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Category: Strawberry Alarm Clock albums
Incense And Peppermints, Strawberry Alarm Clock's first album from 1967
Strawberry Alarm Clock released four studio albums between 1967 and 1969 — Incense And Peppermints, Wake Up... It's Tomorrow, The World In A Sea Shell, and finally Good Morning Starshine. Also during this original period, SAC contributed some songs to the 1968 soundtrack album for the movie Psych-Out (albeit with no non-album songs) and two new songs to the 1970 cult classic movie Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.
Strawberry Alarm Clock had some songs on the Psych-Out soundtrack, though none was new to the album
Since that time, there have been many Strawberry Alarm Clock compilation albums (not to mention billions of 'Various Artists' 60s comps, most with the track "Incense And Peppermints" included). Some of these have been released on vinyl only (The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock Vol. 1 from the 1980s, most significantly), while others have been released on CD only. (Examples are 1971's Changes, which had two new songs with singer Paul Marshall on it, The Strawberry Alarm Clock Anthology and the confusingly-titled 1990 compilation Incense & Peppermints.)
And of course others are (or were) available as both vinyl LPs and compact discs. The band's first compilation, 1970's The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock (not the Vol. 1 from the 1980s) falls into this category, as does Strawberries Mean Love (whose CD version contains extra songs).
Strawberries Mean Love compilation
In addition to Strawberry Alarm Clock's releases, the pre-SAC band Thee Sixpence had all of its singles compiled onto a 1998 compilation called Step By Step, which is easily found on vinyl LP and less often on a limited-edition CD.
The Japanese CD versions of the band's four original studio albums generally contain bonus tracks — these are made up entirely of single mixes of album songs, soundtrack songs, and single-only tracks. Thus they are very necessary from a completist's point of view, but there is nothing technically 'new' or 'unreleased' on any of them.
In June 2010, Strawberry Alarm Clock will be releasing their first new song in a long time, a cover of the Seeds' "Mr. Farmer" for a Sky Saxon tribute album featuring a number of interesting performers.
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The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock — The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock is the name of a 1970 compilation album from Strawberry Alarm Clock, the band's first such album and the only one released while the group was still functioning (though in a fragmented state, after a series of member changes, defections and returns). The compilation is not bad, offering a pretty representative collection of Strawberry Alarm Clock's poppier side, although it bypasses the weirder side ...
The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock Vol. 1 — The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock Vol. 1 is a compilation album comprising a decent, if typical, cross-section of the band's more popular (and poppy) songs. It was released as Back-Trac (MSP 30005). Note that The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock Vol. 1 (there never was a Vol. 2 as far as we can tell) is different from The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock, a 1970 compilation on the band's ...
Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls — Strawberry Alarm Clock contributed two new songs to the soundtrack of the 1971 Russ Meyers movie Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. The songs are "Girl From The City" and "I'm Comin' Home", both with latter-era vocalist Paul Marshall. ("Incense And Peppermints" is also in the movie, though not on the soundtrack album.) Besides Strawberry Alarm Clock, the album has songs by the Sandpipers, and by Stu Phillips sung by ...
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Changes — Changes is the name of a Strawberry Alarm Clock compilation released originally in 1971 on Vocalion (as VL 73915). It was named for the song "Changes", the last song on the last LP by the band (though there were some additional singles). Changes bypasses all of the band's earlier and better-known hits to focus instead on SAC's later career and interesting album cuts. It indeed succeeds in this, with a ...
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Double Star Series Featuring The Who & The Strawberry Alarm Clock — Double Star Series Featuring The Who & The Strawberry Alarm Clock is the name of a limited edition promotional album pressed around 1969 by MCA for Philco. One side of the album features songs by the Who, while side 2 has songs by Strawberry Alarm Clock. The catalog number is MCA Special Products 734586. The Who songs on Double Star Series span the band's first three albums 1965-7:: "Happy Jack" ...
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Good Morning Starshine — Good Morning Starshine is Strawberry Alarm Clock's fourth and final album, released in 1969. It features new lead singer, guitarist and song writer Jim Pitman, who helped lead the band away from the hollow sentimentality of 1968's ultra-lustrous The World In A Sea Shell and into a more immediate and entertaining blues-rock grunge.Without the crushing influence of boneheaded management decisions and the reliance on outside writers, Good Morning Starshine is ...
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Incense And Peppermints — Incense And Peppermints is Strawberry Alarm Clock's first album, named after the song that had already become a hit and released in 1967. When the band was still called Thee Sixpence they recorded and released the song "Incense And Peppermints"; shortly afterwards a bigger record label (Uni) signed the band and re-released the single under the band's new name, Strawberry Alarm Clock. This single became a huge worldwide #1 hit ...
Incense & Peppermints (1990) — Incense & Peppermints (note the ampersand in the title — this is different than the 1967 album Incense And Peppermints) is a Strawberry Alarm Clock compilation released by MCA in 1990. It mostly collects some of the band's hits and a few assorted album tracks. Most interestingly, it included the rare (at the time of this compilation's release, anyway) single-only track "Starting Out The Day" from 1969, although this is ...
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Psych-Out soundtrack — The soundtrack LP of the 1968 movie Psych-Out features Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Seeds, Boenzee Cryque, and the Storybook performing a nice selection of psychedelic pop songs. Strawberry Alarm Clock has no otherwise unavailable songs here, except for a shorter edit of "The World's On Fire". The album is a great collector's piece but not strictly necessary apart from that. Although there are only two SAC songs on the Psych-Out ...
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Step By Step — Step By Step is a 1998 compilation of Thee Sixpence singles released in 1966 and 1967 on the All American label before (and as) the band changed its name to Strawberry Alarm Clock and went on to brief worldwide fame. (Step By Step was compiled by the Akarma label.) Comprising all of Thee Sixpence's songs in chronological order, Step By Step shows how the band went from a rather crude ...
Strawberries Mean Love — Strawberries Mean Love is the title of a compilation album originally released on vinyl LP in 1987 with 13 tracks. It was released on CD in 1992 with a total of 21 tracks, and it is arguably the best Clock compilation available. The collection takes its name from a song on the band's first LP Incense And Peppermints (1967).The original 1987 vinyl version of Strawberries Mean Love was made up ...
The Strawberry Alarm Clock Anthology — The Strawberry Alarm Clock Anthology is an 18-track compilation released in 1993 and comprising many of Strawberry Alarm Clock's more notable songs. It was put out by One Way Records. As an overview of the Clock's musical output 1967-71, The Strawberry Alarm Clock Anthology isn't too comprehensive, but the music is pretty excellent: the selection from the band's first two albums, 1967's Incense And Peppermints and 1968's Wake Up... It's ...
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Wake Up... It's Tomorrow — Wake Up... It's Tomorrow is Strawberry Alarm Clock's second album, released in early 1968 and following up their 1967 debut Incense And Peppermints. Many of the musical themes and lyrical concerns of the first album were explored further on Wake Up... It's Tomorrow, resulting in an album that, impressively, is at turns gentler and weirder. The LP begins with the claustrophobic "Nightmare Of Percussion", followed directly by "Soft Skies, No ...
The World In A Sea Shell — Strawberry Alarm Clock's third album, called The World In A Sea Shell, was released in November 1968 on Uni. The record followed Wake Up... It's Tomorrow (also 1968), but has a much more uniform sound, lusher and swamped with orchestration, than that album. Almost completely gone are the chilly gloom of "Curse Of The Witches", the sound collage of "Nightmare Of Percussion", and the commanding magnificence of "Pretty Song From ...