The Majority - I Hear A Rhapsody/ Wait By The Fire

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1967

Despite their appearance on the "Nuggets II" box set with the slightly rocking "One Third", Kingston Upon Hull's The Majority weren't really a garage band at all, or even a mod act. The vast bulk of their output was harmony pop, and "I Hear A Rhapsody" is a particularly smooth, silky example. So smooth and silky that the band felt that it was unrepresentative of their output and chose to jettison it from their official compilation CD "The Decca Years". Oh well - you can hear what the fuss was about (or rather wasn't) for yourselves now. 

I suspect that it was the record label's idea of a probable Big Ballad Hit, and I've heard far worse examples in my time. The fact that the group sound dangerously close to crooners here possibly hurt their credibility, however, and it's perhaps been the most ignored release in their catalogue ever since - neither a chart hit nor sufficiently loved by the band who recorded it for them to bother to draw attention to it since.

The group, at this point consisting of Barry Graham on vocals, Roger France on lead guitar, Don Lill on drums, Rob Long on guitar and Ken Smith on bass, were heading towards the end of the road at this point. Two singles later they'd pack up all their big ideas about becoming stars in their own right and become a backing band for Barry Ryan, playing on his major hit "Eloise". Once that session stint finished, a different line-up called Majority One continued their career on the continent with mixed results, eventually changing their names to Black Label and then eventually Rocky Cabbage (really, you couldn't make this stuff up, could you?) before splitting.

The brace of eight singles they put out on Decca through the sixties is actually an impressive tally for a group who never had a proper UK hit, and most of them are collected on the "Decca Years" CD, including the B-side "Wait By The Fire" here - and as a consequence of that, I've only included a brief clip of it here. 

Countdown To Christmas Party Time - Have Yourself a Psychedelic Christmas

I know what a lot of the regular readers are thinking at this point. "This is all very well, but most of us have a strong interest in sixties output. We haven't really had any Christmassy sixties offerings so far, have we?" It is to those people that I say "Bring on the biggest Christmas cracker in the world!" "Well, try these little nuggets for size..."

Band: Two and a Half

Track: Christmas Will Be Round Again

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1967

This is an almost ridiculously chirpy piece of sixties pop from an utterly obscure group who, despite having five singles out in the sixties, have been impossible to track down or identify since.  Generally releasing tracks with a strong Simon & Garfunkel feel to them, "Christmas Will Be Round Again" deviates from that particular template to over-enthusiastically embrace Yuletide - truly, this is the noise of Christmas Eve and the excitement of the presents waiting for you in the morning (if you're about eight years old, and if you're reading this you're possibly not...)

Oddly, this was actually the Christmas B-side to the distinctly non-festive but much-fancied Two & A Half track "I Don't Need To Tell You", which was their final release before they disappeared off the face of the planet.  

Artist: The Outer Limits

Track: The Great Train Robbery

Label: Instant

Year of Release: 1968

Again, not strictly speaking a Christmas song, but this has a distinct wintery feel, chiming melodies and close harmonies as well as referencing "A cold and windy evening in December", so it's getting in by default.

"Great Train Robbery" has a distinct Bee Gees feel and asks the listeners whether they remember an audacious near-Christmas steam train hijacking from the late part of the nineteenth century - apparently five men and a woman with a shotgun were responsible, though they do add the disclaimer "so the papers say", which in these cynical "perhaps David Icke has a point" times takes on a new layer of meaning.  This is beautifully produced and shot through with mystery, constantly hinting at a bigger story but never quite disclosing the full details.  It's possible to visualise the incident as the song plays, making this an incredibly filmic single many years before such efforts became commonplace.

The Outer Limits are most famed for having Jeff Christie in their line-up, who eventually hit the big time with "Yellow River".  This is a much bigger achievement than that track, but sadly flopped, possibly due to cash-flow problems at Immediate (whom Instant were a subsidiary of) or perhaps the fact that this doesn't sound like an obvious 45.

Band: The Majority

Track: All Our Christmases

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1968

Sometimes you can just tell that a record company has no real interest in attempting to promote a song or scheduling it properly, and is just "going through the motions" with it - this is a prime example.  Instead of taking the logical decision to release "All Our Christmases" in late November or early December, Decca decided that 12 January 1968 might make a more appropriate release date, causing the disc to predictably plunge into obscurity.

A shame, because this Bee Gees composition isn't half bad and deserved a better crack of the whip.  It's frothy and chirpy and would have made a perfect mid-table festive hit.  As things stood, Hull's Majority had already had seven singles out prior to this one, and the industry seemed to decide that their distinctly non-Christmassy goose was cooked.  This proved to be their final hurrah.

And finally... "Question of Childhood" by Adam and Dee isn't on YouTube, which would fit this list perfectly.  Nothing much I can do about that at the moment, but it might be something we have to return to at a later date.