The Outer Limits are no strangers to this blog, having been covered around this time last year on a segment about popsike Christmas records. Having Jeff Christie (of "Yellow River" fame) on lead vocals and having issued one killer 45 on Deram in 1967 ("Just One More Chance") they never really seemed to realise their full potential commercially.
By 1971 Christie had already gone off to sing about peculiar coloured rivers on hits of his own, so it's not clear if this single contains the remaining line-up of The Outer Limits carrying on regardless, is a studio out-take from before Christie's departure, or another band entirely - but whatever the facts, it's the B-side we're most interested in. The A-side is a piece of early seventies pop so shiny and plasticky you can almost see your face in it, and while it has a lot of bounce, it also has all the drive, emotion and conviction of a breakfast cereal advert. It's safe to say that it did not inform the direction of Pink Floyd's seminal album of the same name.
On the other hand, The B-side "Black Boots" is one of those moody instro-groovers you more commonly tend to find on sixties flipsides, but more interestingly still the bass-line hook is nearly note-for-note identical to The Stranglers "Nice 'n' Sleazy". I doubt Guildford's most terrifying band deliberately stole it, but it is another example (alongside Leatherhead's "Gimme Your Money Please") of how many traces of the men in black could be found in pre-punk recordings. Maybe Bob Stanley was right when he wrote in his excellent book "Yeah Yeah Yeah - The Story of Modern Pop" that the main thing linking the band to the punk movement is that they seemed like a nasty bunch of bastards.
Thanks to Planet Mondo for pointing out the riff some time back, and apologies for the pops and crackles on the copy I managed to find.
I know what a lot of the regular readers are thinking at this point. "This is all very well, but most of us have a strong interest in sixties output. We haven't really had any Christmassy sixties offerings so far, have we?" It is to those people that I say "Bring on the biggest Christmas cracker in the world!" "Well, try these little nuggets for size..."
Band: Two and a Half
Track: Christmas Will Be Round Again
Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1967
This is an almost ridiculously chirpy piece of sixties pop from an utterly obscure group who, despite having five singles out in the sixties, have been impossible to track down or identify since. Generally releasing tracks with a strong Simon & Garfunkel feel to them, "Christmas Will Be Round Again" deviates from that particular template to over-enthusiastically embrace Yuletide - truly, this is the noise of Christmas Eve and the excitement of the presents waiting for you in the morning (if you're about eight years old, and if you're reading this you're possibly not...)
Oddly, this was actually the Christmas B-side to the distinctly non-festive but much-fancied Two & A Half track "I Don't Need To Tell You", which was their final release before they disappeared off the face of the planet.
Artist: The Outer Limits
Track: The Great Train Robbery
Label: Instant
Year of Release: 1968
Again, not strictly speaking a Christmas song, but this has a distinct wintery feel, chiming melodies and close harmonies as well as referencing "A cold and windy evening in December", so it's getting in by default.
"Great Train Robbery" has a distinct Bee Gees feel and asks the listeners whether they remember an audacious near-Christmas steam train hijacking from the late part of the nineteenth century - apparently five men and a woman with a shotgun were responsible, though they do add the disclaimer "so the papers say", which in these cynical "perhaps David Icke has a point" times takes on a new layer of meaning. This is beautifully produced and shot through with mystery, constantly hinting at a bigger story but never quite disclosing the full details. It's possible to visualise the incident as the song plays, making this an incredibly filmic single many years before such efforts became commonplace.
The Outer Limits are most famed for having Jeff Christie in their line-up, who eventually hit the big time with "Yellow River". This is a much bigger achievement than that track, but sadly flopped, possibly due to cash-flow problems at Immediate (whom Instant were a subsidiary of) or perhaps the fact that this doesn't sound like an obvious 45.
Band: The Majority
Track: All Our Christmases
Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1968
Sometimes you can just tell that a record company has no real interest in attempting to promote a song or scheduling it properly, and is just "going through the motions" with it - this is a prime example. Instead of taking the logical decision to release "All Our Christmases" in late November or early December, Decca decided that 12 January 1968 might make a more appropriate release date, causing the disc to predictably plunge into obscurity.
A shame, because this Bee Gees composition isn't half bad and deserved a better crack of the whip. It's frothy and chirpy and would have made a perfect mid-table festive hit. As things stood, Hull's Majority had already had seven singles out prior to this one, and the industry seemed to decide that their distinctly non-Christmassy goose was cooked. This proved to be their final hurrah.
And finally... "Question of Childhood" by Adam and Dee isn't on YouTube, which would fit this list perfectly. Nothing much I can do about that at the moment, but it might be something we have to return to at a later date.
