THE BUGS
Darkside (Big Beat; CD)
Garage bands with a double bass; a very rare sight these days, although
back in the mid 80s you had 
The Sting Rays, The Vibes and The Bugs, the
last of whom have had their only LP re-released on CD by those good
chaps at Big Beat. As Roger Armstrong notes on the Ace website, this
album could have been made anytime from 1966 to 1988 and, nasty 80s
snare sound aside, I'd have to agree with him. A combination of snotty
garage vocals, rip-roaring fuzz 'n' tremolo drenched guitars, a pounding
rhythm section and some killer tunes make this an indispensable addition
to any garage fan's record collection. Stand out tracks include opener
'Just a Bad Dream', instrumental number 'Sarsaparilla Sidewalk' with
it's insistent panned fuzz riff and neat segue into album closer 'One Of
These Days', a great tune with which to finish off the album.
Impressively, all but two of the tracks are originals with the lion's
share having being penned by bassist Lloyd Tripp, who was in the
aforementioned Vibes and was last seen fronting US rockabilly combo The
Zip Guns. 'Darkside' makes an excellent companion piece to Big Beat's
2002 Sting Rays compilation 'From The Kitchen Sink'. Now if only they'd
put out a Vibes compilation then the triumvirate of mid 80s double bass
garage band reissues would be complete. Come on Big Beat, whaddya say?
www.acerecords.co.uk
Dan Whaley
ALAN CARVELL
All Mine: The Essential Collection (EM; CD)
Who woulda thunkit: a whole album of tunes about skateboarding??
That's what Alan Carvell birthed in 1978, a disc called Skateboard Rampage, which, despite
its pedestrian (literally) subject matter, was a 
harmony-lovers wet dream, filled to the brim
with luscious, Beach Boys-inspired vocal arrangements and enough "ahhhs" to satisfy a tongue-depressor
wielding doctor. Though Skateboard Rampage was originally released on
Elton John's Rocket Records, it didn't even make a dent in the charts, though a single from it, 'The L.A.
Run', did manage to hit the Top 30 in the U.K. At any rate, Carvell's recorded lots
of fine material apart from the album, as All Mine: The Essential Collection will gladly attest,
as it features two-discs worth of Carvell recordings, including Skateboard Rampage.
Disc one contains the (mostly) previously unreleased sides Carvell recorded
(mostly) before Skateboard Rampage, under several (mostly) noms de plume, and these (mostly)
display his love and acumen for doo-wop, such as his fine cover of 'Once In Awhile' and the absolutely
gorgeous 'All Mine' and 'Let Me Go,' which feature to-die for vocal arrangements.
Also wonder-ful is the cover of The Beach Boys 'Please Let Me Wonder,' under the monicker Harmony Beach,
which features the aid of Harmony luminaries like Chris White and Tony Rivers.
Some of the recordings on disc one veer a bit too much towards the dreaded Kenny Nolan "ultra-slick,
faux-romantic singer/songwriter territory," but this can be forgiven somewhat as lots of fine artists
were temporarily lured down that road in the late '70s. There's also a bit
of disco here (ouch!), but Carvell's 'Bee Gees Medley' is certainly competent enough.
It's on disc two that Carvell really shines, as most of it contains
Skateboard Rampage. Carvell's slightly nasal lead vocals on the album
might remind one, in some remote way, of Mike Love, but make no mistake: Carvell's voice is
much better! Tracks like 'Skateboard King' recall Carvell's fondness
for doo-wop, 'Skateboard Racer' revs up like a race car, and 'Sidewalk Run' would have made
The Rubettes proud. The best track on the album is definitely 'Skateboard Surfing,'
which is melt-in-your mouth gorgeous. All of Skateboard Rampage is
as professional and tight as any example of the genre. The other tracks on disc
two are also top-shelf, including the "proper" version of 'Skateboard Queen,' with Carvell singing lead
(a take with the album's producer Ron O'Shea's lead vocals ended up on the album when O'shea accidentally
wiped off Carvell's leads), a humorous version of 'Dead Man's Curve' called 'Dead Man's Kerb,"
and three harmony-drenched spots for Capitol Radio.
If you want to hold your head high as a member in good standing of the
"harmony-lovers" club, you need to own All Mine: The Essential Collection!
www.emrecords.net
David Bash
THE EXOTIC SOUNDS OF MARTIN DENNY
Exotica Vol.3 (Rev-Ola; CD)
After the first 10 seconds of the opening track, 'Jungle River Boat', the howler monkeys cut in,
just to 
make sure you know this is a Martin Denny album. To love Mr. Denny, you have to love the monkey
noises and other assorted animal and jungle background noises that punctuate a large number of the songs.
Some see them as a unique and inspired element of Denny's classic exotica sound. Others wish they
had a blow gun and some curare to stun the monkeys into silence. I fall between the two camps;
I can bear the monkeys, as long as they don't get too close to the tent.
This is another in Rev-Ola's long line of exotica reissues of Denny's 50's back catalogue.
According to the sleeve notes of the original album, the ideas for these 12 tunes came whilst on an extended
engagement at the Don The Beachcomber restaurant in Honolulu, and the album was recorded in Hawaii.
You don't get more 'Tiki Style' than that.
Denny's gentle, polite blend of then exotic instruments such as Marimbas
and Burmese temple percussion and bells are still soothingly original background music, and will
delight all lounge and exotica fans. It's a damn shame that Denny isn't still making records,
so that Lounge Laura Taylor could be the cover girl.
www.revola.co.uk
Phil Suggitt
RITA LEE
Hoje E O Primeiro Dia Do Resto Da Sua Vida (Revola; CD)
Much has been said and written about the Brazilian Tropicalia movement. Founded in the late sixties,
it 
used British beat and psychedelia to subvert the existing conventions of Brazilian music and,
in the process, created a set of sounds that ended up being both a sonic and political manifesto.
The backbone of Tropicalia was a band called Os Mutantes who fused a polyhedric set of influences
with a DIY ethic that turned them into the Beatles of the Southern Hemisphere. As the psychedelic 60s
gave way to the prog stylings of the 70s, so too did Os Mutantes mutate. Their contract stipulated one
record a year but their creative output could not be contained and they produced two in 1972 crediting
one to their charismatic front woman Rita Lee - ultimately the band's swansong. Prophetically titled
"Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life" their final record in their original incarnation
is a masterpiece of eclecticism. It spans easily from wigged out space jams to acoustic balladry
and everything in between but like any Mutantes album it never strays far from absolute pop perfection.
So what are you waiting for to get this record, after all today could well be the first day of the rest
of your life...
www.revola.co.uk
Arthur Cravan
THE MIRAGE
Tomorrow Never Knows: Singles and lost sessions 1966-68 (RPM CD)
Yes, at last, 'we can be serious'! A juicy 23 track collection of largely previously unheard Mirage
tracks in good sound quality. This collection reveals The Mirage to have been a good pop group,
growing into 
typical of the times popsike experimentation. The plaintive English whimsy of
'Mrs Busby', 'The Wedding of Ramona Blair', 'Ebenezer Beaver' and 'Lazy Man' are all present and correct.
The biggest bonus is the inclusion of 'Hello Enid' which also stands alongside the above named tracks
full square. It's odd listening to 'Tomorrow Never Knows' (the track) as it just sounds like a fair
enough pop cover of the fabs, and yet the Mirage were amongst the first to hear it and got it out on
wax almost before the Beatles did. It must have sounded pretty cool back then (not that it doesn't
work well enough now). This is actually one upgrade that won't entirely require the jettisoning
of your old bootleg collection of You Can't Be Serious as there's acetate demos on that which
do not feature here, so you could certainly do with both anthologies. Included on the demo side
of this new collection are three acoustic run throughs of 'Katherine', Ebenezer Beaver' and 'Go Away'
(with Graham Nash) and very nice they are as well. Even with the two collections now available,
there are still tracks uncompiled as researcher and liner writer Stefan Granados informs us.
