Left and to the Back

Johnny Pearson - The Rat Catchers/ Weavers Green

2012-01-26T08:00:00.002Z

Label: Columbia
Year of Release: 1966

Spy series "The Rat Catchers" was a firm favourite on British television in 1966 and 1967, produced by the Rediffusion television company and broadcasting a total of 25 episodes. A huge part of the reason the series seems to be very rarely referenced now is due to the fact that the episodes were wiped by over-zealous television executives in the seventies, meaning the series has since been allowed to slip into an undignified obscurity. A brief clip recently materialised on YouTube and apparently there is a full recovered episode out there, but that seems to be our lot.

Johnny Pearson's dramatic theme tune - all thundering piano lines, dramatic strings and hushed segements - was perhaps a contributory factor to the programme's success in itself, and was popular enough with the public for EMI to release it as a single. Whilst it failed to chart, it picked up enough admirers in the seventies to be considered worthy of spins at some Northern Soul nights. Once again, if you can hear what exactly is Northern Soul about this track you have a better pair of ears than me, but one would guess that the pounding piano lines filled the vast, cavernous rooms of many of the Casinos easily.

Resting on the flip side is the theme to another largely forgotten series "Weavers Green", a countryside soap opera produced by Anglia Television. Axed after a mere 49 shows, it remains a British soap forever to be mentioned in the same breath as "Triangle" or "Eldorado" as something which didn't last the distance, although rumours persist that Anglia's lack of clout as a television company at this time had more to do with its failings than the quality of the show itself. The theme tune itself is pleasant and chipper, but ultimately inessential.

Johnny Pearson enjoyed a long career in music prior to his death in March 2011, leading the Top of the Pops orchestra for sixteen years and producing endless soundtracks for programmes (including the theme from "3-2-1") and adverts. One of his pieces of library music, "Autumn Reverie", was even adapted by The Carpenters to become the song "Heather", Richard Carpenter having been obsessed by the track after hearing it on a television advert. Tracks of Pearson's turn up with enormous regularity in the "Library Music" section of most second hand record stores, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he puts in another appearance on this blog at some point.

Embassy Big 4 - Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere/ Mr Tambourine Man

2012-01-23T08:00:00.002Z

Label: Embassy
Year of Release: 1965

We've been here before, and regular readers will know the drill, but for the benefit of those of you who have just tuned into this blog... Embassy were a tireless label in the early sixties, churning out endless discs of session musicians covering the hits of the day. Their platters would then end up in the budget rack of Woolworths waiting to be purchased by punters who felt that their approximations of hit singles were affordable alternatives to the real thing. So infamous were their offerings that John Lennon even jokingly referenced the label as a possible home for The Beatles when their chances of getting signed seemed slim.

Like the "Top of the Pops" albums that followed them, Embassy recordings were a decidedly mixed bag, ranging from faithful interpretations to wayward messes. This "Big Four" EP is particularly absurd in that it contains two ballads and two counter-cultural anthems, so Gene Pitney's "Looking Thru The Eyes of Love" shares Side One with "Anywhere, Anyhow, Anywhere" by The Who, and Side Two pairs "Mr Tambourine Man" with Lulu's top ten ballad "Leave A Little Love". If ever you needed proof that such things as youth splinter groups and demographics hadn't been fully defined by 1965, here it is staring at you in the face.

"Left and to the Back" readers are likely to be more interested in "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" by The Who and "Mr Tambourine Man", and their interest will probably be inflated further still when they realise that neither version is particularly faithful. "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" is, in particular, a really interesting approximation due to the fact that Embassy studio band The Jaybirds clearly don't know what to do with The Who's sound. The drumming sounds primitive and punkish rather than copying Keith Moon's ambitious style, the lead vocals yelping, desperate and close to the style of Jim Sohns of The Shadows Of Knight (though don't get excited - I'm not suggesting it is him) and the feedback-heavy break of the original is replaced with something a bit more synthetic and measured. It sounds more like a bunch of teenagers in a garage trying to copy The Who, and whilst I doubt that's actually the case, it's a peculiar old listen to say the least. It doesn't top The Who's original, but something about the hollow, primal simplicity of it almost reminds me of The White Stripes, which is no bad thing at all.

Meanwhile, The Typhoons - a session band previously known to handle The Beatles material on Embassy, although I don't know if the personnel remained the same throughout all their recordings - battle with "Mr Tambourine Man". It's a fey, gentle take which sounds influenced more by English folk than the American folk rock scene that spawned The Byrds, sounding sleepy and contended rather than urgent, preaching and elated. Readers won't be in a hurry to replace The Byrds version on their iPods with this one, but once again the different approach is at least an interesting interpretation.

As for Terry Brandon's take on "Looking Through The Eyes of Love" and Sally Hyde's version of "Leave A Little Love" - I hate to be dismissive, but neither track really captured my imagination in the first place, so my opinions on these reinterpretations are unlikely to be balanced or fair. They're here for anyone who feels curious enough to hear them, though.

And I hate to say it, chaps, but sorry for the surface noise on some of these recordings. It's difficult to find Embassy records in Excellent condition, and what we've got is the best I can obtain at the moment.

Tracklisting:
1. Terry Brandon: Looking Thru The Eyes of Love
2. The Jaybirds: Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
3. The Typhoons: Mr Tambourine Man
4. Sally Hyde: Leave A Little Love

Reupload - No Way Sis - I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing

2012-01-19T08:00:00.003Z

Label: EMI
Year of Release: 1996

Suffice to say that this wasn't really very high on my list of potential blog uploads, and has been sitting waiting in those mythical mp3 wings for some time already... but when the news that Noel Gallagher was quitting Oasis broke, I couldn't resist a rare dip into relative topicality. (NOTE: This was topical at the time I originally wrote this entry, OK?)

Before we focus on this single, I may as well say that I feel (at best) indifferent to Oasis' split. Yes, I was a fan once, and still rate "Whatever" as being one of the more exciting Christmas releases ever - I can remember playing it non-stop all evening when I first got hold of a copy, thrilled by its energy and optimism. By the time of "Be Here Now", however, the plot appeared to have been lost, nobody either within the band or outside of it appeared to have the knack of using a nice sharp pair of editing scissors on their material, and eventually they became reduced to the level of an occasionally good singles band whose albums were immensely patchy. It wasn't supposed to happen that way, but anyone who wishes to argue with my perspective is wasting their time - I've heard it all before (both the arguments and the less-than-supersonic albums) and nowhere sums up the failings of "Be Here Now" better than the Sweeping the Nation blogsite here, which gives a blow-by-blow assessment of the album's content. Nope, save your comments. Honestly. If you're hearing something I'm not, I'm thrilled for you, but no amount of superlatives are likely to make me change my mind at this late stage. Few British bands have had more written about them in the last fifteen years than Oasis, after all, and I've had plenty of time to change my mind.

Back in December 1996, however, I would happily argue the band's merits to anyone wishing to dismiss them as "plagiarists" or "thugs", and it was back then this bizarre little single was issued by none other than their tribute band. This wasn't the first occasion a tribute band has sneaked into the charts, the Abba tribute act Bjorn Again managing much the same thing with the "Erasure-ish" EP in the early nineties - but suffice to say, it's not exactly a common occurrence. ABCD, Alike Cooper and The Bootleg Beatles have yet to gain entries in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles.

The story behind the track is perhaps more unlikely still. The Coca Cola Company allegedly refused to allow Oasis to use the line "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" in their "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing"-apeing "Shakermaker" single. The fear at the corporation's head office was that the Mancs would cause the public to associate the soft drink with cocaine, which would never do. Cocaine hadn't been part of the recipe for some time, after all. When No Way Sis decided to cover the track directly, however, the corporation decided to give the whole arrangement the green light. Presumably as Oasis' tribute act, the cocaine which they may or may not have been alluding to would simply be pretend cocaine, and therefore would not ruin the brand's image. This, at least, is the only explanation that's ever made remote sense to me.

To give credit to No Way Sis, this single nails their sound particularly well, parodying some of the Oasis riffs and cliches which were already becoming familiar and apparent, and it's not half-bad - but it really wasn't good enough to be a Christmas number one as some had rather optimistically hoped. In the end, it had to settle for a number 27 position before waving goodbye to the charts in early 1997, and EMI rather ungraciously tore up the band's contract to record an album not long after (although why anybody thought there was a need for an Oasis tribute band to record an entire long-player is a moot point, and one which probably doesn't need much more emphasis).

Whilst having your own tribute act on Top of the Pops might seem like a major achievement for any band, 1996 was really the last window of opportunity anyone would have to cash in on Oasis' success. Unlike The Beatles, who saw endless cover versions and novelty singles parodying or covering them charting throughout the sixties, the mania surrounding Oasis wouldn't weather the disappointment of "Be Here Now" in '97. No Way Sis' release, then, was the last nod to the phenomenon of the Gallagher brothers, following Mike Flowers' effort the previous year, and festive follies around their catalogue would not make annual chart appearances. A shame, as I wouldn't have minded hearing The Bootleg Beatles taking on "She's Electric" in 1997, but you can't have everything you asked for on your Christmas wishlist, can you?

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in August 2009 as a One Hit Wonder. Oasis remain dormant and locked in legal battles with one another, so one would have thought now would be an opportune moment for No Way Sis to reform - but no news yet. Perhaps they're waiting a few years for nostalgia and public demand to increase, and hoping that Oasis themselves won't capitalise on it. Don't ask me, I can't get inside the heads of tribute bands.)

Full tracklisting:

1. I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing
2. The Quick Sand Song
3. Good Times
4. I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing (Instrumental)

More Vintage DJ-ism on 28 January

2012-01-17T22:08:00.001Z

Jon The Revelator and I will be back DJ'ing at the Boogaloo Bar on Saturday 28 January for their "Can't Buy Me Love" vintage jumble sale. Not only is this an opportunity to bag a vintage bargain in the manner of most of these affairs, but it's also a chance to hear us DJ'ing material live you won't often hear elsewhere, and to soak up the atmosphere of a bar recently awarded ninth best pub in Britain in "The Guardian" (And "The Guardian", lest we forget, also made this blog one of their picks of the week once, so it's a peculiar kind of double critical blessing for the thirsty and tasteful woolly liberal punter).

Here's where it is: 312 Archway Road, Highgate, London N6 5AT

And it runs from 12:30 - 5:30pm. Please drop by. I know you will.

An aside: contrary to what you can see in the photo I've chosen to illustrate this entry, the largest part of the market will be indoors where I will also be - so don't worry about the January chill. Although the outdoors part of the market is always good as well. Some very nice cup cakes were up for sale there last time.

Dora Hall - It's All Over

2012-01-16T08:00:00.007Z

Label: Premore
Year of Release: 1965

At this present stage in history, you could argue that home-made entertainment probably outweighs "proper" funded entertainment by a small margin. You can click on YouTube and watch endless videos of members of the public trying to be funny, singing mediocre cover versions on their acoustic guitars and Comet purchased electronic keyboards, pointing their cameras at their dogs attempting to dance the cha-cha, or their superstar babies puking, burping or crying about finger nibbling savagery (which mystifyingly some broody/ maternal people have decided to watch millions of times over in the belief that it constitutes humorous entertainment). If it's a popular video, chances are you'll also be forced to watch an advert beforehand, thereby diverting cash into the coffers of the amateur film-makers in question.

Pre-Internet, before Hampton the Hampster was even a small, hairless pink suckling thing, matters were rather different, and avenues for exposure naturally rather limited. There were very few short-cuts to fame available, and you simply had to slog your way around the unforgiving gig circuit in the hope the hard work would slowly pay off. Or... alternatively, you could marry a multi-millionaire at the head of an enormous business empire and ask him to promote your work. It's the stuff of lottery-win dreams, but this is actually what Dora Hall did. Leo Hulseman, founder of the Solo Cup plastic drink cup dispenser and picnic accessory company, turned his attention to the plastic known as vinyl and decided to give his wife's entertainment career a bit of a boost. That Dora was already middle-aged by the time the opportunity arose presented no obstacle to his master plan, and in fact he would continue in his loyal duty towards her even during her twilight years as a grandmother in her seventies.

If you're American, then, it's completely possible that you will not only have stumbled across Dora Hall vinyl in a junk store, but watched a syndicated television special of her singing with Frank Sinatra Junior amongst other guest stars. So relentless was Leo's pushing of Hall's career that he gave her records away free with plastic drinking receptacles, both long-playing and seven-inch, funded television programmes with her in the starring role, and generally considered no expenditure too much for his other half and star in waiting. What the Executive Board members of Solo Cup made of all this is anyone's guess, especially as the constant manufacture of free records must have put a sizable hit in the company's profits.

There appear to be two popular views on Hall's output. The first is that the woman was dire, couldn't sing or perform very well, and wasted her life pursuing a ridiculous fantasy. The second is that actually some of her output is pretty good with superb production values and some of the best session musicians available (The Wrecking Crew were known to be involved with some Dora Hall sessions). I freely confess I haven't heard enough of Hall's material to sensibly comment on her output overall, but I have heard the supposedly good tracks, and they are indeed of a far higher quality than the scoffers and sneerers would lead you to believe.

"It's All Over" is a prime case in point. Actually beloved of a few Northern Soul DJ's at the moment who happily spin it to no complaints at all from punters, it's a neat little record with fantastic drumming high in the mix, haunting backing vocals, and a likable, gentle and rueful vocal performance from Hall. It's true to say that she's not an astonishing, top-flight singer, but there's enough character to compensate, and the huge, swinging drive behind the record is indeed pure Northern (by accident rather than design as always). Any experienced crate-digger will tell you that there are far, far worse things out there than this, and indeed at the kind of price you tend to find these discs for these days they're actually a steal. The Solo Cup company pressed so much of her material up and gave it out for free that it actually seems to be more ubiquitous in the USA at least than some of the in-demand hits of the period - do a quick search on ebay if you're in any doubt.

Naturally, all this pushing of Hall as a future superstar by the disposable utensils empire came to nought. Her TV specials (click here to see a clip from the 1972 show "Once Upon A Tour") clearly registered in the brains of quite a few confused Americans who promptly filed their childhood memories of her in the parts of their brains labelled 'kitsch', but failed to ignite her career in the manner expected. Still, the company carried on promoting her in one form or another until her death in May 1988, and there's something incredibly loyal and touching about her husband's devotion to her career.

Both sides of this single are available below, and I do apologise for the surface noise on the B-side "We'll Sing In The Sunshine" - it looked as if the previous owner had actually used the record itself as a disposable plastic plate at some point, and even a deep clean couldn't repair the damage.

For more information on Dora Hall, and indeed an interview with one of her Solo Cup Company partners, please go here.

The Bintangs - Travelling in the USA/ Hound Is On The Run

2012-01-12T08:00:00.007Z

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1970

The Bintangs are a rock band from The Netherlands who have enjoyed a faithful cult following in their home country across many decades, but have (so far!) failed to create a greater impression in other European nations. With an ever-evolving line-up which makes the band seem like the Dutch version of The Fall in terms of personnel changes (look here for the full details) their bluesy, gravelly sound actually saw them sneak into the mainstream charts in their home country during their peak. This single remains probably their most successful recording.

"Travelling in the USA" is a swaggering boogie taking in a (presumably fictional) roadtrip across the States, whereas the flip side "Hound Is On The Run" is a longer, moodier, more brooding recording. Both owe an obvious debt to Rhythm and Blues, but are approached in a distinctly Nederbeat fashion.

Unless my facts are utterly wrong, The Bintangs are still a going concern in the Netherlands, and despite having split in 1985, reformed in 1989 to continue performing and recording.

Apologies for the pops and clicks during "Hound Is On The Run" in particular - this record wasn't in perfect condition and was a tricky one to clean up.

The Hitmen - I Still Remember It

2012-01-09T08:00:00.009Z

Label: Urgent/ CBS
Year of Release: 1980

Whether you appreciate the fact or not, Depeche Mode are one of the most unique and wonderful pop bands to emerge from Britain in the last thirty years. Such a statement often seems unusually bold to somebody from their homeland - I've had to put up with scoffs of derision for a long time now, usually from people who have only bothered to listen to a few early singles - but it makes absolute sense if you say it to most people in Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and even America. To the average member of the British public, there appears to be a sense that the band started out as a squeaky pop band then spent the rest of their careers over-reacting against that. This seems both illogical and a shame if you consider the fact that Radiohead were just angst-rock lite when their careers opened with "Pablo Honey", and nobody holds that against them now. Nobody scoffs "Ha ha! They wrote a song about not being able to cop off with girls!" when a friend comes home from the record store with a copy of "The King of Limbs". Some bands, it seems, are forgiven their early image and output.

That said, I'm not one of those Depeche fans who is utterly oblivious or blind to the band's shortcomings, and there have been a few slips along the way and some very public mistakes - and some which are rather more buried. Alan Wilder joined the band in 1982 following Vince Clarke's departure, and the main fact given about his past career at the time was that he had been "a member of the group The Hitmen". "Who the hell were they?" was probably the response on most people's lips, and certainly mine. Despite having a contract with CBS, The Hitmen had made precious little impression on the record buying public, and merely sounded like an act with a rather unimaginative name to most. Had this been the age of the Internet, some of us might have investigated more closely on YouTube and file sharing websites, but life was not as simple as that back in those dark days.

Wilder would go on to play a pivotal role in Depeche Mode's development, crafting and arranging Martin Gore's songs to create something more substantial than the slightly shiny, brittle, metronomic synthpop which had characterised the band's sound beforehand (some of the more experimental moments on "A Broken Frame" aside). Many fans believe that the bolder, almost symphonic sweeps found on albums like "Black Celebration" and "Music for the Masses" owe a great deal to him. If, however, he had any similar ambitions in The Hitmen, it's not obvious from their output. Of their previous single "Ouija", a music critic was (somewhat prophetically) moved to comment: "The winning thing about the Depeche Mode single (and their last, and Soft Cell's) is its simple enthusiasm, its complete lack of cynicism. The Hitmen are so calculating - even down to the clever, clever name - it's unbearable; the only remotely comforting thing about all this is that they haven't a dog's chance of ever getting a hit." Slightly harsh, perhaps, but still not terribly far off the mark. The follow-up "I Still Remember It" would, despite its hopeful title, fail to grab the attention of many. It's unobjectionable and sounds passable, but there's a clear lack of identity apparent and nothing to set the band apart from the numerous other pub rock bands gigging at the time. It's refreshing and punchy, but is a bit too simplistic and clean to leave a lasting impression or create a desire to hit the "play" button one more time.

Despite Wilder's involvement, The Hitmen's material remains unissued on CD, and there appear to be no plans in the pipeline to rectify this. This is an odd way to treat the material of a pivotal member of a globally successful act, but hopefully the below tracks will assuage people's curiosity.

The Household - 21st Summer/ Winter's Coming On

2012-01-05T08:00:00.008Z

Label: United Artists
Year of Release: 1968

Another one of those records dealers everywhere are prone to telling fibs about. Oft labelled as a "psychedelic rarity", this actually sits more in folk/ sunshine pop territory, straddling the divide between the Mamas and the Papas and rather more rootsy music.

"21st Summer" is a cute, rustic little tune which has been enjoyed by a few sixties aficionados over the years, but doesn't sound like a hit single at all, which would go a long way towards explaining why it wasn't one. The B-side "Winter's Coming On", on the other hand, is a lot busier and sprightlier and also more appropriate to the present time of year (unless you're reading this in the Southern hemisphere). It has the same combination of pleasingly tight vocal harmonies and kick and bounce of a lot of the best folk-rock of the period, and deserves a bit more attention than it's actually had.

As for The Household, they're something of an enigma - there's very little information available about them, although apparently they were one of the first acts United Artists picked for their new release schedule as a fully fledged "proper" label in Britain (rather than a subsidiary) so clearly somebody in the organisation had high hopes for them. Does anyone out there have any background information?

Footsie - Condition Red/ Cabbage Patch

2012-01-02T08:00:00.005Z

Label: Tangsong
Year of Release: 1975

I've explained before that the Northern Soul scene in the seventies became an incredibly broad church with some niteries (not least the Wigan Casino) adopting songs which were closer in style to uptempo mod-styled sixties floor-fillers than soul as such. In the same manner that the great hunt for the next buried "psychedelic" record has led us to describe some very bubblegum discs as being "popsike", the desperation for new nuggets in a heavily mined genre led to similar behaviour with old soul music in the seventies. The numerous snide YouTube comments under videos of tracks describing themselves as "Northern Soul" these days points towards the fact that a great many punters were disgruntled by this activity (and remain so) but it didn't seem to hurt ticket sales for the nights at the time.

So then, here we have a slice of supposed Northern Soul. I say "supposed" because it was clearly recorded in 1975, and seems to have been engineered for the dancefloors of the time in the same manner that artists like Wigan's Chosen Few and Wigan's Ovation were. It's a strange little record consisting of a very squeaky electric organ playing a jolly melody over the top of some mid-tempo pounding, and as such these days it sounds closer to a jokey Misty's Big Adventure out-take (such as this one) than Dobie Gray. The fluffy English Shepherd dog sitting amongst some flowers on the record label also seems peculiarly out of place, matching the tweeness of the record near perfectly, but having very little to do with a talcum powder covered dancefloor.

Apparently this did enjoy a number of spins in the clubs at the time, and copies of it are surprisingly easy to come by these days, which would suggest that it did sell reasonably well (as indeed many Northern discs did, selling steadily over the course of many months rather than storming the charts). What seems peculiar now obviously passed as a semi-credible disc at the time, and I must admit that I do enjoy the jauntiness of this record - but I've a sneaking suspicion that if I tried to spin it at a club night now, I'd be accused of taking the piss. But maybe, just maybe...

As ever, if anyone knows the story behind the band Footsie (who I suspect were just some session folk) and the odd label Tangsong, please do drop me a line.

Reupload - Foreheads in a Fishtank - I Want To Masturbate At Castle Donnington

2011-12-29T08:00:00.000Z

Label: Stuf Records
Year of Release: 1991

I was, and remain, completely unaware of what it was that actually drove Southend band Foreheads in a Fishtank through the early nineties. Despite managing to get themselves signed to Some Bizarre shortly after this single was issued, there can be fewer bands in the UK who were greeted with more confusion or bewilderment at the time.

Formed in the late eighties as a slightly rockist band (who one local man insists sounded rather like early Genesis) they gradually turned their attention to skewed, wobbly bass riffs, industrial rhythms, and perverse sloganeering. "I Want To Masturbate at Castle Donnington" is probably one of the better examples of their work, combining looped eastern wailing with threatening vocals, which are then frequently punctuated by "Psycho" referencing instrumental effects. It's actually not at all funny, despite the title, and sounds more like the work of obsessive stalkers who would give Barry George a run for his money. If somebody followed you down the street playing this on a ghetto blaster whilst singing "Give me pleasure" along with it, you'd run as hard as you could.

