Mike Stuart Span - Concerto Of Thoughts (1968)

Mike Stuart Span evolved out of the Brighton-based group The Mighty Atoms, which included vocalist Stuart Hobday and bassist Roger McCabe. By 1965, Hobday's early attempts at song-writing had secured a publishing contract with Lorna Music, and the Mike Stuart Span - a name created by reversing the singer's Christian names - was formed, with the addition of Nigel Langham on guitar, Ashley Potter on organ  and a teenage drummer Gary 'Roscoe' Murphy. A liaison with local promoter Mike Clayton resulted in the replacement of Potter with Jon Poulter, and the addition of a four piece horn section. For economy this was soon reduced to two (Gary Parsley on trumpet and Dave Plumb on saxophone) as the band concentrated their efforts on American-derived soul music. The band secured a recording contract with EMI, after recording the Hobday penned 'Work-Out', coupled with a cover of The Drifters' 'Follow Me', but it was another Drifters number, 'Come On Over To Our Place' that was selected as the A-side for the band's debut Columbia single in November 1966. A second single followed in June 1967, with their cover of Cat Stevens 'Dear' being backed by Mike d'Abo's 'Invitation', but it was as unsuccessful as their debut, and EMI dropped the band. 

This forced the band to dismiss the horn section, with keyboardist Poulter also departing shortly afterwards, and after recruiting guitarist Brian Bennett through an ad in Melody Maker, the revitalised band paid more attention to the importance of studio work, starting with an October 1967 session at Decca Records with Dave Paramor, who had produced their EMI singles. Three tracks were recorded, including the instrumental 'As Close As We Can Get It', which titled after Paramor's insistence that the track should last two and a half minutes, but it actually only ran for 2 minutes 28 seconds. However, Decca decided that the recordings were insufficiently commercial, declining to sign the band, and so without record company support, the group took matters into their own hands, and privately funded a single that appeared in February 1968 on the Jewel label – a new Melodisc subsidiary run by Emil Shallit. The two tracks were recorded at R.G. Jones studio in Morden, and 500 copies of 'Children Of Tomorrow'/'Concerto Of Thoughts' were pressed, making it one of the most sought-after psychedelic 45's. Publicity both at home and abroad brought a cameo appearance in the film, 'Better A Widow', as well as successful tours of Germany and Belgium, and a support appearance with Cream in the UK. Following a session for the John Peel's Top Gear programme in May 1968, the band was chosen to feature in documentary film-maker Paul Watson's BBC TV series 'A Year In The Life'. 

The episode charted the band's progress over twelve months, and along the way they dismissed their manager and, thanks to a series of demo recordings reaching Clive Selwood, who was head of the UK branch of Elektra Records, the group was signed to the label early in 1969. In the United States, label boss Jac Holzman immediately commissioned an album, but insisted on a change of name for the group, and so they re-christened themselves Leviathan, and Elektra launched their recording career in April 1969, with the simultaneous issue of two singles. Three of the chosen tracks, 'Remember The Times', 'Second Production' and 'Time', had initially been conceived as Mike Stuart Span recordings, with the newly composed 'The War Machine' completing the quartet, and despite the commercial failure of both singles, work continued on the band's album at Trident Studios. One further old Mike Stuart Span track, 'Flames', was recorded as a single in the summer of 1969, although by the time that it surfaced in October Leviathan had split up. Although Mike Stuart Span recycled much of their unreleased material for the Leviathan project, the original recordings by the group have since surfaced, and if Elektra had allowed them to release an album under their original name then it could have sounded very much like this.   

Track listing

01 World In My Head
02 Flames
03 Concerto Of Thoughts
04 Baubles And Bangles
05 Children Of Tomorrow
06 Second Production
07 Time
08 Blue Day
09 Can You Understand Me
10 Remember The Times

Screaming Lord Sutch - Jack The Ripper (1966)

David Edward Sutch was born in Kilburn, London, in 1940, losing his policeman father in the Blitz when he was only 10 months old. Being brought up by a devoted and resourceful mother, he left school at 15, running a window-cleaning business for several years before being bitten by the rock'n'roll bug in the late Fifties. Influenced by Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard at the Two I's coffee bar in Soho, but wanting to go even further, he formed the Raving Savages in 1960, and adopted the name Screaming Lord Sutch. In fact, most of his hollering-horror act was stolen lock, stock and barrel from Screamin' Jay Hawkins, the American creator of 'I Put A Spell On You', right down to the entrance out of a coffin, though he replaced the voodoo mumbo-jumbo of Hawkins with very British Jack-the-Ripper references. Plagiarism notwithstanding, the Savages act, complete with axes and skulls, cage and loincloth, caused a storm on the London circuit, and came to the attention of the producer Joe Meek, who hooked up with Sutch and, the following year, produced ''Til The Following Night', which was released on the HMV label in 1961, backed with a rollocking version of Little Richard's 'Good Golly Miss Molly'. As their peak, The Savages included Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Nick Simper on bass, and Nicky Hopkins or Freddie "Fingers" Lee on piano, alongside founding member Carlo Little on drums, but even though the Savages toured extensively in Britain and continental Europe, the music was always secondary to Sutch's stunts. During 'Jack the Ripper', the singer would stab the hapless pianists Hopkins or Lee (dressed as a prostitute) before flinging heart and liver (bought from the butchers) into the audience. 

Frustrated at the lack of airplay for novelty titles such as 'She's Fallen In Love With The Monster Man', 'Monster In Black Tights' and 'Dracula's Daughter', Sutch decided to launch another attack on the media, and in 1963, taking advantage of John Profumo's resignation, he stood for the National Teenage Party in the subsequent by- election in Stratford-upon-Avon. He only won 209 votes and lost the first of many deposits, but a pattern was set for the next 35 years as Sutch and the Monster Raving Loony Party became a feature of every British election. On one US trip, Sutch had claimed to be "the sixth Earl of Harrow", and he eventually added the "Lord" to his name by deed poll in 1977. In 1969 he gathered together an impressive line-up to record his debut album, including Jimmy Page (who also produced the album) and John Bonham, guitarist Jeff Beck, session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, guitarist Deniel Edwards and Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding. Rick Brown and Carlo Little from The Savages also appeared, and 'Lord Sutch And Heavy Friends' was released in 1970, winning the accolade in a 1998 BBC poll as the worst album of all time. What he should have done is release his debut album some four years earlier, and made sure it included a selection of his novelty rockers and well-chosen covers, showing what The Savages could do when given free rein. Over the years, Screaming Lord Sutch has claimed to have influenced shock-rockers such as Arthur Brown, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, the Tubes and Marilyn Manson, as well as the psychobilly sound of the Meteors, with whom he recorded in 1981, and his legacy will always be the horror-themed act that he put on in the 60's, so as a reminder of that, here is the album that he should have released in 1966. 

