The Dodos - Up The Block (1966)

In 1966, The Dodos released their highly influential and ground-breaking album, 'Up The Block'. A true innovation in sound, the Dodos left their more simplistic and singles based song-writing for more expansive and fresh sounding songs. With a harder edge than previous output, this record really shook the music scene and influenced many of their contemporaries to follow suit. The title, Up The Block evokes a sense of community which the Dodos both fostered and bristled against. This sentiment is explored within the songs of the album as well, on tracks like 'Marvelman' and 'Best Friends' which both take a combative look at their fan's expectations of them. Meanwhile songs like 'At the Pub', 'The Drums' and 'Honk That Horn' feel more like celebrations of their fans. There are a few classic Dodos boy meets girl songs, such as 'She Smiled At Me', 'Five Ways Till Love', 'Sun In My Eyes', and 'Blue Green Red', which all evoke the nostalgia of previous works, while also moving forward sonically. Two songs which were previously released as singles in late 1965 ('Magazine Blues' and 'One Day You Won't Need Us') were drastically reworked for the album, with completely different structure/sound and lyrical changes. The album had many sessions and there are drastically different alternate versions that were not used for the album which may be released at a later date as part of a rarities album. One such song is the side A closer, 'Dance It Away'. Written by Joseph Lemmon, the songs is a lumbering almost hypnotic song about watching your best girl give herself to the moment while dancing. 

The album version is also sung by Joseph, but there was a version sung by Samuel, who gave a wonderful vocal performance and raced through the song making it significantly shorter and punchier. The label wanted to release the Samuel version as a single, but the band and specifically Joseph fought to make the sixth single from the album 'Marvelman' instead, as Joseph felt more connected to the lyrical content of that song, and so the Samuel version while, breathtaking ,has yet to make the light of day. The Dodos were very staunch on the idea of providing value to their listeners, and so they always tried to make singles and album tracks different enough that no one felt cheated buying both. And this means that a wide selection of unreleased session tracks are in the Dodos vaults, all as good as the released version, but different. Of note is also Johnny's stepping up as far as song-writing goes on this album, having written 'At The Pub', 'Magazine Blues', 'Over Your Head', and 'One Day You Won't Need Us'. This was the first time in their career that Johnny had so many songs on an album. One of the album standouts has to be Bippo's 'The Drums'. A real joy of a track with not only a great vocal & percussion performance by the Dodos' drummer extraordinaire, but the rest of the band goes all in making it one of the most colourful and exciting tracks on the album. This is a rollicking good rock and roll album with something for everyone.  

Track listing

01 At The Pub
02 She Smiled At Me
03 Sun In My Eyes
04 Magazine Blues
05 Five Ways Till Love
06 Honk That Horn
07 Dance It Away
08 Blue Green Red
09 Over Your Head
10 Best Friends
11 The Drums
12 One Day You Won't Need Us
13 Marvelman

The Dodos - Photo Album (1966)

One of the 1966 albums by the Dodos is entitled 'Photo Album', and it features twelve tracks, including six singles, and as always, all the singles are different to the album versions. The Dodos believed in quality and value for their fans! The album shows the boys progressions into their psychedelic phase, with such classics as 'The March Of The Lonely', 'Round About Way', and of course the epic closing number, 'One More Time (For Those In The Back)'. That doesn't mean they sacrificed melody, as shown by such numbers as 'Moon in Your Eyes', 'Outta Sight (Outta Mind)', and 'It Hurts'. All throughout, it's classic Dodos song-writing, but a bit more mature than their 1965 albums, and with a wider palate of colours to work with.

Track listing

01 Hot Fuzz
02 Round About Way
03 Moon In Your Eyes
04 Your Mother Said No
05 Tight Spaces
06 The March Of The Lonely
07 It Hurts
08 Anything That Isn't You
09 Big Ben
10 Outta Sight (Outta Time)
11 Night On The Sound
12 One More Time (For Those In The Back) 

The Dodos - Up Close With The Dodos (1963)

The Dodos second LP, 'Up Close With The Dodos' saw many changes from their previous debut album. For one, Joseph Lemmon led the writing and sang more leads than on 'The World Wants To Know'. The album also went from recording on a two-track machine as they did on their debut to a four-track. This allowed for more texture in the recordings, and led to a leap in their song-writing. Johnny had much less lead singing on this album, but his lead guitar really made a jump in quality and in experimentation. Bippo's drumming also improved, and was recorded with a delay which gave it a much deeper and full sound. While this LP is still mainly full of "boy loves girl" type songs, there are definitely some more complex writing techniques involved. For example, 'He Told Me To Tell You' is written from the perspective of a guy telling his mate's girlfriend that their romance is over, and 'Do That Thing For You' is written from the perspective of the entire band talking to their fans (presumably the female ones). All in all, The Dodos second LP is both a step forward sonically and lyrically.

Track listing

01 Every Bit Of My Heart

02 Hold Me Close

03 Little One 

04 We Could Be So Good

05 He Told Me To Tell You

06 I Think I'm Losing You

07 I'm Gonna Be Your Guy

08 Caught In Your Web

09 Letters Of Love

10 Don't Give Up

11 Twice Before Today

12 Do That Thing For You

The Dodos - The World Wants To Know (1963)

As most people should have worked out by now, the recent post by The Chyknhawks was an AI generated pastiche of The Byrds, and there are few of these on the net at the moment, with a '1967 single' by The Brothers Gee, which bears more than a passing resemblance to late-60's Bee Gees, while Feel Flows takes on the Beach Boys at their own game. The Beatles are not spared either, and have the biggest catalogue, although to be honest they are the least convincing imitations. That's not to say that the songs are not worth hearing, and the spoof biography has been put together with tongue very much in cheek, while the covers have been lovingly created to look of the period that the 'album' came out. So here is the first album from The Dodos, 'released' in 1963, accompanied by this bio.   
Released on August 13th 1963, the debut album by the Dodos was a resounding success both critically and financially. Shooting straight to number one on the UK charts, it was the first of many number one albums. Considering the group consisted of very young men (the youngest at 16 and oldest at 20), the fact that the entire album was made up of self penned songs was truly extraordinary, and would inspire greatness from their contemporaries who until then had filled albums with filler and cover tracks. At this time, the music business was fuelled by singles, as most record buyers couldn't afford full albums, and most albums as said before were mainly full of filler surrounding hit singles. The Dodos began a trend in the English music scene to treat albums as something just as special as singles, and were the first UK band to record different versions of songs for their singles and albums. This was suggested by their producer Tolly Williford Gipson, and the boys loved the idea, and it became an industry standard later in the UK. Yet another example of the Dodos being innovators in music. The album was famously recorded in one feverish day, with a few overdubs done the following day. Recorded on a BTR-2 Reel To Reel tape machine, the rhythm track was recorded on one track with the vocals on the other. this allowed T.W.G. to bring vocals up or down in the mix, ensuring a clean vocal performance on every recoding.

Track listing

01 The World Wants To Know
02 Am I The Bad Guy
03 More Than You Know

04 Empty Spaces
05 I Know A Place
06 Listen To My Heart
07 I Want To Make You Mine
08 Smiles and Glancing Looks
09 I Saw Her Dancing There
10 Why Me
11 Love Me Now
12 Don't Leave Me Now