Reupload - Dog Rose - Paradis Row/ Sunday Morning

Label: Satril

Year of Release: 1972

Well, this is a thorny mess.  Nobody can seem to agree on the band line-up for this recording at all.  The press release Satril Records put out for this single quotes entirely different personnel to the members eventually listed on their solitary 1972 LP release "All For The Love Of", and the only reasonable explanation is that as soon as this group imploded, the label quickly hired another bunch of musicians together to carry on under the Dog Rose name.  It's also possible that the name was owned by the label and musicians were hired for songs accordingly until a hit came.  

Confusion aside, "Paradis Row" occupies the same area as a great many early seventies pop singles, with a tiny drop of popsike in its veins, some anthemic McCartneyesque melancholy (the same strand inhabited by the theme to "Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?") and a streak of Edison Lighthouse bubblegum.  Gently slapped bongos introduce swaggering riffs and beatnik-styled lyrical patter, and this eventually cascades into a huge rainbow streak of a chorus.  Regardless of who may or may not have been responsible for this, it's a bit of a buried gem, a could-have-been that never was.

The flip is much  more bizarre.  The press release describes it as "back to the fifties and rocking and rollin' down the avenue", but the jaunty pub piano, distortion and treble seem to be recalling The Kinks if anyone else.  Virtually absent of bass and overloaded with top-end screech, Graham Coxon would probably nod in approval at the lo-fi approach on offer here, though God knows what anyone made of it at the time.

If you were in any line-up of Dog Rose at any particular point and want to conclusively clear up a mystery here, please do get in touch.  

Woolly - Sunshine Souvenirs/ Living And Loving You

Label: Mooncrest

Year of Release: 1973

This uplifting little single under the mysterious name of "Woolly" apparently picked up a fair bit of airplay in the summer of 1973, but like so many tracks of its ilk at the time, it went nowhere. "Sunshine Souvenirs" is a bouncy, chipper piece of pop which vaguely resembles Paul McCartney at his most carefree. It's not difficult to imagine it being a minor hit.

Sadly, it actually sold very poorly, and of course wasn't the work of McCartney at all. Rather, evidence online (at Discogs, anyway) would suggest that Woolly was simply a nickname for the popular Radio Luxembourg DJ Mark Wesley, who remained at the station until 1981. Wesley wasn't a stranger to the practical sides of the music biz, though - he was also a member of Southend psychedelic outfit Cardboard Orchestra in the late sixties, and acted as a songwriter for groups such as The Wake. Woolly appears to have been a late shot at being a popstar by the DJ, and the dayjob seemed to pay him much greater financial dividends in the long run, eventually causing him to land on Capital Gold.

Sasha Caro - Grade 3 Section 2/ Little Maid's Song

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1967

Sasha Caro was one of those interesting characters who was everywhere but nowhere on the sixties London scene. He was born in Rangoon in 1940, but his family fled to England when Burma was invaded by the Japanese, remaining on these shores thereafter. A love of music quickly sucked him into both the business and creative side of the "industry", and he took some promising steps at commercial songwriting. Originally beginning his career under the name Rick Minas, he co-wrote the non-hits "Lease On Love" by the Graham Bond Organisation and "I Won't See You Tonight" by Hamilton and The Movement, besides setting up the cheap recording studio RayRik with his business partner Bruce Rae. He also had a deeply obscure solo folk 45 out on Polydor in 1965 entitled "Well I Want No Part Of It". 

Very few of their other songs managed to gain a release, though several appeared on an episode of "Dangerman" in the sixties as part of the episode "Not So Jolly Roger", which took place on a pirate radio station. All the "top sounds" the DJs spun throughout the episode were actually just recordings of Rick Minas's work, though none of these gained a commercial release after the episode aired. 

Somehow, Cat Stevens managed to discover Rick through his songwriting demos, and took him under his wing to attempt to launch him as a star in his own right. His name was changed to Sasha Caro, and the two resulting Stevens-produced Decca 45s are damn good - it's astonishing that they didn't find a place on "Rubble" or one of the other many compilations that swept up the best of the Decca and Deram labels psychedelic output. On the sprightly and intricate folk-pop styled "Grade 3 Section 2" Rick's voice is on fine form, swooping beautifully all over the song. The track manages to be rustic sounding without losing any catchy pop appeal, and while it does share a similar sound to Cat Stevens' own work, it's nonetheless a fine single. 

Sadly, I can't include the flip side "Little Maid's Song" below as it was recently compiled on the "Piccadilly Sunshine" series, and therefore remains commercially available. However, you can listen to it on YouTube if you want. 