Track listing

01 Jack The Ripper
02 Come Back Baby
03 Dracula's Daughter
04 I'm A Hog For You 
05 Bye Bye Baby
06 The Cheat
07 Monster In Black Tights
08 'Til The Following Night
09 Good Golly Miss Molly
10 She's Fallen In Love With The Monster Man
11 Don't You Just Know It
12 All Black And Hairy
13 You Don't Care
14 The Train Kept A' Rollin'

The Ivy League - Tomorrow Is Another Day (1967)

John "Carter" Shakespeare and Kenneth "Lewis" Hawker were both from Birmingham, and came down to London to make a name for themselves in the music industry. They were offered a deal by manager Terry Kennedy, and moved with him to Southern music at 5 Denmark Street. He re-christened them Carter & Lewis, and produced the seven singles they cut for Piccadilly, Ember and Oriole between 1961 and 1964 under the name Carter-Lewis And The Southerners. They had developed a close harmony style similar to the Everly Brothers, and were soon established as a popular radio team, appearing on BBC Light Programme shows 'Saturday Club' and 'Easy Beat'. The group became a vehicle for publishing the songs that stemmed from the Carter-Lewis partnership, and in summer 1964 Carter and Lewis disbanded The Southerners in order to concentrate on writing and doing sessions. By July 1964, they expanded to a trio, by teaming up with another session singer and songwriter, Brian Pugh aka "Perry Ford". Pugh was also a songwriter, penning hits for Adam Faith with 'Someone Else's Baby', and The Fortunes' 'Caroline', and was running a studio for Reg Calvert in Denmark Street when Carter and Lewis approached him. The trio developed a clear liking for high-falsetto vocals, being influenced by The Four Freshmen and The Beach Boys, and they christened themselves The Ivy League. They started out providing backing vocals on other artists' sessions, such as Sandy Shaw's 'Always Something There To Remind Me', Tom Jones' 'It’s Not Unusual', and The Who's 'Can't Explain', but after deciding to record their own music they signed to Pye's Piccadilly subsidiary. 

Their debut single failed to chart, but the follow-up 'Funny How Love Can Be' crashed into the UK Top 10, prompting the need to form a backing group and go out on tour. Micky Keene and Dave Wintour left The Tony Colton’s Crawdaddies to become The Ivy League backing band, and were joined by keyboardist Mike O'Neill and drummer Clem Cattini. The original trio released a few more singles, but only managed to release one full-length album, 'This Is The Ivy League', as because they preferring writing and producing to touring, Carter and Lewis pulled out of the band, being replaced by Tony Burrows (ex-Kestrels) and Neil Landon (ex-Burnetts). At this time, the band cut the best record 'My World Fell Down', a John Carter/Geoff Stephens composition which Gary Usher and LA group Sagittarius turn into a masterpiece in 1967. The Ivy League toured the UK and Europe unflaggingly throughout 1966 with new backing band The Jaybirds, who later found success as Ten Years After. In the summer of 1967 Carter and Lewis recorded a song they wrote to articulate the sentiments of the flower-power movement, releasing 'Let's Go To San Francisco' under the name The Flowerpot Men', and as there was no real group of this name, they rented out the band name to Tony Burrows, who put together a tour ensemble to satisfy the popular demand generated by the single, which made number4 in the UK charts in September 1967. Although The Ivy League was basically a different group from 1966 onwards, Carter, Lewis and Ford continued to write all their songs, and by the end of 1967 they had released enough material to make up a second album, but as they broke up before that could happen, here is what their sophomore record could have sounded like. 

Track listing

01 Running Round In Circles
02 One Day
03 When You're Young
04 Suddenly Things
05 Our Love Is Slipping Away
06 Rain Rain Go Away
07 My World Fell Down
08 Four And Twenty Hours
09 Arrivederci Baby
10 Tomorrow Is Another Day
11 Willow Tree
12 I Could Make You Fall In Love
13 Tossing And Turning
14 Thank You For Loving Me
15 In The Not Too Distant Future

Les Baroques - I'll Send You To The Moon (1968)

Les Baroques had been playing around Baarn in the Netherlands since 1959, under various name such as The Modern Teenage Quartet and Hurricane Combo, but they remained unknown until 1965, when the core of guitarist Frank Muyser, organist Rene Krijnen, bassist Robin Muyser, guitarist Hans Van Embden, drummer Raymond Geytenbeek, and vocalist Gerard Schoenmakers (aka Gary O'Shannon) secured a record deal with Europhon Records and released their debut single 'Silky' in June 1965. The group stood out because unlike all other Dutch bands of that time, they sang in good English, which was partly due to Frank Muyser's English mother. Another thing that set them apart was their use of bassoon, which featured on their December 1965 single 'Such A Cad' . They also experimented with other musical instruments, such as the banjo, balalaika and harpsichord, and 1966 saw them release three singles on their new label Whamm Records, as well as appearing at the Grand Gala du Disque. In 1967, Ferdy Karmelk temporarily joined the group, playing guitar, while  Michel van Dijk replaced O'Shannon, who started his own Gary O'Shannon Group. In 1969, after a considerable period of inactivity, the group was in imminent danger of breaking up, although they struggled on with new recruits Ferdy Karmelk, Bart Terlaak Jan Dankmeyer joining the three original members. When the group finally folded, remaining members Jan, Ferdy and Bart changed their name to Island. The career of the group can be neatly split into the O'Shannon-led period, and the post-O'Shannon years, with the difference in the vocals making them sound like two different bands. Their early work is generally regarded as their best, although tracks like 'Working On A Tsjing-Tsjang' and 'Bottle Party' do have their charm. By 1968 they had an impressive body of work behind them, and so they could have released an album had they managed to find a record company to fund it, but it never happened, and so this is what it might have sounded like if it had come to fruition. 

Track listing

01 I'll Send You To The Moon
02 Such A Cad
03 I Know
04 Summerbeach
05 Working On A Tsjing-Tsjang
06 She's Mine
07 Indication
08 Dreammaker
09 Bottle Party
10 When You're Feeling Good
11 Pardon Me I Think I'm Falling
12 Bread
13 My Lost Love
14 Without Feeling Without Mind

Neon Pearl - Urban Ways (1967)

Neon Pearl was a short-lived 1960's British psychedelic band comprising Peter Dunton (vocals/guitar/keyboards/drums), Bernard Jinks (bass guitar/backing vocals), Nick Spenser (guitar/harmonium/keyboards), and also Rod Harrison. They were formed to play as a resident band in a club in Germany, but returned to England in late 1967 where they recorded a number of songs, but couldn't find a record label willing to release them. The tracks were demos of the band's live set and display an evocative line in psychedelic rock, with a slight garage psych/folk rock edge, and the drifting guitar work and melodic vocal harmonies make them an interesting collection of songs. They remained under wraps until they were excavated by Acme Records and re-issued as '1967 Recordings' in 2001, and normally I wouldn't post the album if you can still get hold of the CD, but this version is unique to the blog, as Youtuber Rock Fort Launderdale has taken the original tracks and split them out into their various components, and then put them back together using Ableton, bouncing the individual tracks to good old 1/4" tape, to give a remastered stereo version of the album. Although Neon Pearl themselves didn't have a great deal of success, they were a breeding ground for talent who went on to bigger things, with Dunton joining British psychedelic bands The Flies and Please, while Jinks later played in Bulldog Breed, and both went on to join T2, who made one of the most sought-after UK progressive rock albums with 1970's 'It'll All Work Out In Boomland'. 

