Ronald Cooper : Grew up with it and the other bands, Otis Waygood, Abstract Truth, Suck, Hawk. Met them in PMB, Mate of mine Gus , joined up for awhile in...
Geomel : I’m with you on this, Robin, Poor Will is one of RTs finest songs and the guitar solo a veritable controlled storm of magnificence, in fact...
Robinbrevard : Great review overall, but cannot agree with you that “Poor Will” is an inferior bonus track. It was left off Full House at...
I’d be happy to see a uReview for every Byrds record in the discography (excepting Maniax), seeing as they’re one of the house bands around here, but it’s the middle of country season and I wanna hear your honest opinion on this one. Are you all about Sweetheart or did you never quite get it? Is this really the landmark country-rock record (does it even deserve the ‘rock’ tag)? If not this, then what?
The first incarnation of Deep Purple has tended to be ignored until lately, shaded by the
overwhelming success of Mark II which benefited from a homogeneous (and supremely
timely) musical direction and the outstanding talent of Ian Gillan. By contrast Mark I found
itself at a many-sided crossroads; musically the band was pulled in the conflicting directions
of freakbeat, psychedelia, retro-classical and nascent prog-rock, and perversely it enjoyed
unexpected early adulation in the States whilst remaining virtually unknown in its homeland.
Adverse critical comment of Mark I has only recently begun to ease, as the undoubted
attractions of some of the early works become retrospectively appreciated and the works
themselves remastered and reissued.
Even the beginnings of Purple were artificial, the band being conceived by ex-Searchers
drummer Chris Curtis as Roundabout, an ever-changing musicians’ combine, and sponsored
by two London businessmen looking for a purely commercial foothold in the pop market.
The Mark I lineup pulled in diversely-experienced, classically-trained session musicians
Ritchie Blackmore (gtr), Jon Lord (keys) and Ian Paice (drs). Bassist Nick Simper had played
rock’n’roll with Johnny Kidd and Screaming Lord Sutch alongside Blackmore, and vocalist
Rod Evans came with Paice from Mod R’n’B outfit the Maze. A unified direction was unlikely
from the start.
Following the clearly saleable example of Vanilla Fudge, the band developed a set
based largely on grandiose reinterpretations of known hit songs, subjected to Lord’s cod-
classical Hammond interludes, Paice’s jazzy percussion and Blackmore’s unique, manic
style of soloing involving heavy use of his Stratocaster’s whammy bar. The first album, Shades Of Deep Purple, produced an unexpected US hit single with a rollicking cover of
Joe South’s “Hush”. This led rapidly to a second album and a prestigious support slot to
Cream on the latter’s final US tour. Meanwhile, the band couldn’t get arrested at home. The Book Of Taliesyn (pronounced Tal-ee-ess-in) followed the pattern of Shades Of,
expending first-class musicianship over a confusingly diverse mix of styles, most of which
deserves more attention than it’s received. “Listen, Learn, Read On” is tautly-constructed
psychedelia with a semi-recitative vocal extolling the virtues of the tome in the album’s title
(Taliesyn was the bard at King Arthur’s court); Evans’s powerful vocal on this belies one
critic’s description of him as a “supper-club crooner”, although he does display Scott Walker-
ish tendencies on the string-quartet-enhanced ballad “Anthem”. “Kentucky Woman” is a
similarly energetic workout on the modest Neil Diamond tune to the earlier “Hush” which
would again feature in the US singles chart. “Wring That Neck” is a stereo-tastic proto-prog
instrumental in which Lord and Blackmore vie for supremacy; it portends the sound of In
Rock and would remain in the live set for years. Pretentious covers of “We Can Work It Out”
and “River Deep, Mountain High” segue out of equally bombastic classical themes in which
Lord displays the same leanings as Keith Emerson without the outrageous stagecraft; this
is the sort of “pomp-rock” material that’s reduced Mark I in the eyes of its later heavy-metal
acolytes. Perhaps the best track, “Shield”, is a funky, loping offering with an impenetrable
hippie (or possibly sci-fi) lyric, a catchy, almost oriental organ riff, and splendid guitar work
throughout which deserved to be a hit single in its own right.
Home success continued to elude Purple until the collapse of its US label, Tetragrammaton,
forced the band to return home, re-evaluate and regroup. Evans and Simper were fired and
replaced, and the rest is history. The first three albums, however, show that all the required
elements were in place; only the focus was missing. Avoid the earliest CD reissues and go
for the remastered (at Abbey Road) versions with bonus tracks.
