Break

Merry Christmas everyone! I'm typing this blog entry from the safety of an old 19th Century fisherman's cottage somewhere on the south coast of England. Could I have timed my stay at such a place better? Well, yes. It coincided with one of the cruellest winter snaps in recent memory, and this place doesn't really have proper central heating and was somewhat draughty when we got here. Still, it's our cabin for the festive period while (you guessed it) the legal matters surrounding our house move go through their final motions.

It goes without saying that I have neither a record player here nor the means to digitise vinyl, so that's going to impose another blog break. It's also true to say that when I do finally get the removal lorries to turn up to my new address in the Midlands with all my worldly possessions, getting new entries online here isn't going to be my first priority.

How long before matters are resolved? Who knows? Could be a few weeks, could be a couple of months, could be longer, but keep visiting the site, or like our page on Facebook or follow the blog's Twitter feed and I'll keep you updated as best I can.

But in the meantime... I hope everyone has a good Christmas. Thanks for sticking by this blog during a year which has been riddled with breaks of this nature, and also a time where there are thousands of other distractions online. The fact I still have people logging on to this site to read my waffle about extremely obscure records is a constant source of surprise to me.

Reupload - Next of Kin - Merry Christmas/ Sunday Children Sunday Morning

 

Interesting attempt at festive ska from Mitch Murray and friends

Label: MCA

Year of Release: 1969

Well, ho ho ho, what have we here in Santa's sack? Blow me down if it isn't a bit of cod-ska co-written by the songwriter Mitch Murray, of "How Do You Do It?", "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Is This The Way To Amarillo?" fame. Ho ho ho, off you go young man, get off my knee, there are others waiting, this record didn't bloody sell and I've got tons to get rid of, you know.

Mitch was, it's safe to say, not a man who had probably even holidayed in the Caribbean, much less been a member of a ska band. The Mike Leander production credit also indicates that there wasn't somebody from that background present to steer the ship towards those waters, so by rights, this disc should be a hopeless shambles.

It's interesting to find out that it's not terrible, then. It wouldn't pass muster with the average sixties skin who would almost certainly sniff out the distinctly Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da styled fake accents, but those cheap brass sounds, the raw production and the repetitive nature of the tune make it a strong parody of a late sixties ska track at the very least. It's unquestionably a cynical cash-in on a "current sound", but the attention to detail is impressive.

Rick Jones - Cameraman/ Seen All Her Faces

Yoffy off "Fingerbobs" with melancholy folk single

Label: Fontana

Year of Release: 1967

A lot of cliched nonsense has been written about British seventies children's television by people determined to hear lewd, suggestive or druggy lines in the scripts of innocent shows. Most of these accusations come from people who see bright, colourful and imaginative programmes and assume they're the product of dopeheads who have munched through a buffet of spacecakes, rather than made by educators and producers who just happen to know what small children want to watch and how they best learn. The fact that you enjoy the Teletubbies or In The Night Garden while stoned out of your mind doesn't actually mean to say the creators are (or were) in a state of constant delirium too.

All rules have exceptions, though, and Rick Jones was the black sheep of children's TV. He claimed to have been high on hash on the set of Play School, adding to a journalist that marijuana "was like cornflakes" at the Beeb. Besides his work on that show, he is perhaps most famed for the low budget oddity "Fingerbobs" (a huge favourite of mine as a child) though his career stalled after a "fan" sent him two spliffs to the BBC's address and the package was intercepted. He subsequently returned to the world of music from where he first emerged, and this 45 gives you an idea of what he was up to before fingermice and fingerbirds entered his beardy life.

"Cameraman" is an orchestrated folk ditty which suits Jones' deep, sleepy vocals very well, rolling you around in its deep melancholy. He's not quite Leonard Cohen, but his performance is that of a sleepless, lovelorn lump abandoned unexpectedly, and damn convincing it is too (no doubt aided by some herbal cigarettes). 

 "Seen All Her Faces" is essentially more of the same, although Jones kicks some life into it, and the swelling jazzy arrangement gives it a bit of swing and optimism the A side doesn't have.

His early records didn't sell well which indirectly led to his career as an on-screen children's entertainer, but after he was shown the door at the Beeb he joined country rock band Meal Ticket who signed to Logo Records, reigniting a career a world away from puppetry for pre-schoolers. 

Bryan Evans - Turnaround Sunday/ Re-united

 

Glam-tinged gospel from Mumbles star of the stage

Label: Columbia

Year of Release: 1972

We've stumbled briefly upon Bryan Evans before on this blog, documenting his unexpected efforts to de-campify the Howard and Blaikley glam flop "Don'tcha Like Boys" and turn it into a chart sensation. He failed miserably, of course, but had the project been launched a few years earlier than 1978 he may well have been on to something. Timing is everything in pop.