Track listing

01 Dream Scream
02 Forever
03 Urban Ways
04 What You See
05 Going With The Flow
06 Dream
07 Just Another Day
08 Going Back
09 Out Of Sight

Cliff Wade - Life Story (1969)

Cliff Wade came out of York, England, as part of the mid-60s British soul boom, playing with several early groups including the Misfits, before forming the Roll Movement in late 1965, where he was both the lead singer and lead guitarist. They were good enough to beat Soft Machine into the finals of a 1966 Melody Maker-sponsored competition, ultimately finishing second behind Eyes Of Blue, and this led to support slots for The Who and Cream. The Roll Movement never had a chance to show what they could have done on record, as their sole single, 'I'm Out On My Own', was released on the tiny Go label, and was lost amid the gathering psychedelic haze that spread across music in the second half of 1967. The band eventually split up in the wake of the record's failure, and after a short spell with Cucumber, Wade went to work for independent producer Monty Babson and his corporate operation, the Morgan empire, as a music copyist and jack-of-all-trades on the studio end of the operation, which eventually spawned its own label, Morgan Blue Town. In 1969 Wade began recording under his own name with the Mellotron-dominated psychedelic pop single 'You've Never Been To My House', released on the Morgan's label, and although it sank without trace, over the next couple of years he cut more sides, and also became a singer for an ensemble called Fickle Pickle, who scored a hit in Holland with a cover of Paul McCartney's 'Maybe I'm Amazed'. Wade subsequently bounced around the music business, occasionally performing and recording under his own name and in association with various groups, including the Beaver Brothers, and playing sessions with promising new performers. He also wrote songs with his Beaver Brothers partner Geoff Gill, and enjoyed a hit with 'Heartbreaker', which Pat Benatar took up the charts in 1979, at the outset of her career. Many of the tracks that he recorded at Morgan Studios in 1969 have now surfaced, and if we cherry-pick the best of them we can imagine what a Cliff Wade album could have sounded like in 1969. 

Track listing

01 You've Never Been To My House
02 I See I Am Free
03 Casting The First Stone
04 Life Story
05 Dagger Lane
06 Gonna Meet The Man
07 Shirley 
08 Fern Meadows
09 Sister
10 Rose Village
11 Yes I'm Finding Out
12 I Could Have Loved Her
13 You Should Have Seen Me

The Chocolate Watchband - Psychedelic Trip (1969)

The Chocolate Watchband was formed in the summer of 1965 in Los Altos, California by Ned Torney and Mark Loomis, who had previously played guitar together in a local band known as The Chaparrals. They were joined by Rick Young on bass, Pete Curry on drums, Jo Kemling on organ, and vocalist Danny Phay, and originally chose the name The Chocolate Watchband as a joke. The band garnered a local following, integrating cover versions of British Invasion groups, particularly The Who, into their live repertoire. Curry was soon replaced by Gary Andrijasevich, a jazz drummer from Cupertino High School, and when Torney and Phay accepted an offer from a rival band, The Otherside, the first incarnation of the band disintegrated. With the first version of the Chocolate Watchband disbanded, Loomis moved on to join The Shandels, but he quickly became disillusioned, and so he took the discarded Chocolate Watchband name and recruited The Shandels' bass player Bill 'Flo' Flores and former Watchband drummer, Gary Andrijasevich. Next he convinced former Topsiders guitarist Dave "Sean" Tolby to enlist, and with David Aguilar as the frontman and lead singer, The Chocolate Watchband Mark II was complete. 

Within a week, the band began performing at local clubs in San Francisco's South Bay, playing a range of songs that included obscure British import tunes that hadn't been released in the USA, so that unlike other local bands who were covering the latest hits from the Top 10, they played songs few people had heard before, and they therefore became associated with the Chocolate Watchband and not the original artists. Six months later, after opening for the Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, music producer Bill Graham urged the Chocolate Watchband to sign a management contract with him. He was opening up a new Fillmore East in New York City, and wanted to shuttle the Chocolate Watchband, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane back and forth from coast to coast as his personal house bands. However, they had to turn him down, having signed a management contract with local promoter Ron Roupe a week earlier, and their future followed a different path. Roupe, having secured a recording deal with Green Grass Productions in Los Angeles, introduced the band to producers Ed Cobb and Ray Harris. 

They flew to Los Angeles and entered the recording studio, and Cobb introduced them to a song he had written a week earlier named 'Sweet Young Thing', which was released in December 1966 by Tower Records. Frontman Aguilar began writing material for the band, including their second single, the more restrained 'Misty Lane', backed with a sweet orchestrated ballad, 'She Weaves A Tender Trap'. During this period the band were featured in two Sam Katzman films, 'Riot On Sunset Strip' and 'The Love-Ins'. The band's debut album 'No Way Out' was released in 1967, and shortly after its release Aguilar left for university studies in science, while the other members searched for ways to continue playing music. Loomis and Andrijasevich would depart after Aguilar, leaving Tolby and Flores with the duty of fulfilling a month's worth of bookings. They decided to enlist the services of Tim Abbott, Mark Whittaker and Chris Flinders, members of the San Francisco Bay Blues Band and although they still maintained a level of success, the sound and style differed from the original band. During recording sessions for the Chocolate Watchband's second album, 'The Inner Mystique', the band chafed at Cobb's influence because he presented them as being more instrumentally refined on record than they were live. 

Less than half of the featured studio work was by official members of the band, with the majority of the record featured session musicians, and a singer named Don Bennett contributed vocals on the track 'Let's Talk About Girls'. Abbott and Flinders had a left the group following a disagreement with Tolby and manager Ron Roupe over financial matters, and so a new line-up formed in late 1968 for a short period of time, with Danny Phay, the group's original vocalist in its 1965 inception, re-joining the band, alongside guitarist Ned Torney, while Flores Tolby from the 1967 line-up remained. A third studio album, 'One Step Beyond', was recorded with Cobb again using session musicians, but it was a commercial failure, except for the songs written and sung by David Aguilar that were added to the album from past recording sessions. The Chocolate Watchband finally called it a day in 1970, but previously unreleased material has surfaced over the years and been added to various re-issues of their albums, and this post collects together all those rare tracks, along with a single by the pre-Watchband group The Hogs, their contributions to the soundtrack of 'Riot On Sunset Strip', and some non-album singles and their b-sides.

Track listing

01 Blues Theme (single by The Hogs 1966)
02 Loose Lip Sync Ship (b-side of 'Blues Theme')
03 Sweet Young Thing (single 1967)
04 Baby Blue (b-side of 'Sweet Young Thing')
05 Misty Lane (single 1967)
06 She Weaves A Tender Trap (b-side of 'Misty Lane')
07 Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying (previously unreleased 1967)
08 Since You Broke My Heart (previously unreleased 1967)
09 Don't Need Your Loving (from the soundtrack of the film 'Riot On Sunst Strip' 1967)
10 Sitting There Standing (from the soundtrack of the film 'Riot On Sunst Strip' 1967)
11 Till The End Of The Day (previously unreleased 1967)
12 Milk Cow Blues (previously unreleased 1967)
13 In The Midnight Hour (unreleased single version 1969)
14 Psychedelic Trip (b-side of 'In The Mignight Hour')

The Blue Things - One Hour Cleaners (1967)

The Blue Things formed as The Blue Boys at Fort Hays State College, from the remnants of a Hays R&B band, the Barons, who provided Mike Chapman (lead guitar and vocals), Richard Scott (bassist and vocalist) and Rick "Laz" Larzalere (drums and vocals). With a summer tour booked, the trio decided they needed a fourth member, and soon found a lead singer and rhythm guitarist in Chapman's roommate, Val Stöecklein, who had previously released an album with a college folk group, the Impromptwos, and he had also cut a demo of two original compositions, 'Desert Wind' and 'Nancy Whiskey', with another group, the Hi-Plains Singers. On their ensuing summer tour, the band hired Jim Reardon as manager, who in turn got the band signed with John Brown's Mid-Continent Co. booking agency. Reardon used what was left of his old sweatshirt business to manufacture Blue Boys sweatshirts, in addition to starting a fan club, complete with membership cards, and keeping true to their name, the Blue Boys wore matching blue suits and played blue guitars. Although their live set was mostly Top 40 and British Invasion covers, Stöecklein, Scott and Chapman began composing songs for the band to record, which they did in late 1964 at Damon Recording Studios in Kansas City. The five Stöecklein originals and two covers attracted the attention Texas' Ruff Records, who subsequently signed the group to their label. 

