Eccentric Brazilian trio invent South American psych.Record label: PolydorProduced: Manuel BarenbeimRecorded: Philips Studios, Brazil; 1967–1968Released: June 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: Rita Lee (v, pc, flute); Arnaldo Baptista (b, v); Sergio Dias Baptista (g); Rogério Duprat (ar)Track listing: Panis Et Circencis; A Minha Menina; O Relogio; Adeus Maria Fulo; Baby; Senhor F; Bat Macumba; Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour; Trem Fantasma; Tempo No Tempo; Ave Genghis KhanRunning time: 36.01Current CD: Polydor 8294982Further listening: Mutantes (1969); A Divina Comedia Ou Ando Meio Desligado (1970); Technicolor (1970), a recently released collection of highlights re-recorded in English, never issued at the time; Jardim Eléctrico (1971); Arnaldo Baptista’s solo album tribute to his lost love, Rita (1974); Everything Is Possible: The Best Of Os Mutantes (1999)Further reading: www.luakabop.com/os_mutantes/cmp/main.htmlDownload: iTunes; HMV Digital
The explosion of invention in mid-’60s pop was startling enough to anyone listening on the Anglo-American axis. Imagine how it must have sounded in a place where music followed rigid traditional guidelines and ‘pop’ was the province of fife and drum bands. When a particularly insane Brazilian rock trio called Os Mutantes (The Mutants) unveiled a mischievous, wayward hybrid of Pepper Beatles, Piper Floyd and Disraeli Cream having a bossa-nova jam at a popular Brazilian music festival in September 1967, no one was too surprised when the crowd started booing and throwing things, or when the use of electric guitars was subsequently banned at the festival.
Originally from São Paolo, Os Mutantes became the adopted rock band of the Tropicalia movement, a group of artists from Bahia state who brought together music, pop art and concrete poetry to good-humouredly undermine conservative tradition and irritate the ruling military regime, taking pleasure in sending up Brazilian sacred cows or appearing on TV in plastic trousers for a dada freak-out. Eccentric singer and percussionist Rita Lee, her loopy husband Arnaldo Baptista and his brother Sergio, all still in their teens, were guaranteed to delight or offend as required. A third Baptista brother remained off-stage building guitars for Sergio and creating fearsome musical devices out of electric sewing machines. There were also contributions from Tropicalia’s pet orchestrator, the gifted Rogério Duprat.
This, the team’s debut album, was a lovely antic party in Portuguese, featuring wild versions of their contemporaries’ songs. Tropicalia colleagues Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Jorge Ben were all present, as was a cover of The Mamas and Papas’ Once Was A Time I Thought and an alkaline guitar sound which seared its way across Veloso’s languid blues for the modern era, Baby.
Inspired by Sgt. Pepper to experiment in the studio, their more peculiar inventions included using aerosol sprays in place of cymbals and serving a meal in the vocal booth and recording the prandial proceedings. One might assume that they were familiar with psychedelic drugs. In fact, the Baptista brothers were naturally bizarre enough not to need any chemical assistance, and didn’t sample acid until they visited London in 1970.
Their crazy dream went sour in 1972 when Rita and Arnaldo split after a studio quarrel and she began a successful solo career. Relations between the two factions have been intensely awkward ever since. The brothers’ subsequent albums went into the realms of prog rock and Arnaldo descended into something akin to Brazil’s answer to Syd Barrett. But at their peak they were producing some of the ’60s’ most vital music – in any language.
