PTOOFF IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
RICH DEAKIN wonders if those DEVIANTS and MICK FARREN records are
disposable after all.
THE DEVIANTS
Ptooff!
Disposable
Deviants Three
MICK FARREN
Mona – The Carnivorous Circus
All Esoteric CDs
www.cherryred.co.uk/esoteric
Synonymous with the British underground music scene of the late ’60s, Mick Farren and The Deviants were agitprop writ large; punks ten years ahead of their time. Too raucous for mainstream audiences, too aggressive for many hippies, and shunned by the established music industry, they were never really destined for pop stardom. Now – forty years since The Deviants released their final album and made their live UK swansong in Hyde Park, before imploding on an ill-fated trip to Canada – what better time for Esoteric to bring us these digitally re-mastered recordings on CD.
Often regarded as The Deviants’ masterpiece, the myth surrounding debut album Ptooff! owes as much to its creation as it does its musical content. Re-writing the traditional music business rule bookrulebook, they produced and distributed the LP themselves, advertising it in the pages of the underground press and selling it by mail order. Drawing on influences as diverse as The Fugs, Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground, they assembled a disparate collection of songs as derivative as they were pioneering. Fey, hippy acoustic folk numbers ‘Bun’ and ‘Child Of The Sky’ haven’t survived the test of time too well, but other parts of Ptooff! remain breathtaking. The aural bombardment of experimental sound collages ‘Nothing Man’, ‘Garbage’ and ‘Deviation Street’ coruscate the brain, whilst Sid Bishop’s brutal, distortion-driven guitar riffs pre-empted The Stooges.
Although it could still hardly be described as mainstream, The Deviants’ next album, Disposable, favoured a more straightforward, hard-edged rock sound, and has been called “the methedrine monster”. Admittedly it’s a ramshackle affair at times, but it has its moments: the jazz infused ‘Fire In The City’ is certainly untypical, while the closest Disposable comes to the experimentation indulged on Ptooff! is ‘Last Man’. Elsewhere, ‘Somewhere To Go’ echoes The Doors, whilst ‘You’ve Got to Hold On’ is four minutes of incendiary garage punk, the urgency of which is matched only by an exuberant cover version of The Rivingtons’ ‘Papa-Oo-Mao-Mao’. Blistering stuff then, and not as ‘disposable’ as some of its more waggish detractors might have you believe.
The arrival of Canadian guitarist Paul Rudolph in the spring of ’69 also coincided with a certain professionalism, hitherto lacking. Despite being quintessentially English, the first two Deviants albums had their American influences, but these were consolidated on their eponymous third album to add a certain West Coast Californian air to their sound at times – largely thanks to Rudolph’s love of The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. But – still trying to re-find their feet so soon after Rudolph’s arrival – it does seem somewhat hastily cobbled together. The humorous, dope-induced vocal asides are still evident, and other songs like ‘Billy The Monster’, ‘Rambling B(l)ack Transit Blues’ and ‘Metamorphosis Exploration’ are particularly outstanding. Musically, the album still only provides glimpses of what The Deviants could have become – and to some extent, what they eventually did.
Having tired of his revolutionary histrionics, the rest of the band ousted Farren towards the end of ’69 and evolved into the more musically cohesive, yet still anarchic, Pink Fairies in early ’70. Farren himself went on to record Mona: an overlooked classic of its time, but now fully deserving of the cult status it has since earned. Armed with a bunch of experimental cut-and-paste sound collages and a clutch of old rock ’n’ roll songs, he produced one of the strangest albums ever. As well as covers of ‘Summertime Blues’ and ‘Mona’, the album consists of two suites called ‘The Carnivorous Circus’ (Parts 1 & 2), across which Farren’s paranoid demons run riot, to create a landscape of brooding, claustrophobic menace.
Experimental in the extreme, at times the album jumps wildly from one theme to another: from sinister chants and seemingly random recordings off the radio, to spoken interview dialogues with Steve Took and a London Hell’s Angel. The coup de grâce is delivered on a brutal seven-minute version of ‘Mona (The Whole Trip)’ replete with a deeply intimidating cello solo that has to be heard to be believed. Unrelenting.