For most of the seventies, though, Evans was an ever-present background figure in light entertainment, appearing in West End productions and also having a long recording career across multiple record labels, starting with CBS in 1971 and finishing with EMI International in 1979. It's rare for an unsuccessful artist to be given so many chances by the music business, and it's usually a display of enormous faith in their abilities, suggesting that Evans was seen as a highly polished performer capable of competing with the big boys (and girls) of the day. 

"Turnaround Sunday" was actually his third single and first for Columbia after a two-single stint with CBS. It's an interesting mix of styles, combining happy clappy gospel influences with a faint tinge of glam. The first time I played this, I accidentally left my laptop speaker on and ended up hearing the track with an unintentional and tinny slap of reverb delay, and when I found out it wasn't supposed to sound like that and the extra high-end slap was just due to my own absent-mindedness, I was faintly disappointed - but still, even without such gimmicks the track has its own euphoric stomp.

Reupload - Carnegy Hall - The Bells of San Francisco/ Slightly Cracked

 

A psychedelic Christmas single? Oh, go on then

Label: Polydor

Year of Release: 1967

Let's face it, it's doubtful anyone's surprised by the fact that a psychedelic Christmas single was released at the tail end of 1967 - what's truly surprising is that the market wasn't flooded with kaleidoscopic Christmas elves and festive carols with groovy phasing. (Though at the very least Syd Barrett said that "Apples and Oranges" had a 'touch of Christmas' about it, I suppose).

Sadly, anyone expecting anything authentic here is going to be sorely disappointed. It's a rather flippant novelty cash-in, and while it starts promisingly with its bells and an ominous whirring sound, it quickly descends into child-like whimsy. While we're informed that Father Christmas is on his "psychedelic way", the track itself is more akin to Scott MacKenzie on a tight budget than Soft Machine. "Ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling, a very hippy Christmas Day" the track continues, making you wonder if this was one of the key markers towards the "hippy wigs in Woolworths" moment in society. 

The songwriter Geoff Stephens seems to be the driving force behind the track, who by this point had already chalked up an impressive tally of enormous hits for Manfred Mann ("Semi Detached Suburban Mister James"), Dave Berry ("The Crying Game"), The New Vaudeville Band ("Winchester Cathedral"), and The Applejacks ("Tell Me When"). He would later go on to write "There's A Kind of Hush", "Sorry Suzanne", "Silver Lady" and "Lights of Cincinnati" among others, so the fact this record flopped probably hasn't featured in his nightmares much over the last fifty years. 

Sharon Campbell - All The Loving You've Got/ Did We Ever See The Sun

 

Chirpy pop with a breezy summery feel 

Label: Trend

Year of Release: 1970

Trend really was a peculiar little label. Run out of a record shop in Westbourne Grove, you would have thought its independence would have led to a heap of underground artists tumbling on to its roster. While it did boast relatively hip bands like Swegas and Warm Dust, it also seemed to have a bit of a fetish for straight-ahead, smoothly produced and orchestrated pop. 

In some respects, this should have lined it up neatly for success as the sixties waved goodbye. At that point, sunshine melodies with lush arrangements were selling in huge quantities, but despite their production stylings living up to their company name by 1970, business problems were never far away and it was wound up by the High Court in 1971.

Sharon Campbell's "All The Loving You've Got" is another example of a string-laden pop sound with jollity and breeziness at its core, bit parts sixties girl-pop and the New Seekers. It's impossible to dislike and while its production occasionally feels a bit too hemmed in to really let Campbell's performance fly as much as you suspect she'd prefer, it's still another one for the list of obscure summery pop songs that existed on the cusp of the sixties and seventies.

Differing accounts of Campbell's identity are given depending on who you ask, with some people identifying her as the singer who would later enjoy success as a session vocalist in the seventies and eighties (most notably with Leo Sayer, Neil Innes, Dennis Waterman and Sheena Easton) and others insisting she's a different performer. Given the fact that the name is unbeliveably common - to the extent that I was once in a band with someone called Sharon Campbell, and no, it's definitely not her either - I should probably exercise some caution here, but it doesn't seem improbable that this was a very early release for her before her session career took off.

Bob Rogers & Playground - Take Advantage/ Get Yourself Together

 

Respect to all milkmen and women everywhere

Label: Express
Year of "release": 1971

Hello readers. Do you remember drinking water out of hosepipes? Do you remember when binmen WERE binmen and bikes WERE bikes? Do you remember eating out of tins of Spam during power cuts and feeling grateful, and your Dad giving you a slap if you refused to suck the jelly on the top of the can up with a straw for his own grotesque amusement? DO YOU? And did it do you any harm? And do you remember the milkmen? Hold up, though...

