My Top 1000 Songs #758: Fazon

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.] 

Sopwith Camel were a lesser-known act from San Francisco's Summer of Love, albeit perhaps the first to score a Top 40 hit, with "Hello, Hello," an old-timey Vaudeville-like ditty that captures the eclectic vibe of the 1967 scene. (Even if you're like most people and have never heard of Sopwith Camel, you've almost certainly heard that tune if you grew up on classic rock radio.)

The band disbanded after a lone '67 LP, but reformed a few years later for its second (and final) record, 1973's The Miraculous Hump Returns From The Moon. And goofy name notwithstanding, it's an amazing record (I'm surprised to realize I never wrote it up here before)--retaining some of the band's late 60s psychedelia and eclecticism but fleshing it with a distinctively early 70s jam-heavy vibe. It's best captured on "Fazon," the opening track, a jazzy, Latin-tinged groove that's a mishmash of Santana and Steely Dan and all the wondrous long-forgotten mellow 70s rock I adore. Crazy that this thing never caught on, because playing it today offers a vivid flashback to a half-century-old shag-carpet/wood-paneled-den stoner aesthetic. Turn down the lights, toke up, and dig this.

Contemporary 2014 cover from singer-songwriter Jonathan Wilson: