Paul Brett Sage - 3d Mona Liza/ Mediterranean Lazy Heat Wave

Bassy, funky folkiness - accept the contradictions

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1970

Paul Brett is one of those performers whose career history is far richer and broader than rock and pop history books are likely to give him credit for. As both a background session muso and group member, he played lead guitar with The Strawbs, the utterly marvellous Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, Fire, The Warren Davis Monday Band, Tintern Abbey, Al Stewart and Lonnie Donnegan, which sounds like a complete wet dream of a CV to the average sixties aficionado. 

By 1970, however, he was striking out on his own via the Paul Brett's Sage (or Paul Brett Sage) moniker, a collective which also housed band musicians Bob Voice on drums, Dick Dufall on bass, Nicky Higginbottom on flute and Stuart Cowell on guitar. The group they this bunch have the closest associations with are unquestionably Fire (of "My Father's Name Is Dad" infamy) as Voice and Dufall had both been in the group alongside Brett. 

Anyone plonking this on the turntable and expecting more toytown psychedelia or mod angst will have their expectations thwarted, however - if "3D Mona Liza" is close to any style at all, it's probably the various folk rock festival groups who littered the twilight 1970 era, with its puffing flutes, furious guitars and impassioned vocals. That's not to say it's uninspired - its frantic guitar work and primitive grooves don't have much in common with anything else going on in the period, and its a blistering single which really could have become a hit.  As things stood, the single stalled, although Paul Brett Sage continued for three LPs and their work is now greatly sought after by collectors of the period. 

The track has since cropped up on a few compilations, all now out of print, so here it is again for your pleasure. The B-side of my copy is, unfortunately, rather scuffed up but also presented here for those who don't mind hearing Paul Brett through the gentle sizzling of fried eggs.

I wrote a bit more about Brett and his subsequent career on this entry here, which is worth a read for anyone trying to fill in the remaining blanks. 

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