Martin Scorsese: The Salty Dog! - Shindig! Magazine

An appreciation of the greatest harmony pop band of all time 

BILL FAY • STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK • IAN HUNTER 

KEN STRINGFELLOW • LEE HAZELWOOD • SWEDISH RETRO ROCK 

THE FAMILY THAT PLAYS TOGETHER 

ISSUE 29 • £4.95 

News and Reviews sections 

extracted from 

Shindig! No.29

Martin Scorsese: 

The Salty Dog! 

The eagerly awaited new book that unravels the complex tale of Procol 

Harum, rolled out with a BFI event containing unseen Harum film and 

TV footage 

Gary Brooker invents the sit down and play 

earnest pianist look, The Constitution 

Hall, Washington DC, 1969 

Photo by William Hatfield 

It’s official and you read it here first. Procol 

Harum biographer Henry Scott-Irvine’s Omnibus 

Press publication The Ghosts Of A Whiter Shade 

Of Pale has an exclusive from Scorsese, who 

describes his love of Procol Harum and their 

great lyrics. In particular he singles out ‘A Salty 

Dog’. Led Zep’s Jimmy Page concurs, “It’s their 

masterpiece,” adding that Procol’s BJ Wilson 

was his “first choice” for the Led Zeppelin drum 

stool. “BJ Wilson? There was nobody to touch 

him,” says Page. “He almost orchestrated with 

his drumming – with his uniqueness on the kit. 

There was nobody in the world that could drum 

like [the late] BJ Wilson. And that’s simply it.” 

Filmmaker Sir Alan Parker provides the 

book’s introduction and recollects The 

Commitments, which featured ‘A Whiter Shade 

Of Pale’ as a narrative motif. He also talks about 

“I�am�amazed�as�to�why�he�isn’t 

seen�as�the�greatest�singer�in 

the�world” 

his choice of Procol Harum’s Gary Brooker as a 

co-star for his movie Evita. “I think he’s up there 

with Percy Sledge. I am amazed as to why he 

isn’t seen as the greatest singer in the world. 

The guy could sing literally anything!” Elton 

John and Bernie Taupin mention ‘Pale’ and its 

1967 Top 10 follow-up ‘Homburg’. They were 

both “like a Dali painting,” says Elton. “And 

works by Cocteau,” adds lyric writer Taupin. 

The Who’s Pete Townshend goes on to cite 

Shine On Brightly as being “a real heavy 

influence when writing Tommy”, whilst author 

[the late] Douglas Adams describes Grand Hotel

Photo by William Hatfield 

“Hold on. Like this?” BJ Wilson at his drum kit and Dave Knights 

with his back to the camera, photographed prior to the gig at 

The Constitution Hall, Washington DC, 1969. 

as being the inspiration for his book The 

Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. In more 

recent times, James Bond screenplay writer and 

author Sebastian Faulks described Procol 

Harum’s ’72 British orchestral collaboration at 

London’s Rainbow in his 2008 novel Engleby. 

Prior to Procol Harum [from 1963 till ’66], 

three core Procol members were in the 

Southend-based R&B covers band The 

Paramounts, whom both Jagger and Richards 

described on NBC TV as being their “favourite 

British group” upon The Rolling Stones’ arrival 

at New York’s JFK Airport in ’64. The 

Procol Harum on stage rehearsing ‘The Devil Came From 

Kansas’ in The Constitution Hall, Washington DC, 1969; 

from left: Gary Brooker, BJ Wilson, Matthew Fisher on 

rhythm guitar, Robin Trower and Dave Knights. 

Photos by William Hatfield 

Photo by Ron Sanchez 

Paramounts supported the Stones that year 

and The Beatles in ’65. 

To celebrate the launch of this epic 

biography, The British Film Institute will be 

screening an evening of Paramounts and 

Procol Harum film and television footage, 

showing clips ranging from Thank Your Lucky 

Stars from ’63 to unseen colour psychedelic 

footage of Procol Harum debuting ‘Homburg’ 

and ‘A Salty Dog’, along with some great 

surprises. This profile event is confirmed for 

Saturday November 3rd 2012 at The BFI 

Southbank’s NFT 1 from 6.30PM until 8PM. 

San Fran 

Superman... 

unleashing 

inspirational 

guitar, British 

Division. 

Robin Trower 

at The San 

Francisco Pop 

Festival, 1968. 

Procol Harum & The Ghosts Of A Whiter Shade 

Of Pale is published by Omnibus Press in 

November to coincide with these very special 

one-off screenings. There will be book signings 

in The BFI Bookshop afterwards. 

To win a signed copy of the book, 

tell us the name of the Procol 

Harum organist who was also the 

original bass player in The 

Paramounts. Email your answer 

to win@shindig-magazine.com with a subject 

of “Procol”. Closing date: 25th November. 

“Where’s the bloody 

rider?’ Backstage at The 

Constitution Hall, 

Washington DC, 1969; 

left to right: Dave 

Knights, Robin Trower, 

BJ Wilson, Keith Reid, 

Matthew Fisher and Gary 

Brooker at the piano. 

7

8 

All�Is�Not�Lost 

Boston musician Ted Myers 

is still recording, 40+ years 

on from his days with the 

superb garage band The 

Lost and psych acts 

Chameleon Church and 

Ultimate Spinach. “The 

music was written over a 

span of nearly five 

decades,” explains Myers. 

“It is not ‘now’ or trendy, 

but the songs are solid, timeless and emotionally 

evocative.” Although not sounding remotely like garage 

or psych, it’s good to know a 66-year-old is still making 

powerful music. 

www.tedmyersmusic.com 

.................................................................... 

Return�Of�The�Prodigal�Son 

After the phenomenal success of ‘Clear The Air’ the 

Dutch wunderkid Jacco Gardner returns with a brand 

new seven inch on the US Trouble In Mind label. ‘Where 

Will You Go’ b/w ‘Summer’s Game’ furthers the drifting 

Melotron infused authentic psychedelic baroque/pop 

sound we have all come to love. Essential. 

.................................................................... 

Following last issue’s Cranium Pie 

competition, our favourite bespoke 45s 

label Fruits de Mer is offering one lucky 

Shindig! reader a white label pressing 

of The Pretty Things’ new 7” EP, SF 

Sorrow Live In London, together with a copy of the 

insert poster signed by the whole band! 

To enter, tell us which Byrds song is covered by the 

Pretties on this EP. Email your answer to win@shindigmagazine 

with a subject of “Pretty Things”. Closing date: 

25th November 

.................................................................... 

Spiders,�Tame 

Impala�& 

Strypes 

Records�Up� 

For�Grabs 

Spiders’ amazing full-length debut 

Flash Point. To enter, tell us 

which highly regarded band the 

group’s previous drummer was in. 

Email your answer to win@shindigmagazine 

with a subject of “Spiders”. Closing date: 

25th November 

Tame Impala’s Lonerism, a new album that carries 

psychedelia into 2013 with an appreciation of the 

past and an eye on the future. To win a copy tell us 

which Shindig! hero has remixed Tame Impala. Email 

your answer to win@shindig-magazine with a subject of 

“Tame Impala”. Closing date: 25th November 

Kids playing R&B has never sounded more impressive. 

Who said ’60s inspired acts in the 2000s are past it? 

To win a CD copy of The Strypes’ Young Gifted & Blue 

tell us the name of the prestigious Spanish ’60s/mod 

festival the group played in August. Email your answer 

to win@shindig-magazine with a subject of “Strypes”. 

Closing date: 25th November 

I Am So Blue 

LENNY HELSING mourns the loss of friend and mentor, THE POETS’ 

George Gallacher 

‘That’s The Way It’s Gotta Be’ 

Young George in his prime 

It is with great sadness that we report the 

sudden and tragic death of George Gallacher, 

lead vocalist of The Poets, the Glasgow mid-60s 

beat group best remembered for their October 

1964 Decca debut ‘Now We're Thru’, and the 

February ’65 proto-freakbeat raver ‘That’s The 

Way It’s Got To Be’. 

Alongside guitarist (and brother-in-law) Fraser 

Watson – part of The Poets ’65-67 era – Gallacher 

Another�Utterance 

We love them, but they scare us senseless. Having played a 

number of gigs over the past few years, Comus return once 

more with a gig at Liverpool’s The Kazimier on November 1st. 

Late�Bloomin’�Supergroup 

Sounding occasionally not unlike AC/DC meets Timebox 

(which will come as no surprise) and often hinting at a 

format Squeeze would later gain success with, Mike Patto 

and Ollie Halsall 

grouped together after 

the split of Patto with 

bassist Keith Ellis 

(Spooky Tooth, Juicy 

Lucy, Van Der Graaf 

Generator) and 

drummer Tony Newman 

(The Jeff Beck Group 

and Kevin Ayers’ band) 

to form Boxer. It was 

had recently resurrected the group for a series of 

concerts, and a BBC Radio Scotland live session, 

backed by long-time friends and fans, Edinburgh’s 

The Thanes [Lenny’s group]. Gallacher was due to 

turn 70 on 21st October. A post-mortem is 

currently being carried out but it is thought that 

whilst driving home from watching his beloved 

Partick Thistle FC play on Saturday 25th August, 

he suffered a fatal heart attack. Thistle won too so 

he would’ve been a happy man! 

As anyone who’s heard George Gallacher in 

action would testify, he had a unique vocal 

presence that, despite having only one 

serviceable lung, was as electrifying as it was 

back in The Poets’ heyday, and thoroughly 

unique. Author and friend Jim Kelman calls 

Gallacher “an artist”. 

Since undergoing major heart surgery some 

years ago, he needed daily medication, and 

often voiced his fears over his mortality. He is 

survived by his dear wife, Anne, and sons Craig 

and Fraser. On a personal note, I feel very 

privileged to have been good friends with 

George, and, more recently, to have had the 

honour of playing alongside him and Fraser in 

The Poets. In the light of what’s happened I’m 

eternally thankful that we got to play gigs in 

Glasgow, London, and most recently a great 

show at Festival Beat in Italy. RIP pal. 

The 1971 debut First Utterance was notable for not only 

its unique blend of folk, progressive rock and psychedelia, 

but also the manner in which it genuinely embodied 

elements of paganism and the macabre. This heady blend, 

delivered with a startling intensity, has helped Comus 

become one of the most unique and influential folks bands 

the UK has ever produced. Over the last 40 years their 

impact has gone far beyond the folk scene into 

many diverse genres, including doom and black metal! 

Comus recently returned to the studio to produce a new 

album titled Out Of The Coma for our friends Rise Above 

(which was released this year to great critical acclaim) and 

are evidently still ploughing their own unique furrow. Tickets 

are priced at £15 and can be purchased on 

www.ticketline.com and www.skiddle.com 

1975 and punk was still around the corner. Borrowing 

elements of Free-like rock, a snotty pub rock witticism and 

anger, a touch of musical bombast and solid tunes that 

stem from the late ’60s, the group signed to Virgin in 1975. 

Below The Belt (what a horrid cover) was issued in 1975, 

whilst Blood Letting recorded the following year wasn’t 

released until 1979 (with an equally poor cover). The times 

were against them, but the albums are splendid. 

To win a copy of Below The Belt and 

Blood Letting, which have just been 

reissued by Esoteric, tell us which Beatles’ 

psych classic Boxer recorded. Email your 

answer to win@shindig-magazine.com with 

a subject of “Boxer”. Closing date: 25th 

November.

GOOD 

This�Is�“Not”�Spinal�Tap 

Well, it had to happen, didn’t it? Even if it has taken a 

while. At this juncture Shindig! cannot specify how 

much the following film will follow our editorial policy… 

But it’ll definitely be one to watch! Classified as a “fly 

on the wall history of Status Quo”, Hello Quo will 

premiere on October 22nd and then be released on 

DVD and Blu-ray. Directed by music industry veteran 

Alan G Parker, this candid film sets out to tell the whole 

story of nigh on 50 years of Quo shenanigans. There will 

surely be some tasty footage of the “psych era” band 

and lots on the “lost years” of the drugs ’n’ booze years 

of the ’80s, marked by that stellar Live Aid appearance. 

Could this be the funniest rock documentary ever? 

.................................................................... 

First�New�LP�In�34�Years! 

Hawklords will tour the UK throughout autumn on the 

back of new album We Are The One. Tour dates at 

www.facebook.com/TheHawklords 

.................................................................... 

The lovely folk over at Acid Jazz have 

four copies of Lookin’ Good With 

Jimmy James & The Vagabonds, a 

four-track EP recorded by the popular 

soul combo in 1967 and unreleased 

until now, to give away. 

To enter, tell us which notorious mod impresario 

“discovered” Jimmy James in 1964. Email your answer 

to win@shindig-magazine with a subject of “Jimmy 

James”. Closing date: 25th November 

.................................................................... 

In�The�Movies 

It’s not only Shindig! readers who are fans of Brooklyn 

psychedelic noise mongers White Hills. Notable indie 

film director Jim Jarmusch picked up on the band back 

in 2010 and is now featuring them in his latest offering 

Only Lovers Left Alive. Starring Tilda Swinton, Tom 

Hiddleston (as a depressed underground musician), 

Mia Wasilowska, John Hurt and Anton Yelchin, it’s a 

typically Jarmusch character study set against the 

romantic desolation of Tangiers and Detroit. White Hills 

play themselves in a live concert segment, filmed with 

the stars in Hamburg. 

.................................................................... 

Brother�Of�Edgar 

Shindig! received a rapturous text from last issue’s shining 

light Edgar Summertyme/Jones (he of The Stairs and many 

worthy latter day projects) regarding his elder brother 

Trefor’s latest musical endeavours. Auto Rites sees the 

“influential older brother” create a musical version of 

“Automatic Writing”. He explains, “I was literally and 

metaphorically bored with the sound of my own voice and 

set out to surprise myself musically – creating longer 

instrumental pieces. The basic musical maps were 

recorded and over-dubbed before I could ‘learn’ the chops 

and changes. Texture and weirdness became the priorities. 

Indebted to the McCartneyesque philosophy of random 

motifs to create happy accidents and Holger Czukay’s 

splicing/editing techniques, 

Auto Rites should appeal to 

fans of early electronic 

experimentation and latter day 

acolytes Broadcast. Labels 

interested in hearing the 

material should contact us. It 

deserves a release. 

Far More Than 

That Old Chestnut 

PAUL RITCHIE homes in on the cool, hot, buttered soul of CODY CHESTNUTT 

Cody Chestnutt’s second full-length long player 

looks set to establish the singer/songwriter as a 

player on the modern soul scene, following in 

the footsteps of the likes of Aloe Blacc and 

Mayer Hawthorne. Landing On A Hundred is the 

Shape�Of�Things�To�Come 

Arriving just too late for review in this issue we have 

country/soul/psych oddity A Fire Somewhere by Ray 

Stinnett (Light In The Attic CD), recorded in 1970 but 

unreleased until now, a straight reissue of Roger 

McGuinn’s ’77 outing as Thunderbyrd (BGO CD), Demis 

Roussos’ ’71 solo debut, On The Greek Side Of My Mind 

(RPM CD), Danish psych-proggers 

Day Of The Phoenix’s highly-rated ’70 

album, Wide Open N Away (Esoteric 

CD), a second volume of soul man 

George Jackson’s Fame Recordings, 

Let The Best Man Win (Kent CD), 

Andy Roberts’ ’73 post-Plainsong 

solo work, Urban Cowboy (Fledg’ling 

CD), more Danish prog courtesy of 

Ache’s first two albums, De Homine Urbano and Green 

Man (both Esoteric CDs) and Action!: The Songs Of 

Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart, the latest in Ace’s 

exemplary songwriters series, starring The Monkees, Paul 

Revere & The Raiders, Del Shannon et al. 

November and December should deliver the first ever 

official CD reissue of Daughters Of Albion’s self-titled ’68 

psych masterpiece (Now Sounds CD), Stackridge’s fairly 

self-explanatory Radio Sessions 1971-73 (Angel Air CD), 

The Awakening (él 6-CD box set) – collecting Goblin’s 

scores for ’70s Italian horrors Profundo Rosso, Suspiria, 

Tenebrae and more, Morricone In Colour (él 4-CD box 

Before�Unit�Delta�Plus 

Music historian and critic Mark Brend returns with 

the successor to his 2005 book, the critics’ 

choice, Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments & 

Sonic Experiments In Pop. His new title, The 

Sound Of Tomorrow: How Electronic Music Was 

Smuggled Into The Mainstream, delves back in 

time to 1945 and the theremin soundtrack to Hitchcock’s 

Spellbound, charting the evolution of this new music form from 

follow-up to his lo-fi debut, The Headphone 

Masterpiece, from way back in 2002. With a 

modern hip-hop based sensibility along the 

lines of D’Angelo and Raphael Saadiq, this 

music is rooted in the classic era of Marvin 

Gaye and Stevie Wonder, all sweeping strings 

and socially conscious ruminations on life. 

The Atlanta native has always stood his own 

creative ground ever since he first holed 

himself up in his bedroom to record his debut 

on a dusty four-track cassette recorder. The 

result was an unvarnished collection of songs – 

36 in total, which alchemised his love of classic 

rock, R&B, pop, punk and gospel music. 

His latest was recorded with a 10-piece band 

in Memphis-based Royal Studios, the sonic 

birthplace of some of the deepest works by soul 

and blues luminaries such as Al Green. 

Chestnutt found plenty there for inspiration: 

“My hands were tingling because I got to sing on 

the actual microphone that Al Green recorded 

with. Nothing has changed. The downhome 

acoustic treatments are still in place.” 

set) does the same for eight of the maestro’s scores, 

including the very groovy Quattro Mosche Di Velluto 

(Four Flies On Grey Velvet), pre-10cc art-rock ensemble 

Hotlegs are anthologised on You Didn’t Like It Because 

You Didn’t Think Of It: The Complete Sessions 1970-71 

(Grapefruit CD), 1st Floor by The Floor (RPM CD) claims 

to be the Danish Sgt Pepper, Soft Machine Live 

1967-69 (unknown LP) pairs two sessions 

recorded for John Peel’s Top Gear, Forget 

About Tomorrow: The Singles (Sunbeam 2-LP) 

collects all of Kaleidoscope and Fairfield 

Parlour’s 45 releases for the first time, Irish 

folkies Tir Na Nog see their first three albums 

reissued with bonus tracks on Esoteric and 

finally, One Sunny Day: Singles And Rarities 

1968-78 (RPM CD) is a set of leftovers and unreleased 

material by UK soft-pop aggregation Design. 

For those of you with a few quid lying around, 

Sundazed release The Verve/MGM Albums – the first 

three Velvet Underground albums plus the unfinished 

1969 and Nico’s Chelsea Girl – on mono audiophile vinyl 

in a deluxe box (should go nicely with your copy of 

Universal’s 6-CD The Velvet Underground & Nico) while 

Numero Group unleash the frankly mind-boggling 

Eccentric Soul: Omnibus, a custom box set containing 

45 singles that mop up various loose ends and one-offs 

yet to find a home on any Numero releases. 

the entirely electronic score of Forbidden Planet (1956) 

through to the magical concoctions of Delia Derbyshire and the 

effect this wholly unique approach had on a new generation, 

including early pop adopter Paul McCartney. Published later 

this year, it sounds like yet another cracking read. 

Many of you may also have heard the BBC Radio 4 

documentary presented by Stewart Lee – written by Mark, and 

tracing a similar arc to the forthcoming book – A Sound British 

Adventure, which ran on August 14th. Those who missed out 

should still be able to find a stream in cyberspace.

66 

1960s 

YES,�WE�HAVE�NO�BANANAS 

KRIS NEEDS journeys back to the album he’s heard “more than any other”, and one that has come 

to define the term seminal 

THE VELVET 

UNDERGROUND & NICO 

The Velvet Underground & Nico 

Universal 6-CD box set 

During the summer of 1967 there 

was a short-lived magazine called 

Flower Scene, a kind of Carnaby 

Street view of The Summer Of 

Love, covering the likes of The 

Flowerpot Men, rinsed in peaceloving 

vibes. Amidst the beatific 

smiles lurked a page devoted to 

five sinister-looking figures, 

including a Teutonic ice-blonde, 

looking blankly menacing. The 

short feature talked about “one of 

the leading outfits on the 

psychedelic scene, perhaps the 

most commercial of the American 

groups in that particular vein and 

[one that] will almost certainly 

make the biggest impact on the 

British public”. 

