Reupload - Help - Run Away/ Keep In Touch

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1971

Consisting of members Chet McCracken on vocals and drums, Jack Merrill on vocals and guitar, Rob Rochan on vocals, bass and percussion, Help were a country rock outfit from California who fell through the cracks in the early seventies.

"Run Away" has become a much-referenced single online since those days, and it's easy to hear why. Released in 1971 it may have been, but there's a raw garage roughness to some of the guitar work, combined with some mean and lean "licks" - this is searing riffage without too much fat on the bones, and quite atypical of most of their debut album "Help" which overall tended to be rather more laid-back in tone. 

Peter Law - The Long Black Veil/ You'll Never Get The Chance Again

Stormer on the B-side - rather dull over-long Tom Jones styled ballad on the A-side

Label: Major Minor

Year of Release: 1968

Major Minor is a fascinating little label if you're an idle collector - with an output varying from folk whimsy to easy listening to psychedelia and full-on rock, picking up a little known record with their logo on it is a bit like taking a dip into a bag of Revels. It could be a delicious toffee or a rather unpleasantly powdery orange "surprise".

Lo and behold, just to confuse things, this single manages to be a bit of both. The A-side here is a tedious Tom Jones styled version of the country standard "Long Black Veil" which lacks any kind of emotional punch.

Nestling on the flip, though, is Law's own composition (in collaboration with one Tommy Scott) "You'll Never Get The Chance Again", which is a lovely stormer. Infamously, The Grumbleweeds recorded this first as the flipside to their awful single "Goodbye", and there are some aficionados out there who consider that to be the definitive version. Nonsense, says I. This take is hard, sharp, has a nice clattering guitar high in the mix, and gives the track a dancefloor urgency, whereas The Grumbleweeds take a lighter and slightly more showy approach. A lost Northern Soul dancer? Maybe.

Offered With Very Little Comment #4 - The Whales, Nick and Nichola, Laura, Sheila Scot

Some regular readers will be aware of the fact that from time to time, I throw a whole batch of singles up on to this blog in one swoop while writing very little about them.


This is usually for one of a few very simple reasons:

• I know virtually nothing about the artist(s) in question
• I have very little to say about the music
• The record in question didn't really seem to me to warrant a lot of dissection. Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes things just are what they are. 

So then, with no apologies offered for the lack of background reading, and with no expectations raised, please see the latest batch behind the link. Some of these are really very obscure and there's a chance you'll have been keeping one eye open for a copy.

Introducing The Exciting Stereo Sound Of Franck Pourcel (EP)

Whizzing, squealing analogue synths meet Easy Listening 

Label: Columbia
Year of Release: 1967

This EP has been causing a bit of fuss online of late, primarily for featuring one of the most unexpectedly strange cover versions in Easy Listening land. That track, the squealing, oscillating, analogue synth infested cover of "Days of Pearly Spencer", is indeed an exciting stereo sound - like something you would hear at a firework party while drunk on scrumpy and high on LSD simultaneously, or the sort of noise Number 6 might have heard at a cocktail party in "The Prisoner" at which he was injected with something that made him a bit woozy. This, folks, shows just how weird even the most middle-of-the-road offerings could be in the late sixties.

While "Pearly Spencer" here is clearly intended to demonstrate the wonders of music heard through a good stereo system, with its ambitious arrangement and hi-tech (for the time) instrumentation, the rest of this EP is comparatively run-of-the-mill in terms of its ambition. Pourcel's attention to detail with the arrangements is wonderful, but they won't slap you in the face with quite the same force as the first track.

Reupload - Brotherly Lovers - If You Need A Love Song/ Our Favorite Hill

Rough and ready garage ballad from New York

Label: eskee

Year of Release: 1966

Brotherly Lovers are responsible for a garage track called "Was A Lie" which has been talked about enthusiastically online for awhile now. Rough and imperfect, it sounds as if was recorded for a few cents, and even they were probably fed into the electricity meter just to keep the session going.  Like so much of its ilk, though, it possesses a charm that some contemporary hits of the time lacked.

Far less has been written about its follow-up "If You Need A Love Song", despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that this seems to be the release where Brotherly Lovers had smoothed off some of the rough edges. Sounding less buzzsaw and agitated in approach and more akin to an aspiring folk-rock group, it showcases gentle vocal harmonies and a slightly melancholy but jingle-jangle melody. Still, though, there's a brittleness and punkish naiveté to the delivery which clearly indicates that this is still a low-budget affair, like a DIY eighties indie take on The Byrds as opposed to the polished Columbia Records deal.