The B-side "Happy Shopper" was the A-side of their previous single, which was withdrawn after the cut-price food chain objected to its content. A prolonged, jerky rant against domestic bliss, the singer Jeff regularly screams "Who bought these tea bags?" in fury, whilst the verses are punctuated with the line "She grabs a plastic fish fork and she buggers me". There's a certain Stump-iness to the rhythm section on this track, but both sides remind me much, much more of Australian pranksters TISM. FIAFT could easily have been their Home Counties brothers.

Their debut album "Buttocks" was a very samey affair, but not unworthy - John Peel loved it, and offered them two sessions, and it certainly had its fans elsewhere too. For the most part, though, nobody knew quite how to deal with the band. They were mentioned in the same breath as The Swell Maps and Stump in reviews, but their crudeness combined with art-school song structures alienated the frat-boy audience just as much as it did the intelligent fringe crowd. Fans of both bands were not known for their love of vulgarity.

It's probably also worth mentioning as a footnote that the band had some peculiar and unorthodox ways of getting press attention without hiring a Press Officer or even being signed to a label. They once got into Kings Reach Towers and plastered their posters all over the walls of the NME's toilets - one review the magazine subsequently published largely consisted of a request asking them to come back and clean up. They also sent out packets of lard to music critics (which melted all over their records, causing a lot of anger and resentment), and on one occasion publicised a bunch of gigs in the NME's gig guide in places that didn't even exist (which were published completely unchecked). It may have got them press, but one has to wonder how much long-term ill feeling it all generated. One thing's for sure, though, they livened up Southend at a point in time where there really wasn't a hell of a lot going on there... I certainly enjoyed having my own set of renegades-about-town for a while.

(This entry was originally uploaded in August 2008, and somewhat unexpectedly got an enthusiastic response from many readers. Rather more worryingly, one of the band got in touch to correct me on the Genesis critique a friend of mine (who actually drummed in a band with me) originally raised with these pointed words: "Let me make this clear. Foreheads in a Fishtank were an anti establishment band ten years before the invention of the Internet. They had nothing to do with ‘Genesis’ though they may have agreed with ‘keep those mowing blades sharp’

In the late eighties some bands experimented with deconstruction of ‘melody’ into noise. Site: ‘My Bloody Valentine’. Which is why we hated soft bellied ‘NME’. Foreheads were clearly a part of the ‘Melody Maker scene’.

We sort to connect those sounds with down to earth lyrics. Those of day-to-day pointlessness and banality.

We looked to create three to four minute pop songs de-constructed from Melody into ‘NOISE’.

So we had more in common with ABBA than Genesis.

We hated all forms commerciality. And had the last laugh at the commercial record industry by finally understanding the inevitable pointless destruction of everything and the universe.

Everything is fleeting and passing. We choose to make a large wall of sound before our own inevitable death."

Glad we've finally managed to clear that one up, then.)

Merry Christmas

2011-12-19T16:30:00.002Z

"Left and to the Back" will be taking a break while you lot chew on your mince pies and fiddle with the Beach Boys box sets you got as presents while the rest of your family nag you to do something else instead. It's not quite Christmas yet, I'll grant you, but nonetheless the reading figures usually start to plummet around about now, and I've got a busy festive season ahead so unfortunately won't be in a good position to keep the blog updated.

If you're utterly desperate for mp3 fun while I'm gone - and in particular, festive orientated mp3 fun - well, you're spoilt for choice.

If you haven't downloaded them already, the "Sweeping The Nation" festive mp3 compilations are almost a box set in themselves and worthy of several spins. These genuinely mop up most of the decent festive obscurities and oddities out there.

Failing that, "The Lord of the Boot Sale" has updated his blog with plentiful festive novelty tracks over the last few weeks, including one or two I had absolutely no idea even existed - Charlie Jones' "Hey Whiskers We Love You" for example, which is seasonal but at the same time faintly disturbing, like Steve Harley drunk whilst wearing nothing but a Santa hat.

And if you're really bored, don't forget the "Left and to the Back" Xmas Spotify playlist, and perhaps even our main playlist which isn't festive, but I get the sneaking suspicion a lot of people have forgotten exists (me included, actually - I need to update that quite soon).

Oh, and don't forget - if you didn't see them first time around, I did an array of Christmas blog posts in 2010 and 2009 which you can re-read again by clicking on the Christmas tag.

Above all else, have a fantastic, restful Yule. This blog aims to be up and running again before New Year's Eve, so I'll hopefully see you before 2012 begins.

Biggles - Gimme Gimme Some Lovin'

2011-12-19T08:00:00.003Z

Label: Philips
Year of Release: 1971

Given that I didn't have any Christmas records to upload this year, I thought I couldn't just leave you all disappointed without any party tracks before present opening day (because of course, this blog has been soundtracking everyone's house parties for years now). So here's one.

"Gimme Gimme Some Lovin'" is nothing more or less than a glam rock medley combining the Transatlantic bubblegum hit "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'" with the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'". Whooping, cheering and "Barbara Ann" styled party noises are worked into the mix to create something which sounds like the biggest rave-up since I heard "Gimme Hope Joanna" being played by a band in a pub in East London one summer to an assortment of booze-added cockneys. You don't hear the like very often. There's a thudding glam beat backing all this as well, which adds an extra layer of rowdiness, and in all whilst nobody could pretend this is a particularly sophisticated piece of work, it sounds bloody fantastic if you've had enough beer on a cold winter evening.

Biggles were essentially a studio based group created by one Mike Berry, who worked as a music industry mover and shaker for many years for both Sparta Music and The Beatles' publishing arm of Apple. It's probably safe to say that when this record flopped, no follow-ups were attempted under this name. You can read more about Berry's career on the Mersey Beat website.

This record also featured on the marvellous Purepop blog some years ago, where the author Robin Wills has done a fantastic amount of Mike Berry related trawling over the years. In fact, when I made the schoolboy error of mistaking this Mike Berry with the Joe Meek/ "Are You Being Served" Mikester awhile ago, he was quick to spot my on-blog mistake and contact me.

The Gibsons - Only When You're Lonely

2011-12-15T08:00:00.011Z

Label: Major Minor
Year of Release: 1968

Making it in Britain appeared to be the goal of most Australian bands in the sixties. Once they'd had one or two hit singles in their own country, they seemed to dart down to their local High Street travel agency to book tickets for the motherland, regarding their Australian fame as being an indication that they were in with a sound chance of British acceptance.

Sadly, a great many fantastic Australian acts were left disappointed. The Playboys and The Masters Apprentices were largely ignored in this country, and even The Easybeats only managed to chalk up two hit singles (despite deserving a great deal more). The arrival of Merseybeat had allowed the British to realise that their home-grown rock music could be just as groundbreaking and exciting (if not more so) than the American output, but acts from all other countries were still treated somewhat sniffily. Plus, the sheer competition on offer from the thousands of home-grown acts who had already spent years building up a following meant that even a great band had their work cut out whilst starting in a new country from scratch.

You could forgive Melbourne's The Gibsons for thinking that they were in with a shot. Their debut single in Australia, "That's What I Want" (issued under the name The Chicadas), performed strongly in most of the regional charts around the country, and actually hit the top spot in Brisbane. On the back of this they managed to pick up British management from Phil Solomon, owner of the Major Minor label. Changing their name to The Gibsons in an attempt to give them a more British-friendly name and also apparently in the hope that they might blag some free guitars in the process, their career never quite took off. Solomon did his level best to ensure they got their support from his pirate station Radio Caroline, so airplay was strong, but the public seemed disinterested despite high-profile tours around the nation.

Fans of psychedelic pop frequently cite the band's cynical stab at London "City Life" as one of the finer Australian examples of the genre. They're not wrong, but in reality (rather like The Montanas who we featured earlier this month) The Gibsons actually specialised in straightforward, uncomplicated pop with luxurious arrangements. "Only When You're Lonely" is a prime example of this, bringing to mind the fare of The Walker Brothers rather than Pink Floyd. It's a lovelorn ballad focussing on the selfish neediness of a pesky lady, and does sound as if it could very easily have been a hit. Sadly, this was not to be, despite having some striking harmonies and an unusually intricate chorus. The B-side "Ode To A Doll's House" borders on psychedelic pop, but climbs too high on the Twee-o-meter for my tastes. Perhaps you good readers will fare better.

For an interview with John Kaye and Geoff Dart of The Gibsons, please visit the relevant page on the excellent Peach Fuzz Forest blog where both go into depth on the topic of their British career with no hard feelings whatsoever.

Driver 67 - Going My Way/ (Theme From) There Is No Conspiracy

2011-12-12T08:00:00.008Z

Label: Logo
Year of Release: 1979

We've already partially explored the output of Driver 67 on this blog with a sniff at the sinister, horrible and downright wrong record about female-stalking truckers that is "Headlights". Enough has been said about that little disc that I don't really feel I need to add any more at this juncture.

Whilst it may have seemed as if Paul Phillips and Pete Zorn were trying to alienate radio stations and their entire female listening audience with "Headlights", "Going My Way" puts things back on the proper track, being a fizzbomb of a pop record with the same pub sing-along effect and pounding rhythms that Dennis Waterman delivered (to a much more convincing degree, actually) with "I Could Be So Good For You" the following year. The world-weary, Craig Charles-on-Coronation Street weepiness of "Car 67" isn't apparent in this instance, and if you regard the three singles as being a trilogy (and God help you if you do) it could be argued that "Headlights" focusses on Phillips' post-dumping misogyny, whereas this one represents his recovery. "Look," he is essentially saying to us, the good listeners, "we're pulling in different directions, but we could make this work. But if you can't be bothered, I'm off down the pub to sing along with the jukebox with all my mates. Whatever will be, will be."

The B-side in this instance is another perplexing piece of Driver 67 work, this time involving Zorn and Phillips discussing the noisy A-side neighbour who has moved in upstairs, and holding a naturalistic dialogue about the benefits and drawbacks of easy listening which sounds slightly like a Dexy's "Don't Stand Me Down" out-take. What a peculiar pair they were.

Pete Zorn is still an active session musician whose CV is the envy of anyone involved with folk and roots music. He is almost a permanent fixture in Richard Thompson's touring band, and has also played with Gerry Rafferty and Steve Tilston. Paul Phillips eventually became disillusioned with the music business after endless disputes about royalties owed to him from "Car 67". Record company failures to press up enough copies of that single to keep up with demand also won't have helped. The record dropped to number 11 mid-way through its climb up the charts only to continue climbing the following week; apparently this blip was purely due to the lack of copies available in the shops, and may have cut short its potential performance. He now works as a partner in a design business based in London, and imports vintage guitars.

We Wish You A Spotify Christmas

2011-12-08T08:00:00.006Z

Long-term readers of "Left and to the Back" may remember that for last two Decembers I've tried to include some vaguely Christmas themed mp3s on the blog. This year, however, it's not going to happen. In all honesty, finding Christmas records that hardly anyone has heard or noticed before is a bloody hard job, and on the rare occasion you do chance upon one it's usually complete and utter rubbish. To make matters worse, so many other blogs have done this sort of thing far better - "Sweeping The Nation", for example, produced several CDs worth of Christmas themed material.

For 2011, I've decided to change tack a little. Instead of shoving obscurities in your face like so many mince pies, I've created a Spotify Playlist of established Christmas songs with a few ones thrown in which, on the surface, appear to have nothing to do with the season whatsoever. This might seem like a ridiculous thing to do, but these are all tracks I regularly dig out for my own listening pleasure over Yuletide, purely because something about them - perhaps the time of the year they were originally released, the clanging bells in the mix, the Spector-ish wall of sound, the wintery feel - feels indicative of the season to me. This means that Pulp's "Bad Cover Version", Johnny Boy's "You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve", The Jackpot's "Tiny Goddess" and the Dukes of Stratosphear's "Pale and Precious" sit alongside Slade, Jona Lewie and Greg Lake.

It's not a hugely long list at the moment, I'll agree, so I'd be grateful if you could chime in with your own suggestions in the comments below, either of a traditional festive hue or perhaps using more oblique reasoning. Answer soon enough (and provided the track is on Spotify) and I'll add it to the list like a little audio present beneath Spotify's giant Christmas tree. Answer later than 19 December, and I'll probably be too busy to do that. Soz, but other obligations beckon.

Added apologies to all you people living in countries which can't access Spotify. I haven't done this to deliberately exclude you from the Festive fun, but it's the only easy way of making all these tunes generally available.

One Hit Wonders #21 - The Krew Kats - Trambone/ Peak Hour

2011-12-05T08:00:00.006Z

Label: HMV
Year of Release: 1961

It's very tricky to pop into your local second hand record shop and not stumble upon some old near-hit from a British instrumental act - there were so many of them about during the early sixties, after all. The trouble is, many of the copies are battered and scratched to kingdom come, having enjoyed the pleasure of soundtracking parties, gatherings or just plain old Dansette scuffing within the first few years of their purchase.

It was an absolute unexpected pleasure to stumble upon a copy of this one in excellent condition, then. "Trambone" was a very minor hit in 1961, peaking at number 33. Its popularity may not have been significant enough to make it a major smash, but it was clearly enough to ensure that the track is still available to buy on iTunes to this day, meaning we'll have to content ourselves with a brief edit of its charms below.

Not that any of this really matters, because it's the B-side that contains the biggest surprise. "Peak Hour" is a surf-guitar styled instrumental with dramatic flourishes, jittery, skittish rhythms and some of the best twanging you'll have ever heard. One of those "too good to be buried on a flipside" moments, it's short and sharp, but riddled with drama. If this were the mid-nineties it would no doubt be a candidate for the soundtrack of some retro-gangster styled flick - as it's not, perhaps it will eventually gain popularity serving a more dignified role.

The Krew Kats were probably better known as The Wild Cats, Marty Wilde's backing group for much of his career. Rather than keep the "Wild Cats" moniker for their two non-Wilde 45s ("Samovar" was the follow-up to this), they rather bafflingly chose this identity instead. The most significant member of the band during this period was undoubtedly their drummer Brian Bennett, who was poached by The Shadows after Tony Meehan departed their ranks, and continued to produce a varied array of work away from The Shadows as well. Amongst his claims to fame are the BBC Golf theme "Chase Side Shoot Up" (also a "Northern Soul dancer" if some sources are to be trusted, and frankly I'm not sure they are), the theme to the sit-com "Robin's Nest" and various ditties composed for the ITV schools broadcasts between 1987 - 1993. "Peak Hour" is just one of the many surprising sidetracks and diversions during his main career as a skin-thumper in The Shadows, and arguably one of the best pieces of vinyl to feature his contributions.

The Montanas - Ciao Baby/ Anybody There

2011-12-01T08:00:00.001Z

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1967

Oftentimes you will hear people talk about how demanding modern record labels are of their acts, spewing out invective about how "They didn't release The Head Shoppes album when the third single flopped!" In truth, the sixties weren't much better for this sort of behaviour. The Kinks "You Really Got Me" was their third shot at success after two stiffs, and it was widely believed that had it not succeeded, that would have been the end of the band's recording career.

Bearing the above in mind, the career of Dudley's The Montanas (also signed to Pye along with everyone's favourite Muswell Hill band) is perplexing to any student of pop. From 1965- 1969 they were allowed to release eight singles, and also had this one reissued once in order to see if it had more luck on its second outing. This was a perplexing amount of faith to show a band which, from its beat beginnings right to its sunshine pop end, never really showed much sales potential. Two things probably acted in the band's favour. Firstly, their beat take on harmony pop was incredibly middle of the road and subsequently enjoyed some airplay during the period. Besides that, reports from the frontline of the era would suggest they were also a versatile live act, as likely to please social and supper club audiences with music and comedy as they were Carnaby Street kids, and it's possible that Pye executives may have hoped that some of that crowd-pleasing ability would cross over into sales of physical product. This is a case of "citation needed" to the power of a hundred, obviously, but calculated guesswork is all we have in this peculiar case.

In reality, The Montanas never realised their potential either at home or abroad. They spent some time in America trying to crack the lucrative British Invasion market, issuing a total of eight singles there as well to no avail, although the rather good "You've Got To Be Loved" managed to climb to number 58 on the Billboard Charts. By 1969 both UK and US labels had clearly had enough, although the band carried on performing well into the seventies.

"Ciao Baby" was issued twice by Pye in a bid to give the band a hit. The first time around it dominated the airwaves impressively, but failed to chart. It's not hard to understand what Radio DJs saw in this one. It's rich, summery harmony pop which would have sounded utterly in keeping with some of the more middle-of-the-road hits of the day. There's a slick touch of class to the performance and it's arranged in a typically pleasing fashion by Tony Hatch. It isn't, however, any sort of lost classic, and the fact that it's been largely forgotten in the years since unlike other 'turntable hits' ("The Days of Pearly Spencer" by David McWilliams, for example) possibly shouldn't be that surprising.

Perhaps the most notable release by the band for people interested in psych pop is the rather sour, piss-taking 1967 B-side "Difference Of Opinion" where the band let their previously hidden satire spew in the direction of hippies. Dominated by pseudo-Dylan lyrics and statements like "Flower people, all the same/ using other people's names/ trying to find someone to blame", it's safe to say that they weren't convinced by the subculture of the time. Why they never got a gig penning parodical songs for "Spitting Image" in the eighties is anyone's guess.

Reupload - Screemer - Interplanetary Twist

2011-11-28T08:00:00.003Z

Label: Bell
Year of Release: 1976

It's another cheap Second Hand record from Bell. Aren't you the lucky ones? Bell were the glam rock label in the seventies, churning out endless pieces of tinsel from their dayglo production line, and it just so happens that it's these records which clog up charity store bins, remainder boxes and even rubbish skips the most. And no, that isn't a lazy, off-the-cuff remark, either - hundreds of rare glam singles recorded by Freddie Mercury under the name Larry Lurex were once found in a skip, discarded by some fool who believed them worthless.

By 1976, glam rock was starting to look a bit worn out, and bands falling back on the genre were frequently disappointed by the time the chart rundown was released. Even the established acts often struggled, so new ones - like Screemer here - found that Britain was hostile to their stomping sound.

In Screemer's particular case, however, one has to wonder if they were a mite too OTT even for the glam genre, if that's possible. I have come across many records in my time, but few have sounded as ridiculously theatrical and camp as this, a tune about introducing rock and roll to the people of the twenty first century (presumably they thought we'd all be blasting around on jet packs and listening to Jean Michel Jarre by now). Starting off with an airy synthesiser noise and a peculiar, Mystic Meg-styled vocal (which you just know the lead singer delivered with a suitably vacant stare), then building into a Rocky Horror Picture Show styled epic number, "Interplanetary Twist" is baffling. It's like The Sweet after they've eaten far too many sweets and are on a sugar rush, or Spinal Tap with some new space-age props. I've never seen a photo of Screemer, but I hope and pray they all wore futuristic space suits and had ridiculously ambitious fringes, otherwise the image I've got of them in my brain will be shattered.

I don't want to trick anybody into thinking that this is some kind of golden nugget of spacerock - although it is actually huge fun for five minutes, which is precisely what all good novelty pop should be. Just thank your lucky stars (no pun intended) it wasn't a hit and we didn't all have to hear it a hundred times, otherwise this could be a very different blog entry indeed.

Once again, the B-side ("Billy") isn't much cop, I'm afraid - but what more did you want from these intergalactic rockers, eh?

(Update - this entry was originally posted in August 2008, and I'm not too sure I care for its dismissive, flippant tone these days, but I suppose this blog was a young pup back then, I was still learning, and I'm entitled to have off days. Whilst I did originally purchase this from a bargain box for 50p, its value has increased dramatically in the years since and it changes hands for daft money on ebay now, the only one of the discs I've so far featured in the "Second Hand Record Dip" section of the blog to do so (to the best of my knowledge). This is largely due to it being featured on a glam rock rarities compilation, and proves if nothing else that my Larry Lurex comment at the start of this entry was somewhat prophetic. One man's junk is definitely another man's treasure.
As for Screemer - who knows? They still seem to be shy.)

Final Vinyl

2011-11-26T16:59:00.002Z

Just added another auction lot to ebay, and this will be the last I attempt this year, since I really don't want to get bogged down in the Christmas postal rush. Anyone who has run auctions on ebay at this time of year will know that emails along the lines of "I live in the Falkland Islands and want to know whether your copy of 'Sadie and Her Magic Mr Gallahad' by The New Generation will reach me in time for Christmas so I can wrap it up for my Niece" are only too common. Well, OK, they tend not to refer to obscure psychedelic records much, but you take my point all the same. I usually aim to get all records out within a day of two of getting the money, but that still doesn't mean to say that the stars of our mystical global postal services will align to cause a fast delivery.

Anyway, this time around, click here to see (amongst others):

FEDERATION: Blake's 7 Disco (I know one of you has surely got to want to own this)
EASYBEATS: Hello How Are You
HEINZ: You Were There
TIME MACHINE: Summer Of Love/ Another Dream In Black and White
BARNABY RUDGE: Joe Organ & Co
PULP: His n Hers (vinyl copy)
PULP: This is Hardcore (Promo Remix 12")
BUGGY: Harry The Keeper
TERRORVISION: Oblivion (Promo one sided 12")
SUPERGRASS: Lenny (Promo 12")

You popsikers should be particularly interested in the Morgan records by Barnaby Rudge and Buggy, and the Bam Caruso oddity by Time Machine. Some of these sales even have Box.net soundclips on them, so it's like a blog only... er... not as good. But you can buy what's on it. Yes.

Any questions, feel free to ask. Unless they're intricate questions about the Brazilian festive postal service.

The Calliope - Clear Mud/ Wiser

2011-11-24T08:00:00.008Z

Label: Uni
Year of Release: 1970 (recorded in 1969)

Remember what I said about rare psychedelic/ dancefloor crossover records? One would have imagined that the era would have been shot through with such gems, but the reality is that those thoughtless hippies left behind very few records which swung. For all their versatility, even The Beatles left only slow groovers like "Get Back" and "Ballad of John and Yoko" behind, neither of which tend to set people's feet on fire (although you can - kind of - move a bit to "Paperback Writer" if you're feeling ambitious).

Here's another exception to the rule, then. "Clear Mud" is a messy, domineering, bongos-and-organ driven workout which slipped out in Britain in January 1970, long past the point where anyone cared for chipper little records with cheery hippy vocals in this country. A deep shame, because beneath the puffing flutes and bashed bongos lies a record which sounds like a distant cousin of Deep Purple's "Hush", utterly loose, carefree and actually quite wonderful for all that. Whereas most psychedelic pop had an obsession with the idea of catchy choruses, this is more interested in the rhythms and the mantra-like repetition of the song title, giving it more in common with a lot of the soul and mod records being released during the late sixties than perhaps you'd rightfully expect it to have.

The flipside "Wiser" restores order to the proceedings and is a brief, wistful ballad mentioning hope and rainbows. It's OK and comes with plenty of studio-glossed shimmering effects, but fails to defy your expectations in the manner of the A-side.