Forty-five years later, this 

cutely innocent early UK press of 

The Velvet Underground And Nico 

sounds inadvertently spot-on – 

the album WOULD make the 

biggest impact on the British 

public around two decades later. 

But, at the time, its consumption 

was restricted to those few who 

relished its flower power 

antithesis, snarfed it on release 

and used it to either annoy hippie 

neighbours, form a band, or 

become magnetised to the sleazy 

New York underbelly it portrayed. 

So much has been written 

about the Velvets’ debut that 

further superlatives or even 

descriptions of the music are 

quite superfluous to 

requirements. Sure, it remains 

one of the most important, 

inestimably influential albums of 

all time, its subterranean allure 

and aural audacity undiminished 

after 45 years. But right now, 

after years of seeing those 12 

epoch-making tracks repackaged, 

remade and remodelled, Velvets 

fans will simply want to know if 

it’s worth shelling out 90 quid for 

a six-CD box. 

While making this writer 

agonise for the millionth time 

over selling his banana original 

for a pittance 30 years ago, this is 

undoubtedly the album I have 

heard more than any other since 

getting a mono original in 1967 

(still have that one!) So what’s in 

the box? There has to be an 

irresistible carrot to attract the 

diehards... and there is (along 

with an 88-page book written by 

Richie Unterberger, which can 

only be a draw). 

Along with CDs apiece 

covering the mono and stereo 

versions (the former more of a lofi 

wall of sound), which also 

include singles versions, and 

Nico’s underrated Chelsea Girls 

(recorded a year later with the 

Velvets), nestle three highly 

desirable discs which bootleg 

snobs will know, but the man in 

shades on the street will salivate 

over. CD four is the fabled 

Scepter studio acetate, cut on 

April 25th ’66, found in a New 

York flea market for 75 cents in 

2004 and sold on eBay for 

$150,000. For someone as 

stricken and besotted with this 

album now as they were 45 years 

ago, hearing ‘Venus In Furs’ with 

different, less menacing vocals 

and more emphasis on the 

leather guitar scrapings, ‘Heroin’ 

with different vocal-viola 

dynamic and emphasised bassline, 

‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ 

with ostrich guitar scratching 

providing main rhythmic focus 

instead of Cale’s pounding piano, 

plus different takes on ‘All 

Tomorrow’s Parties’ and the 

terrifying broken glass landslide 

of ‘European Son’ (original band 

choice for opening track!) is 

nothing short of revelatory. These 

tracks represent the original stab 

At the time, its consumption was 

restricted to those few who relished its 

flower power antithesis and used it to either 

annoy hippie neighbours or form a band 

at the album in a decaying New 

York studio, before some was rerecorded 

with (former Sun Ra) 

producer Tom Wilson in LA. CD 

four also features Factory 

rehearsals, including the 

previously unknown ‘Walk 

Alone’, Bo Diddley’s ‘Cracking 

Up’, ‘Miss Joannie Lee’, where Lou 

takes off on a skin-freezing 

ostrich guitar assault, and Nico 

gamely trying to sing ‘There She 

Goes Again’. Thankfully, this will 

be the other disc on the more 

affordable two-CD deluxe edition, 

along with stereo version of the 

album, which is also available on 

its own, along with a vinyl 

version. (The lot’s also on 

download, non-physical fans.) 

Then there are the two live 

discs, captured in November ’66 

at The Valleydale Ballroom in 

Columbus, Ohio. Metronomic, 27minute 

‘The Nothing Song’ is a 

rare chronicle of what they were 

playing for Warhol’s Exploding 

Plastic Inevitable, all four 

improvising over Moe Tucker’s 

heartbeat tom-tom pulse. After 

fairly faithful renditions of first 

album songs, (‘Run Run Run’ a 

gloriously vicious guitar snarlup), 

the set closes with the full 

28-minute slo-mo throb of ‘Sister 

Ray’ blueprint ‘Melody Laughter’ 

(10 minutes appeared on ’95’s 

Peel Slowly & See box set). 

Not many albums deserve such 

recycling but, having sat through 

all six CDs five times, it must be 

said that enough of the right kind 

of thought went into this to make 

a highly desirable VU artefact. 

Even if, after 45 years, new 

delights still appear, the new 

versions can only spice up this 

already rock solid marriage, 

while newly-weds won’t know 

what’s hit ’em. 

Subterranean allure: John Cale, Mo Tucker, Nico, Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed (front)

BOOKER T & THE MG’S 

Green Onions Concord/Stax CD 

‘Green Onions’ is 

like much of The 

Beatles’ material 

in that we’ve 

been so 

overexposed to 

it, it’s virtually 

impossible to hear it with fresh ears 

anymore. But there’s no denying 

that the groove-happy track is 

simply one of the finest 

instrumentals ever recorded. It’s not 

surprising that the head honchos at 

Stax, having heard the cut, knew 

they needed to make the MG’s – 

which up untill that point had been 

merely a backing unit supporting 

other artists – its own band, and 

needed to quickly pull together an 

album of their tunes. 

The record, released in 1962, 

sounds like what it is: a rush release 

to promote a new band that had a 

sizzling single. Even if the album is a 

hurry-up job, though, when is it not a 

good thing to listen to Booker T & 

The MG’s play? The bonuses are two 

selections from a ’65 live show – 

rawer than the studio versions and all 

the better for it. 

Brian Greene 

EVERY MOTHER’S SON 

Come On Down: The Complete 

MGM Recordings Now Sounds CD 

This writer picked 

up a dog-eared 

copy of Every 

Mother’s Son’s 

Back for pennies 

in the mid-1980s 

and has 

remained charmed by its roughedged 

naivety and surfeit of blinding 

tunes ever since. Okay, it sounds like 

it was mastered by a 70-year-old 

lathe worker who’d left the machine 

running while he went for a fag, but 

the sheer diversity of the fresh-faced 

quintet’s carte blanche approach to 

writing and recording – wherein 

powerpop, garage, country, sunshinepop 

and psychedelia were all grist to 

the mill – shines from every cut. To 

hear the likes of ‘I May Be Right’, 

‘Pony With The Golden Mane’, ‘Proper 

Four Leaf Clover’ and the jawdropping 

‘Put Your Mind At Ease’ in 

master tape fidelity for the first time 

is a treat. 

And then there’s the first album. 

Less assured, more reliant on teenappeal 

clichés but boasting the 

irrepressible US #6 smash, ‘Come 

On Down To My Boat’ (on which 

Love meets The 1910 Fruitgum 

Company) and Nuggets-worthy raveup 

‘Alison Dozer’, it nevertheless 

holds up remarkably well alongside 

much teen-orientated Hollywood pop 

of the day. Everything bar the hit is 

self-penned too. 

Phased non-album ’68 single ‘No 

One Knows’ hints tantalisingly at 

what might have followed. 

Andy Morten 

THE FRAYS 

90 Wardour Street Acid Jazz CD/LP 

From a lone, untitled 1965 acetate 

comes this unreleased album. The 

Frays’ storming Decca flop 45, ‘Keep 

Me Covered’, has long since been a 

cult favourite. Here are 13 others to 

go with it. Recorded in the studio 

behind The Marquee Club, The Frays 

belt out first-wave boom R&B in a 

convincing manner. 

About half of these cuts are 

perfunctory harp-led renditions of 

‘Help Me’, ‘Keep it To Yourself’ et al. 

The other half shows the band was 

highly capable, strongly rehearsed 

and tight with their music. Singer and 

harpist Brian Howard enunciates his 

best white Delta bluesman, as “first” 

becomes “foist”. There are fine 

Georgie Fame moves to begin with 

whilst, at the other end, ‘Groovin’’ is 

a fast but mono-chorded slow-burner 

that you can imagine ending a 

steaming hot Marquee Saturday 

night. 

Paul Martin 

Some mothers do ‘ave ‘em: 

BURL IVES 

Sweet, Sad & Salty Omni Recording 

Corporation CD 

In something of a 

dramatic stylistic 

departure from 

their regular 

experimental fare, 

the ORC bring 

you the sound of 

latter day minstrel and self-styled 

country balladeer Burl Ives as you 

might never have heard him before. 

Investigated by Senator Joseph 

McCarthy’s infamous House 

Committee On Un-American Activities 

during the early ’50s for his support 

of egalitarian causes and workers’ 

rights, Ives was also a lifelong highranking 

Freemason, and these 

biographical details add a fascinating 

twist to the subject matter of the 

songs on this miscellany of 

recordings taken from his string of 

Decca/MCA albums recorded in 

Nashville during the ’60s and early 

’70s, stretching from The Versatile 

Burl Ives! in ’61 to Payin’ My Dues 

Again in ’73, and including five 

previously unreleased tracks. 

Just for the record, the colourful 

subject matter includes the power of 

money, booze, murder, executions, 

hobo life, unemployment, girlie mags 

and hippy communes. 

Grahame Bent 

KING GEORGE DISCOVERY 

Peace Of Mind Shadoks CD/LP 

‘King’ George Clemons was playing in 

New York and rubbing shoulders with 

Jimi Hendrix and 

Castor when 

Scandinavian 

music agents 

lured him to 

Sweden. There, 

he joined a black 

soul band, The Harlem Kiddies, while 

simultaneously forming his own more 

psychedelic band, The King George 

Discovery. They recorded one selftitled 

LP for the Haparanda label in 

1969 (reissued on CD by World 

Psychedelia a few years ago). Peace 

Of Mind is comprised of out-takes 

from that album. 

The Hendrix equation is evident in 

the 14-minute ‘It Ain’t Me (In The 

Spirit Of Jimi Hendrix)’ – very much in 

the mould of ‘Stone Free’. There’s a 

very haunting take on ‘Light My Fire’, 

plus six other tuneful and rhythmic 

grooves that make up this 36-minute 

set. Songs seem to emerge rather 

than start, giving the set a 

disorienting feel. It’s none the poorer 

for it though, and well worth a listen. 


THE KNACK 

Time Waits For No One: The 

Complete Recordings Now Sounds CD 

Debuting in 

February 1967 

with the 

explosive, 

Anglophile 

powerpopper 

‘Time Waits For 

No One’ and bowing out less than a 

year later with their fourth single, the 

67

68 

1960s 

woozy, San Fran-infused ‘Freedom 

Now’, The Knack came infuriatingly 

close to a commercial breakthrough. 

Not that that’s any reflection of their 

abilities, of course. The LA quartet 

possessed more than its fair share of 

songwriting chops and instrumental 

prowess, as the eight songs released 

on Capitol during those 11 months 

and gathered on this definitive, firsttime 

anthology alongside five 

previously unreleased and equally 

assured recordings, prove in spades. 

One listen to ‘I’m Aware’, ‘Pretty 

Daisy’ and ‘Lady In The Window’ will 

have you scratching your head and 

wondering why these singles aren’t 

mainstays of ’60s sunshine-pop 

compilations but, as is often the 

case, record company blunders and 

radio station tit-for-tat ensured The 

Knack’s records weren’t exposed in 

crucial territories like their hometown 

of LA. Now Sounds’ customary indepth 

liners tell the whole story. 

Andy Morten 

KRZYSZTOF KOMEDA 

Knife In The Water OST él CD 

Celebrated as the 

composer of the 

scores for Roman 

Polanski’s The 

Fearless Vampire 

Killers, Cul-De- 

Sac and 

Rosemary’s Baby, Krzysztof Komeda’s 

score for Polanski’s ground-breaking 

1962 debut feature, Knife In The 

Water, represents the breakthrough 

moment of what would prove to be 

an intensely fruitful partnership for 

the pair throughout the ’60s. 

Recorded in ’61, the four tracks 

that comprise the score are 

essentially an Eastern European 

variation on the then in vogue modal 

/cool jazz school, performed by a 

four-piece ensemble with Komeda 

himself on piano. Additionally, this 

visit to the archives also includes a 

selection of tracks by The Krzysztof 

Komeda Quintet from the soundtrack 

of Andrzej Wajda’s ’60 feature 

Innocent Sorcerers, the extended 

piece ‘Roman Two’ from ’61 and a 

selection of studio and live 

recordings of various Komeda-led 

combos, including The Trio Komedy 

at The Warsaw Jazz Jamboree 

Festivals of ’60 and ’61, and the 

historic Sopot I Jazz Festival of ’56. 

Grahame Bent 

LEVIATHAN 

Unleashed Record Collector 2-LP 

In 1968, the 

former Mike 

Stuart Span 

signed to Elektra 

Records, changed 

their name to 

Leviathan and 

recorded an album. Three singles 

were issued but the LP was not. Until 

now. Here for the first time, and from 

the master tapes, is that lost album. 

Spread over three sides of wax 

(the fourth is laser etched), this 180gram 

jewel is housed in a glossy 

gatefold sleeve and is issued in a 

limited, certified edition of just 750 

copies. Owners of Tenth Planet’s 

Timespan set will be familiar with 

most of the songs, though those cuts 

were all culled from acetates. 

Leviathan re-recorded those songs for 

Elektra and several of them are 

markedly different, with an added 

bass solo or a differing guitar part 

and fabulous sound separation 

throughout, so you most definitely 

need both titles. The Leviathan 

singles are all here as well. 

Available from Record Collector’s 

online shop. 


MC SQUARED 

Tantalizing Colours: The Reprise 

Recordings Now Sounds CD 

Nothing to do with the theory of 

relativity, MC Squared was a mid-60s 

US harmony-pop band with 

psychedelic undertones, so named 

because two of the band members 

had the initials MC. They hung 

around long enough to release a pair 

of singles and record an album’s 

worth of tracks, which are collected 

Priscilla Paris: “festily independent” 

and released for the first time here. 

From the opener, ‘Bornatzatt’, 

which mixes easy and bossa vibes 

with complex jazz time shifts, it’s 

clear that MC Squared were driven by 

some serious talent. The harmonydrenched 

songs with gorgeous but 

understated melodies recall both The 

Mamas & The Papas and, at times, 

the psych-tinged folk-rock of The 

Peanut Butter Conspiracy. ‘Miss 

Abercrombie’ could almost have 

come from the British folk canon of a 

few years later, while ‘The Stoning Of 

A Quiet Man’ sounds like The Groop, 

who, in my book, are the ultimate 

easy/psych combo. 

Ashley Norris 

THE OLIVERS 

Lost Dove Session Break-A-Way LP 

Hailing from Fort 

Wayne, Indiana, 

The Olivers are 

known for their 

classic garage 

45, ‘I Saw What 

You Did’. By 

1969, however, they’d become a 

heavy psychedelic rock band. As 

such they recorded an album at Dove 

Studio in Minneapolis, which has 

only now been released. The sevensong 

set features titles such as 

‘Mushroom’ and most proceed in a 

fluid, groovy and soulful harmonyrock 

vein with great guitar passages. 

One wonders if they’d been 

listening to the first Velvet 

Underground album as their 12-plus 

minute opus ‘Social Slavery’ riffs on 

two chords with a barrage of weird 

sounds reminiscent of ‘Sister Ray’. By 

contrast, ‘Someday, Somewhere’ is a 

short, heartfelt acoustic number. They 

even have a (different) song called 

‘The End’. This is most definitely a 

discovery worthy of reissue and a CD 

edition with extra tracks by earlier 

band incarnations is also slated for 

release. 


PRISCILLA PARIS 

Love, Priscilla Ace CD 

Priscilla Paris was lead voice of The 

Paris Sisters, propelled to early girl 

group stardom by Phil Spector in 

1961 with the magical ‘I Love How 

You Love Me’. The feistily independent 

chanteuse (who sensibly rebuffed 

Spector’s advances) had her own 

agenda, writing the highly personal 

songs that appeared on ’67’s Priscilla 

Sings Herself. 

First single ‘He Noticed Me’ thrust 

her mellifluous voice to the fore, 

tinged with the naked emotion which 

characterised her work away from her 

siblings. The album was studded with 

self-written gems such as the soulbaring 

plea of ‘Help Me’, plus ‘By The 

Time I Get To Phoenix’, dis concertingly 

placing herself as the woman. 1969’s 

Priscilla Loves Billy [sic] saw her 

homaging Billie Holiday, relishing 

throwing herself into Lady Day’s 

songbook, triumphing on the pained 

intimacy of ‘In My Solitude’ and ‘Crazy 

He Calls Me’. Both albums here, with 

four recently unearthed nuggets, 

making for another vital Ace curio. 

Kris Needs

RUPERT’S PEOPLE 

Rupert’s People And Beyond Angel 

Air CD 

Rupert’s People 

had a confusing 

existence – 

releasing 

‘Reflections Of 

Charles Brown’, 

(performed by 

Les Fleurs de Lys) under this moniker 

before the Fleurs went AWOL, leaving 

a record deal but no band. 

‘Reflections...’ was a re-write of Rod 

Lynton’s ‘Charles Brown’, combining 

the original lyrics with a descending 

chord structure, pre-dating, but not 

unlike Procol Harum’s biggie. Rod’s 

band, The Sweet Feeling, became 

Rupert’s People, releasing two further 

singles in 1967, British psych gems 

the lot of ’em and all included here. 

Calling it a day in ’69 (with offcuts 

by early ’70s projects by 

Matchbox and Swampfox added to 

this release), they reformed to play at 

Hastings Mod Rally in ’99. This 

collection also features some of 

these live recordings, boasting a 

great Hammond/psych guitar-driven 

‘You Can’t Always Get What You 

Want’ and a Marriottesque vocal on 

The Small Faces’ ‘My Mind’s Eye’. 

Paul Hooper-Keeley 

MIKE SEEGER 

Mike Seeger Vanguard CD 

Growing up as 

the son of 

respected 

folkalogists 

Charles and Ruth 

Seeger (half bro 

to the venerable 

Pete) meant Mike being dunked from 

childhood in America’s oldest 

musical form, while becoming 

proficient on a gamut of stringed 

instruments. He became heavily 

involved in the updating and 

translating of folk music for new 

generations in the ’50s as a member 

of The New Lost City Ramblers, who 

so influenced the young Dylan. 

In 1964, Mike released his first 

solo album, now regarded as a 

pivotal work in the re-evaluation of 

Southern folk music – his sublime 

renditions of traditional chestnuts 

such as ‘Fishing Blues’ and 

‘Waterbound’ pulsing with new life, 

particularly an eerie, a capella ‘Young 

McAfee On The Gallows’. He also 

lends his knowledge and passion to 

ditties by the Fiddlin’ John Carson, 

Carter Family, Frank Hutchison and 

Grandpa Jones, but there are many 

more voices beaming through here, 

some stretching back centuries. 

Kris Needs 

SRC 

SRC/Milestones/Traveller’s Tale 

BGO 2-CD 

Nary a Shindig! goes by without John 

Peel getting props but, as the notes 

on this reissue of the late ’60s 

Detroit psych rockers attest, it was 

Sail�On�Sailor 

THE STEVE MILLER BAND 

Children Of The Future 

Sailor 

Your Saving Grace 

Brave New World 

Number 5 

All Edsel CDs 

I don’t often tell people that they 

“have to” hear something. I may 

“suggest” things. I may “cajole”. I 

may “insist”. I may on occasion 

“grab you by the lapels”. But to say 

that you “have to” hear something 

is tantamount to robbing you of 

your free will. And hey, that’s 

just not me. 

IF, however, when you hear the 

words Steve Miller Band your 

thoughts run straight to ‘Fly Like 

An Eagle’, ‘Jet Airliner’ or (gag) 

‘Abracadabra’, well, then, you 

really do “need to” hear these. I 

don’t even care if you like them or 

not. You just “need to” know what 

else is behind the curtain, as it 

were. 

Maybe this is not as big a 

problem in the UK as it is here in 

the USA, where there are two 

entire generations – two and a 

half, maybe – who have spent 

their entire lives with one ear 

glued to a radio, are intimately 

familiar with the abovereferenced 

tunes (and the 

soporific ‘The Joker’) and have 

still never heard ‘Living In The 

USA’ or ‘Space Cowboy’. But I do 

suspect that this is a global 

infirmity rather than a local one, 

and that’s just sad. 

