23rd Turnoff - Michael Angelo

Label: Deram

Year of Release: 1967

This has already featured on the "Turnoffs to Nowhere" compilation, so I apologise for its reappearance again - but really, it's one of those tracks which manages to sum up an era so impressively you frequently find yourself scratching your head about how the hell it remained buried for so long.

Jimmy Campbell was the songwriter and main project driver behind the 23rd Turnoff, having previously had a long history on the Liverpool music scene without sniffing much in the way of mainstream action.  One of his acts, The Panthers, supported The Beatles at the Cavern Club in 1962, and The Kirkbys - who were essentially 23rd Turnoff under another name - slipped out a couple of singles towards the tail end of the Merseybeat era which were largely ignored.

Campbell was quick to leap on psychedelia when its multi-coloured, swirling hues drifted his way, and this single was one result - a brief but brilliantly dreamy track with hushed vocals, throbbing church organs and a slightly sinister undertow which has been consistently been named one of the era's lost records, with people as varied as Bob Stanley out of Saint Etienne and Will Sergeant out of Echo and the Bunnymen singing its praises.  If you haven't heard it yet, you should remedy that immediately.  

The B-side "Leave Me Here" is rather less impressive, being a rather stripped bare and chipper acoustic track, but I've included it in the download bundle (as always).

There's a complilation of 23rd Turnoff material available entitled "The Dream of Michaelangelo" which is also worth a listen.

Sadly, Jimmy Campbell passed away in 2007, but there is a Myspace page in tribute to him here.

Download the Single Here

Second Hand Record Dip Part 39 - Bud Flanagan - Who Do You Think You're Kidding Mr Hitler?

Who: Bud Flanagan

What: Who Do You Think You're Kidding Mr Hitler? (b/w"It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo!" by Bernard Bedford & Chorus)

Label: Pye

When: 1969

Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street

Cost: 50p

You'll be aware from previous blog entries that I have a passing interest in BBC television themes being given disco remixes, so imagine my surprise and disappointment when I discovered that this (the theme to "Dad's Army") wasn't one of them. True, I can't imagine many people pointing their fingers in the air and shaking their booty to such a defiant patriotic anthem, but you'd think in this instance somebody at the Beeb would have tried to add a funky bassline, or at the very least a Mellotron.

This, then, is an exceptionally rare example of a TV theme being issued much as God intended it, right down to the fact that it peters out after just over one minute of playing time, brevity even Wire would have balked at across seven inches. There appears to be only one line added to the whole affair, and fans of "Dad's Army" will know what they're getting here - a fairly bog-standard forties-styled bit of brassy belligerence - and people from other nations who aren't aware of the programme may get something out of this tune without the context of the show that surrounded it, although it's hard to tell exactly what. The Bonzo Dog Band it is not, although it may have a certain period cuteness about it.

Perplexingly, the b-side is a seemingly unrelated track by Bernard Bedford & Chorus entitled "It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo!" which is middle of the road music hall silliness. I can only assume somebody at Pye found it down the back of an archive somewhere, unless anybody can enlighten me further about the situation (I'm sure you can tell I haven't the first clue who Bernard Bedford is or was, although I'm fearful of the fact that perhaps I should do, and somebody is going to come along and tell me that he played a key role in the British comedy scene at some point).

Download it Here

Giorgio Moroder - Nights In White Satin

Label: GTO

Year of Release: 1976

I'm sure I've uttered these very words at some point before on this blog, but Giorgio Moroder is a genius, not just as a producer, but as a solo artist as well.  Of course, there are many wise, decent people out there who already know this fact.  The man is a legend in his home country of Italy, and may as well be given the keys to the control room of the country's music industry.  Here in Britain, however, his solo works are largely bypassed in favour of praising Donna Summer's revolutionary sound on "I Feel Love", or talking about how he breathed life back into the Mael brothers career - both worthy things to mention, but only really telling half the story.

"Underdog", as I've established before, is a prime slab of seventies pop which the Sparks probably borrowed a great deal from even before he ever sat down in the same studio with them, and this is just one of the more simultaneously ridiculous and wonderful things to come out of the seventies disco boom.

We will all be familiar with The Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin", with its pomp, grandeur and woe-ridden lyrics, Justin Hayward sounding like a man writhing in emotional agony upon the battered carpet of a lounge in a Midlands semi-detached house.  It's not to everyone's tastes, but I personally love it.  However, a guilty confession - I probably like this cover version of it a lot more.  In it, Giorgio takes the chest-beating pleading of the original and turns it into sexual writhing.  Whilst Hayward attempts to lure back his lover with sobs and hastily scribbled poetry, Moroder beckons her back with gruff whispers: "Yeeahhh... I love you... I want you!  I neeeeed you!" he hisses, whilst a synthesiser buzzes deep, panther prowling notes in the background.  

Had Hayward and Moroder been locked into a battle to see who could get their lady back with the use of this particular ballad, I'd be willing to bet that the former would still be sobbing now despite writing the damn thing, whereas the latter would at least have got some hot, loving sex out of his effort, which is better than nothing, isn't it, readers?  

If anybody were to tell me that Jarvis Cocker had never heard this record, I would be stunned. If we forgive the saxophone solo, it more or less sets the blueprint for a lot of Pulp's disco wig-outs like "My Legendary Girlfriend" and "Seductive Barry", and Giorgio's seduction technique is perhaps similar, as even more so than Cocker, he wasn't exactly a conventionally attractive man, nor a pitch-perfect singer.  On top of that, it puts recent ironic mirrorballed cover versions such as The Scissor Sisters' "Comfortably Numb" to total shame - the lyrics to that just don't work on the dancefloor if you've any idea about their origins at all, whereas Moroder has spotted some sexual yearning in "Nights in White Satin" and gone the whole way with the idea, rising it above the status of cheap irony.