Little is known of The Calliope, but their line-up was apparently Jim Andron on guitar, organ and vocals, John Ray on guitar and vocals, Tony Riparetti on guitar, Sue Ferrel on flute and vocals, Dan Protheroe on bass guitar and Jim Saad on drums and vocals. Online evidence points towards a band active in Santa Barbara who had a couple of minor local hits but failed to take America as a whole. How "Clear Mud" ending up getting issued in the UK is a mystery which is clearly perplexing some record collectors online as we speak - US psych flops could hardly have been in much demand in Britain by 1970, and there's no evidence to suggest that this picked up any unexpected radio or club play prior to release. Nonetheless, here it is, proof that UK pressings of obscure records from across the Atlantic should never fail to surprise in their quantity.

Sorry about the surface noise on this record in some places, by the way. I did my best to minimise it, but unfortunately I don't have a perfect copy of this record.

The Pipe Dream - If You Do What You Gotta Do

2011-11-21T08:00:00.005Z

Label: Decca (Belgium)
Year of Release: 1969 (?)

You say "popsike", I say "borderline bubblegum, actually" - let's call the whole thing off. As the sixties drew to a close and The Archies' "Sugar Sugar" dominated the number one spot in numerous countries around the world, a similar chirpiness began to leak out of recording studios from (often manufactured) acts hoping to replicate that carefree feel. A lot of psychedelic pop had similar world-loving breeziness in its favour, of course, but also peculiar undercurrents and effects. By 1969, a lot of pop had dispensed with these elements entirely to produce something a lot more straightforward, whilst the heavy dudes got into the beginnings of hard rock and prog instead.

Don't let that put you off, though, because whilst "If You Do What You Gotta Do" isn't the most challenging thing you'll hear all year, it's addictively gleeful stuff. The chipper string arrangements and honking organ noises create a track which sounds a cut above most lightweight productions, and the chorus has a mighty power to it which may have driven people mad had the record managed to be a hit in the UK. The less said about the B-side, however, the better.

It was actually issued by Penny Farthing in 1970 in this country, but failed to attract much attention. I have a suspicion that this may have managed to become a hit on the continent, however - this is a Belgian pressing and we can hopefully safely assume that this is where The Pipe Dream are from. Information on the band is scarce, and all I've managed to ascertain is that they are definitely not the American harmony band who released the LP "Wanderers/ Lovers" in 1969. It's over to you lot, I'm afraid - any further information you can give me on this lot would be welcome.

Superalmendrado - Gotta Give It Up

2011-11-17T08:00:00.002Z

Label: Dedicated
Year of Release: 1995

It's common enough to upload tracks by sixties outfits for whom background information is scarce, but nineties bands - especially nineties bands who were signed to well-known labels - seldom fall through the cracks so easily. By that stage in history we were all just starting to go online and leave dirty great Internet trails about exciting new bands we'd just seen and heard, and much of that information is still available today.

Superalmendrado, on the other hand, are an absolute mystery. Signed to Dedicated, the home of Spiritualized, The Cranes and Chapterhouse, this seems to be the only release of theirs which made it out into the public realm, and even then I've only ever seen Promo copies of it, leading me to suspect that it never received an official release. This is a jarring, dischordant piece of work which makes use of angst rock drumming, needles-on-the-nerves guitar lines, and forlorn vocals to bring three tracks which are not easy on the ear. Whether you consider this to be genius or utterly unlistenable may depend upon your tolerance of rock music's more experimental strands - but one thing's for sure, this isn't pop.

The whereabouts of the band presently remains as big a mystery as the full details of the line-up, but Craig Ward appears to have been the most active since, leaving Superalmendrado to join cult Belgian band dEUS not long after this single crept into the world. Whether his departure spelt the end for the band as a going concern or not is difficult to ascertain, but on the face of the little evidence we have available to us, it's probably safe to say that it won't have helped.

Anyone with any other background information on this band should get in touch to fill in the blanks. I'd be grateful for any help received.

Tracklisting:
1. Gotta Give It Up
2. Shedtronics
3. The Ballad of John Harlow

Fox - Mr Carpenter/ Seek and You Find

2011-11-14T08:00:00.010Z

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1968

As a friend of mine wisely observed a couple of weeks ago, most psychedelic pop records do not make for good DJ'ing material - all that whimsy, introspection and feyness seldom leads to people shaking some action on the dancefloor. As with all genres, however, crossover records exist, and this is one of them.

Issued in 1968 just as the summer of love was beginning to seem a bit passe, "Mr. Carpenter" makes up for that by having a great fat bouncing groove going on, as well as some repetitive and nagging (if rather meaningless) lyrics. "Hey Mr Carpenter, won't you come on round and mend the door?" the band ask urgently, then follow it up with "Hey Mr Geetar-man, would you play me a song, I'm feeling down?". It's highly unlikely all these nagging favours would come to anything if the requests didn't come backed by a buzzing sitar riff, a marvellous psychedelic guitar breakdown, and some lovely stomping rhythms. Frankly, after three minutes of this I'd happily act as the band's general maintenance man. It's a gleeful soundtrack to a Saturday night, if lacking in the pseudo-profundity of a lot of its paisley painted brothers and sisters - but its poppy dumbness works endlessly in its favour.

The identity of The Fox is a mystery. They're certainly not the same Fox who signed to GTO in the seventies, and nor are they the same sixties band who issued the brilliantly titled LP "For Fox Sake". Nonetheless, rumours abound that this release features Dave Mason of Traffic on sitar, and it was produced by John Goodison who later got involved with songwriting for various glam rock bands including Mud (clearly he was getting a bit of stomping practice in early with this one). If anyone has the full lowdown on the band, please let me know. Otherwise, I may just assume that they were a studio based creation.

And yes, I really can't resist saying it - the lyrics to this are similar to Vic Reeves' "Oh Mr Songwriter" in places, aren't they? I highly doubt the man ever heard it, though.

More Ebay Stuff

2011-11-12T12:39:00.001Z

I've put some more stuff on ebay, if any of you readers are interested. Among the goodies on offer are:

dEUS - Worst Case Scenario (Limited Edition Audiophile Vinyl)
SAM THE SHAM AND THE PHARAOHS - Lil' Red Riding Hood (UK Pressing)
DEEP FEELING - Skyline Pigeon
BUZZ CLIFFORD - Baby Sittin' Boogie
BUD ASHTON - Telstar (Embassy remake of the Joe Meek classic)
MUSIC EXPLOSION - Little Bit O' Soul
OASIS - Definitely Maybe (double gatefold vinyl)
HANK THOMPSON - I'm Not Mad Just Hurt

And a bunch of other stuff besides. Please click here if you're interested.

Second Hand Record Dip Part 77 - Natural Life - Strange World

2011-11-10T08:00:00.001Z

Who: Natural Life
What: Strange World
Label: Hollywood
When: 1992
Where: de Plaatboef, Oude Gracht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Cost: 50 Euros

It was a funny time, the early nineties, filled with a combination of political angst and grooved up music. It might sound perverse and desperately unfashionable now, but back then (my son) you could form bands with very specific political lyrical agendas and squeeze endless albums out of them, whether their specialism happened to be feminist, Marxist or Anarchic rhetoric. Not only that, but people actually thought they were slightly cool as well.

Natural Life are a particularly odd case in point, having been promoted as an environmentally conscious rock band with long hair, recycled record sleeves and singles which had a rather hollering, angsty outlook combined with big guitars and shufflesome beats. Subtlety never seemed to be on their particular agenda - this disc, for example, mentions shotguns very close to the call-and-response line "Sing it to me sist-errrr!" suggesting that their ambitions were to fill huge arenas rather than the local bar. Like a number of otherwise forgotten bands in this peculiar post-eighties period, there was a flavour of both the rapidly exiting baggy bands and the stadium ambitions of Then Jericho in their work, a dominating sense that all bases were being covered to appeal to as wide an audience as possible so their messages could be heard by all and sundry.

The B-side exercises their alternative roots a bit more keenly, being a dub-rock excursion which sounds incredibly like the festival-goers dance music of choice back in those days when Glastonbury was only just beginning to seem like it might be important.

This was their debut single which failed to chart, but the follow up "Natural Life", complete with a video featuring the band running, skipping and jumping through the Spanish wilderness posing with unplugged instruments, jumped into the UK Top 50 after Radio One and ITV Chart Show support. That proved to be their swansong - their album failed to chart, no follow-up was forthcoming, and like David Icke, the concept of Green rock music never really bothered the mainstream in the UK again. The drummer Shovell would later find gainful employment in M People, the whereabouts of Jon Spong, Darren Hunter, Liggy Locko, Mark Mathews, Ray Wilson and 'Big' Sydney Holdforth remain less clear.

The video for "Natural Life" also seems to be unavailable on YouTube - although I'm guessing somebody somewhere must have an off-air of the Chart Show episode it was broadcast on - but you can see them performing "Strange World" live here.

Reupload - Federation - Blake's 7 Disco

2011-11-07T08:00:00.001Z

Label: Beeb
Year of Release: 1979

Yes, another example of a reworked or otherwise tampered television theme finds its way into the "Left and to the Back" archives, although to be frank in this case it's easy to see what the BBC were playing at. They'd already released an approximation of the theme tune in 1978 (rather than the theme itself) and presumably thought that a cult sci-fi hit like "Blake's Seven" was always going to be good for a bit of milking. Hence (presumably) this "disco" version of the theme emerged in 1979 as well. And why did they stop there, you have to wonder? Why not a whole album full of alternate versions of the "Blake's Seven" theme done in a whole wide range of styles?

Perhaps the full stop to any such grand schemes coming into fruition really had to come when this flopped, and I'll be blunt, that might have a lot to do with the fact that it really isn't much cop - even the most desperate sci-fi completist would turn their noses up. Driven by a squeaky synth rendition of the theme which sounds for all the world as if it's being sung by Sweep (now actually, that would have been a version worth hearing) some hideous, half-asleep psuedo-funky basslines, and the irritating and unrealistic "handclap" noise on a drum machine, this could be the demonstration setting on a Rumbelows home MIDI synthesiser unit and nobody would be any the wiser. It sounds like the work of session people who despised what they were being asked to do, and wanted to get the whole exercise over with as swiftly as possible so they could nip down to the pub.

More interesting - and perplexing - is the flipside "Disco Jimmy", which so far as I know appears to have no connections with the programme at all, and just consists of some bagpipes, a disco beat, and a drunken Scotsman sounding off, although I think it's safe to say that the man isn't a native.

Equally confusing is the "Beeb" label, which seemed to run parallel to the BBC label in the seventies, but didn't really have a different release policy at all. You wouldn't get away with that now without the tabloid press running a week of headlines about the Beeb wasting licence payer's money. Nice cheerful picture of a bee in the logo, though.

Update: This blog entry was written in January 1991. I have nothing to add, as nobody responsible for the recording has come forward - wisely, I'd say - but "Here Is A Box" blog author Tim Worthington did correctly point out that "Blake's 7 Disco" does bear a certain resemblance to Pulp's out-take "We Can Dance Again", although the only version of that I can find online is Chevette's cover).

The Motions - Take The Fast Train/ Hamburg City

2011-11-03T08:00:00.003Z

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1968

The mod movement is regarded by most listeners and pop pickers as being an inherently British phenomenon, and whilst overseas mod acts most certainly did exist, it's curious to see how they presented themselves. The Motions, for example, posed beneath Big Ben for the sleeve of one of their earlier singles "Everything (That's Mine)", complementing the clanging Who-ness of the disc with distinctly familiar Anglo orientated imagery. That they hailed from The Hague in The Netherlands and were at that point produced by Americans Scott Walker and John Walker apparently presented no issues to them.

Despite (or perhaps because of) their rather un-Dutch image, The Motions were a force to be reckoned with in their native land, issuing dozens of singles and containing plenty of national musical legends in their line-up. Singer Rudy Bennett had a successful solo career after The Motions called it a day in 1971, drummer Sieb Warner became sticksman for Golden Earring, and perhaps most notably Robbie Van Leeuwen became one of the founding members of the ridiculously under-rated (in Britain, at least) Shocking Blue.

"Take The Fast Train" perhaps isn't their best single, but its raw, bluesy riff cuts through the sweet vocal harmonies in such a contradictory fashion that it's a compelling listen. The influence on Shocking Blue in particular can clearly be heard here - this is basically late sixties hard rock with a slightly sugary edge. Flip side "Hamburg City" is a lot less jagged (and therefore less interesting) being an almost Manfred Mann styled tribute to the German city.

The Motions are pretty much the Godfathers of the Nederbeat movement, and can even be found on the "Nuggets II" box set issued by Rhino. That they didn't do much business outside of their home country is unfortunate, but in the case of Britain they barely tried (notching up only a few gigs to their name there, despite Scott Walker's encouragement). Some members would, however, get their shot at international fame in other bands, and the Motions must therefore be considered one of the better schools of Rock in Holland, as well as releasing some furiously good singles.

Second Hand Record Dip Part 76 - Nadine Expert - I Wanna Be A Rollin' Stone

2011-10-31T08:00:00.009Z

Who: Nadine Expert
What: I Wanna Be A Rolling Stone
Label: CBS
When: 1978
Where: Wood Street Market, Walthamstow, London
Cost: 50p

Oh God. This is a prime example of a single you might spot in the 50p bin and do a double take about, not because you expect any good to come of chancing upon it - let's face it, the sleeve hardly promises a great lost artistic gem - but because you hope that it has some kind of kitsch appeal. And does it? Well, you be the judge.

Information on Nadine Expert online is about as scanty as the daywear she posed in for many of her record sleeves, but the media story appears to be that she happened to "bump into" Bill Wyman at an unnamed airport whilst he was on his travels (attractive young women seemed to stumble into Wyman's path a lot at this time) and following a chat with the man was offered the opportunity of a recording career. Well, it could happen to any of us. You can only wonder at the content of that conversation which must have occurred at the luggage carousel, or perhaps whilst they were both innocently waiting for the shuttle bus to ferry them to a useful terminal. This, the first single, was a disco medley of some The Rolling Stones classics, including "Paint it Black" performed in an absurdly joyous manner. It sounds exactly as you'd expect it to, and is only really notable for predating the trend for popular disco medleys of old hits by several years.

Nadine managed some success on the continent and is still respected by some aficionados of disco music. There's a clip of her performing this very track on some unnamed European music show, where she struts her stuff in a very confident, Suzy Quatro influenced, proto-Samantha Fox hybrid kinda way. Beyond that, it's very difficult to think of anything to add.

Winston's Fumbs - Real Crazy Apartment/ Snow White

2011-10-27T08:00:00.006+01:00

Label: RCA
Year of Release: 1967

So far as I'm aware, there are only two sixties singles whose lyrics are heavily focussed on interior design. One is Pregnant Insomnia's brilliant "Wallpaper", a track which gave its name to probably the best homebrew compilation I put together for this blog. The second is this, which is also surely the only rock record to heavily feature the repeated proclamation "Furn-i-ture! WOOO!" I'm not the right age to understand whether this line sounded as absurd at the time of this record's release as it does now, but it perhaps signifies how much design and lifestyle became a focus for many British sixties bands, and most especially any with a modernist agenda.

Jimmy Winston, yer man behind Winston's Fumbs, was unquestionably a man with a mod background, having previously been the keyboard player with The Small Faces. He'd already released one quite good 45 on Decca under the name Winston's Reflections, but he switched to lead guitar for this and sounded every inch the garage equivalent of Jimi Hendrix. "Real Crazy Apartment" is an excitable piece of work, so much so than the line "Take it easy now" could well be Winston addressing himself, shortly before he rattles off a list of things in his friend's apartment he particularly enjoys, including the Shakespeare volumes and the wallpaper. It's almost like Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen on uppers, combined with such a high-tempo, rattling backing that it feels almost beyond gleeful.

Much has also been made of the flip "Snow White" over the years, but to my ears it's the poorer cousin, being a rather metronomic piece of work focussed on the shortcomings of a vain female scenester.

Winston went on to work in theatre, appearing in the musical "Hair", whilst the keyboard player Tony Kaye had rather more success in the progressive monster that was Yes. There was no Fumbs follow-up, but perhaps that's just as well - this would have taken some beating.

The King's Singers and Greg Lake - Strawberry Fields Forever/ Disney Girls

2011-10-24T08:00:00.009+01:00

Label: EMI
Year of Release: 1978

Sometimes I find myself wondering what on Earth I'm supposed to write about some of these records. Sometimes, instead of writing a big long description about the history of the act and what's on offer, I feel the urge to stick to the basics - so for this entry, all I'd really type is "This is the choral act The King's Singers covering the Beatles 'Strawberry Fields Forever' with The Beach Boys track 'Disney Girls' on the flip. Greg Lake produces". If I expanded on that, is there a danger I'd dampen the shock effect of the fact that the record even exists?

It most certainly does, however, and I'm probably as perplexed by it as you are. When the needle hit the grooves of this one on the first play, I must admit I was expecting a total dog's dinner of a record, another appalling Beatles cover to add to the long line of bastardised cash-in nonsense that's been released into the wild. In reality, it's neither as ridiculous as it sounds - and some of Lake's production frills actually help keep the proceedings mildly psychedelic - nor as unlikable as you'd expect. Also, as church choirs doing interpretations of modern classics has worked its way into the heart of popular culture in the early 21st Century, this probably sounds more run-of-the-mill now than it ever did in 1978. The King's Singers are obviously incredibly skilled at their craft and take the job in hand seriously, and the end production knows exactly where to draw the line in its interpretation, so there are no surprise fade-outs and fade-ins at the end, nor reverse effects. Overall, it's actually a pleasing record, like the long-forgotten sixties harmony act Tinkerbell's Fairydust taking a stab at the output of Mersey's finest sons. Oh, and the similarity of the intro to that of Bobak Jons Malone's "House of Many Windows" is, it's safe to say, coincidental.

Less excusable is the scratch and sniff sleeve containing a lady whose dignity is only covered with some strawberries. I'm sure such excesses played badly with the band's hardcore audience of Pebble Mill viewers and Christians, although who knows? The red vinyl EMI disc manages to make their disgusting seventies fawn and red label look halfway pleasing, mind.

The King's Singers were formed at King's College in Cambridge by six choral scholars in 1968, and are still active today and remain a successful live concern, performing 125 concerts a year. An adaptable approach to their set lists is one of the factors which has caused them to be a constant draw, including classical music as well as pop standards in their repertoire. After finding this one, my respect for them has actually increased tenfold.

Johnny Johnson & The Bandwagon - Mr Tambourine Man/ Soul Sahara

2011-10-20T08:00:00.006+01:00

Label: Bell
Year of Release: 1971

Johnny Johnson and The Bandwagon, rather like Geno Washington, were an American soul act who had far greater success in the UK. "Breaking Down The Walls of Heartache" was a number four hit in 1968 - even though, given its subsequent influence and club plays, it feels as if it should have climbed even higher than that - and whilst the original line-up of The Bandwagon failed to last into the seventies, Johnson was keen to continue to capitalise on his success outside of the States.

A whole variety of other singles were issued, including the top ten hits "Sweet Inspiration" and "(Blame It) On The Pony Express", shortly before this one was issued to public indifference. Your eyes aren't deceiving you - it is indeed a soulful rendition of the Dylan/ Byrds classic, complete with sweat, intensity and a great big brassy horn section. On first listen, it sounds frankly unnatural and absurd. So much is done to deviate from the original tune and arrangement during the introductory seconds in particular that it's hard to even hear what it has in common with Dylan's song, and it's only when a chipper version of the chorus kicks in that you're able to connect the dots. By the second listen, however, it's a pure joy to listen to, a cover version attempted in the spirit of all the best ones, using the original track as a springboard for different arrangements rather than a score to idly copy from. Some may scream "Sacrilege!", but it's actually no more or less of a deviation from Dylan's first recording than The Byrds attempted.

The fun doesn't stop there, either. The B-side "Soul Sahara" is a thing of wonder, with Johnson whooping and hollering his way through a funky backbeat and horn section as he forcefully takes us through a history of that thing we call soul, with all its accompanying sub-genres. That neither side seems to get played very often in clubs (unlike the group's hits) is a missed opportunity in my book - "Soul Sahara" has such a furious insistence that it's impossible to stay still while it's playing, whereas "Tambourine Man" is a wonderful talking point.

And all this gets me wondering - has there ever been a song which has attracted a more varied array of covers than "Mr Tambourine Man"?

(And whilst I realise we're in danger of drowning in asides and sentences starting with "and" at this point, apologies to The Lord of The Boot Sale who I know damn well uploaded both this one and Ginger Ale's "Sugar Suzy" not long ago. It would seem as if our purchasing habits are crossing over at the moment, but I'm sure we'll deviate wildly again soon).

Can't Buy Me Love Vintage Jumble Sale

2011-10-18T21:25:00.003+01:00

I'm back DJ'ing at the "Can't Buy Me Love" jumble sale on Saturday 29 October 2011, which as always will be taking place from 12:30 - 5:30 at The Boogaloo Bar in Highgate:

312 Archway Road, Highgate, London N6 5AT

Expect the usual carefully messy mix of soul, rock and roll, garage, mod pop, and whatever else takes the fancy of both myself and the resident DJ John The Revelator. This event is picking up quite a bit of press now, so do drop by and to find out what the fuss is about.

The Facebook events page is here for anyone who needs to remind themselves using the wonders of social networking technology. I hope to see some of you there.

Reupload - Kes Wyndham - Broken Bicycle

2011-10-17T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1971

"The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones."
Flann O'Brien "The Third Policeman"

I freely admit that I have absolutely no idea whether or not Kes Wyndham's wistful "Broken Bicycle" tune is inspired by Flann O'Brien's bike-obsessed police officers in the "Third Policeman" novel. However, lyrically it certainly seems to have several key pointers - "We were one body of flesh and of steel" he sings mournfully, whisking the listener away into a hellish, surreal world where men may become methods of two wheeled transportation at any time.

It has to be said, "Broken Bicycle" is a rum little piece of work, being a subtly orchestrated ballad about the end of one woman's love affair with her jilted Raleigh. It comes drenched in the slightly twee, pie-eyed melodies of the sixties despite its 1971 release date, and was considered good enough to work its way on to the Ripples series of compilation albums (volume three - "Autumn Almanac"). Sadly, there is no information about who Kes Wyndham was or what else he did in the booklet, which is usually the compiler's polite way of sidestepping the issue that nobody has the slightest clue. I certainly don't either, but if the possibility of some royalties cheques can't smoke Mr Wyndham out of his hole, I sorely doubt I mention on this blog will. Still, Kes - if you happen to chance on this entry, please let us know what else you got up to.