Door to door milk deliveries may feel like they belong among Internet memes celebrating somewhat forgotten ways of life, but are very much still "a thing". My milk, for example, is delivered by electric float from Parker Dairies of Woodford Green who service the suburban East London area (they haven't paid me to say they're very reliable, but I will say it anyway - when I move house they'll lose my custom and somebody else should rebalance things by stepping into the fray). When I first started utilising their services during the lockdown of 2020, however, my next-door neighbour - who wasn't born in this country - was outraged, responding furiously: "Why are they just leaving drinks on your doorstep? They could get stolen. RING THEM AND TELL THEM TO DO THEIR JOBS PROPERLY! They should knock on your door and give it to you!" I tried to explain to her that milkmen knocking on my door at five in the morning wouldn't be welcome, but she walked off shaking her head at the drivel I was apparently spouting. Such is the lowly profile of the milk roundsperson in 2022. 

Back in 1971, however, business was booming and Express Dairies saw fit to hire seasoned performer Bob Rogers and plonk him in the studio to record a promotional flexidisc extolling the virtues of cow udder juice. Bob was by this point a popular cabaret performer with holiday camp residencies to his name, playing covers of the pop hits of the day, but had previously been a member of the instrumental beat combo The Ted Taylor Four who were with the Oriole label for five singles between 1958-1961 ("Fried Onions" is an interesting one).

For "Take Advantage", however, he croons away about the special deals your local milko could offer you, making it clear - as Benny Hill also did in adverts of the day - that you could also obtain other non-dairy products from him, including chicken, bread, potatoes and eggs ("take advantage, save your legs!") in all weathers. From a 21st Century perspective, this feels like an early example of direct food delivery which in its digitised form is the mainstay of all supermarkets who are serious about modernising their services. In truth, Unigate and Express and all their other milk round rivals and cohorts were offering such services halfway through the twentieth century. It's enough to make you weep with pride.

David Cumming - Rubber Rabbit/ The Parrots of Simple Street

Renowned scriptwriter immortalises his musical ideas on wax

Label: Philips

Year of Release: 1967

David Cumming's name isn't bandied around often nowadays, but back in the sixties he was all over the end credits of many top rated television shows. As a comedy scriptwriter for The Dick Emery Show, Baker's Half Dozen, The Stanley Baxter Show and Horne A'Plenty (with Kenneth Horne) his output was prolific and while he may not have usually been visible on screen, his gags kept many of these series afloat for series after series.

It's a wonder he had the time to dabble with pop music, but dabble he obviously did. This little 45 slipped out in 1967 at the peak of his scriptwriting activity, apparently after the songwriter Peter Lee Stirling made a few encouraging noises in his direction. The A-side "Rubber Rabbit" is pure whimsical sixties pop, the kind of organ-driven tweeness you're amazed Bam Caruso didn't pick up for their "Circus Days" compilation series. Some might call it "popsike", and with its mentions of toy bunnies, goldfish and fairground activity, I think we should probably allow them that liberty, though it remains uncompiled and generally unremarked upon.

Over on the flip he gets somewhat spiky with "The Parrots of Simple Street", a folky sneer at all the wannabe Kerouacs and Dylans of the world and the people who idolise them and hang on to their every word. You have to wonder what triggered this one - did one of them say "The Dick Emery Show? Hey, I don't dig that scene, man, I like Gurney Slade" to him in a coffee bar, to the tittering approval of a lovely lady? We might never know. Despite being compiled on "Piccadilly Sunshine", though, it feels to me less compelling than the bright, fluorescent pop on the plug side. 

David Cumming's recording career seemed to come to a halt after this and he returned to the typewriter, eventually moving to Australia in 1984 where he also managed to appear on screen, getting his mug on "Sons & Daughters" playing the role of a Minister. Despite writing credits for "Three Of A Kind" that decade, his work rate slowed down and he generally appeared to settle into a much less visible lifestyle before sadly passing away in 2011.

Reuploads - The Chances-R - Talking Out the Back Of My Head and Turn A New Leaf Over

 

Two singles from relentless Southampton rockers and Melody Maker Beat Contest finalists.

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1967

While Battle of the Bands contests are seen as a bit passé now, back in the sixties the Melody Maker National Beat Contest was a huge opportunity for aspiring groups. Shining a spotlight on bands away from the London hub, anyone who made the final at the London Palladium was at the very least a powerful live act. The competition tended not to leave itself open to mere fashion and hype - if you couldn't deliver, you didn't get through.

Rob Chance and The Chances-R went through a number of heats to earn the opportunity to perform in the final in 1966, and lead singer Rob decided that the best way of impressing the judges and audience would be to sing "Maria" and "Somewhere" from West Side Story. It has been suggested that this stunt reduced them to mere third place, as while Chance's performance was strong, it clearly wasn't in keeping with the other sharp bands on the bill raving it up. In the end, Neath's Eyes of Blue took the top prize, which seems to make perfect sense to me ("West Side Story" errors of judgement from the bronze placed band or not). They were widely regarded to be a fierce live act in their day.

The publicity was obviously valuable to The Chances-R, and they signed to CBS the following year. First out of the traps was "Talking Out The Back Of My Head" in March 1967, a skippy, jolly beat offering with vague Motown undertones, which ironically sounds very slightly like Eyes of Blue circa "Supermarket Full Of Cans". With tight vocal harmonies, an insistent chorus and one of the most dangerously long false endings I've ever heard, it's only fault is probably the nagging use of "la la la la" vocal lines, which are overdone.