Dr John, The Night Tripper
Gris-GrisThe record that transformed session player Mac Rebennack into post-hippy psychedelic voodoo king Dr John.Record label: AtlanticProduced: Harold BattisteRecorded: Gold Star Studio, Los Angeles, California; autumn 1967Released: July 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: Mac Rebennack, (v, g, o); Steve Mann (g); Alvin ‘Shine’ Robinson (g, v); Ernest McLean (g); Harold Battiste (bs, clarinet); Ron Johnson (b); David West (b); Richard ‘Didimus’ Washington (d, pc); John Boudreaux (d); Dave Dixon (v, pc); Jessie Hill (v); Shirley Goodman (v); Tami Lynn (v); Joanie Jones (v); Sonny Raye (v); Ronnie Barron (v, o); Morris Bachamin (ts); Plas Johnson (s)Track listing: Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya; Danse Kalinda Ba Boom; Mama Roux (US/S); Danse Fambeaux; Croker Courtbullion; Jump Sturdy (US/S); I Walk On Gilded SplintersRunning time: 33.32Current CD: Collectors Choice COLC1311Further listening: Babylon (1969); Gumbo (1972); Dr John Plays Mac Rebennack (1982); Anutha Zone (1998)Further reading: Under A Hoodoo Moon: The Life of the Night Tripper (Mac Rebennack with Jack Rummel, 1994); www.drjohn.orgDownload: iTunes
Mac Rebennack had no intention of singing on this brooding underground classic; New Orleans belter Ronnie Barron had been designated for the job. But with Barron unavailable – ‘his manager thought it was a bad career move’ – the man who had worked as a session keyboardist and guitar player (until a gunshot wound put paid to the picking) on albums by Professor Longhair, Joe Tex and Frankie Ford morphed into his alter ego – mystical, menacing growler Dr John, The Night Tripper, a character he had learned about in the ’50s from voodoo artist Prince LaLa.
‘I figured it would be a one-off thing,’ recalls the Doctor.
Rebennack was familiar with the mystery and magic of Crescent City – his nightmarish 1965 Zu Zu Man borrowed liberally from the voodoo chants and incantations that were as prevalent as incense smoke in the tawdry French Quarter. But Gris-Gris went further, grafting voodoo’s dark, esoteric heart to a hypnotic groove with funky blues, sparse, repetitive minor chord melodies, funereal keyboards and Afro-Cuban syncopation shot through with feral noises, gibberish and metaphysical threats and boasts, creating an unwholesome witchy brew of sorcery and chicanery that fascinates as much as it disturbs.
‘One thing I always did was believe. I used to play for gigs for the Gris-Gris church. I dug the music, and that’s what I was trying to capture.’ Using left-over time at Gold Star from a Sonny and Cher session, Dr John and his fellow refugees did their best to turn the legendary studio into a voodoo church: ‘I remember Hugh Masekela was cutting next door to us and the engineers at Gold Star were nervous. They were used to Phil Spector and Sonny Bono and people like that coming in, and they saw my crew and next door they saw Hugh’s crew and these guys didn’t look like your regulation studio-looking kind of guys, and we were burning candles and incense to get into the mood and everything. But I got a kick out of that.’
Centrepiece I Walk On Gilded Splinters was based on a traditional voodoo church song. ‘It’s supposed to be “Splendors” but I turned it into “Splinters”,’ said the Doctor. ‘I just thought splinters sounded better and I always pictured splinters when I sung it.’ And the ambling, subliminal title cut wormed its way into the nascent waves of American FM radio where it became a late-night staple, catching the cresting wave of psychedelia and hippiedom. More than three decades on, the album retains its extraordinary power to cast a spell.
J.K. & Co. Suddenly One Summer
Dreamy psychedelia from Canada! Now a cult classic.Record label: White WhaleProduced: RH SpurginRecorded: Vancouver Recording, Canada; dates unknownReleased: July 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: Jay Kaye (all instruments, v); RW Buckley (ar)Track listing: Break Of Dawn; Fly; Little Children; Christine; Speed; Crystal Ball; Nobody; O.D; Land Of Sensations & Delights; The Times; The Magical Fingers Of Minerva; DeadRunning time: 33.03Current CD: Currently unavailable on legitimate CD, though bootlegs existFurther listening: Ford Theatre – Trilogy For The Masses (1968)Further reading: You just read it!Download: Not currently legally available
One of those treasured items record collectors occasionally stumble across and pick up merely because they find the cover to be interestingly tacky, Suddenly One Summer has proven to be a jewel of a record, albeit a mystifying one. Canadian in origin, and issued in the US on White Whale Records – a label with a bizarrely eclectic artist roster that included The Turtles, Nino Tempo And April Stevens, and British under-achievers John’s Children – the record is a whooshing, floating trip.
