Sons of the Piltdown Men - Mad Goose/ Be A Party

Label: Pye International
Year of Release: 1963

Ed Cobb's Piltdown Men were one of many popular instrumental acts formed during the late fifties/ early sixties, in this case hailing from Hollywood.  Despite their American origins, they had a greater degree of success in Britain, having three top twenty hits here ("McDonald's Cave", "Piltdown Rides Again" and "Goodnight Mrs Flintstone") while the USA largely looked the other way.

The identity of The Sons of the Piltdown Men is something of a mystery to me.  Main man and Four Preps member Ed Cobb wrote the A-side to this platter which would indicate that he still had some involvement, but I suspect that some changes within the rest of the line-up may have necessitated a sneaky name-change for this one 45. For a start, future Michael Palin and Terry Jones musical collaborator Barry Booth plays keyboards on this, and he most certainly wasn't part of the original Californian line-up.

Beyond that, there's nothing here to suggest any radical changes to their sound, but both sides are a frantic rave-up, with the flip "Be A Party" having a more likeable urgency to it. If you like honking saxophone riffs, rocking organs and driving beats you'll be quite at home with this, although obviously by 1963 this kind of noise was beginning to seem somewhat passé and the record-buying public stayed indoors with their Merseybeat discs rather than venturing to the shops to buy this.

The collapse of The Piltdown Men didn't stand in Cobb's way. Once this was done and dusted he moved on to a highly successful career as a producer, engineer and songwriter, penning evergreen hits such as "Dirty Water" for The Standells and "Tainted Love" for Gloria Jones, as well as working with Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan.  Unsurprisingly under the circumstances, The Piltdown Men have become something of a footnote on his CV.

Group Therapy - Can't Stop Loving You Baby/ I Must Go

Label: Philips

Year of Release: 1969

Occasionally mistakenly identified by baffled collectors as a British band on the cusp of mod and hard rock, Group Therapy were in fact a New York act who began their careers in a rather conservative fashion.  Cover versions and slightly tepid pop were the order of the day, none of which charted in America or achieved much radio play.

Their career in the USA was failing to generate much heat, and so in 1969 they packed their suitcases and descended on British shores to support Moby Grape on tour.  Eye-witness reports suggest that the previously unheard band, who had yet to release anything in the UK, gave Moby Grape a very frightening run for their money.  Philips subsequently signed the act in an attempt to capitalise on the interest.

If this single is representative of their live act, you can fully understand why audiences reacted in the way they did.  The change of sound for the act in 1969 originally led me to suspect that there were two different Group Therapies in circulation, so great is the chasm between their early days and the Grape tour - for this, my friends, really is the business.  Squawking, screaming vocals, a tight, driving rhythm section, and a thunderous organ combine to deliver a track which sits right between the garage lands of old and the coming hard rock storm.  The moody organ break in the middle of the track does subtract from the single's dancefloor potential somewhat, but adds to the listening experience by creating a song which is more than just a bog-standard garage rave-up.   Even the B-side "I Must Go" is worthy of a listen, being a piece of similarly intense, if rather more brooding, blue-eyed soul.  Indeed, lead singer Ray Kennedy was originally encouraged to take up singing by Otis Redding whilst working as a jobbing sax player. "You should put that horn down and go sing," Redding advised him.

Whilst this single really should have pushed Group Therapy into the big time in Britain at least, it didn't click for them.  Nor did its predecessor, a cover of "River Deep Mountain High".  Philips gave up on them, and the band subsequently split, leaving three albums behind them ("People Get Ready For Group Therapy", "37 Minutes of Group Therapy" and "You're In Need of Group Therapy" - a constant punning on the group name which feels as if it belongs in the script for "Spinal Tap").  All was not completely lost for Kennedy, who went on to have a successful career as a session musician and songwriter, working with Jeff Beck, Aerosmith, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Fleetwood Mac amongst others.  Beyond those achievements, the fact that he co-wrote the brilliant "Sail On Sailor" with Brian Wilson is likely to be of most interest to "Left and to the Back" readers.

Love Society - Without You/ Do You Wanna Dance

Label: Scepter

Year of Release: 1968

Love Society were one of many, many low budget bands operating in the USA in the sixties - and I'll stop short of using the word "garage" to describe all their records.  Originating from the small town of Plymouth in Wisconsin, their earliest discs were slightly treacly, innocent pop affairs, and that's evidenced by the slow, smoochy close harmonies on the actual A-side here "Do You Wanna Dance". Never have a late sixties provincial group sounded so indebted to the very earliest works of the Beach Boys.