It wasn't a hit, but their next release would be a bit sharper and livelier. (Entry continues beneath the sound files)

Take 6 - Whiter Shade Of Pale/ There Goes My Everything/ Carrie Anne/ Groovin/ Okay/ Here Come The Nice

 

Pocket money covers of tip-top chart hits, from the faithful to the ghastly

Label: Take 6/ Avenue

Year of Release: 1967

While they're probably never going to command huge prices, budget sound-a-like hits compilations have been picking up casual interest from collectors of late, not least because some of the session players on these stocking filler discs later went on to become famous. Elton John grabbed the opportunities that were afforded keenly and was noted for his adaptability in the studio, although sometimes the results were rather unexpected. Likewise, David Byron of Uriah Heep wasn't averse to popping in for a cup of tea and a rendition of one of the day's hits in exchange for a few pounds (such as this cover of John Lennon's "Cold Turkey").

"Take 6" was a short lived and not particularly successful six-track EP series issued by Avenue Records which worked to the same familiar business model as all the others - get some seasoned musicians in quickly to accurately record the hits of the day (and absolutely no fannying about with "alternative interpretations" or fresh arrangements) then get the product on the shelves whip-smart to rival the official versions. They retailed at the cost of a standard seven inch single and must have been tempting to the uniformed or the unfussy who deemed it worth their while to own six A sides for the price of one. 

To give them full credit, the session musicians mostly managed to produce fair forgeries of the original work, and that's borne out by track one here, a cover of "Whiter Shade Of Pale" which just about manages to retain the mystical heat haze of the original. True, it sounds more like Van Morrison singing than Gary Brooker (but don't get excited, it's almost certainly not) but the rest is a faithful replica with only the thinness of the production showing itself as a marked difference.

And so the pattern follows throughout most of the EP, being filled with competent, efficient versions of top hits,  until you get to the main track I bought this for, The Small Faces under-the-radar paean to drug purchasing "Here Come The Nice". This was actually a very smartly, carefully produced and arranged number in its official incarnation with a depth, tricksiness and slickness which was going to be very difficult to pin down by any would-be interpreters, and so it proves. The pinging guitar notes at the start quickly give way to ludicrous falsetto vocals somewhere between Tiny Tim, The Pipkins and Donald and Davey Stott, then the session players deliver a Youth Club bash-through the song, which it really didn't deserve. Still, it's as terrible as I'd hoped, and sometimes hearing people fall flat on their arses trying to perform something wonderful is actually masochistic fun. I hope for their sake that nobody famous was involved in this monstrous three minutes; as no credits are ever given on these releases, we will probably never know.

The Smile - Apricot Face/ Why Should I

 

Mysterious nineties indie single on Irish MOR label

Label: Play

Year of Release: 1992

Now this one is baffling. The Play label was Irish and tended to feature quite middle-of-the-road artists from its home country, such as Brendan Shine, Ann Breen, and perhaps less relevantly Radio Two DJ Ray Moore who gave the label its only two UK hits with "Children In Need" related product (the "Blog Eyed Jog" sidebar on this website is partly named in honour of one of them, though this is the first time I've ever bothered to mention it in the context of anything else. I'm astonished it took me fourteen-and-a-half years to get around to it, frankly).

It was exactly the last place you would have expected to find a nineties indie band littering the place up with their vim and brio, yet the final record to have slipped out on the label before it disappeared completely was this one - a none-more-1992 piece of post-baggy alt-rock. A paean to a girl with "eyes like diamonds" and skin like an apricot, it comes from the same sonic stable as The Real People, Bedazzled and other sixties-indebted tambourine shakers and groovers from the same period. 

The flipside "Why Should I" really highlights their main influence, though, with a whopping great Beatles-esque harmonica riff running straight through the middle and a gentle jangle to go with it. Clearly these chaps were just as interested in the beat end of the sixties as Lee Mavers.

The "Kaiser Keller" writing credit is another big giveaway to the group's influences. Named after the famous Hamburg club that hosted the pre-fame Fabs, it was also the name of a 1988 group who had one single out on their own Clock label. That record is almost as under-documented as this one, with no YouTube or blog site documentation of its existence, but it doesn't seem too unfair to surmise that there's a strong probability that The Smile are the same (or close to the same) group under another name.

Freedom - Frustrated Woman/ Man Made Laws

Ex-Procol members get hard and heavy with The Standells garage classic

Label: Probe

Year of Release: 1970

This is the second time Freedom have featured on "Left and to the Back" - we covered their highly poppy single "Kandy Kay" last year and also dug into their history back then too... but just to recap: the group were formed by ex Procol Harum members Ray Royer and Bobby Harrison shortly after they were dismissed from that band. While both had contributed to "Whiter Shade of Pale", the track hadn't long been top of the charts before they were told their services were no longer required.