As its cover credits only three humans to speak of – and anonymously named ones at that – one is left to ponder whether J.K. & Co. was in fact a band or a psychedelic predecessor of the Alan Parsons Project. In some ways it indeed seems a producer’s record: opening vocal track Fly boasts a drum sound lifted straight off The Beatles’ A Day In The Life; a sitar can be heard on The Magical Fingers Of Minerva; Little Children features the inevitable sound effect of children at play and actually breaks into a few bars of Frère Jacques; and, most appropriately, album closer Dead includes the voice of a clergyman invoking burial rites, and – nice touch, this – the sound of someone shovelling actual dirt.
But what holds Suddenly One Summer together throughout is the voice and song of one Jay Kaye, who has crafted a rather special song cycle. From its whirling beginning – in which Kaye in lazy reverie sings, ‘If you want to fly …’ – through the troubled lyrics of Nobody (‘My happiness is a needle/I will escape for another day’), which recalls Love’s Signed D.C. – to the cheery sound of that gravedigger’s shovel, there’s a story of some sort being told here.
Consider this one of those late ’60s psychedelic concept albums – Ford Theatre’s Trilogy For The Masses and Mandrake Memorial’s Puzzle are two others – that in their ambition to tell some sort of life parable emerge with an oddly open-ended suite that can be interpreted in any manner the listener finds appropriate. In the end, the big question is less the matter of J.K.’ s identity and more the motivation of the people who made the record – not to mention the expectations of the label that decided to release it. Stranger still is how Fly manages to anticipate Radiohead’s OK Computer, a mere 30 years beforehand. What goes around …
The Millennium Begin
Ambitious, avant-garde but accessible West Coast genius from a legendary cult figure.Record label: ColumbiaProduced: Curt Boettcher and Keith OlsenRecorded: Columbia Studios, Los Angeles; early 1967 to mid-1968Released: July 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: Curt Boettcher (v, g); Lee Mallory (v, g); Doug Rhodes (b, tuba, p, o, harpsichord, v); Ron Edgar (d, pc, v); Michael Fennelly (v, g); Joey Stec (v, g); Sandy Salisbury (v); Michelle O’Malley (v); Red Rhodes (ps); Mike Deasy (g); Toxie French (d); Jerry Scheff (b); Pat Shanahan (d) Paulinho DaCosta (pc)Track listing: Prelude; To Claudia On Thursday; I Just Want To Be Your Friend; 5am; I’m With You; The Island; Sing To Me; It’s You; Some Sunny Day; It Won’t Always Be The Same; The Know It All; Karmic Dream Sequence #1; There Is Nothing More To Say; Anthem (Begin)Running time: 43.15Current CD: Rev-Ola CREV052 adds: Just About The Same; BlightFurther listening: The album made by Curt Boettcher and various Millennium personnel as Sagittarius, Present Tense (1968)Further reading: www.geocities.com/Hollywood/ 3218 (fan site)Download: Not currently legally available
The Millennium were the brainchild of LA-based producer Curt Boettcher (1943–1987), whose work on The Association’s 1966 debut album had yielded the hits Along Comes Mary and Cherish. Seeing himself as an auteur in the Phil Spector mould, Boettcher sought a broad canvas for his outpouring of ideas. His production partner was Keith Olsen, a whiz-kid engineer who quit his gig as bass player in the Music Machine to follow Boettcher’s lead. (Olsen would later become a hit producer himself for Fleetwood Mac, The Grateful Dead and others.)
