Debut Beat Pop effort from eccentrically garbed Coventry bunch
Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1964
We've already covered The Pickwicks once on "Left and to the Back" when we took a look at their uptempo, searing garagey efforts "Little By Little" and their cover of Ray Davies' "I Took My Baby Home".
Their debut release "Apple Blossom Time" was somewhat more conventional by comparison, being a more controlled and less frisky beat offering. It's an odd track for a sixties band to be covering, being penned in the twenties then performed by all manner of pre-rock and roll stars including The Andrews Sisters, Vera Lynn, Nat King Cole and Artie Shaw. Its romantic imagery and sweet-natured lyrics seem rather tame and decidedly un-teen, but the group do inject it with a certain oomph and even add some squeaky keyboards which make it feel as if it indirectly invented Lipps Inc's "Funky Town".
The B-side is the better offering in my view, consisting of Beatlesy harmonies and a jogging tempo, though those keyboards are back at the forefront of the mix again, and while the keyboardist was probably a lovely chap, they do start to wear very thin at this point.
The Pickwicks consisted of Alan Gee on guitar, Malcolm Jenkins on drums, Tony Martin on bass and Johnny Miles on lead guitar and vocals. If you want to hear them at their most raucous, head over to the other blog entry about them.
2 comments:
I assume the President Records shown in the production credit is the independent big-hitter which released its first single under its own name in August 1966?
I assume so, yes! Quite often small independent labels started out by leasing their productions to bigger labels (eg Island Records to Fontana) and this seems to be a similar situation.
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