Second Hand’s Reality israrely mentioned when collectors compile their lists of best ever UK psych albums. That’s a shame, because Reality is probably better than most of the well-known psych classics.
Second Hand was originally known as The Next Collection, a Clapham/Balham/Streatham group who, early on, were structured around the guitar talents of Bob Gibbons (Gibbons would eventually quit the band due to depression). The Next Collection were heavily influenced by the sounds of the Who, the Creation and the Small Faces, utilizing feedback and charging arrangements in many of their early tunes. The axis of the group would eventually become keyboard player Kenny Elliot and drummer Kieran O’Connor. This group would change their name to the Moving Finger as psychedelia became the new trend and some time later, they’d eventually settle on Second Hand. Early copies of their debut, released in 1968, are in fact credited to the Moving Finger. The group changed their name to Second Hand because another group called the Moving Finger had just released a 45 on Mercury.
Lots of people comment that the album’s one weak point is Kenny Elliot’s vocals. This reviewer feels his vocals fit the music appropriately and do not take anything away from the album’s greatness. Some tracks such as “A Fairy Tale” and “Good Old ‘59″ are appealingly twee while others hit much harder, like the stoner rock of ‘Rhubarb!” There’s lots of mellotron and cool studio tricks throughout Reality. The album’s one certified classic, “The World Will End Yesterday” has swirling backward tapes, crashing drums and heavy guitar – a psych masterpiece! A few of the longer cuts have led some people to unfairly label this disc prog. Reality is pure psychedelia but more experimental and challenging than most. Two sad drug OD songs (“MainLiner” and “The Bath Song”) hit really low, downer moods but are truly brilliant. An album that can be played from beginning to end, without skipping thru any tracks. One of the great unknown LPs from 1968.
Second Hand would issue their second album in 1971. This disc, titled May Death Be Your Santa Claus, is another standout effort from the early progressive era, full of great ideas and eccentric music.
Although The Rising Storm’s principal premise is to play the spotlight on fine obscure albums, it’s fun occasionally to review something well-known from a (hopefully) new personal perspective, so here’s my take, forty-two years on, on Cream’s most uncharacteristic album.
The historical context for Wheels Of Fire needs no repetition here, as Cream’s history is so well documented. Suffice to mention that by the time they began recording it in early 1968 the wheels, so to speak, were already coming off, with a disillusioned Eric Clapton’s original vision of a purist blues trio with himself in the Buddy Guy role just a distant dream, Jack Bruce firmly in the driving seat as both composer and vocalist, and Bruce and Ginger Baker well and truly back at each other’s throats just as they had been in their Graham Bond days. The decision to break up the band had already been taken before the album’s completion, with just contractual live engagements and the makeshift fourth album to fulfil.
Despite all this antipathy the studio component of Wheels is a surprisingly high-quality collection which, as we all know, hit the shelves accompanied by a frankly turgid live set. The studio half – which in most countries was also released as a single album in its own right – is exhilarating proto-progressive rock with the odd bluesy afterthought and some stealthy jazz and classical overtones. Hardcore head-banging blues-rock aficionados may still wince when comparing it to Cream’s earlier studio efforts, and to the extended guitar jams on those songs that continued to make up most of their live set – only “White Room”, “Sitting On Top Of The World” and “Politician” from Wheels ever seeing the stage – but fans of Jack Bruce will acknowledge it as a worthy precursor to his highly successful solo career. What may come as a surprise is that three of the most leftfield numbers weren’t composed by Bruce, though he makes two of them his own both vocally and instrumentally, but by ill-fated British jazz composer and pianist Mike Taylor, with Baker providing the lyrics. Add to this the astonishingly diverse multi-instrumental talents of producer Felix Pappalardi, and you’ve got an engaging musical stew comparable to the Fabs’ White Album in its variation and experimentation.