Despite first appearances, though, the group could pack a much moodier punch, and the flip "Without You" is far better.  Filled with droning organs, despairing guitars and minor-key misery, it's West Coast sounding in a Doors rather than Wilson sense of the word.  On this track, their slick vocal harmonies are put to a much more interesting use in tandem with a distinctly underground sounding tune.  

Known and documented members are Keith Abler on vocals and guitar, Steffen on guitar, and Dellger on drums.  All these people would go on to join cult seventies prog rock group Sunblind Lion in the seventies who have left behind slightly more of a mark in rock's great biography.  They still occasionally gig around North America in this guise to this day.

One Hit Wonders - Microbe - Groovy Baby

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1969

Even if you know only a tiny bit about Wonderful Radio One, your natural assumption would be that novelty records emerging from the station itself were not an immediate phenomenon.  Most readers of "Left and to the Back" are probably familiar with Steve Wright's horrendous (if frequently failed) assaults on the charts in the eighties, and Dave Lee Travis's stab at humour in the seventies with his trucking record "Convoy GB".  This, however, is a vintage example from its earliest days.

Ex-pirate DJ turned legitimate broadcaster Dave Cash is behind this record, and the story behind it is  more straightforward than I had hoped for.  While he worked at Britain's favourite station, it would seem that he was informed by the newsreader Pat Doody that Ian Doody, his three-year old son, would sit transfixed by the radio listening to his father's voice and attempting to have conversations with him.  Rather than giving his daft and obviously delirious boy a brutal kick to the windpipe for such unearthly stupidity, Doody was impressed by this cuteness.  So too was Cash, who thought that it might amuse the public to have the boy on record uttering the day's slang, such as "Groovy baby".  The otherwise impeccable - but at this point rather hitless - Chris Andrews penned something appropriate, Maddy Bell, Leslie Duncan and Dusty Springfield (citation needed, the "Dusty" element could just be Internet rumour-mongering - ed) trilled some vocals, and Ian Doody gurgled over the top at regular intervals.

To an extent, the public approved.  This wasn't a monster hit, but it did climb to number 29, which seems somewhat unbelievable under the circumstances.  It's not that this is the worst novelty single I've ever heard, but beyond a certain cute factor it's rather slight.  One can only assume that having a very small child uttering sixties hip-speak seemed far funnier at the time than it does now (and to be fair, people might have howled with laughter at a similar concept around the peak of "Austin Powers").

The B-side is unusual in that it includes silent gaps so the "children at home" can insert whatever exclamations they want, but I'm much more interested in the oft-claimed fact that Natalie Casey was the youngest person to ever chart in the UK with "Chick Chick Chicken" in 1983.  Even if we take into account the performer's ages in days, months, or even hours, Ian Doody actually broke the top forty compared to Casey's number 72 entry. I smell a rat here, readers, and I suspect the rodent has got bits of Mike Read's pantry all around its mouth.

Reupload - Marvin The Paranoid Android/ Metal Man

Label: Polydor
Year of Release: 1981

There are two songs I know of which reference a "paranoid android" - one features the line "kicking screaming gucci little piggy", the other "you know what really makes me mad?/ they clean me with a brillo pad". Guess which one this isn't?

The mania surrounding the television programme The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the early eighties was decidedly odd and almost unprecedented for a BBC2 show which only managed one measly television series, and the enthusiasm for its most popular character Marvin the terminally depressive robot led to this particular spin-off single. Whilst this failed to get inside "the only chart that counts" on Radio One, it did pick up a surprising volume of airplay and became a favourite during my childhood. I recently rediscovered it in a second hand store in Walthamstow, and upon getting it home was astonished by how geriatric it sounds now. What originally seemed like a piece of synthesiser wizardry with jokes thrown in now sounds like a rather creaky b-grade version of Landscape. I also had a false memory of it using parts of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" in the mix, but in actual fact the chorus only bears a faint resemblance to that particular tune, although one has to wonder whether it's coincidental.

For all my carping, this single is far from being the worst spin-off effort I've ever heard, managing to perfect the balancing act between humour and an engaging tune, the net result being a fair imitation of a Gary Numan record with lyrics by Douglas Adams, which surely any sensible person should wish to hear. It certainly dumps from a big height all over rival robot Metal Mickey's vinyl drek which dogged the same decade, although he too would have to be remembered in a song title by somebody else - in this case Suede - before getting a mention in the big Top 40 rundown. It's a peculiar old world.

Life, don't talk to me about LIFE....

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in April 2009. When the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy was remade as a film, a spin-off single involving Zooey Deschanel and Marvin would have been nigh-on perfect, but for some reason nobody was tempted. Spoilsports.)