Lazy Smoke

An obscure Massachusetts band of the late 1960s, Lazy Smoke offered a sort of Transatlantic psychedelic sound with roughly equal debts to American and British influences. Their biggest debt was to the Beatles, and although they were hardly exceptional in that regard, the resemblance commanded more attention due to the fairly close similarity of leader/chief songwriter John Pollano's vocals to those of John Lennon.

Pollano's compositions bore a heavy Lennon stamp as well, often sounding like callower derivations of Lennon's more sedate White Album-era tunes. They pressed a few hundred copies of one album for the tiny Onyx label in 1969, Corridor of Faces, before splitting. It is higly sought after, and original LP pressings go for over $1,500. Recorded in the summer of '68, it's pop-psych with quite a UK influence (you can definitely hear Beatles in here), though not abandoning the American Psych either, it's soft at times just as it is rock, a true 60's gem. The record has since attained a modest cult following, and was reissued on CD with a dozen bonus demos.