The collection does not include their CBS recordings (not least because of licensing and no doubt
space reasons) but focuses (quite rightly I think) on the Dick James recordings. 'Chicago Cottage'
for instance has been compiled several times elsewhere. The sound is as good as you're going to get
on a lot of these and that isn't to disparage it, it's pretty good throughout. The set tips over to
post Mirage 'Jawbone' territory (and presumably their self-titled album can not be far off a reissue)
in 'How's Your Pa' but overall, this is a good collection of pop songs which any Mirage fan will enjoy.
It contextualises their popsike outings with their more general pop sentiments in the same way
for instance that 10th Planet did with their work with The End that also threw up a lot
of great pre-psych pop recordings, and it is in that spirit you should approach this collection.
The packaging is attractive (I especially like the shimmering pastel coloured camel on the silver disc
label side) and the liners informative as Granados's writing always is, and the contributions from band
members give a useful insight to the recording and marketing processes of the time.
It's well worth your investigation, buy wth confidence.
www.rpmrecords.co.uk
Paul Martin
THE MUSIC MACHINE
The Ultimate Turn On 1966-67 (Big Beat 2x CD set)
Sometimes, groups attain kudos out of all proportion to their importance because of temporary shifts
in contemporary opinion trends. You only have to take a cursory listen to the Music Machine however,
to immediately grasp their originality and the more you listen, the more important they become.
Year on year, 
the Music Machine's musical legacy has grown in stature and importance and rightly so.
If I had to name only one US 60s group of import, it would be The Music Machine, such is the originality
and otherness (maybe I'd cite The Monks on that basis as a close second, but then they were more
European than American!). We all know the comparisons drawn, not least because of the black clothing
and single black glove stage wear, with being the godfathers of the shoe gazing post ('77) punk crowd,
or of the gothic subculture that emerged in its wake. Clearly all the inferences are here,
the dark, brooding lyrics and moody (there's an understatement), restless aesthetics of songs like
'Absolutely Positively', 'Masculine Intuition', 'Bottom of The Soul', 'The People In Me' and especially,
as far as I'm concerned, 'The Trap'(and in their later Warner Brothers incarnation the claustrophobic
'You'll Love Me Again'). Sean Bonniwell and co. might enjoy or discourage this particular notion,
I know not, but in the longer and overarching historical pantheon, the Music Machine stand like giants
in my book. There's a dignity, presence and a particular grace in many of their songs which immediately
hits you that makes you take them seriously from the off.
What Big Beat have assembled here is a superb array of the Music Machine's Original Sound label
recordings featuring the classic line up. The chunky 27 page booklet is stuffed with photos
and memorabilia illustrating Alec Paleo's closely written historical narrative and comments
and analysis of the music and the group from Bonniwell, Doug Rhodes and producerer Brain Ross.
Disc 1 gathers together the Turn On LP and accompanying 45s and non-album sides recorded for
Original Sound, 28 tracks in all. The LP of course has been booted on CD and vinyl, but this is a serious
upgrade to say the least. One can only concur with Bonniwell when he disparages the cover versions
the group were compelled to record for Original Sound and which found their way onto their album.
Not that there's anything wrong with them as covers, but they wilt beside the intensity and confidence
of songs like 'Wrong' or 'Come On In'. 'I've Loved You' and 'The Eagle Never Hunts The Fly'
are also (additionally to those already mentioned) of a high order. Disc 2 is a revelation.
It gathers together 22 unissued rehersal, demo and original mixes of their Original Sound material.
Too often on twofers and double cd sets, one disc or the other turns out be of
much lesser quality and is included purely for the sake of completion. This is not the case here.
Disc 2 contains no acoustic bedsit versions , false starts or noodling,
it's prime Music Machine and would be a perfectly good stand alone CD in its own right. Given the groups
rep for intense and regular rehersal both on and off the road (even their rhythm section held separate
rehearsals of their own before joining a full band practice!), this was always going to be a must-hear set.