Although Mick Farren and The Deviants won’t be everyone’s cup of tea – at times they make uncomfortable listening even to these ears – all these releases are essential purchases for anyone with even the faintest interest in ’60s British underground music. |
PROCOL HARUM
Procol Harum
Shine On Brightly
Salvo/Fly CDs
www.salvo-music.co.uk
Procol Harum represent an almost textbook example of how a bunch of moddy herberts morphed from being a feisty, gutsy ensemble playing R&B and soul covers into a full-on, be-kaftaned Prog Rock butterfly – within the space of mere months. Of course, with ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’, the band not only scored colossal international success (six months at number one in Venezuela, no less!), but also produced an era-defining record that ushered in the UK’s Summer of Love and took Prog Rock to the toppermost of the poppermost for the first time. A record that just won’t go away, it has been the subject of litigation in recent years (and the case is now making its progress through the House Of Lords), ‘A Whiter Shade…’ has never sounded better than as a bonus track on Salvo’s superb reissue.
The Procol’s debut album is a splendid mix of (often) Dylanesque lyrical jive and some tremendous musicianship. The band’s unusual line-up – featuring Gary Brooker on piano and vocals, and Matthew Fisher providing the churchy Hammond organ counterpoint, with the secret weapon of Robin Trower on lead guitar, who provides stinging six-string action throughout, and the great Keith Reid as a non-performing lyric writer – gave their sound a thoroughly distinctive quality. Moreover, Brooker, as a tunesmith, brilliantly realised the often difficult task of setting Keith Reid’s idiosyncratic lyrical barbs to memorable music.
Shine On Brightly, the second album, was originally released in 1968, and is the sound of a band with a now-settled line-up truly stretching their musical wings – the side-long song cycle ‘In Held ‘Twas In I’ was a massively-influential piece that helped nudge Pete Townshend towards writing Tommy. However, the album didn’t sell in their homeland, despite its innovative qualities and dazzling wordplay.
Lord knows that the first two Procol Harum albums have been repackaged umpteen times over in the digital medium, but Salvo have, with this brace of superb reissues, finally delivered the definitive articles, that score heavily in terms of their packaging, authoritative liner notes, and most importantly of all, superbly remastered sonics. I look forward to Salvo’s reissues of the rest of the Procol Harum catalogue, including a scheduled box set. Look out for a Procol feature in a future Shindig!
Alan Robinson
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BLOSSOM TOES
Love Bomb: Live 1967-69
Sunbeam 2 CD
www.sunbeamrecords.com
There’s no way this set will ever equal the frequency of plays of We Are Ever So Clean, nor even If Only For A Moment, but I’m sure that every Blossom Toes fan will be happy to have this.
The only sign of Clean’s genuine British Toytown whimsy to be heard on the Swedish August 1967 live set is ‘The Remarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dog’, stuck among mostly blues-driven numbers more likely to be heard during their earlier Ingoes days. Along with The Downliners Sect-like ‘Love Us Like We Love You’, the bluesy psych of ‘Captain Trips’ and the obligatory ‘Smokestack Lightning’, the most surprising cut here is the cover of ‘Electricity’ by “Captain Blossomheart, who had a band that was apparently Magic” and to Brian Godding’s untrained ear sounded like “backwoods hillbillies meeting Howlin’ Wolf and Messiaen on the road to nowhere in the middle of a thunderstorm, getting pissed and deciding to terrorise the neighborhood!”.
Disc two opens with the only pair of tracks with more than a decent sound quality, recorded for UK radio broadcast in October ’67 (‘What On Earth’ and another ‘Remarkable Saga ...’), followed by more live recordings, from a Belgian festival in ’69, by which time the band was already in its full rootsy heavy prog-psych swing, which is how they prefer to be remembered.
Goran Obradovic
DUNCAN BROWNE
Give Me Take You
Grapefruit CD
www.cherryred.co.uk
For many of us, music is not merely a form of entertainment, but rather a visceral experience. Our favourite albums transport us to an alternate state of consciousness. For me, such an album is Give Me Take You by Duncan Browne.
