Doctor's Children - Rose Cottage (EP)

Label: Upright

Year of Release: 1986

It's a well-known fact to any indie aficionado that 1986 was a year where endless singles in childishly designed sleeves suddenly fell into branches of small independent record stores.  The accepted wisdom was that the contents of each would be either be naive approximations of The Smiths performed on Argos guitars, or deeply fragmented, barking mad experimental discs.

The truth in fact frequently differs, and whilst The Smiths had gained affections amongst a certain kind of British musician, and there were also a few eccentrics out there who suddenly had the means to distribute their wares, there were also plenty of bands heavily tuned in to the alternative rock being dispensed by the Bunnymen, Julian Cope, REM, The Cure et al.  Plenty of them also had bugger all money, so chose to stick their recordings out in decidedly handmade sleeves.  That all of them seem to have fallen by the wayside when it comes to blogs and websites examining this sort of thing has more to do with the fickle finger of fashion than much else (unless their records came out on Creation, in which case all seems to be forgiven).

So then - The Doctor's Children seemingly hailed from South London, and appeared to be taking a strident, melodic Bunny kind of path as opposed to the Smithsian one which supposedly dominated at the time.  This record is filled with punchy guitar noises and droning organs which recall the more melancholic end of sixties pop.  Whilst there's nothing truly outstanding going on across the four tracks here, fans of independent music from that era might do well to lend their ears to this - not only was it produced by John Leckie, three years shy of discovering the Stone Roses, it also has a certain clean, carefree drive that has all but disappeared from alternative rock in the decades since.  Almost all the tracks contain clear, ringing chords and hollered vocals - the high point for me is the chiming Autumnal moodiness of "Blessed is the Man".

The Internet is rather shy about providing much more information about the band, and all I can really glean from the limited scraps available is that Sounds magazine rated them highly and predicted they would conquer all before them (which obviously never happened), that somebody financed an American tour for them (so they did better than a lot of other UK indie acts of the same period who were not granted permits), and that they released an album called "Dream Buffalo".  That's it.  If anybody has anything more, they know what to do.

According to the sleeve, the band's line up consisted of:

Paul Smith - Guitar, vocals

Matthew Woodman - Organ, Piano

Dave Ramsey - Bass

Rowland Howarth - Drums

Tracklisting:

1. Rose Cottage

2. Me, September 24th 1983

3. Blessed is the Man

4. When I Was Young

Download it Here

Al Stewart - The Elf (b/w "Turn Into Earth")

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1966

Al Stewart must surely be familiar to most readers as being the seventies singer-songwriter responsible for the oft-referenced "Year of the Cat".  As at least one friend of mine has pointed out before, there barely seemed like a time when you could buy an RCA long player in the seventies without finding his albums advertised on the inner sleeve, although his sales in Britain weren't actually particularly impressive.  

Way before he began burbling on about felines and their connection to calendar years, however, Al Stewart was a sixties troubadour, strumming his stuff around the bars and clubs of Britain, and parting with hard-earned money to fund Yoko Ono's arts projects.  Featuring guitar work from Jimmy Page, this single is a two-headed beast with a jaunty little Donovan-esque A-side which contemplates elves hiding in bushes listening to him play music.   It predates a lot of the Middle Earth styled psychedelic musing about mystical creatures by a fair year, but isn't really the most impressive offering here.  That honour goes to the B-side, "Turn Into Earth" which is, without exaggeration, one of the best pieces of British psychedelia there is.  Taking the Yardbirds original and giving it an air of stoned, almost proto-dub reggae mystique, it is quite simply breathtaking, containing echo-ridden drum patterns, laidback vocals, and a woozy, ill-at-ease sense of something unwell in the opium den.   It builds and builds until it reaches a point where it comes to its decisive conclusion, fading suddenly as if to taunt the listener who wants more.

Nobody bought this, obviously, and original copies (mine's a facsimile) go for hundreds of pounds.  But not without reason - this is bloody great, kids.  Now, best not to talk too much about his time in Tony Blackburn's band...

Download it Here

Second Hand Record Dip Part 42 - The Metropolitan Police Band - Dull it Isn't!

Who: The Metropolitan Police Band

What: Dull it Isn't!

Where: Wood Street Market, Walthamstow

When: 1974

Label: Decca

Cost: 25p

Oh, just look at me.  I hit the bell with this one.  25p for an entire album recorded by the Metropolitan Police!  Readers expecting karaoke turns from the city's finest constables (with a cheeky wink for all the honest English gentlemen in their audience) will be sorely disappointed to learn that this is just the force's brass band, a regular crime fighting and trumpet tooting force whose presence is well-known at Arsenal football matches.  