It's by and large a fascinating and very enjoyable listen of 'live in the studio' type rehearsals of many
of the songs on disc1, but so intriguing in development they are invaluable in their differentness.
Additionally there are demos of 'No Girl Gonna Cry', 'Discrepency', 'Astrologically Incompatible'
and others. To cap it all there are two videos of the band from 1966 perfoming 'Talk Talk'
and 'Cherry Cherry' from KHJ-TV's Boss City programme. This set stands
as a perfect companion piece to the two Sundazed discs of the groups Warner Brothers recordings.
A fabulous collection and a suitably lavish presentation and packaging makes this a must-have for any
MM fan, it's just excellent!
www.acerecords.co.uk
Paul Martin
BILLY NICHOLLS
Would You Believe (Deluxe Edition) Sanctuary; CD
OK, now that a few years have passed and the hype dust has settled, we can now see Would You Believe
for what it is, which is assuredly not the "second coming of Pet Sounds", an accolade
heaped upon the album when it was first reissued in the late '90s…which did no favour to either Nicholls
or the album, as it raised expectations to the point where listeners were left scratching their heads
in bewilderment and disappointment. What the album is, however, is a
fine slice of UK pop/psych with 
baroque flourishes, a disc which has deserved all the reissues it's
been given, especially this one: Would You Believe (Deluxe Edition), which adds a disc of demos
and outtakes recorded around the same time as Would You Believe (these demos were originally
released by Nicholls himself in 2000, under the title Snapshot).
A bit of background is probably in order for the otherwise uninitiated:
Billy Nicholls was the teenage protégé of Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham (by way of
George Harrison, whose help Nicholls had enlisted in marketing his songs).
Oldham had been looking for the British answer to Pet Sounds, and was not shy about proclaiming
Nicholls as the heir apparent to Brian Wilson, which is why Would You Believe has garnered
comparisons to the Beach Boys classic. In truth, Nicholls UK upbringing had,
by osmosis, made him more worldly and mature than Brian Wilson, traits that are reflected
in his lyrics and music. The real genius of Would You Believe
is that, whether its songs are uptempo or slow, busy or spare, it's able to retain an ethereal,
almost other-worldliness, making for a wholly unique experience, which you can hear for yourself on disc
one of this collection. Would You Believe opens with the title track, a cool
slice of pop psych adorned with playful strings and a persistent keyboard fill.
The next track, 'Come Again,' is a mournful acoustic piece with a baroque feel that will appeal to fans
of co-Immediate Records wunderkind Duncan Browne (and, if you haven't already, check out Del Shannon's
recording of this song-retitled 'Cut And Come Again'-it's simply amazing!).
The floating 'Life Is Short' is more on the psych end of things, featuring the captivating intermingling of
horns and high pitched strings. There's also 'Daytime Girl,' a deligtfully carefree
tune which melds dense, milky way vocal arrangements to a lively, whimsical beat.
Other excellent cuts include 'London Social Degree', which is decidedly manic, with high pitched
keyboards doing a mad dance. 'Portobello Road' is just as manic but is
more grounded. The following three tracks, 'Question Mark,' 'Being Happy,'
and 'Girl From New York' feature the blistering guitar work of The Small Faces' Steve Marriott,
the latter two featuring the most complex melodies on the album. The coda is
the gorgeous 'It Brings Me Down', and it does just that with its lilting feel.
There are several bonus tracks included herein, such as mono, single mixes of
'Would You Believe' and 'Daytime Girl', and an album outtake called 'Always On My Mind,' whose electrifying
chord changes and vocals makes it as good as, or perhaps better than, anything on the album.