Their subsequent career in the somewhat collectible group Freedom seemed to involve hopping and jumping between various different labels, and initially performing relatively lightweight ditties before eventually getting hard and heavy. "Frustrated Woman" marks the beginnings of that heaviosity, taking The Standells garage classic "Dirty Water" and making it stomping, sludgy and dirty, like a bunch of hairies revving their motorcycles through a muddy ditch.

Curiously, the A-side clearly marks the group (and not Ed Cobb) as the writers of the track which seems like a blatant piece of copyright theft worthy of the KLF - there is no way any court in the land would agree this was entirely Freedom's work, and had it been a hit I suspect the lawyers would have been on the phone immediately.

The flipside is theirs, however, and sees the group getting heavier still while ranting about evil "man made laws" and "selfish" people. I would nod in agreement with them but it's not entirely clear to me what it specifically is they're so angry about, so I'll just stay quiet in my corner to be on the safe side.

Hugh Lloyd and Bill Pertwee - Uncles/ Friends and Neighbours

Legendary British actors josh musically about their familial responsibilities

Label: Spark
Year of Release: 1971

Novelty singles involving children were something of a phenomenon throughout the seventies and eighties in the UK, and most of them were pretty damn grim. "There's No-one Quite Like Grandma" is traditionally near the top of the tree when people are asked to vote on the worst singles of all time, along with "Grandad", "The Sparrow", "It's Orrible Being In Love When You're Eight and an Half" and the festering sludge of kiddie-flops that lay beneath the hard outer crust of that particular cowpat.

And while we're on the topic of flops... this is one such. It's a recording by the British actors Hugh Lloyd and Bill Pertwee backed by their "nephews and nieces" (except in reality, of course it wasn't - these were all handpicked children getting their first taste of showbiz). While it's had a kicking online over the years, nobody has actually been kind enough to upload it so we can all hear what it sounds like.  Seems like a job for me, doesn't it?

Surprisingly though, it turns out to be gentle, humorous fare which won't gain many repeat listens from anyone, but will raise a few smiles along the way. Lloyd and Pertwee play the roles of clueless bachelor duffers to perfection, coming across like carefree tweedy men for whom a walk in the park with their extended family is a kind of exhausting bliss. It's easy to picture them fishing sweets out of their pockets with a friendly nod while laughing gently at the chaos around them, proper gents of the Werther's Original persuasion. 

While I would certainly have a more irritable view of this single if it had been a hit and I'd had to hear it fifty times, in truth there was never much danger of that. Unlike Mums, Dads, loveable grandparents and even affectionate Aunties, Uncles have seldom enjoyed a lot of public recognition. Peter and Gordon's slightly Mulligan and O'Hare-esque track "Uncle Hartington" probably more effectively sums up the popular view of an eccentric middle aged man who tends to add little to his nephew's lives and clutters up the place when he visits. Maybe we all need to hire a PR company to improve our lot.

Reupload - The Endevers - Sunny and Me/ I Really Hope You Do

 

Bouyant, optimistic, orchestrated pop song from the 60s beat merchants

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1969

The irritatingly named Endevers have had their meatier, beatier moments slipped on to a couple of sixties rarity compilations lately, with their debut single "Taking Care of Myself" popping up on "Beatfreak" and "She's My Girl" being the opening track on volume 4 of "New Rubble". This, their final single, has yet to be given another outing.

That's possibly because unlike the two stormers that preceded it, "Sunny and Me" is a fluffy piece of sunshine pop, filled to the brim with feelgood arrangements and hopeful lyrics. It's actually a version of a Farrell and Romeo penned track which originally landed (equally unsuccessfully) in the laps of country poppers Douglas Good and Ginny Plenty the year before, and the arrangement doesn't take any radical steps away from that flop record. The vocals here are much more confident and punchy, though, and so for my money it's the better version.

Warm Dust - It's A Beautiful Day/ Magic Worm

 

Paul Carrack of Ace in early jazz prog mode

Label: Trend

Year of Release: 1971

Warm Dust is a very inviting band name for a record collector, evoking those summer days spent on your knees in dusty old second hand shops and bazaars, rifling through cartons of records coated in fluff... or perhaps the accumulated dust bunnies you pluck off the record players stylus, hot from the latest vinyl rotation... mmm, nice, even if these possibly aren't the images they were trying to put in people's minds.

The group possibly aren't every vinyl lover's cup of tea, though, being from that awkward, unfashionable and frequently pretentious progressive jazz rock genre. And it's certainly true to say that some of their material veered close to the pompous; their 1970 debut LP was entitled "Peace In Our Time" and subtitled "Neville Chamberlain 30th September 1938" and contained a lot of fussy, busy rhythms alongside the unexpectedly pretty melodies. 

