The Sundowners - Dr. J. Wallace-Browne/ Love Is In The Air

Label: Columbia

Year of Release: 1968

This single was recommended to me by a 45Cat Forum user as being "one of the weirdest A-sides ever released".  I would have happily snapped up a copy even if somebody claimed that it was one of the weirdest singles of the late sixties period - that era saw endless gambles and risks being taken by panicking record labels who weren't sure which way the wind was turning or what kind of weird shit "the kids" were presently into. But ever? Here, have my bank account details and take as much money as you want, sir.

In reality, it's not actually as off the wall as I'd hoped, but it's still pretty damn unusual. What The Sundowners appear to be trying to produce here is the kind of warped music hall inspired pop much beloved of the psychedelic period, and where they actually land is somewhere between The Scaffold and The Kinks at their most deranged. The band begin by singing about "Dr J. Wallace-Browne's confidence capsules" which "pick you up when you're down" (How very nineties of them - Prozac hadn't even been invented yet!) then eventually the entire track breaks down into the kind of brass-led pub tra-la-laing session much beloved during album interludes by Blur during "Modern Life Is Rubbish" and "Parklife". How anyone thought this would be a hit at the time is a 24 carat mystery, and copies are actually staggeringly hard to come across, which would seem to suggest that it wasn't a remotely popular purchase at the time.

To add to the bafflement, the flipside "Love Is In The Air" is very straightforward sunshine pop, which makes me wonder if there was some kind of mistake at the pressing plant and it was supposed to be the A side. 

We've already talked about The Sundowners once before on this blog, of course - here we talk about the less perplexing, but still rather unusual, "Gloria Bosom Show". You can get a bit more information about the history of the band in that entry. 

The Sundowners - The Gloria Bosom Show/ Don't Look Back

Label: Spark

Year of Release: 1968

A slight surprise to find this single relatively cheaply priced and sitting around all unloved. It's not a lost classic by any means, but nonetheless it's an interesting psychedelic pop curio on a highly collectible label, and on top of that it's an early piece by seventies singer-songwriter Clifford T Ward.

Ward is often dismissed by some critics for being slightly middle-of-the-road, but like most writers and performers of that era, there was actually a wonky, peculiar edge to much of his work. His track "Home Thoughts From Abroad" - later covered by Jack Jones of all people - is a delicate, heart-tugging ballad about separation from a significant other, which somehow manages to crowbar the line "Does the cistern still leak?" into its lyrics. If any other ballad has managed to mention toilets and still sound sincere, and been covered by an easy listening superstar, I'd like to hear about it. 

Ward was apparently rather eccentric and difficult to work with. His manager Clive Selwood once wrote that his refusal to tour and dislike of public appearances and the naive demands he made of his record label (at one point asking that they buy him the house of his dreams so he'd "be happier and write better songs") made his career rather more difficult to promote than it might have been. That's possibly why his solitary top ten hit "Gaye" remains his best known work by far.

Way before any kind of success struck, however, Ward was both a performer and a jobbing songwriter. Psychedelic aficionados who haven't kept up with music magazines in awhile are often shocked to learn that The Factory's astonishing "Path Through The Forest" was his work, written under the pseudonym "Rollings". And then there's this track he passed on to The Sundowners, which... well, OK, doesn't hold a candle to "Path Through The Forest". But nonetheless, it's a quirky, music hall influenced effects-laden track about the mysterious Gloria Bosom, a lady with her own radio show. "She just knocks me right through the floor/ every time I hear her speak" sings the lead singer, seemingly through some kind of megaphone (so some aspects of "Forest" were intact). Like some kind of popsike premonition of The Buggles "Video Killed The Radio Star" colliding with one of Kenny Everett's peculiar ideas, it's a rum old burst of pop whimsy which is actually pretty charming. It probably lacked enough of a hook to really catch on with the public, but it's certainly on a par with many psych recordings of the period, so the lack of attention its received is a little baffling.

The Sundowners were apparently from Scotland and usually served as the backing band for Tommy Trousdale, and indeed managed one single on Thistle Records with him in the early sixties. They consisted of Steve Robbins on bass and vocals, Barry John Weitz on banjo, guitar and vocals, and Dave Silverman on everything else. This appears to have been the last 45 they managed to record, but the predecessor to this disc - "Dr. J. Wallace-Brown" - is very scarce and also apparently incredibly weird, according to one 45cat user. I'll keep an eye open for a copy, but I'm not holding my breath.

As for Ward, sadly he passed away in 2001 after complications from Multiple Sclerosis, which he was diagnosed with in 1987. He continued recording right up until the end, recording his final proper album "Julia and Other New Stories", while crawling on all fours in his home recording studio.