The short version: These guys were bassist Randy Meisner's band before he joined Poco (and later The Eagles), and they were managed by the guys who handled Buffalo Springfield. Also as you can hear and see...
...the song -- which is terrific -- was written by Tom Shipley, later of the duo responsible for "One Toke Over the Line." Okay, I've forgiven both of them.
I should add that the comp album above is one of the coolest artifacts of the just-pre-San Francisco rock era, and well worth checking out.
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I was never big on tokin’, or on parties. But one night I was at a party, and passing the Dutch I’d just to be sociable, when I found myself seated in front of a phonograph, listening to what - though new to me - must have been the most wonderful album of all time. Everything was perfect, from the songs, singing and arrangements to the recorded sound.
Later, I learned that I’d been listening to “Down in L.A.,” the debut album by Brewer & Shipley on A&M. It was not, as it happens, the most wonderful album of all time.
That was pretty much the end of my smoking. Brewer & Shipley weren’t bad; just sort of boring in a hippie way. And they did later cut “Witchi-tai-to.”
The song you posted was published by Irving Music, which was A&M. Points to B&S for this: when they wised up and formed their own publishing company, they named it Talking Beaver. Not something derived, as one might think, from Native American folklore, but from the strip of Santa Monica in West Hollywood where a number of establishments offered customers the opportunity to carry on a conversation with a fully undressed woman, behind a glass barrier.
The signs outside such enterprises advertised, variously, “live nude girls” and “talking beaver.”
Is producer Barry Friedman the guy who was later known as Frazier Mohawk?
Todd - great read, thx.rob
Good God, I have a Brewer and Shipley album. And it has a cover of All Along the Watchtower.
How did that happen?
Actually, Brewer & Shipley's version of "She's Got The Time" is on the "DOWN IN L.A." album. For those music fans who still buy CDs, the album was reissued by U.K. company Now Sounds in that format.
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