In December 1964, the Blue Boys cut their first single for Ruff at Gene Sullivan's studio in Oklahoma City, but before their cover of Ronnie Hawkins 'Mary Lou' could be released in February 1965, they had become The Blue Things, in order to avoid confusion (and possible legal wrangles) with the late Jim Reeves' backing group. The single charted in the Top 40 in Oklahoma City, thanks to local radio station KOMA, and their next single, 'Pretty Things-Oh', was once again a hit in the Midwest. After recording another six-song demo in Texas (this time with only two Stöecklein and one Scott originals), the band left Ruff Records over a royalty dispute. At this point, John Brown managed to get the Blue Things a deal with RCA Records, but before they could record for the label, drummer Rick Larzalere left the band to focus on school, and after several unsuccessful replacements, Bobby Day from Salina, Kansas, was chosen. The Blue Things' first RCA single, 'I Must Be Doing Something Wrong', was written by the three remaining band members, and was released in October 1965. A session drummer was used for the single sessions, as Day had yet to join, but once again, the single charted locally, but failed to chart outside of the Midwest. 

The following single, while repeating the chart action of the band's previous RCA single, at least gained the band some notoriety, as 'Doll House' sympathetically told the story of a prostitute, and criticized the role of brothels in society. Although it was a bold statement at the time, the single struggled after TIME magazine did a feature on supposedly obscene lyrics in rock music, citing 'Doll House' as an example. The album 'Listen And See' was released shortly after the 'Doll House' single from June 1966, and while it was popular with Blue Things fans, by the time it came out the band had moved past the folk rock/Merseybeat sound that RCA favoured, to a more psychedelic sound. Their January 1967 Nashville session, which was to be last with Stöecklein, produced the psychedelic single 'Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind' b/w 'One Hour Cleaners', after which Stöecklein left for a solo career, signed with Dot Records and released the album 'Grey Life' in 1968. The remaining Blue Things moved to California and continued to perform concerts, also signing with Dot Records and touring for 14 months before disbanding entirely. Although they are fondly remembered by fans of 60's folk-rock, and also in their later incarnation by psyche aficionados, their sole album is not really representative of their sound, as 1966 was a transitional time for them, moving from the folk-rock of their early singles to a more mature sound, which was never really evidenced on record. This album is therefore the unreleased follow-up to 'Listen And See', featuring the band's more psychedelic leanings, and could have come out some time in 1967.   

Track listing

01 The Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind

02 Since You Broke My Heart

03 Twist And Shout

04 One Hour Cleaners

05 Can't Explain

06 You Took The Flight

07 Pennies

08 I Can't Have Yesterday

09 Hey Joe

10 Alright

11 Caroline

12 Baby, My Heart

13 Yes My Friend

14 High LIfe

15 You Can Live In Our Tree

Merrell And The Exiles - Let The Time Go By (1964)

Merrell Wayne Fankhauser was born on 23 December 1943 in Louisville, Kentucky, and after his family moved to San Luis Obispo, California while he was in his teens, he began playing guitar, and got his first break playing in movie theaters and talent shows. In 1960, after one of these shows, he joined local band The Impacts as lead guitarist, and their Ventures-influenced sound developed a strong following at the start of the surfing scene. In 1962 he met Norman Knowles, who was the saxophone player from The Revels, and he convinced The Impacts to record a session with Tony Hilder at a backyard studio in the Hollywood area. As much as this seemed like a notable event for the band, it was more of a lure than a lucky break, as after recording twelve tracks, including Fankhauser's own 'Wipe Out', as well as 'Blue Surf', 'Impact', and 'Sea Horse', Knowles and Hilder took the tapes to to Del-Fi Records, where owner Bob Keene signed the album for immediate release as the 'Wipe Out!' album. Knowles and Hilder never revealed to the band how much money they made by doing this, and they also tricked the young band into signing a contract for one dollar, meaning that the band was unable to collect royalties on this music for 36 years, as Hilder and Knowles claimed both artist and publishing royalties with Del-Fi Records. In late 1963 Fankhauser left the band and moved to Lancaster, California, where he met Jeff Cotton (later of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band), and in 1964 they formed The Exiles. 

With the addition of Greg Hampton on drums and Jim Ferguson on bass, they started paying local gigs, and record label owner Glen MacArthur heard them and offered to record them in his Palmdale studio. Their first single under their new name was 'Too Many Heartbreaks', a song that Fankhauser had written in 1961, backed by a new song called 'Please Be Mine', and it was released on Glenn Records in March 1964, reaching number 9 on the local KUTY radio chart. This coincided with The Beatles' invasion of America, and Merrell And The Exiles were the Antelope Valley's answer to them, going on to record five singles for Glenn Records. Later in 1967 Fankhauser moved back to the California central coast, and formed another band with his old guitar playing friend Bill Dodd, who had taken over from him in The Impacts when he left. After playing with several drummers and bass players as Merrell And The Boys, they decided one night that they needed a new name for the band, and as this was the beginning of the psychedelic era, they felt they needed a more far out moniker, so he took the two letters from each band members last name and put them together FA (for Fankhauser), PAR (for Parrish, bass player at the time), DO (for Dodd)  and KLY (for Dick Lee, the drummer), and Fapardokly was the result. He was contacted again by Glen MacArthur who wanted to release an album with some singles and unreleased Merrell And The Exiles songs that he had on the shelf, and so the band drove the two hundred miles from the coast over to the desert and recorded enough songs to complete the album. 

The 'Fapardokly' album was released on UIP Records in 1968, and has since gone on to become one of the most highly sought after and valuable albums from the late 1960's, with a sealed copy going for over $1,000. At the time, however, it was not a success, and so Fankhauser and Dodd then formed another, more overtly psychedelic, band with Jack Jordan on bass and Larry Meyers on drums, naming it HMS Bounty. They won a recording contract with Uni Records, and their self-titled album was released in 1968, followed by the single 'Tampa Run', a remake of another old Exiles song. However, success was again thwarted by personal and record company problems, and the band split up. Reuniting with Jeff Cotton in 1970, Fankhauser then formed Mu, and in 1971 their first album was released and became a radio hit. Increasingly fascinated by legends of the lost continent of Mu, Fankhauser then relocated to the Hawaiian island of Maui in February 1973, where he has continued to record, releasing over two dozen albums as Mu and under his own name. This post collects together some of the recordings that they had made for Glen MacArthur which were not then released as singles on the Glenn Records label, showing that Fankhauser was a prolific writer from the start of his musical career, and they had enough material to be able to release an album as early as 1964 had they wanted.  

