The Herd - Have You Herd? (1969)

The Herd were founded in 1965 in south London, recording three unsuccessful singles with Parlophone, before three members quit the group in quick succession in 1966. The remaining members, Andy Brown (keyboards, bass) and Gary Taylor (rhythm guitar.) recruited Mick Underwood on drums and 16 year-old singer Peter Frampton, and the classic line-up of the band was complete. Parlophone had given up on them, so they moved to Fontana, and their manager Billy Gaff brought in the songwriters/producers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, as they had been largely responsible for a string of hits by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. Howard and Blaikley brought a unique blend of pop and flower power to the group, and following a chart near-miss with 'I Can Fly' in 1967, the haunting 'From the Underworld' reached Number 6 later that year with help from copious plays on pirate radio. Based on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, it was a hit all around Europe, and was soon followed by another Howard/Blaikley song based on a literary classic, 'Paradise Lost'. 
In 1968 Frampton's boyish good looks earned him the title 'The Face of ’68' from teen magazine Rave, but that year was also to be a tempestuous one for the group. They dumped their managers Howard and Blaikley, and briefly found a new mentor in Harvey Lisberg, who soon found himself so bogged down with their personnel problems that he politely withdrew his services. They released one more self-penned single 'Sunshine Cottage', but when that failed to make an impact on the charts Frampton left to form Humble Pie with Steve Marriott, and the remaining members gave it one last shot with the flop single 'The Game', and then disbanded. They only recorded the one album 'Paradise Lost' in 1968, but it has since become regarded as a psychedelic classic, and if they'd stuck together just a little longer the potential was certainly there for them to achieve so much more. One song which wasn't on the album was one of their biggest hits, and so by taking 'I Don't Want Our Loving To Die' and adding 'Sunshine Cottage' and 'The Game', together with their b-sides and a few choice out-takes we can imagine an album which could have been a worthy successor to 'Paradise Lost'. 

Track .listing

01 Sunshine Cottage
02 Our Fairy Tale
03 Follow The Leader
04 Sweet William
05 I Don't Want Our Loving To Die
06 Diary Of A Narcissist
07 Miss Jones
08 Come On - Believe Me
09 Understand Me
10 Beauty Queen
11 Bang!
12 Sugarloaf Mountain
13 The Game
14 Charlie Anderson
15 Mother's Blue Eyed Angel
16 Fare Thee Well (Reprise)