- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- “Incense and Peppermints” by Strawberry Alarm Clock is one of the most successful psychedelic rock singles and actually reached #1 for a week.
Strawberry Alarm Clock – Incense and Peppermints (1967): “Incense and Peppermints” by Strawberry Alarm Clock is one of the most successful psychedelic rock singles and actually reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of November 25, 1967; the single had sold one million copies by the end of the year. Exactly why “Incense and Peppermints” is not included on the landmark garage rock and psychedelic rock compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 (1972) is difficult to understand, especially considering that “Incense and Peppermints” out-performed every song on Nuggets on the record charts. Perhaps, like “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers, “Incense and Peppermints” is viewed as more of a bubblegum pop song than a psychedelic rock song; even though the term bubblegum pop wasn’t coined until 1968.
At least “Incense and Peppermints” is included in the 1998 Nuggets box set; “Green Tambourine” wasn’t even selected for that four-CD collection. “Incense and Peppermints” had a messy rollout; since the bandmembers didn’t like the lyrics in the song, their producer Frank Slay had someone else sing the lead vocals, Greg Munford, a friend of the band who happened to be in the recording studio at the time. Slay also denied bandmembers Mark Weitz and Ed King any songwriting credits on “Incense and Peppermints”, despite the fact that the song was, at least partially, built on an instrumental idea by Weitz and King. Ed King later went on to great fame as a bandmember in Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Incense and Peppermints” was originally released in April 1967 as the “B” side of the single “The Birdman of Alkatrash” under their original fake-English band name, Thee Sixpence. When disc jockeys began playing the “B” side instead, and the song started gaining traction on the charts in Los Angeles, the Uni Records subsidiary of MCA Records picked up the record for national distribution; and the single was re-released with the “A” and “B” sides swapped and showing a new band name, Strawberry Alarm Clock. “The Birdman of Alkatrash” was even omitted from their album. The album Incense and Peppermints was also highly successful, reaching #11 on the Billboard album chart; and the album has been reissued many times since its original 1967 release. However the song “Incense and Peppermints” might be viewed, the album Incense and Peppermints definitely has more of a garage rock and psychedelic rock sound than a bubblegum pop sound. Unlike most bands, Strawberry Alarm Clock put their really long song “The World’s on Fire” as the first track. The tracks “The World’s on Fire”, “Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow”, and “Incense and Peppermints” were all featured in the motion picture Psych-Out (1968), along with a new song, “Pretty Song from Psych-Out”, which later appeared on the band’s second album, Wake Up . . . It’s Tomorrow (1968). Besides these songs, favorites of mine on Incense and Peppermints include “Lose to Live”, “Strawberries Mean Love”, and the instrumental “Pass Time with Sac”. My copy of Incense and Peppermints has a plain yellow record label with a spiral on one side, and I have been unable to figure out when it came out; this release is not among the 33 entries on Incense and Peppermints that are given in the Discogs discography website. I assume that it is a relatively recent bootleg edition, but the official and unofficial releases of Incense and Peppermints alike mostly have the same record labels as the original release.