![]() ![]() Then they asked Greg Munford if he wanted to be in the band and he didn’t. He was not in the band, and then the song started to have success. So he did it and it was exactly how you hear it. They asked him to try it, and it was right in his wheelhouse. He was doing his own project simultaneously. Greg Munford happened to just be sitting there in the session, and Greg also had the same manager and producer. One of those things where nobody thinks that at the moment, what you’re doing is going to be successful. Bassist/rhythm guitarist George Bunnell explained: It was Greg Munford, a 16-year-old singer with a group called The Shapes, who sang lead. ![]() The lead vocalist on this track was also not a member of the group. To this day, they have received 100% of the royalties. Frank Slay ultimately credited that melody line solely to the writing team of John Carter and Tim Gilbert. John Carter was solely responsible for conjuring up the lyrics and the controversial melody line extracted out of the finished musical track. ![]() Our producer Frank Slay decided to send the fully mixed music track (recorded on 8 tracks of mono!) to John Carter a member of the band The Rainy Daze, who Slay also produced at the time. At the time when the music was recorded at Art Laboe’s ‘Original Sounds’ studio in Hollywood, there was only a temporary title to the song, and lyrics had not yet been written. I came up with the idea and actual music to the then untitled song that ultimately evolved into the #1 national hit, ‘Incense and Peppermints.’ I wrote the intro (the oriental sounding riff), the verses, and the ending (the major sevenths) while Ed King, at my request for some help on completing the song, co-wrote the bridge (the F # part) and of course the lead guitar parts. Weitz gave this account of how the song was written: In 1973 King joined Skynyrd on guitar, ultimately writing the riff for “Sweet Home Alabama”). (In 1970, an unknown band called Lynyrd Skynyrd opened some shows for The Strawberry Alarm Clock, and King got to know them. The writing credits of “Incense and Peppermints” are listed as John Carter and Tim Gilbert, who were not part of the band, and based on an instrumental idea by band members Mark Weitz and Ed King, the group’s guitarist. We were asked by Frank Slay to come up with a new name because when we did a name check to clear it for label printing, Thee Sixpence was already used somewhere by another band at the time and there would be too much confusion. I borrowed the Strawberry from Strawberry Fields Forever and then right down to the noisy Baby Ben electric alarm clock (in my bedroom/guest house where we used to rehearse) that we hooked up with name Strawberry to come up with the new name. I was instrumental in coming up with the name. But there was a real group there, with members who had played for a long time on the Southern California band scene, who were proficient on their instruments and who sang well and generated four whole LPs of which at least three were worth hearing more than once.It went from Thee Sixpence right into the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Their name is as well known to anyone who lived through the late-'60s psychedelic era as that of almost any group one would care to mention, mostly out of its sheer, silly trippiness as a name and their one major hit, "Incense and Peppermints," which today is virtually the tonal equivalent of a Summer of Love flashback. Strawberry Alarm Clock occupies a peculiar niche in the history of '60s rock. The Strawberry Alarm Clock’s unique sound-full of beautiful, day-glo pop surrounding jagged, fuzzy guitars and organs, among other garage-rock influences-is all presented as originally issued! Their smash “Incense and Peppermints,” which reached #1 in late 1967 and remained in the Billboard pop chart for 16 weeks, is included on The Best of Strawberry Alarm Clock, and ’60s psych gold “Love Me Again,” “Sea Shell,” “Barefoot in Baltimore,” “Sit With the Guru,” and many more-all mastered from the stereo UNI reels in definitive 180 gram editions! The Best of Strawberry Alarm Clock is a vintage collection that includes key tracks from all four of the band’s albums-“Incense and Peppermints” among them-plus the rarely heard non-LP singles “Desiree” and “Starting Out the Day,” now on 180 gram vinyl. Reissue of 1969 album with original sleeve art. Dirtnap Color Vinyl: Green Noise Exclusives
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