Miller was a fish out of water 

The Steve Miller Band (no Labour party jokes please – we’re British) 

in San Francisco in 1968. White 

boy, playing Chicago blues, 

dropped head first into The 

Official Headquarters Of US 

Psychedelia. He melded the two 

genres beautifully, as these five 

essential LPs illustrate. And if 

you didn’t know any of the 

aforementioned, you probably 

didn’t know that SMB also 

contained one young and hungry 

Boz Scaggs, years before he too 

would become a staple of the 

Way-Too-Shiny end of the radio 

dial. His ‘Baby’s Calling Me 

Home’ is something which you 

really “have to” hear. 

All five of these LPs speak 

right from the heart of late ’60s 

rock music, for all that’s worth. 

And, with production (on the 

first two) by Glyn Johns and 

guest appearances by the likes of 

Nicky Hopkins, they manage in 

spots to out-Traffic Traffic with 

as much ease and aplomb as they 

out-Steppenwolf Steppenwolf. 

Mike Fornatale 

69

Let’s kick things off with the 

familiar shuffling rhythm of 

BENNY SPELLMAN’s 

‘Fortune Teller’; a staple for 

beat and garage groups of the 

’60s from the Stones and 

beyond. Still popular to this 

day at mod-friendly do’s, this and 29 other 

tracks are featured on the comprehensive 

Fortune Teller: A Singles Collection 1960-67 

(Shout CD). Spellman was also deployed as a 

backing singer for the likes of Ernie-K-Doe, Chris 

Kenner, Lee Dorsey and Fats Domino, so a single 

CD could never do him justice. But, this is as 

good as it gets for now. From the graceful 

‘Lipstick Traces’ to the moody, New Breedflavoured 

‘Ammerette’, there’s plenty of New 

Orleans magic to keep you going until the next 

Mardi Gras. 

Stax soul girls, 

JEANNE AND 

THE DARLINGS 

and THE 

CHARMELS 

barely get a 

mention in Rob 

Bowman’s weighty Stax tome, but 

The Darlings’ funky ‘Soul Girl’ and 

The Charmels’ heart-tingling ‘As 

Long As I Got You’ are 

quintessential Stax Gold. Their 

complete recordings are presented 

for the first time on the eagerly 

anticipated We’re The Soul Girls 

(Stax CD). Sultry downbeat soulful 

ballads and punchy horn-driven uptempo 

grooves abound with a stellar 

support cast. Isaac Hayes and David 

Porter provided most of the material 

for the girls, with Booker T & The 

MG’s and The Memphis Horns 

supplying the beats. 

Another Stax 

obscurity, HOT 

SAUCE 

FEATURING 

RHONDA 

WASHINGTON 

had an album 

planned for release on Volt before 

bankruptcy hit the label. The group 

became a solo vehicle for the 

astoundingly soulful voice of Rhonda 

Washington and managed to release five singles 

before the label imploded. Good Woman 

Turning Bad (Stax CD) was the title of their 

projected Volt album. Thanks to the recent 

discovery of a proposed track listing, Ace have 

sequence the CD in the same order alongside 

two non-album B-sides. This is lovely later 

period mid-paced Stax fodder, from the 

sumptuous grooves of ‘Bring It Home’ to the 

ballsy funk of ‘Love Strike’. Mystery surrounds 

Rhonda, we can’t be sure of her real name or 

current whereabouts, but her powerful voice 

was the group’s main weapon. 

70 

CELLARFUL OF SOUL 

Obscurities from Stax and Sounds Of Memphis rub shoulders with classics from Benny Spellman 

and Bobby Womack. PAUL RITCHIE digs 

A recent Guardian interview 

with BOBBY WOMACK 

revealed the singer still had 

plenty of fire in his belly 

despite being hospital-bound 

with a debilitating illness. It 

was typical of his 

uncompromising nature that once had him at 

loggerheads with a former record company who 

had demanded a disco album from him, only to 

be offered a country album instead, which 

Womack had wanted to call Move Over Charley 

Pride And Give Another Nigger A Chance. The 

40th anniversary edition of the soundtrack 

Across 110th Street (Charly 2-CD/LP) is packaged 

in a neat hardback book format with two other 

solo efforts, Facts Of Life (’73) and Lookin’ For A 

Love Again (’74). Despite the mighty title track, 

soundtrack albums, particularly those littered 

with instrumentals, tend to lose perspective 

when separated from the silver screen. 

Thankfully, this package is worth a punt with 

the bonus of two additional albums that 

capture Womack on top form. His majestic, 

huskily half spoken-word ballads in particular 

are top-drawer soul, always worth checking out. 

Barbara Brown: a lost soul gem found 

R&B and country music are 

unlikely kissing cousins, but 

as proved by everyone from 

Ray Charles to Gram Parsons, 

country soul at its finest 

transcends barriers. The 

music on Behind Closed 

Doors: Where Country Meets Soul (Kent CD) may 

well have been what Gram Parsons had in mind 

when he coined the phrase “Cosmic American 

Music”. The premise here is black American 

artists interpreting country standards. These 

wonderful interpretations evoke images of 

Stetson hats and Clarence White as much as 

they do Clarence Carter and Afros. The soul 

oozes from behind those saloon doors. Real tears 

in your beer stuff. 

The roots of rap go way back before the bloc 

parties to the spoken word jazz poetry of Gil 

Scott-Heron and The Last Poets. Despite the naff 

title, Ancestors Of Rap (Tramp CD/2-LP) is a 

worthy collection of mostly 

obscure proto-rap that builds 

on essential deep funk 

collections such as Stones 

Throw’s The Funky 16 

Corners. You could easily 

imagine The Beastie Boys 

riffing enthusiastically over opener ‘We Got The 

Number’ by Pigmeat Markham – a comedian by 

trade. Seriously funky, pulsating and often 

hilarious stuff, check out Blowfly, the alter-ego 

of Clarence Reid, who gets real naughty on the 

crude, adults-only ‘Sesame Street’. 

Loving On The Flipside: Sweet Funk And Beat- 

Heavy Ballads 1969-1977 (Now-Again CD/2-LP) is 

crammed with lo-fi mellow ballads often found 

tucked on the B-sides of funk 45s. If you dig the 

Eccentric Soul series, this one is of a similar ilk. 

The musicians sound like they are 

waking from a 

slumber, yet still 

manage to pull 

off subtle funky 

rhythms. That 

old Charlie 

Watts adage, 

less is more, couldn’t be truer. 

Despite the no frills productions, 

there’s no shortage of soul from 

mainly obscure artists like the 

Darling Dears, Little Janice and Lee 

Bonds. The collection also features 

a deluxe 80-page book filled with 

rare photos and each band’s story. 

If you dug the 

first volume of 

the New Yorkbased 

Scepter, 

Wand and 

Musicor labels 

then you will 

dig Manhattan Soul Volume 2 

(Kent CD). A variety of soulful 

styles are represented from all 

over America, including Philly, 

Chicago and Memphis. This CD is 

worth its weight in gold thanks to 

three hard-nosed R&B heavy, 

modish standouts from Irma & 

The Fascinators, Lois Lane and 

Lou Lawton. However, the shift in 

styles makes for an uneven 

listening experience that perhaps could be 

better sequenced with dancers at the front 

and slowies at the back. 

Finally, there has been 

much to celebrate from the 

discovery of the Sounds Of 

Memphis stable, and Lost 

Soul Gems From The Sounds 

Of Memphis (Kent CD) 

provides further evidence of 

the label’s seemingly endless treasure trove of 

Memphis soul. The only problem with this 

latest compilation is the inclusion of a couple 

of mid-80s tracks that deter from the classic 

sound and quality we’ve become to expect. 

But with more terrific performances from 

William Bollinger and Barbara & The Browns 

to name but two, you’d be foolish to overlook 

this one if you loved the previous releases. 

Just ditch those off-piste ’80s efforts next time 

pur-lease!

his support which 

got them released 

here, after he 

hammered 

1968’s raging 

debut, ‘Black 

Sheep’ – 

quintessential early SRC as Glenn 

Quackenbush’s Hammond organ 

dogfights with brother Gary’s stinging 

lead guitar, conjuring seat-gripping 

collisions between Cipollina-style 

vibrato and Motor City pantsscorching, 

while singer Scott 

Richardson vents impassioned soul. 

The first album’s Love-style 

eloquence and axe/organ dynamics 

massively influenced early Genesis, 

proto-prog undercurrents 

mushrooming on March ’69’s 

Milestones, including a bombastic 

mash-up of ‘In The Hall Of The 

Mountain King’ and ‘Beck’s Bolero’. 

Gary Quackenbush had been replaced 

by the more restrained Ray Goodman 

by ’70’s Traveller’s Tale, UK-style prognastics 

now dominating – ‘The 

Offering’ even using an orchestra. 

Intriguing as a US take on the genre, 

but that blazing debut remains the 

unsung Detroit psych milestone. 

Kris Needs 

VARIOUS ARTISTS 

Electric Eden: Unearthing 

Britain’s Visionary Music Universal 2- 

CD 

Performing a ‘Threeple Hammer 

Damson’ in the wake of the book of 

the same title comes this companion 

compilation of British folk-rock from 

the late ’60s and early ’70s, 

compiled by the book’s author, Rob 

Young. Electric Eden has been hotly 

debated elsewhere, some hailing it 

as the definitive tome on UK folk and 

folk-rock, while others accuse it of 

inaccuracies through a premise that 

both rose-tints and mythologises the 

genre. 

These two discs are filled with a 

pretty good selection of bands from 

the book, although The Water Into 

Wine Band (a Christian outfit who 

played with Cliff Richard) are 

somewhat at odds with the magical 

pagan concept, the MOR Tudor Lodge 

selection is not their best and Meic 

Stevens is far more Americansounding 

here than British. Missing in 

action are Magna Carta, Storyteller, 

Lindisfarne, Decameron, Nigel Mazlyn 

Jones, Steve Ashley and many others. 

Entertaining? Certainly. Definitive? No. 

Richard Allen 


Have Mercy!: The Songs Of Don 

Covay Ace CD 

This addition to 

Ace’s vaunted 

songwriter series 

zeroes in on 

legendary 

composer and 

singer Don 

Covay, the son of a Baptist preacher 

who was the opening act for Little 

Richard in 1957 but, early on, 

decided to focus his energy on 

writing songs for others, beginning 

with Solomon Burke (‘You’re Good 

For Me’ is here), Chubby Checker 

(likewise ‘Pony Time’) and Gladys 

Knight & The Pips – Billy Fury’s 

version of ‘Letter Full Of Tears’ was a 

charter. Later successes included 

‘Mercy Mercy’ (cleverly covered here 

by The Wailers), ‘Sookie Sookie’ 

(Tina Britt) and the bluesy ‘See Saw’ 

(Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rockers), 

along with the Grammy-nominated 

‘Chain Of Fools’. 

Other artists represented include 

Joe Tex, Gene Vincent, Connie 

Francis, Brook Benton (‘Shoes’), 

Arlene Smith, Dee Clark (‘Kangaroo 

Hop’), Etta James, Wanda Jackson 

(‘There’s A Party Goin’ On’) and, 

surprisingly, Lena Horne with ‘Love 

Bug’. In ’92, Covay had an 

incapacitating stroke but has 

recuperated well and is, reportedly, 

still active. 

Gary von Tersch 


The Haunted Pad: British 

Instrumental Guitar Music Of 

The Sixties Part One 1960-61 él CD 

This impressive 

35-track 

anthology of 

vintage highreverberation 

guitar 

instrumentals 

turns the spotlight on the 

immediate pre-Fab Four landscape 

of the short-lived but prolific 

instrumental boom that happened 

in the wake of The Shadows hitting 

paydirt with ‘Apache’ in the summer 

of 1960. 

Cruising along in the afterglow of 

Hank & Co we’re treated to the rare 

delights of combos including The 

Krew Kuts, The Tom Cats (both 

featuring Big Jim Sullivan), The 

Phantoms, The Packabeats, Judd 

Proctor, The Moontrekkers and The 

Outlaws (both produced by the one 

and only Joe Meek), Nero & The 

Gladiators, The Ted Taylor Four (who 

contribute the album’s memorably 

freaky title track), The Hunters, The 

John Barry Seven Plus Four (featuring 

Vic Flick), The Barons, The Volcanos 

and Sounds Inc. 

To close we play out with ‘Ghost 

Train’ by the granddaddy of all British 

rock ’n’ roll guitarists, Bert Weedon, 

in memory of whom this stellar 

collection is dedicated. 

Grahame Bent 

Holland,�Dozier�& 

Holland 

THE OUTSIDERS 

Monkey On Your Back: Their 45s 

Q65 

The Life I Live: The Decca 45s 

GROUP 1850 

Mother No Head: Their 45s 

COSMIC DEALER 

Crystallization 

CARGO 

Cargo 

All Pseudonym LPs 

As a reader of this magazine, it’s 

highly unlikely you’ll need a potted 

introduction to the delights of 

Nederbeat and what followed. The 

Outsiders, Q65 and their long 

haired manic beat music most 

likely inspired a number of you in 

your “relative” yoof. I know they did 

me. There’s something undeniably 

cool, and particularly Dutch, about 

that patented brand of scruffy 

attire and wholehearted beat band 

panache. 

The latest set from Pseudonym, 

all issued on brilliantly pressed 

heavyweight vinyl (“remastered in 

the 24-bit domain”) won’t offer 

much new for hardened fans, but 

they’re essential all the same. The 

Outsiders, Q65 and Group 1850 all 

gain singles sets, with the first and 

last act receiving career-spanning 

As and Bs overviews, and Q65 

being rewarded for the early 

R&B/psych-era 7” outings. 

Musically faultless, aurally 

impressive, these updated sets 

work so much better than a CD 

equivalent might. These collections 

are food for thought. 

‘Touch’, ‘Daddy Died On 

Saturday’, ‘From Above’, ‘So High 

I’ve Been, So Down I Must Fall’; 

brilliant one and all. It’s just a 

shame that this Outsiders set 

lacks Mike Stax’s authoritative 

essay. 

Group 1850 made two fine 

albums, but it was when 

compressing their spooky 

hashish-fuelled visions onto 45 

that they impressed most. ‘Misty 

Night’, ‘Mother No Head’ and 

‘We Love Live (Like We Love 

You)’. Say no more. 

Moving into the next era we 

have Cosmic Dealer, who issued 

a fine single in 1971 (‘The 

Scene’), followed by the brilliant 

Crystallization – an album that 

just about sums up the end of 

the psychedelic era and the 

beginning of the next. It’s 

something of an overseas cousin 

to The Pretty Things’ Parachute. 

Bar a dodgy and misplaced Elvis 

cover it’s a rousing, fully 

realised affair. An extra album 

includes later bonus sides, plus 

there’s another informative Stax 

essay. 

Cargo’s self-titled ’72 album is 

heavy on lengthy Allman 

Brothers guitar interplay, 

indicated by its four tracks. At 15 

minutes, ‘Summertime’ goes on 

twice as long as it should, but as 

funky, harmony vocal-laden jams 

go, it’s stupendous. 

Did I say these are essential? 

Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills 

71

1960s 


Love Me Do: 50 Songs That Shaped 

The Beatles Fantastic Voyage 2-CD 

A companion to 

the Roots Of 

British Beat set 

reviewed 

elsewhere this 

issue, this wellresearched50tracker 

sees The Beatles’ hugely 

eclectic formative influences 

exposed. A policy of one tune per 

artist ensures the whole thing isn’t 

merely an Elvis/Chuck/Little 

Richard/Carl Perkins compendium – 

quite the opposite in fact. Obscurities 

from Les Brown & His Orchestra 

(‘Sentimental Journey’, natch) and 

The Merseysippi Jazz Band (The 

Cavern’s inaugural live act) rub 

shoulders with Bill Justis’s ‘Raunchy’ 

(George Harrison’s audition piece), 

Eddie Cochran’s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ 

(ditto McCartney) and all manner of 

discs beloved of the young fabs that 

run the gamut from Peter Sellers and 

Anthony Newley to Django Reinhardt 

and George Formby. 

Of course, ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Please 

Mr Postman’, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Music’, 

‘Matchbox’, ‘Til There Was You’ et al 

are all present and correct but it’s 

discovering the hidden connections 

to the less obvious selections that 

makes this such an engrossing 

proposition. 

Andy Morten 


Number 8 Wire: 16 Trippy New 

Zealand Nuggets 1967-69 Particles CD 

When it was 

released on vinyl 

in 1997, this 16tracker 

was 

amongst the first 

to acknowledge 

New Zealand’s 

acid-pop heritage, earning itself a 

place alongside other Antipodean 

must-haves like Anzac’s Dreamtime 

Downunder and Raven’s, er, 

Downunder Dreamtime, with which it 

shares a number of cuts. Familiarity 

has done little to diminish the impact 

of subsequently oft-compiled high 

watermarks like The Hi-Revving 

Tongues’ ‘Tropic Of Capricorn’, House 

Of Nimrod’s ‘Slightly Delic’ and The 

Dave Miller Set’s ‘Mr Guy Fawkes’, 

and it’s great to hear that particular 

strand of moody, minor-key Kiwi 

garage-pop as exemplified by The 

Smoke’s ‘Never Trust Another Man’ 

and The Top Shelf’s ‘Time Beyond’ 

again, despite them sounding like 

they were recorded long distance via 

a piece of string and pressed on 

cardboard – something the faceless 

people behind Particles have done 

little or nothing to rectify. 

A hand-written, cut ’n’ paste insert 

replicating what was presumably that 

of the original LP excitedly shrieks 

“let’s hear it for psychedelia without 

drugs!” Count me in. 

Andy Morten 

72 


Roots Of British Beat Fantastic Voyage 

2-CD 

This autumn is 

the 50th 

anniversary of 

‘Love Me Do’, the 

initial chart 

example of the 

British Beat 

boom, and Fantastic Voyage marks 

the occasion with this timely 50track 

collection of some of the 

American R&B, rock ’n’ roll, country, 

pop and blues hit singles that 

provided the inspirational 

fountainhead for the UK’s major ’60s 

musical developments – from the 

Merseyside sound pioneered by The 

Beatles to the West London blues 

revolution trail-blazed by The Rolling 

Stones. 

Kicking off with Little Richard’s 

incendiary ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ 

and Barrett Strong’s gospel-infused 

‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ and 

closing over two hours later with 

Chuck Berry’s rocking story-song 

‘Bye Bye Johnny’ and early Chicano 

star Chan Romero’s frantic ‘Hippy 

Hippy Shake’, the artist roll call 

along the way includes everyone 

from Slim Harpo, Hank Thompson 

and Fats Domino to Buddy Holly, 

The Coasters, Gene Vincent and 

Roy Orbison. Seriously seismic 

stuff! 



Saint Etienne Presents Songs For 

The Lyons Corner House Cherry Red CD 

Not to be 

confused with 

the teashops, 

the McDonald’s 

of their day, 

Lyons Corner 

Houses – a 

hybrid of café, deli and 

restaurant, housed within art-deco 

palaces – were the company’s 

famous West End establishments, 

which thrived between 1909 and 

1977. 

Jukeboxes were never installed in 

the corner houses, but Saint 

Etienne’s Bob Stanley fantasises 

about what they might have offered if 

they had been, on this latest 

compilation, which follows his wellreceived 

rock, soul and pop 

collections Songs For The Dog & 

Duck and Mario’s Café. 

This time, Stanley focuses on the 

early ’50s “pre-rock” era, when a 

depressed Britain went gooey and 

nostalgic for cheesy ’30s and ’40sstyle 

ballads and high camp. Whilst 

it’s difficult to love some of these 25 

songs, such as Frankie Laine’s 

“cowboy hits” ‘Blowing Wild’ and 

‘Hummingbird’, there are some 

intriguing re-discoveries, including 

the seductive ’55 hit ‘Stowaway’ by 

the appropriately named Barbara 

Lyons. 

Chris Twomey 


Soul Braza Volume 2: Brazilian 

60s & 70s Soul Psych No Smoke LP 

The first volume 

of this series has 

to have been the 

most dance floorfriendly 

compilation of 

2011. This 

second volume is not quite as 

immediate but it’s not far behind. 