Track listing

01 Ready To Roll
02 Run Baby Run
03 She's Gone
04 Long Time Gone
05 Exiles Blues
06 Don't Let Go
07 Remember Me
08 The War
09 Yes I Love You
10 Be A Good Neighbour Week
11 Pain In My Heart
12 Let The Time Go By
13 Let Me Go
14 Shake my Hand
15 Please Be Mine
16 Don't Call On Me
17 Send Me Your Love

Neil Christian And The Crusaders - Get A Load Of This (1967)

Neil Christian And The Crusaders might be a relatively obscure UK pop group of the early 60's, but they were as good a breeding ground for guitarists as John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, including in their ranks at various times such luminaries as Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Albert Lee, Mick Abrahams and Paul Brett, as well as pianist Micky Hopkins, and bassist Alex Dmchowski, who later went on to join Aynsley Dunbar's Retaliation. Christopher Tidmarsh started his career in music by managing a North London-based outfit called The Red-E-Lewis And The Red Cats, who underwent a line-up shift when the original members joined Johnny Kidd as The Pirates from July 1961 to early 1962. Recruiting guitarist Bobby Oats and drummer Jim Evans, they played a few gigs at the Ebisham Hall in Epsom, and Tidmarsh first spotted Jimmy Page paying there. In early 1959, John Spicer joined the band on rhythm guitar, and when Oates announced that he was leaving the band, Tidmarsh contacted Page and invited him down to Shoreditch to audition for the vacancy. He became their new lead guitarist and Spicer switched to bass, and in Spring 1960 Tidmarsh replaced Lewis on vocals, and they reinvented themselves as Neil Christian And The Crusaders. Tidmarsh changed the names of his musicians, with Page being known as 'Nelson Storm', John Spicer was 'Jumbo' and drummer Evans was nicknamed 'Tornado'. 

Page toured with them for two years until he was forced to quit due to illness, suffering from glandular fever, although he would later still record with the band in the studio until 1964. Page's replacement was Paul Brett from the Impacs, who was himself briefly replaced by Albert Lee, while bassist Jumbo Spicer left to be replaced by Arvid Andersen. The Crusaders were augmented by pianist Tony Marsh, who had previously been in a Wembley-based combo called the Escort alongside drummer Keith Moon, and is was Marsh who introduced guitarist Ritchie Blackmore to Neil Christian, who teamed up with Andersen and Evans for a brief spell in early 1965. In March 1965, Blackmore and the rest of the group defected Screaming Lord Sutch to become The Savages, and so Christian pulled in an entirely new line-up, taking over a Luton group called The Hustlers, who featured Mick Abrahams on guitar. By June 1965 the new line-up was cemented by the addition of drummer Carlo Little, keyboardist Graham Waller and bassist Alex Dmchowski. While he was guitarist with the Crusaders, Abrahams stood in for Screaming Lord Sutch, who did exactly the same set as The Crusaders, before eventually leaving in late 1965. 

Christian disbanded the Crusaders soon after and decided to pursue a solo career, and his fortunes went on the upswing after he hooked up with songwriter and producer Miki Dallon, and landed a number 14 hit single with Dallon's 'That's Nice. To promote 'That’s Nice', Christian reassembled The Crusaders with Richie Blackmore, Tornado Evans, Avid Andersen and Tony Mash, and they toured the UK and Europe, particularly Germany, where they had a residency in Munich. While there he also recorded some tracks for the Metronome label, with 'Two At A Time' being a big hit for him in Germany in 1966. Christian went back to England and recruited new musicians who formed the final incarnation of the Crusaders, with pianist Matt Smith joining three members of Lord Caesar Sutch & The Roman Empire, Richie Blackmore, Carlo Little and bassist Tony Dangerfield. After The Crusaders split up following an argument in a restaurant, Christian released his final UK 45 'You're All Things Bright And Beautiful' for Pye in 1967, although when he moved to the Vogue label he recorded 'My Baby's Left Me' with his old Crusaders mates Blackmore and Little, with Nicky Hopkins on piano and Rick Brown on bass. Christian continued to release singles under his own name and as Neil Christian And The Crusaders well into the mid 70's, but he is best remembered for employing a string of guitarists who later went on to greater things, and an album around 1967 could have included tracks featuring most of them. As that never came about, then here is the best of the band's output, leaving aside some of the more 'pop' moments, and concentrating on the R&B that let those guitarists shine. 

Track listing

01 She's Got The Action
02 Get A Load Of This
03 One For The Money
04 Yakity Yak
05 That's Nice
06 Honey Hush
07 Bad Girl
08 Crusading
09 Oops
10 Countdown
11 My Baby's Left Me
12 Let Me In
13 I Like It

Featuring on guitar:
01, 02, 08, 12, 13 Jimmy Page
04, 07, 09, 10, 11 Richie Blackmore
01, 05 Mick Abrahams 
03, 06 Phil McPill 

The Micky Finn - The Sporting Life (1967)

In the summer of 1961 lead guitarist Micky Waller, rhythm guitarist Bevis Belmour, bassist Mick Stannard, and drummer Richard Brand put together a Shadows-like instrumental band called The Strangers, and gigged around Bethnal Green in East London. The following year, they became a much more R&B-oriented group and enlisted vocalist Harry Bates, although by 1963 Waller and Brand had left to form a more 'mod' sounding band, while the remainder of the group carried on as The Mates, with new drummer Albert Smith. Having been  bitten by the Jamaican Blue Beat bug whilst hanging out at the Crypt Club, Aldgate, they decided to concentrate on this music, and so formed a new band, recruiting John Cooke aka "Fluff" on keyboards, John Burkitt on bass and Alan Marks on vocals. After having heard that Cyril Davis & His R&B All Stars featured a drummer called Micky Waller, he changed his surname to Finn, and the band became Mickey Finn & The Blue Men. Their agent, Don White, secured them a recording contract with Blue Beat Records, and in 1964 they released their debut single, a rendition of Elias & The Zig-Zag Jive Flutes 'Tom Hark', coupled with 'Please Love Me', composed by Alan Hawkshaw of Emile Ford & the Checkmates. After a couple of months, they switched to Oriole, and began recording with Jimmy Page on harmonica, after meeting him at Hackney Club 59. 

The follow up single, covering Bo Diddley's 'Pills' and Jimmy Reed's 'Hush Hush', was released in March 1964, and was banned after the police had discovered some purple hearts stashed in Mickey Waller's amp during a raid on The Scene Club. By mid 1964, ex-Stranger Mick Stannard had replaced Burkitt on bass, and they became known as simply The Mickey Finn. Their final 45 for Oriole was a Chuck Berry number 'Reelin' And Rockin'', but it failed to chart, even though it was tipped as a hit on 'Juke Box Jury'. Through their new manager, Chris Radmall, they got a deal with Columbia, and began recording with producer Shel Talmy in 1965, and their cover of Ian Whicomb's smash hit 'The Sporting Life' is now one of their most notable releases. They followed this with 'I Do Love You'/'If I Had You Baby' in July 1966 on Polydor, and then spent the summer of 1967 in Southern France, where they had a residency at the Voom Voom Club, St-Tropez. 'Garden Of My Mind' appeared on Direction Records in 1967, but after a few more years on the circuit, they decided to call it a day in 1971, with Micky Waller and John Cooke going on to The Heavy Metal Kids. Waller relocated in France and became a sought-after session musician, recording with Nino Ferrer, among others, and he eventually returned to the UK and joined Steve Marriott’s All Stars in 1976, and then the group formed by ex-Pretty Things singer, Phil May & the Fallen Angels, in 1977. The Micky Finn made a couple of excellent singles in their hey-day, and this has kept them at the top of any list of obscure UK beat groups of the 60's, and by 1967 they had recorded enough material for an album, although this would have had to include both their R&B and psychedelic songs on the same record, so this could be why it never happened. However, let's enjoy all of their best music on this imaginary album from 1967.  

