Bouncy ska-influenced pop from Newcastle band managed and produced by Alan Price.
Label: Polydor
Year of Release: 1969
Happy Magazine were a highly reckoned group in the late sixties. With fellow Newcastle boy Alan Price acting as their manager, and even contributing songs - their debut single "Satisfied Street" was also penned by him - they certainly had a valuable mentor to steer them through pop's choppy waters.
The fact that their singles are still reasonably easy to find these days would appear to indicate that they didn't flop as badly as some records on Polydor during this period (I've mentioned on Twitter before now that some of Polydor's singles from the 66-69 period are so scarce I have to wonder if they even sold more than fifty copies). Despite this, they certainly weren't chart hits either, and that feels a bit unjust under the circumstances. In this case, "Who Belongs To You" bounces along as neatly and nicely as one of Price's own compositions from the same period. Possibly the fact that the group felt the need to add "(Ooby Dooby Doo)" in brackets after the song title put some punters off; it's certainly something that caused me to nearly not buy this record, fearing some incredibly trite bubblegum sound.
The flipside here is a fairly mediocre slice of twee popsike which was recently compiled on to the "Piccadilly Sunshine" series of compilation albums, and remains commercially available. You can hear it on YouTube if you're really interested, but it's a simple, child-like tune which probably won't do much to squeegee your third eyeball.
The group consisted of Kenny Craddock on organ, Pete Kirtley on guitar, Alan Marshall on vocals and Alan White on drums. This was their last single, and the instrumental talent in the group walked off to form Griffin who released the "I Am The Noise In Your Head" single later in the same year. Craddock and White then joined Ginger Baker's Airforce when Griffin failed to cause many record buyers to part with their pennies.
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