All the tracks are well-known, but possibly overlooked highlights to listen out for in retrospective plays are Clapton’s eerie, brittle, reverbed guitar sound on “Sitting On Top Of The World”, produced from his single-pickup Gibson Firebird; Bruce’s hypnotic droning cello and modal acoustic guitar on “As You Said”; the instrumental break on “Politician” in which Bruce’s sludgy, rumbling bass underpins no fewer than three overdubbed intertwining guitar lead lines; Pappalardi’s gorgeous baroque trumpet figures which rescue the weakest track, Baker’s recitative “Pressed Rat And Warthog”, from mediocrity; and the splendid tuned percussion by Baker and Pappalardi on the sinuous, shifting “Those Were The Days”. Bruce’s near-operatic vocals on this album were among the best of his career.
I guess the live set should be mentioned in passing. Only the crisp, driving four minutes of “Crossroads” makes the grade, with Bruce’s tedious harmonica exposition “Traintime” and Baker’s formless sixteen-minute drum solo on “Toad” being of interest only to completists. (IMHO, the only rock drummer ever to warrant a solo is Jon Hiseman.) Oh, and for those wondering what a tonette is, as credited to Pappalardi on “Pressed Rat”, it’s a cheap plastic recorder-like instrument commonly used in elementary schools. It took me forty-two years to find that out: thanks, Wikipedia.
I bought this album after reading the story of Gary Walker & the Rain in Shindig! magazine; it’s as entertaining a tale as any such from the late sixties. The Rain’s reign was brief, but they left behind a genuine “lost” album which has only recently seen the light of day outside Japan and which will come as a pleasant surprise to aficionados of Brit psych.
Gary Leeds was only ever a third wheel to the Walker Brothers, a non-singing drummer thumping the tubs on live dates and TV appearances and providing a further piece of eye candy for the photo shoots. However, such was the impact of the Walkers in Europe and Japan that, when the trio folded, Gary was easily convinced by conniving manager Maurice King to put together a new band in England on the basis of his kudos as a former Walker. He was fortunate enough to recruit two capable Merseybeat veterans, Joey Molland (vocal, lead gtr) and Paul “Charlie” Crane (vocal, keys, gtr), plus reliable London bassist John Lawson. Allegedly Molland’s interview ran thus. Leeds: “You look like Paul McCartney. Can you sing like him?” Molland: “Yes”. L: “Can you play guitar like Eric Clapton?” M: “Yes”. L: “You’re in.” Serendipitously, he really could do both, besides proving an adept songwriter. Lawson got the job on the basis of his Gene Clark-like good looks and his orange jacket and purple loons; such are the vagaries of rock showbiz. Unashamedly cashing in on Leeds’s celebrity, the outfit would be known as Gary Walker and the Rain.
The band’s recording career kicked off with a passable cover of “Spooky” that failed to show in the UK or America but sold well in Japan, where the Walkers had belatedly achieved godlike status. On the basis of this UK Polydor permitted them to record an album, but then inexplicably refused to release it. Only in Japan, where the band’s local label, Philips, was crying out for further product, did it hit the shelves; its title there was Album No. 1, which follows a Japanese penchant for such unambiguous nomenclature whilst appearing pretty humdrum to Western sensibilities. On the ensuing tour of Japan the band were mobbed by teenage girls, with the lion’s share of the attention going to the drum-stool god rather than to the talented but unknown front line. Sadly, Beat Era heroes were less in vogue in the UK by 1968; the gigs dried up, two subsequent single releases tanked, and the band called it a day just a year after coming together. Molland went on to be a cornerstone of Badfinger, while Crane became a noted music publisher. Leeds enjoyed a brief renaissance when the Walkers reunited in the mid-70s.
The album itself proves gratifyingly to be a distinctive pop-psych set falling somewhere between a pre-Tommy Who, an un-flanged early Status Quo and a nascent Badfinger. The slightly hazy production was by ex-Four Pennies bassist Fritz Fryer, who enlisted much inventive studio trickery to enhance the uncompromisingly basic eight-track recording facilities. The leadoff track “Magazine Woman” sets out the stall, with choppy rhythm, stun-gun lead guitar, delightful rough-edged harmonies and “Taxman” rip-off bassline. The ensuing tracks move from late Merseybeat through freakbeat to proto-metal, some played straight, others psychedelically treated. Notable are “Thoughts Of An Old Man”, distinctly Pepper-ish musically and lyrically; “Francis”, a crunchy, stereo-tastic garage rocker chronicling the adventures of an elderly philanderer; and a totally wigged-out cover of Lieber and Stoller’s venerable “If You Don’t Come Back” in best Jeff Beck Band style with thudding backing and shards of barely controlled guitar feedback. The original album closes with two ballads: the harpsichord-driven pop-baroque “I Promise To Love You” and the gentle countrified acoustic “Whatever Happened to Happy”.