Track listing

01 Night Comes Down
02 Ain't Necessarily So
03 Poverty
04 Reelin' And A'Rockin'
05 Garden Of My Mind
06 Hush Your Mouth
07 If I Had You Baby
08 The Sporting Life
09 Miss Jane

10 Because I Love You
11 I Still Want You
12 God Bless The Child

13 Please Love Me
14 Time To Start Loving You

The Four Pennies - A Place Where No One Goes (1966)

The Four Pennies started out as the Lionel Morton Four, taking their name from their singer, who had served as a choir boy in a cathedral in his hometown of Blackburn, Lancashire, during his youth. In 1963 they changed their name to the more commercial alternative of The Four Pennies, named after Penny Street, where their favourite music shop was located. The band now consisted of Lionel Morton on vocals and rhythm guitar, Fritz Fryer on lead guitar, Mike Wilshaw on bass, keyboards, and backing vocals, and Alan Buck on drums, and they got a record deal with Philips almost immediately, and their first single 'Do You Want Me To' came out in 1963, scoring a number 47 placing in the UK singles chart. Their second single, 'Tell Me Girl', was released in 1964, but the b-side proved the more popular song, and 'Juliet' is now the song with which they are most associated, after it hit the number one slot on the UK Singles Chart. It was a self-penned number, written by Fryer, Wilshaw and Morton, but ended up being the only UK Number one of 1964 not to chart in America. Following the UK chart-topping success of 'Juliet', the band racked up subsequent 1964 UK hits with their original 'I Found Out The Hard Way' and a cover of Leadbelly's 'Black Girl', followed by the release of their debut album 'Two Sides Of Four Pennies', which, as was customary for British acts of the time, mostly ignored their hit singles. After their first single of 1965 failed to reach the UK chart, Fryer left The Four Pennies to found a folk trio called Fritz, Mike and Mo, and he was replaced on guitar by David Graham. The revamped quartet then hit the UK chart again with 'Until It's Time For You to Go', written by Buffy Sainte-Marie, but their 1966 cover of Bobby Vinton's 'Trouble Is My Middle Name' would be their final chart placing, after which Fryer returned to the fold, replacing his own replacement Graham. They finished 1966 by releasing their second album, 'Mixed Bag', but neither it, nor the singles 'Keep The Freeway Open' and Tom Springfield's 'No More Sad Songs For Me', charted, and so by the end of the year the group had dissolved. As it happened, they could have released a much better second album than 'Mixed Bag' in 1966, by just including some of their better singles and their b-sides, but as they didn't do that then here is what it would have sounded like. 

Track listing

01 Square Peg
02 Till Another Day
03 Don't Tell Me You Love Me 
04 Juliet
05 Trouble Is My Middle Name
06 No Sad Songs For Me
07 Black Girl
08 Keep The Freeway Open
09 Miss Bad Daddy
10 Cats
11 The Way Of Love
12 A Place Where No One Goes
13 Way Out Love
14 I Found Out The Hard Way
15 Tell Me Girl (What Are You Gonna Do)

Bern Elliott & The Fenmen - I Can Tell (1964)

Bernard Michael Elliott was born in Erith, Kent, on 17 November 1942, and attended Picardy School in Belvedere, before forming his own beat group, which became Bern Elliott and the Bluecaps. After a name change to Bern Elliott and the Fenmen in 1961, the group performed over the next two years in clubs in Hamburg, Germany, and were signed to a recording contract with Decca in early 1963. 'Money' was released by several artists at the time, but Bern Elliott and the Fenmen were unique as a group in registering a UK Singles Chart Top 20 hit with the song in December 1963, with their Merseybeat style belying their southern England roots. However, they did appear on 13 March 1964 episode of the UK television programme Ready Steady Go!, playing their follow-up hit, 'New Orleans'. In May 1964, Elliott parted company with The Fenmen, and utilised The Klan for a short time as his backing group on one release, 'Good Times'/'What Do You Want With My Baby', which was released on Decca in September 1964. The following year Elliott tidied himself up in an effort to become a smoother pop entertainer, and issued two solo efforts, 'Guess Who' and 'Voodoo Woman', neither of which troubled the charts. The Fenmen continued as a band in their own right, issuing further efforts both for Decca and CBS, including 'I've Got Everything You Need, Babe' in 1965 and 'Rejected' in 1966. After the Fenmen themselves disbanded, Wally Allen (aka Wally Waller) and Jon Povey moved on to The Pretty Things, but despite only releasing one EP and a couple of singles before the band members went their separate ways, they had recorded enough material for an album by 1964, and so if Decca had wanted one then it could have sounded like this. 

Track listing

01 Money
02 Be My Girl
03 Everybody Needs A Little Love
04 Good Times

05 (Do The) Mashed Potato
06 Chills
07 New Orleans
08 Please Mr. Postman
09 Talking About You
10 Nobody But Me
11 What Do You Want With My Baby
12 I Can Tell
13 Shake Sherry Shake
14 Little Egypt
15 Shop Around

The Attack - Art Attack (1968)

The Attack were founded by Richard Shirman and Gerry Henderson, who were originally in a group called the Soul System, whom, for the best part of a year, had a very unstable line-up. In early 1966, the remnants of the crumbling group were joined by Bob Hodges on organ, David John (Davy O'List under alter ego) on guitar, and Alan Whitehead on drums. They soon came to the attention of entrepreneur Don Arden, who then signed them to Decca and changed their name to The Attack. Their debut single was released in January 1967, and was an extremely anglicized cover of 'Try It', an American hit for both the Standells and Ohio Express, whose versions were exemplar of the sneering garage sound. However, The Attack's powerful vocals, pop art guitar, and the underbelly of a warm Hammond created a similar atmosphere to the Small Faces, the Birds, and the Creation. Shortly after the single was released, Davy O'List was handpicked by Andrew Loog Oldham to join the Nice, who were to act as the backing band for newly acquired American soul singer P.P. Arnold, and so he quit the group in late February. Meanwhile, Shirman, a regular visitor to the London clubs, had been keeping a watchful eye on a young guitarist he had seen jamming with Jimmy Page, and so John Du Cann was introduced into the group. 

As a follow-up to 'Try It', a version of 'Hi-Ho Silver Lining' was then released, but Jeff Beck got the hit first in Britain in 1967. The third 45, 'Created By Clive'/'Colour Of My Mind', backed a foppish sub-Kinks-style number with a fairly groovy mod-psych tune penned by DuCann. Bassist Kenny Harold and guitarist Geoff Richardson left shortly after the disappointment of the 'Created By Clive' single, leaving Du Cann as the only guitarist, and Jim Avery was drafted in on bass, with Plug still on drums. Their next single was to be be the excellent 'Magic In The Air', but Decca refused to release it on the grounds that it was too heavy, and so Plug and Avery left the ranks to be replaced by Roger Deane on bass and Keith Hodge on drums. The final single, released in early 1968, was 'Neville Thumbcatch', a fruity mod-pop tune with spoken narration, like a lesser counterpart to Cream's 'Pressed Rat And Warthog', and Decca's deal with the Attack expired after that single, with a projected fifth 45, 'Freedom For You'/'Feel Like Flying', remaining unreleased. This led to the break-up of the group, with Du Cann going on to form Andromeda, and later to join Atomic Rooster in the 70's. The Attack have been well-served with compilations of their material, but as so often happens with these anthologies, the label try to cram in every single thing that they could track down by the band, whether good, bad or indifferent, and The Attack are the perfect example of the need for some judicious pruning of their material in order to present them in the best light. Their singles 'Hi-Ho Silver Lining', 'Created By Clive', and 'Neville Thumbcatch' are not representative of the band's powerful mod sound, and so they need to be excised in favour of scorching rockers like 'Any More Than I Do', and so here is the album that they should have released in 1968, which shows what a great band they really were. 