The A-side "Honey Call Me Home" is less pleasing, being a rather middle-of-the-road ballad lacking a sufficient hook. I've included it in the download so people can satisfy their curiosities. I doubt anybody would have had more luck with this single if they'd flipped the sides around, since "Broken Bicycle" is far too subtle to crash the charts, but it might possibly have established Kes Wyndham as an interesting artist to watch.

(This entry originally went live in June 2009. Kes never did get in touch - I can't say I'm particularly surprised.)

Ginger Ale - Sugar Suzy/ Scoobidad

2011-10-13T08:00:00.001+01:00

Label: Injection
Year of Release: 1972

Many moons ago, you may remember that I wrote I was due to spend a week's holiday in The Netherlands, and I promised I'd return with some records for this blog. This is the first of the bundle, and whilst it may be a push to describe it as an obscurity - the A-side "Scoobidad" hit number four in Holland - the B-side has since acquired some love as a bit of a psych-pop classic across the whole of Europe.

Ginger Ale were formerly known as Roek's Family before changing their name and subsequently dabbling with more intricate sounds. "Scoobidad" is a fairly harmless piece of seventies bubblegum, but "Sugar Suzy" is beautiful despite its rather unpromising, Archies-esque title. Filled to the brim with twanging, whining guitars and gentle, wistful vocals, it would neither be out of place on the second side of Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" nor indeed a compilation of West Coast classics. Dreamy, considered and tranquil, it's far too good to be buried away on a flipside, and had it been released at an earlier date and on the right side of a seven inch single (or tucked away on an album) it's not difficult to imagine it gaining more respect than it has done. As it stands, hopefully this will gain further popularity over the coming years.

Ginger Ale eventually went their separate ways, with drummer Richard De Bois moving on to a successful production career, and guitarist Steve Allet going on to join the psych-tastic band Ekseption.

Esprit De Corps - If (Would It Turn Out Wrong)

2011-10-10T08:00:00.024+01:00

Label: Jam
Year of Release: 1972

Throughout the eighties, the musical prowess of Mike Read became something of a standing joke for popular culture vultures and viewers of "Saturday Superstore". The presenter and Radio One Breakfast Show host surely had plenty on his career-shaped plate during the period, but he still managed to slip out a few singles under the name The Trainspotters, all of which were met with utter indifference by both critics and the public. "Mike Read and his bloody guitar" almost became a disdainful national catchphrase for Saturday mornings.

At the time, hardly anybody at all referenced the fact that he was also partly responsible for this little-known 1972 flop which was later deemed of a high enough quality to emerge on the "Rubble" series of psychedelic compilation albums. I can only concur, it's actually pretty bloody good. The B-side "Pictures On My Wall" can probably be safely ignored, but "If (Would It Turn Out Wrong)" is one of those psychedelically tinged ballads with an unsettling undercurrent, here provided by the positively woozy phasing on the string section. It's an eerie piece of work which deserved further attention, but clearly never got it, despite sonically encapsulating the giddy, doubtful feelings of love which may possibly be unrequited - far from attempting to be "trippy", I'd argue that the chaps were merely trying to replicate conflicting emotions with the skying effects here.

Joining Mike Read were other music industry dabblers Dave Mindel, David Ballantyne, Bill Pit and Alan Tomes. It would appear that they only managed one more single after this one, "Lonely", before knocking matters on the head. Esprit De Corps are one of a privileged number of acts who appeared on "Top of the Pops" despite not having a hit to their name, so they clearly were given a fair chance by Read's future BBC paymasters, but it obviously came to nothing. As for what became of Read, he was at one point so successful in the eighties that Strawberry Switchblade's record label tried to talk one of the girls into going on a date with him, just to increase their chances of getting one of their records played on the Breakfast Show (they did not comply). It's a far cry from that to this, and no mistake.

Second Hand Record Dip Part 75 - Cirrus - Rollin' On

2011-10-06T08:00:00.004+01:00

Who: Cirrus
What: Rollin' On
Label: Jet
When: 1978
Where: Wood Street Market, Walthamstow, London
Cost: 50p

Ah, chocolate for men! Where were we in the days before we had chocolate for men, eh lads? In the seventies, if you were a bloke and you wanted a chocolate bar, you had to buy Dairy Milk and end up looking like a lady in public or (as one astute YouTube commenter puts it) "a bit like Larry Grayson". Dairy Milk and Galaxy, delicious though they are, were for men of suspicious inclinations. And as no self-respecting gentleman would ever want such an image, we had to resort to stealing bars from petrol stations, eating them in the middle of the night for fear that our lady-wives and lovers would catch us, and even hiding it in the Garden Shed underneath the biggest saw we could find. Put it this way, it wasn't much of a life.

Thank God for Rowntrees, then, who put an end to the whole dilemma by producing a low quality, manly chocolate bar all chaps could enjoy without fear of criticism. "Yorkie" (also slang for "Yorkshire Terrier", which as we know isn't an especially masculine dog - I'm stunned they got away with that one) was launched with adverts including a butch, confident truck driver slowly eating the large sized bricks of the stuff with an expression somewhere between smug self-satisfaction and sexual ambition. However hackneyed and silly this idea seems now, it worked a charm in the seventies, and propelled the bar up the best-selling chocolate charts - this despite the fact that it's among the shoddiest commercial chocolate I've ever wrapped my tongue around.

The tune from the advert was clearly popular enough that Jet Records thought it could be a hit single. They were wrong, obviously, and even the aid of this novelty chocolate bar shaped and coloured record didn't help matters. It's pure cod-Country and Western, all twangs and mock American accents, and frankly sounds like a right load of old cobblers. For just a few minutes, though, you could imagine you were the gentleman in the track, that confident, swaggering brute with only miles of road ahead and loads of chocolate on your mind, and as a fetching bonus you got a peculiarly shaped disc for your record collection into the bargain.

This entry is also almost topical in that one of the lorry driving men Stuart Mungall was recently sent to prison after committing euthanasia on his wife. "Left and to the Back" isn't really the place to comment about such complex social issues, but it's such an enormous elephant in the room that I didn't think I could let the entry finish without mentioning it.

The Surfaris - Shake

2011-10-03T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: Paramount
Year of Release: 196? (This reissue 1973)

Now here's a puzzler for your collective minds. The Surfaris are, I would hope, familiar to all readers of this blog as the authors and performers of the legendary "Wipe Out" single, a song originally composed as an off-the-cuff B-side which subsequently went on to sell in terrifying quantities as the radio play favoured track. Only yesterday I had the television on and an advert using "Wipe Out" as its soundtrack was burbling away in the background - if The Surfaris signed a reasonable contract at the time of its original release, I shudder to think how much money they've made from it since.

In 1973 Paramount acquired the rights to The Surfari's catalogue in the UK and decided to issue the evergreen single once more in the hope that it may enter the charts again. There's absolutely nothing unusual in that. What is unusual, however, is what they opted to place on the flip side. Contrary to the label's "1963" credit, their cover of Sam Cooke's "Shake" originally emerged on the Dot label in the USA in 1967 during a period when nobody much cared about the band anymore. As such, it sank like a stone. That's a bit of a shame, as the track now sounds like a mean old garage track which would sound completely at home on any compilation such as Pebbles or Nuggets - it swaggers confidently, grooves mightily and sounds more of its moment than any Surfaris record issued in the late sixties has a right to sound. Instead of sticking with the surf guitar twang, it would seem the boys diversified towards the end of their careers.

Despite all this, the track is still a bafflement to me. The Surfari's official website suggests that they disbanded around August 1966, which makes the 1967 release date seem strange. It also makes no mention of "Shake" at all, as if the damn thing never happened. But - unless there's something strange going on - it surely did, for here is the audio proof below. I've already begged you lot on Facebook and Twitter, and I'm begging you again now - anyone with the full facts surrounding this track should definitely drop me a comment. It's ace, and I'd appreciate it if I had a bit more background knowledge about how it dropped into the world.

Planet E-bay

2011-10-01T11:00:00.002+01:00

I've done it again - I've floated a few records along the great E-shaped bay, although as always it's a handful rather than a bulk lot (I tend to run out of steam quite quickly).

Readers caring to click on this link will find the following records for sale:

VOODOO QUEENS: Supermodel Superficial
PARCHMENT: Light Up The Fire (John Pantry Produced effort)
OASIS: Some Might Say 7" (Probably of little interest to readers of this blog, and I don't particularly want it either - near mint as well!)
MOODY BLUES: Everyday/ You Don't (All The Time) (Early Moody Blues flop, fairly scarce these days)
SWINGLE SINGERS: Fugue In D Minor
GOLIATH: Port & Lemon Lady - demo copy (I've only seen a copy of this prog/ psych/ folk effort for sale once, and that was on the day I bought it. I'm curious to see how much it actually goes for. Get the feeling this one could be all or nothing).
IDES OF MARCH: Tie Dye Princess (a relisting)

If you're interested, you know what to do. As ever, any money raised goes towards the general running of this blog, in other words it pays off our subscription fees to have the mp3s hosted.

The Three Johns - Never and Always

2011-09-29T08:00:00.004+01:00

Label: Abstract
Year of Release: 1987

Leeds outfit The Three Johns were created by Mekons member Jon Langford in 1981, and whilst their track record seems to have been forgotten by most people in the years since, for a long time they were dependable indie chart botherers, releasing one John Peel favourite and NME Single of the Week after the other. Loud, occasionally political ("We're not a socialist band. We're a group of socialists who are in a band. It's a fine distinction but an important one") and periodically ramshackle, there was no suggestion that the band were ever going to be a threat to the mainstream, although in one Record Mirror interview they joked that at least one member might have boyband looks.

It's still worth revisiting their work to realise what some of the fuss was all about, however. "Never And Always" in particular is so urgent, brutal and intense that it's a clear winner for my affections at least. Produced by Adrian Sherwood who is responsible for the clattering, ear-battering drum machine work here, it's a combination of squawking punk vocals, angular guitar riffs and industrial turmoil which, had it been released by Public Image Limited, probably would have been widely respected. Instead it had to make do with a couple of Chart Show plays on the television and a moderately high placing on the indie chart.

The band called it a day in 1990, leaving behind a bunch of material which, while not always perfect, still deserves more listens than it appears to get in the present day. You'll never hear this on 6Music - but that doesn't mean to say that you shouldn't. It still grabs you by the throat even now.

Reupload - The Hush - Elephant Rider/ Grey

2011-09-26T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: Fontana
Year of Issue: 1968

There are some cheery music industry optimists out there who believe that every band will eventually get the success they deserve, and if they don't, they've clearly approached something from the wrong angle. "Talent will out," as Freddie Mercury used to camply trill to anyone who was listening (and lest we forget, he suffered a few disappointments of his own before Queen made it).

On the other, shadier side of the room, however, stand people like me who think that whilst there's a grain of truth to the belief that talent is always recognised in the end, there are also other factors to consider. There's record companies, of course. We should never, ever, underestimate the power of record companies to make the wrong decision at the wrong time. Ask Bob Geldof what he thought of his American record company's plan to send stuffed rodents to radio stations to promote the Boomtown Rats. As a stunt, it turned more stomachs than it ever turned any dials on to heavy rotation. Then again, record companies are frequently known for promoting the right people in the wrong way, or signing the right bands and releasing the wrong tracks. And that's the focus of this entry.

Here we have two sides that sound absolutely nothing like each other. "Elephant Rider" sounds as if it could be a failed Song for Europe entry with its childish chorus and cheery noises, whereas "Grey" is actually a harsh, heavy, very garagey piece of work, messy and stormy in all the best ways. "One day I'll die, leave things behind..." the lead vocalist announces at the beginning of the track, to the single, pounding metronomic beat of a snare drum. "But that's just one thing on my mind," he then snarls as some demonic, punky guitars come behind. The chorus just builds, a single whining note being struck again and again as the vocals peak into panicked ranting. It's a total garage punk classic, and whilst I can understand how Fontana got jittery about its commercial potential, to bury this away on a B-side is nothing short of criminal.

As for whether The Hush approved of their decision or not, I'm afraid I couldn't say. This was the only single they were ever able to release, so unless some dusty tapes turn up somewhere soon, we'll never know if they had more tracks like "Grey" to offer. Nobody has ever been able to successfully trace them either, despite their single regularly going for hundreds of pounds at auctions (the copy photographed above is a bootlegged facsimile copy I purchased at a more regular price). If any of them ever happen to read this entry, though, they should certainly get in touch...

(This blog entry was originally posted in May 2008, and get in touch they did! Firstly the drummer Mac Poole dropped me a line to say that they were an act he put together at Luxembourg Studios in London, and they were managed by Doug Perry, the same man who later went on to manage the snooker champion Alex Higgins.
Their keyboard player Peter "Twiggy" Wood later went on to join The Sutherland Brothers, whereas vocalist Chris Anslow now works on the cabaret circuit.
Another anonymous commenter also pointed out that the band clearly had a fan in Lou Barlow, who had very clearly sampled the riff from "Grey" to use for Sebadoh's single "The Flame".
Now, if only it was as easy to gather as much information as this for the numerous other entries about bands who have long since disappeared off the face of the Earth...)

Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans/ Detroit

2011-09-22T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: Columbia
Year of Release: 1964

The demise of the instrumental rock and roll combo is something I've mourned on "Left and to the Back" a number of times. There's no conceivable reason why such groups should have fallen out of fashion by the mid-sixties beyond the fact that listeners seemed to want groups to have an obvious focal point, a notable communicator, a role that only a lead singer could easily provide. Beyond that, the advantages of instrumental rock were obvious - it's more universal than vocal forms with their language barriers from one nation to the next, and there's frequently a sense of atmosphere and drama in these recordings which in the hands of other artists could be ruined by naff or disagreeable lyrics. The images painted by The Shadows' "Wonderful Land", for example, are for me a lot more enjoyable than those dished up by The Stones "Under My Thumb", a good track dirtily smeared by sneering, sadistic lyrics (and yes, at this point I am conscious of the fact that I may sound like somebody's Dad circa 1966).

Unlike most of the artists on this blog, Sounds Incorporated did meet with some minor success in the sixties - this record, for example, got to number 30 - but hovered just outside the fringes of mainstream acceptance. They worked with Joe Meek and are notable for having used the Clavioline keyboard before The Tornados did with "Telstar". When you couple that with the fact that they worked with the huge stars of the day, backing the likes of Gene Vincent, Cilla Black and Little Richard (during his UK tour), and even The Beatles on the track "Good Morning Good Morning", their relative anonymity becomes more startling. If nothing else, they were clearly among the most sought after session musicians of the era in Britain.

Of all the Sounds Incorporated recordings, this is probably my favourite. On the A-side rests a pleasingly atmospheric instrumental which proved to be their biggest hit, but on the flip lies "Detroit", an absolute floor-shaker of a track which combines sax riffs with mean, grooving hammond organ workouts and a tight rhythm section. At four minutes long, it's certainly one of the most persuasive mod groovers of 1964, and only recently seems to have been notching up spins by retro club DJs. The two sides of this single show how diverse and skilled Sounds Incorporated really were, as capable of creating Meek-esque atmospheric tracks as they were Rhythm and Blues inspired groovers.

Frankie Machine - The Cartesian Product (EP)

2011-09-19T08:00:00.004+01:00

Label: Artists Against Success
Year of Release: 2000

Blame Babybird if you want, but at the tail end of the nineties and during the eye-blinking morning of the 21st Century, the music press developed something of a fascination with eccentric lo-fi or semi-acoustic dabblers. They'd always been around, of course, the origins being easily traced to people pressing their own folk records in the fifties and sixties - but seldom before or since had the practice been given so much scrutiny, with some hacks admiring the anarchic, independent spirit of the artists in question, whilst others (who probably also freelanced for "Loaded") dismissed them as no-hopers and losers.

Some of the output was indeed self-indulgent silliness which should have remained locked away on the home Portastudio, but other items from the era - like this - are beguiling. The Cartesian Product isn't really an EP as such, but two sides of ambient noise, effects and melodies creating a well-woven whole. If the vinyl had been released as a two track single you'd genuinely be none the wiser. Wonderfully, though, it seeps with gentle menace, suggesting a creeping violence more intriguing and disquieting than most hard rock records. "I only wish that people wouldn't trust me enough to allow me to raise their children" Frankie gently sings as if performing a lullaby, not long before being interrupted by some discordant sound effects. Simultaneously comfy and utterly wrong, the use of melodic subtlety here is both manipulative and pleasingly odd.

There's not really a massive amount of point in me offering the EP below as its available free on the Frankie Machine website - but I've done so anyway, just so you can hear the both sides strung together as a coherent whole. Unbelievably, the act is still going, and I'm pleased to report that a new album "Squeeze The Life Back In" was issued in July of this year.

Tracklisting:
The Film I Never Made
Rhumba for the Mainframe
Happy/ Sadistic
St. Agnes Day Epilogue

Commercial Zenith
Tragic Love, Easy Listening
No Love Boat
Every Sunday Morning

The Bats - Listen To My Heart/ Stop Don't Do It/ Hard To Get Up In The Morning

2011-09-15T08:00:00.008+01:00

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1967

"Northern Soul", like Catholicism, is one of the hardest concepts to define, forever snaking its way out of your grip just as soon as you believe you've got the whole affair firmly nailed. Rather as the Vatican appear to sit and reinterpret matters now and then, so too do the divine faithful at the Soul Weekenders up and down the country, leading to some rather rum records landing on official (and unofficial, disputed) discographies. Is Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction" a Northern Soul record, for example? Not by my estimation it isn't, but that doesn't seem to have prevented some people from taking that line in the seventies (I have a bootleg repressing of the disc on the "Sound of Soul" label).

Nestling neatly on the Decca compilation "Northern Soul Scene" is a single by this South African band, The Bats (they're not Irish as the liner notes state). It only fits the genre due to its pounding, jogging rhythms, chiming piano lines and finger pops, but whether we're arguing about its standing in the official list or not, it's still a damn fine track. Effervescent, insistent and absolutely loaded to the brim with hooks, it's hard to understand where the chorus starts and the verses begin - listening to this record would inspire movement in even the most dancefloor shy of humans. Sadly, I haven't been able to include a clip of it in full, but it's available to buy on iTunes if you're that way inclined, and also a kindly YouTube user has uploaded it there.

Truth be told, the B-side "Stop Don't Do It" is pretty good in a mod-pop way as well, and it remains a massive mystery why this record didn't chart in the UK. It's pure, absolute pop, being neither ahead of its time in its stylings nor awkward, and the start of a career should have been assured for the band. Sadly, it was not to be.

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1967

So sadly, then, by the tail end of 1967 the game was up, and "It's Hard To Get Up In The Morning" was their final single. This is an entirely different proposition and sounds rather like a slice of bouncy, McCartney inspired whimsy - sweet and pleasant enough, but hardly the barnstormer "Listen To My Heart" is, nor powerful enough to have stood a chance in the charts.

What became of The Bats when this failed to do the business isn't clear to me, but if anyone has any information, please come forward. They deserve masses of recognition for their one club classic at least.

Fred Walking-Stick - Well I Ask YEW!

2011-09-12T08:00:00.004+01:00

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1961

There is a general belief that the Bonzo Dog Band were the first artists to parody the polite English absurdity of the old homegrown shellac sounds, and you can fully understand how that viewpoint has become the accepted one - there really wasn't anyone prior to the Bonzos who had any great commercial visibility taking on peculiar dance records like "I'm Gonna Bring A Watermelon To My Gal Tonight".

Here, however, is a very rare flop example of somebody not only doing a very neat parody of that era, but also beating the likes of Mike Flowers and Richard Cheese to the punch by a fair 35 years with an easy listening version of a rock and roll record. Eden Kane's "Well I Ask You" sounds rather ordinary and wet by modern standards, but at the time Kane's Elvis styled vocalising and swagger seemed rather daring and modern. What better way to deflate that unspeakable arrogance than with a polite English version, complete with lyrics referring to the lady's rejection as being "a beastly thing to do"? I can't think of one. "Naughty, naughty, naughty you", sings Fred with the minimum of emotion to the sound of a restrained and reedy brass section, and you can't help but think that whilst some of the humour within the grooves of this record has been lost by the present-day irrelevance of Eden Kane, the approach itself is actually the first vinyl instance of an ironic easy version of a rock song. There may be others - and I would be very interested to hear from somebody if there are - but the approach here proves that some jokes are older than you'd think.

The identity of Fred Walking-Stick is a complete mystery. Peter Sellers had apparently referred to Eden Kane as "Fred Walking-Stick" before this record came out, and this has led to some speculation that it may be him behind this record - but if so, that fact has bypassed numerous Sellers biographers, and above all else the disc fails to appear on his contractual home of Parlophone Records. It seems far more likely that Fred was a Sellers fan with a similar keen ear for the joy of musical parody. Had this record been a hit we might have heard more about the man behind the pseudonym. As an extremely obscure flop, however, it's likely to remain a riddle unless (or until) somebody comments to put me straight.

The B-side is a version of "Ain't She Sweet" by Brother Jim Walking-Stick, and no, I don't know who he is either.

Epic Spleandor - It Could Be Wonderful/ She's High On Life

2011-09-08T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: The Hot Biscuit Disc Company
Year of Release: 1968

American bands covering the work of British bands was fairly common practice back in the sixties, particularly if the Anglo-act in question had a number of catchy tracks which had yet to find favour across the pond - and indeed, such behaviour often worked in reverse too. This, however, surely takes the (hot) biscuit. "It Could Be Wonderful" was an utterly ignored track by The Smoke, a band who had made it reasonably big in Continental Europe but meant very little in Britain. Recorded at the beginning of their stint with Island Records after being dropped by Columbia, it's a pleasant, dreamy, woozy and actually quite slow number which sold in very low quantities.

Googling the Internet seems to reveal that most forum-dwellers and bloggers out there prefer The Smoke's original, but for me it's this version that really rips into the song's potential. Turning the tempo up significantly, filling the arrangement out with horns, and pounding on the drums, The Epic Spleandor created a piece of fantastic Motown-derived mod pop, utilising the kinds of rhythms which end up contributing to something unbelievably danceable and difficult to ignore. Propelling itself along with such gusto that it's all over in just over two minutes, it's one of those records with such urgency and force of personality that you feel compelled to play it twice, maybe three times in a row. Whilst The Smoke's version focusses on a dreamy, disconnected feel, this one has a more euphoric, urgent rush about it - perhaps not quite derivative enough to pass as Northern Soul, but certainly a lot more compelling than a great many records released by inauthentic artists which did fit that particular rubric.

The Epic Spleandor were a New York based act formed from the ashes of Little Bits Of Sound. Their first release "A Little Rain Must Fall" was a regional hit on Hot Biscuit, the newly launched subsidiary of Capitol. "It Could Be Wonderful" was supposed to be capitalise on this initial interest, but failed utterly to click with the American public, and the band were promptly dropped by the label. Records like this one, and the West Coast styled flip "She's High On Life", make you wonder what might have been had they been allowed to continue. This is one of my favourite US singles of the era, and I'd love to hear it a lot more often than I do (which at the moment is "never" outside of my house). It doesn't seem to sell for a great deal on ebay, either, so the question must surely be - am I alone in my love of this record, or does it have an untapped audience waiting for it?