Disc 2 features demo versions of several tracks on Would You Believe,
including the title track, 'Cut And Come Again,' 'Life Is Short,' and 'Portobello Road,'
among many others. There are also other gems which certainly fit nicely on the album,
like the aforementioned 'Always On My Mind,' the warbling 'Back About Four,' which sounds a lot like the
current Los Angeles buzz band The 88 (!), the dynamic 'Umbrella Time,' the whimsical 'Haven't Any Money,'
and the lilting 'I Want To Be Friendly With You'. (Interestingly, there are
also cuts titled 'Casey Jones' and 'Love Is All Around,' which are not the covers but are indeed
Nicholls originals). The production values of these demos range from spare,
acoustic to full-on arrangements, but either way, one is left with the feeling that, damn, it's too
bad Oldham ran out of funds and wasn't able to issue Would You Believe, let alone an album
with finished versions of these demos!
Those of you who already have one of the original reissues (sounds like
an oxymoron, don't it??) of Would You Believe still need to own this one…c'mon, you know
you do! And if you don't own any form of this album, Would You Believe
(Deluxe Edition) is definitely the one to have.
www.sanctuaryrecordsgroup.co.uk
David Bash
THE SOUNDS OF TOMORROW
(Mood Mosaic Series, Volume 9) (RPM; CD)
The Sounds of Tomorrow were pioneers of electronica. As Mark Brend points out in the liners,
they were 'out of place and ahead of their time'. Dressed in truly naff black and white checkerboard
suits and 
bow ties, they looked like a very straight cabaret novelty act. Yet Scott Ludwig played
the 'Sonocon', a modified drums and organ combo, while Max Crook played an array of modified keyboards,
the 'Musitron'. Contemporary 60's ads for their gigs proclaim 'Music of today…played on instruments
of the future', but tellingly '..gentlemen must be properly attired…for dancing and cocktails'.
Crook even billed himself as 'Maximilian on the Musitron'.
Max Crook was Del Shannon's keyboard player, the co-author of his huge
hit 'Runaway', which features an instrumental break played on the Musitron, Crook's modified clavioline.
This CD features a set of mostly self-penned, previously unreleased tunes recorded by Crook
and his pal Ludwig from 1968-1972, plus seven live tunes from 1968. The concept of a duo playing
electronic pop was cutting edge in 1968, but unsurprisingly the Musitron and Sonocon sound less
spectacular and novel in 2006. It is impossible not to admire the duo's ground
breaking technical ingenuity, but great pop music has always been about tunes, not technology.
Although The Sounds of Tomorrow were good musicians, they were not exceptional songwriters.
Whilst there are some good instrumental passages, a lot of the tunes aren't that exciting
or memorable. It would have been interesting to see hear the duo embellish more songs as strong
as 'Runaway'.
www.cherryred.co.uk
Phil Suggitt
THE TORNADOES
Charge Of The Tornadoes (Crossfire: CD)
This is the second Tornadoes reissue from Crossfire, and concentrates mostly on 60's album tracks and newer
material recorded in the 90's, after the original band had reformed. The good news is that the new stuff
sits very comfortably with the original surf instros recorded by Frank Zappa as a young engineer.
The band are good musicians-they even sound good aged 17, on the early tracks. The use of sax on
most songs gives the music an upbeat, danceable sound. The tunes are fun surf instrumental fare,
solid rather than classics of the genre.
As these tunes were originally made for dancin' or drivin', a 26 song
compilation is rather a lot to listen to in one go if you aren't on the beach, highway or dance floor.
I appreciated the sound more in short bursts, skipping the half dozen or so vocal numbers.
It isn't that the vocals are weak; they demonstrate that the Tornadoes are that rare thing, an instro
band that can actually sing. The problem is that songs are all standards such as 'Johhny B.Goode',
'My Girl' and 'Summertime', well arranged but covered to death by countless bands. The only 60's vocal,
'Old Shep', is sung in a corny style that has really dated, yet the instrumentals still sound fresh
and fun.
www.crossfirepublications.com
Phil Suggitt
BOBBY VEE
The Singles Collection EMI /Liberty 3cd set
NOW THIS IS WHAT A COMPILATION SHOULD BE LIKE. A chronological collection of Bobby's A
and B sides
on Liberty from 1959 to 1977 featuring all the hits, different UK and US releases, rare stereo tracks
and even Italian language versions of four hits. In fact a veritable cornucopia of delights for fans.
