The Legion of Extraordinary Traders Presents...

Folks, it's been some time since I took bits of my 45 collection to an event and played them to some ladies and gentlemen, but next Sunday (22nd March) we'll be visiting the Earl Haig Hall in Crouch End, London as part of their LOET "Market and Social Event". I'll be joined by top London old-school club DJs Sean Bright and John The Revelator.

The same thing happens again on 26th April, and yet again on 31st May. Grab some booze, a coffee and a cake, buy yourself some clothes and a vintage Stylophone, and join me. It will be nice. And let's face it, you won't be doing much else on a Sunday afternoon.

Manfred Mann/ Mike Hugg - Ski Full of Fitness Theme/ Sweet Baby Jane

Label: Ski

Year of Release: 1971

Manfred Mann were a perplexing paradox of a group at their peak. Named after their South African keyboard player and originally performing in the jazz and blues styles he so loved, they quickly morphed into a huge hit making machine, chalking up three British number ones which have become the staple of sixties oldie collections ("Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Pretty Flamingo", "Mighty Quinn"). All are classy pop recordings, but were almost certainly a world away from the career Mann had envisaged for himself, and other stars of the time such as Scott Walker were frequently astounded at the patience he showed for such a bog-standard pop career.

By the seventies, something had clearly snapped, and Mann and co-conspirator Mike Hugg seemed to have devised a plan. They formed a new group called Manfred Mann Chapter Three focussed on experimental jazz rock, and continued to write and record other songs for commercial and advertising use. Clearly understanding that some commercial compromise was essential to making a living as a musician, Mann obviously thought that his time could be sensibly split with his pop songwriting chops being licensed for marketing purposes to partly finance other weightier projects. And indeed, why not? To this day, jazz musicians pay the bills by popping up as session musicians on all manner of other more simplistic material.

The "Ski Full of Fitness Theme" is an oddity which stems from this period, and can be widely found in charity shops and second hand shops the length and breadth of the country. Given away as part of a deal with Ski yoghurts, it's a surprisingly loose and pleasing yet strangely facile jam. "Ski - the full of fitness food!/ Feel fit for anything!/ Na na na na na na/ NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA!" they enthusiastically inform us before bursting into a bit of guitar riffola. This is not the stuff winning advertising slogans are made of, but as the brilliant magazine "Shindig" pointed out recently, the guitar jam of the main track does propel things along nicely.

Ski yoghurt was also a heavily marketed phenomenon so particular to the 1970s that mentioning it may act like a bat light to Peter Kay. Certainly in my house we devoured this exotic "fitness food", usually helping things along a bit by pouring in a spoonful of white granular sugar to make the concoction less sour. "What is the point?" you may ask, and I can only reply: "What? Of our behaviour, or this blog entry? I'm not sure I can help you in either case."

What I can tell you is that Manfred Mann Chapter Three were a very short-lived proposition, surviving for only two albums, and after this quirky period business was semi-returned to usual with the rather more rocky Manfred Mann Earth Band, who managed further top ten hits without veering things in a particularly poppy direction. Mike Hugg continued his career in jazz without Mann while also penning the legendary theme to "Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads" (partly inventing the mood of Oasis's "Don't Look Back In Anger" in the process), and presumably everything resolved itself relatively neatly. What else can you say apart from na na na na na na, and indeed, NA NA NA NA NA NA!

Elliots Sunshine - 'Cos I'm Lonely/ Is It Too Late

Label: Philips

Year of Release: 1968

It's been awhile since we've had a burst of popsike on this blog, so here's some - and its written by something of a master at that. Caleb Quaye, father of Finley and a prolific session musician in his own right, is probably most admired among psychedelic pop fanatics for the thoroughly peculiar and amazing single "Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad". A pean to the difficulties of achieving a satisfactory relationship with somebody who has poor pronunciation, it wasn't a smash despite achieving some moderate airplay on Radio Scotland - but since appearing on the "Rubble" series of compilation albums, it's rightly earned its place in most "Best British Psychedelic Singles of All Time" polls.

Caleb takes a backseat here and acts as songwriter for Elliots Sunshine, an obscure pop group who only had this single to their name. His effort "'Cos I'm Lonely" sits on the flip, and is considerably less berserk than "Phrasing", content instead to bathe itself in tranquil pseudo-West Coast melodies.

The A-side is an unremarkable ballad which really isn't worth troubling with, but I'm including it here for the sake of completeness.