This time there’s a definite mid-70s 

jazz-funk tinge and a hefty dollop of 

outright James Brown funk – not that 

that’s a bad thing of course. 

I found the opening 

instrumental, ‘Tema De Kiko’ by The 

Youngsters off-putting – too jazzy 

and New York orchestral sounding. 

However, things soon improve. How 

can you resist a singer with a name 

like Toni Tornado? There are some 

much stronger Tropicalist influences 

going on in some tracks, with 

manic freeform shouting and 

extemporising. The majority though 

are as pulsating and floor-filling as 

on Volume One. There aren’t 

enough female vocalists 

represented unfortunately, in my 

opinion – only Silvinha stands up 

for the girls with the wonderful ‘É 

Minha Opinião’. 

Nonetheless, you’ll need more 

than a piña colada to cool you down 

after you’ve danced this set out. 



Turn To Stone Volume 2 Ashtray LP 

New garage 

compilations 

seem to be thin 

on the ground 

these days – 

have all the best 

tunes really been 

found and outed? Well, there are a 

good few that hadn’t on this second 

volume of mid-60s obscurities. They 

range from the big sky and fresh air 

folk-rock stylings of Califonia’s The 

Dillons on ‘Simple Way Of Life’ to 

the urban mosquito fuzztone and 

snotty howling of Ontario’s (Those) 

Rogues on ‘Girl’. The hybrid garagepsych 

sound is also present in 

Washington’s Misters Virtue’s 

‘Summer Night’ and an (anti?) 

protest/consciousness song comes 

from Michigan’s Mergers with 

‘Unworthy American’. 

The rest of these 16 tracks are all 

pretty cool – even the rather slow 

cover of ‘You Really Got Me’ and the 

“barely finding the right pitch” 

backing vocals on The Celtics’ ‘Jail’. 

Label scans are present but liners 

are not. Just let your ears make up 

the story. 



TV Sound And Image Soul Jazz 

2-CD/4-LP 

It’s hard to believe that the great 

revival of interest in easy listening and 

library music 

happened nearly 

20 years ago. For 

those of us 

brought up on 

Saturday night TV 

in Britain during 

the ’70s, the Sound Gallery comps 

sounded like the return of old friends. 

Now of course you can’t turn the telly 

on without hearing John Gregory’s 

‘Jaguar’ or Alan Hawkshaw’s ‘Girl In A 

Sports Car’ accompanying footage of 

tossers moving into an even bigger 

house. 

But I digress. Focusing on TV and 

film theme tunes and casting a net 

wide enough to ensnare “pop” artists 

Pentangle, Wil Malone and CCS, 

alongside the usual backbone of 

Hatch, Barry, Budd and various Alans, 

Brians and Johnnys, this 36-track 

collection is a solid if uneven affair. 

The sequencing is curious (the 

synth/disco stylings of the 1980 

version of the Tomorrow’s World 

theme followed by Brian Fahey’s 

comparatively prehistoric ‘At The Sign 

Of The Swingin’ Cymbal’ from 20 years 

earlier is jarring, to say the least) and 

some of the choices predictable 

(‘Whole Lotta Love’ again?) 

Such quibbles aside, audiophiles 

will bask in the customarily earpopping 

sound quality while the 48page 

booklet boasts enlightening 

notes from Jonny Trunk. 

Andy Morten 

HEDY WEST 

Hedy West/Hedy West Volume 2 

Vanguard/Ace CD 

Probably the 

most 

individualistic and 

inspiring of the 

women singers to 

emerge from the 

’60s American 

folk song revival, West graced both 

North American and European folk 

scenes because of her politics. This 

32-track project offers nicely 

remastered editions of both her 

exceptional solo studio albums, 

recorded for Vanguard (where she 

had the likes of Joan Baez and Ian & 

Sylvia as label mates) in 1963 and 

’64 respectively. 

Accompanying her troubled, rawboned 

vocals on both banjo and 

guitar, West sings with an intensity 

and deep melancholy, recalling 

both Hazel Dickens and Rosalie 

Sorrells, on her signature song ‘500 

Miles’ as well as on a wide variety 

of mostly traditional material such 

as ‘Cotton Mill Girls’, ‘Shady Grove’, 

‘Moonshiner’s Lament’, ‘Single Girl’ 

and ‘Pans Of Biscuits’, along with 

other frank songs that often deal 

with hard times and struggle. Folk 

music historian Ken Hunt’s 

extensive booklet essay adroitly 

contextualises West’s life, art and 

career. All in all, a long overdue 

appreciation. 

Gary von Tersch

74 

1970s 

CHICKEN SHACK 

Imagination Lady 

Esoteric CD 

Stan Webb’s 

Chicken Shack 

was part of Mike 

Vernon’s 

influential Blue 

Horizon label 

roster, which 

championed the British blues revival 

of the late ’60s. Shack’s notoriety 

was originally based on Webb’s 

intrepid guitar playing in tandem with 

the soulful singing of pianist Christine 

Perfect (her cover of Etta James’ ‘I’d 

Rather Go Blind’ was an early hit) but 

by the time this 1972 album was 

released, Perfect was long gone and 

Shack was a power trio with bassist 

John Glascock and drummer Paul 

Hancox urging on the charismatic 

Webb’s histrionics. 

This somewhat uneven set, 

nevertheless boasts some great 

Webb originals (an 11-minute, 

panoramic ‘Telling Your Fortune’, the 

harrowing tale of a ‘Poor Boy’ and a 

Hendrix-like ‘Daughter Of The Hillside’ 

are high points), along with bluesrocking 

covers of both Tim Hardin’s ‘If 

I Were A Carpenter’ and Don Nix’s 

signature song ‘Goin’ Down’. 


CHRISTIE 

No Turn Unstoned 

Angel Air 2-CD 

Overlook the puntastic 

title, the 

poorly Photo - 

shopped cover 

(Jeff Christie’s 

cigarillo-smoking 

mug super - 

imposed over the two other band 

members’ faces) and the bulk of the 

1980s end of this collection (that’s 

CD two pretty much taken care of 

then), and you’re left with a downright 

neat treasury of unreleased Christie 

demos and home recordings. 

I was only familiar with Christie’s 

hits and second album (For All 

Mankind) and, while I fully expected 

“leftovers”, I was pleasantly surprised 

by the timbre of Jeff’s demos. ‘Better 

Days’ is pure Pete Ham, and the more 

I play this song, the more I’m knocked 

literally sideways by it (neatly sitting 

equidistant between All Things Must 

Pass and Fresh Raspberries). ‘Long 

Grass’ and ‘Living Is Giving’ are 

beautifully crafted, whilst the boogierock 

of ‘One Way Ticket’ has more 

moves than Pickfords, and blows my 

mind. Nice one, Jeff! 

Louis Comfort-Wiggett 

CLOVER 

Clover/Fourty-Niner Real Gone CD 

The nucleus of 

Clover first came 

together in 1967 

as Tiny Hearing 

Aid Company 

and played 

“entry level 

hippie gigs”, as lead singer/ 

songwriter, guitarist and pianist Alex 

Call recalls them in his liner notes, 

at Marin County’s fabled Muir 

Beach Tavern. Call, along with lead 

and pedal steel guitarist John 

McFee, drummer Mitch Howie and 

bassist John Giambotti, quickly 

developed a local following with 

their mellow country-rock sound 

and recorded this pair of albums for 

Fantasy Records, neither of which, 

unfortunately, generated sales. 

Clover combined contagious 

covers of ‘Shotgun’ and ‘‘Wade In 

The Water’ (stage act staples) with 

great band-generated numbers like 

the surreal ‘Lizard Rock ’n’ Roll 

Band’ and the carefree ‘Monopoly’, 

while Niner boasted their rockin’ 

bluegrass anthem ‘Chicken Butt’ and 

the oft-covered Call originals ‘Mr 

Moon’ (Elvis Costello) and ‘Love Is 

Gone’ (Brinsley Schwartz). As Call 

also recollects, this is “mellow 

reefer-and-cheap beer vibed” music 

at its best. I’ll say! 


ROGER JAMES COOKE 

Study RPM CD 

I’ve always been 

a fan of the big 

man’s songbook, 

but had never 

heard Roger 

Cook’s 1970 

British 

orchestrated-pop monster Study. The 

original 13-track LP is expanded here 

and gathers singles and B-sides, a 

mixed bag of Cooke/Greenaway 

tracks (‘Primrose Jill’ – love it!) 

alongside a hand-picked clutch from 

the pens of contemporaries. 

John/Taupin’s ‘Skyline Pigeon’ and 

George Harrison’s ‘Something’ are 

minimalist and underplayed, whereas 

George Martin and Jerry Lordan’s 

‘Ellie’ stinks of Jacques Brel in his 

darkest of hours. 

Personal fave here has to be the 

Mike Hazelwood/Albert Hammond 

Butlins-pop tour de force ‘Teresa’, a 

total belter of a tune – Tom Jones 

should have nabbed it. ‘Not That It 

Matters Anymore’ and ‘Stop’ are 

groovier and I envision 45s of the 

latter now beginning to creep up in 

price. I hereby highly recommend 

Study as one of the pop highlights of 

the year. 

Louis Comfort-Wiggett 

early version of ‘Carnival’ and 

covers of Fred Neil, Bert Jansch and 

Bob Dylan cornerstones. Disc two 

gathers Fairport and Fotheringay 

out-takes and the excellent ‘Are The 

Judges Sane’ from a rare Swedish 

film soundtrack, whilst the 

remaining two discs are filled with 

live, alternate and demo versions of 

Denny’s ’70s solo outings as well 

as Fairport’s Rising For The Moon 

out-takes. 

At the time of writing it is not clear 

whether the annoying silence in the 

middle of ‘Full Moon’ has been 

corrected which, for those with the 

19-CD box, could make this the only 

reason for purchase. 

Richard Allen 

KLUSTER 

Zwei Osterei Bureau B CD 

Recorded in the 

space of one 

eventful day in 

West Berlin in 

February 1970 

and originally 

released on West 

German label Schwann (bizarrely a 

label initially specialising in church 

music), only 300 copies of Zwei 

Osterei were pressed, making original 

pressings of the album seriously 

valuable collectors items. This, 

Kluster’s second studio recording is 

both an extension and a continuation 

SANDY DENNY 

The Notes & Words: A Collection Of 

Demos And Rarities 

Universal 4-CD box set 

It had to happen. Bobbing in the 

wake of the now-deleted 19-CD 

“monster box” of 2010 comes this 

compact collection, bringing together 

most of the material that fuels the 

former’s now £1,000 price tag. 

Disc one covers Sandy’s earlier 

repertoire – although there’s nothing 

from her time with The Strawbs – 

with home demos that include an Down on the ’farne 

of its predecessor, Klopfzeichen, and 

stands as an uncompromising and 

otherworldy colossus of pioneering 

Krautrock. 

Produced by Conny Plank, the 

album comprises two 20-plus 

minute Stockhausenesque walls of 

primitive oscillating electric noise 

created by Messrs Moebius, 

Roedelius and Schnitzler playing a 

variety of “conventional” 

instruments, namely guitar, organ, 

cello and percussion through 

customised banks of sound 

processors, filters, tone generators, 

echo units and other assorted 

electrical paraphernalia. Stunning 

though Zwei Osterei undoubtedly is, 

it’s arguably only the prelude to 

Moebius and Rodelius’ magnum 

opus, Cluster 71. 

Grahame Bent 

CURTIS KNIGHT 

Down In The Village Aurora CD 

Knight will forever 

be remembered 

as the leader of 

The Squires, the 

band he hired a 

hungry Jimi 

Hendrix to play in 

back in 1965. However, this ’70 

album is a more fitting testament to 

his talent. Knight was a fair guitarist 

himself, and that comes through well 

here. Clearly influenced by Hendrix, 

this set of quasi-psychedelic funky 

rock tunes is strong and infinitely 

worthy in its own right. 

There’s the occasional, updated 

nod back to the Chitlin’ circuit days 

in ‘Friedman Hill’ and ‘Goin’ Up The 

Road’, but basically the album 

overflows with warm funky bass 

lines and flowing guitar, nowhere 

more so than on the near 10minute 

‘Give You Plenty Lovin’’. The 

“village” of the title track, which 

was also released as a single, is 

Greenwich, New York, so nothing 

pastoral about it! Knight would go 

on to form the band Zeus, but Down 

In The Village is undoubtedly his 

defining moment. 

Paul Martin

LINDISFARNE 

Fog On The Tyne: 40th Anniversary 

Edition EMI CD/LP 

Back in 2004, 

EMI remastered 

Lindisfarne’s 

neglected early 

catalogue and 

added bonus 

tracks and not 

much else. Then, in 2011, the 

marketing wizards chucked everything 

onto four CDs in a hideous plastic 

box, with some excellent bonus 

tracks but minimal information. Now 

the band’s most well known album 

gets the deluxe vinyl treatment in the 

original gatefold sleeve with a CD 

containing the album but inexplicably 

omitting the bonus material. Still with 

me? Good. 

Despite the endless recycling, this 

edition is something special. 

Immediately apparent is the clearer 

and cleaner sound. ‘Meet Me On The 

Corner’ sounds as crisp and upbeat 

as a 10 bob note and a two quid 

deal. Alan Hull’s timeless ‘January 

Song’ evokes that extra tear and 

reminds us just what a great 

songwriter he was. I just hope that 

the powers that be will eventually 

combine the sound quality, bonus 

tracks and sleeve notes all in the 

same package. 

Richard Allen 

THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS 

People Like Us: Deluxe Expanded 

Edition Now Sounds CD 

Originally 

released on 

Dunhill in late 

1971 in the spirit 

of a contractual 

obligation album, 

due to the fact 

that the four individual members had 

to be cajoled into reassembling for 

one last hurrah, People Like Us finds 

the foursome negotiating the postflower 

power, post-Altamont brave 

new world of the early ’70s without 

the all-important guiding light of Lou 

Adler. Produced by John Phillips, the 

trademark vocal harmonies might be 

there but the arrangements and 

overall feel of the backing tracks 

(played by a crack posse of West 

Coast session men) is quite different 

to the classic Mamas & The Papas 

sound and rarely comes anywhere 

close to scaling the heights of past 

glories. 

Long unavailable and now 

reissued with a raft of bonus tracks 

including out-takes, alternative mixes 

and demos, the sleeve notes 

perfectly sum up the mood of the 

album thus: “People Like Us stands 

out like an out of focus photograph 

of a long-lost loved one”. 

Grahame Bent 

MISTY HUSH REVIVAL 

Your Heart Is Broken Guerssen CD 

Very much in private pressing 

territory comes this reissue of a 

rare album by 

an unknown 

New York band, 

issued in 1972 

in microscopic 

quantities and 

subsequently 

whispered about only in the halls 

of über-rich collectors. Seemingly 

lost in time, it sounds like a typical 

’60s teen/frat band finding their 

way with simple fuzz guitars and 

dreamy harmonies, tambourine to 

the fore. 

The music is reminiscent of The 

Rising Storm or maybe even The 

Baroques, and the harmonies recall 

The Strawberry Alarm Clock. But it 

isn’t really psychedelic. There’s no 

ripping fuzz and even the jamming 

has a laid back, introverted feel. 

Choice cuts are the title track and 

‘Gone Away’, which pretty much 

encapsulate the band’s fayre. Quite 

what a band was doing making this 

kind of music in ’72 is unclear, but 

this reissue, complete with a detailed 

booklet and two bonus tracks, 

certainly justifies their previously 

obscure efforts. 

Richard Allen 

NICO 

The End Universal 2-CD 

The major event of 1974 had to be 

the appearance of Nico as part of 

Kevin Ayers’ June 1st Rainbow 

Theatre extravaganza, which also 

starred John Cale and Brian Eno. 

After seven years spellbound by the 

first Velvet Underground album, then 

her three riveting solo outings, 

witnessing the lady in the now 

heroin-ravaged flesh was utterly 

captivating as, accompanied by her 

harmonium, she regally performed 

her death rattle version of The Doors’ 

‘The End’, defiantly followed by 

‘Deutschland Über Alles’. 

These joined glacial confessionals 

such as ‘Secret Side’, ‘Valley Of The 

Kings’ and haunted distress call ‘You 

Forget To Answer’ on her new album, 

produced by Cale, with help from 

Eno and Phil Manzanera. Too 

impregnable back then, it now 

sounds both starkly harrowing and 

timelessly spiritual, original tracks 

joined by Rainbow performance and 

sessions for Peel and The Old Grey 

Whistle Test. 

A great, often misunderstood 

lady – this is special. 

Kris Needs 

Vivid Stanshall 

RHYTHM MACHINE 

Rhythm Machine Now-Again CD/LP 

The transitional, 

almost-disco 

mid-70s cuts by 

the show band 

funk-soul of 

Rhythm Machine 

(and their 

previous incarnation The 

Highlighters) have featured on 

various Now-Again and Stone’s 

Throw Records compilations over the 

last few years. Finally the 

Indianapolis sextet’s sole album from 

1976 has been reissued on CD and 

LP with three previously unreleased 

bonus tracks, a deluxe gatefold 

sleeve and a 20-page booklet with 

extensive liner notes. 

The shoulda-been-a-classic 

masterpiece ‘Put A Smile On Time’ 

will bring most crate-diggers here, 

but they will also be rewarded with 

10 other warm, charming, 

syncopated up-tempo soul music 

gems that were sadly, up until now, 

extremely hard to find. A series of 

unfortunate personal, personnel and 

label problems scuppered the band’s 

career before it even really started, 

making vinyl originals of this as rare 

as they come. 

Luke Smyth 

SATISFACTION 

Three Ages Of Man Acid Jazz CD 

Satisfaction, a 

sextet formed in 

1970 from the 

ashes of The 

Mike Cotton 

Sound and 

featuring ex- 

Artwoods guitarist Derek Griffiths, 

spent 18 months gigging around 

Britain’s clubs and unis, and 

released a self-titled album on Decca 

in ’71 before being relegated to 

footnote status. A second album was 

cut but due to record company 

indifference and the cost of keeping 

a six-piece band on the road, it was 

never released. Acid Jazz were 

presented with these tapes while 

courting Griffiths for unreleased 

Artwoods material and, 40 years late, 

Three Ages Of Man finally sees the 

light of day. 

Rooted in the band’s jazz and 

blues heritage, these nine songs also 

involve lengthy hard rock workouts 

(‘My Fixation’, ‘Liar, Liar’) and 

accessible, even whimsical, solo 

acoustic pieces by Griffiths (the title 

track, ‘One Man Band’). They may 

have aspired to be Blood, Sweat & 

Tears and Chicago but they were just 

too damn English to pull it off… 

luckily for us. Fans of Colosseum, 

Forever More, Audience and Mogul 

Thrash should be paying attention. 

Andy Morten 

THE SKABBS 

Idle Threat Jackpot CD 

Undiscovered for 

30-odd years but, 

thanks to the 

efforts of bassist 

Mike Enzor and 

the Jackpot label, 

The Skabbs can 

now be enjoyed by those with a taste 

for raw, stylised new-wave 1978 

style. Amongst their influences are 

Devo-esque sensibility in tunes like 

‘N-N-N-N-Nervous’ and ‘Spray Paint’. 

This, allied to the zeitgeist zaniness 

peculiar to some US groups, gets 

close to the overall sound of this illfated 

LA-based outfit. They’re direct, 

endearingly fun and worthwhile as 

many of the bruising, off-kilter 

75

Working in partnership with Pernambuco’s 

Discos Rozenblit in North Eastern Brazil and a 

network of collectors, the Mr Bongo label is 

currently embarking on a major restoration and 

reissue programme of treasures from the mighty 

Rozenblit catalogue. Initially flagged up by the 

release of last year’s Psychedelic Pernambuco 

compilation, the first wave of titles to be 

released covers the complete range of styles 

from bossa jazz to garage pop and free-spirited 

Tropicalia. 