While their excesses seem rather quaint from our current perspective, they weren't the kind of fools to let musicianship overshadow songwriting ideas, and both sides of this single are brief windows into that side of their world. "It's A Beautiful Day" is a jaunty skip through summer replete with puffing flutes and keen vocal melodies. Over on the flip, on the other hand, gives them a bit more room to stretch out and use the full ensemble to huge effect with some of the proggy fussiness leaking through. 

Willy Flascher and the Raincoats - (Everybody Wants To Be A) Streaker/ Run Rabbit

 

In the past, our privates were all famous for fifteen minutes

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1974

At some point in the early eighties, I was sat in the living room while my Dad watched the cricket. I cared not for the test match, but my attention was briefly caught by a man running stark bollock naked across the pitch while my parents sighed. "Another attention seeker's disrupted a game," my Dad muttered, while the rest of the family gazed up for a split second before going back to our own interests. A streaker again. BORING. By the eighties, streaking felt like the realm of sad arses desperate to be noticed, drunken rugger buggers and sex pests, and it's probably not much of a coincidence that the phenomenon didn't really grab headlines much throughout that decade.

In the seventies, though,  something about streaking was deemed sufficiently cheeky and carefree - and not dodgy at all - and captured the media and the public's imagination. Ray Stevens "The Streak" got to number one in 1974 on the back of all the anarchic public nudity, and no doubt the mysterious Willy Flascher here (no points for the choice of name) fancied a slice of the tittybum pie profits.

If Ray Stevens' record was all whoopsy-daisy larks and laughs, like a cornball Benny Hill number retranslated to smalltown America, this one is more of a bar-room novelty ditty with woodworm infested piano and oompah rhythms - somewhere between Gilbert O'Sullivan and Lieutenant Pigeon without quite capturing the wit or eccentricity of either. "You can have a lot of fun when you're flashing your bum" they sing as if they know from experience.

The B-side is more interesting, having an almost glam grooviness to it which is utterly unexpected given the unvarnished spit and sawdust scruffiness of the plug side. It sticks rigidly to its groove without changing tack much, but is brief enough to not wear out its welcome. 

Hollywood Freeway - I've Been Moved/ Cool Calamares

 

Superb bit of pounding plastic soul from a mysterious source

Label: Deram

Year of Release: 1972

A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside a conundrum, this one. "I've Been Moved" was originally slated to be released on the Moody Blues "Threshold" label in April 1972, but only emerged as a promotional demo copy there. It finally hit the shelves in July 1972 on Deram, the jump to a different label and the release delay seemingly remaining unexplained. Was the release just too "pop" for the Moody Blues progressively inclined label, or was there some kind of business disagreement? Who knows. 

What I do know is that "I've Been Moved" is another example of the criminally under-rated sunshine pop/ plastic soul sound the British market seemed riddled with in the early seventies. For every single of this ilk which broke through, another dozen perfectly good examples seemed to dip unloved into the vinyl recycling melters at the pressing plant - and in the case of "I've Been Moved", this would have been a harsh ending. The record pounds, parps and joyously speeds its way towards euphoria, like a Denmark Street employee's streamlined idea of a Northern Soul sound. 

The group Hollywood Freeway are something of an unknown quantity, though, and once again the temptation to conclude that they're just a studio group is strong. Jobbing producer Michael Aldred was clearly at the mixing desk here and also wrote the B-side, so I was initially tempted to say it's a project of his, but their second single "You're The Song (That I Can't Stop Singing)", released by Pye the following summer, was co-penned and produced by Tony Rivers and had no Aldred involvement.

Reupload - Symbols - Blackbird/ Great Swamp Symphony

 

Mike Post produced Soul/ gospel reworking of The Beatles track

Label: Bell

Year of Release: 1971

Just when you think you've been made aware of all the one-single wonder groups whose sole effort was a Beatles cover, another rears its head. Sometimes it's like one big game of whack-a-mole where all the rodents are wearing Woolworths Beatle wigs.

Soul and reggae covers of Beatles tracks are by no means uncommon, and "Blackbird" should perhaps be considered one of the most appropriate choices for politically minded groups during the sixties and seventies. Apparently written by McCartney partly in response to the black civil rights struggle in America, "Blackbird" may act as a discreet, delicate, folksy moment on "The White Album", but its background message had a far greater power potentially waiting to be amplified. 

This clearly wasn't lost on The Symbols (or the ska group The Paragons in 1973) who deliver a much punchier, less subtle version of the song here. Gospel vocals holler "Fly blackbird fly!" at regular intervals while the arrangement of McCartney's original finger-plucked version is swamped by strings and roaring vocal harmonies. It's transformed from a plaintive and pretty tune into a sweeping, panoramic piece, like something you would expect to hear in the concluding dramatic moments of a motion picture. 

Ilford Subway - The 3rd Prophecy/ A New Song

Folky psychedelia from future Thin Lizzy and Supertramp members

Label: Equinox

Year of Release: 1967

As someone who was born in the East London suburb of Ilford and still currently lives there (though not for much longer) of course I wasn't going to walk past this record. The group's name is mysterious - the only significant subway I'm aware of in Ilford is the one for Gants Hill underground station, which was designed by the architect Chris Holden in a manner closely apeing the Moscow Metro. 