Armed with a concept and a partner, all Boettcher needed was an angel. He found one in the form of Brian Wilson’s former writing partner, Gary Usher. A staff producer at Columbia, Usher first learned of Boettcher in 1966, when he heard strange sounds wafting down the hall at Studio Three West. As Usher (who died in 1990) later recalled, he was not the only one who was impressed; ‘Brian Wilson said, “What is that?”’ It was Boettcher doing a single with future Millennium member Lee Mallory. ‘That record stunned Brian. He’s doing little surfer music, and here comes this kid who is light years ahead of him. I had never seen Brian turn white. All he could talk about for a week was that song and that kid. Brian sensed that that was where it was at, that’s where it was going.’
Although The Millennium was conceived as a studio group, its line-up was solid. In addition to Mallory, Salisbury and Boettcher, it included former Music Machine members Ron Edgar and Doug Rhodes, newcomer Joey Stec and future Crabby Appleton leader Michael Fennelly.Begin was recorded on two jerryrigged 8-track machines, making it only the second album to use 16-track technology. (Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends was the first.) The sound is dense; Boettcher’s philosophy could be summed up as,‘16 tracks and every one of them has to be filled!’ At the same time, it escapes being a Wall of Mush; in fact, it sounds strikingly modern, rendering the West Coast vocal-harmony sound of the time with a lush intricacy. The songs are as strong as the production, too: Fennelly-Stec composition It’s You presages ’70s power pop, while Boettcher’s The Island sparkles like beach glass in the sun. It’s no surprise that the album is a favourite of contemporary pop confectioners such as Belle And Sebastian, Saint Etienne and The High Llamas. Even in 1968, when Begin died a commercial death, there were people who knew that it pointed towards the sound of the next millennium. And then, there were also those who didn’t want to know. ‘I sent Brian [Wilson] a copy of The Millennium album,’ Usher recalled. ‘Freaked him out. He never called me back.’
Nilsson Aerial Ballet
The Beatles’ favourite songwriter shines.Record label: RCA VictorProduced: Rick JarrardRecorded: RCA Victor’s Music Center of the World, Los Angeles; late 1967–early 1968Released: November 8, 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: Harry Nilsson (v); Larry Knechtel (b, p); Lyle Ritz (b); Al Casey (g); Dennis Budimir (g); Michael Melvoin (harpsichord, o, p); with orchestra; George Tipton (ar)Track listing: Good Old Desk; Don’t Leave Me; Mr Richland’s Favorite Song; Little Cowboy; Together; Everybody’s Talkin’; I Said Goodbye To Me; Little Cowboy (reprise); Mr Tinker; One; The Wailing Of The Willow; BathRunning time: 25.15Current CD: Camden Deluxe 74321 757422 2CD set includes Pandemonium Shadow Show and Aerial Pandemonium Ballet, the 1971 remixed compilation of the two albums.Further listening: Nilsson said that his albums came in trilogies. Aerial Ballet could be said to be the middle of a trilogy that began with his debut, Pandemonium Shadow Show (1967), and ended with Harry (1969), both highly recommended.Further reading: www.harrynilsson.comDownload: Not currently legally available
‘I always thought,’ mused Harry Nilsson, ‘I was a street cat who could pass for someone who went to college.’ Aerial Ballet, his second album, perfectly showcases his unique, utterly charming blend of earthiness and airiness. In an era bloated with confessional songwriters, Nilsson was a contradiction. His lyrics often seemed extraordinarily intimate, yet he bristled when fans attempted to read too much meaning into them. He was accommodating enough to explain the album’s title – Nilsson’s Aerial Ballet was a name his grandparents used for their trapeze act. However, when asked the meaning of one of his songs, he was likely to give an answer like the one he gave Hugh Hefner on TV’s Playboy After Dark. Hef had inquired as to the inspiration behind Aerial Ballet’s Good Old Desk. With a straight face, Nilsson replied that the song’s meaning was in its initials: GOD; ‘I bullshitted him,’ Harry admitted later. ‘I thought it was funny. Nobody else thought it was funny!’