The album finally hit the Western World as a CD in 2009, boosted by the band’s sole post-album track and both sides of a single recorded earlier by Gary with some Japanese musicians styled the Carnabeats. The B-side of this is unselfconsciously wet-yourself hilarious. Why? I ain’t telling; you’ll have to get the album to find out.
With the notable exception of the Zakary Thaks (both groups shared a similar sound and influence), the Liberty Bell were probably Corpus Christi’s top rock n roll group. They were talented musicians who wrote fine, original material and played with a conviction and skill that most lack. While the Liberty Bell never recorded an album, they released 5 excellent singles on the J-Beck and Back Beat labels. Back in the mid 90’s, Collectables issued a good compilation collecting all their singles and a couple of outtakes, titled Reality Is The Only Answer. The sound quality and liner notes are iffy but the music is fine if underappreciated garage/psych. Also, if you look hard enough, Reality Is The Only Answer can still be found for under $10.
The group started out life in Corpus Christi, Texas as the Zulus. Upon manager/record label owner Carl Becker’s suggestion, they changed their name to the Liberty Bell. Their first single (J-Beck) was released in 1967 – a rocking cover of the Yardbirds’ “The Nazz Are Blue.” The flip side was a fine, fuzzy take on ”Big Boss Man.” This single met with some local success prompting Becker to release their second 45, “For What You Lack/That’s How It Will Be.” Both sides of this 45, also released in 1967, are pounding slabs of prime garage punk that should have put the Liberty Bell on the map. All the ingredients were there too, attitude, lots of fuzz guitar and an overpowering energy but no success. Another track cut at the same session, “I Can See,” is a brash garage number that’s worth a spin as well. Amazingly, these 3 songs were cut on one of the first eight-track machines available in the U.S. Their third J-Beck single was a solid blues number (“Al’s Blues”) with strong guitar work. This track was backed by another good garage pop number that probably should have been the A-side, titled “Something For Me.”
In 1968 the Liberty Bell added ex-Zakary Thaks lead singer Chris Gerniottis to the fold. That spring they went into the studio to record some tracks that would never be released. “Reality Is The Only Answer,” written by Chris, is perhaps the group’s finest moment. A scintillating acid punker, this cut features ferocious Keith Moon-like drumming and creative psych guitar effects – it’s explosive. That summer the group forged on, releasing “Thoughts and Visions” and “Look For Tomorrow.” These cuts were solid psych numbers with diverse influences ranging from the Small Faces to the Jefferson Airplane. The Liberty Bell closed the year out with “Naw, Naw, Naw” and the superb fuzz laden psych B-side “Recognition.”
Not exactly a “lost” album, Tomorrow’s solitary collection has been readily available on CD since its major label reissue in 1999. And quite rightly so; this is a splendid retro package for psychedelia fans. The original album covers all the bases, from whimsy to cod-oriental to acid-rock, in tremendous style. The leadoff track “My White Bicycle”, originally issued as the preliminary single to the album, is a recognised psych classic and has been widely anthologised. Also included are five outttakes and alternative versions from the original sessions, plus some interesting hard-to-find tracks from each of the band’s two short-lived offshoots.
Tomorrow, like numerous other Brit psych outfits, came about when an established R’n’B group, the In Crowd, changed their name and musical direction to surf the psychedelic upheaval of late 1966. Signed to EMI but failing to click with Pink Floyd producer Norman Smith, they were handed to his colleague Mark P Wirtz, which proved both a blessing and a curse. Wirtz was a brilliant, willingly experimental producer, arranger and composer, but he also had an obsessive pet project, A Teenage Opera, which was doomed to become a legendary unfinished work comparable to Smile. Diversion to the Opera of the efforts of guitarist Steve Howe, who owed Wirtz favours from earlier session work, and singer Keith West, whom he lured with an offer to act as both vocalist and lyricist, plus the band’s own hectic live dates list and their discovery of LSD, meant that Tomorrow’s recording schedule for their own album became patchy and extended.
