The Adventurers - (Jane) Doesn't Love Me Anymore/ Cheryl's Song

 

Messy garage rock screamer from Catasauqua, Pennsylvania

Label: Reading

Year of Release: 1967

Collectors and appreciators of sixties garage rock can probably guess exactly what this one sounds like before they even click on the mp3. Droning organ mixed relatively low? Check. Uncertain guitar work bouyed up by enthusiasm and vim rather than technique? Yep. Basic lyrical references to a girl who just isn't paying the singer attention these days, and it's causing him pain? You're good at this, aren't you? Lots of screams, and shouts of "Yeah! Yeah! Weeeooowww!" Of course. It's not as loose, wild or ragged as some examples of the genre I've heard, but it's certainly shot through with energy and glee. 

The Adventurers (and not Adventures as suggested on the label) were from Catasauqua in Pennsylvania, a suburb of Allentown. They had two singles out in the sixties - this one, and "Baby Baby My Heart" in 1966. Neither did very much outside the local area and the band's history is rather sketchy as a result. 

We know that the members consisted of Armedeo Borsetti, Jim Smith, Dave Wagner and Denny Wagner, but in terms of their roles, we can only say with any degree of certainty that Dave Wagner was the bassist, given that he later moved on to the Allentown group The Dooley Invention to pick up four-stringed duties. That group didn't appear to issue any vinyl at the time, but their tracks "Crimson Afternoon" and "No Time" did emerge on the 2005 local CD compilation "Allentown Anglophile". 

Reupload - Rhys Eye - Yellow Submarine/ I Just Can't Lose That Tune

 

Fascinating but sombre reading of the jaunty Beatles tune

Label: Epic

Year of Release: 1975

"Yellow Submarine" is probably one of the less analysed Beatles songs in their oeuvre, despite being one of the best known. At my infant school, it was wheeled out for sing-a-longs in school halls that whiffed of chips and baked beans, and it was a track I was used to hearing soundtracking cartoons or during intervals at local children's theatre shows. Marrying upbeat melodies to nonsense lyrics, it seemed like the very definition of "harmless fun".

Clearly not everybody thought that way, though. Paul Phillips, who would later on find brief fame as Driver 67, was troubled by the sense it was an "other-worldly excursion into all sorts of sub-conscious emotions that I couldn’t put my finger on". When he eventually had gainful A&R employment at CBS he was surprised to find someone who agreed with him turning up to an audition.

Peter Bennett, who recorded and wrote under the name Rhys Eye, dropped by insisting he had a fantastic idea, but if he simply told Phillips what it was there was every possibility he would be cut out of the picture and find it being used by another artist on CBS. Phillips arranged for a legal waiver to be signed stating that whether he accepted or rejected the idea, it would remain the intellectual property of Mr. Eye.

And this, amazingly, was it - something that confirmed Phillips wasn't the only one bowing his head solemnly to Ringo's honking about strangely coloured submersible warships. Bennett's idea was a heartfelt, bluesy, troubled take on a Beatles song most listeners haven't really bothered to read much into. In Rhys Eyes' hands, "Yellow Submarine" becomes reflective and regretful, sounding like a hymn to lost childhood, lost friends and perhaps lost innocence - or, more than that, a nostalgia for absurd, exaggerated things that were never truly as the singer believed them to be eating away at him like a slow poison. 

Whether it works is something not everyone is going to agree on, but it certainly fits the modern music business model of finding opportunities for plaintive, melancholy expression in the most unlikely source material. If an advertising executive from John Lewis hears this and doesn't use it in their next Christmas campaign, then I'll be lost for words.

Bernadette - Come Kiss Me Love/ Let Me Do The Talking

 

Scottish folkie with a bouncy, peppery 1967 pop effort

Label: RIM (Rediffusion International)

Year of Release: 1967

Bernadette Connelly of Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire - known solely as Bernadette during her recording career, for unclear reasons - is one of those folk artists who seemed to be glued to the release schedules for most of the late sixties, but to no commercial avail. Many such characters abounded through the period, perhaps because while labels back then didn't expect folk music to fly off the record store counters, they seemed quite happy with the steady, niche sales it achieved.