Originally released in 1968 on Immediate Records, it’s a beautiful album that takes British pop sensibilities and blankets them with baroque, classical and folk stylings. Browne’s delicate vocals perfectly complement this regal music, and the combination of Browne’s voice and the choral backgrounds are able to make the often maudlin themes of lyricist David Bretton seem almost nurturing. Like Bob Dylan, the Browne/Bretton team favours a series of verses over the traditional verse/chorus format, but here this helps to keep the mood consistent and steady. Songs like ‘Give Me, Take You’, ‘Chloe In The Garden’, and ‘The Death Of Neil’ are as dramatic as any ever written, while more playful tunes like ‘On The Bombsite’ and ‘Alfred Bell’ will bring out the gleeful child that’s been trapped inside you.
This is the album’s third reissue, begging the question ‘why’? The answer can be found in the previously unreleased rehearsal demos, fine sound and top notch liner notes.
Give Me Take You is not only essential for collectors of ’60s pop music, but is vital to anyone who wants to experience the ultimate in musical nirvana.
David Bash
HIGH TIDE
Sea Shanties
Sundazed LP
www.sundazed.com
Former Misunderstood meets future Hawkwind in a heavy metal/prog/ psychedelic sludgefest from 1969. Tony Hill of late-period Misunderstood plays an ever-screeching, wah-wah guitar that often sounds like it’s in competition with the dizzying violin work of future Hawkwind member Simon House; the two battling out for who could create the most mayhem with their instrument. As I listen I find myself constantly thinking in terms of mash-ups – it’s Black Sabbath running into White Light/White Heat-era Velvet Underground, Steppenwolf colliding with The Stooges, Iron Butterfly sharing a stage with Steeleye Span.
The whole record could be the soundtrack to a Hell’s Angels party, right around the time the witching hour strikes and the acid kicks in and the bikers are ready to embark on some serious menace. Hill’s vocals, done in a style similar to Jim Morrison’s on the darker Doors material, add to the doom-laden feel. A ballad called ‘Pushed, But Not Forgotten’ closes side one on a relatively plaintive note, and ‘Walking Down Their Outlook’ opens the next side with the closest thing the album offers in the way of an easy groove. All around those two are four tracks that can only be considered a relentless sonic attack.
Brian Greene
WILLIAM R STRICKLAND
Is Only The Name
Esoteric CD
www.cherryred.co.uk/esoteric
The mysterious William R Strickland’s extraordinary debut from 1969 remains a true one off in every sense of the term.
Distinguished as the only American artist signed to Deram, Strickland’s little known and long unavailable one and only album occupies a strange, unsettling place all of its own. Strickland once famously described himself as a cross between Willie Nelson and Pink Floyd but the truth here is actually a lot weirder with Strickland on occasion coming across as part surreal beatnik, part apocalyptic protest singer, part experimental performance artiste – part Lenny Bruce, part skewed Bob Dylan and part an acid-fried Scott Walker.
By virtue of its inclusion on the ’69 Decca sampler Wowie Zowie: The World Of Progressive Music the thoroughly out there ‘Computer Lover’ probably remains Strickland’s best known recording however, the unsettling menacing tone of the monumental ‘You Can Know My Body (But You’ll Never Know My Soul)’ and ’If I Stay Here Much Longer’ both dwarf it in terms of their turbulent visceral power.
Grahame Bent
CHAD STUART & JEREMY CLYDE
The Ark
Rev-Ola CD
www.revola.co.uk
Still dealing in their politely Anglocentric pop psychedelia by the time their final collaboration rolled around in 1968, Chad & Jeremy remained the quintessential Englishmen abroad right to the end. The material on show here ranges from the dreamy hues of ‘Sunstroke’ and ‘Pipe Dream’ to the reflective ‘Sidewalk Requiem, Los Angeles, June 5th And 6th’ (written in the aftermath of the Robert Kennedy assassination) and the decidedly Bill Fahey-flavoured ‘Pantheistic Study For Guitar And Large Bird’.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, ‘Paxton Quigley’s Had The Course’ was written to order for the soundtrack of the sexploitation flick Three In The Attic while the Bonzos-esque singalong ‘You Need Feet (You Need Hands)’ has the honour of closing the album. Alas, for all its strengths The Ark – here with three bonus tracks – like Of Cabbages And Kings before it, failed to sell and so ended the recording career of Chad & Jeremy.
