Shindig! #166 – Skin Alley

SKIN ALLEY’s third album TWO QUID DEAL? mixes relaxed hippy sentiments with strident, funky rock and prog – a winning formula, perfectly attuned to the festivals of the day.

JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS meets multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Nick Graham on the road to and from that defining statement

Skin Alley were quickly ushered into Rockfield in Wales to re-record the songs. Once again, management company Clearwater’s Fritz Fryer stepped into the producer’s chair. “We had played most of those songs live many times by then,” adds Graham about the sessions, “so they were definitely slicker and better thought out. Fritz was a lovely person and very tolerant of our foibles. We pretty much just played what we had and then left him to mix it. Rockfield had just gone to 16-track. However, there was a completely different sound in the room compared to Trident, and it was relatively primitive compared to the acoustically designed space they had offered. Not that either was better – they=were just different.”

The recordings were packaged together as Two Quid Deal? and released in November 1972 on Transatlanic.

“The artwork and title were a direct reflection of the times we were living in,” band leader Krzysztof Henryk Juszkiewicz told It’s Psychedelic Baby. “‘Two Q__uid’ (pounds) was the average price of an album. It was also the price of a weekend’s worth of hash. The morsel of cheese the mouse is holding thus has a double meaning.” “We all thought the mouse (nicknamed ‘Right On Rodent’) was a bit of a laugh,” concedes Graham, “but it certainly made for a striking album cover. We had a huge 10-foot wooden replica of that mouse which we carried around on gigs for a few weeks, but it deteriorated quickly, and the road crew soon got fed up with loading it in the van.”

When asked about Skin Alley’s inspirations, Graham states that it was very much the American acts of the era. “We were all blown away by The Band, their second album in particular – you can hear that influence in the piano parts I came up with for the arrangement of ‘Sun Music’ and the whole of ‘Graveyard Shuffie’.” ‘Skin Valley Serenade’ is far more progressive, somewhat in the mould of Caravan. “I think Bob James was a better flautist than me but what you hear on the album is a selection of work from both of us. Bob also played saxophone and guitar. ‘Skin Valley Serenade’ is a flute duet featuring both of us. Who knew you could have two flautists in one rock band?” he laughs. “‘The Demagogue’ is a great groove and lyrically still has huge relevance in today’s political climate. When the album came out, my favourite was ‘Bad Words And Evil People’ and that was also the track that Stax chose to release as a single in the US.”

To read all of this article  you can order Shindig! #166 here