It's not entirely impossible that some members of the American group The Ilford Subway had visited and been wowed enough by the experience to name their hairy hippy combo after it, but let's chalk it up as unlikely. If anything, it's probably just another example of a fairly random garage group name with no major or specific meaning attached (and chances are if there was one, even the band members can't remember it these days).

The A-side "The 3rd Prophecy" is, despite its way-out title, a weird concoction of hey nonny-nonny folk melodies, early sixties pizzicato plucked guitar strings and a distinct paisley hue. A mish-mash of trad folk, pre-beat stylings and post-beat psych, its like the past and the future rolled into one rush of flavours. That makes it sound more overwhelming than it is in reality, though - there's nothing alienating or harsh about this and it acts as a neat, smoky bundle of fireside melodies.

The slightly more freaky sounds are on the flip, though, where the distorted guitars, squeaks and squawls live. 

Steve Voice - UFO/ Radio Blue

Sci-fi rock of the Electric Light Orchestra kind

Label: EMI/ Red Bus

Year of Release: 1979

I'm a sucker for science fiction and Arthur C Clarke-esque ideas on 45, which makes it a pity there's so damn few of them. Given that the seventies were riddled with speculation about UFOs and ghosts with the occult even having its own section in most municipal libraries, one would have thought that more artists out there would have wanted to profit from the fascination. You can only conclude that perhaps they didn't want to be dismissed as a bit silly, and ultimately only Jeff Lynne really took the brave step of regularly setting that weird world to music(*).

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the influence of Lynne is all over the A-side "UFO" here which enters your ears via a series of bloops and bleeps, dramatic thrusting cello lines, and mystical vocals. Generally when I state a record's influences I inwardly cringe, as it's normally a failing on my part rather than the artist's - if all you can think of to say is "sounds a bit like Gene Pitney crossed with some garage rockers" (for example) it's usually because you've been too damn lazy or unimaginative to use any other descriptions. In this case, though, "UFO" could easily be the work of the Electric Light Orchestra Part II in 1992. That doesn't mean it's a bad record - in fact, the creeping atmosphere really grows on you across subsequent listens - but it does mean that Steve Voice was undoubtedly inspired by the bearded Brummie wonder in this instance.

Before you inwardly dismiss him as a coat-tails grabbing chancer, though, it's important to remember that Voice was no Johnny-come-lately. He had been in a duo with Peter Yellowstone (this disc's producer and co-author) in 1972 and they issued a brace of singles and two LPs throughout the decade, some of which were hits in other countries - "Well Hello", for example, reached the Australian Top 20 in 1973. Bouncy, almost folkish tracks like that are a far cry from the laser-fired melodrama on offer here. 

So Feww - Get Inside/ I'm Not Automatic

  

More self-released North West New Wave

Label: All For One

Year of Release: 1982

Almost exactly a year ago now we covered the mysterious North West England combo So Feww on this blog, and drew very few conclusions about their identities from their disc "Spirits High". I've often had cause to ponder the fact that the people who did vanity pressings in the seventies and eighties would have been brilliant on the Internet in the 21st Century - having multiple social media accounts, a well-organised Soundcloud site and a slick website. Getting your shit together to do this kind of thing in 1982 was so much harder than it is now and only the truly organised and savvy did it well.

But... we are where we are, and still all I actually know about the group is that the enigmatic Nick Rome was the driving force. While this was technically their third single, it's actually a re-release of their first effort on Pennine Records with the sides flipped. This time round, the subtler "Get Inside" is the main attraction over the more anthemic "I'm Not Automatic", which is an interesting way of doing things.

Sound-wise the group set out their stall in exactly the same way. This is melodic and slightly pub-rock tinted New Wave which shows an interesting range of ideas despite its lo-fi production. They clearly had a following and money to burn on their own record pressings, but neither this nor "Spirits High" pushed them into the so-called big time. 

As ever, if you know more than the sketchy outline information provided above, please get in touch.

Reupload - The Atlantics - Don't Say No/ Send Him To Me

Super obscure slice of 60s girl pop

Label: Windsor

Year of Release: 1964

Another puzzling record which poses as many questions as answers, I'm sorry to say. According to the Manchester Beat website, The Atlantics on this record formed in 1962 and hailed from Blackpool, consisting of Chris Riley on rhythm guitar, Michael Stephens on bass, Frank Blackburn on lead guitar, and Ronnie "Lee" Brambles on drums. Ordinarily I would have absolutely no reason to doubt the information of a well-run site, but there's one snag. There are clearly at least two women singing on this record, one of whom is taking the lead. Either this is not the same group after all, or they underwent a temporary and short-lived line-up change at the record label's behest, or for other unknown reasons.