Now I have never subscribed to the myth that pre Beatles '60s pop was crap. I
grew up on this stuff and age has not withered it as Shakespeare would
say. What we have is great Brill building songs well sung and wonderfully played
by the best musicians in LA and produced superbly in the main by Snuff
Garrett. 95 tracks and only familiarity not quality diminishes over the
three cds. Highlights include the rare stereo mixes of the Jack Nietsche
arranged 'Run Like the Devil' and the Leon Russell arranged and produced
version of Brian Wilson's 'Here Today' from Pet Sounds. This is a great
collection, now if only EMI/Liberty could do the same for Jackie DeShannon.
Pat Curran
VARIOUS
Shapes And Sounds: Orange and Red Beams from The BBC Archives 1967-69 (Top Sounds LP / CD)
There's lovely! From the makers of the wonderful Alphabeat compilation comes this new amazing
limited edition, hand numbered collection of crystal clear, diamond sharp transcription disc transfers,
all fully licensed from the Beeb. The packaging is every bit as excellent as Alphabeat's. I got
the LP edition, which comes in a thick glossy card sleeve and a 16 page, A5 colour book stuffed to the gills
with information, band, label, and memorabilia pics (the cd edition shoehorns all this into a 24pp booklet).
You'll need to play the album 2 or 3 times just to get through the density of the book (and it is
a book rather than an 'insert'!) whilst listening. The LP is 180grm vinyl and plays like a dream.
Essentially the sounds fall into two camps; white boy soul beat and popsike / psychedelia and every
one's a gem. The spoken word intro/outroductions, especially by Brian Matthews, sound like the guys
are MCing directly from your stereo! The music has been remastered, although I don't know if it needed
that much, these transcription discs sound as sparkling clean as the day they were cut – the groups
really do sound like they're playing in your own front room! The Tomorrow tracks, it has to be said,
are off-air recordings and sound a little less pristine than the others, but even so they are quite amazing
'live in the studio' type renditions of 'Colonel Brown', 'Blow Up' and 'Real Life Permanent Dream'.
If you had a whole album's worth in this sound quality alone you wouldn't complain. The Montanas tracks
('Hey Grandma', 'A Step In The Right Direction' - just dig that guitar phasing!, 'You're Never Going To
Get My Loving' and 'Omaha') are absolute blinders, harmony pop meets garage fuzz with the aural clarity
of a piano tuner's sense of hearing! The two Kaleidoscope tracks 'Jenny Artichoke'
and 'Music' were not included on the recent Please Listen To The Pictures anthology as they
were not available, but here they are now and 'Music' in particular opens right up in comparison
to any previous versions I've heard. You get to hear both Gentle Influence and
Timebox doing their club soul-beat thing across sides such as 'You've Been Cheatin', Always Be A Part
of My Living', 'Beggin' (which to my ears is better than the released 45 version!!),
Stay There', A Girl Like You' and their later transition to a more progressive pop mode in an excellent
rendition of 'Yellow Van'. The Spectrum's Beeb cuts of 'I Take What I Want'
(which was never officially released at the time) and 'Headin' For A Heatwave' are also excellent.
In general, this is 'A Star' grade material and presentation, like Alphabeat an obvious labour
of love, but with a less eclectic play list. It's amazing how well integrated the differing styles
sound together. I can't recommend this highly enough, packaging, production, track selection etc
are all immaculate, you can't lose, believe me!
http://topsoundsrecords.co.uk/intro.html
Paul Martin
VARIOUS
Soft Sounds For Gentle People Vol.4 (Pet Records CD)
You may have thought that all the best 1960s softy tunes had been mined and reissued by now.
