The Chambers Brothers “Time Has Come Today”

“Time Has Come Today”

One of the great things about the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s music scene was that the younger generation did not care about your color or race when it came to music. I’m not saying that today it is any different but during the turbulent 60’s with the anti Vietnam war movement and the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King leading the way music played a pivotal role in the World, especially in America. The late 1960’s and early 1970’s had visionary promoter Bill Graham promoting 100’s of shows in New York and San Francisco. His ability to promote tons of diversity in  shows was amazing.

You could go see a group like The Grateful Dead playing with Blues legend Big Mama Thornton opening up for them. Or from a story we were just reading about were Bill Graham had Ten Years After headlining a show in 1970 and since he didn’t like Ric Lee’s drum solo’s he signed The Buddy Rich Band to open so he could embarrass him to not play a a solo that night. Buddy Rich for those of you who might not know was one of the greatest drummers to ever live and played Big Band music. As the story goes Ric Lee didn’t play a solo that night. The point we are trying to make was the younger generation at that time were very open minded about music and as long as there was music to be heard they would go and listen to it and they enjoyed it without fail. If you ever look at a list of performers at concerts like Woodstock and the Monterey Pop Festival you can see how diversified the music was that could play on the same bill.

This brings us to our song for the week Time Has Come Today. There are very few songs from the 1960’s that scream Psychedelic Rock and Acid Rock as much as this classic does. A few songs pop into mind like the 7 minute plus version of “Sky Pilot” by The Animals or “Mona” (off of Happy Trails) by the legendary Quicksilver Messenger Service.

The The Chambers Brothers were better known as a Gospel–Soul Music group from there beginnings in the 50’s but brothers Willie Chambers and Joseph Chambers wrote one of 60’s most classic songs in 1967. Willie and Joseph along with brothers George Chambers, Lester Chambers and drummer Brian Keenan took two simple cow bells and tweaked the sound with a little echo and reverb to create a tick-tock that has stood the test of time. The various guitar effects used though out the song along with the voices and laughing effects going on for the a lot of the last 5 minutes must have truly been fascinating and vibrate to those enjoying a little bit of man made chemical back in those days.

Video courtesy of J5schn1tz’s channel