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. 

Paul Brett - Mr. Custer/ Goodtimes, Hardtimes

Bouncy, chirpy single with faint popsike leanings from Fulham guitar ace

Label: Bradleys
Year of Release: 1973

Well, I certainly wasn't expecting to find this one for £1 in Oxfam. Paul Brett was something of a shadowy, wandering figure throughout the sixties and seventies, adding his guitar riffage to all manner of cult groups. Among his more notable achievements are stints or session work with Fire, The Overlanders, The Strawbs, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the undervalued Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, and Tintern Abbey. If that weren't enough, he also sessioned for Al Stewart and Roy Harper.

Among heavy, deep digging aficionados of folk rock, he's probably best known for his work under the group name of Paul Brett's Sage who issued an eponymous debut LP on Pye in 1970 and follow ups "Jubilation Foundry" and "Schizophrenia" on their progressive imprint Dawn across the two following years.

After those three records were issued to only minor public interest, Brett disbanded his merry Sages and set off by himself, going on to become one of the first artists to be signed to ATV Music's newly launched Bradleys label in '73. The earliest singles released on this label are examples of corporate vanity at its absolute apex, with a special picture sleeve dedicated to the label and its "Mr Bradley" character rather than the artists in question. Who the moustachioed and bubbly Mr Bradley was based on, and why he ran a hotel on the picture sleeves, are questions whose answers have been lost to the mists of time. It's safe to bet that they also weren't very clear to ordinary punters who didn't read Music Week or internal record industry memos in 1973, who must have been confused by the appearance of identical picture sleeves housing completely different records by different artists.