I was listening to The Scaffold's 'Fresh Liver' album the other day, and I'd forgotten just what a great rock band they could be when they put their mind to it. The Scaffold were a comedy, poetry and music trio from Liverpool, consisting of musical performer Mike McGear (real name Peter Michael McCartney, the brother of Paul McCartney), poet Roger McGough and comic entertainer John Gorman. From as early as 1962 the members of The Scaffold were part of a performing revue group known as The Liverpool One Fat Lady All Electric Show, which also included McGough's fellow Liverpool poet Adrian Henri. Working almost exclusively as a trio under the name The Scaffold from 1964, Gorman, McGear and McGough performed a mixture of comic songs, comedy sketches and the poetry of McGough, and they released a number of singles and albums on Parlophone and EMI between 1966 and 1971, with several more on Island, Warner Bros. and Bronze later. In 1967 they had their first hit single with 'Thank U Very Much', and they followed this in 1968 with their best known recording 'Lily The Pink', which topped the UK singles chart. They also composed and sang the theme tune to the popular BBC TV comedy 'The Liver Birds', which aired from 1969–1978. Mike McGear was the only member of the band who could be described as a professional musician, and so the songs on their early albums were often augmented by session musician such as Elton John, Jack Bruce and Graham Nash. In addition to the hit singles, The Scaffold's output included four albums: the live 'The Scaffold' in 1968, and 'L. The P. 'in 1969, both on Parlophone Records, 'Fresh Liver' on Island in 1973, and 'Sold Out' on Warner Brothers in 1975. All of their albums contained a mixture of straight rock songs, comic songs, sketches and poetry, and as I mentioned at the start, the pop and rock songs were good enough to have been recorded by any number of top groups of the period. Some of the sketches and poetry don't really bear repeated hearings, and even some of the comic songs are best heard sparingly, so what I really wanted to hear was an album of just their rock and pop recordings. As they were primarily a comic trio, their four albums only yielded 10 songs that were played straight, but with the addition of a couple of unreleased tracks from Abbey Road, including an early take of 'Take It While You Can' which was re-worked for GRIMMS' 'Rockin' Duck' album in 1973, that was exactly enough for what I wanted. So here is the album that I will probably play more than any other of theirs - just the songs of The Scaffold.
Track listing 01 Devon's Dead 02 Plenty Of Time 03 Today04 Uptown And Downtown05 Oh To Be A Child06 Take It While You Can07 Fax 'N' Figgers 08 Jelly Covered Cloud 09 Nuclear Band 10 I Can't Make You Mine11 All The Way Up12 Leaving Of LiverpoolFor anyone who wants to burn this collection to a CD, SmithWorksGrafx has designed some groovy artwork for it.