Like garage however, this genre seems to be a bottomless pit. Witness Pet Records latest volume of rare
soft 
pop and lite-sike lovelies. Here's 23 jewels you'll be glad to have heard. There's plenty of sitar
doing the rounds here, such as Cosmic Brotherhood's 'Sunshine World', the enigmatic 1st
Century's 'Dancing Girl' (a hippy dream of a tune) and Central Park's adorable 'Flower Hill' for instance.
There's a decent uncompiled Mark Erickson single in 'Hey, In The Water' a nice
Byrdsian folk rocker in the form of The Roony Brothers (yes Mickie's boys) take on the UK prog folkers,
Trees fave 'Geordie'. Being a limey, the name of Chuck Barris doesn't register with me at all.
We learn however, that he was both a successful game show host in the US
(Dating Game, Newlywed Game, Gong Show – from which perhaps Michael Miles and Take Your Pick
was copied over here) and also, allegedly, a CIA assassin!!!!! On top of this,
he ran his own soft pop band, the Chuck Barris Syndicate, whose 'Donnie', which features here is a
pretty decent tune with a semi-whispered vocal. Split Level's 1968 self-titled album is much better
than it is usually credited for. The track 'Equipment' for instance is not only musically excellent,
but is lyrically witty in its bemoaning, told through the eyes of an old time acoustic troubadour,
of the requirement for amplifiers and microphones etc. for the new breed of stadium rock bands.
Similarly, the track featured here, also from the album, is equally adroit, being a tale of disillusion,
personified in the song's title 'Looking At the Rose Through World Colored Glasses'. Elsewhere, pop
pleasers of varying degrees of softness entertain in no small measure; The Luv Birds 'Little Faces',
The Phoenix Trolley's 'Too Many Trees', Lemonade Charade's 'Yellow Brick Road', Public Company's 'Hearts
and Flowers' and The Incredible Fog's 'When The Sun Goes Down' are all terrific. If you've enjoyed
the other three volumes (not to mention Mystic Males Vol.1 – Vol.2 is in the pipeline as is
Soft Sounds Vol.5), then you can waltz into Vol.4 with the full expectation of aural satisfaction.
If you're new to this series, this one is as good as any to start with; a set best summarised as mellowness
with edge (if that's not a contradiction in terms). Highly recommended, as are all the other volumes
in this excellent series.
petrecords@hotmail.com
Paul Martin
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Who Will Buy These Wonderful Evils Vol 3 (Dolores/Virgin Sweden; CD)
There's very little garage/beat on this volume, which is fine by me. Instead, we get
a handful of late 
'60s/early '70s melodic pop and hard rock that're well worth hearing.
On the downside, a few entries are almost unbearable, notably two weak covers of The Stones'
'Sympathy For The Devil' (Match) and Buffalo Springfield's 'Mr Soul' (East-West). Nevertheless,
everything included is very obscure and will certainly please the avids. Scorpion's 'Sagittarius'
is a 1970 effort that has a fair bit of '60s garage parlance about it, and if anything,
the melody sounds not unlike South American's Los Chijuas' 'Changing The Colors Of Life'.
Red White Blues' 'Last Train To Georgia' is more contemporary, essentially it's a suitably funky,
hard rock blues tune but man, it has enough panache to fill a mod dancefloor. Heavier still is the
1975 monster, Bjorn Pame's 'Vampire'. What a beast! After Life's 'Help Me' is another quality rocker,
this time with a marked Steppenwolf style and a big pop chorus. More delightful pop comes
in the form of three fine bands: Fruit, Candle and Atlantic Ocean. Fruit's 'Eye Of The Raven'
(1968) is suitably Bee Gees / Golden Earring whilst the slightly later Candle offer a rustic/post Beatles
style on the truly gorgeous 'In A Vision' and Atlantic Ocean get exquisitely folky.
I've always known that Ebbott and S.O.O.L have great taste, and for me, at least, I could
hedge my bets that the guys adore the lo-fi sunshine stomp of Harambee's 'Tu-Ru-Ru'.
Sweden. What place.
www.dolores.se
Jon 'Mojo' Mills