Whatever the facts, this is actually a rather nice chunk of sixties girl group action, a little rough and ready in places - something which surely isn't helped by the mere "VG" quality of the copy I own - but swinging, beaty and punchy. It's also notable for the production involvement of Peter Stirling, later known as Daniel Boone, a member of the beat group The Bruisers and regular "Left and to the Back" guest.

The In-Keepers - Daily News/ Everytime

 

Psychedelic tinged pop bemoaning news broadcast bummers

Label: RCA

Year of Release: 1969

The In-Keepers are a tiny bit of an enigma. What we know for certain is that ex-Swingin' Six member Stephen Ramsey Burnett was a pivotal part of the group, penning and singing on all their releases - what's less clear is who accompanied him on his mission.

More baffling still, their second single "That Was Just His Thing" is an unusual slice of what appears to be Christian psychedelia, although none of their other tracks show any particular religious leanings and it's not clear how sincere they were (in that sense it occupies a similar territory to The Blinkers "Original Sin").

What I can seemingly ascertain with a fair degree of accuracy is that they were from the New England area and aside from this debut single and the aforementioned follow-up, there was to be no further recorded material. That's a pity, because both records are fascinating in different ways. This one is a faintly folkish maudlin jaunt around one man's despair at the grave nature of daily news broadcasts. "I don't wanna know... for today everything's going so wrong" the group wail, their close vocal harmonies putting a sugary coating on a very sour world outlook. Still, it's not as if things have got any cheerier in the interim, so you can only sympathise with them.

Mark Allain - Be Mine/ Best Friend

Mystery 45 found on the pavement

Label: Island

Year of Release: 1973

Flashback Records in Islington have a fascinating and extremely tempting stock clearance policy. Their harder-to-shift wares gradually get shifted to large shelves and boxes on the street outside their premises, where they are radically reduced in value to £1, 50p, 25p and then ultimately nothing. If they can't get rid of certain records at all, they'll often just make them free to passers-by.

Even at £1 I've found some lovely items on the pavement outside alongside the tat - a box set of Motown classics, for example, which may have been in horrible reprocessed stereo but for the price of one shiny golden coin I was barely in a position to complain about. Then last weekend, this obscure Island 45 was nestling for £0.00 amidst the unwanted eighties Elton John LPs, scratched Readers Digest compilations and football supporters records. 

It's unusual for an artist on Island Records to be so tough to trace. Most people who recorded for the label had a notable pedigree among fans of their genre at the very least, and collectors have already done a sound job of tracing their career and subsequent whereabouts. Unless I'm very much mistaken, though, Mark Allain appears to have recorded this one single for the label in 1973 before disappearing forever. 

I expected a naff ballad from a folkie singer-songwriter, but actually "Be Mine" is a more robust effort than that, with sophisticated jazzy backing rhythms combining with bouyant pop melodies. It's the kind of material you could imagine Brian Protheroe producing around the same period, daytime radio fodder which nonetheless isn't too plastic sounding.

Theo Bikel - I Love My Dog/ The Great Mandella (The Wheel Of Life)

 

Actor, folk singer, composer and political activist Theodore Bikel seemingly adds "dog lover" to his list

Label: Reprise

Year of Release: 1970

If anybody told Theodore Bikel "Find out what you're really good at, focus on that alone and you might become great", he obviously wasn't listening. Closing down his career options really didn't seem to be his thing. He had a butterfly mind, being an actor on television and in the theatre, a political activist, a singer of folk songs (he was one of the first signings to the fledgling Elektra Records) and occasional songwriter himself. His CV of appearances in everything from "My Fair Lady" to "200 Motels" to "The African Queen" and "Dynasty" is enough to make your head spin - from serious productions to light musicals and soaps, to performing at the Newport Folk Festival inbetween, the man seemed to do everything he wanted in his lifetime without much pause for thought.

I have to admit to being something of an ignoramus around his recorded work, so when I found this slightly battered 7" single selling for £1.99, I was somewhat sceptical and it was only the presence of Richard Perry on production duties which made me jump for it. Perry's arrangements and productions throughout the late sixties are often exceptional, his work on Tiny Tim's LPs elevating them above and beyond mere eccentric curiosities. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't disappoint either.

Cat Stevens' original version of "I Love My Dog" is a fine single, but is somewhat subdued in its delivery, sticking to a galloping rustic rhythm rather than letting fly as much as you suspect it could. Perry and Bikel really put that right here by pushing things up several gears, introducing urgent drumming, psychedelic diversions, orchestral flourishes and joyous vocals. Bikel sounds like he means it when he sings "I love my dog as much as I love you/ But you may fade, my dog will always come through" - sentiments seldom heard in pop music but ones some of us can certainly relate to.

This wasn't a hit in any country and certainly didn't generate royalty payments for Cat Stevens akin to the ones Ugly Kid Joe and Boyzone dropped in his lap many years later, but it's a fine example of how adaptable the man's work is, here performed by another gentleman who would seemingly try anything once.