Reupload - Idi Amin - Amazin' Man

2011-09-05T08:00:00.001+01:00

Label: Transatlantic
Year of Release: 1975

Now, if there's one thing Laibach, Bob Geldof and I seem to agree on - and I'd be willing to wager if you put us all in a room together it would be the only thing we all agree on - it's the fact that a great many dictators behave uncannily like rock stars, who use the same art school imagery, symbolism and sweeping universal statements that some of history's biggest murderers have also indulged in. In fact, the one reason rock stars will never seem like anything more than slightly comedic figures is the fact that their use of arthole imagery for populist means, and their stadium rallies, and their fist-punching power gestures don't really amount to much more than a foot-stomping barn-storming session down at the Hammersmith Palais (and perhaps the odd sacked keyboard player here and there). Picture Bono with a machine gun in control of a Third World state, though, and suddenly the imagery seems slightly horrific. In fact, one reason why I've never been too convinced that Tony Blair was actually, genuinely Evil is that he looks so damned unconvincing with a guitar. If you'd given Idi Amin an instrument, he'd have looked like he was born with the thing. Tony Blair just looked slightly ashamed and apologetic.

Of course, this isn't genuinely Idi Amin on this single, even though when I first picked up the disc I actually thought for a split second it might be. It is in fact satirist John Bird pretending to be Idi Amin, but still sending the single out under the ruthless dictator's name anyway (Hey, what was he gonna do? Sue for defamation?) Bird cooks up a mean groove as the frontman to this single, explaining his philosophy to win the public over with the power of populist song, and getting up to all sorts of backing vocalist sacking mayhem on the way. It would spoil the joke if I revealed the outcome of the record at this point.

The B-side, on the other hand, is purely a spoken word side outlining Amin's problems with the ladies. Both form part of the "Broadcasts of Idi Amin" album that Bird put out, after his Private Eye columns and offshoots on the same topic proved so popular that Transatlantic Records clearly thought there was an entire album's worth to be appreciated by the public.

Why Bird or Private Eye or Transatlantic Records stopped there I'll never know. This is surely under-explored territory, and whole albums by Kim Jong-il, for example, would be worthy additions to anyone's collection. You could simply file the vinyl next to Phil Spector's Christmas albums and have done with it. In fact, a cover of "Amazin' Man" by somebody pretending to be Phil Spector would be immensely topical at the moment....

Update: Except it wouldn't any more, obviously. This entry was originally posted in April 2009 and to this day remains one of the most unusual records I've presented on here, and God knows it's had some competition. I'm still waiting for Bono's military coup, by the way.

Gene Latter - Sweet Little Rock n Roller/ Auntie Annie's Place

2011-09-01T08:00:00.005+01:00

Label: Vogue (France)
Year of Release: 1974

Ah... you wait all of your blogging life for an obscure Gene Latter single to turn up in a second hand record store, then two come along at once (this one was found in the rather brilliant "Record Museum" in Brussels, by the way). Although to be frank, the difference between this record and our last Latter upload "Sign on The Dotted Line" could barely be more extreme.

Latter appeared to have a scattershot approach towards musical genres throughout his entire career, doing sitar-tinged Rolling Stones cover versions, pounding Northern Soul tracks, and supremely ridiculous disco records (check out "John Travolta You Are A Superstar" for an example of just how far the boat of ludicrousness can be pushed out to sea). Perhaps it therefore shouldn't be a surprise to me that this single consists of two genres for the price of one, with a piece of pounding glam rock on the A-side and some second-hand popsike on the flip. "Sweet Little Rock N Roller" is a likable but inessential seventies thudder which seems to be drawing its inspiration from both Abba and Suzi Quatro without quite managing to scale the heights that either artist managed. Still, those influences were clearly enough to push this record towards some moderate sales on the continent, even if it was greeted with utter disinterest in the UK. A full version can be purchased over on iTunes if you're interested.

It's what's occurring on the flip-side which is a source of both surprise and bemusement to any seasoned "psych collectible" head, however, "Auntie Annie's Place" being a cover version of a track whose original version nestled on the "Circus Days" series of compilation albums. The original was released by a studio group called Kidrock and paired with the whimsical "Ice Cream Man" and released as a single specifically targeted towards the Infant and Junior School market in 1973. Whilst managing to become a minor hit in Spain thanks to the use of it on an ice cream commercial (as you'd expect) it did absolutely zip-all business in the UK, despite being a perfectly good piece of toytown pop in its own right. Fully grown (and probably predominantly middle-aged) "Circus Days" listeners were in fact listening to this for years without being informed that it was actually supposed to be appreciated by pre-pubescents.

The B-side "Auntie Annie's Place" was a stripped-back and sweet but unambitious piece of acoustic musing on the subject of going to visit one's favourite relative and her friendly dogs. Probably recorded in as few takes as time would allow, the understated nature of the work actually made it seem perhaps too subtle for kiddies, but as Marty Feldman once observed, artists can do whatever they want on the B-side... So in this case, why Latter has taken the song and given it a truly epic orchestral arrangement defies logic. The lyrics of child-like wonder remain, but are instead delivered with Latter giving them a full-throttle, high powered performance, in front of strings that would have shocked Suede circa "Dog Man Star". Such high production values are seldom found tucked away on flip-sides, which makes me wonder if at some point this was being mooted as the headline song.

It has to be said, the melodrama also suits the track, converting it from a piece of folksy acoustic musing into a Bowie-esque piece of musical theatre. "Auntie Annie's Place" - whatever that may be - now sounds like it lives in some glaring technicolour valley, whereas the original seemed to me as if might have been suggesting a run-down and barely converted straw barn. It turns the track into an incredibly unlikely but pretty damn marvellous observation on childhood nostalgia.

E Bay Gum

2011-08-30T13:30:00.004+01:00

I'm back on ebay again selling a number of items - please do nip by and see me by clicking on this link. And just in case you're curious, the records on offer are:

ALAN PRICE/ GEORGIE FAME: Follow Me/ Sergeant Jobsworth
HOT BUTTER: Percolator
GLEN CAMPBELL: Galveston (BBC Record Library disc)
MANSUN: Flourella/ Skin Up Pin Up
IDES OF MARCH: Tie-Dye Princess (really pristine condition demo with soundclips available)
FLYING MACHINE: Yes I Understand
RAY MORGAN: Long and Winding Road
QUEEN: Save Me (picture sleeve version)
OLIVER SAIN: Apricot Splash/ Party Hearty

Any funds raised by the auction go towards the server costs incurred by storing mp3s on Box.net.

Second Hand Record Dip Part 74 - Mr Food - And That's Before Me Tea!

2011-08-29T08:00:00.016+01:00

Who: Mr. Food
What: "...and that's before me tea!"
Label: Tangible
When: 1990
Where: Wood Street Market, Walthamstow, London
Cost: 50p

It's been over three months since the last "Second Hand Record Dip" entry, such a long gap in the service that I feel almost obliged to remind you all of what the hell the concept actually is. Essentially, it involves a dig into the remaindered section you find in the second hand record store, the unloved vinyl that gets tossed into the plastic crates on the floor near the back (or, in particularly uncared for cases, on the pavement outside) for the passing cheapskate to contemplate whilst on their bended knees praying for budget miracles. I've had some fantastic finds in the 50p box before now, but SHRD doesn't focus on the gems but the oddities - the flotsam and jetsam that may have stayed there forever had not somebody with a blog to write passed by.

Ex-BBC Radio One DJ Steve Wright has already cropped up in this section of the blog, and it's frankly no surprise to find him getting mentioned again. In the great musical box of fireworks, Wrighty has always been responsible for the fast-burning ones which do little more than make a few farting noises, mostly to the amusement of the assembled children and grandparents. Even his hit and near-hit singles remain largely forgotten by the General Public and are certainly no longer commercially available. Like slumber parties and roller discos, his melodic output does not appeal once you reach adulthood (One possible exception might be his effort under the name of Arnee and the Terminaters, whose single managed to prophesise the career of Scooter, so now is amusing for reasons entirely separate to the ones he originally intended).

So then, I'd stopped listening to Steve Wright's show by the time the jingle this single was based on begun to air on his show, having developed what I thought was a more grown-up interest in moodily listening to indie bands, and have no idea what the hell the context of it was - although context meant very little to our Steve, so it's safe to say this was probably played endlessly for the hell of it. It consists of a Geordie character known only as Mr Food delivering a Pam Ayers-esque series of lyrics about how much he enjoys eating over a basic, jaunty piano backdrop. And that really is it. The title of the single itself is the punchline to the joke, so that's out of the bag before the needle even hits the groove. It's the kind of thing you hear at open mic nights up and down the country when a musical comedy act takes the stage after being encouraged by their well-meaning friends, delivers a ditty to polite laughter, then promptly naffs off never to be seen again. With Wrighty's help, however, this managed a staggering number 62 position in the charts, hardly a life-changing triumph for anyone concerned, but certainly more than most indie-distributed discs of the era could hope for.

This record probably wouldn't be worthy of further mention were it not for the fact that the gentleman behind the mask of Mr Food, David Sanderson, went on to craft several pastoral neo-psychedelic pop songs under the name of Flowerbed, and his efforts can be found here. When he wasn't titting around with Steve Wright and The Afternoon Boys, clearly he was taking the time to study his Lilac Time and XTC albums closely. Sanderson is also a contemporary classical music composer who has had his work performed at several major concert halls in Britain and abroad, and if you honestly expected this entry to end in such a manner, you're far more wised up than I was when I began to research the man behind the disguise. Sometimes even these ridiculous chance finds can lead to interesting places.

For those of you wondering what was on the flip side to this, by the way - because I know at least one person will be - it appears to be exactly the same song all over again in the guise of a "remix". A mis-press or satire? You be the judge. And while you're sitting thinking about that, there's a low quality copy of the promo video to watch over on YouTube.

Gary Walker - You Don't Love Me

2011-08-25T08:00:00.010+01:00

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1966

So then - Left and to the Back - it's a blog focussed on flops and obscurities, isn't it?

Yes, it is. We're there first with that essential oddity every time, and you know it!

So why have you included this one, then? A minor hit in 1966, I believe.

Well, we occasionally...

And don't use the "One Hit Wonder" excuse. Gary Walker wasn't really a One Hit Wonder, was he?

No, he had two minor hits. This got to number 26 in 1966, as did "Twinkie Lee" in the same year, and he had more hits than I could count in Britain with the Walker Brothers, who as we all know released one of the most played and purchased records of the period in "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"...

Yes, yes, yes, I knew all that. So what is he doing on here, then?

I don't really have a good reason, other than that it's an absolutely cracking record. The fuzz guitar on this, and the aggression behind the vocals, actually make it one of the more striking sounds of the period. It's safe to say that Gary Walker was also an unlikely source for something of this nature - popular though The Walker Brothers were, they weren't exactly a credible band outside of mainstream circles.

But still, I refer you back to the purpose of the "Left and to the Back" blog.

It was a minor hit, it's true, but that didn't put the "Chocolate Soup for Diabetics" series of albums from compiling it along side all manner of flop artistes. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

So if the compilers of "Chocolate Soup for Diabetics" joined The Taliban, you'd do it too, would you?

Well, there's no need for that!

Sorry. But you take my point. And why have you written this blog entry in the style of The Guardian's "Pass Notes", a much-aped journalistic cliche which already seemed tired by 2001?

Well, as a retro-leaning blog, I felt it was time to revisit the format of Pass Notes, and see if it had any life left in it...

Stop making excuses. You're bereft of inspiration aren't you, you pathetic man?

I am not!

I put it to you that you've had this record for some time now, and just can't think of anything interesting to say about Gary Walker's career.

That's slander! I'll have you know that The Walker Brothers are, in my opinion, one of the era's more under-rated groups amongst snobs/ aficionados. "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" is of course a classic, but beyond that there were even gems tucked away on B-sides like "Arcangel", which utilised a church organ way before "A White Shade of Pale" had even been thought of - a radical move some have been tempted to suggest inspired Procul Harum. For all that, though, Gary Walker's talents were never given much exercise within the unit - largely due to some perverse contractual obligations preventing him from contributing much - and some of his solo material and group material with The Rain shows an artist who was actually rather more hip and swinging than the times gave him credit for. A lot of his non-Brother related output, and most especially this single, still stands up very well today in a mod pop vein, and deserves a lot more attention. His work may be terribly overshadowed by Scott Walker's monumental achievements with the classic albums Scotts 1-4, but there's plenty to appreciate, even if it doesn't cover the same cinematic, melodramatic ground.

Oh. Well, why didn't you say all that in the first place?

Bloody hell...

You're never going to write an entry in this style again, are you?

I doubt it very much, mate.

Another Event Alert

2011-08-24T21:14:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be DJ'ing at the Can't Buy Me Love summer vintage jumble sale market at the Boogaloo in Highgate (North London) this Saturday. The event runs from 12:30 - 5:30 and it should be a great place to have a quick drink and shop.

Far apart from the vintage items on sale, you'll get to hear me spinning some soul and rock and roll on the turntables, including some "Left and to the Back" favourites.

The pub can be located at:

312 Archway Road N6 5AT

And the Facebook invite with all the necessary details is here. See you there, hopefully.

Giorgio - Underdog/ Watch Your Step

2011-08-22T08:00:00.016+01:00

Label: Polydor (European Issue)
Year of Release: 1971

This one already featured on the Purepop blog a couple of years ago, but I couldn't not upload my copy on to here for two very particular reasons:
1. The utterly glorious European picture sleeve you see above, featuring Giorgio Moroder and his slightly sinister Basset Hound. Truly, if such a dog-walking sight appeared over the brow of a hill in your locality, you would surely feel at least a bit flustered? If not, you're a less easily alarmed person than I.
2. The B-side "Watch Your Step" is worth a listen in itself.

Also, any chance to wax lyrical about this record is welcome. Way before Moroder developed a career as one of Europe's foremost synthesiser experts, he crafted a number of records which were variable in quality and often not particularly adventurous. In the take-it-or-leave-it corner rests some bubblegum experiments which added little to the world of music, the likes of "Looky Looky" being a head-on collision between The Beach Boys and The Archies without as much of the charm as either. By 1971, however, he'd produced this marvel, a twisted gem of a record which has never really received the full attention it deserves.

"Underdog" is an epic piece of glam pop which tells the tale of an unfortunate rural type who finds himself trying to make a name for himself in the city. Throughout his stay, he finds himself being bullied by his demanding boss, and being rejected by prostitutes who laugh at his very presence in their brothel (even whores have standards, you know). This largely preposterous, exaggerated tale of failure is propelled along brilliantly by the kind of minimalist violin riff later utilised to good effect on many Italian pop records, and a simplistic building structure which, after a period of respite in the middle, begins scaling new heights for the latter half of the record, twisting the whole thing around into a more optimistic and aggressive finale. It's a record that does a great deal with very little, and in many respects reminds me simultaneously of much of The Sparks output (who Moroder would later go on to produce) and also Pulp's "Common People", though in the latter case the differences are great enough to attribute to coincidence. Still, it has wit, ludicrousness, an ambitious amount of power behind it, and it's such a domineering piece of work that from the very first note, it's impossible to ignore. When you combine that with reverb-heavy drums and a fantastic pop guitar solo, you're really in Glam Rock heaven.

Moroder's achievements with electronic music were so astounding that it's unsurprising something like "Underdog" should be ignored by critics exploring his back catalogue, making it perhaps his most appropriately-named single. It doesn't quite fit the Moroder story, as it fails to break any new ground, unlike Donna Summer's "I Feel Love". Despite that, it's still a track I simply can't stop playing, a track which causes me to beam from ear to ear every time it comes on my iPod, and if it's unfamiliar to you, I predict a similar response.

Over on the flipside, "Watch Your Step" doesn't quite have the same effect, but any primitive, punkish glam rock track criticising the police force has to be worth a few spins at least. "Just you cut your hair, and take my advice/ when he passes by try to be so nice" advises our hero in rather hesitant English. It's a double-sided disc of victimhood, this one, but what fun there is to be had in hearing about these misfortunes. Put simply, this is probably one of the best records I've ever uploaded on to this blog.

Beau Brummell Esquire (and his Noble Men) - I Know, Know Know

2011-08-18T08:00:00.006+01:00

Label: Columbia
Year of Release: 1965

In the same way that the ghost of psychedelia still haunted record stores in the early seventies (just ask anyone who bought a Hawkwind single) and leftover punks made their presence felt in the early eighties, Elvis Presley's particular brand of rock and roll could still be observed in the clubs and dancehalls long after Merseybeat changed the mainstream settings of the pop scene.

Beau Brummell Esquire's vocalisings on this record are, to all intents and purposes, rather akin to the kinds of professional sneering Elvis-isms we can all hear these days from performers in certain restaurants up and down the land where birthday parties and stag dos are welcomed. "I Know, Know, Know" isn't necessarily a retread of the old fifties discs and has enough sixties swing to have made it sound reasonably contemporary - but still, the swaggering confidence behind the main performance belongs sounds as if it belongs underneath a major quiff, and the record even comes complete with an Elvis cover version on the B-side. Despite the similarities to the King of Rock and Roll, though, this record doesn't half pack an energetic and addictive punch, and Brummell should be applauded for the self-penned top side.

Beau (if I may call him that, although his real name is Mike Bush) was a South African who was attempting to launch his career in Britain in the early sixties. Backed by the Noble Men, a band previously known as The Detours, his live performances were apparently the subject of much discussion throughout their career, being invariably described as charismatic and energetic. With that force of personality apparently also came a major flaw, according to many internet rumours. Stories abound to the effect that whilst the club venue PAs of the day could cover up his shortcomings with their distorted and indistinct sound, his lack of vocal prowess was more noticeable in the studio. One estimate suggests that "I Know, Know, Know" took a hundred takes as a result of his flat delivery, which sounds like an exaggeration, and you certainly can't hear that struggle in the grooves. The final product sounds as if it could have been a hit, and surely would have been had it been released a few years earlier.

Success did not come Mr Brummell's way with this single or any others, and in the end he returned to South Africa to set up a naturist valley in the Northern Transvaal, whereas The Noble Men became The Penny Peeps who have been featured on this blog before. You can see an unbelievably detailed timeline of the group's history over on the impeccable "Garage Hangover" site, which provides biogs of sixties bands the official rock biographers never really cared about.

Reupload - Yossarian - Gilbert and George/ They Are Naked and They Move

2011-08-15T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: Satellite
Year of Release: 1998

You've got to move fast to catch Gilbert and George, they're fit old geezers...

Somewhat strangely, "Whatever happened to Soho?" is a question I've encountered on the Interweb more times than I ever really expected to. I'm not referring to the region of London, either, but the one hit wonders who sampled the Smiths "How Soon is Now?" on 1990's "Hippychick". It seems to be appreciated much more in retrospect than it was at the time - now the sneers of "cheap cash in!" appear to have given way to an appreciation of the single.

One small part of the puzzle can certainly be solved via this blog entry, because band member Tim London moved on to this particularly bizarre electronic project Yossarian. Unlike Soho, it was an utterly hitless and frankly rather unusual venture which slipped out largely unnoticed ten years ago, and you'd still be hard pressed to find anyone online who cares.

That's not to say that the general public are necessarily always right, of course, for whilst I find "Hippy Chick" to be a faintly irritating piece of fluff, "Gilbert and George" has wit, originality, and sonic scariness to spare. The tribute to the notorious British artists is lyrically a bit baffling, but somehow pleasing all the same with its carefully phrased but randomly tossed around references to "slightly scuffed shoes", men dressed like Mr Chips, and being stalked by the artists in question down London streets (an image which is probably meant to be worrying, but I find quite pleasing for some reason). It is backed up by primitive electronic noises, deep, stomach churning groans and oscillating whoops, and a basic, lo fi backbeat. It screams "home made", but still sounds more adventurous than most big league productions.

It's also a double A side, and the other "A" on offer here, "They Are Naked and They Move", is five minutes of Krautrock rhythms, guitar freakouts and retro space age noises. It's not as good as its partner, but certainly dominates the room impressively as soon as you slip the needle into the grooves.

And if you're still wondering what happened to Soho after "Hippychick", look here for something I uploaded some time ago:

Update: Tim London got in touch with me to assure me that, in fact, Soho were alive and well and an ongoing venture (or at least were in September 2008 when I originally put this entry online). Their site can be found here.

Tim added: "Yossarian hung up his boots after a few albums/ EPs etc for Satellite/Soul Jazz. Fabio, who played drums, has a beautiful piece of vinyl out with his group Washington Rays. Kirsa, who played Transcendent 2000 and glock, is a mum in south London. She was (is?) also the vibes player with proto Arcade Fire-ish Copenhagen.

I'm back doing pop music as a producer after a break to make films (the feature-length Gordon Bennett would probably qualify for this site, if it was a film site). Look out for Young Fathers (hip hop boy band from Scotland) and Her Royal Highness, also from Scotland."

Tim also offered to help me get the above video unblocked on YouTube, which is more than I should really expect from somebody whose earlier work I harshly dismissed as "irritating" in the original blog entry. He is, therefore, officially a good chap.

Patrick D Martin - I Like Lectric Motors

2011-08-11T08:00:00.003+01:00

Label: Deram
Year of Release: 1979

I've blogged at some length before about how much revisionism has occurred on the topic of eighties (or in this case, cusp seventies/ eighties) electronic music. This isn't necessarily surprising in itself - history is generally written by the winners, and why would the Great Book of Rock and Pop waste its time devoting entry space to Karel Fialka, The Techno Twins, Tik and Tok and other such robo-jerking comrades when the battle was conclusively won by people who attempted to give machines a soul, who realised that focussing all their artistic and lyrical efforts on the novelty of modern electronic devices would eventually be regarded as nothing more than a novelty itself?

Indisputable though this may be, "Left and to the Back" has never been about analysing victories in pop, and "I Like Lectric Motors" by Patrick D Martin is yet another electronic obscurity which, instead of utilising electronics gracefully a la Soft Cell, New Order and The Human League, judders all over the show like a giant angry mutant wasp zig-zagging its way towards the party food. Focussing its lyrical efforts on the benefits of non-combustion engines, and being a damn sight better at predicting the future than most music of this era in the process, "I Like Lectric Motors" manages to avoid sounding hackneyed by actually being damn good. A simple idea based upon stomping, jerky repetition, it's brief, to the point, and a welcome splash of cold water to the face. A popular DJ spin choice at the "Blitz Club" at the turn of the eighties, it's been surprisingly overlooked by revivalists since, turning up for mere buttons in record stores and on internet auction sites.

