Song of the Day 9/24: The Electric Prunes, “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”

Judging by the hangover I definitely had too much of something yesterday, but I think it was Propofol.

The Electric Prunes released this classic slice of psychedelia in late 1966. It was a moderate hit, reaching No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1967, but its place in rock history was cemented when Lenny Kaye made it the opening track on the authoritative “Nuggets” collection of garage rock, which came out in 1972. The opening burst of what sounds like angry hornets actually came about by accident.

As lead singer James Lowe recalled,

“We were recording on a four-track, and just flipping the tape over and re-recording when we got to the end. [Producer Dave Hassinger] cued up a tape and didn’t hit ‘record,’ and the playback in the studio was way up: ear-shattering vibrating jet guitar. … Forward it was cool. Backward it was amazing. I ran into the control room and said, ‘What was that?’ They didn’t have the monitors on so they hadn’t heard it. I made Dave cut it off and save it for later.”

Both “Too Much to Dream” and the band’s follow-up hit, “Get Me to the World on Time,” were composed by songwriter Annette Tucker, who mostly worked with MOR artists. She wrote most of the tunes on the band’s first album, a decision made by producer Hassinger, who signed the band to a contract that gave him creative control. The friction contributed to most of the original members quitting the band during the recording of their second LP.

This was the Prunes’ follow-up hit, which reached No. 27.

Those commercial highlights are not representative of the band’s ouevre. The lead track from their second album, “Underground,” gives a better idea of how they sounded when they wrote their own material, and the video gives you a blurry idea of how a pop band had to dress in the Sgt. Pepper era.