Track listing 

01 Any More Than I Do
02 Go Your Way
03 Colour Of My Mind
04 Strange House
05 Come On Up
06 Magic In The Air
07 Feel Like Flying
08 Lady Orange Peel
09 Too Old
10 Freedom For You
11 Anything
12 Mr Pinnodmy's Dilemma
13 Try It
14 We Didn't Know

The Glass Menagerie - Run To The Sun (1969)

In August 1967 guitarist John Kendall and bassist John Medley left their band The Truth and teamed up with three ex-members of The Raging Storms, being Lou Stonebridge on vocals, Keith O'Connell on organ and Bill Atkinson in drums. Inspired by the new wave of progressive and psychedelic rock, they started out as a covers band, playing material by Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Doors, Traffic, The Lovin' Spoonful, and Jefferson Airplane, and they quickly gained a reputation and a strong following, and in 1968 they signed a deal with Pye Records. After they moved to London, O'Connell left the group to join Geno Washington's Ram Jam Band, and so Stonebridge took over on organ as well as vocals. Their fist single for Pye was a cover of The Rolling Stones' 'She's A Rainbow', which was released in April 1968, and they followed that in June with another cover, this time tackling The Lovin' Spoonful's 'You Didn't Have To Be So Nice'. For their third single they covered Harry Nilsson's I Said Goodbye To Me', and backed it with a John Medley original in 'Frederick Jordan', but despite all three records containing some excellent music, and enjoying decent airplay, none of them were hits. The band continued to build up a popular live following through constant touring, broadcasts on John Peel's 'Top Gear' radio show, and regular appearances at clubs like The Marquee. In 1969 the band moved to the Polydor Record label, where they released two singles, 'Have You Forgotten Who You Are' and 'Do My Thing Myself', and they also recorded an album, which was never released, possibly due to the lack of success of the singles. By the end of 1969, both Kendall and Medley felt that they were getting nowhere with the group and so left, and the remaining members recruited Tony Dangerfield as the new bassist, and they continued for another year as a three-piece, before finally folding in 1970. The unreleased album has never surfaced, but we can have a guess at what might have been included on it, and as some of their radio sessions have survived, we know the sort of material that they were playing in 1969, and so here is my attempt to piece together what a Glass Menagerie album could have sounded like if it had appeared in 1969. 

Track listing

01 I Said Goodbye To Me
02 That's When I Start To Love Her
03 Watching The World Pass By
04 Life Is Getting It Together
05 Have You Forgotten Who You Are
06 Chequebook Girl
07 Do You Ever Think
08 Let's All Run To The Sun
09 Frederick Jordan
10 Run Out Of Time
11 Do My Thing Myself
12 Putting It Off Till Another Day
13 She Came From Hell

This album is the perfect companion to a recent post on the albumsthatshouldexist site, as it includes all their singles, alongside a few sessions for the BBC.  

The Human Expression - Optical Sound (1967)

The Human Expression formed in 1966, with the members coming from Westminster, California, and Tustin, California.  Jim Quarles and Jim Foster began writing songs for the new band, and they started performing in local venues and school dances to create a more cohesive unit. After rehearsing for six months, they went to a recording studio and cut the demo recordings for their first single, eventually securing a recording contract with Los Angeles-based Accent Records. Although 'Every Night' was chosen as the A-side, the original flip, 'Readin' Your Will', was replaced with a song that is probably their best known recording, 'Love At Psychedelic Velocity'. Two more original compositions made up the second single, 'Optical Sound'/'Calm Me Down', but perhaps due to the slow sales of the band's own songs, their manager brought demos of two songs by then-unknown songwriter Mars Bonfire to the band to consider for their third single. They selected 'Sweet Child Of Nothingness' for their third release, to be backed with another original composition 'I Don't Need Nobody', turning down 'Born To Be Wild' in the process, as Quarles was not impressed with the song. Before the third single was released, lead guitarist Martin Eshleman injured his hand, when Tom Hamilton accidentally slammed a door on it, leaving Eshleman with severed tendons, forcing him to leave the band. Although a new guitarist was brought in, Quarles left almost immediately, and the band then fell apart. By that time they had recorded enough material to put together an album of their single sides plus a few demos, and so here is the best of The Human Expression from 1967.

Track listing

01 Love At Psychedelic Velocity
02 Outside Of It All
03 Every Night
04 Calm Me Down
05 Optical Sound
06 Your Mind Works In Reverse
07 Who Is Burning
08 Readin' Your Will
09 I Don't Need Nobody
10 You Need Lovin' Too
11 Sweet Child Of Nothingness
12 Following Me

The Pete Best Combo - I Don't Know Why I Do (1965)

Randolph Peter "Pete" Best was born 24 November 1941 in the city of Madras, then part of British India. After Best's mother, Mona Best, moved to Liverpool in 1945, she opened The Casbah Coffee Club in the cellar of the Bests' large house in Liverpool, and it became very popular with British youths, having a membership of over 1,000. The Beatles (at the time known as the Quarrymen) played some of their first concerts at the club, and Best played there with the Beatles, as well as with his first band, the Black Jacks. In August 1960 The Beatles invited Best to join the group, on the eve of their first Hamburg season of club dates. He was eventually replaced by Ringo Starr on 16 August 1962, when the group's manager, Brian Epstein, dismissed Best under the direction of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, following their first recording session at Abbey Road Studios. Soon after he was dismissed, Epstein attempted to console him by offering to build another group around him, but Best refused. Feeling let down and depressed, he sat at home for two weeks, not wanting to face anybody or answer the inevitable questions about why he had been sacked. Epstein secretly arranged with his booking agent partner, Joe Flannery, for Best to join Lee Curtis & the All Stars, which then broke off from Curtis to become Pete Best & the All Stars, and they signed to Decca Records, releasing the unsuccessful single 'I'm Gonna Knock On Your Door'. Best later moved to the United States along with songwriters Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington, and as The Pete Best Four, and later as The Pete Best Combo, they toured the US in 1965 with a combination of 1950's songs and original tunes, recording for small labels Cameo and Mr. Maestro, but with little success. They ultimately released an album on Savage Records in 1966, 'Best Of The Beatles', which was a play on Best's name, but which led to disappointment for record buyers who neglected to read the song titles on the front cover and expected a Beatles compilation. The group disbanded shortly afterwards, and Bickerton and Waddington were to find greater success as songwriters in the 1970', writing a series of hits for the American female group, The Flirtations and the British group, the Rubettes. Many of Best's group's singles were written by Bickerton and Waddington, and by 1965 they had amassed a considerable body of original material, which would have been enough to put together an album of their own songs in 1965. While 'Best Of The Beatles' did include some of those songs, it also featured a lot of covers, and so this album would have been a much better example of their work, had it come out a year earlier in 1965. 

