I was quite pleased at how my recent post from Jason Crest turned out, where I extracted the songs recorded for their unreleased album from the various compilation albums that are doing the rounds, and made a record that was more rooted in one particular period of their career. It does seem to me that when a record company decides to release a retrospective of an obscure group from the 60's they tend to chuck everything that they can find into the mix, and so we end up with singles, b-sides, demos, acetetes, alternate versions and mixes, multiple versions of the same songs, and sometimes even what the lead singer got up to when the band broke up! I have a number of these compilations, and it is a chore having to skip the inferior tracks or the multiple takes, and so I've decided to take the raw material and use it to compile an album that the group could have recorded at a certain point in their career, using just the best songs and recordings. Sometimes this does mean that the result is very much in the spirit of an actual 60's album, and might only be 35-40 minutes long, but that just adds to the authenticity of the album. I'm starting with a band who are mostly known for their classic 1969 single 'Tamaris Khan', but this music is from earlier in their career.
The Onyx were a psychedelic rock band formed in Wadebridge, Cornwall, England in 1965. They were descended from a band called The Jaguars, which consisted of Tony Priest on vocals, Fritz Philips on drums, Cliff Webb on lead guitar, Rob Hancock on bass, and Anthony Jewel on rhythm guitar, with the addition of 13 year old guitarist Alan Hodge. After winning a battle of the band contest in Cronwall, they went through a number of line-up changes, and they eventually settled on Priest on vocals, with Steve Cotton on lead guitar, Mike Black-Borow on bass, Pete England on rhythm guitar, and Chris Cotterell on drums, with the new band beinf christened The Onyx Set, named after an Onyx ring owned by band member Black-Borow. After more changes in the line-up they shortened their name to The Onyx and the classic line-up was formed, with Preist and Cotton being joined by bassist Dick Bland and drummer Roger Dell (after a pre-Queen Roger Taylor turned them down), plus a returning Alan Hodge. The band evolved from doing cover versions of popular contemporary beat bands in their early days to psychedelia, and in 1967 they used Bob Potter's studio to record demos of some of the songs that they had been working on, including the live favourite 'Kaleidoscope Of Colours', which was a great piece of pop-psych, and included their only foray into phasing. Another track recorded during these sessions was the quirky progressive pop number 'Climb That Tree', which would be covered the following year by She Trinity on the b-side of their 'Hair' single, with the girls using the Onyx backing track for their recording.
Through Potter's contacts the band hooked up with songwriter Guy Fletcher and lyricist Doug Flett, who were fresh from working with Wishful Thinking, and they agreed to work with the band on what would become their first single. The Flett/Fletcher penned and produced 'You've Gotta Be With Me'/'It's All Put On' was released by Pye Records in 1968, but despite healthy local sales and an airing by Alan Freeman on the Top Of The Pops radio show, the record failed to fully take off. 'My Son John' followed later that year, to much the same reception, and so Fletcher and Flett decided to try something different, and moved in a more psychedelic direction with their next song 'Tamaris Khan', which gave guitarist Alan Hodge's Stratocaster and fuzz box their first opportunity to be let loose on record. It was released in 1969, and was the first single to include a band composition on the b-side, with their own 'So Sad Inside'. The single received some very positive press, with its excellent production, tight harmonies, searing guitar and a title hinting at something slightly lysergic without being too suggestive, but perhaps it was a bit too psychedelic for daytime radio, and not psychedelic enough for the underground. 'Tamaris Khan' has since become regarded as the band's high-point, and so that is a good place to take a break and re-evaluate their earlier work, most of which was recorded in 1967 in Bob Potter's studio, and so here is an album made up from the demos they laid down in that year, all housed in a suitable psychedelic cover.
Track listing
01 Kaleidoscope Of Colours
02 In Harmony
03 Travellin' Along
04 Billy
05 Life's Anticipation
06 I Put A Spell On You
07 On Our Way
08 Loneliness Cuts Like A Knife
09 These Are The Things
10 He's A Salesman
11 I Just Die
12 Porcelain Monuments
13 Louisa La Belle
14 I Used To Know Her
15 I Just Had To Laugh
16 Climb That Tree
