Song of the Day 7/3: The Pyramid, “The Summer of Last Year”

A bright, sunshiny day at the start of a holiday weekend calls for some sunshine pop. Bet you’ve never heard this one before.

The Pyramid was a short-lived surf-music trio that formed in London in 1966. “The Summer of Last Year,” released in January 1967, was their only recording, because singer Ian MacDonald – soon to change his name to Ian (later Iain) Matthews to avoid confusion with the King Crimson saxophonist – left to join Fairport Convention. He shared vocals with Sandy Denny on a couple of their early folk-rock LPs, but when the band took a hard turn into British folk, Matthews was shown the door.

He started recording solo but assembled a band he called Matthews Southern Comfort when he had to tour behind his cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” a surprise UK No. 1 in 1970. It reached No. 23 in the US the next year.

That was Matthews’ commercial high point, but he’s had a long and varied career since. He went back to folk in a group called Plainsong in the early ’70s, then moved to Los Angeles, where he cut a string of LA-mellow solo albums (one produced by Monkees alum Mike Nesmith). None of them clicked, so he moved to Seattle where he formed a power pop band, Hi-Fi, with Pavlov’s Dog singer David Surkamp, who sang lead and wrote most their material.

That didn’t sell, either, so he gave up performing and went into A&R for several years. He later made a comeback in Austin, then moved to the Netherlands in 2000, where he worked with a jazz band and formed a new edition of Matthews Southern Comfort with Dutch musicians. And at age 79 he’s still going. He released an LP in the singer/songwriter vein – we might call it Americana nowadays – “How Much Is Enough” just last year. This is the title track.