For all their history - the Metropolitan Police parpers go back the twenties, making them one of the longest serving acts on this blog - one can only assume that the release of this album was supposed to appeal to Arsenal fans who listened to them every season, since the market for this otherwise would have been extremely narrow.  That said, Decca didn't appear to be giving much thought to the concept of a "market" for anything by the seventies, adopting a "throw mud at the wall and see what sticks" sales strategy, so perhaps they thought the novelty of a police brass band would have a wider audience.  

The title "Dull it Isn't!" is a sorry case of a record label protesting too much, since it has to be said that most of the content of this album is actually tremendously predictable fare, more mundane even than the sleeve shots of the police force attending to troubled children, riding horses and playing with dogs.  It seems to be performed well, but you would probably have more fun imagining the content of the grooves entitled "Traffic Patrol", "Passing of the Regiments" and "Trafalgar March" than you would actually listening to them.  Therefore, to give you a flavour of the album I've offered up two mp3s for download here.  The first is the Met's charming little cover of "Eye Level", which has a certain strident oomph that the original lacked, and the slightly swinging "Piping Hot", which you can march around to when you're next cooking a casserole for your dinner party guests.

To any Met Officers who may be reading, please remember that the purpose of this blog is to enrich people's knowledge about the world of obscure sounds.  I would therefore ask you to ignore my obvious copyright infringement, for without breaking the law a little I wouldn't have introduced a new audience to your truncheon-tapping sounds.  Please don't whack me around the head until I need stitches like you did to a friend of mine at an environmental protest this year - that wouldn't be in the spirit of the proceedings here at Left and to the Back at all.  Besides which, your transport officers did let me off my rail fare this morning when the ticket barriers weren't working, and that cost considerably more than 25p.  Think on.

Download it Here

One Hit Wonders #4 - Warm Sounds - Birds and Bees

Label: Deram

Year of Release: 1967

Warm Sounds were essentially the duo Denver Gerrard and Barry Younghusband who worked primarily as Andrew Oldham's right hand muso men for the Immediate label.  If a band required a stray song they might have (such as "Black Sheep RIP", for example, which was theirs) or needed some competent vocal harmonies or smart instrumentation, Denver and Barry were beckoned.  

Their own particular waxings under the name of Warm Sounds were, perhaps unsurprisingly, generally gentle and wistful affairs, like West Coast pop with soft English vowels thrown into the mix. "Birds and Bees" is all lazy vocalised noises which would be described as scat if they were energetic enough ("Ooh bap bap, ah bap bap" is the closest I can get to transcribing them)  pinging glockenspiels and idle basslines.  Some people would probably refer to this as "popsike".  

Whilst "Birds and Bees" did well enough aboard the good ship Radio London to climb to to pole position in that station's chart, it only got to number 27 in the official charts used by the music industry, supposedly the lowest position a Radio London number one has ever occupied in the real world.  We shouldn't pay too much heed to this fact, since their chart was largely based on airplay, guesswork and whoever the station owed a favour to at any given point, but its safe to say that there were probably many disappointed faces at the Deram offices as a result.

It was also the duo's only hit.  Follow up singles "Sticks and Stones" (on Immediate this time) and the rather berserk "Nite is A Comin'" (back on Deram again) were ignored by the public despite picking up further radio play, and the concept of Warm Sounds was subsequently put into the chest freezer.  Younghusband later worked with Donovan in his Open Road band, whereas Denver Gerrard released a solo album "Sinister Morning" which wasn't greeted with much more enthusiasm than the later Warm Sounds releases.

Download it Here

Medicine Head - How Does It Feel

Label: Dandelion

Year of Release: 1972

Well, here we go again... and it's like I said before... and I'm sure I will say many times again... second hand vinyl doesn't turn up in neat batches for any particular artist.  You're not likely to see the complete works of a certain artist just sitting neatly in the racks unless a disgruntled fan has a serious clear-out (it's long rumoured, for example, that one second hand store suddenly had tons of Julian Cope rarities in stock after a fan had a disappointing argument with him).

I'm well aware we've covered Medicine Head here before, and this leaves me with very little to add.  You'll know the drill already - the band were a perverse, two man blues outfit with a deliberately stripped down sound who nonetheless created some great pieces of lo-fi wonder for John Peel's Dandelion label.  Peel had one of their singles in his box of favourite seven inch singles when he died, and whilst they're certainly an acquired taste, a great deal of their output is simplistic, hypnotic and even exciting if you can get into their particular zone.

"How Does It Feel" features a twanging Jew's Harp, the usual basic stomping rhythms, and an approach so facile it borders on childish, but it's an appealing and cheering little single I'm happy to own.  The other blog entry of the band covers the full story of their evolution, and isn't particularly worth repeating again here.  Go back and read it for yourselves, you lazy sods.

Download the single here