Now - I Wanna Be Free/ People Are Standing

Label: President
Year of Release: 1973

I've said it before, but will doubtless repeat it regularly - the early seventies is an under-rated source of sharp, spiky pop gems. All the popsmithery that bled out of Denmark Street during the late sixties simply flowed straight into glam and rock as the early seventies began, and with a tiny bit of imagined tweaking it's very easy to perceive how some mod and freakbeat could simply have been adapted into glam tracks instead. Am I making an original observation? Admittedly not, but people are still surprisingly sniffy about these sorts of ideas.

This release, for example, is an euphoric piece of storming power pop which, with its bubbling and squeaking analogue synths and slamming riffing does sound of the 1973 moment, but has the same raw aggression present in the best freakbeat obscurities. It never gives up, gleefully sprawling all over its short run-time to explore every last nook and cranny of the tune. Sounding like a punked-out, less polished version of Wings at their "Junior's Farm" finest, it deserves more listeners. It is commercially available in the Amazon mp3 store to buy, and also forms part of "Electric Asylum Vol 5", and you can hear it in more depth on YouTube. I've included a brief minute-long clip below so you can also get an idea of what you're missing.

The B-side "People Are Standing" is a bit of angst-ridden political protest about apathy which is less impressive, though by no means terrible.

Apart from a blurry press release online which I can't read properly, I've managed to obtain very little information about these boys, apart from the fact that they apparently had "an album ready to go" which obviously hasn't seen the light. If anyone knows more, please do get in touch.