Originally released on 

Rozenblit imprint Mocambo, 

SALVADOR TRIO’S selftitled 

album releases from 

1965 and ’66 show them to be 

masters of the jazz/bossa 

instrumental stripped down 

to its barest of essentials of piano (and 

occasional organ), bass and drums. Like their 

contemporaries Tamba Trio, they perfectly 

encapsulate the breezy lightness of touch that 

characterised the mid-60s high water mark of 

the bossa boom. 

Released on the Mocambo 

imprint in ’67, OS 

CANIBAIS’ self-titled debut 

survives as an authentic 

example of homegrown 

Brazilian garage-pop. As 

members of Brazil’s Guarda 

Jovem movement – a peculiarly Brazilian style of 

adapting facets of Anglo-American pop and rock 

for native audiences – Os Canibais showcase 

their talents on among other things a 

Portuguese language cover of The Turtles’ 

‘Happy Together’. 

The impressive Santanaesque 

groove of ‘Sorriso 

Selvagem’ – the opening track 

on THE GENTLEMEN’s 

insanely rare ’72 debut on 

Rozenblit imprint Smog 

(apparently only 200 radio 

promos were ever pressed and a mere three of 

these are still known to exist) – isn’t particularly 

representative of the album as a whole, which 

actually has a strong pop feel as demonstrated 

by their reworking of The Bee Gee’s ‘My World’. 

Although less well known and 

commercially successful than 

his fellow founding members 

of the Tropicalismo 

movement Caetano Veloso, 

Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa and Os 

Mutantes, TOM ZE’s 

distinctively experimental work remains a 

uniquely uncompromising voice in the history of 

the movement with his self-titled ’69 debut a key 

release in laying the foundations of the 

Tropicalia style and philosophy. 

Satwa (’73), the sole album 

from LULA CORTES & 

LAILSON is essentially a 

collection of free-flowing 

raga-influenced acoustic 

guitar jams, which 

hypnotically blends 

traditional Brazilian Nord Este folk forms with 

elements of jazz, raga and a taste for all things 

psychedelic. Recorded and released a matter of 

76 

MUNDO EXOTICO 

From unearthing Brazilian nuggets to the sound of Rio’s homegrown Mr Super Bad. 

GRAHAME BENT scans the region 

months after Satwa, Lula Cortes’ categorydefying 

one-off collaboration with obscure 

underground poet Marconi Notaro, the truly 

surreal No Sub Reino Dos Metazoarios feels little 

short of a densely compressed trip deep inside 

an unknown world with its bewildering blend of 

experimental folk, multi-layered raga-esque 

guitar, reverberating psych and esoteric spoken 

word interludes at times managing to hint at a 

Brazilian take on Popol Vuh, while also 

providing a spectacular companion piece for 

Lula Cortes & Ze Ramalho’s Tropicalista 

magnum opus Paebiru (’75). 

Also featuring contributions 

from Lula Cortes and Ze 

Ramalho, FLAVIOLA E O 

BANDA DO SOL’s self-titled 

’74 album, which originally 

appeared on Cortes’ solo 

imprint Solar, is an 

understated gem of impressionistic folk psych 

Tim Maia: “completely at odds” 

typified by lyrical songwriting and mellow 

acoustic instrumentation with the occasional 

nod in the direction of Caetano Veloso. 

Released in ’80, LULA 

CORTES’ Rosa De Sangue, 

with its kitchen sink and allstylistic 

mosaic of everything 

from experimental folk, acid 

raga, fuzz rock, space funk 

and rampant psychedelia, is 

conventionally held to represent the close of the 

richly fertile Pernambuco Tropicalista cycle. 

And so from the exotic to the 

parallel reality of TIM MAIA 

(AKA Brazil’s Soul Brother 

Numero Uno) as revealed on 

The Existential Soul Of Tim 

Maia: Nobody Can Live 

Forever. Finally released on 

Luaka Bop as part of its World Psychedelic 

Classics series after 10 years of negotiation and 

legal wrangling, this 15-track overview of Maia’s 

’70s recordings reveals a world of bad boy LSDfuelled 

soul-funk, cult religion, UFOs and a 

musical direction completely at odds with 

Brazil’s then dominant musical genres of MPB 

and Tropicalia. Coming on like an out there 

guru of the groove and getting down in both 

English and Portuguese, the every way larger 

than life Maia was instrumental in introducing 

the sound of contemporary US soul and funk to 

Brazil and was likewise a key figure in the Black 

Rio Afro-Brazilian cultural movement of the 

early to mid-70s. By way of a fitting tribute to 

the colourful legacy of Brazil’s funkateer 

supremo, this vibrantly hued collection is due 

for release on what would have been the late 

lamented Maia’s 70th birthday (September 

28th). Viva Tim Maia!

anthems assembled here show. Too 

punk for the rockers, too rock for the 

punks, they nonetheless strike with 

ease on opener ‘Idle Threat’ and a 

succession of powerful guitar-led 

tunes follow – the searing ‘4th Of 

July’ one of the best. Surging 

rhythms, wild leads, commanding 

vocals – all a match for their peers 

any day of the week. 

They quit when vocalist Steven 

Salazar died in February ’79. Read 

their heartbreaking story in Ugly 

Things and make sure you score a 

copy of this truly fine set. 

Lenny Helsing 

VIVIAN STANSHALL 

Men Ahead Opening Umbrellas 

Poppy Disc CD/LP 

Vivian Stanshall 

had a passion for 

Africa, even going 

as far as to learn 

Swahili. It should 

come as little 

surprise, then, 

that his debut solo album, Men 

Ahead Opening Umbrellas, is infused 

with African rhythms. But for all the 

polyrhythms and syncopation, the 

African influenced songs are 

unfocused affairs. So too is the 

album. One moment it’s a dark place 

reflecting Stanshall’s anxieties, the 

next he’s throwing in some willy jokes 

to lighten the mood a little. As a 

debut offering it is wildly eccentric in 

every sense of the word. 

It’s a miracle Stanshall managed 

to finish this or any other album, and 

while it’s far from perfect it does 

have its moments. His original record 

label, Warner Brothers, didn’t know 

what to do with it. Thankfully, Poppy 

Disc is more enlightened and has 

reissued it on vinyl and CD. 

Considering how small Stanshall’s 

canon of recorded music is, we must 

be truly thankful to them. 

John Blaney 

THAT’S WHY 

That’s Why Jazzman CD/LP 

Nordic Christian 

jazz might sound 

like a distinctly 

sobering prospect 

but this couldn’t 

be further from 

the truth in the 

case of Norway’s freewheeling 

evangelical jazzers That’s Why. 

This stunning trip into Norway’s 

transcendental Christian jazz boom of 

the mid-60s to early ’70s opens up a 

lost world of free-spirited 

experimentation. Drawing their 

inspiration from a blend of Blood 

Sweat & Tears, Peter, Paul & Mary, 

acoustic and electric jazz and 

Norwegian folklore, during their brief 

lifespan That’s Why recorded two 

albums That’s Why Volume 1 

(Children Of The Future Age) and 

Volume 2 for the Lu Mi label – this 

startling sampler is essentially a best 

of both albums. 

Fuelled by trippy organ, esoteric 

poetry and intricate arrangements, 

the end results are frequently 

spectacular, with the seriously 

atmospheric ‘Noe Annett’ sounding 

like an ethereal Julie Driscoll, Brian 

Auger & The Trinity. Most importantly 

of all, you don’t need to be fluent in 

Norwegian to dig there’s something 

seriously intense going on here. 

Grahame Bent 

UFO 

The Decca Years: Best Of 1970-1973 

Repertoire CD 

Look back to the 

early ’70s, 

beyond the 

spandex trousers 

and preening 

cock-rock that 

typifies UFO in 

many peoples’ eyes, and you’d find 

UFO kicking out hard-rocking blues in 

a similar vein to Led Zeppelin, early 

Fleetwood Mac and even Black 

Sabbath. Sure, there are some turgid 

excursions into plodding prog territory 

at times too and, clocking in at 26 

minutes, parts of ‘Flying’ could test 

the patience of even the most 

Naughty�But�Nice 

WICKED LADY 

The Axeman Cometh 

Psychotic Overkill 

Both Guerssen CDs/LPs 

When I first heard Wicked Lady four 

or five years ago I flipped out over 

their sound and wondered why their 

take on heavy acid-rock hadn’t been 

more widely lauded. Time has now 

given me a bit more distance to 

contextualise what the band recorded 

and, while I’m still a big fan, it now 

comes with a few reservations. 

Wicked Lady was guitarist Martin 

Weaver’s outfit pre-Dark. Dark’s LP, 

Round The Edges, is probably best 

known for its status as a monster 

rarity, though their music is great too 

– full of psychedelic heavy fuzz guitar 

jams, though imbued with an air of 

detachment and aloofness that stops 

it ascending into the premier league 

of ’60s/70s prog/psych. 

If you like the aforementioned 

album then you’re on pretty safe 

ground with these releases from 

diehard UFO freak – one is reminded 

why punk happened. 

Elsewhere, there’s a rousing cover 

of ‘C’mon Everybody’, and the almost 

ubiquitous, at least for the time, 

‘Who Do You Love?’ is duly 

hammered out too. But it’s their own 

compositions that really stand out – 

‘Prince Kajuku’, ‘Galactic Love’, the 

soaring ‘Silver Bird’ and the eerily 

psychedelic ‘Treacle People’ are 

particularly noteworthy. Minor 

grumbles aside, The Decca Years is 

worthy of further investigation, so 

take those blinkers off now. 

Rich Deakin 

BILL WILSON 

Ever Changing Minstrel 

Tompkins Square CD 

One night in 1973, Indiana-born 

singer-songwriter Bill Wilson knocked 

on legendary Nashville producer Bob 

Johnston’s door, brazenly asking to 

make an album. Bob allowed him to 

sing one song, heard 11 more, then 

rounded up Nashville’s session giants 

to record immediately. The album 

sneaked out on Columbia in ’73 but 

was buried during restructuring. In 

January, Tompkins Square’s Josh 

Guerssen. Repackaged handsomely 

with new sleeve notes, these are the 

definitive versions of the material. 

The pick of the two is The Axeman 

Cometh, which contains demo 

recordings from 1968 to ’72. The 

material has little, if anything, in the 

way of production, though this adds 

to the overall doomy psychedelic 

atmosphere, as Weaver bazookas evil 

fuzz and wah-wah all over the eight 

long-ish tracks. Vocal melody lines 

are minimal, though ‘Run The Night’ 

and ‘Life And Death’ are probably the 

best songs the band wrote. 

Psychotic Overkill is more of the 

same, recorded at the end of the 

band’s existence in ’72. It features 

their longest recorded jam, the 22minute 

‘Ship Of Ghosts’, and the cool 

parent-baiting anthem ‘I’m A Freak’. 

However, many of the vocal parts are 

particularly unmemorable and some 

of the jams fail to gain the 

momentum they do on the previous 

collection. 

Rosenthal found a copy in a Berkeley 

record store for 25 cents. Now it’s 

out on his esteemed label, redefining 

the term “lost treasure”. 

Wilson covers various styles 

including swirling southern rock, 

joyful gospel, outlaw narratives, 

Village folk, lazy blues and, best of 

all, somehow evoking a Southern Tim 

Buckley on the desolate country 

ballads ‘Long Gone Lady’ and ‘To 

Rebecca’. Wilson never topped this 

album, dying from a heart attack in 

’93. On this evidence, he should be 

up there with the Guy Clarks and 

other greats. Rosenthal’s sterling 

devotion means it’s never too late. 

Kris Needs 

Simply put, Wicked Lady sound 

like a forgotten acid cult, 

hermetically sealed in a cellar 

with an endless pharmacological 

supply to jam ad infinitum. It’s 

little wonder that their original 

drummer ended up in a mental 

institution. The songs are 

sometimes a little under - 

developed and the sound quality 

is basic but there’s something 

magical going on in the druggy 

grooves. Buy The Axeman Cometh 

and, if you like it, lap up 

Psychotic Overkill next. 

Austin Matthews 

77

Now, what better way to preface a review of two 

reissues from Dutch proggers KAYAK – See See 

The Sun and Kayak (both Esoteric CDs) – than 

by wanging on about the early Yes for a spell? 

True, I’ve already made an earnest and stringent 

comparison between the two bands in another 

review – it’s my version of multi-tasking – but at 

any given opportunity, I feel compelled to trot 

out my reasons for still flying an increasingly 

tatty flag with the original Yes speech bubble 

logo on it. It’s like those meetings at which 

everyone has to stand up, say their name, and 

tell everyone else: “I am a practising alcoholic. 

I’ve been practising for years, and now I’m 

fucking great at it.” 

My enduring 

love for 

these evermaligned 

prog 

numpties is 

mostly the 

fault of 

keyboardist 

Tony Kaye – 

fondly 

referred to 

in our house 

as Captain Morgan And His Hammond Organ. 

Kaye’s nobly intransigent, synth-shunning 

stance marked him out as a man of rare taste 

and refinement, but famously led to him being 

given his marching papers when Rick Wakeman 

came along armed with a full panoply of bells 

and whistles. Admittedly, a Hammond was 

initially still part of the deal – I cleave to no man 

in my admiration of Wakeman’s Hammond solo 

in ‘Heart Of The Sunrise’ – and there was a 

lovely fogbound Mellotron in there as well. But 

then there were synths that sounded like 

Roobarb doing diarrhoea down one of those 

plastic tubes that kids used to whirl around their 

heads in the early ’70s. If ever a deal-breaker 

there was, then so mote it be. And that’s what’s 

so great about the first two Kayak albums, from 

1973 and ’74 respectively. They’re not synth-free 

by any means, but keyboardist Tom 

Scherpenzeel tended to use them back then 

rather in the manner of an epicure discreetly 

sprinkling cress on a sandwich, as opposed to 

slathering an entire honking jar of Shippam’s 

Bloater Paste all over it. 

This approach is curiously at 

odds with the incident-rich 

high drama that Kayak 

perpetrated in every other 

area, particularly on See See 

The Sun: a decidedly Yes-ish 

dynamic range, from pin-drop 

pianissimo to piano-drop pandemonium, in the 

service of compositions as complex and restless 

as antibodies. ‘Lovely Luna’ is a noteworthy 

delight: just listen to that lonesome Mellotron 

flute fanfare, and a vocal of stupefied 

wonderment. For lo, is that a sylph delicately 

bathing in a tinkling waterfall in the enchanted 

glade? Either that, or this track comes to you 

with beer goggles for the ears. But I shit you not, 

‘Forever Is A Lonely Thought’ is genuinely like 

something that Brian Wilson could have written 

in the haunted interstices between ‘Wind 

Chimes’ and ‘Wonderful’. Proper pretty. 

Staying with Holland for the moment – I like it 

here, it’s nice and flat and I don’t have to waddle 

78 

PROG NOSIS 

From the Netherlands to Nektar via Van Der Graaf. MARCO ROSSI is one happy bunny 

up any hills to get to the 

nearest pie shop – the first 

two albums by SOLUTION – 

the self-titled ’71 debut and 

the following year’s 

Divergence (both Esoteric CDs) – 

have also just been reissued. 

Man, there’s never a Dutch prog reissue when 

you want one, then several come along all at 

once. Like buses, proverbially – or trams, given 

that we’re in Holland. I remember looking 

around myself in the middle of a large square in 

Amsterdam once, then 

realising that I was being 

converged upon by said 

trams, lorries, slipstreaming 

cyclists and, ahm, fast 

pedestrians… and screaming 

like a Hammer starlet 

because I had simply no idea where the safe bit 

to stand was. 

Listening to Solution is nothing like that, 

mercifully – with the possible exception of the 

chaotic and self-explanatory ‘Circus 

Circumstances’, during which I was squirted in 

the face by a soda siphon, my bow tie started 

revolving and my trousers fell down. There’s a 

linear, unhurried rationale and clear melodic 

A-ha! The Solution 

framework at the heart of Solution’s jazz-derived 

extrapolations – especially the likes of ‘Trane 

Steps’ from their predominantly instrumental 

first album. A certain debt to the Karl Jenkinsera 

Soft Machine seems self-evident until you 

remember that this stuff actually pre-dates it – 

so if Solution were listening to them, it would 

have to have been on the stereo in the timetravelling 

Back To The Future DeLorean car. 

Mind you, if it was a DeLorean, the stereo 

wouldn’t have worked. Nothing worked properly 

on the DeLorean: good news, then, if their aim 

was consistency. 

However, I digress. Or diverge, if you will? 

(Woefully contrived link alert!) Divergence, the 

next album along in the Solution timeline, is the 

keeper, a luscious, smooth-toned beastie: the 

band had grown a new bassist/vocalist, Guus 

Willemse, and accordingly stepped up to the 

plate like Billy-o. They must have wanted to 

impress him? The sultry, why-don’t-you-slipinto-something-more-comfortable-baby-while-Ipour-us-both-some-Um-Bongo 

title track was 

considered sexy enough for Solution’s Dutch 

prog peers, Focus, to lift it wholesale: they called 

their version ‘Tommy’ in loving, doe-eyed tribute 

to Solution saxist Tom Barlage. Kisses on the 

bottom. 

Moving briskly along, in 

something of a “you sure 

know how to spoil a guy” 

development, I get to review 

something by my beloved 

VAN DER GRAAF 

GENERATOR for two prog 

columns in a row. Last time out, it was the new 

instrumental album Alt, an unrepentantly 

thrown down gauntlet: this time, it’s the 

gratifyingly chunky Recorded Live In Concert At 

Metropolis Studios, London (Salvo 2-CD/DVD), 

which takes almost as long to type as it does to 

listen to and watch. 

What an intelligence-radiating joy, though. 

Peter Hammill, Hugh Banton and Guy Evans 

have never taken the path of least resistance, 

Satan bless and preserve them, and they’re not 

about to start now. Of the 11 tracks performed, 

all bar three are from A Grounding In Numbers, 

Present and Trisector, the band’s most recent 

with-vocals albums: magnificent late-middleage 

death-defying death-acknowledgers such as 

‘Over The Hill’, ‘Lifetime’ and ‘We Are Not 

Here’. Perversely, brilliantly, they nod to their 

past with ‘Lemmings’ and ‘Man-Erg’ – two 

bullish selections from ’71’s almighty Pawn 

Hearts, by some distance the most 

uncompromisingly accursed bulletin from the 

inner circle of Hell ever to reach #1 on the 

Italian album chart. And then there’s ‘Childlike 

Faith’ from ’76’s Still Life: they tear the arse out 

of this with such elemental brio that fault lines 

appear in the fabric of the universe. Was there 

ever a more raucously committed vocalist than 

Hammill in all of rock? Allow me to answer that 

for you. No. 

Finally, who’da thunk it? 

The new album by 

NEKTAR, A Spoonful Of 

Time (Purple Pyramid CD), is a 

covers album, egad – 

positively bespattered with 

guesting prog princes (Steve 

Howe, Rick Wakeman, Patrick Moraz, Ginger 

Baker, Edgar Froese etc) and headscratchingly 

scattershot as regards source 

material (Rush, 10cc, Neil Young, Alan 

Parsons Project). At the far end of the 

facepalm/debit column, ‘Africa’ by Toto: in 

the thumbs-aloft/credit column, ‘2000 Light 

Years From Home’ by the short-lived psych 

Stones. Everything’s extremely well played 

and all, but as to why… ours is not to reason 

why. It’ll keep the mulligatawny simmering 

until the next krazy koncept.

1980s/90s 

20/20 

20/20/Look Out! Real Gone CD 

First two albums 

from seminal 

powerpop outfit, 

plus a couple of 

previously 

unissued B-sides. 

20/20 came 

from Tulsa, Oklahoma like Dwight 

Twilley and Phil Seymour, but they 

sounded more like The Plimsouls 

than The Twilley Band. Their 1979 

eponymous debut is pure powerpop, 

with its brisk energy and the 

combination of British Invasion 

throwback and new wave edginess. 

Look Out!, released two years later, 

finds the band in more of a worldweary 

mode, their viewpoint and 

musical approach thickened with 

some early ’80s malaise. 

‘Yellow Pills’ is of course a staple, 

and beyond that there are another six 

or eight winning numbers contained 

between the albums. Overall, these 

two titles are sterling examples of 

records made of their style and in 

their time, even if the quality of 

20/20’s songwriting is just a notch 

below that of the afore-mentioned 

Dwight Twilley Band and The 

Plimsouls, and other standout 

soundalike acts. 