The follow-up "Molatov Molatov" is also worthy of investigation, being a slice of Russian-tinged psychedelia which is far more OTT and decidedly bizarre. It's already worked its way on to my "wants" list for being such a full throttle collision of chaotic ideas.

As for what became of Rick (or Sasha, or whatever we want to call him or he would prefer us to call him) nobody seems to know. He apparently gave up music and took up a career as an accountant not long after his two Decca records flopped. This seems like a horrible waste of some very obvious talent, so I can only hope he had a change of heart somewhere along the line and still occasionally plays and writes. 

The Waterproof Candle - Electrically Heated Child/ Saturday Morning Repentance

Label: RCA

Year of Release: 1968

It sometimes feels as if we live in an age where absolutely every last drop of psychedelic goodness has been mopped up, remastered and presented for public consumption on a compilation series, but some baffling little discs remain unappreciated affairs selling at bargain basement prices.

Take "Electrically Heated Child", for example. An oddly titled record performed by the equally oddly named Waterproof Candle, it was also produced and arranged by Jimmy Webb - enough reason, under ordinary circumstances, for it to be considered a collectible even without considering eccentric song titles in the valuation equation. Strangely, though, you can regularly buy it for around a fiver and some people online are also rather dismissive of its contents.

I blame that partly on the fact that it doesn't quite live up to the weirdness of its title, and instead turns out to be a carefully produced piece of faintly far-out harmony pop. Despite that, it drips with a weird and almost autumnal atmosphere, being filled with plucked acoustic guitar lines, hushed vocals, and even by the standards of the era, some incredibly rum lyrics. "Steelwomb lightbulb chi-iiild", they sing, "is your mother/ you have no other". "To be free," they conclude, "you must be dead".  I have no definite idea what on Earth it's all about, obviously, though I'd suggest The Candle are musing on the antiseptic lifestyle of a modern child in a heated, hi-tech apartment block. Thom Yorke would no doubt nod in agreement at their observations.

The B-side "Saturday Morning Repentance" is neat too, being much more uptempo and groovy (though these things are relative) as well as having lots of unexpected chops and changes to its arrangement. In common with the A-side, it has a commercial pop edge which is skewered somewhat by all the surrounding weirdness. Fascinating stuff, though.

The Waterproof Candle were apparently an Indianapolis based band who featured Rob Swaynie, Steve Foster, Wayne Wilson and Michael Rea. Rob Swaynie also featured in the line-ups of other bands in the area such as The Urge, Clarence Brown, and Memorial String Band. Steve Foster and Wayne Wilson previously served in the garage group Sounds Unlimited.  More than that, I do not know, but please feel free to fill in any blanks.

[Edit - the suggestion has been made since that the lyrics to the A-side are likely to be about child incubators, which is an even darker, less subtle, but  - let's face it - probably correct interpretation]. 

Reupload - Charles Dumont - Le Fils Prodigue

Label: CBS
Year of Release: 1970

"You know, if you'd grown up listening to French pop music, I really don't think you'd be so keen on Scott Walker's albums" - my wife.

My wife, as you can probably gather from that above quote, doesn't like Scott Walker much, seeing his earliest work as being dull cherry-picking of adult French/ Belgian music productions - a Brel song there, a melodramatic orchestral arrangement there.  This is interesting if only because Walker himself largely rejects most French pop music, talking about it in extremely disparaging tones in most interviews.  I would further counter her argument with the observation that the Brel influence behind his work and occasional production flourish does not a continental breakfast make - a certain strand of French sixties pop definitely took the melodramatic, kitchen-sink route, but the most popular work (in its home country, at least) tends to be quite scuzzed up and messy. Jacques Dutronc, for example, doesn't really seem to immediately have anything in common with Scott Walker.

It is possible to find examples where the comparison fits, however, and this is one. "Le Fils Prodigue" has the same faint tinge of psychedelia about it, and the same strolling bass groove that Walker frequently utilised.  Wailing guitars undercut dismissive vocals, female backing vocalists coo their way melodramatically underneath, and the whole track is richly textured.  What's striking is that melodically there's not a great deal going on here - Dumont does not have a wonderful singing voice, and the song itself is not overburdened with traditional pop hooks. What stays fresh in your mind even after the first play are the flourishes, the details, the tiny sums of the parts.  The different elements interact beautifully.

Dumont was a prolific French songwriter who most famously penned "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" for Edith Piaf with lyricist Michel Vaucaire.  He still records and performs to this day, appearing most recently in "A Tribute to Edith Piaf" at the Beacon Theatre in New York.

Sadly, the flip "Ta Cigarette…" is still widely available, meaning I can't include it here.