A wild trip down memory lane on Gary Schneider’s Open Mynd Excursion with special guest, Travis Edward Pike

June 21, 2017 – Gary’s Schneider’s Open Mynd Excursion regularly showcases radio broadcasts from 1955 to the 1980’s, but with a feature article in the Winter Edition of Ugly Things and a full page in Harvey Kubernik’s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love, Gary decided it was time to book fellow New England expatriate Travis Pike to be his guest for a May 31st Special Edition.

The first half hour was true to form, featuring broadcasts from 1967, but then, Gary introduced Travis and they began spinning songs from Travis’ more than half-century as a singer-songwriter.

It started with the Demo Derby title song, written by Travis, arranged by Arthur Korb and recorded by the Rondels. In 1964, while Travis was stationed in Germany, his song “Demo Derby” made history by playing on screens with three of the biggest music icons of the 20th Century, opening with Frank Sinatra in Robin and the Seven Hoods, Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas, and later, on thousands of screens across the country, with the Beatles Hard Day’s Night.

And if Travis wasn’t making music history in Germany, he was definitely providing interesting footnotes. Gary premiered two songs Travis recorded in 2016, originally intended for his 1964 German-Italian Showband, The Five Beats, and “Rock ‘n’ Roll” immediately made it clear why Travis was known over there as “the Twistsensation aus USA.” Gary followed that with Travis’ moving bilingual ballad, “End of Summer,” which added another footnote to his musical history when, in 1973, sans vocal, it became the score for a 1974 Golden Globe nominee for Best Documentary, The Second Gun.

Gary then played requests for “Watch Out Woman” and “The Way That I Need You,” two of Travis’ songs only finally made available to the public in 2016, when he posted restored footage from the 1966 movie, Feelin’ Good on Youtube. Both are now scheduled for a State Records release in July.

Then Travis introduced three rockers from his 2014 Tea Party Snack Platter, featuring audience favorites from live performances in the late sixties, and in honor of Memorial Day, thought they’d end the segment with “Don’t You Care at All,” a Vietnam era song he composed shortly after the Tet Offensive. Gary played the song, but went on to close the segment by playing a request for the original Alma recording of Travis Pike’s Tea Party’s “If I Didn’t Love You Girl,” currently featured on the Detour Records le beat bespoké 7 compilation album, and due for a first-time re-release of that original, 1967, two-sided 45 (“If I Didn’t Love You Girl” and “The Likes of You), later this Summer.

Given the format of Open Mynd Excursion, “station break” has a totally different meaning on Gary’s show, but after his regularly scheduled return to radio broadcasts from 1967, with about 20 minutes left in the show, he and Travis were back to open the final segment with “Loup Garou,” from Travis’ 2014 Reconstructed Coffeehouse Blues, and then, with time running out, they went for a five-in-a-row set of new songs from Travis’ 2016 album, Outside the Box.

Their easy-on-the-ears conversation was low key, but Travis’ songs were anything but! And now, Otherworld Cottage has posted the entire show, along with a playlist giving approximate start times for each song, at http://otherworldcottage.com/Travis_Pike_on_21st_Century_blogs_and_broadcasts.html.

Clicking on http://otherworldcottageindustries.com/PRODUCTION%20OFFICE%20AUDIO%20SAMPLES.html will take you to the Otherworld Cottage links page to Travis Pike’s songs posted on Youtube.

GET IN TOUCH
Travis Edward Pike
Otherworld Cottage Industries
323 733 1074
http://www.otherworldcottage.com

Release ID: 255730