Strawberry Alarm Clock-Wake Up It's Tomorrow Orig. Sealed Mint 1968 UNI Psych LP

$

65

This is an original sealed mint pressing of the 2d LP released in 1968 on UNI Records by The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Wake Up It's Tomorrow, which featured on lead guitar, Ed King, who later went on to join Lynyrd Skynyrd  as bass player. The group is most well known for the song Incense and Peppermint, which was released in 1967 as the B side of another single and wound up becoming a huge hit. Sealed copies of this very rare record are becoming very scarce.

 The band cut a follow-up single, "Tomorrow," was a collaboration between Mark Weitz and  Ed King that reached number 23 nationally in early 1968. The song had lots of great hooks, vocal and instrumental, with a killer feedback-soaked guitar break by King and lyrics that belonged to Weitz this time; along with the rest of the album, it also benefited from the presence of vocal coach Howard Davis, who was brought in to help the members push the harmony singing displayed on Incense and Peppermints to new levels of sophistication. On the single they sounded a bit like the Association crossed with the Who or the Creation (except that, unlike the Association, the Alarm Clock played on their own records).

Despite the success of "Tomorrow," the album Wake Up...It's Tomorrow never sold as well as it should have, mostly because Uni Records was late in getting it out, a month after "Tomorrow" had started its run up the charts. The public's attention span was very limited, and 30 days was an eternity in a marketplace crowded with lots of new (and some good) music; it's the difference between individual record stores ordering one or two copies of an LP, versus five or six, and displaying them prominently or at length, versus putting them in the browsers for people to find, and listeners still having the song in mind when they find the album. It ended up selling nowhere near the quarter-of-a-million copies of the first LP, and in many ways marked the sudden downward turn in the band's fortunes.        

The whole image of the group as it's been passed down might have been different if Wake Up...It's Tomorrow had sold better. "Incense and Peppermints," for all of its success, was a piece of product produced by many hands, as was the album that followed, while Wake Up...It's Tomorrow was the creation of a cohesive working band, and sounded it, even with the presence of Howard Davis working to make their singing more sophisticated. There were some exotic instruments, to be sure, and some un credited contributions by the members -- in an interview with Gary James, King said that he played a lot of the bass parts on that record -- but it was much more an expression of the five members, complicated by the sometimes very direct (and sometimes interfering) influence of the record label, which was always looking for the most accessible, commercial sound, and also by some disagreements. Still, the album did fit together in its odd way, and was more of a musicians' record than a producer's record -- and had more people heard it, they might've been remembered in subsequent years as a band and not just as an AM radio phenomenon with a funny name.

The cover is completely sealed with corners very sharp, and the only real blemish being cut out hole on the lower right side of the LP at mouth signifying LP was record company cut out.

The LP is being sold without reserve and payment is expected within 3 days of auction close. Return of the LP will only be accepted if the LP is returned still sealed.

If you bid on and win more than one item shipping for multiple purchases will be adjusted. If you win more than one item do not pay until I have had the opportunity to issue new invoice to reflect combined lower shipping cost. Shipping for one item is $4 and includes tracking

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Save me as a seller as I have about 150 sealed rare 1960's and 1970's rock, soul, blues and jazz LPs that will be auctioned over the coming months. And then thereafter I will auction over 200 open and very clean MFSL and other audiophile pressings, as well as over 200 promos. I will ultimately be auctioning almost 6500 rare and very clean LP albums.