Very little is known about Elliots Sunshine, but by all rumoured accounts they were a proper gigging group and not a hastily pulled together aggregation of studio musicians. If anyone has any concrete information, it would be great to find out more.

As for Quaye, he eventually became a Christian evangelist and moved to the USA. That's the way it sometimes goes.

Reupload - Ola and the Janglers - I Can Wait/ Eeny Meeney Miney Mo

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1967

These days, I would hope that most people are aware of the fact that the Scandinavian countries have well-developed and extraordinarily creative music industries of their own (a sentence I'm aware sounds slightly condescending, but isn't meant to be).  In the sixties, however, if any Scandies attempted to break the UK or US markets, they were normally blocked out.  It's tempting to put this solely down to isolationism and xenophobia - and those two traits were certainly common to both Britons and Yanks at the time - but there again, when you consider that every teenage boy or girl with a guitar in London, Liverpool, Manchester, New York, LA and San Francisco (and beyond) were courting labels and darkening their knuckles knocking on the relevant doors, life was never going to be easy for somebody trying to infiltrate from the outside.

Ola and the Janglers - despite their ridiculous name, another thing I'll warrant stood in their way - were a hugely popular group in their native Sweden, scoring numerous hits.  Their material varied from the rich, weeping, Walker Brothers-esque ballad "What A Way To Die", to rather more abrasive garage poppers like "I'm Thinking Of You", straight along to this, something so downright mod it should have been given away free with all Vespa purchases.  The strummed, clanging guitars and Ola's charmingly hesitant vocals bounce keenly off Motown rhythms, and the whole thing is danceable enough to trigger activity in any well person's limbs.  It should have been a hit, and doubtless was in the areas Britons refer to as "continental Europe", but despite a "Top of the Pops" slot here in the UK, it didn't really do particularly well. 

Despite this, they were the first Swedish group ever to chart in the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA, their cover of Chris Montez's "Let's Dance" managing to climb up to number 92.  Ola's career continued in Sweden over the decades as well, recording a duet with Abba's Agnetha Fältskog in 1986 - somebody who completely changed international perceptions of Swedish music with her own career.  

Incidentally, I have to confess that I don't like the B-side to "I Can Wait" - even the title, "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo", is bloody irritating.  It's not without it's fans, though, so feel free to sample it below.  You've nothing to lose.

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in August 2010). 

The Roundtable - Eli's Comin'/ Saturday Gigue

Label: Licorice Soul
Original date of release: 1969

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Jazz Club. Nice! Tonight, we've got some jazz upstarts lined up who have taken the liberty of augmenting their grooves with antique instrumentation.

We've all got "Time Tunnel" and International Ska Festival DJ Sean Bright to thank for this one. Catching up with me at a soul night in Camden, he thrust a copy of this into my hands at the bar with the blunt words: "This is the single you were after". This record, sought after by me for a year or two now, is a victim of one his clear-outs - so disgusted was he with the version of "Eli's Comin'" on the A-side ("A song I thought it would be virtually impossible to ruin") that he passed it on to me for the price of a beer.

So, this probably isn't to everybody's tastes, but it is downright unique. So unique that it's a wonder it ever got recorded in the first place. A collaboration between two members of the medieval music ensemble The Early Music Consort (David Munrow and Chris Hogwood) with UK jazzers Don Lusher, Kenny Clare and Kenny Baker, the tracks contain two drummers, a hammond organ, harpsichord, crumhorn and a whole lot of other unlikely music room instruments thrown into an audio blender. It should be complete and total chaos, an unlistenable cacophony, but it's tight and amazingly insistent. The A-side "Eli's Comin'" does indeed take liberties with the original tune, but turns it into something quite vibrant and - despite the obvious jazz flourishes - surprisingly groovy.

The flip "Saturday Gigue" allows the medieval instrumentation to come out to the fore, and gels less well, but does give you a chance to hear Munro's playing up front.

David Munro should really be given particular mention here as a remarkable individual who dedicated his life to obscure instrumentation, even commissioning reconstructions of defunct instruments. He was behind a total of fifty LPs, and a large body of soundtrack work and BBC radio programmes and British television programmes. Sadly, however, he committed suicide in 1976 while in a state of depression. You can see an example of his televisual work here, and it's worth remembering that prior to these ideas getting ITV exposure (imagine that) this was incredibly niche stuff.