The Wages of Sin - West Virginia/ Hey Hey Hey (Well I'm On My Way)

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1970

Another absolute mystery, I'm afraid. "West Virginia" is the sole release from the obscure and largely undocumented Wages of Sin, and the lack of information about them probably indicates that they were  a studio group created for the purposes of this record - in the early seventies this had become highly regular practice.

Originally issued by Ronnie Dio's group The Elves to similar disinterest a mere few months before, "West Virginia" straddles an awkward line between bubblegum and garage, having the kind of kicking horns and soulful hollering vocals to draw comparisons with the likes of Paul Revere and The Raiders. The chorus is close enough to a stadium chant to make me think it might have stood a hope of being a hit, but despite the fact that this is a UK re-recording of the song, it still sounds far too damn American. The British, as a rule, are fine with celebrating American cities and states when they're halfway familiar through the television and cinema screen. New York, San Francisco, California, LA, Las Vegas, Detroit, these are all places we're happy to gaze upon in admiration and celebrate in song. West Virginia, on the other hand, isn't going to stir up many feelings of fondness or familiarity, largely because internationally it has a very low profile. Would anyone from the USA buy a celebratory British song called "Great Yarmouth"? I doubt it (very few people in Britain would either).

Still, this is cheerful enough, and thuds and punches its way through its celebration just enough that you almost want to visit West Virginia. Perhaps if Tony Christie had covered it, as he did with "Show Me The Way To Amarillo" which caused tourism in the city to leap up dramatically, everyone would be in business.

Turnstyle - Trot

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1968

Turnstyle's "Riding A Wave" has joined the ranks of the uber-collectible British psychedelic 45s. It was  the group's only single and has been known to command nearly £900 in excellent condition, and is extraordinarily hard to track down. So hard, in fact, that an enterprising bootlegger ran up more copies of it recently (the version I own, naturally) all of which seem to have since sold out.

It's little wonder, really. "Riding A Wave" is a great little summertime psych record, doomed on its original release perhaps by the fact that Pye Records shoved it out in the unforgiving gloom of a British November. But even outside of its ideal context, it's still a joyous and celebratory record, filled with soaring Indian string arrangements and a storming, defiantly carefree chorus. It's on YouTube and even iTunes if you want to investigate further.

Less exposure has been given to the B-side over the years. "Trot" is a very different beast indeed, being a threatening, clattering and clanging rocker, raving and drooling away. Harsh garagey guitar riffs hang out with bluesy vocals and in a blindfold test, it's unlikely anybody would guess this was the same band.  Knuckle-dragging tunes and weightless psych-pop seldom shared vinyl space on one 45 in this way.

Turnstyle were formed by songwriter and drummer Mark Ashton and his brother (whose identity I have not managed to unveil). Based up in Scotland, they only managed to stay together for six months after this single was released before disbanding, after which Mark moved over to the considerably more successful prog outfit Rare Bird, whose "Sympathy" sold more than one million copies globally. I prefer "Riding A Wave", personally.

The Mad Hatters - The Humphrey Song

Label: Epic
Year of Release: 1976

He'd never believe it - and I suspect even if he did find out, he wouldn't care much - but the songwriter Mike Batt is indirectly responsible for two things that traumatised me as a child. The first and obvious thing would be the Wombles. Not the fictional litter-gathering characters who I liked, but their incarnation as a musical group. As a three year old child in a Butlins holiday camp, four towering men in Womble costumes gathered around me for a perfect photo opportunity. Seeing these fat, giant, Pete Townshend-nosed furballs stood behind me, glaring with vacant eyes in a manner I took to be menacing, I burst into floods of tears and had to be taken out of the room.

Then, Humphrey the phantom milk-drinker. Jesus Christ. You can talk to people of a certain generation about these adverts and they'll stare at you blankly - who? What? But they were the stuff of appalling darkness to me at the same age. In the adverts, Humphrey is an unseen force, never in camera shot, who steals milk from various surprised or terrified celebrities. Sometimes his emergence would be met with a booming, bellowing "He's behind you!" The fact that Humphrey was never visible caused me to conclude that this was a horrible, Triffid-type monster. I visualised a giant, striped, snaking straw, coiled and ready to strike, slithering into rooms and strangling people before sucking the milk bottles from their fridge dry. Again, I used to burst into tears at the adverts and had to be taken from the room. Thanks a fucking lot, Mike Batt (though to be fair to the songsmith, he only came up with the tunes for these horrible creatures, I doubt he was behind the concept, or my own warped mind's visualisation of the unseen).