You wouldn’t know this from the music, which is somehow both wildly eclectic and reassuringly homogeneous. “My White Bicycle”, inspired by the community white bicycle scheme in 1960s Amsterdam, is a definitive acid-psych cut laced with backwards guitar, found sound effects and other studio trickery. “Real Life Permanent Dream” is a sitar-driven raga-rock opus with suitably lysergic lyrics, while “Revolution” veers crazily through a whirlwind of spoken word passages, riffs and time signatures. On the whimsical side, the delightful musical pen-portraits “Auntie Mary’s Dress Shop”, “Colonel Brown” and “Shy Boy” were originally intended for the Teenage Opera. (“Shy Boy” was later covered as a single by Kippington Lodge, who eventually morphed into Brinsley Schwarz.) Only the chemically-induced silliness of “Three Jolly Little Dwarves” and the superfluous, though solid, cover of “Strawberry Fields Forever” conspire to mar the original eleven-track release’s brilliance. Howe’s playing throughout is exemplary while West’s deadpan whacked-out vocal is perfect for these songs and this genre.
Tomorrow didn’t see release until early 1968, after an unsupportive EMI finally called time on the Opera. By then the psychedelic honeymoon had largely passed and the album failed to sell. The jaded band promptly split; drummer John “Twink” Alder and bassist John “Junior” Wood recorded a handful of totally wigged-out originals as The Aquarian Age with Wirtz providing keyboards, while West and Howe called in Ronnie Wood and Aynsley Dunbar, no less, on bass and drums and cut a few tracks in a more mainstream pop-rock direction under West’s name. When neither project grabbed the public’s imagination, Twink went on to rattle the traps for the Pink Fairies, whilst Howe eventually surfaced in an obscure little prog-rock outfit called Yes.
This Youngstown, Ohio band hit pay dirt in 1967 with their version of the Isley Brothers’ classic “Nobody But Me.” The group featured Mel Pachuta (bass guitar), Ting Markulin (rhythm guitar), Mike Tatman (drummer) and Richard Belley (lead guitar). Prior to Evolutions the group had released a split LP with the Mammals and a legit 1967 debut followup titled Nobody But Me.
Most of the Evolutions material was penned by producer Lex De DeAzevedo. While the album is a bit self-indulgent in spots, overall it’s a very classy garage psych platter; a wreckless landmark for the genre. Only the mellotron speckled pop number ”Mrs Applebee” sounds dated today. The fuzz guitar instro “April 15th” and country-rocker ”Two Of A Kind” are over the top psychedelic madness but in the best possible way. The last few minutes of “Two Of A Kind” are devoted to the group destroying a piano in-house. The rest of the lp is given over to short compact folk-rock numbers, psychedelic pop, and menacing garage punkers.
Evolutions opens with “The Face,” an excellent psych pop track with production values (strings, horns, harpsichord and lots of fuzz) that are a good deal more sophisticated than the typical Human Beinz outing. This cut sets the tone for the lp nicely and features a smooth mixture of acoustic and electric guitar textures. The mellow numbers, “Close Your Eyes” and “Cement,” are solid folk-rock cuts that hint at a softer, introspective side. “My Animal,”"I’ve Got To Keep On Pushing,” and “Every Time Woman,” are worthy gems that give lead guitarist Richard Belley ample breathing room to stretch out and produce some wicked fuzztone solos. “Every Time Woman” along with Nobody But Me’s “Flower Grave”, may be the group’s finest moment on vinyl. This cut features blasts of lacerating fuzz guitar and neurotic punk vocals. Behind Belley’s fab fuzz work are the Beinz locked-in rhythm section, who whip up a storm here. Out of control and unhinged, this performance is one of the all-time garage punk classics – mandatory listening. Evolutions is a long way from the Human Beinz frat rock, soul influenced origins. Listening to sounds from within and taking a quick glance at the album’s fine cover art should tell you these guys were no longer fooling around. It’s a great album by an underrated band.
Evolutions has been reissued on cd several times (Ascension and Collectables Records are the best versions) and is relatively easy to score on vinyl.
