One of the most notoriously weird b-sides of the '60s, and a song that's stayed surprisingly obscure over the years, even among Turtles fans, "Umbassa and the Dragon" is basically the middle hour of Peter Jackson's King Kong condensed to a little over three minutes. Not so much a song as it is a story in sound that includes a bit of singing, "Umbassa and the Dragon" is about as racially sensitive and anthropologically accurate as the old B-movie adventures that inspired it, but it's still oddly impressive. How many bands would go to the trouble of making something this weird for the flipside of a single (the 1968 flop "Sound Asleep," not really one of the Turtles' best efforts) that most people were going to listen to once, if that? Testament to the overall sloppiness with which the notoriously shady L.A. indie label White Whale treated their cash cow, the label doesn't even get the song title right, dropping a key word. Listening to this, it's not surprising that when the Turtles broke up, almost all of them (not just singers Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, who renamed themselves Flo and Eddie around the same time, but also drummer John Barbata and bassist Jim Pons) went on to play with Frank Zappa.

-Stewart Mason