John's Children - Orgasm (1970)

When I first discovered the MVSEP app, which could split out stems from music audio, and even remove crowd noise from a live recording, one of the first albums that I wanted to run through it was 'Orgasm' by John's Children. The story of this album is fairly well-known, and is one of the many gimmicks instigated by legendary manager Simon Napier-Bell. After witnessing the band live, and commenting that they were positively the worst group that he'd ever seen, he nevertheless offered to manage them, changing their name in the process from The Silence to John's Children. A group of session musicians then went into the studio and recorded John's Children's first single, 'The Love I Thought I'd Found' b/w 'Strange Affair', which was released in 1966. The original title of the A-side was 'Smashed Blocked', but a name change was necessitated at home because it was deemed offensive. For some reason the single found a receptive audience in Florida and California, where it was released under its original title, and so in 1967, John’s Children released their second single, 'Just What You Want – Just What You’ll Get' b/w 'But You’re Mine', which was also recorded by session musicians, and which features a guitar solo by Jeff Beck on the flip. This single fared better than its predecessor, and after the cancellation of a third single, 'Not The Sort Of Girl (You’d Like To Take To Bed)', their American label, White Whale Records, requested a full-length album. Napier-Bell presented them with 'Orgasm', which kicks off with the shrill screams of young female fans, and after someone pleads with the audience to stop screaming, the band launch into 'Killer Ben', which only elicits louder screaming. 

The album was, in fact, recorded in a studio, and the audience screams were borrowed from the soundtrack to The Beatles' 'A Hard Day’s Night'. Napier-Bell's idea was to present a live album to show the US just how popular the band were in the UK, but he over-did the addition of the fake crowd, and most of the music is buried under a cacophony of noise. Somehow the Daughters of the American Revolution, a patriotic US women's group, heard about the planned release of the record, and objected to its title, delaying its release until 1970. My first attempt at removing the crowd noise was not a success, as it was so deeply embedded into the music, but by splitting out the original stems, some of the crowd was left behind, and so I could then piece it back together and actually hear what the songs sounded like. Having now heard the best versions that we'll find of the music of John's Children, I can only agree with Napier-Bell's original assessment of them, as this is a very ordinary album, with nothing really original on display, and the vocals do let it down. The best tracks were remakes of some of the songs that they released as singles, and the original recordings do show them in a much better light, and so I would say that the 'Strange Affair' album that I posted a while ago is a much better representation of the group. There is one one really interesting song on here, however, and that is 'Let Me Know', which is The Clash's 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' recorded 15 years before they wrote it.      

Track listing

01 Killer Ben
02 Jagged Time Lapse
03 Smashed Blocked
04 You're A Nothing
05 Not The Sort Of Girl
06 Cold On Me
07 Leave Me Alone
08 Let Me Know
09 Just What You Want
10 Why Do You Lie

Having listened to my 'Strange Affair' post while editing this one, I realised how out of place 'Hippy Gumbo' sounded, being Marc Bolan's only lead vocal on the album, and so as it was long enough to stand some editing I've decided to remove that song from the track listing. If you've already downloaded it then do the same and see what you think.