In the mid-'60s, Trident Productions, run by
Kingston Trio manager
Frank Werber, recorded quite a bit of San Francisco Bay Area rock, usually but not always leaning to the folk-rock side. Though they had a big hit right away with
the We Five's 1965 smash "You Were on My Mind," that single (and, to a lesser extent, the
We Five group) represented the only real success Trident managed, despite distribution for some of their recordings through A&M and Verve.
Sing Me a Rainbow is a two-CD set of tracks cut by Trident from 1965 to 1967, the great majority of them previously unreleased. Those tracks that were released will be familiar to the San Francisco '60s rock fan, including "You Were on My Mind" and a few other
We Five singles, as well as
Blackburn & Snow's neglected folk-rock classic "Stranger in a Strange Land" and
the Mystery Trend's garage-psychedelic 45 "Johnny Was a Good Boy." Otherwise, though, this is virgin territory for all but the most insider San Francisco '60s rock collectors, even if some of the artists (particularly
the Sons of Champlin and
John Stewart) went on to release reasonably high-profile records.