Track listing

01 Why Did You Leave Me Baby?  
02 I Need Your Lovin'  
03 I Can Do Without You  
04 She's Alright  
05 Keys to My Heart  
06 I'm Checkin' Out Now Baby 
07 I'll Try Anyway  
08 I Don't Know Why I Do  
09 How Do You Get to Know Her Name?  
10 She's Not the Only Girl in Town 

11 Don't Play With Me 
12 More Than I Need Myself  
13 I'll Have Everything Too 
14 The Way I Feel About You  
15 If You Can't Get Her 

The Mystic Tide - A Psychedelic Journey With The Mystic Tide (1967)

The Mystic Tide formed in Long Island, New York, in 1965, and was led by guitarist and songwriter Joe Docko, Paul Picell on bass, Jim Thomas on rhythm guitar, and John William on drums. They formed in early 1965 as The Chosen Few, and changed their name to The Mystic Tide in late 1965, inspired by 'Mystic Eyes', the most extreme single by Van Morrison’s Them. Contrary to what might be expected, The Mystic Tide’s own song cheekily titled 'Mystic Eyes' was a moody, vaguely Zombies-esque folk-punker rather than the rave-up the band name and title would suggest. Their first two singles have none of the wired aggression running through what came next, as something seemed to happen to them between singles two and three, with 'Frustration' featuring elements of bands like The Magicians and The Blues Magoos bleeding into their sound. However, none of this directly explains where The Mystic Tide were coming from, as their sonic attack is like nothing else heard at the time. Their four self-released singles between 1966 and 1967 captured a foreboding kind of early psychedelia denoted by raw, fuzzy guitars, angsty sentiments, and a vaguely Middle Eastern-flavor. They remained largely overlooked on even a local level and disbanded in 1967, but as the years went on, their ahead-of-their-time sound became the fascination of garage rock historians and enthusiasts, and their incredibly rare singles began fetching collector's prices, and appearing on collections of obscure psychedelic bands of the 60's. In 1991, the band's eleven songs were released on a self-titled anthology, and since them a couple of demos have also surfaced, and last year yet another compilation of the singles appeared, but what I wanted to hear was just their 1967 recordings, including the demos, with an edited version of the two parts of the 'Psychedelic Journey' single sides, and the 1966 'Mystic Eyes' single added in. This would feature the band at their very best, and show their ahead of its time sound on their most innovative sides. So here is an album that could have come out a good 25 years before these tracks were eventually made available to the general public.

Track listing

01 Mystery Ship
02 You Know It's True
03 Frustration
04 Psychedelic Journey
05 I Search For New Love
06 Solid Ground
07 You Won't Look Back
08 Mystic Eyes
09 Silver Rails / Going Home
10 Running Through The Night

Wimple Winch - Lollipop Minds (1967)

In early 1963, after several name changes, Four Just Men settled in Manchester and decided to become professional musicians. At the time, the group was composed of Demetrius "Dee" Christopolus as lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, lead guitarist Johnny Murphy, drummer Larry Arends, and bassist Pete Turner, and they became a popular attraction in Liverpool as they shifted through two line-up changes, with Keith Shepherd replacing Turner, and then John Kelman replacing Murphy. They toured with more prominent groups including The Rolling Stones, The Searchers and Del Shannon, but despite their initial success, the band was plagued by missed opportunities when they rejected 'Trains And Boats And Planes', a later hit for The Dakotas, and had lawsuit threats against them over their name, resulting in them having to change it to Just Four Men as another group had rights to their original choice of name. They did sign a recording contract with EMI Records in 1964, and produced two singles, which were both recorded at Abbey Road Studios, with their debut single, 'That's My Baby', being released in November 1964, and the second one, 'There's Not One Thing', following in February 1965. Both were positively received, but the release dates were in correlation with The Beatles' releases so sales were dwarfed in comparison, and they were subsequently dropped from the label, although they continued to perform until early 1966, at which point they morphed into Wimple Winch. The renamed band consisted of an altered line-up of Arends, Christopolus, John Kelman on lead guitar and newcomer Barrie Ashall on bass guitar, and the name change was brought about as a result of the band's addition of heavier and more psychedelic components into their music. 

Club owner Mike Carr, who would later become their manager, offered the band chance to be the house band at his new club in Stockport called "The Sinking Ship", which they accepted, and the club established itself when Wimple Winch opened for The Jimi Hendrix Experience at the venue. An associate of Fontana Records watched them perform and signed the group to record at Philips Studios in March 1966, during which the band completed demos for their debut single, 'What's Been Done'. It received heavy local support and was listed as a "climber" by Radio London in April 1966, but still failed to chart, and for their second release the band choose 'Save My Soul', which incorporated a protopunk structure. The single was immensely popular locally on its release but was unsuccessful nationally, although it has since been recognized as one of the more innovative tracks of the Mersey beat scene. In between performing, Wimple Winch recorded in August and December 1966, and several tracks were finished, with the Who-styled song 'Rumble On Mersey Square South' being released as the group's final single in January 1967. Things were looking good for them, but then The Sinking Ship caught fire and destroyed the group's housing and equipment, and as a result Fontana Records decided to not re-sign them when their contract expired. The band continued to tour, and recorded more demos in a personal studio, but decided to disband in mid-1967, never managing to release an album under either of their guises. Four Just Men only recorded a few songs, but Wimple Winch were much more active in the studio, and so there are enough excellent recordings to put together the album that they should have released in 1967. 

Track listing

01 Save My Soul
02 Atmospheres
03 I Really Love You
04 Lollipop Minds
05 Marmalade Hair

06 Coloured Glass
07 Those Who Wait
08 What's Been Done
09 Sagittarius
10 Bluebell Wood
11 Last Hooray
12 Rumble On Mersey Square South

The Mojos - Everything's Alright (1965)

The Mojos formed as a duo under the name the Nomads in 1962, and originally consisted of bassist Keith Karlson and drummer Jon "Bob" Conrad. Before Conrad, Snowy Fleet was the drummer, but he was replaced by Conrad when he emigrated to Australia, and after that the band was joined in September 1962 by lead singer/pianist Stu James, and rhythm guitarist/vocalist Adrian Lord. They were a bit different from most of the other Merseyside bands in that their first love was American blues rather than R&B and rock & roll, preferring to cover the works of John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. The band continued without a lead guitarist when Wood left, and at the suggestion of Beatle George Harrison, pianist Terry O'Toole was added to the line-up in August 1963. The band also changed their name in August 1963 to The Mojos, and Lord swapped from rhythm guitar to lead guitar, with this line-up recording 'My Whole Life Through', which was featured on the Oriole Records 'This Is Merseybeat' compilation album. After signing to Decca Records they released their debut single 'They Say' in 1963, and it achieved some popularity, especially after it was used for the party scene in the 1964 film 'The Comedy Man'. Despite having written the single's b-side, Lord left the group soon after its release, and was replaced by Nicky Crouch, with this line-up continuing until October 1964, recording the group's three charting singles, 'Everything's Alright', 'Why Not Tonight', and 'Seven Daffodils'. 

They also appeared in the movie 'Every Day's A Holiday', and like many of their contemporaries the group played at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany. In 1964 they released a four-track EP, but by this time the group had only scraped the Top 30 since their solitary big hit, and the label began losing interest. In October 1964, Karlson, Conrad and O'Toole left the group and James and Crouch were joined by drummer Aynsley Dunbar and bassist Lewis Collins, and this line-up recorded the singles 'Comin' On To Cry' and 'Wait A Minute', both of which were released as by "Stu James And The Mojos". In September 1966 the group broke up, with James and Crouch forming a new version with Birmingham bass player Deke Vernon and Southampton drummer Martin Smith, while Collins went into acting, and scored huge acclaim when he appeared in 'The Professionals' with Martin Shaw. The Mojos in their original incarnation were only around for a couple of years, but they will forever be remembered for 'Everything's Alright' after David Bowie covered it on his 1973 'Pin Ups' album, and it's a shame they never recorded an album, as their style of Merseybeat was a bit different to what was generally coming out of the city at the time, and so here is what a long-player from them could have sounded like in 1965.  

Track listing  

01 Give Your Lovin' To Me
02 Don't Do It Anymore
03 I Got My Mojo Working
04 Comin' On To Cry
05 Everything's Alright
06 Nothin' At All
07 Seven Daffodils
08 Nobody But Me
09 They Say You Found A New Baby
10 Forever
11 Why Not Tonight
12 That's The Way It Goes
13 The One Who Really Loves You