Brian Greene 

THE LIARS 

The True Sound Of The Liars: 

Anthology 1985-90 Area Pirata CD 

This is the story 

of a talented 

young group from 

Pisa, Italy who – 

at that time in 

the mid-late ’80s 

– managed to be 

both ahead and behind their time, 

especially in their skillful songcrafting 

ideas and keen usage of soft 

and heavy dynamics. Founded by 

former Useless Boys bassist 

Alessandro Ansani, plus personnel 

from Birdmen Of Alkatraz, they 

looked into ’60s garage and 

psychedelia, adding hard, expansive 

rock riffs, a blend that, with their love 

of tight vocal harmonies, created 

Perfect 20/20 vision 

some terrific moments. 

Their Optical Sound and 

Mindscrewer mini-albums heralded 

the excellent ‘The Lady Knew’ and 

‘You Shock My Heart’, while remakes 

of Kim Fowley’s ‘Bubble Gum’ and 

The Nazz’s ‘Wildwood Blooze’ sound 

positively glowing. Commercially 

bowing out with an extremely melodic 

slice of pop-psych, 1990’s ‘Cold Girl’ 

45, they somehow managed to invite 

a Teardrop Explodes/Clear Light 

comparison. It’s a pity these Liars 

weren’t afforded the wider 

breakthrough they so thoroughly 

deserved, but worry not as this 

double CD set of their complete 

recordings, including demos, is 

available for you to savour. 

Lenny Helsing 

UPS & DOWNS 

Out Of The Darkness Feel Presents CD 

Like too many 

bands, Australia’s 

Ups & Downs 

suffered the 

slings and arrows 

of record 

company asininity 

and management ineptitude. Their 

debut single ‘Living Inside My Head’ 

coincided with the emergence of the 

LA-based Paisley Underground and 

had fate been on their side they 

might have been as big as... well, 

who knows? 

Like their US contemporaries, their 

jangly guitars, rich harmonies and 

powerpop sensibilities were 

refreshingly engaging and still sound 

foil fresh today. Often compared to 

fellow Ozzies The Church, to these 

ears there’s more than a passing 

resemblance to The Prime Movers 

and late period Chills. Then there are 

songs like ‘Travelling’, which has a 

touch of U2 bombast about it. And 

that’s when things started to go 

wrong. The band began 

experimenting with its sonic signature 

and ditched jangly guitars for 

sequencers and drum machines. Buy 

it for their early singles and mini 

album, worthy additions to any 

Shindigger’s collection. 

John Blaney 

Specialising in 1950s, 60s, 70s 

vinyl and CDs 

-original and reissue. 

rock, Psych, west-coast rock, 

folk-rock, folk blues and soul. 

47 Main Street 

Symington 

Biggar 

ML12 6LL 

Scotland UK 

tel/fax: 

+44 (0)1899 308 077 

www.blackvinylrecords.co.uk 

79

80 

NEW 

Ya�Dig? 

ADMIRAL SIR CLOUDESLEY 

SHOVELL 

Don’t Hear It… Fear It!! Rise Above 

CD/LP 

Grit and balls. Two qualities that 

are hard to find in music 

nowadays. Two things that might 

make you wince and think of 

awful blues-rock workouts with a 

blustery singer emoting bogus 

soul crapulence all over the shop. 

But that’s not what’s on offer 

here, friends – what’s here is a 

band that use those qualities to 

devastating effect, playing raw 

(and I mean yolky chicken foetus 

RAW) proto-metal with superheavy 

dirt ’n’ drugs vibes. 

If you’re after references then 

you’ve just got to look at the 

touchstones of that early heavy 

sound from 1969-73 – Master Of 

Reality, the first Budgie album, 

Emerge by The Litter, the first two 

from Buffalo, Split by The 

Groundhogs, both Dust albums. 

Add this to the pantheon. Really. 

The Shovell (balls not pictured) 

Quite frankly this album is more 

bulbous with joy than a pregnant 

pachyderm. ‘Mark Of The Beast’ 

(included on our own It’s 

Happening Volume 1 a coupla years 

back) opens things with some 

heavy-psych phased madness, 

much like The Pretty Things circa 

SF Sorrow/Parachute, before being 

blasted into hard-rock heaven by a 

glassy nostril full of amphetamine 

guitar work. Highlights are too 

numerous to mention, though my 

favourites are the low-slung 

bastardry of ‘Devil’s Island’ and the 

desperation-waltz of ‘iDEATH’. 

By the close of the record those 

influences that were already writ 

large have become explicit. Yer 

actual Tony McPhee from The 

Groundhogs knocks out some 

monster guitar work on ‘Scratchin 

And Sniffin’’ and the band blast 

through a demented cover of 

Buffalo’s ‘Bean Stew’ on the 

album’s hidden track. 

If justice were served, the 

crimson buzzard that serves as 

ASCS’s mascot would be made into 

a 20-foot animatronic character to 

stalk the stage as the band play to 

thousands at some filthy Euro 

metal festival. A real blunderbuss of 

an album that deserves to be heard 

not just by a coterie of friends or a 

small group of genre fans, but by 

the public at large. How did they do 

it? Grit and balls, my friend. Grit 

and balls. 


THE ALLAH-LAS 

The Allah-Las Innovative Leisure CD 

My, oh my. 

Garage music has 

been abused and 

the term has 

been misused for 

far too long. 

Thankfully, 

youthful LA residents The Allah-Las 

have reclaimed their native music 

and remedied this. There are no 

pointy points or spray-on black jeans 

on display from this band. What 

they’ve done is to go right back to 

the source and aesthetic of the teen 

acts featured on the Back From The 

Grave, Shutdown 66 and Hipsville 

comps. The harmonies are primitive, 

and the guitars, bass and drums are 

stuck somewhere between surf, 

Merseybeat and proto-folk-rock. 

Essentially the sound of 1965-66 

garage and they have it off pat. Best 

of all, although they really know 

where they’re coming from, it 

appears they are picking up young, 

modern fans. Could The Allah-Las 

hold the key to the future? Only time 

will tell. 


BUFFALO KILLERS 

Dig, Sow, Love, Grow Alive CD/LP 

Twelve months 

after Buffalo 

Killers released 

their jaw-dropping 

third long player 

3, a record that 

had this reviewer 

gushing about it being his “album of 

the year”, the Cincinnati trio are once 

again back in the groove with Dig, 

Sow, Love, Grow. Mixing the mellow 

West Coast country-rock vibe of 3 

with a return to the heavier, psychlaced 

blues-rock and roadhouse 

rock-a-boogie found on their earlier 

releases, brothers Zach and Andy 

Gabbard, along with Joey Sebaali, 

have cultivated an organic summer 

stoner sound that’s at once familiar 

and fresh. 

Images of lazy, hazy nights or 

burning up the highway with the top 

down inevitably materialise while 

listening to songs such as opener 

‘Get It’, the soulful jangle of single 

‘Hey Girl’, ‘Moon Daisy’ with its late 

’60s echoes of a shimmering Laurel 

Canyon, and the chicken-fried boogie 

of ‘Blood On Your Hands’. Highly 

recommended. 

Alan Brown 

SUZI CHUNK 

Girl From The Neck Down State 

CD/LP 

This LP is a 

meeting of mind 

and voice: Glenn 

Prangnell, now 

trading as Groovy 

Uncle, and welltravelled 

Cardiff 

singer Suzi Chunk. The two opening 

tracks highlight the power and beauty 

of Suzi’s voice. This level of drama 

and emotion is pop-soul at its best, 

the likes of which is rarely made 

anymore. 

I doubt there’s anyone out there 

who understands ’60s pop music 

better than Prangnell, from the 

doleful Kinksian swing of ‘I Can’t 

Stop The Rain’ and Brill Building 

yearn of ‘It's Not Your Heartbreak’ to 

‘Daytripper’ rewrite ‘Look Back And 

Laugh’ and Nilsson-inspired closer 

‘Wish Away The Moon’. There’s even 

a wild card with the samba rhythms 

of ‘Probably Normal’ featuring a ’70s 

flute solo. 

This pressing will be a worth a 

fortune 20 years from now, for 

this is classic songwriting voiced by 

Suzi’s humane, humble and honest 

tones. A match made in heaven. 

Phil Istine 

COLORAMA 

Good Music AED CD/LP 

Given that Colorama’s British psychpop 

opus Box and Welsh language 

acid-folk mini-masterpiece Llyfr Lliwio 

have been among my most played 

records of the past two years, I had 

very high hopes for the band’s latest 

long-player, Good Music. Trouble is 

though that four songs in and I am 

not too sure what I think of it. With 

its perky beats and catchy melodies 

the opening quartet reminds me of 

mid-90s Britpop. The tracks sound 

fine, just not exactly to my taste. 

Fortunately, those who’ve been 

charmed by Colorama’s previous 

work will find Good Music’s second 

half a lot more to their liking. ‘The 

War Con’ is wonderful, a Dick Dale 

meets John Barry-style instrumental, 

while ‘Why Is She?’, ‘My 

Predicament’ and ‘Anytime’ are the 

type of delicate ballads that made 

Box such an essential listen. Best of 

all is Woe Is Me, a Kinksy strumalong 

that Noel Gallagher would have 

traded body parts to have written. 

Ashley Norris 

BILL FAY 

Life Is People Dead Oceans CD/LP 

Like one Sixto 

Diaz Rodriguez, 

who has been 

getting his 

belated dues of 

late for his 

similarly two lost 

albums and cult status, Bill Fay is 

another of those magnificent men; a

musician’s musician and artist held 

in astounding awe by those in the 

know. 

Life Is People is – give or take a 

few informal releases – Fay’s first 

release since 1971’s excellent Time 

Of The Last Persecution. A record on 

which Fay, even way back then, 

sounded poetically weathered at the 

prospect of closing a door on the 

’60s, and without ever realising it, 

commercial success. Across the 

album, he charges songs like ‘Big 

Painter’ and ‘Thank You Lord’ with an 

ecclesiastic grace and world-weary 

wisdom. There’s no hiding away from 

the fact that this is a sombre record, 

but Fay’s positivity shines out in his 

song writing and piano playing, 

making this one of the year’s most 

gratifying releases. 

Richard S Jones 

THE GALILEO 7 

Staring At The Sound State CD/LP 

Lead man of The 

Galileo 7, Allan 

Crockford, has 

collaborated with 

many significant 

players on the 

Medway scene, 

forming the backbone of scores of 

Medway bands from The Prisoners to 

The Stabilisers. So we can be pretty 

sure of what to expect from his own 

band’s second album, the follow up 

to 2010’s Are We Having Fun Yet? 

It’s well crafted guitar pop from 

beginning to end, drawing on 

melodic ’60s garage-punk as well as 

powerpop of both the long hair and 

skinny tie varieties. A less aggressive, 

more mannered Len Price 3 

occasionally come to mind (that 

distinctive Estuary accent shines 

through) and, in The Galileo 7’s use 

of analogue organs and lustrous 

harmonies, you can also detect the 

neo-psych of The Dukes of 

Stratosphear and The Rain Parade. 

If you love Rhino’s Children Of 

Nuggets collection and have 

exhausted all the avenues that it sent 

you down, then this might well 

signpost a new one. 

Daragh O’Halloran 

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY & THE 

BROKEOFFS 

Sunday Run Me Over Transdreamer CD 

Prolific Londonborn,Georgiabasedsingersongwriter 

Holly 

Golightly 

(christened after 

the call girl 

protagonist in Truman Capote’s 

Breakfast At Tiffany’s) joins forces 

once more with longtime 

collaborator, photographer and multitalented 

Texas musician Lawyer 

Dave. The pair serve up a dozen titles 

that range from rockabilly-on-steroids 

(‘I Ain’t Got No More Money’), an offkilter 

waltz called ‘One For The Road’, 

a delightfully re-tooled, rootsy 

rendition of Wayne Raney’s 1960 

gospel chestnut ‘We Need A Lot 

More Jesus (And A Lot Less Rock 

And Roll)’, the hauntingly chugging 

opener ‘Goddamn Holy Roll’ (a line 

from which is the album’s title), a 

ghostly, loping duet titled ‘They Say’ 

and the western swing-edged ‘The 

Future’s Here’. Not to mention a 

silvery take on The Davis Sisters’ ’53 

country hit ‘I Forgot More’, along with 

an ebullient run-through of Mac 

Davis’ ‘Hard To Be Humble’, with an 

appropriately swaggering lead vocal 

from the Lawyer. Golightly has really 

hit her stride with these Brokeoffs 

projects. 


THE HIGHER STATE 

The Higher State State/Kool Kat CD 

In their 

component 

personnel and as 

a band, The 

Higher State has 

been one of the 

British mainstays 

of ’60s based music since at least 

the early ’90s. This anthology 

collects together a range of their 

material recorded between 2007 

and ’12. It includes a variety of 

standalone singles, compilation 

tracks, EPs, live and studio 

recordings cut in their own Kentbased 

Sandgate Studios. They serve 

up rousing self-compositions like 

‘And In Time’ and covers of The West 

Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s 

‘Smell Of Incense’, The 13th Floor 

Elevators’ ‘I’ve Got Levitation’ and 

more. 

Whether covering or composing, 

they move authentically between LA 

folk-rock, fuzztone garage and SF 

pop-psych like consummate 

professionals. Their albums are full 

of well-crafted goodies as faux radio 

ad for their latest album Freakout At 

The Gallery is eager to attest. If 

you’ve not sampled their delights yet, 

this is a good primer. 


THE JON SPENCER BLUES 

EXPLOSION 

Meat And Bone Bronze Rat/Shove! CD 

Deviating little 

from a tried and 

tested formula 

that has largely 

provided JSBX 

with its 

trademark fuzz 

distorted blues punk sound for the 

last 20 years, Meat And Bone seems 

to have an even more stripped down, 

distorted lo-fi feel about it than its 

predecessors Damage (from eight 

years ago) and Plastic Fang from 

2002 (Jesus! Is it really that long 

ago?), if that’s possible. 

Spencer continues to deliver his 

vocals by means of yells and growled 

proclamations in that idiosyncratic 

way that only he can, but JSBX let 

their music do the talking too and 

Savage�Resurrection 

THE JIM JONES REVUE 

The Savage Heart PIAS/Punk Rock Blues 

CD 

Third album proper and eagerly 

anticipated follow-up to 2010’s 

Burning Your House Down. The 

stakes were always going to be high 

for The Jim Jones Revue to 

maintain the steamrollering 

momentum that they’ve built up 

over the last few years and to 

deliver the goods again. Big 

question is whether they can pull it 

off. 

At times The Savage Heart has a 

more earthy roots-rock feel than 

its predecessors, with echoes of a 

cappella, “Negro spirituals” and 

chain gang choruses – take ‘7 

Times Around The Sun’ and 

‘Chain Gang’, for example. There’s 

also a distinct swamp blues vibe 

about it at times, and they deliver 

more venom than a rattlesnake’s 

kiss on ‘In And Out Of Harm’s 

Way’: with its lyrics and voodoo 

rhythm you could almost be in 

N’awlins! 

They haven’t forsaken their 

trademark kick-ass high-energy 

Keeping up the momentum: The JJR 

rock ’n’ roll roots though and, on 

songs like ‘It’s All About Me’ and 

‘Never Let You Go’, they lay waste 

to everything before them like an 

unstoppable King Panzer leaving 

a trail of scorched earth in their 

wake. ‘Where Da Money Go’ – 

already a firm live favourite – 

takes a vitriolic swipe at our 

politicians and bankers, whilst 

the menacing and equally 

unnerving ‘Eagle Eye Ball’ is a 

cautionary indictment of 21st 

century 24-hour surveillance 

society. 

‘Midnight Oceans And The 

Savage Heart’ is a real turn up 

for the books. Although Jim 

Jones croons the vocals with 

apparent heartfelt tenderness, it 

appears to have a darker edge to 

it, coming across like Phil 

Phillips & The Twilights’ ‘Sea Of 

Love’ colliding head on with a 

twisted ‘Unchained Melody’ 

having been given a David Lynch 

soundtrack treatment – utterly 

sublime. 

Even with a noticeable change 

in direction on some numbers, 

The JJR never fail to surpass 

expectations and, rest assured, 

any concerns you may have had 

about what this new material is 

like will certainly be allayed – not 

that you should have doubted it 

anyway! 

The Jim Jones Revue remain 

the undisputed kings of rock ’n’ 

roll, and on this evidence I 

don’t think their crown is in 

fear of being knocked off 

anytime soon. 

Rich Deakin 

81

Meat And Bone really finds the band 

at the top of their game. It’s 

impossible to single out any one 

track for preferential treatment 

because, from the frenetic opening 

track ‘Black Mold’ to the swaggering 

closing instrumental number ‘Zimgar’, 

it’s all Grade-A Blues Explosion for 

sure. There’s no gristle here – just 

prime meat and bone. 

Rich Deakin 

THE MOONS 

Fables Of History Schnitzel CD 

I feel like I’ve been having an 

ambivalent on-off affair with The 

Moons for quite a while now. The 

mod trappings, Dad-rock affiliations 

and everyman appeal of their 2010 

debut Life On Earth only cemented 

these feelings even though, by rights, 

I should love them. So when recent 

single ‘Jennifer (Sits Alone)’ breezed 

into my life and proceeded to charm 

my pants off with its understated pop 

magic, I felt I’d finally made friends 

with The Moons. 

Second album Fables Of History 

leans heavily on the same ’60s 

moves – Who power chords, Tamla 

backbeats, Joe Meek squiggles and 

ladlefuls of Village Green 

Preservation Society-vintage 

Mellotron – but ramps up the 

songcraft and musicianship to new, 

often intoxicating levels. The fact that 

The Moons can save the album’s 

high points – the majestic, 

Lennonesque ‘Can You See Me’ and 

wobbly, bossa-tinged ‘Habit Of A 

Lifetime’ (“I’d rather stand outside 

under a bus stop with a bottle in my 

hand”) – ’til tracks nine and 10 

demonstrates a newfound maturity 

that’s converted me from a cynic into 

a fan. 

Andy Morten 

THE PHANTOM KEYS 

The Real Sounds Of Screaming Apple 

CD/LP 

Beginning life 

some years ago 

as a 

psychedelicallyinclined 

garage 

hybrid, with a 

tasty remake of 

The Velvet Illusions’ theme song 

serving as their debut 7”, here comes 

the first long-player from Spain’s The 

Phantom Keys. There’s been talk of 

them going more R&B lately; lead 

guitarist Roi Fontoira can certainly 

82 

NEW 

pull off the licks. A reason too for the 

recent departure of former Thanes 

bassist Mal Kergan was that perhaps 

R&B was crowding out other 

influences within the group. While the 

R&B emphasis is strong, they’ve also 

retained the folk-beat-punk and fuzzy 

garage angles that coloured their 

previous work. 

The Real Sounds Of has involved 

much sweat and also coaxing the 

best from vintage hand-me-down 

equipment, and the album grows on 

you with each spin. Among the 

highlights are a few Tell-Tale Heartsstyle 

R&Beat punkers, and the wellplaced 

‘Even If I Try’, ‘Evil Eye’ and 

‘My Last Mistake’ offer solid 

representation of their remit – as do 

Marcos ‘Marky’ Mascato’s 

impassioned lead vocals. He also 

designed the mod beat, period style 

jazzy ice blue cover design too. 

Lenny Helsing 

ANTHONY REYNOLDS 

A World Of Colin Wilson Rocket Girl 

CD 

Anthony 

Reynolds, who 

you might 

remember as the 

creative force 

behind genius 

’90s baroque pop 

classicists Jack, is a man who likes 

to get close to his heroes. On his 

superb solo album, British Ballads, 

from a few years back, he was joined 

by folk goddess Vashti Bunyan. He’s 

written a biography of Scott Walker 

and, on this slightly bizarre album, he 

collaborates with cult author and 

existential mystic Colin Wilson. 