Grahame Bent
TRAMLINE
Somewhere Down The Line
Moves Of Vegetable Centuries
Both Repertoire CDs
www.repertoirerecords.com
Guitarist Micky Moody bashfully concludes that Somewhere Down The Line, the first of two albums originally released on Island Records in 1968-’69 by blues evangelists Tramline, is “a fine effort by four lads from the North East of England, having a go”.
Damn straight. Moody, who went to school with Free/Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers, eventually found fame – and disillusionment – with Whitesnake, but the late ’60s saw him and his Tramline compadres eagerly pursuing their muse and literally starving until the contract with Island, and a tail wind from the ’68 blues boom, allowed Moody to start pulling in a princely £25 a week.
Tramline may have lacked the glutinous feel and stark weightiness of their labelmates Free, but they exuded a sweatily infectious enthusiasm nevertheless, best heard on the debut album’s excitable ‘Harpoon Man’ and ‘Grunt’ from Vegetable Centuries. For all their purism, they still found space for hearty, modish covers of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Woman’ and Traffic’s ‘Pearly Queen’.
Marco Rossi
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Mike Hurst: Producers Archives Volume 3
Angel Air CD
www.angelair.co.uk
Don’t let the cover photo of Mike in his ’80s music biz finery put you off – this nifty little comp has plenty to offer those with a penchant for vintage UK ’60s sounds.
Pride of place must go to the forceful rendering of ‘My Girl The Month Of May’ by The Alan Bown, which was cut as a single but never issued. There’s also an excellent previously unreleased track from ’68 by Cat Stevens, who recorded the wah-wah laced ‘Twinkie’ for the soundtrack of a never completed ’60s exploitation film. Several other fine tracks, such as ‘Can You Hear Me’ by The Cymbaline and ‘Simplified’ by The Majority also make their first compilation appearances here.
The CD is rounded out with some well-known numbers by ’60s faves Nirvana, Murray Head and Warm Sounds, plus ’70s outings by Shakin’ Stevens, Cilla Black and Bruce Woolley.
Packaged with detailed liner notes from Hurst, this volume is the arguably the best of the three volume series that looks at the work of one of the finest UK pop producers of the era.
Stefan Granados
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Rare Mod: A Collection Of ’60s Underground Rhythm ‘n’ Blues, Psych And Soul
Acid Jazz LP/CD
www.acidjazz.co.uk
Some of the selections here have appeared elsewhere in the past (the two Silence tracks on Incredible Soundshow Stories Volume 5, Favourite Sons and The Moments for instance). However, this is an excellent collection with a solid stylistic focus on the mid-60s.
The two Shots tracks are alternative versions from a ¼ inch four-track tape and sound even rawer than the 45. Truly Smith’s ‘This Is The First Time’ (Cilla Black covered it!) is Brit femme pop par excellence. The Unknown Mod Band’s ‘Can’t Get None Of Your Lovin’ Baby’ and Shapes Of Things’ ‘Striving’ are barnstorming modsters and Steve Howe’s ‘So Bad’ is a funky groover.
The liner notes are detailed (if almost microscopic) and as a whole this is a very attractive package. Overall, think Purple Heart Surgery with a hint of Dream Babes. It’s well worth a punt.
Paul Martin
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Shapes and Sounds Volume 3
Top Sounds LP/CD
www.topsoundsrecords.co.uk
These fully licensed comps are top ear gear but are also important archival documents. This volume features BBC session versions of familiar songs by Skip Bifferty, The End and a scorching ‘Old Man Going’ by The Pretty Things as well as some covers you wouldn’t expect – Gulliver’s People’s ‘Horizontal’, Dave Dee & Co’s ‘Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In’.
The whole package screams “labour of love” and the accompanying booklet is packed with info, band photos, label scans etc. The sound quality is as usual pristine (though the two End tracks are from an off-air source) and sound as if they were recorded yesterday.
The abundantly evident sheer effort of time and excavation invested here would justify the disc’s purchase alone but the quality of otherness and time shift evoked by these long gone artefacts pleasures the ears and the mind equally. Buy with commitment – this is exactly the sort of enterprise we should all support.
