Stone Circus - ST

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	What Went Wrong	02:25
	2	Adam's Lament	02:36
	3	Mr. Gray	03:06
	4	Blue Funk	02:36
	5	Carnival of Love	03:01

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Sara Wells	03:06
	2	Inside-Out Man	05:11
	3	Camino Real	03:33
	4	People I Once Know	06:54

Photos

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Information/Write-up

The Stone Circus LP has long been one of the holy grails to collectors of the legendary Mainstream label, but so little is known about it that the misconceptions have grown along with its monetary value. Thanks to the wonders of cyberspace, organist Jonathan Caine (actually Larry Cohen) cleared things up a few years ago. “First of all, we weren't from California. We were a New York-based band. In fact all of us, with the exception of Sonny Haines, were originally from Montreal. We moved to New York to form the group with Sonny and worked under the name the Funky Farm.”

As the curiously named Funky Farm, the five (Caine and guitarist Haines, along with singer Ronnie Paige, bass player David Keeler and drummer Mike Burns) managed to get their blend of psych-pop and experimental acid-rock into the Mainstream offices in 1969. Of course the melodic songwriting and the superb pairing of Hammond organ and freewheeling fuzz guitar hardly hurt their cause. Unfortunately, Stone Circus received no airplay or promotional support and was soon deleted, but has gone on to become one of the most sought-after major-label LPs of the period. What’s more, Cohen recalls the band’s shock when “…it was only when the album was released that we found out, much to our surprise, that the band had been renamed by Mainstream, Stone Circus.”

Virtually abandoned by their label, Stone Circus didn’t last very long. “We were together for a year and went our separate ways after the release of the record.” After returning to Montreal, Cohen co-wrote the sprawling 3-LP concept album The Diary of Mr. Gray with (former Footprint) Yank Barry, and later created CRIME (Creative Research Into Musical Expression) before settling in as a soundtrack composer.
-Robert Williston

Whether it was more a blessing or a curse to be signed to Bob Shad’s Chicago-based Mainstream Records in the late 1960s is a matter for debate. Though the label issued numerous underground albums that are unlikely to have seen the light of day otherwise (including minor classics by the Bohemian Vendetta, the Art Of Lovin’, the Growing Concern, Ellie Pop, the Jelly Bean Bandits, the Orient Express, and others), it had little in the way of national distribution or radio support, and was at best a way-station for the more talented artists on its roster, such as Big Brother & the Holding Company and Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes. A classic victim of its approach was Stone Circus.

The band’s leader and chief songwriter was Jonathan Caine (real name Larry Cohen). Born in Montreal in 1948, by the age of 14 he was a guest soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and upon graduation from the Quebec Conservatory in 1968, he gravitated towards America’s East Coast. There he hooked up with fellow Montreal natives Ronnie Paige, David Keeler and Mike Burns, as well as guitarist Sonny Haines (a New Yorker who had played with Joey Dee and the Starlighters before recording a few 45s with Canadian act the Footprints). The band based themselves in New York, named themselves the Funky Farm, and were soon offered the chance to record an album by Shad. The result was a superb blend of melodic psych-pop and experimental acid rock, spanning mellow, catchy pop (What Went Wrong? and Sara Wells), harder-edged rock (Mr. Grey and Inside-Out Man), and out-and-out weirdness (the long closing track, People I Once Knew, which opens and closes with unsettling spoken word sections), and bore similarity to contemporary acts such as the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Blues Magoos.

When the LP was released, however, the band was astonished to find their name changed to Stone Circus — and when it failed to sell, they split. Cohen went on to collaborate with Footprints singer Yank Barry on an odd, lavishly packaged double LP entitled Diary Of Mr. Gray (boasting a very close cover of Stone Circus’s Mr. Gray) in the early 70s, before embarking on a career composing music for B-movies. The other members of Stone Circus remain in obscurity, though one hopes they’re aware of the standing their music has belatedly acquired amongst connoisseurs of psychedelia.

Sonny Haines: lead guitar
Ronnie Paige: lead vocals
Jonathan Caine: organ
David Keeler: bass
Mike Burns: drums

Cover design & illustration by Ely Besalel

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