As for who Patrick D Martin was and what else he did, good question. Another strangely prophetic song entitled "Computer Dating" came forth from his pen (whoever he was, he was certainly good at this malarky, perhaps he should have become a Science Fiction writer) and he appeared to get minor press reviews in, amongst other places, "Billboard" magazine, but beyond that there's very little to go on. Please do comment if you know more.

And remember - Electric motors have no fears.

Dave Allen - The Good Earth/ A Way Of Life

2011-08-08T08:00:00.000+01:00

Label: Philips
Year of Release: 1969

A few entries back when we discussed Alexei Sayle's hit single, I (possibly unnecessarily) listed many of the comedians who - for better or worse - had issued vinyl from the fifties onwards. I neglected to mention Irish comedian Dave Allen, whose sole 45 is possibly one of the most unlikely releases there's ever been.

Before we really get stuck into the contents of this disc, it's worth me getting on my soapbox and arguing that I genuinely regard Allen to be a legend. His lengthy television career from the sixties to the nineties is a testament to his surprisingly broad appeal, but what's less appreciated in some quarters is quite how revolutionary he was in his own understated way. Way before Ben Elton steamed in with his "bit of politics", Allen weaved tales of hypocrisy in the church, lampooned authority figures and generally (and perhaps most successfully) highlighted the absurdities of human life. Allen certainly traded on grouchiness and his material frequently landed him in trouble, but unlike many comedians with an axe to grind, there was a warmth to his story-telling which still seems unique today. His sign-off line to audiences everywhere was "Goodnight, thank you, and may your God go with you", an entirely non-cynical and utterly ecumenical statement which, despite my lack of belief in a "God" as such, I can't help but find touching.

So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that a comedian choosing to sign off his shows in such a giving way released this record, in which he appears to read soft but slightly weary poetry to the accompaniment of an orchestral backing. "The Good Earth", despite its rather sentimental leanings, manages to sum up Allen's personality rather well, using an astronaut looking down upon the planet as its focus, then signing off with the resigned statement: "Why can't we be good on the Good Earth?" The wonder of space travel may seem like a rather corny focus for such a thought in the present day, but in 1969 this was doubtless a very modern, contemporary message.

The B-side "A Way Of Life" is actually more absurd still, being akin to "The Sunscreen Song" long before that God-foresaken record was ever issued. To the accompaniment of "Greensleeves", Allen advises all his listeners on the best ways to approach life, offering gems such as "Listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant - they too have their story" and "For all that is sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a very beautiful world". It's easy to laugh for all the wrong reasons at such a record, but maybe this was the closest we got to the softer side of Allen, almost - although not quite - uninterrupted by thoughts about the planet's aggressive absurdities. And whilst neither side of this record would ever be likely to win the Forward Prize for Poetry, it means well without being nauseating.

It wasn't a hit, but when a Radio Two DJ played the record again in the nineties and asked in a rather perplexed manner why Allen put it out, he was unembarrassed and unrepentant, stating simply that he just saw it as a good opportunity to put some spoken word material with a message he happened to like to music. Of all the novelty or spin-off singles I've ever uploaded, this one feels the least like a cash-in, and certainly among the least likely to ever actually stand a hope of charting. I, for one, believe his version of events.

It's going one time, it's going two times/ Sold to the gent who wears the stunned expression

2011-08-06T20:53:00.000+01:00

I've started an ebay auction of several items which you can view here.

As you'll doubtless realise, most record collectors - and especially collectors who are obsessive enough to blog about it - do this sort of thing with a slightly heavy heart. Even if there are items in my collection I don't really want or have any further use for, I generally don't enjoy waving farewell to them (unless they're Freddie Starr items, which just go straight to the Salvation Army charity shop up the road).

Despite all this, I live in a tiny London flat which seems to be getting pokier by the day. This isn't helped by the collection of crates up against one of the walls. And far apart from that, I presently have to pay server fees to Box.net to keep this blog up and running without overload issues, and if I can claw back all of my monthly fees by doing this sort of thing on a regular basis, that will no longer feel like a loss during tight financial times.

There are ten singles for sale at the moment, some of which will be familiar to you. Hopefully one will be something you've thought you might quite like to own. Please do bid if so, and I await with interest to see if "100,000 Morrisseys" actually goes to a new home.

Medicine Head - Can't Get Over You/ Tenderhooks

2011-08-04T08:00:00.006+01:00

Label: Harvest
Year of Release: 1980

Once every so often I'll choose to upload a single on to "Left and to the Back" not because I particularly think it's good, but because I know a number of readers will have been trying to track it down. Certainly, the existence of this one completely passed me by until I saw it sitting in the record racks of a backstreet Camden Town record store, so I've no doubt there are other people out there who will be perplexed by it.

You see, it's a widely acknowledged fact that everyone's favourite minimalist rock duo (if we don't count The White Stripes) Medicine Head split up in the seventies. This record, a complete one-off released in 1980 with no follow-ups to be had, is therefore surely a good-natured reunion? Well, no. It would appear that the disc is little more than Ray Majors out of Mott The Hoople and John Fiddler out of Medicine Head using the latter band's name to try and bump up sales (I suspect both they and the record label would rather have used Mott The Hoople's name had there not been greater obstacles in the way of doing so). What you'll hear below sounds very little like the Medicine Head of yore, and much more like a slickly produced piece of eighties rock-pop, so far removed from their usual output that it's like sticking a Dansette logo on to a luxury Sony stereo system.

Whatever your moral view on the use of the band name for this project, it all came to nought anyway. The single flopped, it doesn't appear on any of the commercially released Medicine Head albums, and appears to have been airbrushed out of the band's discographies. One quick listen to either side will make it clear how this happened, although I suppose there might be the odd fan out there who sees this as a good and forgotten example of eighties AOR. Personally, it leaves me cold, although the B-side "Tenderhooks" is a reasonable enough stab at Springsteen-styled pop.

Sorry for the pops and clicks on this one, by the way - no amount of filtering could cover up the scratches without suffering significant loss of quality of sound elsewhere.

Paul Jones - The Dog Presides/ The Sun Will Shine

2011-08-01T08:00:00.005+01:00

Label: Columbia
Year of Issue: 1968

I doubt Paul Jones is unfamiliar to many readers of this blog. One of Portsmouth's finest sons, Jones enjoyed huge success as the lead singer of Manfred Mann, before departing their unit in 1966 to become a solo superstar. Or, at the very least, that was the plan. The reality was rather different, as the public chose to continue purchasing Manfred Mann singles without him as lead singer, whilst his own musical career seemed to plummet into ever-more diminishing returns and selective audiences. Rather than licking his wounds quietly, Jones became incredibly adept at diversifying his career, appearing in films and television programmes, and even becoming a DJ on the cultishly popular BBC Radio Two Rhythm and Blues programme.

This particular 1968 flop release is a peculiar affair indeed, having a rather hymnal Bee Gees composition on the A-side which, to be frank, doesn't bear much scrutiny or analysis. It's the track unfairly tucked away on the flip which is the real jaw-dropper. Featuring Jeff Beck on guitar, Paul McCartney on drums and Paul Samwell-Smith on bass, "The Dog Presides" is a supergroup track in all but name, and is a raw, pounding beast featuring all members playing to the best of their abilities. Bluesy, furious and insistent, even Jones' harmonica playing sounds spontaneous and ragged, and being present in the studio at the moment this was recorded must have been a very memorable occasion indeed. The fact that it's talked about so infrequently these days is really due to the fact that EMI seemed to completely fail to capitalise on the collective and merely hid the track out of sight behind a pop number - the phrase "missed opportunity" barely covers their error.

Unfortunately, due to the commercial availability of both tracks I can't really upload them in full here, although you can buy "The Dog Presides" on iTunes, and of course there's a full YouTube clip of it should you care to go wandering in that direction.

One Hit Wonders #20 - Alexei Sayle - Ullo John Gotta New Motor?

2011-07-28T08:00:00.007+01:00

Label: Spring
Year of Release: 1982

Even at Comic Relief time of year in Britain, you don't get terribly many comedians queueing up to make records these days, which is actually something of a relief - the very idea of a Mighty Boosh spoof glam/ psychedelic single or a knees-up Michael MacIntyre war hits medley filled with whimsical things he's noticed about Hitler thrills me not. There was a time, though, from the fifties right through to the eighties, where having your own single was your personal signal to the world at large that you had arrived as a comic force. Bruce Forsyth, Jim Davidson, Jimmy Tarbuck, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Bob Monkhouse, Bernard Manning, Julian Clary, Lenny Henry, Larry Grayson, The Young Ones, Tracy Ullman... the list is almost endless and encompasses everything from Royal Variety Show favourites through to the alternative set. The more radical people cared not whether it made them seem as if they'd "sold out" - why should they when they were getting to become pop stars and therefore living out their bedroom mirror fantasies?

Alexei Sayle is actually probably one of the most surprising additions to the canon in that he always seemed like somebody who didn't really care about whether he could get on "Top of the Pops" as well as prime-time BBC2. Whilst the likes of Rik Mayall and Julian Clary clearly had a hunger for the spotlight, Sayle appeared much more earthy and straightforward. So what on Earth was going on here?

In his defense, "Ullo John Gotta New Motor?" isn't really a commercial proposition, being a stream-of-consciousness rant seemingly in the guise of his Cockney character John backed with some funky loops. There's no chorus, no story, and seemingly absolutely no point, which makes the popularity of the single seem startling in retrospect - it reached number 15 in 1982 at a point in history where record sales were high and the charts were staggeringly competitive. To this day, unless you count the froth-mouthed ramblings of fringe anti-folk acts like Spinmaster Plantpot, there isn't really anything you can sensibly compare the record to, and like many novelty singles before it, success seems to have arrived in its direction purely because it sounded like nothing else around rather than because it followed the rules of the day. The record was also seemingly bolstered by fans of "The Young Ones", and people who caught Sayle being anarchic on "Top of the Pops". These days, the stretched parody of cockney banter the record is attempting to mock seems rather quaint, purely because very, very few people actually talk in this manner in the city anymore.

I suspect most British people know what Sayle is up to these days, but for the benefit of people overseas I can reveal that he is now an author of several successful (and serious) novels. No, really.

Reupload - Moonshake - First EP

2011-07-25T08:00:00.003+01:00

Label: Creation
Year of Release: 1991

Sometimes when I'm rummaging around the flat for possible things to upload to this blog, my greasy little paws chance upon something I really should have considered a long, long time ago.

Moonshake really weren't everybody's particular cup of tea. Formed by David Callahan of The Wolfhounds after that band had decided its time was up, their fans must have been baffled by the sudden shift in approach. Whereas The Wolfhounds specialised in a fierce, brittle and politically charged kind of indie guitar pop, Moonshake were a mongralised meeting of electronica, dub, krautrock, and "shoegazing" indie dream-pop, whilst still retaining some of the old spittle of yore.

Curiously, this first EP slipped out on Creation Records, but for whatever reason (possibly the label's perilous financial state at the time) they opted not to stay there and shifted to Too Pure for their debut album "Eva Luna". Whilst that album had heavier basslines and a more noticeable identity of its own, this EP is admittedly far closer to the sonic experimentation of My Bloody Valentine. The loops shimmer, the beats thud along like a drunk rolling slowly down some stairs, and the vocals are buried deep in the mix. Suffice to say, it's impossible to feel indifferent to this - you will either think it's sheer bilge or really rather good.

The first track "Gravity" in particular manages to be hypnotic in a repetitive, krautrock way whilst also being tremendously dense with ideas, and whilst the "Eva Luna" album (which was a critical fave rave at the time, but is seldom if ever referenced now) had a more definite identity, there's a more pleasing subtlety to these tracks to my ears. You can start hurling your collection of "Indie Top 20" albums in my face if you must, but I honestly believe that "Coming" on side two of this EP shows more balls, innovation and downright unsettling surprises than anything the Slowdives of this world managed. There are unexpected shifts, atmospheres and lyrics which make you stop and pay attention - it's difficult to focus on anything else whilst this is playing. This is the sound of people with big, broad record collections and the creative talent to understand how to take the most effective ideas from each to create something bold and relatively unique.

That Moonshake have been largely forgotten about in the 21st Century whilst plenty of people seem to be falling over themselves to download a lot of inferior material from the early nineties is a deep shame. That I hadn't actually played them in years myself is something you should perhaps punish me for as well, although depriving myself of these noises for so long and for no good reason might possibly be punishment enough.

Tracklisting:

1. Gravity
2. Coward
3. Coming
4. Hanging

(Update: This EP was originally uploaded in February 2009. I don't really have anything to add at this point, beyond saying - why the hell aren't this band being listened to thousands of people right now as we speak?)

The Answers - Just A Fear

2011-07-21T08:00:00.013+01:00

Label: Columbia
Year of Release: 1966

There seems to be a misconception in some circles that the minimal, wiry, angular, paranoid rush of a noise frequently associated with amphetamines only occurred when punk broke. I suspect you know where this entry is going just by looking at the "year of release" above, and why should I patronise you by beginning a new sentence with the word "However"?

"Just A Fear" is, it has to be said, a startlingly forward-thinking single, combining many of the kind of minimalist, dischordant structures and production techniques post-punk would utilise many years later. The skeletal, persistent main riff here could just as easily grace an early Fall single, and whilst the track does occasionally find its way back on to the main roads of convention at points, it's still as uncommercial as sixties beat pop ever got. Screeching its way towards a demented conclusion, its astonishing this ever got released at the time. The B-side, on the other hand, features a bluesy, honking harmonica and a clapping beat, and sounds like a product of an entirely different band.

The Answers only released two singles, both this and "That's What You're Doing To Me", before their guitarist Tony Hill was poached by cult psychedelic legends The Misunderstood. That band's output is rather more appreciated than "Just A Fear" ever has been, but a quick listen proves that Hill was already operating on the fringes long before they whisked him away.

Elcka - Boho Bird

2011-07-18T08:00:00.010+01:00

Label: Nectah
Year of Release: 1995

1995 was a confusing year if you happened to be reviewing music either for a living, or because you wanted to due to the tons of free records and tickets to gigs you got. Britpop had caught hold of the public's imagination, and you couldn't go to see a new band without witnessing at least one support act with either a fey English approach to guitar pop or a monstrously unsubtle demonstration of Ladrock (soon to turn into Dadrock). Many of the acts obeying the fashions of the day were actually perfectly good, but if you happened to be attending two to three gigs a week, you began to crave any band who seemed just a tiny bit like oddballs, and developed an irrational hatred for anything observing the NME approved template. Trust me, there was a review I wrote of no-hopers Powder at the time which was so vitriolic that these days I'm actually ashamed of it. Pearl Lowe's slightly smug performance pressed a horrible red button in my brain I hope nobody ever goes near again.

I managed to catch Elcka playing at a small provincial gig venue during this simultaneously exciting and somewhat trying year, and was immediately struck by their slightly bizarro approach to the more bohemian side of indie pop. The lead singer Harrold led the band in a flamboyant, airy way, seemingly beamed forward in time from some seventies Art College graduation ceremony. The songs were pure pop, but had enough twists and unexpected (and, even at the time, unfashionable) quirks such as harpsichord noises and MOR backbeats to stand out. There were some sounds occurring which seemed to be channelling both Steve Harley and Genesis's "I Know What I Like In Your Wardrobe" as well as Bowie and Roxy, meaning unfavoured retro acts were creeping into their sound besides the more accepted ones from the canon of cool.

Then I picked up this single, and decided to go haywire with my praise for the band, telling anyone who happened to be bothered enough to read my writing - which was very few people - that they should Watch Out, because here was The Next Big Thing. That was utterly untrue, of course, and in reality the splash Elcka made went unnoticed by even some of the more hardcore indie kids. Listening back to their debut single "Boho Bird" now, it seems good enough to understand why I'd have managed to get carried away, but not quite good enough for me to fathom why I thought they would end up taking on allcomers. "Boho Bird" is at once odd and infectious, combining erratic keyboard riffs with swaggering vocals, but was ultimately just too subtle to find a larger audience. There are no big choruses to be had, and instead the track saunters along in the kind of considered, stylish way which might not have leapt out of anyone's radios.

Eclka eventually signed to Island Records, and in 1997 their album "Rubbernecking" landed, but by then it was far too late, and even I seemed to fail to notice its arrival, buying it a few years later after spotting it in a record store. For all that, the band have a web presence (and fanbase) of sorts, and in April of this year it was announced that they were considering reforming for some gigs. I await with interest to see what happens, and if they do get back together, I've no doubt I'll turn up to see them if only to relive that moment when I saw a brilliant live band and immediately supposed they'd be on the front cover of all the major music papers within the twelve-month. Sometimes you can still be impressed and have huge fun while you're busy getting things wrong.

Travelling Light

2011-07-16T17:15:00.001+01:00

I'm soon due to take a trip to the Netherlands, where I'll be stopping off in Amsterdam and The Hague... and somewhat inevitably, I'd be keen to know where the best second hand record stores are (if indeed there are many left).

This blog does tend to pick up quite a few hits from The Netherlands, so I'd love to hear from anyone who has any advice at all. It's for your own good - if I come back with any quality stuff, it will end up going straight on here, after all.

I'm also likely to be doing a couple of quick stops in Brussels and Antwerp over the border in Belgium. Thanks (in advance) for your help!

Gene Latter - Sign on the Dotted Line/ I Love You

2011-07-14T08:00:00.005+01:00

Label: Spark
Year of Release: 1969

Would-be Welsh pop stars seemed to get a rough ride of it during the sixties. Uncle Tom Jones may have broken out of the valleys and into the hearts of many a knicker-throwing wench, and Mary Hopkins might have briefly been Apple's biggest success after The Beatles, but beyond that there weren't many contenders. There was a distinct Welsh music industry established during the decade, but its appeal seemed to wane on the south side of the Severn Bridge and East of Chepstow - local (often folk-orientated) stars often flourished within their own borders, particularly in North Wales, but failed to find much appeal in the rest of the UK.

Of all the contenders, Cardiff's Gene Latter was certainly one of the most persistent, having a long and varied career from 1965 until the late seventies. During that time he tried many different styles, and one of his more undeservedly famous releases is "Mother's Little Helper", a dire cover of the Rolling Stones track which for some reason was given a home on the Rubble series of compilation albums. The Stones themselves slated it in the music press and sales were disappointingly low, and after such a thorough drubbing you could have forgiven Gene for calling it a day.

Rather than hang up his hat, he carried on, producing some curious and often strong work. "Sign on the Dotted Line" is possibly the most loved creation of his amongst the Northern Soul crowd, enjoying a great many plays on the circuit, and no wonder - the frantic, pounding insistence of the track is a joy to behold, and slotted in incredibly neatly with the scene, making him an unlikely Northern Soul turntable hogger along with the likes of David Essex and Elkie Brooks. Such was the track's cult popularity that you can still buy it on iTunes as part of a Northern Soul compilation, although if you want to hear the blaring, heartbeat amplifying thing before you buy, it's naturally on Youtube as well.

As a result of the commercial availability of the tune I've shied away from including it as a download on the blog, but instead given you the none-too-shabby self-penned B-side "I Love You" instead, which is what I believe many people would refer to as a "mod floorfiller". It's a very simple groover which sounds exactly like much of the fare which was emerging on Immediate Records before the label went under - all swinging confidence and ragged, masculine vocals.

Gene Latter's whereabouts are unknown. He appears to have released a single in the late seventies entitled "John Travolta, You Are A Superstar" which I've never seen or heard anywhere, and then we're left with nothing to go on. As ever, an update on his present activities would be welcome.

Three Good Reasons - Nowhere Man

2011-07-11T08:00:00.009+01:00

Label: Mercury
Year of Release: 1966

Some time ago, I made a solemn vow not to upload any more Beatles covers to this blog unless there was an exceptional reason to do so, believing that far too many were just lazy xeroxes of the Fab's originals. However, bizarro novelty covers would be allowed, and so too would perfectly decent discs like this.

What the rather mysterious Three Good Reasons achieved with "Nowhere Man" is by no means radical, subversive or weird, but it is interesting. The vocals in the track are handled by female vocalist Annette Clegg, who brings a slightly spiteful, folksy tone to the proceedings. Whereas Lennon was largely writing about himself in a despondent fashion in the original but coyly buttering it up with pop melodies, Clegg sounds like a scolding finger-pointer here, which gives the track an abrasive edge it ordinarily lacks, foresaking vocal harmonies for a bit of grit. It takes a spark of originality to make a cover version sound like an enjoyable alternative to the original rather than a poor facsimile of the original, and Three Good Reasons are most definitely in the former camp here. "Nowhere Man" might not trump The Beatles, but it does strangely highlight how much they were influenced by Dylanesque folk rock by this point in their careers, and it does so in a pleasingly zippy, zinging way.

Three Good Reasons released two other singles - "Build Your Love" and "The Moment of Truth" - but never really achieved mainstream scucess. "Nowhere Man" was their best shot of the big-time, peaking at number 47, and as for where they are now, your guess is as good as mine. Information, as always, would be welcomed.

Reupload - Golden Section - Young Mavericks

2011-07-07T08:30:00.003+01:00

Label: Diversion
Year of issue: 1991

Given the proliferation of blogs focusing on lost indie gems from the early nineties, it’s slightly surprising that “Young Mavericks” doesn’t seem to have been given any attention anywhere yet. This received rave reviews in the weekly music press, to the extent that the NME saw fit to give them an interview and also listed the single in the end-of-year “On list” – meaning that they thought it was one of the best recordings by a new band in 1991.

The Roman Jugg produced “Young Mavericks” is indeed the kind of ditty which would have got music journalists very hot under the collar at the time. A storming, sneering song which namechecks Rimbaud and Baudelaire, it has "Statement of Intent" stamped all over it. Such pretentious arrogance on debut singles always got the press to prick up their ears in those days (and it still does at the NME) but that’s not all it has to offer – there’s an infectious energy on display too, and an urgent chorus (which admittedly takes rather too long to kick in). The drums pound, rattle and roll, the guitars feedback joyously, and the keyboard sounds as if it’s engaged in a battle with an irritated and writhing octopus. In short, it’s huge fun, and if the band had actually made it there’s no doubt it would have been the monstrous, firework display launching finale piece to their festival shows.

For all that, the sound here is most definitely in an early nineties Evening Session vein, and whilst there’s a certain sixties garage undertone to the whole thing, there’s little question there are elements of Jesus Jones and The Wonder Stuff in the mix as well. Depending upon your point of view, you will either find that charming or utterly irritating.

True to the final line on the A-side here, Golden Section did indeed “burn out”. Following this acclaimed single, they split up within a matter of months and with no public explanation. Some members splintered off to form The Earthtrippers (a band I know absolutely nothing about) whilst lead singer Paul Tunkin created retro mod band The Weekenders, who enjoyed a slightly higher profile. These days, he’s better known as the DJ at the legendary Blow Up club in London, and puts together the tracklistings for their compilation albums featuring obscure sixties library and lounge music. A man after Left and to the Back’s own heart, then.