“Every Time Woman”
CD Reissue | 2006 | Collectables | 2fer w/ Nobody But Me | at amazon ] Original Vinyl | 1968 | Capitol | search ebay ]
Posted by Jason |
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 | Comments (1)
Minnesotan, Michael Yonkers recorded his Microminiature Love album in 1968, using an idiosyncratic approach to capture an assembly of original songs. The results are heavy! He and his group (The Michael Yonkers Band, featuring bassist Tom Wallfred & drummer/brother Jim Yunker) unleashed a new and original sound for these recordings – driven by raw alternate guitar tunings, heavy drums, mucho tape delay, unique vocal stylings & homemade electronics. The production is only part of the picture, however – the songs display original craftsmanship and are fueled by dynamic energies, pushing and pulling to high degrees. This album is built to reveal a true (& slightly dark) world inside; each new moment can draw you in deeper & it never really relents. Remarkably, the entire album was recorded in only one hour at Dove Studios in Minneapolis. Even more remarkable, perhaps, the record was not released for nearly 35 years.
Why this record went unreleased for so long is something of a mystery. Sire Records initially expressed interest in releasing it, but (according to MY, as revealed in Iker Spozio’s interview from the excellent MORNING #2 magazine) they wanted Yonkers to move to New York City and re-record the material with studio musicians, something Yonkers wasn’t ready to do. Local label Candyfloss Productions (who had recently released the excellent Trip Thru Hell LP by another MN act, C. A. Quintet) also reportedly expressed interest. Further complicating matters, Michael was still in college at the time & legally unable to sign his own record contract.
Thanks to Clint Simonson & Di Stijl records, the LP was finally released in 2002 as it was intended – seven tracks on vinyl. Sub Pop followed up with a CD release in 2003 that included 6 bonus tracks – all of which sound as if they were recorded at the same 1968 studio sessions (though they were home recorded the following year). Sub Pop did an excellent job selecting & mastering these extra tracks to fit the feel of MML.
A powerful record & one-of-a-kind.
“My House”
CD Reissue | 2003 |Sub Pop | at amazon ] Vinyl Reissue | 2002 |De Stijl | search ebay ]
Posted by Kenneth |
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | Comments (8)
The historical importance of this unassuming album can’t be overstated. It was the first rock sampler album I ever saw or heard, and almost certainly the first such ever released here in the UK. It was in fact the first time I saw the actual term “rock” used to describe the music at all; previously the successive labels “underground” and “progressive” had been coined to cover the diverging (from “pop”) stream of album-based, art-for-art’s-sake music that had started with Dylan and Hendrix. It was the new music’s first budget release; at a time when the standard price of an album was 32/6 (about £1.63), this cost 14/6 (about 73p), just within the average teenager’s weekly pocket-money allocation. And it would spawn a whole new sub-genre of record releases peculiar to, and essential to, progressive rock: the cult of the sampler.
What came over then, and still impresses today, is the sheer quality of this dip into the CBS catalogue of 1969. Each track can be seen to have been carefully cherrypicked from its parent album, no sample being so leftfield as to frighten off the listener, though nobody venturing further into any of the represented albums would have been disappointed. Yet the overall diversity of the collection is astonishing, both in terms of styles and artists, in a way befitting progressive music. Practitioners of jazz-rock, country-rock, folk-rock, blues-rock, psychedelia and simple honest weirdness are all represented, whilst the acts featured include established big-hitters (Dylan, the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel), contemporary heroes whose days were numbered (the Zombies, Moby Grape, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Tim Rose), newcomers who would fall at the first hurdle (the United States Of America, the Electric Flag, Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera) and up-and-coming artists who would go on to found dynasties (Leonard Cohen, Spirit, Blood Sweat & Tears, Roy Harper, Taj Mahal).
Two tracks above all left their mark on me. The Electric Flag’s “Killing Floor” induced me to purchase their album straightaway; this powerful number remains my favourite blues-rock AND jazz-rock performance of all time, with Mike Bloomfield on cloud nine and brass work to die for, the standout track from a solid album. By contrast, despite taking a perverse delight in “I Won’t Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar” I somehow didn’t get round to buying the United States Of America’s sole album until 2008, when a book review of it rearoused my interest. This erotically engaging ditty with its homely brassband coda merely hints at the trippy weirdness of its fellow tracks – one to grow into over forty years, obviously.
