Who were
the Salt? That's a question one might just as well and reasonably have asked in 1968, when they released their one record of any note, "Lucifer" b/w "A Whole Lot of Rainbows." Actually, they weren't so much a group as an idea for a group, conceived by
Joey Levine -- of "Yummy Yummy Yummy" and "Chewy Chewy" renown -- and built around a single, "Lucifer" b/w "A Whole Lot of Rainbows." If the single on Cotillion had charted, the resulting group reportedly would have included Marc Bellock (who had written "Try It," the "notorious"
Standells single with
Levine) and
David Lucas.
"Lucifer" sounded like an imitation of
Sgt. Pepper's instrumentation and mix, with elements of "Hello Goodbye" and other
Beatles songs drifting through, while "A Whole Lot of Rainbows" is closer to
the Mamas & the Papas (or, perhaps more accurately,
Spanky & Our Gang), mixed with
Blood, Sweat & Tears-style horns and some cool Farfisa organ, with odd tempo changes and modulations that sort of anticipate the work of
ELP on the same Cotillion label, plus some scatting at the end that sounds an awful lot like
Micky Dolenz's work in a similar vein with
the Monkees. They would disappear, unheralded and unnamed -- with
Lucas ending up producing
Blue Öyster Cult -- into the hazy mists of the receding Summer of Love. Both sides of
the Salt's only single re-emerged in 2004 on Rhino Handmade's Come to the Sunshine: Soft Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults and Hallucinations: Psychedelic Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults.
–
Bruce Eder, Rovi