Golden Section were also from Southend, a town I lived in for a number of years. I was possibly too young when they were at their peak to make accurate judgments, but the energy on this single does seem to sum up their live act. They were known for being one of the more full throttle bands in the region, and regularly played to packed and sweaty venues, also earning prestigious support slots in London with the likes of The Verve.

Of the B-sides, the icy “Close Quarters” is the most appealing, with “Can’t See The Light” being a wee bit too indie-pop-by-numbers for my liking.

(Update: This entry was originally posted in April 2008. This song still seems strangely overlooked out in blogland. Its scarcity is probably an issue - the band pressed it up on their own label in limited quantities - but given some of the stodge I've heard on those endless blogs with names like Twisting Me Melons, Baggy Bonanza and I'm Madchester, Me, I find it odd to say the least that this couldn't be given a bit of space. Of all the critically acclaimed indie singles of the early nineties, this really seems to be the one that's fallen most under the radar).

Five Flights Up - Do What You Wanna Do/ Black Cat

2011-07-04T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: Bell
Year of Release: 1970

I have a general rule on "Left and to the Back", which is that if a track seems to be commercially available as an mp3 download already, I won't upload it in full. This is one reason why soul records, however obscure, tend not to get featured here. Almost all of the legitimate online sources for music are stuffed to the gills with soul tracks nobody cared about at the time, but have suddenly decided to start listening to now.

Examples where the usual situation has been flipped are incredibly rare to come by, but with Five Flights Up we may have just found the odd fish, the rum old exception to the rule. Back in 1970, this single was popular enough to get to number 37 in the Billboard pop charts, and has since disappeared into the ether. Google searches reveal nothing apart from people asking where the hell they can obtain a copy from (to a bemused silence) and radio airplay is apparently also impossible to come by these days. If nothing else, it's interesting to know that some US hits of yore suffer the same problem as UK ones - it really feels as if they might as well have never existed.

In the case of "Do What You Wanna Do", that's a slight shame. It's a slick, neatly harmonised piece of soul which saw the quintet crossing over to a mainstream audience. Pleasant as it may be, however, it's the impassioned, Smokey Robinson styled yearning of "Black Cat" on the flipside which sets my motor running, with its haunting, swelling brass arrangements and tales of lost love. If somewhere in your mind's eye you can't see a sulking, broken man strolling down city backstreets with only the local neighbourhood feline for company, you clearly have no feelings to speak of. "Black Cat" is autumnal, cinematic and actually quite wonderful.

Sadly, neither side provoked any commercial interest in the UK, although apparently this record did get a moderate amount of plays on the Northern Soul circuit - but once again, clearly not enough plays to warrant an inclusion on any of the usual compilations. Maybe the subtlety of the disc ultimately proved to be its undoing, but it certainly doesn't make it a bad record, and I for one would quite like to put forward the case for its revival.

FACT: When I spun this record at The Boogaloo bar in North London at the point when most people had drifted off home, the resident black cat strolled in front of the DJ booth just as the opening lines were delivered. Only one person noticed.

"Rum Do" All-Dayer

2011-07-03T21:24:00.001+01:00

I've been invited back to the London live music night "Rum Do" at The Castle in Whitechapel to do some more DJ'ing, and on this occasion my efforts will be taking place at their rather exciting All-Dayer, which hopefully means there will be loads of time to play the usual crowd-pleasers plus explore the more groove-some nooks and crannies of my record collection.

The Facebook invite is here, but for those of you who don't "do" Facebook these days, here's the information for you to write in your retro eighties File-o-Faxes:

Date and time: Saturday, July 9 · 8:00pm - 2:00am
Venue: The Castle
44 Commercial Road, London, E1 1LN

Other Useful Data:
It's that time of year again, the time when the Castle is taken over by drunks and bands, and it's all free all day. Here's what's cracking:

LIVE:
Without My Medicine
Silent Republic
The De Selby Codex
The Fingers Malone Ensemble
Simon Breed
Duncan Mitchinson
Easy and the Cali Five

DJs:
John the Revelator
Tim Wells
Dave Bryant

and more TBA.

At this point, I should also add that I've seen The De Selby Codex live before, and they were brilliant - krautrock grooves merrily colliding with nonchalant on-stage mannerisms Stuart Staples out of The Tindersticks would be proud of. Not that I want to curse them by adding them to the roll-call of failures that presently exists on this blog...

UPDATE - note - the time of the event has now changed from 8pm - 2am. The De Selby Codex have also unfortunately had to pull out.

Fresh Air - It Takes Too Long

2011-06-30T08:00:00.004+01:00

Label: Philips
Year of Release: 1972

And just in case you thought that absolutely all the top drawer sixties influenced pop had been compiled somewhere by someone, here's yet another discarded piece of vinyl which is utterly under-valued on the collector's market.

In fairness, "It Takes Too Long" isn't quite the obscurity that "The Company I Keep" was two entries ago. Unlike that single, it's had a fairly high profile internet airing already on the seventies obsessed "Purepop" blog, and a quick google reveals quite a bit of cyber-chatter about it elsewhere too. It appears on the surface to be something of a loved record amongst aficionados of the obscure (including me) but nobody can ever get past the first paragraph without mentioning George Harrison, for the pure and simple reason that the A-side is a shameless imitation of the Fab lentil curry eating one. Coming across slightly like Chris Bell copping a few riffs from "My Sweet Lord", it's what might have been produced in the soundlabs at Creation Records had Teenage Fanclub spent their time ripping off The Beatles rather than Oasis. This is absolutely no bad thing, but it's not difficult to see why the public rejected this record in 1972, a mere two years after Harrison issued the single this appears to be aping. It's a case of too much nineties post-modernism far too soon. That's a shame in a way, because "It Takes Too Long" has some gorgeous whining guitar fretwork, close vocal harmonies which would elate even the most cynical soul, and a slow, steady build which means the simplicity of the melody itself never grows tiresome. It's a gentle, charming piece of pop which wears its influences very closely on its sleeve, but seems more affectionate, warm and considered than cheeky.

The B-side "Here Comes Summer" does plough its own furrow more successfully, being a close harmony piece of acoustic season pondering, but is unfortunately a lot less interesting as a result, being a breezy, tranquil affair without much of a chorus.

Fresh Air are something of an enigma as well, given that no particular source can agree definitively on whether this lot are the same band who released the Rubble-compiled "Running Wild" in 1969. Given the complete difference in style, vocals, and record labels, and the length of the gaps between each single released, I'd be tempted to nix any suggestions that the performers are the same. Bam Caruso suggested in their liner notes that the band name Fresh Air might have been owned by a music business svengali placing their tunes with whichever session musicians would take them, but in that case the songwriting and production credits do not align in a convincing way (although I have no access to the label information for the third release under that name, "Bye Bye Jane"). If anyone knows the truth about this band, or indeed any band at all operating under this moniker, I'm sure a lot of collectors would be relieved if you could pass on the information.

In the meantime, just enjoy a record which sounds as if it might have been a summer smash in another dimension.

One Hit Wonders #19 - Hylda Baker and Arthur Mullard - You're The One That I Want

2011-06-27T08:00:00.007+01:00

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1978

Let's not beat around the bush too much on this one - this is quite simply one of the worst singles ever to enter the British Top 40. My Dad doesn't think so. My Dad thinks this is hilarious. On the rare occasions it pops up on television, usually as an example of either television or radio hell, he laughs quite heartily at the inept nature of the track. I, on the other hand, have never really been in on the joke.

The concept behind this record is really rather simple. Olivia Newton John and John Travolta were both glamorous, admired and lusted after individuals in 1978, so what could be more comedic than taking two ageing and unglamorous British celebrities and giving them a "Grease" duet to cover? Quite a bit, as it turned out. "You're The One That I Want" is really a piece of drunken pub karaoke before such a thing had been invented. In every bar-room karaoke session in the world, I'd be willing to bet there's a drunk, ageing couple in the corner who decide, against better wisdom, that it would be hilarious to take on a raunchy modern song much beloved of those young people. I've seen this done in bars around London with all manner of Lady Gaga, Girls Aloud and Katy Perry tracks, and it's been a chore to witness on those occasions, but I suppose credit should be given to Baker and Mullard for being way ahead of the game and getting their particular singalong released on Pye and sending it flying into the charts.

You do have to give them further credit for being so diabolical, which was surely most of the point. Mullard bellows away and sings "Oh yus indeed", and Baker seems game enough but fails to hit the notes on several occasions. Trouble is, there's nothing actually funny about the failure, it's just gratingly awful, pure and simple. Time has not been kind to this particular attempt at humour, and what we're left with is a screecher of a track which should never have been let out of the recording studio's doors.

Much has also been made of the fact that their ill-rehearsed "Top of the Pops" performance (complete with fluffed lines and confused, bewildered looks) caused the record's sales to drop to unexpectedly low levels the following week, with numbers in the hundreds being occasionally quoted. I've always suspected that this is an exaggeration, purely because the single's chart movements (50-22-23-22-31-35) don't really suggest crashing sales at any point. What is more miraculous is the fact that there was any kind of demand capable of lifting this chartbound in the first place.

Mullard and Baker were stars of the British screen for a great deal of their careers, with Mullard taking on roles in "The Ladykillers" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", whilst Baker enjoyed success in a variety of mainstream television comedies. This record was among the last things either of them did. Whether further career opportunities would have emerged had it not been for this disc is difficult to say - both were in the twilight of their careers - but it surely can't have helped matters. Sometimes novelty records come with a very heavy price attached, a lesson many comic talents would do well to learn.

The lesser-heard B-side "Save All Your Kisses For Me", on the other hand, is pure comedy gold, filled with asides and punchlines that really make you wonder why it was never the A-side (I'm just joshing, readers - it's an absolute dog of a flipside as well).

Just out of curiosity

2011-06-25T11:00:00.000+01:00

What do you generally visit this blog hoping to see?

Because it's always good to know. I've been noticing lately that posts I'd expect to be popular have been crashing and burning stat-wise (and comment-wise), whereas ones I'd expect nobody to care about have been doing rather well. It's difficult to get people to leave comments on mp3 blogs, no matter how many people they attract, and this might just solve a few riddles for me.

And of course, feel free to drop further hints by commenting. I'm all ears.

Brindley D Spender - The Company I Keep

2011-06-23T08:00:00.003+01:00

Label: Domain
Year of Release: 1968

In the world of that thing we call "popsike", it's beginning to get tougher and tougher to find items which remain uncompiled. So many compilations summing up the late sixties era have by now been released by labels both big and small that very few stones are left unturned - and when you consider some of the sheer nonsense that's been remastered by major labels, you could be forgiven for thinking the bottom of the barrel has so many scratch-marks on it that it might resemble a Pollock painting in etched form.

This is why turning up something which remains generally unreferenced is a huge thrill, and whilst I wouldn't want to make massive claims for "The Company I Keep", it's still a damn strong example of popsike balladry, having the same rueful, dark charm that a great many of the more reflective moments on the "Circus Days" series of compilation albums had. In this case, Mr Spender appears to be giving a girlfriend of his a thorough dressing-down for thinking ill of his friends and associates, and failing to be polite and welcoming. Perhaps his lady friend had been bored shitless by their talk of musical obscurities. It's difficult to say - but what we can ascertain from the grooves we're presented with here is that the track has a simultaneously dreamy and dark nature, pulling in the delicate but detailed orchestral arrangements so beloved of many artists during this era, but adding a layer of spite on top which sounds as if might actually be genuine. There's a summery nature to the disc, but rest assured there are thunder-clouds on the horizon, which gives the record a bit of a kick that many of its more well-known cousins definitely lacked.

Brindley D Spender is something of an enigma, but I have managed to ascertain that his real name is Ken Smart, and he'd previously been a member of the Rubble compiled Sons of Fred, as well as a member of Odyssey who were briefly signed to the independent Strike label. From there, the trail goes cold and it's impossible for me to ascertain what became of him or where he went next (if anywhere). If anyone knows, please check in and share the information.

I can't find much information on Domain Records either, although it would seem that they were an indie manufactured and distributed by President if my basic identification of British sixties pressing styles is anything to go by - and it's probably not. (And don't call me sad. You won't be calling me sad when I find a really rare Beatles outsource pressing in Oxfam through learning this stuff, will you? You will? Oh).

Reupload - Dracula's Daughter - Candy

2011-06-20T08:00:00.001+01:00

You'll remember, of course, that I once mentioned that Bill Drummond and Mark Manning (aka Zodiac Mindwarp) wrote and released a number of records in 1997 under the guise of up-and-coming acts from Finland? Oh, you don't. Well, if you really need more information on the slightly baffling project (which in fairness is no more or less baffling than most Drummond activities) a website still sits here.

As only 500 copies of each were ever pressed and imported to Britain, they're naturally extremely scarce, and actually tremendously varied in quality as well. Some - such as KLF roadie Gimpo's self-titled "Gimpo" - are an absolute waste of precious pressing plant resources. Others - like Aurora Borealis' self-titled "Aurora Borealis" - were actually extremely good, but I won't waffle on about that one too much since it's already been posted on this blog elsewhere.

Draculas (sic) Daughter's "Candy" sits somewhere between the two. Manning and Drummond periodically used local Finnish musicians and singers for the recordings and just directed their style, and it seems fairly safe to say that's what happened in this case. What you've got here, then, is a pretty good Velvet Underground apeing disc which wouldn't have been out of place amidst the mid eighties music scene, or indeed the late sixties one. It's hypnotic, repetitive and insistent, and features some agreeably lazy, scuzzed up guitar work in the instrumental break. Please don't ask me why the original title "Supermodel" is scrubbed out on the label, because I have absolutely no clue...

One has to wonder if Drummond was trying to belatedly achieve with Kalevala a project he mooted a long time ago for Zoo Records, where he created "parallel universe" versions of bands on their catalogue. The Teardrop Explodes were to become Whopper, and featured Cope's alter-ego Kevin Stapleton on lead vocals who "enjoyed a game of rugby and liked the odd pint". These occasionally poorly disguised Finnish bands with their records released by a fictional clueless sounding Finnish indie record label owner do bring to mind a parallel universe Zoo Records, set up in Helsinki rather than Liverpool. Only Drummond could honestly back me up on my hunch, though, and I've a funny feeling he won't bother.

(This blog entry was originally posted in October 2008. And nope, Drummond hasn't bothered yet, although I suspect he keeps well away from nostalgia-ridden mp3 overloads this days).

Wallace Collection - Dear Beloved Secretary

2011-06-16T08:00:00.001+01:00

Label: Odeon
Year of Release: 1969

Whatever was it with the sixties obsession with secretaries? Look at the poor woman in the picture above, trying to get on with some doubtless important business whilst a bunch of unsavoury hairies hang around her looking smug and pleased with themselves for even being in the same room as a lady. Secretaries were also always portrayed as spectacle wearers, but the kind who would probably rip their glasses off at a minute's notice, toss their hair around, and deliver a ravishing smile. In reality, you have to suspect this probably happened rarely in dull day jobs, and that any female PAs or administrative assistants with the capacity to be stunning probably didn't waste their time flirting with the civil engineers or solicitors in their immediate environments, and went to swinging clubs to meet men instead. Or OK, that's what I'd have done if I'd been an attractive woman in my prime during the mid-to-late sixties. Not that I've thought about this. Much.

We're also in danger of drifting slightly off-topic here, but The Wallace Collection have provided us with a sleeve so downright distracting that it's their own fault. "Dear Beloved Secretary" is indeed a woe-filled piece of chamber pop about being in love with one's chief Personal Assistant, and actually looking forward to going to work in the morning so you can sigh in her presence. Or ogle her. It depends entirely on your personal interpretation. The Wallace Collection are quite sweet natured about it, though, so I'm going to suggest that they're assuming the role of innocent, sexually inexperienced men scribbling love poetry rather than behaving like PA-bothering types (such as Larry Page in this photo here). The song also incorporates some typewriter and bell ringing noises, which is as cutesy as things get.

For my money - and it was indeed my money - the B-side "Hello Suzannah" is a neater, chirpier piece of popsike with hints of The Move in its grooves. Neither side really scales much beyond the level of middle-of-the-road sixties pop, but there's a politeness and quaintness to the material the Wallace Collection produced which I always find endearing. Especially considering the era they operated in, there was something particularly wide-eyed and innocent about their work.

Their most famous track of all was "Daydream", later swallowed by both the Beta Band (for "Squares") and I Monster (for the unimaginatively titled "Daydream in Blue") in its Gunter Kallmann Choir incarnation to create two brilliant Top 40 singles in the UK. The original Wallace Collection version of it did no business in Britain at all, but was a huge hit in their native Belgium and the continent. The impact of that track meant the band did have some continued success across Europe, but not enough to really sustain their careers beyond the early seventies, after which point they called it quits.

As for the secretary - who knows? She's probably retired and living in Antwerp these days.

Cameron - Close Encounters of The Third Kind

2011-06-13T08:00:00.004+01:00

Label: RAK
Year of Release: 1978

Perhaps more than any other musical genre, disco wasn't afraid to use current trends and gimmicks and make them the focal point of any record. Forget "Kung Fu Fighting", because disco crossed all the boundaries, even giving goth-rock a run for its money in the zombie killer stakes (Andy Forray's dubious and incredibly creepy "Drac's Back" and Zorro's "Phantasm" on blood splattered twelve inch vinyl are only two such examples. I own the latter and may well upload it eventually).

Moving away from the graveyard and out into space, this particular single focussed itself on the five note riff the aliens broadcast to Earth in Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". In itself, this is the kind of conceit you could imagine an early nineties novelty rave record being based on (probably a Sheffield bleep parody) but this is pure seventies commercial dancefloor fare, all squelchy synths and slapped bass lines. That it fared poorly in the charts, not even getting within the UK top 75, just goes to prove that sometimes a tie-in with a blockbusting film isn't enough.

As for who Cameron is or was or where he or she came from, we may never know, although it's safe to say it has nothing to do with the Prime Minster Dave. Perhaps, like the greys in the film itself, we're not supposed to actually know the origins of this disc, and are merely listening to the record as the privileged few Earth-dwellers to catch its friendly, welcoming melodies. Except it's not really as exciting as that, is it? Not even close, in fact...

(Ignore the title on the sleeve above, by the way. It says "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on the record label, so that's what I'm running with).

The Flies - House of Love

2011-06-09T08:00:00.004+01:00

Label: Decca (this reissue Acme)
Year of Release: 1967

They were a rum bunch of old coves, The Flies. Hitless to the last, they were one of London's underground dwelling hippy house acts, appearing at the "14 Hour Technicolour Dream" wearing palm-leaf skirts and emptying flour all over the audience, then sneering in the music press that Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd had "sold out".

Given the above, you'd assume that their recorded output would sound rather like AMM, or perhaps the proto-prog of The Nice, all experimental and boundary breaking, making "Interstellar Overdrive" sound like "Love Me Do". In fact, what you actually got was some very sharp, abrasive and distinctly mod-ish rock music - in other words, this was essentially a band who hadn't really progressed much from the "clean living under difficult circumstances" model, but were damned if they were going to let anyone think they were behind the fashion of the times.

Whilst the sheer cheek of the situation might lead you to switch off, it should be noted that they were actually very, very sharp at what they did. Their version of The Monkees' "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" leaves the song sounding mean, menacing and groovy, and this track is so savage and swaggering it somehow manages to sound like the work of some early nineties Madchester band. Funky basslines and pounding rhythms combine with vocals so over-annunciated Liam Gallagher would be impressed. The resultant cocktail ends up being what the music press of 1966 would probably have called a magnificent rave-up. Unfortunately for The Flies, the year was 1967, not 1966 - light years in sixties developmental terms - and this may well have been what caused the track to fail. Little else stands in its way apart from perhaps the slightly unambitious repetition in the chorus, but plenty of other acts succeeded with similar minimalism at the time.

The B-side "It Had To Be You" is a cover version of the standard, and almost sounds sarcastic in comparison - although it has a certain similarity to our old friends Breez e we uncovered many entries ago. Don't worry, I'm not even attempting to suggest that both acts are one and the same.

The Flies split in 1968 after one final single, "Magic Train".

The Regents - See You Later

2011-06-06T08:00:00.010+01:00

Label: Arista
Year of Release: 1980

You have to feel at least slightly sorry for the punk and new wave bands who only began to feel the benefits of major label aid towards the end of 1979. Despite some presence in the charts from the best of punk's old guard at this point, breaking new acts with an abrasive, simplistic sound was a tricky task. Most ramshackle acts managed one freak hit at best, and were then subject to the slow drip of diminishing returns.

The Regents were no exception to this rule. Their debut single "7 Teen" fared well enough - and still crops up on budget label "Best of the Seventies" CDs to this day, usually programmed amongst some other punk/ new wave fare - but this, the follow up, is one of the genre's more ridiculously under-exposed releases despite actually sounding somewhat better then The Regents' actual proper hit. "See You Later" managed to climb to number 44 in the charts, and would apparently have been granted a "Top of the Pops" slot if the BBC hadn't been on strike that week. What would have happened to the track and the band's career thereafter under more favourable circumstances is something we can only guess at.

"See You Later" is stupendously dumb and silly, containing lyrics The Ramones would have considered too pre-school. "She said 'I'll see you later'/ He said oh no no no no/ I don't want to be a waiter" snaps the lead singer Martin Sheller in no uncertain terms, while backing singer Bric Brak whoops in the background like an extra from a scene in "Grease". It's daft enough to be likable and energetic enough to sweep you along, but it's perhaps not the kind of material to make you wonder hard about what might have been for the band.

Only the B-side really gives you pause for thought. "Oh Terry!" appears to be a sinister and warped reinterpretation of the main side, consisting of echoing footsteps, growling vocals, electronic oscillations, and female voices that are either yelping in pleasure or fear. It's a sick and dark piece of work which shows The Regents were perfectly capable of experimenting with ideas when they put their minds to it, and is something of an unexpected shock, akin to finding an ambient track on the flipside of a Rezillos single. Still though, you strongly suspect that they had a giggle to themselves immediately after the red recording studio light flicked off.

Sir Henry and His Butlers - Camp/ Pretty Style

2011-06-02T08:00:00.004+01:00

Label: Metronome
Year of Release: 1967

This is arguably one of the more baffling singles to be issued during the late sixties, and Lord knows there were plenty of other contenders. The A-side "Camp" is a proto-Lieutenant Pigeon instrumental consisting of kazoos and a barrel organ, shouts and cheers, and little which would suggest it was going to storm the charts. It's a clown car of a record, all wonky wheels and dodgy brakes. As a piece of incidental music for the final cheerful item on a regional news programme it might pass, but as an A-side? Never.

This does absolutely nothing to prepare you for the flip, which is an elongated piece of psychedelia with droning sitars, guitar riffage reminiscent of Joe Cocker's version of "A Little Help From My Friends", and some very dramatic, hollering vocals about nothing discernible. It's absurdly compelling in the way that the most freakish American psych underground tracks are, and the fact that the band are from Copenhagen is a red herring to say the least.