A steady stream of samplers followed as prog-rock blossomed, including the best of the lot: CBS’s double from 1970, Fill Your Head With Rock. Samplers were considered disposable, and originals are now quite rare and collectable (sadly, I disposed of all mine many years ago when thinning the collection). Whilst retrospectively compiled anthologies covering the whole life of a label are nowadays commonplace, original samplers with their snapshot of a moment in prog-rock’s history are not. The Rock Machine Turns You On is the only sampler ever to be reissued on CD in its original form – and that sadly minus Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair / Canticle”, probably due to some momentary petulance on Paul Simon’s part. It came out in 1996 and is now a rarity in its own right, never having been re-released. Judging by the clamour on Amazon, Sony could do a lot worse than reissue The Rock Machine Turns You On and Fill Your Head With Rock in their original forms, although licencing problems mean they probably won’t.
You could say Timebox got a pretty fair deal out of life when compared to other bands we feature here in these pages. They had a top 40 hit with the Four Seasons’ “Beggin’,” are represented by two terrific cd reissues and their story has been told countless times by all the serious rock n roll magazines/fanzines (Record Collector, Mojo, Shindig, and Ugly Things). Timebox’s roots lay in the Take 5, a group who came from Southport, England (near Liverpool) and featured talented drummer/guitarist/vibraphonist Peter (Ollie) Halsall.
The group’s classic lineup didn’t really stabilize until early 1968. By that time Timebox looked something like this: Mike Patto (lead vocals), Ollie Halsall (guitar, vibes and vocals), Chris Holmes (keyboards), Clive Griffiths (bass), and John Halsey (drums). Prior to these personnel shifts Timbox had released three 45s in 1967. Piccadilly issued the first two 45s which were largely instrumental efforts but in the cheerful Swingin’ London style. The A-side of the first 45, ”I’ll Always Love You,” was an excellent pop-soul number, similar in style to the early Action or Small Faces – in other words real mod pop. In late 67 the group switched over to Deram and released one of the jewels in their crown, a superb cover of Tim Hardin’s “Don’t Make Promises” backed by the soulful acid pop of “Walking Through The Streets Of My Mind.” Timebox’s version of “Don’t Make Promises” was rather special in that Ollie Halsall played sitar and vibes; the song was dramatically rehauled into something imaginative. The next single was Timebox’s run at the big time. “Beggin’” topped out at 38, their highest chart entry by some distance but it was again, a great remake of the Four Seasons classic.
By this time the Patto/Halsall songwriting partnership had began to solidify into something productive. The group began crafting records that were both experimental but also radio friendly. Timebox needed a hit 45 for survival. Their next Deram release was a baroque soul pop number titled “Girl, Don’t Make Me Wait.” While this track was respectable enough, it was the brilliant, swirling psychedelia of the B-side that caught my attention most. “Gone Is The Sad Man” is comparable to a really good track off the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour: dense, tripped out psych rock. This single stiffed as did Timebox’s next two Deram releases. The best of these were “Baked Jam Roll In Your Eye/Poor Little Heartbreaker.” The A-side was another slice of skewed psychedelia that recounts the tale of two dozen martians who are led by Galloping Klaus (a German martian?). It’s flip side edged comfortably toward classic rock and is a fine slice of metallic angst.
After so many failures Timebox finally broke up around 1969/1970. Out of the ashes of Timebox came Patto, the great progressive rock outfit formed by Mike Patto and Ollie Halsall. Timebox is usually remembered as a table setter for Patto, who would release 3 classic progressive LPs in the early 70s. RPM’s Beggin’ (2008)collects all Timebox’s 45s (including a rare French release) and much of the Moose On The Loose sessions. These sessions were recorded in 1968/1969 for what would have been a projected Timebox album. The group recorded about a dozen tracks at Morgan Studios in Willesden. Decca heard the results and hated it. They pulled out, leaving this unheard gem in the vaults for many years. To my ears Moose On The Loose would have been a fascinating album, close in sound to Traffic’s self-titled 2nd LP. There’s catchy psych pop (“Promises,” “Tree House,” and “Barnabus Swine”), effective Traffic-like forays into roots rock (“Love The Girl,” “Country Dan and City Lil,” and “Stay There”) and blazing hard rock (“Black Dog”) that point to the future direction Patto and Halsall would take with their progressive outfit. These recordings highlight Patto’s soulful vocal approach and Ollie Halsall’s wizardry on guitar and vibes . The Moose On The Loose tracks deliver the goods and prove once and for all that Timebox was one of England’s great lost pop groups.
(56 votes, average: 8.30 out of 10)
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CD Reissue | 2003 | Sony | amazon ]
Original Vinyl | 1968 | Columbia | ebay ]
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