I've also managed to write this entry up without mentioning much about the cheeky B-side "I Wanna Funk With You Tonite", wherein a saucy female vocalist keeps deliberately misunderstanding the use of the word "funk", and repeating a certain other f-word back.  That alone would be worth a download.

A quick note - yes, I'm aware this single was credited as "Knights in White Satin" in other countries, but it definitely wasn't released as such in Britain, so I'm running with the k-less title.  Sorry and all that, but it doesn't make any difference to what you're going to hear, which is top drawer stuff - right down the back of the drawer in fact, alongside the porno mags.

Download it Here

One Hit Wonder #2 - The Sorrows - Take A Heart

Label: Piccadilly

Year of Release: 1965

I'm not claiming originality or insight with this choice, of course - the track itself has appeared on the "Nuggets II" box set and has been much discussed since.  

Whilst I would have to take exception to anybody who is honestly prepared to argue that The Sorrows were better than The Who or the Kinks, or indeed any number of other more successful loud, pounding, rough rock bands of the time, they certainly deserved to climb higher than number 21 in the charts with this one.

"Take A Heart" pitter-patters its way towards some of the most aggressive, hollering and sneering vocals you'll hear, and is one, elongated pean to adolescent romantic frustration.  It's not an original piece of material, of course, and other versions of this song are available - but for me it's the ultimate version, and even on the live clip above it sounds pretty damn savage.  

Lead singer Don Farden later went on to have hits with "Indian Reservation" and "Belfast Boy" as a solo artist in the seventies, but neither are a patch on this.  

Thanks to Sirlongpass for the YouTube upload.

Apologies from me for the relative lack of uploads at present - I've been away on holiday and relying on delayed posts to get my stuff out there.  Hopefully normal service will be resumed very  soon. 

The Best Of and the Rest Of British Psychedelia (aka Morgan Blue Town)

Label: Action Replay/ Morgan Blue Town
Year of Release: 1988/91


Ooh, the confusion this one's likely to cause. I'll start from the beginning, shall I?


Once upon a time, there was a North London based recording studio and record label called Morgan, who were extremely successful in their capacity as the former, attracting visits from the Rolling Stones amongst others, but disappeared completely under the radar as an independent house of hits. Some of their acts such as The Orange Bicycle found success on the continent, but in the UK almost all their bands were ignored, and the label failed to produce anything which charted.


Mindful of the changing tide, and perhaps sensing an opportunity to claw back some cash, the label and studio owner Monty Babson created a psychedelic and progressive outlet called Morgan Blue Town in the late sixties which issued a few slabs of vinyl before giving up the ghost. Astonishingly, though, a great many acts were waiting in the wings to issue material for MBT which never got heard outside the studio walls due to the label's demise.


"What the bloody hell does this have to do with an album entitled 'The Best Of and the Rest Of British Psychedelia', I hear you impolitely cry. Shut your cakehole, and I'll tell you. This very compilation was originally issued in 1988 under the name "Morgan Blue Town", seemingly on the reactivated label, and was then deleted and fell off the shelves before being reissued again as a budget CD by Action Replay under its new and frankly rather misleading name and sleeve design. The tracklisting covers a lot of material which was unreleased in the sixties, plus a quantity of stuff which was licensed elsewhere - Angel Pavement, for example, briefly had their material out on Fontana Records.


The sound quality on this CD is imperfect, and the tracklisting is flawed and periodically factually incorrect ("House of Many Windows" should be credited to Bobak, Jons, Malone, and not Motherlight) but there are still some pearls on here which any self-respecting fan of the genre should hear, from Jude's marvellous reading of "Morning Morgan Town" to Cliff Wade's preposterous but ultimately lovable "Look at Me, I've Fallen Into A Teapot" - and he does too, right at the end.


The ultimate guide to all things Morgan is a compilation issued by Sanctuary called "House of Many Windows", which they released as part of the "Psychedelic Pstones" series. I haven't uploaded it here yet because it still seems to be generally available, but that album in particular proves that there was an impressive creative buzz going on. A lot of the musicians and producers worked together across most of the Morgan work, cropping up on each other's recordings all the time, and thus the studio has a very definite sound which I've always found extremely appealing. There's a fuzzy warmth and decidedly twee leaning to a lot of the poppier work, a lot of cute classical motifs which don't sound Spinal Tappish or tacked on (as on the Gorkys-ish "Saga of a Wrinkled Man"), and when the musicians are really given something to get their teeth stuck into (such as "House of Many Windows") there's an impressive depth and variation to the work. Kick me where it hurts for saying this if you must, but I've always preferred the Morgan sound to the Joe Meek sound, whilst fully appreciating the fact that the latter was more inventive and influential (and actually more successful too - it's just that Monty Babson happened to be a better businessman than Meek, and knew how to invest money wisely).

I've already covered the Bobak, Jons, Malone story here, so have another read of that if you need to get your bearings - all three worked on most of the recordings presented on this disc, so it's worth a look to get the full back-story.


Download it Here


Tracklisting:
1. Jude - Morning Morgan Town
2. The Shots - Keep Hold of What You've Got
3. Cliff Wade - Shirley
4. Motherlight - House of Many Windows
5. Chimera - Peru
6. Fortes Mentum - Saga of a Wrinkled Man
7. Angel Pavement - Baby You've Gotta Stay
8. The Smoke - My Friend Jack
9. Orange Bicycle - Laura's Garden
10. Bob Grimm - It Never Stays The Same
11. Pussy - All of My Life
12. Magic Worms - Green Mello Hill
13. Chiitra Neogy - Leilla
14. Cliff Wade - Look at Me, I've Fallen Into A Teapot