It’s essentially Michael Nymanesque 

musical doodles with the spoken 

words of Wilson, recorded at various 

points over the last few years, eerily 

integrated into the mix. Things liven up 

later on with the introduction of beats, 

a female backing vocal and jazzy 

undertones on ‘The Colour And Light 

Around Me’ that are reminiscent of the 

wonderful The Real Tuesday Weld. After 

one play you are intrigued – give it a 

few listens and you’ll be addicted. 

Ashley Norris 

THE ROOKIES 

Things Ever Said Other Eyes LP 

This is only the 

second long-play 

outing from 

Piacenza, Italy’s 

endearing garage 

folk-rock 

scenesters The 

Rookies – 2005’s fine Out Of Fashion 

on Teen Sound being the first. Both 

sets are housed in psych-nouveau 

style cover designs. At their best, the 

songs build on a succession of 

dynamic pathways where the 

distinctive lead vocals of Giovanni 

Orlandi forms the central framework 

from where the group’s edgy, yet 

often quite fragile melodies cascade 

down. This is solidified by Simone 

Modicamore’s heavy lead guitar, and 

lyrics that often speak of regret, lost 

love, and a restless spirit that – like 

the seasons – yearn for change. 

To me, the likes of ‘Thinking About 

The Past’ and the engaging title track 

opener have something of an 

Outsiders (Dutch ’60s legends) feel, 

while ‘Just Promises’ and ‘Another 

Rainy Morning’ recall the pre-heavy 

bloomings of another Italian group, 

The Sick Rose. 

Lenny Helsing 

TODD RUNDGREN 

Todd Retroworld CD 

Alongside the 

landmarks of A 

Wizard, A True 

Star and Utopia’s 

self-titled debut, 

the eccentric 

musical tour de 

force that was 1974’s Todd remains a 

towering creative peak of the 

Rundgren discography. This live 

CD/DVD combo recorded and shot on 

a six date US tour in 2010 captures 

Mr T as the master of all he surveys, 

as he navigates the self-transforming 

roller coaster ride in the company of a 

band that includes long-serving 

Utopia bassist Kasim Sultan and 

Tubes drummer Prairie Prince. 

With the album performed in its 

entirety and in sequence, the effect is 

akin to finding yourself lost in a 

dreamlike odyssey through the mind 

of Todd and, along the way, 

encountering a baffling range of 

styles, including ragtime, vaudeville, 

pop, experimental electronica, 

psychedelia and hard-rock as is 

demonstrated by the stylistic chasms 

separating ‘An Elpee’s Worth Of 

Toons’ from ‘The Last Ride’, ‘A Dream 

Goes On Forever’ from ‘Heavy Metal 

Kids’ and ‘No 1 Lowest Common 

Denominator’ from ‘Useless Begging’. 

Grahame Bent 

THE SETTING SON 

Before I Eat My Eyes & Ears Bad Afro 

CD 

Having started as 

something of a 

solo project for 

maverick Dane 

Sebastien T W 

Kristiansen, who 

was soon taken 

under the modest wing of Baby 

Woodrose leader Lorenzo Woodrose, 

The Setting Son have evolved into a 

fully fledged unit for their third album. 

Before I Eat My Eyes & Ears, 

however, is nowhere as psychotic and 

paranoid as it sounds – neither is it 

quite as aligned to the garage sound 

and ethos of the guiding light of Baby 

Woodrose (even if they do share the 

odd member). 

‘Eat My Fear’ with it’s 

Cramps/Jesus & Mary Chain 

drumming, tinny Farfisa and boy/girl 

vocals indeed recalls the backcombed 

garage pop of that other 

Danish act, The Ravonettes, as does 

much of the record. That Woodrose 

chorus is clear on ‘Above The Rest’ 

and ‘Terrible Town’, but ‘Are You The 

One’ recalls C86 indie-pop as much 

as garage-rock. ‘Death Breath’ even 

encroaches up on that post-Flaming 

Lips wide-eyed psych-pop sound that 

is done so well by Tame Impala. Yet 

these elements, when out of the 

synch with the formula, just don’t fit 

well. ‘Butterface’, with its B52s and 

Rezillos bubblegum-surf-garage 

phrasing, is the sound of The Setting 

Son. Less diversity needed. 


SPIDERS 

Flashpoint Crusher CD/LP 

When has an 

album cover of a 

girl on a chopper 

surrounded by 

moody long hairs 

ever been a bad 

thing? And when 

was the last time Shindig! covered a 

new act featuring an attractive 

female singer who could be the next 

role model for young girls, saving 

them from aspirations towards 

appearing on The X Factor? 

In an ideal world Spiders have 

success written all over them. From the 

lineage of hard rockin’ Swedes that 

make up the band (see feature this 

issue) to the focal point of Ann-Sofie 

Hoyles, they’re high on riffage and 

energy but, most importantly, not too 

shabby with memorable tunes either. 

Whether made yesterday or today, 

Flashpoint packs an almighty punch. 

It’s a superb album that does what it 

sets out to in under 30 minutes and 

the proof is in the pudding. 


STEALING SHEEP 

Into The Diamond Sun Heavenly CD 

The debut album 

of three 

Liverpudlians, Into 

The Diamond Sun 

is a real treat. It’s 

a sound for these 

summer dregs; it 

has instant handclapping froth, but 

also enough complexity and originality 

to improve with repeated listens. 

It is peppered with catchy 

moments. ‘Shut Eye’ is a bubbly pop 

tune, recalling Hannah Peel and PJ 

Harvey’s cheerier shots, while ‘White 

Lies’ is even a little bit Lily Allen. 

There’s a nice Paisley Underground 

tinge to a few tracks, too. However, 

Into The Diamond Sun is also assured 

enough to pull off a difficult multipart 

number: the closer, ‘Bear Tracks’. It is 

a big ambitious track, of which 

Joanna Newsom would be proud, but 

hasn’t a sniff of pretension to it. That 

is a difficult thing to achieve, and a 

satisfying thing to hear. 

In a fair world, Stealing Sheep 

would be storming the charts. Theirs 

is a commercial sound, and a very 

good one. 

Jeanette Leech

JASON STEEL 

The Weight Of Care Rif Mountain CD/LP 

Sometime Owl 

Service member 

and full-time 

introspective 

troubadour Jason 

Steel impressed 

with his previous 

two releases, Fire Begot Ash and Baby, 

Wolves Abound. With The Weight Of 

Care he takes the persona of a difficult, 

overwrought young man to ever-further 

levels – and succeeds on each one. 

The key to this album’s pleasure – 

if you can call listening to an album 

as miserable as this “pleasure” – 

comes with its balance. Steel’s guitar 

and soft voice are both perfect 

counterweights to his melodramatic 

lyrics. The emotion isn’t lost; far from 

it. Performed completely without 

histrionics, he brings a complicated 

tautness to these sad words. In 

places, Steel recalls the folk 

storytelling of Alasdair Roberts – 

notably on ‘I Lost My North’ – while 

elsewhere he’s rather Stone Breathish, 

with the despondent banjo of 

‘The Feast’. Yet The Weight Of Care 

never sounds mannered or derivative. 

Rich in imagery of dark nights and 

darker feelings, The Weight Of Care is 

an album to curl up with. And maybe 

have a little cry to. 

Jeanette Leech 

These Spiders bite! 

KEN STRINGFELLOW 

Danzig In The Moonlight Lojinx CD 

Diehard Posies 

fans must have 

been dismayed 

when the Seattle 

powerpop 

stalwarts’ flawless 

2010 album 

Blood/Candy registered typically 

weedy sales. Detractors tend to 

criticise their “fussy” attention to 

detail as though adventurousness 

and thoughtful production were dirty 

words. Anyone looking for simplistic, 

heads-down rock should give Ken 

Stringfellow’s fourth solo album a 

miss, because it displays a mindboggling 

range of styles and moods, 

albeit with the potential to reward 

patient listeners in different ways on 

each listen. 

Stringfellow’s previous solo 

excursions haven’t been quite as 

extreme – Danzig is undeniably 

dense, dark and difficult in parts, but 

beautifully soulful and accessible in 

others. So if something as haunting 

as the stripped down string-backed 

‘Odorless, Colorless, Tasteless’ 

doesn’t grab you, try the bouncy 

country-rocker ‘You’re The Gold’ or 

sweet, seductive ‘Pray’ (imagining a 

collaboration between an on-form 

Shuggie Otis and Prince!) 

Chris Twomey 

WHISPERING PINES 

Whispering Pines 

www.inthewhisperingpines.com 

Fans of Cosmic 

American Music 

via the LA axis 

of Chris 

Robinson 

Brotherhood 

and/or 

Beachwood Sparks will delight in 

this second self-titled album from 

the admittedly Echo Park, not 

Laurel Canyon-based Whispering 

Pines, a five-piece straight outta 

the early ’70s. Country-rock Byrds 

meets The Band (obviously, get the 

name); The Allman Brothers rub 

shoulders with Steven Stills’ 

Manassas and all rejoice in great 

beardage and have such a groovy 

and authentic time that it’s a 

miracle they haven’t somehow all 

managed to have it off with Joni 

Mitchell at some point. 

And with four singer-songwriters in 

the band things remain varied in the 

most pleasant of ways. Highlights for 

me include the great ‘Wolfmoon’ with 

its beautiful psychedelic-period Black 

Crowes distorted organ flowing into 

the guitar solo, and the poppy ‘One 

More Second Chance’, which recalls 

The Lovin’ Spoonful and their ’60s LA 

ilk. 

Luke Smyth 

WITCHCRAFT 

Legend Nuclear Blast CD/LP 

Witchcraft’s 

debut album 

would easily 

make my top 

five of the last 

decade. It 

weaved what 

was nominally described as doom 

metal into something more lyrical 

and alluring than the standard 

scorched earth slow-motion riffing 

that has come to symbolise the 

genre. 

This new album presents a 

quandary, however. Their first was 

recorded in a basement and their 

subsequent two albums retained the 

same analogue charm. This album 

has a much cleaner, commercial 

production sound, which removes a 

lot of their earlier appeal. Added to 

this, the vocals sound occasionally 

overwrought. Thankfully the songs are 

too good to let these factors totally 

ruin the album – ‘Deconstruction’ and 

‘White Light Suicide’ show the band 

can still mix it with the best of 

modern riff-throwers and the final two 

tracks let the band stretch out and 

indulge their prog influences to great 

effect. You might want to check out a 

preview online before you buy it 

though. 

Austin Matthews

Y NIWL 

4 Aderyn Papur CD/LP 

Has it been two years since we last 

sang the praises of these Welsh 

instrumental hodads? Hard to believe 

given it feels like the world has been 

bopping along to Y Niwl since the 

summer of 1961. Hailing from North 

Wales, they’ve been serving recent 

years as Gruff Rhys’ backing band and 

honing their rocky coastal sound, 

which, here on 4, grants us an 

extended busman’s holiday from where 

2010’s Y Niwl last dropped us off. 

With so much traditional ’60s 

sounding British organ and reverbed 

guitar it’s difficult not to draw 

comparisons to the likes of The 

Shadows on ‘Dauddegun’ or The 

Tornadoes’ swirling Meek-like magic 

(‘Dauddegpump’). Contrary to popular 

opinion, Welsh music has had previous 

flings with surf in the past (Y 

Castaways’ 1981 single, ‘Tawel Fy 

Firaeth’) but few groups it seems, 

Welsh or otherwise have flung 

themselves at it as brilliantly as Y Niwl. 

Richard S Jones 

84 

NEW 45s 

Homies: Y Niwl 

THE ZOMBIES FEATURING 

COLIN BLUNSTONE & ROD 

ARGENT 

Live In Concert At Metropolis 

Studios, London Salvo CD/DVD 

Standing next to 

Paul Weller 

during one of 

March 2008’s 

Odessey & 

Oracle gigs at 

Shepherds Bush 

Empire, it struck me how odd The 

Zombies’ lives had become. Here 

they were, 40 years after the 

release of their belatedly 

discovered masterpiece, enjoying 

the adulation of a savvy, musically 

literate London audience. Yet on 

another evening, they might be 

playing at a seaside ’60s cabaret 

show, where, ‘Time Of The Season’ 

aside, anything off Odessey & 

Oracle would doubtless draw blank 

stares. 

This excellent CD and DVD 

package, recorded live before a 

small, specially invited audience in 

’11, admirably balances these 

disparate Zombie worlds. Featuring 

the touring version of the band 

(Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent, 

alongside bassist Jim Rodford, his 

son Steve on drums and guitarist 

Tom Toomey), the set features six 

Odessey songs (including the 

magnificent ‘Care Of Cell 44’) plus 

Zombies and Argent hits and solo 

favourites such as Blunstone’s 

sublime 1972 classic ‘I Don’t 

Believe In Miracles’. 

Chris Twomey 

BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS 

From The Morning/Fuga No 2 

Fruits de Mer 

Beautify Junkyards are a Portuguese 

collective who infuse their distinctive 

brand of folktronica with a luxuriant, 

tropical sheen, imbuing their songs 

(sometimes literally) with the sounds 

of birds, bountiful gardens and damp, 

glistening emerald forests. On this 7”, 

they tackle the songs of Nick Drake 

and Os Mutantes – strange 

bedfellows admittedly – but they 

approach both with intelligence, 

integrity and originality. 

Even Drake fans (often as 

possessive about their hero’s music 

as they are obsessive), will find little 

complaint with their cover of ‘From 

The Morning’. They bring an eerily 

uplifting beauty to the song, gently 

easing Drake’s rather downcast 

dream reveries to one side and 

finding something celebratory within 

the warp and weft of the song. ‘Fuga 

No 2’ glows and shimmers beautifully 

– a slice of delicate psychedelic 

Tropicalia full of gentle acoustic 

picking, luscious female vocals and 

subtle electronic accents, building to 

a lush, expansive chorus. 

Neil Hussey 

THE BLIMP 

Not Beer Violet Times 12” EP 

Eugene, Oregonbased 

band The 

Blimp transmits a 

righteous and 

raucous barrage 

of proto-punkian 

stew bubbling 

from the ceaseless well of mid-70s 

Ohio (Styrenes, Mirrors, Electric 

Eels) all over this one-sided footlong. 

Fed on a steady diet of 

’60s/70s avant-rock skronk and 

pre-punk noise makers, they bring a 

sound more kin than derivative. The 

Blimp aptly channel the artsy, 

confrontational feel of pre-codified 

punk on this four-song platter in a 

collage of guitars screeching with 

equal dissonance and jazzy 

melodicism – vocals one part 

monotone recitation, one part 

performance art shriek; and 

percussive free jazz-style piano 

shards. Yet amidst all the 

captivating energy and mutated 

mania lies a band with some real 

pop know-how. 

As sure as red blood boils through 

me, I never thought I’d heartily dig 

something called ‘I Like Good Music 

With Boobs In My Face’ (which on 

the insert is referenced as “Radio 

Hit”), but you’ve got me soaring 

through the wild blue with ya boys. 

Jeremy Cargill 

JACK ELLISTER 

The Man With The 

Biochopper/Citadel Fruits de Mer 

As Shindig! readers will know, there 

are those so taken with the sounds 

and spirit of the 

’60s that they 

come across as 

pointless 

pasticheurs, 

utterly beholden 

to a long-gone 

era. Jack Ellister, formerly of Angina 

Pectoris and Yordan Orchestra, is not 

one of those people. He draws 

heavily on ’60s sounds and musical 

iconography, yet conjures an end 

product that is fresh, contemporary 

and strikingly original. 

‘The Man With The Biochopper’ 

has a recurring guitar theme that’s 

somehow redolent of some halfforgotten 

vintage TV theme – 

throbbing, rubbery bass, female 

vocals that whisper sexily and coo 

girlishly, and a nice, dirty-sounding 

guitar solo. On the flip is a cover of 

the Stones’ ‘Citadel’, which 

manages to be both lysergically 

trippy, yet pin-sharp and focused 

too, in a mind-bendingly beautiful 

arrangement featuring tumbling 

drums, reverbed vocals, maracas, 

treated piano and wah-wah guitars. 

One of the best covers you’ll hear 

all year. 

Neil Hussey 

HORACE 

Waiting For The Moon Shagrat EP 

Nigel Cross’s 

Shagrat Records 

has quietly 

mined a rich 

seam of 

unreleased early 

’70s 

underground music and this latest 

release, containing three tracks 

recorded by the ephemeral Horace, 

doesn’t signify any drop in quality. 

Horace existed just long enough to 

record the dazzling demos on this 

stunningly packaged 33 RPM 

gatefold EP in 1971. Ric Parnell 

(drums, vocals) had been involved 

with Atomic Rooster and Horse and, 

together with his sparring partner 

Jim Mercer (bass), rubbed shoulders 

with the likes of Rare Bird, Cressida 

and other bands that circulated in 

the golden age of UK prog. 

‘Waiting For The Moon’, ‘See The 

Sun’ and ‘Mongrel/Polyop’ feature 

the electric violin of Mike Piggot and 

piano and guitar work of Andy ‘Ced’ 

Curtis. The result sounds like the 

lost bridge between David Crosby’s 

If I Could Only Remember My Name 

and Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats. 

Richard Allen

LES BOF! 

Elle Me Rend Fou/Train De Vie 

Originaux 7” 

Ultra modern 

French-sung 

garage beat at its 

best here from 

Edinburgh’s beat 

ravers Les Bof. 

Topside sees the 

boys make a delightfully vibrant stab 

at The Easybeats’ early days winner 

‘She’s So Fine’. Flip for a marvellous 

episode of harp-wailin’ teen punk on 

their thriving update of The Johnny 

Burnette Trio/Yardbirds/Scotty McKay 

Quintet workhorse ‘The Train Kept A- 

Rollin’’ (‘Train De Vie’) where, 

amongst the combustible pistons, 

bells and whistles some superdexterous 

fuzz rumblings are heard 

emanating from Angus McPake’s lead 

guitar amp. He is also the one 

“responsable” for the production of 

these bold creations from his 

exceptional Ravencraig studio lair. 

If you’ve not yet switched on to 

the masterful tones of Les Bof! – 

either on stage where they are a total 

wow, or on phonograph – now is the 

optimum time to do so as they are 

truly at the top of their game. 

Excitement personified! Warning: 

pressing fault has labels reversed. 

Lenny Helsing 

NECROS 

Ambionic Sound: Original 1980 

Demo Tape Alona’s Dream EP 

Quite a wild 

rumpus being 

kicked up by this 

bunch of, at the 

time, US 

unknowns. 

Captured in 

1980, these five lo-fidelity, but 

mighty big fuzz punk sizzlers, really 

get to the very heart, spirit and 

adventure of the times. Primitively 

brash executions, loaded with 

extremely high degrees of snot-caked 

punk naiveté and enthusiasm. The 

titles alone say it all: ‘I Hate My 

School’, ‘Police Brutality’, ‘Race Riot’. 

Back then Ohio’s Necros were just 

three high school kids, before making 

a name as hardcore heroes after 

tours with The Misfits, Black Flag and 

Circle Jerks, and records on the 

Touch & Go label. Now, more than 

three decades later, these early 

demo tapes are available for the first 

time on vinyl, courtesy of Chicago’s 

crucial resurrectionist label Alona’s 

Dream. For those with a mind for 

relentless, dirty sounding teenage 

punk noise. 

Lenny Helsing 

THE OLIVERS 

Beaker Street/I Saw What You 

Did Break-A-Way 

Forming in 1963 as The Serfmen, by 

’65, The British Invasion had 

supplanted surf and a more English 

name was required. So they named 

themselves after Oliver Twist! Cut at 

86 

45s 

CAP Studios and originally issued on 

the local Phalanx 

label, the band’s 

double headed 

classic garage 

single has been 

compiled at least 

seven times on 

garage collections since the early 

’80s and now finally gets a long 

awaited stand-alone 45 reissue. 

The topside is a pounding, 

screaming fuzz-fest in the very best 

garage tradition. The flip is not far 

behind in strength but has a stronger 

R&B vibe, though pounds just as 

hard. Picked up by the local WGL 

and the 50,000 watt WOWO radio 

stations, their manager persuaded 

RCA to pick up the record and 

distribution nationally. This is a great 

addition for any jukebox, DJ set or 

just your own wig-out party. 