Shortly before the release of Aerial Ballet, Nilsson’s career received the kind of boost most performers can only dream of. Derek Taylor, The Beatles’ close friend and former press agent, had given the group a copy of Nilsson’s first album, Pandemonium Shadow Show. At an Apple press conference, when asked to name their favourite singer, The Beatles said, ‘Nilsson’. Asked about their favourite group, they gave the same reply. Nilsson subsequently met the Fabs during a trip to England, where he played Lennon Aerial Ballet. Lennon especially liked Mr Richland’s Favorite Song (named after record promoter Tony Richland). Recalling those times with Lennon, Nilsson told Rolling Stone, ‘I really fell in love with him. I knew he was all those things you wanted somebody to be.’
Although it was largely Nilsson’s songwriting that impressed The Beatles, it was Aerial Ballet’s lone non-original that would catapult him to fame. According to legend, it was the inexhaustible Taylor who turned director John Schlesinger on to Nilsson’s version of Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talkin’, which had an unsuccessful run as a single on Aerial Ballet’s release. When it emerged in August 1969 as a single from the film’s soundtrack, it became an international smash. Everybody’s Talkin’ won Nilsson his first Grammy: Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male.
David Ackles David Ackles
A former toilet-factory security guard taps into the American heartland in a classic debut.Record label: ElektraProduced: David Anderle and Russ MillerRecorded: Location and date unknownReleased: September 3, 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Running time: 37.54Personnel: David Ackles (p, v); Michael Fonfara (o); Danny Weis (g); Douglas Hastings (g); Jerry Penrod (b); John Keliehor (pc)Track listing: The Road To Cairo (S); When Love Is Gone; Sonny Come Home; Blue Ribbons; What A Happy Day; Down River (S); Laissez-Faire (S); Lotus Man; His Name Is Andrew; Be My FriendCurrent CD: Elektra 7559615952Further listening: American Gothic (1972)Further reading: www.mathie.demon.co.uk/da/Download: HMV Digital
Born into a showbiz family, at the age of four David Ackles was half of a song-and-dance act with his sister, and in his early teens was a Hollywood B-movie child actor. Contracted to Elektra purely as a songwriter in the late ’60s, label boss Jac Holzman soon realised that compositions as idiosyncratic as The Road To Cairo, about a man immobilised by fear, or His Name Is Andrew, detailing the pain of lost faith, would best be served if Ackles sang them himself. Partnered with his old school-friend David Anderle as producer, he set to work recording and orchestrating his poignant story-songs.
‘We had to make that album twice to get what I wanted,’ explained Ackles later. The second attempt came when Ackles was introduced to Rhinoceros, another recent Elektra signing. ‘We sat around and I played the songs and they filled in, and we just had such a good time. We knew that was the right thing to do.’
The album offered the intelligence and imagery of Leonard Cohen without the self-pity, as it stumbled along on Ackles’s curious piano rhythms, augmented by Michael Fonfara’s whistling organ and Doug Hastings’s empathetic guitar filigrees. These collaborative arrangements tended towards stagey structures, as if written for some half-realised off-Broadway musical, ideal for tracks like Down River, an ingeniously plotted, semi-autobiographical, one-sided conversation with a sting in its tail. Ackles later recalled the sessions as ‘an easy-going, friendly affair’, but the atmosphere was shot through with the singer’s world-weary aching and loneliness. On release, Rolling Stone complimented his voice but reckoned his melodies were ‘almost no melodies at all’, while the nearest Record Mirror got to a positive comment was ‘a plaintive sort of collection’. After four unsuccessful albums, Ackles became variously a lecturer, TV scriptwriter and scorer of ballets. As if he was becoming a character in one of his own songs, various accidents left him with an all but crippled arm and a steel hip before he had his first encounter with cancer. Tracked down in 1994, Ackles said, ‘I’m really enjoying my life, which will no doubt come as a shock to fans of my first two albums, in whose angst they swim.’ On March 2, 1999, David Ackles died of lung cancer, leaving a legacy of four of the most beautiful but rarely heard albums of his era.
Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit And Greenhill The Unwritten Works Of Geoffrey, Etc.
