to this issue, I purchased a mint-minus stock copy pressed at the Terre Haute plant, which turned out to have superior sound to the other discs I auditioned.
I maintain hope that someday Lee Michaels, perhaps after reading this blog post, will make available flat, high-resolution transfers from the master tapes for all to enjoy. Until that day, this remains the truest available representation of the Carnival Of Life.
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Original promo poster which would have hung in record shops at the time of release
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Link includes the artwork and various Lee Michaels paraphernalia from this period which I've been able to uncover. The rare promo poster above was scanned in full high-resolution 1200 dpi / 24-bit color, but has been down-sampled for the purposes of this post. If you would like the original 12 GB .psb file, or if you find more Lee Michaels material which is in need of high-resolution scans, please contact me using the email address listed on the side of this page.
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Promo photo with paisley and beads, circa 1968
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Performers:
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Lee Michaels: piano, organ, harpsichord, vocals
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Hamilton Watt: lead guitar(s)
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Gary Davis: organ
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John Keski: bass guitar
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David Potter: drums (tr. 1-8)
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Eddie Hoh: drums (tr. 9)
Engineered by
Jim Messina
Produced by
Larry Marks
Album photography by
Guy Webster
Vinyl condition: M-
Dynamic range: DR 12
Track listing:
1) Hello -- 4:29
2) Another One -- 4:12
3) Streetcar -- 3:39
4) Love -- 5:12
5) Carnival Of Live -- 3:06
6) Why -- 3:26
7) Tomorrow -- 4:37
8) Sounding The Sleeping -- 4:15
9) My Friends -- 2:42
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