Some of the best-known bands in Los Angeles in the Sixties became brand names for a particular style of rock: jangling folk rock for the Byrds, portentous doom rock for the Doors. Love not only bridged the gap between those two groups, they also tried to summon up every color of psychedelia. The range of their sound meant that they never really progressed past cult-band status, but Love were a cult worth joining and still sound fresh and inventive today. Lead singer Arthur Lee, a black man from Memphis, led this interracial band into uncharted waters, singing about orange skies and snot caked on his pants. This generous twenty-two-track compilation ranges from hard-rock freakouts ("Seven and Seven Is") to wistful pop ("She Comes in Colors") to trippy mariachi ("Maybe the People Would Be the Times, or Between Clark and Hilldale"). It also includes the grooviest up-tempo version of "Hey Joe" you'll ever hear.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"