Apparently Sir Henry and His Butlers were quite a draw in their home country of Denmark for a period of time, but their other releases are considerably more pop orientated and not at all similar to this downright absurd piece of work. When sixties pop acts switched to the darker side of psych overnight, it was usually indicative of cynical marketing rather than the use of hallucinogens - in this case, however, I genuinely wouldn't be surprised to learn that somebody had spiked the band's drinks before the recording session (although the "Sweet Floral Albion" e-zine did suggest that this track was "contrived" when they covered it themselves some years ago. I'm not so sure).

Reupload - London Pleasures - Summer of Love/ London Pleasures

2011-05-30T08:00:00.000+01:00

Label: Paperback
Year of Release: 1982

This one has been stuck in my "to upload" pile ever since I started this blog, but I've never got around to it purely because... well... the strength of feeling was never quite there, I must be honest. Despite the fact that this single has been listed on several collector's sites (and record stores) for rather ambitious sums of money, I've never quite understood what anybody might be seeing in it beyond the fact that it's yet another reasonable early indie single with a limited pressing.

The London Pleasures were indeed a London-based band (despite this coming out on a Peterborough based record label) who consisted of Mark Wragg on guitar, Brian Thorpe on Bass, Paul Addie on Drums and Phil Brammer on guitar and vocals. Judging from the two sides presented here, their particular schtick was a slightly new wave styled noise with sixties influences tacked on. Like a great many bands of their ilk, however, they were cursed with ultra-cheap production values which mean that neither track seems to rise much above demo tape quality, and frequently doesn't even hit the highs of the decade eighties recording technology was supposed to supersede. By the time the messy, noisy basics of punk had faded away, the DIY approach of many a bedroom indie label was left looking rather exposed when bands tried to record more complicated material.

Still, there's some nice ideas going on throughout the disc, and a sense that if they'd been given a bigger budget to play with and further releases, something more striking might have come out of the London Pleasures camp. Their theme tune "London Pleasures" is timeless lyrically at least (as well as being the stronger side), bemoaning the impossibility of anybody young actually living a swinging life in the hostile capital, whilst "Summer of Love" apes psychedelia and marries it with a fat, beefy bassline, a pleasing riff, and more lyrics protesting about the fact that the eighties were basically the evil yin to the sixties yang. There's also a gentle groove going on here which would probably have pleased Edwyn Collins and his Orange Juice cohorts more than the numerous piss-poor Postcard copyists who littered the indie scene for years afterwards.

Sadly, nobody rushed forward to finance any further releases, and this seems to be the sole offering from the band. Paperback Records apparently released one other single by another act before giving up too (although the Internet doesn't seem to have any data as to who this was by) and what we're left with is a whole bunch of guesswork about both the band and label. Still, don't go off and pay fifteen quid for this, for God's sake, just download it below.

(So why reupload it then, you may ask, given that you said the above on 10 April 2009? Well, purely and simply due to the fact that a couple of people felt that this was a perfectly good example of early eighties indie with elements of psychedelia that acts on Creation would adopt a few years later, and that my original assessment above was downright harsh. So here it is again, being given a bit more of a fighting chance).

Black Velvet - Clown/ Peace and Love Is The Message

2011-05-26T08:00:00.006+01:00

Label: Beacon
Year of Release: 1969

Right at the start of this year I uploaded a couple of Black Velvet singles - including the astounding "African Velvet" - and announced that I'd drawn a total blank on the band. I asked for more information, but the only answer I've received so far is from the DJ Pete Jennings who declared them to be a brilliant live act. Nobody else came forward, and thus they remain an elusive act despite the fact that a number of records of theirs were issued.

This particular one is perhaps the most unusual of them all. The A-side "Peace and Love Is The Message" is a decent enough slab of hippy-infused soul, the type of which was cropping up regularly towards the tail end of the decade. It's the flip which is beginning to attract attention for its warped and peculiar tones, however. "Clown" is a shimmering, discordant piece of psychedelia with demonic laughter, swirling organs, out-of-tune whistling, and descriptions of a "happy, smiling" clown I never want to meet in my life. Chipper and cheerful in the way that Alexei Sayle was in the introductory sequence for his "Merry Go Round" series, "Clown" is black-streaked psych with a smile on its chops and evil in its heart, more Papa Lazarou than Ronald McDonald (although it's a fine line).

And come on, somebody out there must know who this lot were and what became of them.

Medium Wave Band - Radio

2011-05-23T08:00:00.003+01:00

Label: Spark
Year of Release: 1974

The hiss and crackle of the BBC Light Programme through a Bakelite radio set, the treble-heavy brass and string sounds, the light-hearted, humorous lyrics about far-flung colonial outposts... the pop music of the early part of the twentieth century may seem to have been revived relatively infrequently, but there have been patches of activity here and there. The Bonzo Dog Band are the most obvious example if we're naming revivalists, but the classic pre-45 rpm pop obsessions of Tiny Tim, the New Vaudeville Band, The Pasadena Roof Orchestra, and even odd rogue examples like Sting's "Spread a Little Happiness" have all echoed that era. And if you really thought it was safe to avoid now, a new craze for Shellac Discos is sweeping London, where the DJs play only 78s. The old music hall and showtime world is, for all its seeming irrelevance, fairly irrepressible.

The Medium Wave Band here demonstrate how to do it with a reasonable degree of faith, trying their hardest to recall the production values of those days where dogs stared down gramophone horns and after-dinner sherries were supped before cranking up the player. It's not quite up to the Bonzo Dog Band standards, but it's still a charming oddity which sings the praises of radio. Queen's rather more orthodox attempt at lionising that form of broadcasting was considerably more successful, however, and this novelty item failed to fly out of the shops. Still, enough copies of it turn up to convince me that it can't be too rare, and therefore must have shifted some units at the time.

Who The Medium Wave band are or were is less clear, and my guess would be that they were session musicians pulled into Southern Studios with the aim of performing on a novelty record. They are almost certainly not the sixties pop act Davey Payne and The Medium Wave. As ever, if you know who they are, get in touch. This tune has been cheering me up lately, as it's utterly impossible not to warm to a record that mentions "Housewife's Choice" and "Hancock's Half Hour" in a polite, chipper tone.

Can't Buy Me Love

2011-05-21T15:38:00.002+01:00

Just a quick update to let you all know that I'll be DJ'ing at the Vintage, Crafts, Jumble and Flea Market "Can't Buy Me Love" on Saturday 28th May from 1:30pm - 3:30pm (or thereabouts. I don't think anyone will have their finger on a special retro clock timer).

It's taking place at:
The Boogaloo
312 Archway Rd, N6 5AT
London

And the Facebook details are all here.

Also spinning discs on the day will the be the DJ John The Revelator.

For me personally, events like these serve a number of purposes. You can turn up and browse and buy to a great soundtrack, have a swift drink and then disappear off into the daylight, having had a more fulfilling time than you might had you chosen to join the hordes along a usual shopping street on a Saturday afternoon. Or alternatively, you can turn up, browse, find nothing you want, but decide to stay and have a few drinks and listen to some great music in a fantastic pub anyway. It's a win-win situation - there is no way you can lose. Unless you expect me to play novelty glam records. Or indeed sell my stash of them.

See you there, maybe?

Southern Sound - Just The Same As You

2011-05-19T08:00:00.003+01:00

Label: Columbia
Year of Release: 1966

Southern Sound were just one of many sixties bands who released one extremely interesting single before the record label seemingly told them "No more - your record didn't sell and this isn't working. Back to the pub circuit with you".

Unlike so many of those one release wonders, Southern Sound were an abrasive mod band from whom further releases would have been welcome. "Just The Same As You" is, in itself, impressive - all shimmering yet abrasive guitar work, defiant lyrics about living the high life on the dole (way before Wham! had the same idea but made it sound less exciting) and a slowly building menace. Like a number of mod discs, this is almost punk before its time both in delivery and message, both the band and their audience being made to sound like vampiric club-dwelling outcasts. When they sing "We're just the same as you" it doesn't sound reassuring so much as daring the audience to disagree.

The flip side "I Don't Wanna Go" is also bloody-minded, and almost psychedelic in a Joe Meek-esque way (although he had nothing to do with the release). A hollow, minimal arrangement places thundering drums not far behind the sneering rock and roll vocals in the mix. Pop art? Not 'arf!

For a 1966 release this is actually quite progressive stuff, but only one member of the band (so far as I'm aware) Robbie Blunt went on to any success, working in Robert Plant's band and also playing with Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. That kind of material is a far cry from this.

Off Side - Match of the Day/ Small Deal

2011-05-16T08:00:00.005+01:00

Label: Pye International
Year of Release: 1970

Since its introduction in 1970, the "Match of the Day" theme on the BBC has become one of the most instantly recognisable television themes in Britain - if not, according to the Performing Rights Society, the most recognisable. More suggestive and indicative than any news broadcast theme (even the BBC World News channel's bleeping ambient effort) or even the wailing harmonica of "Last of the Summer Wine", some of us were born with this theme and know, within the first few milliseconds of the first note, what it's representing.

Trying to listen to it with a fresh pair of 2011 ears strapped firmly to my aging head, it does seem a strange choice for a tune despite its endearing familiarity, and I'm clearly not alone in thinking that - my Canadian wife when she first heard it burst out laughing at the absurdity of a celebratory Herb Alpert styled quasi-Mexican ditty introducing a modern British football programme. Clearly at the time of commissioning the piece had South American connotations which seemed entirely synonymous with the big game, but there's definitely something a little unlike Auntie Beeb about the whole thing. However, I for one am happy about the fact that it's what we've got - it's a happy, chirpy clarion call which you can imagine beckoning members of any British family in from their bedrooms, kitchens and even bathrooms, like some soccer orientated Pied Piper of Hamlet with, er... a football for a head.

Whatever your personal feelings on the piece, it's one of the few television themes which has wormed its way so much into the British psyche that it conjours up memories and emotions from even the the most steely hearted football fan. As Paul Whitehouse once observed on an episode of "The Fast Show" in the guise of Ron Manager - "Match of the Day? Da da da da da-da-da-da da? Somehow comforting, isn't it, you know?" In summary, then - do I expect any non-British reader to really get the appeal of this record? No, not really. In the absence of any context at all, it probably sounds like a cheery piece of easy listening and not much more (and I'd be really curious to read your thoughts on it if it's unfamiliar to you, actually).

The single you can hear below isn't, of course, the original theme commissioned by the BBC but a very close and crafty approximation recorded by Mike Vickers for the benefit of Pye Records. It wasn't a hit, but in recent years has become a massive collector's item purely due to the B-side, a Vickers-penned piece called "Small Deal", which has apparently become popular with DJs who are keen on the "funky loops" it offers. To my ears, "Small Deal" is a dramatic piece of library music which offers nothing especially outstanding, but my DJ'ing chops are definitely not adequate enough to be able to hear what possibilities it might afford.

Mint copies of this frequently go for £20 plus on ebay. As you can hear, mine isn't exactly mint, but it's good enough, and certainly gives you a fair idea of what's on offer. Not that, in the case of the A-side, you'd really need telling.

(Sorry for all the horrible typos this entry had when it went live this morning - I've been having a bad week. Which isn't much of an excuse, but still...)

Chris Andrews - Hold On

2011-05-12T08:00:00.001+01:00

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1967

"Babeeee you're just tooooo much!" screeches Chris Andrews at the start of this record, before seductively uttering: "And I waaaaant you". Hearing such lines over the years has frequently made me wonder just how much self-confidence you'd need to have, either in the studio or on stage, to deliver bold sexual declarations without the slightest hint of irony.

In the context of this record, all is forgiven. "Hold On" is such a needle-into-the-red mod screecher that it seems entirely appropriate that the lyrics should essentially be a human version of a mating call. It's yet another example of a sixties record which really acts more as a declaration of sexual frustration for teenagers everywhere than a studied, lyrically thoughtful piece of work. Guitars squeal and wail, the chorus hammers itself into your cranium, Chris is so unsubtle in his delivery that he may as well be beating his chest, and its so relentless that you can only jump around along to it whether you sympathise with the bedroom related plight of Mr Andrews or not.

Of course, Chris Andrews had a successful career prior to this record, writing many of Sandie Shaw's biggest hits ("Girl Don't Come", "I'll Stop at Nothing") as well as working with The Mamas and The Papas and Adam Faith. On top of that, he'd managed hits of his own with "Yesterday Man" and "To Whom it Concerns". Despite this, his career begin to stall once the music of the period became more diverse and experimental, and like so many beat boys before him, could only watch helplessly as the flops piled up. "Hold On" was his last single for Decca who by 1967 had clearly given up all hope of him having any kind of mainstream presence again. One has to wonder whether the record was in some way nixed by the label's pessimistic attitude towards it, as "Hold On" sounds to my ears like one of his finest recordings - it's brittle, punchy and incredibly addictive, and is an astounding track to blast loudly around a room. I've yet to hear the record played once in a club, but I'd be willing to place money that any DJ who dared to spin it would get a favourable reaction.

Irrespective of my personal views, the public didn't take to it at the time, and Andrews moved to Pye Records to deliver three more flops. A comeback of sorts was attempted in 1977, but once again nobody bit, and the utterly astonishing "Nothing Less Than Brilliant" single he co-wrote with Sandie Shaw in the eighties also found little appreciation outside of late-night Radio One play. Hopefully the royalties he receives from his prime hits are enough to keep the wolf from the door - he certainly deserves the security, as many of his records are actually supremely under-rated in the UK, and he's surely due a major reappraisal soon.

Animals That Swim and July return, and other less interesting tales...

2011-05-10T08:00:00.002+01:00

If it were up to me, many of the bands featured on this blog would reform at some point or another. True, I'd be willing to make exceptions for people like The Egton Runners, who really shouldn't bother checking into a rehearsal room any time soon to prepare for a comeback tour. Broadly speaking, however, running a blog like this one has been an unfortunate reminder of just how much talent falls by the wayside for no other good reason apart from poor timing, poor management, poor record labels, or just the backwardness of the general public.

I'm absolutely delighted to report, then, that two favourite bands of mine (both featured on here before) have reformed. First and foremost, Animals That Swim have decided to get back together to release a new single, the minimally brilliant double A-side "Silver Rays/ Tiny Lucifer". Their first release in over ten years, it shows they've lost none of their talent for haunting lyrical content, wit, or indeed beguiling tunes. "Tiny Lucifer" is a doomy piano ballad focussed on a stuffed toy bear who, amongst other things, pisses on garden wildlife. It's a story worthy of one of the grittier tracks on "Workshy" told from the viewpoint of a child's toy - clearly parenthood has done peculiar things to the band. "Silver Rays", on the other hand, is a delicate pean apparently about "moments of epiphany or disintegration that can come over you anywhere". An album has been written, so please show your support for this single by going over to iTunes now and buying it. This simple act might mean that an entire LP eventually gets to see the light of day. Even if you don't like Animals That Swim, consider it an act of charity towards me - they were the f irst band I ever featured on this blog for the pure and simple reason that I could think of no more appropriate act to begin matters with than the most under-rated British band of the last twenty years.

For the psych-heads amongst you, however, there's further good news. July have reformed and recently played a live comeback show at the Lexington in Kings Cross, London. I didn't manage to attend myself, but reports back from the frontline so far have been extremely positive, with some new "slightly doomy" material apparently peeking its way out of the setlist. An interview with Peter Cook of the band can be found here on the "Psychedelic Baby" website, and further shows at the 100 Club are planned.

And after all that... I hate to break up all the jollity with a housekeeping message, but it has to be done. Firstly, Facebook have (for reasons known only to themselves) decided that they're going to close down our old "Left and to the Back" group, and have told me that I should instead create a new "page" which is apparently better suited to ventures such as mine. As one does exactly as one is told on Planet Facebook without quibbling, I've had to comply - the results are here. Please do join this page if you are presently a member of the existing group (and even if you're not) which is due to be mothballed and rendered redundant at some random date of Facebook's choosing.

Additionally, I've had a few hiccups uploading mp3s to Box.net, and I've received one complaint from a reader regarding mp3s not downloading properly via Firefox. If you can't hear the tracks properly or download them on the browser of your choice, please do let me know. The traffic this blog gets means that I could not longer obtain mp3 hosting services for free, so I'm presently paying a monthly subscription fee to Box.net to keep things ticking over. If things are getting a bit wobbly it's therefore vitally important you let me know!

Second Hand Record Dip Part 73 - Colorado - California Dreaming/ Space Lady Love

2011-05-09T08:00:00.002+01:00

Who: Colorado
What: California Dreaming (b/w "Space Lady Love")
Label: Pinnacle
When: 1978

Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street, London

Cost: 50p

Hot on the heels of the last "Second Hand Record Dip", Tik and Tok's eighties electronic version of "Summer in the City", comes this - a disco version of the Mamas and the Papas evergreen hit "California Dreaming". Covered by a multitude of artists over the last forty plus years, "California Dreaming" does admittedly feel like something of a cliche these days, but this at least is not a xerox copy. Instead, it attempts to shift the sound on to the seventies dancefloor.

This particular version was widely anticipated to be a hit at the time, so much so that the group were allowed to appear on "Top of the Pops" despite not having a Top 40 slot to their names. It made very little difference despite their best efforts, as the single stalled at number 45. Whilst this version does indeed vamp up the original with some sultry disco noises, there's something a little bit too clinical and contrived about it, and I smell the suspicious whiff of stale sweat and lager of various session musos in action under an assumed "band name" here (although I'd be happy to be proved wrong).

The flip side, however, is a lovely piece of disco dancefloor action you would have hoped somebody at the label would have had more faith in. "Space Lady Love" is full of Eurodisco and Giorgio Moroder lifts, complete with that squelching, grumbling electronic undertow which characterised so much of the output at the time. The high pitched vocals are the kind of thing The Scissor Sisters got their notebooks out for at the peak of their careers, and whilst I'd be surprised to learn that they listened to this particular B-side of a flop single, it's certainly jumping up and down and doing the splits under a very similar mirror ball.

Despite their TOTP appearance I have absolutely zero information on the band, so it's up to some other wise sage to fill in the blanks.

And... once again, please excuse the pops and clicks. I have tried to clean this audio up a bit, but the below is really the best I can do.

(Incidentally, "Left and to the Back" will be updating with mp3 entries on Monday and Thursday mornings as of this entry - random news and housekeeping updates notwithstanding, of course. I sincerely doubt that even the most regular readers will have noticed the Saturday/ Wednesday update schedule the blog had dropped into, but shifting the timings around a little makes more sense as it leaves me able to write new entries at the weekend then queue them for release. You don't need to know this, and I don't need to announce it, but... erm... Oh, whatever).

Re-upload - Goliath - Port and Lemon Lady

2011-05-07T08:00:00.002+01:00

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1970

As the sixties waved goodbye and everyone wept - or so popular culture would have us believe, but it's safe to say that wasn't universally true - the old guard didn't so much change their stripes as gently mutate into other beasts. The bubblegum brigade largely turned their attentions to glam (Mud and The Sweet had both been around and been ignored during the sixties, lest we forget). The garage rock acts frequently morphed into full blown hard rock bands. And then the psychedelic hippies, seemingly for want of anything better to do, carried on exploring their pastoral and experimental influences until, in some cases, we got something rather like this lot.

Goliath were one of several prog-folk acts to emerge almost exactly at the same time as the sixties faded, and whilst as a genre it didn't really have any big-hitting names like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, it nonetheless ploughed its own particular furrow for a rather long period of time. Unlike many of their rivals (or perhaps we should say "fellow travellers") however, Goliath had a distinct blues influences to their work as well, and were probably one of the only acts of the era to combine raunchy vocals- courtesy of lead singer Linda Rothwell - with puffing flutes. As the various cultures clash and compete for your ear's attention across the grooves, it should be a tremendous mess, but amazingly it all hangs together very well.

"Port and Lemon Lady" was CBS's choice for the single off their sole eponymous album, and is a rather merry little number which I personally find close to irritating, but the B-side "I Heard About a Friend" is rather more serious and satisfying and displays the band's strengths much more successfully.

Some critics referred to them as being the British Jefferson Airplane - whether that's the case or not, they seemingly never had an opportunity to record another album, and petered out a few years later. Their sole long player has never been reissued, and is now extremely collectible - the single features nothing which isn't already on the album and is as such less desirable, but still pretty scarce. Enjoy, although I do feel that this is probably an acquired taste, more like gin in that respect than Port and lemon.

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in May 2009, since when Goliath's sole album appears to have been re-issued on CD. All's well that ends well, then!)

Underground Sunshine - Birthday/ All I Want Is You

2011-05-04T08:00:00.005+01:00

Label: Intrepid
Year of Release: 1969

You know the drill with cheeky cash-in Beatles cover versions from the sixties by now - or if you don't, here's a handy guide which was doubtless followed by music industry hucksters at the time:

1. Listen to a copy of the latest Beatles LP, preferably a pre-release if you can obtain one.
2. Get that ailing band whose career you're worried about to record one of the stronger tracks as quickly as possible. Don't waste money on orchestras, complex arrangements, or production values, just bang the bastard out at speed - you'll need to release it before anyone else gets the same idea, and time is of the essence.
3. Release the disc, and hope with your fingers tightly crossed that it launches some new stars.
4. If it flops, drop the band like hot bricks. If it charts, watch with a sinking heart over the next year as it becomes apparent that they will never have another hit ever again.

So many band's careers followed the above pattern that it's amazing anyone in the industry was still bothering with the technique by 1969. The Young Idea, The Truth, The Overlanders, Ray Morgan... all these artists had a short, sharp hit of success by riding on the back of Lennon and McCartney's tunesmithery, only to be relegated back on to the Working Man's club circuit within the twelve month.

I had assumed that in the USA this was less common practice, but Underground Sunshine managed to climb to number 26 on the Billboard Chart with this, their slightly limp-wristed cover of "Birthday". Whereas the original has oomph, wah-wah piano, and a thumping proto-glam rock performance from Ringo Starr, the Sunshine here turn it into a bubblegum affair. It's not bad, but it adds nothing and subtracts a fair amount, rendering the exercise as pointless as the ones their British cousins over the water attempted.

Far better is the B-side "All I Want Is You" where the band shine through in their true colours, sounding almost mod-ish and turning out a groovesome mix of hypnotic organ washes, laidback vocals, funky guitar lines and a non-fussy, raw delivery. I must confess that I wasn't terribly sure about uploading this one - initially I felt it may be a bit too laissez-faire for its own good - but completely without prompting a number of friends have given it the thumbs-up upon hearing it, which has given me enough faith to deliver it to you good readers.

Underground Sunshine eventually issued a full-length album entitled "Let There Be More Light", but as this and subsequent singles (including the David Gates cover "Don't Shut Me Out") failed to chart convincingly, their number was up by 1970.