I had no idea Canned Heat was still around. I’m not surprised: bands that played at Woodstock have a long shelf life. Canned Heat was your basic blooze-rock boogie band, Southern California style. They weren’t known for their cover art but the package of Future Blues ruled as well as rocked. I hope the moon landing truthers haven’t used it to prove that Neil Armstrong never hit a tee shot on the moon.
The best back cover scan I could find was of a CD reissue of the 1971 album. It could be subtitled Hippies On The Moon:
The full LP isn’t online, so here are the first and last tracks of the original album:
Around 1967, a friend of mine had a band called The Freeborne, in Boston. They opened for Canned Heat at the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston for a couple of nights.
At that time, Canned Heat’s tune “Amphetamine Annie” was getting a lot of play, just like any explicit drug-themed song did. I was still in high school (a sophomore), and I got to hang around backstage because of The Freeborne. I kept bugging Canned Heat to play “Amphetamine Annie.”
They got rather cross, for which I don’t blame them. They did start to act rather dickish over the whole thing, for which I did blame them. I wasn’t a huge fan at the time, and I never became one, but they were damned good, I’ll give them that.
So Bob Hite was, uh, Bearish with you? Thanks for sharing that story.
Hallelujah had a nice cover, too, from the same outfit that did It’s a Beautiful Day’s first and Quicksilver’s Shady Grove. And it’s a better album, with the hilarious “Sic ‘Em Pigs.”