THE PRETTY THINGS 

SF Sorrow Live In London Fruits de 

Mer EP 

Limited edition vinyl EP taken from a 

recording of the group’s Christmas 

2010 concert at London’s 100 Club. 

Ageless sounding renditions of three 

magical cuts, originally created for 

their astounding late 1968 landmark 

psychedelic opus are on offer, fired 

up and fizzing with a tangible bite, 

and an energy that groups with half 

the collective age of the Pretties 

couldn’t muster. 

There’s the glorious title track, ‘SF 

Sorrow Is Born’, the unforgettably 

poetic ‘She Says Good Morning’ 

(“threading through a web of gas the 

rain precedes the storm”) and the 

decidedly sinister tones of the deadly 

‘Baron Saturday’. All are gripping 

performances highlighted by keening 

electric runs, authoritative vocals and 

propulsive rhythmic surges that make 

you sit bolt upright and take notice. 

As a scintillating extra, purchasers 

receive a longtime fans’ favourite in 

the form of a superb cover of The 

Byrds’ hippie-beat anthem 

‘Renaissance Fair’, cut at a Dutch gig 

sometime in ’69. Phil May’s original 

Sorrow-based cover artwork 

completes the deal. Perfect! 

Lenny Helsing 

SILVER APPLES 

The Edge Of Wonder/Fractal 

Flow Enraptured 

Silver Apples emerged from New 

York’s East Village in 1967, vocalist 

Simeon Coxe III 

constructing a 

tower of 

oscillators from 

junked 

equipment, 

singing over 

sparse, pulsing melodies and Danny 

Taylor’s drums on two groundbreaking 

late ’60s albums. The duo 

split amidst record label problems, 

leaving third album The Garden 

unreleased but a growing legend. 

They reformed in ’96, but Simeon 

broke his neck in a ’99 car crash, 

fighting to recover and start touring 

in 2007. (Sadly Danny died the 

previous year.) 

These startling new songs are 

drawn from live recordings Simeon 

hasn’t even managed to take in the 

studio yet, but the crowd responses 

to the cosmic shimmer bathing ‘The 

Edge Of Wonder’ and sci-fi 

dronescape of 1996’s ‘Fractal Flow’ 

show why it’s been catapulted out 

now (on limited red wax). 

The most magical slice of pure 

psych spirit you’ll hear all year… and 

next up is the long-lost third album. 

Kris Needs 

SPIDERS 

Weekend Nights/Lies Crusher 

On ‘Weekend 

Nights’, Spiders 

come on like 

Cherie Currie 

fronting The 

Stooges in 

postulating the 

weekend not as relaxing downtime, but 

as life-threatening pitched battle 

between human and liver. “DANGER!” 

hollers vocalist Ann-Sofie Hoyles and 

immediately you want her to be your 

guide on whatever demented nocturnal 

activities the band are undertaking in 

their hometown of Gothenburg. 

Geno and the boys caught live and in their prime 

Sounding like a garage band 

making the transition into hard-rock, 

Spiders retain the raw energy of punk 

though cross-bred with the sort of 

devilish licks you find in the faster 

material of early Zeppelin or Purple 

MK2. This is an act that has little 

truck with the notion of 15-minute 

jazz odysseys, preferring to get in and 

out in under three minutes and leave 

you breathless for more. 

A great entrée to their blistering 

debut album Flash Point – check it 

out forthwith. 


GENO WASHINGTON & THE 

RAM JAM BAND 

Holdin’ On With Acid Jazz EP 

“Back in ’68 in a 

hot, sweaty club” 

(or a studio in 

this case), a later 

line-up of Geno 

Washington & 

The Ram Jam 

Band (now augmented by Colin 

Davey and Dave Greenslade from 

Chris Farlowe’s Thunderbirds and 

Dave Tedstone from Jimmy James’ 

Vagabonds) recorded four numbers 

that have recently been discovered 

on ¼-inch tape and have never 

previously seen the light of day. 

Thankfully, this is all about to 

change as Acid Jazz has released 

them as a vinyl EP and download as 

part of their ongoing Rare Mod 

series. 

Featuring ‘Holdin’ On (With Both 

Hands)’, ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, a 

reworking of ‘Michael The Lover’ and 

‘Hi Heel Sneakers’, this is for those 

of you who like your soul delivered 

with lashings of Hammond and 

horns and with plenty of pace (which 

I certainly do). A seriously good 

release from Geno, who you can still 

catch live. 

Paul Hooper-Keeley

BOB DYLAN AND THE BAND 

Down In The Flood Chrome Dreams 

For a singular 

collective of 

musicians 

originally content 

to work in the 

shadow cast by 

their friend and 

mentor Bob 

Dylan, for whom 

they provided 

peerless support during key periods 

during the ’60s and ’70s, this DVD is 

a more than welcome insight into the 

history, evolution and the internal 

workings of a band that was 

ultimately to become way more than 

merely Dylan’s back-up. From their 

beginnings and apprenticeship as 

Ronnie Hawkins’ backing band The 

Hawks, Down In The Flood is part 

critical appraisal, part guided tour of 

the life and times of The Band from 

their earliest days under the 

leadership of Levon Helm to their 

farewell concerts filmed by Martin 

Scorsese and released as The Last 

Waltz in 1978. In between, all the 

significant landmarks of The Band’s 

career are touched upon, from being 

recruited by Dylan as his backing 

band for the history-making ’66 world 

tour, their relocation to Woodstock 

and the beginning of the celebrated 

Basement Tapes era through to their 

emergence as an act in their own 

right with the release of Music From 

Big Pink and its hugely successful 

follow-up The Band, before reuniting 

with Dylan for his ’74 world tour. 

Built around interviews with 

Ronnie Hawkins, ’66 tour drummer 

Mickey Jones, Garth Hudson, 

producer John Simon, Nashville 

session man Charlie McCoy, archivist 

Sid Griffin, and biographer Barney 

Hoskyns and seasoned with live and 

archive footage aplenty, Down In The 

Flood is a welcome and long overdue 

appraisal. 

Grahame Bent 

Pull My Daisy Steidl DVD/book 

Directed by 

photographer and 

underground 

filmmaker Robert 

Frank (The 

Americans, 

Cocksucker 

Blues) and based 

on a short story 

by Jack Kerouac, 

Pull My Daisy represents the first 

time the authentic beat philosophy 

and manifesto were successfully 

captured on celluloid. Shot on 16mm 

black and white stock over a fourmonth 

period from January to April 

1959 in the Manhattan loft of artist 

Alfred Leslie, the film is narrated by 

Jack Kerouac and features a cast of 

beat luminaries, including Allen 

Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter 

Orlovsky, Larry Rivers and Mooney 

Peebles. Despite its underground 

credentials, it premiered at New 

88 

DVDs BOOKS 

York’s New Yorker Theater on 88th St 

and Broadway, and survives as both 

part curio and part vivid document of 

its time and the burgeoning 

subculture of the beats which 

spawned it. 

Clocking in at a mere 28 minutes, 

the importance of Pull My Daisy as 

both an example of American 

underground cinema at the close of 

the ’50s and as an authentic 

cinematic expression of the beat 

lifestyle and mind set in action can’t 

be underestimated. As an artefact in 

its own right, this deluxe box set has 

been impressively assembled in true 

no expense spared Steidl style, with 

both NTSC and PAL versions of the 

film, Kerouac’s original short story, 

complete cast and crew details, a 

’61 introduction to the film by Jerry 

Tollmer, the lyrics to the film’s 

Kerouac/Ginsberg-composed title 

song and a booklet of previously 

unpublished atmospherically grainy 

on-set photos by John Cohen. 

Grahame Bent 

Stonehenge 1984: A Midsummer 

Night Rock Show Floating World DVD/CD 

According to the 

extensive liner 

notes by film 

director Al 

Stokes, it’s a 

wonder that this 

film ever saw the 

light of day at all given some of the 

obstacles he had to overcome at all 

stages of the production process – 

what with Hell’s Angels, distrustful 

members of the “Peace Convoy”, 

financial constraints and duplicitous 

co-producers amongst other things. 

Kicking off with the only song on 

here by Roy Harper, the mis-titled 

‘Rock ’n’ Roll Man’, much of 

Stonehenge 1984 is interspersed with 

photographic stills of the event and 

some occasional, but rather 

rudimentary, attempts at animation. 

Nik Turner, who had briefly returned 

to the Hawkwind fold, pops up as an 

interviewee, as does Keith Bailey from 

Here & Now, to add contemporary 

gravitas to proceedings. Fronted by 

the aforementioned Turner in typically 

gonzoid mode, Hawkwind numbers 

include ‘Ghost Dance’, ‘Social 

Alliance’ and a version of Inner City 

Unit’s ‘Watching The Grass Grow’. It’s 

also a real treat to see the three Here 

& Now songs, ‘Secrets’, ‘Theatre’ and 

‘Glad You Made It’ – it’s a shame 

then that the sound quality lets the 

film footage down at times. I’ve never 

gone a bundle on The Enid, but in 

hindsight their particular brand of 

theatrical prog bombast is quite 

endearing, if only out of a sense of 

nostalgia. 

Although this DVD and CD 

package reveals just a glimpse of 

four of the better known acts, it still 

provides an interesting snapshot of 

the last ever Stonehenge People’s 

Free Festival proper. 

Rich Deakin 

ECCENTRIC MAN: A 

BIOGRAPHY & 

DISCOGRAPHY OF TONY 

(TS) MCPHEE 

Paul Freestone Incompetent Publishing 

“Paul knows more 

about me and The 

Groundhogs than 

I do” confesses 

Tony McPhee in 

his foreword to 

Paul Freestone’s 

generously 

proportioned 

biography of the man and his music. 

Comprehensive, exhaustive, definitive, 

all these adjectives could accurately 

describe the massive undertaking 

that Paul Freestone’s labour of love 

represents. Self-published and some 

eight years in the writing, editing and 

production, Eccentric Man actually 

began life as a student publishing 

project of 5,000 words in 1979 with 

the text being expanded over the 

years until it eventually reached the 

weighty dimensions of today’s 

finished article, which numbers some 

470 pages. 

Painstakingly researched and 

encyclopaedic in its appetite for 

detail, Eccentric Man is testament to 

the depth of the author’s fascination 

with Tony McPhee dating from when 

he first saw The Groundhogs on BBC2 

in May ’70. Structured 

chronologically, the book documents 

Tony’s career from his earliest gigs as 

a member of The Seneschals in ’61, 

via John Lee’s Groundhogs, The John 

Dummer Blues Band, The 

Groundhogs, Tony McPhee’s 

Terraplane, Tony McPhee’s Turbo and 

The Tony McPhee Band, with frequent 

references to contemporary coverage 

of The Groundhogs et al in the pages 

of the UK music press. 

Additionally, other chapters deal 

with McPhee the songwriter and 

vegetarian, while others are devoted 

to his guitars, a directory of radio and 

TV broadcasts, a Groundhogs family 

tree and, to round things off, an 

extensive discography, gigography 

and bibliography. In his introduction 

Paul Freestone writes that he hopes 

his book will do Tony McPhee justice 

– it does way more than that! 

Grahame Bent 

MUSHROOMS AND 

MOONBOOTS 

Garry ‘Moonboot’ Masters 

Create Space 

So where were 

you during Live 

Aid? I was 

watching a charity 

gig by The Magic 

Mushroom Band 

at The Nag’s Head 

in High Wycombe. 

Those were the 

days. You could 

see a band with a 

lightshow on any given weekend, 

within stumbling distance of your 

home. Now, over 25 years later, Garry 

Masters, leader of the space-psych 

Magic Mushroom Band, has 

published his memoirs. The perfect 

companion to the recent Alice In 

Wonderland book, it’s a very 

personal journey tracing Garry’s life 

from a well spent youth in ’70s 

Ladbroke Grove through to the days 

of The Crypt, Alice In Wonderland 

and the heart of the ’80s UK 

psychedelic underground. 

The Magic Mushroom Band 

inherited the ’60s/70s psychedelic 

torch, lighting up UK venues with 

their unique brand of mind-expanding 

music, exemplified on the superb 

and yet to be reissued Eyes Of The 

Angel (1989) and The Dukes Of 

Stratosphear-influenced Process Of 

Illumination (’90). Documenting the 

scene’s details such as the recording 

of the now rare Evil Edna’s Horror 

Toilet cassette, the book contains 

numerous and priceless historical 

vignettes. 

Early adopters of a trance hybrid 

sound, The MMB also gave birth to 

Astralasia, who later went on to some 

success under the guidance of 

drummer Swordfish. Detailing the ups 

and downs of the colourful ’80s 

underground with other half Kim Of 

Oz in tow, Garry’s tale is both 

amusing and inspiring, proving that 

to survive in the ’80s music scene 

you didn’t need a stupid haircut and 

a review in NME. Bom Shankar! 

Richard Allen 

THE ROLLING STONES 

COMPLETE RECORDING 

SESSIONS 1962-2012: 50TH 

ANNIVERSARY EDITION 

Martin Elliott Cherry Red Books 

With the 50th 

anniversary of the 

Stones’ first gig 

on July 12th 

1962 (albeit 

under the 

embryonic guise 

of Little Boy Blue 

& The Blue Boys) 

having just 

passed, the publication of this 

monumental work couldn’t have been 

better timed. In setting out to 

compile such a wide-reaching 

volume, author Martin Elliott set 

himself something of a Herculean 

task in respect to the amount of 

research and cross-referencing 

involved in bringing such an 

exhaustive project to life. Sporting a 

foreword from Chris Kimsey – 

variously tape operator, recording 

engineer and co-producer during his 

25-year association with the Stones 

–The Complete Recording Sessions is 

way more than a standard 

discography; it’s a comprehensive 

directory of all Stones recordings 

released on a range of formats from 

movies to bootlegs to downloads, 

and covers the band’s earliest days 

up to July of this year. 

More than anything, the book 

documents the ever escalating scale

of the Stones’ ambitions and their 

scale of operations from the 

landmark 45 and album releases of 

the ’60s and early ’70s, through key 

events, including the ’69 US tour and 

the epic Exile On Main Street tour 

(which effectively laid the 

foundations and set the pattern for 

all future tours), culminating in the 

trans-global mega-productions that 

have characterised the reality of the 

Stones on the road from the ’90s 

and beyond. 

As such, Martin Elliott’s 

encyclopaedic undertaking will be an 

essential addition to the reference 

libraries of all Stones collectors and 

completists. 

Grahame Bent 

SATURDAY’S KIDS: THE 

1980S BRITISH MOD 

REVIVAL 

Darren Russell Foruli Codex 

Another month 

and another modrelated 

book hits 

the shelves. My 

bookshelf is in 

danger of looking 

sharper than the 

contents of my wardrobe, as a recent 

rush of mod literature appears to be 

coming out faster than our Bradley 

Wiggins freewheeling down the 

Champs-Élysées. 

Saturday’s Kids is largely a photo 

essay that lovingly documents the 

early ’80s mod scene in London. The 

then-fledgling photographer Darren 

Russell was inspired by Richard 

Barnes’ definitive book on the 

original ’60s scene, Mods! He was a 

fan himself, so he knew where to 

look and who to snap. We are 

thankful he had the foresight to 

capture the faces and their choice 

threads of the second revival era, 

unwittingly creating what will become 

a style bible for generations to come. 

All the ingredients are here: the way 

to dress, the way to ride, how to 

dance and the importance of good 

haircut. Just add music. The stunning 

photography transcends the subject 

matter, and anyone with a passing 

interest in photojournalism will find 

much to saviour in these grainy black 

and white images. 

Interspersed with a smattering of 

short flashback pieces by some of 

the faces who made up the scene, 

it’s the photos that the phrase “a 

picture paints a thousand words” 

seems especially coined for. The final 

section of the book features some 

rare and tasty images of the popular 

mod bands of the day, including 

Makin’ Time, The Aardvarks, The 

Phrogs, The James Taylor Quartet and 

the modfather himself, Paul Weller. 

Paul Ritchie 

STICKING IT TO THE MAN: 

POP, PROTEST AND BLACK 

FICTION OF THE 

COUNTERCULTURE 1964-75 

Iain McIntyre The Leda Tape Organisation 

At 80 sub-A4 pages long, this may 

not exactly scream “coffee table 

book”. But that won’t stop Sticking It 

To The Man from inhabiting a very 

special place in the reference library 

chez Morten. We published a piece on 

pulp fiction novels by the author in 

these very pages in 2011 but here’s 

the definite article: 130 book covers 

reproduced in all their garish, titillating 

glory, each accompanied by an 

overview, the length (and gravity) of 

which is based on whether “something 

about it piqued my interest”. 

The section titles spell out the 

content perfectly: ‘Power To The 

People!’, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’, ‘Better Living 

Through Chemistry’, ‘Freakspolitation’, 

‘Ghetto Blues’, ‘Parents Just Don’t 

Understand’, ‘Hairy Bikers’. This is a 

largely unheralded document of 

youth, rebellion and the 

counterculture between the mid-60s 

and mid-70s writ large in the pages 

of dime store paperbacks – 

sometimes with insight, credibility 

and to shocking effect, but more 

often than not by past-it hacks who 

missed the point entirely. 

It’s those extremes that provide 

the greatest thrills here. On the one 

hand you have Panic In Needle Park, 

written seven years before the Al 

Pacino movie adaptation and based 

on first-hand observations of junkie 

culture during the ’64 New York 

heroin shortage – harrowing, 

unflinching stuff. On the other there’s 

Cute And Deadly Surf Twins, written 

in 1970 and based on, well, surfing 

and a “swinging topless discotheque” 

– the whole thing bashed out without 

recourse to narrative structure, fact 

checking or the English language. The 

fact that it was also 10 years out of 

date seems irrelevant. 

Andy Morten 

TEENBEAT MAYHEM!: 

COMMEMORATING 

AMERICA’S FORGOTTEN 

MUSICAL HERITAGE - THOSE 

TEENAGE ROCK ’N’ ROLL 

COMBOS OF THE 1960S 

Mike Markesich Priceless Info Press 

We’re all better 

for it, aren’t we? 

Being “a bit mad” 

that is. Mike 

Markesich has 

just turned 50, 

LOVES garage 

band music 

(which he more 

accurately refers to as TeenBeat) and 

has worked on putting this weighty, 

thorough tome together for the past 

20 years; cataloguing singles on 

index cards, struggling with an early 

IBM 386 and eventually entering the 

world of the internet. At 400 pages 

long and featuring the most detailed 

selective discog of TeenBeat 45s 

(EVER), not to mention the road 

miles incurred in researching it, the 

near $100 cover price for this 

The Chargers indulge in a spot of teenbeat mayhem. You’d never have thought it, would you? 

genuine labour of love is more than 

warranted. 

Has he succeeded in closing what 

Greg Shaw began all those years ago? 

A resounding yes. Is this book for 

you? If a garage nut obsessed by lists, 

sure. If a dedicated eBay bidder, most 

definitely. If a casual fan, perhaps. 

One criticism is that Markesich’s 

36-page introductory essay ‘Dance, 

USA’ follows a well known trajectory – 

the American teens’ adaptation and 

remoulding of rock ’n’ roll, British 

influences and later psych onto 

Nuggets, and the change in 

landscape from ’80s garage 

revivalists to the more recent 

hybridised take on the sources. One 

would imagine that those who read 

this magazine and, indeed, the 

book’s target audience, already know 

this. Perhaps more specific areas 

would have been better to focus on – 

and at more length. What he does do 

well however is offer a few new 

theories – historical, geographical 

and sociological. 

Primarily this is essential for the A- 

Z discography, grading system and 

track-by-track breakdowns. As a 

dedicated history of the garage band 

era, it covers a lot of ground in too 

few pages. If paragraphs were 

expanded into chapters with relevant 

label scans, promo shots and picture 

sleeves integrated, it would certainly 

be the ultimate book on the prime 

TeenBeat period. One hopes that it’s 

something the writer will consider 

doing over the next 20 years. He’s 

the man who can. 

Until then this is the one stop 

guide to the myriad back alleyways 

of a-delic, low-key, Anglo-esque, folkrock, 

frat, psych and Surfbeat 45s 

from America’s fertile mid-60s. 

Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills

Martin Scorsese: The Salty Dog! - Shindig! Magazine

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