This is one of those sixties songs that you never hear much nowadays.

I suppose it was a protest song, of sorts.

South also wrote Walk A Mile In My Shoes which was a hit for Elvis in 1970.

Another of his songs was Hush which I remember Deep Purple released as their first single.

South’s website is here. If you click on the link it belts out Games People Play very loudly.

Speaking of The Troggs, this was the first of their singles that I bought. Almost the first single I ever bought, it being two or so years since the previous one.

An example of the group’s more tender tendency.

This song has been recorded many times over. The most famous of these is probably the one that gave Jimi Hendrix his first hit but I also know it from Love’s eponymous first LP. [See also Friday On My Mind 3, Alone Again Or. Btw I noticed on checking that the original video I featured there has been withdrawn so I have updated it.]

Jarvis Cocker has been playing various versions of Hey Joe on his BBC 6 Music Sunday Service programme (4–6 pm) roughly every month. The one he played last Sunday (New Year’s Day) surprised me as the performing artists Kasenetz Katz Singing Orchestral Circus are probably more widely known for the “bubblegum” hit Quick Joey Small. I had certainly not paid them more attention than that. Their Hey Joe is much better than I would have thought.

I’ve finally found an embeddable clip of Chicory Tip’s Excuse Me Baby, the original version of which I featured over two years ago.

Listening to it now, with its hints of Trad Jazz, I understand why my brother liked this. (See my Friday on my Mind category.)

Speaking of Jeff Lynne, his first brush with fame came with The Move’s Birmingham contemporaries The Idle Race.

One of my schoolmates raved about The Skeleton And The Roundabout though it didn’t trouble the charts much; and nor did other Idle Race tracks.

If you listen closely you’ll hear that the singer actually pronounces the unusual (for a song’s title) word in the song’s title “skelington.”

The Move was of course Roy Wood’s (and Bev Bevan’s) first brush with fame. Not content with rattling out some of the mid 60s best pop songs Roy then went on to found ELO with Jeff Lynne but quickly tired of that and formed Wizzard.

This clip (I believe from French or German TV) certainly sounds live but isn’t well synched.

Tim Rose’s cover of this song is the one I remember from the 60s. His is a powerful performance but he kind of bludgeons the song to death.

Morning Dew has been covered many times - even by last week’s featured band, Nazareth.

The song’s writer was Bonnie Dobson. Her version is completely different from either of the above.

A track from 1970. Like Fleetwood Mac’s 1960s song Man Of The World which I featured as Friday On My Mind: 7, this is more evidence of the dark state of composer Peter Green’s mind. There’s a definite air of menace surrounding this. Not to mention weird.

For various reasons I was listening to “California Saga” from the Beach Boys’ Holland album this week, which, yes, is a 1970s recording. Referencing, among other things, John Steinbeck “and his travellin’s with Charley” it also mentions that at a festival, “Country Joe will do his show,” and I thought “Hmm.. I’ve not done that one.”

I don’t think Country Joe and the Fish are remembered for more than the one song but that song certainly caught a mood.

It is the quintessential musical protest against the war in Vietnam.

As this is a live version – Joe performing at a festival, Woodstock no less – it is not suitable for work.

As a gimmick goes stripy jackets wasn’t very cool, was it?