Song:I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)
Album:Nuggets From Nuggets: Choice Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era
This is a group I get asked about all the time because of their name. But they were a real band and they did have a top 20 hit with I Had Too Much To Dream in 1967. But it appears that Reprise Records liked the group name but didn't like the band as they tried to turn them into a studio concoction. The group started out in Los Angeles as The Sanctions. The founding members were James Lowe on lead vocal and autoharp, Ken Williams on guitar, Mark Tulin on bass and Michael Weakley on drums. They were introduced to recording engineer David Hassinger and he cut some demos with them and got them a contract with Reprise Records. He had worked with The Rolling Stones. He decided that the group couldn't write their own songs so he brought in the songwriting team of Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz and they wrote I Had Too Much To Dream. It reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100. Get Me To The World On Time was their other top 40 hit. The Electric Prunes went through constant personnel changes. David Axelrod produced their third album Mass In F Minor. It was supposed to be some sort of psychedelic mass. But the group split up and Axelrod finished the record with studio musicians. Meanwhile, I Had Too Much To Dream was used in Easy Rider. So Reprise decided to use The Electric Prunes name with an all new band. They recorded one album and split up. I Had Too Much To Dream has been kept alive by the Nuggets comps so that's the CD you should get. Lowe, Tulin and Williams reformed The Electric Prunes and recorded a CD in 2007. Tulin has worked quite a bit with Billy Corgan so Corgan is producing a new Electric Prunes CD. Here's The Electric Prunes performing You Never Had It Better and I Had Too Much To Dream.
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