Paul Martin
VARIOUS ARTISTS
We All Love The Human Race: Fairytales Can Come True Volume 4
Psychic Circle CD
We have here an eclectic mix of chart-aimed pop (John Burness, The Haystack), pop with fuzzy edges (Tim Andrews and Paul Korda, Dave Berry) and occasional heaviness (Plastic Penny). All of which makes for an interesting and enjoyable listen (although Jack London’s ‘Morning’ sounds like something from a Lionel Bart musical!).
Gems include the astoundingly under compiled debut 45 ‘Heart Trouble’ by The Eyes Of Blue. No wonder it commands a £75-100 price tag, all the bounce and verve of a Who influenced mod classic, a slight lilting psych influence in the backing vocal, and you have something to please everyone. Alan Dell (a singer or a band is unknown) kicks off with the four plus minute ‘The Blue Sound Of Love’. Fans of the Mr Toytown Presents compilations will love this – it’s completely out there; formless, yet melodic!
Elsewhere white label unknown Justin’s Timepiece, Eddie Tre-Vett produced The Darlings and Belgian melodic prog popsters Modus Vivendi also please variously with mod pop, English whimsy and keyboard tinkling.
Paul Martin
THE YARDBIRDS
Over Under Sideways Down
Heart Full Of Soul
Both Repertoire CDs
www.repertoirerecords.com
This is almost the original 1966 set called Yardbirds – known as Roger The Engineer – except that this is a reissue of original Canadian release. They’ve rearranged the track order, omitted ‘Jeff’s Boogie’, and tacked on smash hit ‘Shapes Of Things’.
I’ve reviewed the Yardies before here, telling it like it is; one of the most invigorating, intensely thrilling of the R&Beat groups from our little island, pure and simple. This is the Beck-era at its finest, including some of the earliest psychedelic stylings the rock world knew. The pulverizing ‘Lost Woman’ (the original LP has it as ‘Lost Women’), ‘The Nazz Are Blue’ and ‘Rack My Mind’ were the, ahem, yard-stick for loads of American garage combos to stamp harder on their fuzz-boxes, let go and freak out a little more. ‘He’s Always There’ is electrifying, brimming with fine vocal and percussive touches, constantly underpinned by juicy fuzz.
They had that otherness too, the strangely strange (sometimes infused with country and folk influences) fascination with pop experimentalism, exemplified by the likes of ‘I Can’t Make Your Way’, and the curiously life-affirming yet desperately sad ‘Farewell’, governed by Keith Relf’s bleak poetic imagery: “On Sunday back inside my room I draw the blinds, ‘tis afternoon / I let my mind find its own way farewell to future days”.
The Yardbirds Featuring Heart Full Of Soul, For Your Love, My Girl Sloopy And Others. At least that’s what its full title was upon release for a Canadian LP back in the mid-60s! This slightly hotch-potch affair is nevertheless a dynamic collection gathering together a bunch of early single sides, the US LP only cut ‘Putty (In Your Hands)’ plus the three tracks that made up the Five Yardbirds EP.
Their debut, an interpretation of Billy Boy Arnold’s knockout blues ‘I Wish You Would’, kicks things off, Keith Relf’s stellar vocal/harp wail and Paul Samwell-Smith’s bass run the mark of true R&B genius. ‘A Certain Girl’, ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ and another Billy Boy take-off in the form of ‘I Ain’t Got You’ all keep the action moving. Clapton’s lead breaks are, of course, scorching. ‘I’m Not Talkin’’ – with Clapton having given way to Jeff Beck – is another of their excellent rave-up numbers, although the time-shifts are nowhere near as frenzifying or half as death-defying as the interpretation scored a little later by California R&B disciples, The Misunderstood. Sheeeesh!
Digression aside, this is a fine distillation of the group’s most blueswailin’ days and, with ‘For Your Love’ and ‘Heart Full Of Soul’, the beginning of the cross-pollination of influences rippling out from under these super smash Graham Gouldman-penned hits.
Comes with yet another Chris Welch essay wherein a couple of nice group photos are printed on a mini-poster design.
Lenny Helsing
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