Showcase of the sophisticated scene in Ft Worth, Texas.Record label: UniProduced: Joseph BurnettRecorded: Sound City Studios, Fort Worth, Texas and United Audio Studio, Santa Ana, CaliforniaReleased: September 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: David Bullock; Scott Fraser; John Carrick; Phil White; Eddie Lively; T-Bone Burnett; George J Fernandez (m, special effects)Track listing: The Viper (What John Rance Had To Tell); Day Of Childhood; Upon Waking From The Nap; Live ’Til I Die; Street In Paris; As Pure As The Freshly Driven Snow; Tribute To Sundance; House Of Collection; Just Me And Her; One Lusty Gentlemen; Ready To MoveRunning time: 28.12Current CD: Code7 FOCD2007Further listening: J Henry Burnett – The B-52 Band And The Fabulous Skylarks (1972); Space Opera (1973)Download: Not currently legally available
Anyone picking up this nondescript 1968 Uni Records album expecting to glean any information about the performers within were confronted with period liner notes reading: ‘I predict Benjamin Whistler, Geoffrey Chaucer, Nathan Detroit and Phillip Greenhill will be the next big thing, and I’m sure after you dig this album you’ll agree they have what it takes to be just that.’
Anyone reading the songwriting credits, though, would note that producer Joseph Burnett – soon known as T-Bone – penned four of the album’s 11 tracks, and that the real names of the mysterious ‘next big thing’ were nowhere to be seen. In fact, WCD&G were not a band, but a loosely based, non-performing group of musicians ‘just learning to use the studio, really,’ says T-Bone Burnett today. With Houston’s John Carrick the only non-Ft Worth homeboy, Burnett, David Bullock, Scott Fraser, Phil White and Eddie Lively were just making it up as they went along.
‘We were hanging out recording stuff down in the basement of this radio station in Ft Worth. We did the Legendary Stardust Cowboy at that time, then we recorded a bunch of tunes – mostly staying up all night taking a lot of speed or something, staying up for five days at a time making music. And that group of tunes somehow ended up being a record. And I don’t know how that name came about.’
The music from those non-stop recording sessions is surprisingly coherent rock’n’roll that comes from all directions and provided this ‘group’ with the same sort of varied sound that made bands like Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape so worthy. With notably different singing and writing styles, the lingering impression was of vast untapped talent waiting to come to further fruition on follow-up or solo albums yet unmade. Much of this crew would end up recording a memorable, Byrdsy classic for Epic as Space Opera in 1973, then disappear.
‘I was by far the least talented of all these people,’ says Burnett, ‘and – this just shows you that life is tricky – I think it’s funny that I’ve managed to stay doing it all these years.’
The Outsiders CQ
Dutch psychedelic beast touches on love, murder, revenge – and space travel.Record label: PolydorProduced: The OutsidersRecorded: GTB Studios, The Hague; spring—summer 1968Released: October 1968Chart Peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: Wally Tax (v, g, hm, o, pc, flute, vibes, balalaika); Ronny Splinter (g, b, bv); Frank Beek (b, g, o, p, bv, vibes); Buzz (d, pc, bv, mouth harp).Track listing: Misfit; Zsarrahh; CQ; Daddy Died On Saturday; It Seems Like Nothing’s Gonna Come My Way Today; Doctor; The Man On The Dune; The Bear; Happyville; You’re Everything On Earth; Wish You Were Here With Me Today; I Love You No. 2; PrisonsongCurrent CD: Pseudonym VP99008Further listening: Strange Things Are Happening: The Complete Singles Collection (2002)Further reading: www.alexgitlin.com/outsider.htm (fan site)Download: Not currently legally available
It’s easy to forget that at the height of the ’60s, rock’n’roll was alive and kicking in the most unexpected places. And arguably nowhere outside the UK and the US had a more fertile scene than Holland, home of the now-legendary ‘Nederbeat’ scene, where great bands like Q65, Group 1850, Sandy Coast and the Motions were churning out high quality records that were barely released abroad. Few would dispute, though, that the greatest Dutch band of all was The Outsiders, who never recorded a song they hadn’t written and in 1968 produced the mighty CQ.