I didn't realise that there was a glam rock Humphrey single released to coincide with the adverts, although it's safe to say that only a particularly cruel adult in my house would have considered buying it for me as a gift. On top of a thudding beat and a honking Soho sax, things only get more mysterious. "Though Humphreying is against the law/ they'll Humphrey a bit and Humphrey some more" Batt warns us. "Hey they don't need no reason!/ Hey baby, this is the Humphrey season!" he adds, while a sinister, prolonged psychedelic Floydish whisper hisses "Humphreeeeeyyyy!" in the background. Absurdity and anarchy abounds. I didn't know Humphreys had seasons, or that there were specific laws against the very act of Humphreying itself.

There's no reason why this shouldn't have been a hit. The adverts were very well-known and popular (with everyone except me), Batt's original jingle was familiar to all and a huge factor behind their success, and the track is enough fun to be worth more than the usual couple of plays most novelty singles end up being granted. Doubtless the BBC were reluctant to playlist something so closely linked to a major ITV advertising campaign, and it failed to pick up attention elsewhere. But it could be that I'm biased - while you're probably hearing a very innocent glam ditty, I'm actually hearing bleak, monstrous terror and cow-juice drinking chaos. This track has enough darkness to it to never be pure 'novelty pop' to me. Do indeed watch out, people.

Sorry I couldn't include the ballad on the B-side in this upload, but it's absolutely scratched beyond use on my copy, I'm afraid.

Reupload - Elliot Mansions - I Don't Want To Live Inside Myself/ Three Score and Ten

Label: President
Year of Release: 1972

I've owned this particular single for years, and there are two key reasons it's never been uploaded. Firstly, information on Elliot Mansions seems to be incredibly scarce, and I was hanging on for more facts to materialise - however, it seems as if I may be waiting for the rest of my lifetime. And secondly... despite numerous good reviews on psychedelic pop sites like Sweet Floral Albion, I really can't hear what everyone else is seemingly hearing here. Both sides are perfectly passable ballads, with the A-side perhaps being of most interest to people as a Barry Gibb composition, but I can't hear any oddness or adventure you'd expect from a popsike disc.

Still, it seems rather selfish to sit on these things when there clearly is some demand for them to be heard, and so I present it to you for download with apologies for having absolutely no back story about the artist (or possibly band) in question.

Perhaps rather more interestingly, this single is one of many which turned up in boxes around London which appeared to have originated from the BBC Gramophone library. I had always assumed that the BBC's vinyl library was the most comprehensive in the world and that they never had "clear outs", but that's clearly not the case, as the BBC transparent plastic sleeve my copy came in (plus the bold BBC library stamp on the B-side) both prove. Good news for collectors, perhaps, who get to pick up near-mint copies of old singles for very low prices, but I have to wonder if some of this material would be better off inside the vaults rather than being allowed to wander into the hands of people like me - although I should probably respect the fact that if license payers were asked what their money should be spent on, the storage of flop sixties and seventies acts probably wouldn't be very high on their lists.

And as usual, I must ask anyone with any information about Elliot Mansions to come forward and spill the beans.

(Update - This entry was originally uploaded in July 2009. Nobody ever did come forward to 'spill the beans' about Elliot Mansions, though numerous people brought me up to date with the BBC's plans to digitise its library. My opinions on this record haven't changed much in the intervening years, unfortunately, but Bee Gees fans will probably want to check it out as a rarity. A copy sold on ebay for £10 recently…)

The Vejtables - The Last Thing On My Mind/ Mansion Of Tears

Label: Autumn

Year of Release: 1965

From a fairly ignorant UK perspective, it's easy to reduce the US folk-rock movement into a few key names and places. The reality is that away from the hits and the iconic figures, there were a lot of other players who never really gained much more than cult appreciation (or perhaps even less than that).  This blog recently revisited the work of the largely unknown Brotherly Lovers from Queens in New York, and the pile goes a lot deeper than that.

Californian band The Vejtables, on the other hand, had moderate success in certain regions of North America, and caught some media attention for possessing the then quite unheard of combination of a female singer/drummer in Jan Errico. Their cover of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind" is probably one of their better known moments, and continues to be appreciated enough that you can buy it from plenty of tax-dodging mp3 selling outlets to this day (or listen to it on YouTube if you're that way inclined). 

For my money, though, the B-side "Mansion of Tears" is the better moment here - the jangly guitar, dramatic, romanticised vocals and trad-folk imagery listed in an angsty rush is quite lovely. Occasionally compared to The Seekers, The Vejtables were in reality a tiny bit harder and spikier, and that shows through here. The combination of world-weary female harmonies with chiming guitars mixed to the forefront still sounds completely lovely, even if some of the lyrical content does veer close to "A Mighty Wind" territory.

Once The Vejtables tore off into a more psychedelic direction, Jan Ellis decided to depart and join The Mojo Men who released the garage classic "Sit Down I Think I Love You". But the remaining band did give her a good run for her money - they changed their name to The Book of Changes and their single "I Stole The Goodyear Blimp" is freaky popsike story-telling at its finest, seeing the band "tripping on a big huge silver cigar". Nice. She should have stayed put, really.