8. 'Midsummer New York' - Yoko Ono / Plastic Ono Band - Apple 1839 - 1971. Here's a little ditty to get your lazy ass right outta bed: Yoko Ono's screeching take on Blue Suede Shoes. Horripilating stuff - she cannot hit the right notes nor can she even stay within the beat (simple as it is) - yet, with what's-his-name bashing out the changes, it nonetheless rocks out hard. Who needs PiL when you got this noise?

9. 'You and the Night and the Music / Reverie' [EP on 45] - Stan Kenton - Capitol 462 - 1955. Man, this is sweet: jazz, big band, classical, easy listening - all in one well-prepared wall of sound. Kenton smashed WWII-era dancehalls with his 'loudest band on earth,' but here, he's relaxing the tempos and tempering the volume all the better to add denser chords. Dig his piano break in DeBussy's 'Reverie,' it's positively post-bebop.

10. 'Soul Experience' - Iron Butterfly - Atco 6647 - 1969. The 'failed' follow-up to their monster hit, but a far more durable tune. Loads of flower-power sentiments and psychedelic cheap effects, of course, but the dynamics here are superior to most other groups mining this terrain. More trippy than heavy, the real star on this one is guitarist Eric Brann who consolidates the echoplex abandon of Syd Barrett and the volume control mastery of Steve Howe.

11. 'Here's To the State of Richard Nixon' - Phil Ochs - A&M 1509 - 1974. This was the end of the line, Ochs' final session and final release. Nothing but a easy lyrical re-write of his bold civil rights protest classic, this crude live recording nonetheless has loads of verve - and his flag-burnin' audience of 50 know it. Grim as it was true, this is the essential Nixionian document from someone who was there.

12. Bobby Darin - 'Beyond the Sea' / 'That's the Way Love Is' - Atco 6158 - 1959. Everyone knows the amazing chart topping A-side, at least from the movies. Full of aggressive, inventive drumming, this one swings a lot harder - and far more earnestly - than anything by those jaded boozers in the Rat Pack. Check also the flip, written by Darin himself. Hotcha!

13. 'Calling Occupants' - Klaatu - Capitol 4412 - 1976. Sometimes less is better. On the LP version, 'Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft' is an imposing eight minutes; here on the chart-topping version, even the title gets a tidy trim. Actually, Klaatu didn't chart this acid-casualty, space-age ode to God; that task was left to the superior marketing abilities of ... the Carpenters. If that wasn't bad enough for the band's reputation with its presumably pothead constituency, Capitol decided to promote Klaatu as... the Beatles. Ouch. Nice, eccentric tune nevertheless.