Led by the androgynous Wally Tax, they’d been playing the dives up and down the seafront of the Hague for years, honing their musicianship in front of a transient audience largely comprised of rowdy sailors. In this period they grew impressively hard-hitting, their magnificent, adrenaline-filled set captured on their live March 1967 debut – such was their power that they reportedly blew the Stones off stage when supporting them in 1966. Releasing a string of punchy hit singles like the raunchy Touch, the melodic Monkey On My Back and the gritty That’s Your Problem, in the summer of 1967 they had a Dutch smash with the uncharacteristically fey Summer Is Here. This success encouraged Polydor to grant them total freedom in recording their second album early the following year.
Closeted in the studio for months on end, The Outsiders experimented with new instruments and sounds, massively expanding their repertoire without losing any of the focus or drive displayed on their singles. The crunching opener, Misfit, announces itself with an ominous bass riff before dementedly energetic drums and guitar crash in. Its unusual, jerky structure typifies the unconventional approach of the album. On the spacey, claustrophobic title track (which could be mistaken for Can or even Radiohead) waves of static wash from speaker to speaker as Tax increasingly desperately cries ‘do you receive me?’ over a mesmerising groove.
Few releases of the time could boast such varied fare or ferocious delivery, but when CQ appeared in 1968 (in a striking yellow pop art sleeve) it bombed and the band disintegrated. Less than 1,000 copies are thought to have been sold, making the recent reissue especially welcome. Though The Outsiders can be compared superficially to the Stones or The Pretty Things, on CQ they developed a sound all of their own and proved that they could hold their own alongside anyone – and that means anyone.
Pentangle Sweet Child
The UK’s folk rock supergroup make their definitive work.Record label: TransatlanticProduced: Shel TalmyRecorded: The Royal Festival Hall; June 29, 1968; IBC Studios, London; September 1968Released: November 1, 1968Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)Personnel: Jacqui McShee (v); Bert Jansch (v, g); John Renbourn (v, g); Danny Thompson (db); Terry Cox (v, d, glockenspiel); Damon Lyon-Shaw (e)Track listing: Live: Market Song; No More My Lord; Turn Your Money Green; Haitian Fight Song; A Woman Like You; Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat; Three Dances: i. Brentzel Gay; ii. La Rotta; iii. The Earle Of Salisbury; Watch The Stars; So Early In The Spring; No Exit; The Time Has Come; Bruton Town Studio: Sweet Child; I Loved A Lass; Three Part Thing; Sovay; In Time; In Your Mind; I’ve Got A Feeling; The Trees They Do Grow High; Moondog; Hole In The CoalRunning time: 75.51Current CD: Castle CMDDD132 is a 2-disc 36-track collection which includes live versions and studio versions of songs plus numerous outtakes and alternate versionsFurther listening: Basket Of Light (1969); Reflection (1971)Further reading: Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch And The British Folk And Blues Revival (Colin Harper, 2000); www.jacquimcshee.co.ukDownload: Not currently legally available
Including two celebrated solo recording artists in Jansch and Renbourn, and a second-to-none rhythm section drafted in from previous spells with Alexis Korner and Duffy Power’s Nucleus, Pentangle were a supergroup from day one – and uniquely so in fusing together individuals and repertoire from both the folk and jazz/blues scenes of the day.
The group existed initially as a spare-time concern, playing almost exclusively at their own Sunday night club at the Horseshoe Hotel in Tottenham Court Road throughout 1967. At the start of that year Bert Jansch had filled a series of thousand-seater city halls on his own and many people, record label included, viewed his commitment to developing the group project bewildering.
It could indeed have been a disaster. There were a number of blown opportunities and false starts in trying to move beyond the Horseshoe before the arrival of New York publicist Jo Lustig, who became the group’s manager in early 1968. He immediately oversaw the release of a first album, The Pentangle, secured substantial print, radio and TV coverage and curtailed all group and solo live appearances, invariably in small clubs, to allow for their relaunch as a concert hall act – a scam that worked perfectly.
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