The Olivers - Social Slavery (1969)

In 1962, 12 year old guitar players Mike Mankey and Billy Franze got together and started playing music in Fort Worth, Indiana, eventually locating bass player Jerry Vachon and drummer Bob Goodwin, and putting a band together called The Shadows. They practiced once a week in Mike’s bedroom, and after a year or so, they'd learned to play R & B songs from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, as well as popular songs from the radio. Also in Fort Wayne, Chuck Hamrick and Jay Penndorf were part of a band called The Serfmen, who played mainly surf music, but  they wanted to move into doing their own versions of R & B songs, and this caused the band to split up, with Hamrick and Penndorf retaining the band name. With the addition of two new members, The Serfmen recorded a single which was a local hit, and The Shadows started to cover it in their set, leading to the two bands meeting up. Hamrick and Penndorf were impressed with Franze's guitar and vocal style, and needing a new bass player they invited him to join their band, as long as he could play bass, which Franze readily agreed to. Around 1965 The Serfmen decided to revamp their style, and, based on the British Invasion, they changed their name to The Olivers and began dressing in 19th Century style English stage outfits, and after some local success they even recorded a single 'I Saw What You Did/Beeker Street' in 1966. When Penndorf was drafted into the military, Franze contacted his old friend Mankey and invited him to join the band, which, with the addition of Rick Durrett on keyboards, spent the next couple of years touring and opening for acts like The Hollies, The Who, Blue Cheer and Jefferson Airplane. 
By the time Penndorf returned from the army in 1968, the band had evolved into a more psychedelic style of music, and in 1969 they went into Dove Recording Studio in Bloomington, Minnesota with producer Pete Steinberg, and spent a week recording an album of original songs. A rough mix of seven songs was completed, and through Steinberg's connections with Sire Records, they expressed an interest in putting out the album on their label. However, the planned album never appeared on Sire, and was never released on any label. The band members returned to Fort Wayne with no tapes and no acetates of their Dove recording sessions, and  Penndorf and Durrett left the band, leaving Franze, Mankey and Hamrick to carry on as a three piece under the name of Triad. The album did eventually get a limited release in 2012 on the German Break-A-Way label, but it really deserves more than that, as there are some superb songs on here, most notably the two extended pieces 'Jessica Ryder' and the title track. I've added in the b-side of their 1966 single to make the album up to 40 minutes, and changed the title from 'The Lost Dove Sessions', which was a bit boring, but I can guarantee that the music is anything but. 

Track listing.

01 Ball Of Fire
02 Mushroom
03 Beeker Street
04 Jessica Ryder
05 Someday Somewhere
06 The End
07 Free
08 Social Slavery