"Come Kiss My Love" was her debut single, but a huge clutch followed; "Many A Day", "You're The Nearest Thing To Heaven" and "Toys Toys Toys" in 1968, followed by "Sing Me Sunshine" in 1969 and "Ladyfingers" in 1970. The LP "A Girl Called Bernadette" was released by Philips in 1969 as well, and as recently as 1984 she put out the album "Back On The Road Again" on the Scottish independent label Lismor. 

That last LP appears to have largely consisted of modernised recordings of her previous waxings, including a version of this very single with none-more-eighties keyboard chiming. To my ears, though, the original is best. It gives Bernadette lots of Sergeant Pepper styled brass flourishes, strident melodies and choppy guitar rhythms. It's actually a very restless arrangement and while I'm sure its busy, poppy nature had many a folkie screaming "Judas!" at the time, it's actually a thoroughly interesting piece of work as a result. 

Music Room - I Don't Mind The Rain/ Come Softly To Me

 

Zack Laurence arranged harmony pop 45

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1971

Music Room managed two 45s on Decca; this was their debut in 1971, and the follow-up "Hook and Ladder" emerged in 1972. Neither were hits and nor were they issued in other countries, and after they came and went the group also seemed to evaporate completely.

The trail they've left is so utterly non-existent that it leads me to wonder whether they were just a studio session group and the clue was in their name. This single in particular highlights some amazing performances - those harmony vocals are as slick as they come, and Zack Laurence's arrangements are as intricate, careful and cotton wool soft as you'd expect. It achieves the almost impossible feat of making a rainy day sound appealing, with its swirling, pinging and joyous harmonies. 

While this isn't the sort of single I can imagine myself returning to often, fans of The Carpenters or the softer, poppier end of easy listening will probably find themselves succumbing to its charms very quickly.

If anyone knows who performed on this record and what became of them, please do leave a comment.

The Zoo - She Said She Said - Good Day Sunshine/ Where Have All The Good Times Gone

 

Two song Beatles medley (and Kinks cover) from Ohio garage rockers

Label: Parkway

Year of Release: 1967

One of the more finely observed aspects of "Spinal Tap" is the way the group went through so many name changes before settling on their sinister moniker. Digging up facts about obscure sixties groups comes with plenty of challenges already, but the fact so many of them struggled to settle on a working group name complicates matters further. 

Ohio's The Zoo were yet another one of those restless cases. Starting life as the Beau Denturies in 1964, they gigged around the local area and following a victory in a WAKR battle of the bands contest issued "Don't Quit Now" on the Encore label in 1966. 

Perhaps realising The Beau Denturies was a pretty awful name, they promptly changed it to The Yellow Pages to issue this track on Encore in March 1967. The directory company they'd named themselves after promptly objected, and it was shelved and subsequently released again under the name The Zoo in May the same year, this time on the Parkway label.

It's a curious attempt to wedge the last track on Side One of "Revolver" and the first track on Side Two together; the uneasy, disassociated "She Said She Said" and the bouncy "Good Day Sunshine". By rights, the two don't feel as if they should be existing in the same 45rpm space, but the group find a way of making it work, partly by virtue of taking the rubbery bounce of "Sunshine" and hardening it up somewhat with distorted buzzing chords, and taking the trippy darkness of "She Said" and adding some perk. 

Is it a worthwhile artistic endeavour? Good question. The liberties taken with the original arrangements are hardly radical, and there's probably no particular reason you'd need to reach for this record over the original "Revolver" tracks. Despite this, it's a cheery bit of work which predates The Beatles own "Abbey Road" device of meshing their work together in medley form (and Stars on 45, for that matter, but let's not go there).