DAVE DEE, DOZY, BEAKY, MICK & TICH
The BBC Sessions
BR Music 2-CD
www.brmusictwo.com
Most of you good Shindiggers will already know that Dave and the boys were more than just a crazy name wearing crazy clothes. Under Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley’s guidance they recorded 13 hits in varying styles. All are featured among the 54 tracks on offer here, alongside post-split Dave Dee solo and DBM&T efforts as well as sundry album tracks and B-sides, including ‘The Sun Goes Down’ and ‘Frustration’ – successful attempts at psych and garage respectively.
As is often the case with this type of collection, the covers provide clues as to what the band really wanted. Here they include songs by Tim Hardin, Jagger/Richard, Marriott/Lane and Stephen Stills, as well as a storming version of ‘Mr Soul’ – pretty hip for a provincial pop act!
DDDBMT are often given short shrift by pop historians – but isn’t it time they had the benefit of a serious reappraisal? I mean, if it’s good enough for The Troggs...
Richard Nash
CHRIS FARLOWE
14 Things To Think About
Repetoire CD
www.repetoirerecords.com
British R&B just doesn’t get more animated than ‘Think’, Chris Farlowe’s 1966 hit single and the opening gambit on 14 Things To Think About, originally released on Immediate that same year.
Farlowe knows his niche as a soulful, gritty shouter and generally sticks to it. What the album lacks in originality of material, since most of the songs Farlowe tackles are well known in other versions, it makes up for in Farlowe’s energetic joie de vivre. His roots in skiffle music, a musical genre that was punker in spirit than punk itself, really bleed through in his willingness to adapt any sound to his raw technique.
The album is enhanced well by the reissue packaging – a lovely digipack, a massive 12 bonus tracks of single and EP tracks (including his ferociously good cover of the Lee Hazlewood song ‘The Fool’) and a detailed booklet.
Jeanette Leech
HUMBLE PIE
As Safe As Yesterday Is
Repertoire CD
www.repertoirerecords.com
When the Pie’s American manager Dee Anthony suggested that they shitcan the meandering acid acoustica and concentrate on rocking like primates instead, he simultaneously assured them of Stateside immortality and slammed the door on albums like this one – more’s the pity.
As Safe As Yesterday Is, the pleasingly unfocused 1969 Immediate label debut from this Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton-fronted supergroup, is at its most engaging on the Traffic-style bucolic country-soul wig-outs of the title track, ‘Growing Closer’, ‘What You Will’ and the nodding sitar and tabla coda of ‘Alabama ’69’, while ‘I’ll Go Alone’ sounds like Frampton attempting – with surprising success – to rewrite ‘Tin Soldier’.
It all serves to underscore what a waste it was when they cut their losses and set sail once and for all to boogie wonderland. There was so much more to them back in the day.
Marco Rossi
THE LATE
Songs From The Family Tree
Wooden Hill CD
www.tenthplanet-woodenhill.co.uk
Do you remember Unicorn? Early to mid-70s soft rockers of this parish, latterly produced by David Gilmour? Here they are in embryonic form as The Late – previously The Late Edition, and The Pink Bears previous even to that.
Their love of close harmony pop, and their natural aptitude for same, is explicit straight from the off: but their abilities, compositional clout and indeed the overall recording quality take a quantum leap from 1968’s ‘Train Coming My Way’ onwards, with a classy clutch of Ken Baker songs recorded in Bob Potter Studios – the pinnacle of Mytchett technocracy.
Songs such as ‘Going Back Home’, ‘Doris’ and ‘Working Man’ boast beautifully judged, featherweight performances, pealing three-part harmonies and a sureness of touch which renders their obscurity inexplicable.
In ’68, The Hollies would have nutted everyone out of the way for material as strong as this.
Marco Rossi
ONE WAY TICKET
Time is Right
Guerssen LP
www.guerssen.com
One Way Ticket was an attributed name for the blink and you’ve missed it album by engineers and producers Brian Carroll and Damon Lyon-Shaw, famously involved with Factory and Five Day Rain. This ten-track album features their own songs at IBC studios where they worked (www.ibcstudio.co.uk/ onewayindex.html).
Recorded in the late 1960s, the album only appeared briefly (on President) in ’78. This is a sublime and all too short set of great songs, many of which could have been singles.
Stylistically the songs range from pop rock (‘Lusty Eyes’, ‘Take A Ride’) to songs that would have fitted well on the first Tin Tin album. ‘Reason’s Why’ with its treated vocal is a Five Day Rain track in all but name whilst the drone-like ‘Fall Out’ is a delightful psych rock pleaser. Overall this is a joy, grab it quick!
Paul Martin
THE SWINGING BLUE JEANS
Good Golly Miss Molly: The EMI Years 1963-1969
EMI 4 CD box set
I always thought The Swinging Blue Jeans were one of the most undervalued of the ’60s Mersey combos. OK, so they didn’t come on too wild compared to other more exhibitionist groups, and with their neat suited and booted image and not too long hair. But let it be known to all that these guys produced some marvellous and rocking tunes as this set readily demonstrates.
Take the tough pop-beat stance of ’66 B-side ‘What Can I Do Today’ for example: stylish vocalising married to cool reverberating twang action that will have you demanding more. Further testament of their power and versatility comes from such earlier efforts as ‘Ol’ Man Mose’, the great hit version of Chan Romero’s ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’, and ‘I’m Gonna Have You’. Another absolute killer single cut from ’65 was ‘Make Me Know You’re Mine’; think Johnny Kidd & The Pirates in a head-on collision with that early West Coast rock sound.
Their later period spawned the sublime soft psych-styled beauty ‘Sandfly’ too, recorded under the shortened Bluejeans monicker, and thankfully this is also included. A raft of unissued material is on offer too, including a fine stab at The Pete Best Combo’s ‘Anyway’ – also covered in the mid ’80s by The Lyres.
Lenny Helsing |
