The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
Kinks’ The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (Andy Miller, 2003); http://kinks. it.rit.edu/ (fan site)
Download: Not currently legally available
True to its title, Village Green Preservation Society eschewed the wide-eyed psychedelia and studio experiment of its contemporaries. Which may be why it was grossly overlooked at the time. Instead, it focused on the wistful, sharp social commentary of Davies’s writing and it’s the fulcrum on which his deserved reputation as a songsmith pivots.
While Davies’s peers on Village Green are not from the rock and pop world, neither are they – despite the claims of many a pop historian – the kitchen sink dramatists of the early ’60s. If anything, Davies alludes to the short stories of Harold Nicholson, the Bloomsbury essays (rather than novels) of EM Forster, George Orwell’s Coming Up For Air and the mundane urbanity of Philip Larkin. What Davies seemed to crave was certainty and stability, the bastion of the familiar. The title track speaks of saving everything from ‘strawberry jam to variety, china cups and virginity’, but Picture Book anticipates the bleaker Shangri-La (from Arthur) and Last Of The Steam Powered Trains hints at something darker and more directionless.
The album contains at least two bona fide classics (three if you include the subsequent hit single Days, withdrawn from the original LP but restored to the CD). Do You Remember Walter updates David Watts, the hero-emulation of schooldays replaced by sentiments that seesaw between fondness and regret and a sad denouement in which the narrator talks himself out of a reunion, realising that memories are all that he and Walter have. People Take Pictures Of Each Other, with its weary refrain ‘Don’t show me no more please’ offers a cameo of human beings validating a transitory existence and also serves as a metaphorical postscript for the swinging ’60s. Musically, the band complement Davies’s lyrical concerns majestically, illustrating a similar disregard for contemporary musical fashion, and Nicky Hopkins provides wonderfully ornate touches on celeste and harpsichord throughout. Not a phased guitar in sight.
The Smoke
The Smoke
Forgotten American psych-pop in thrall to The Beatles and dedicated to Stuart Sutcliffe.
Record label: Tower
Produced: Michael Lloyd
Recorded: Hollywood Boulevard Studios, LA; summer 1968
Released: November 1968
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Michael Lloyd (v, k, g, b, horn and string ar), Stan Ayeroff (g), Steve Baim (d)
Track listing: Cowboys And Indians; Looking Thru The Mirror; Self-Analysis, Gold Is The Colour Of Thought, Hobbit Symphony; Daisy-Intermission; Fogbound; Song Thru Perception; Philosophy; Umbrella; Ritual Gypsy Music Opus 1; October Country; Odyssey
Current CD: Currently unavailable
Further listening: Castle’s High In A Room (2002), a 2-disc retrospective of the band’s output
Further reading: The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band Story by Tim Forster, published in Ptolomeic Terrascope magazine, 1999; www.marmalade-skies.co.uk/ smoke.htm
Download: Not currently legally available
Michael Lloyd was a precocious 12-year-old when he first decided to be in a band. It was 1962 and he was swimming with a friend. ‘We were far out from the shore and we heard music coming from the beach. It sounded great. So we paddled in and there were these local guys playing Ventures songs – they were very good – and that started us thinking. We’ve got to have a band!’
A couple of bands later, Lloyd started at the Hollywood Professional School, where he met Shaun and Danny Harris. Together they formed The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and made an album in Michael’s bedroom. (He left before they signed to Reprise.) Still only 17, he was next handed a number of projects by young executive Mike Curb, under names such as The Laughing Wind and The Rubber Band, and for Epic Records he produced a group of fresh-faced teenagers called October Country. Although it flopped, that album gave him a taste of what he could achieve with good studio facilities at his disposal and he persuaded Curb to give him some studio time. Thus was born The Smoke.
Michael poured all he had learnt into the album, he produced, arranged, sang lead vocals and played bass and keyboards while Stan Ayeroff, who co-wrote three of the songs, handled guitar and Steve Baim played drums. The record opens with the organ-driven Cowboys And Indians, echoing Brian Wilson’s Heroes And Villains. There are overt Beatles references throughout, too. The chorus of Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds is quoted in the fade to Fogbound and its influence is clear in Gold Is The Colour Of Thought.
‘I didn’t really think of what I was doing as psychedelic,’ says the undoubtedly clean-cut Lloyd. ‘There may have been drug references in Beatles songs, but in my naïve way it just seemed to be some brilliant creative thing they were doing.’
Despite a wide release, nothing ever happened with the album. Curb subsequently appointed Lloyd Vice-President of MGM, where he finally achieved commercial success as a producer and composer with The Osmonds, Lou Rawls and Debbie Boone (he produced You Light Up My Life) and the multi-million-selling soundtrack to Dirty Dancing. But this non-moneyspinning nugget from his psych-pop roots is still one of his favourites.
The Beau Brummels
Bradley’s Barn
Psychedelic San Franciscan pop outfit turns up in Nashville. With creamy results.
Record label: Warner Brothers
Produced: Lenny Waronker
Recorded: Bradley’s Barn, Wilson County, Tennessee; 1968
Released: 1968
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Sal Valentino (v); Ron Elliott (g); Jerry Reed (g); Wayne Moss (g); Harold Bradley (g); Billy Sanford (g); Norbert Putnum (b); David Briggs (k); Kenny Buttrey (d)
Track listing: Turn Around; An Added Attraction; Deep Water; Long Walk Down To Misery (S); Little Bird; Cherokee Girl (S); I’m A Sleeper; The Loneliest Man In Town; Love Can Fall A Long Way Down; Jessica; Bless You California
Running time: 31.50
Current CD: Collector’s Choice COLC3172
Further listening: The Brummels’ Triangle (1967) is well worth casting back over and there’s a good Rhino retrospective Best Of The Beau Brummels (1981) if you want to scan their whole career from Mersey to flower power and beyond
Further reading: www.beaubrummels.com
Download: iTunes
The Beau Brummels had spent the early ’60s interpreting the British invasion from the safety of their San Francisco home. Impressed by the Fabs and The Searchers, they’d hit on an angular version of beat music which songwriter Ron Elliott perfected for the deep, country-toned voice of singer Sal Valentino. Their early records on the Autumn label (some produced by hip young house producer Sylvester Stewart AKA Sly Stone) were state-of-the-art pop rock and they enjoyed several American hits, but Autumn crumbled in 1966 and members of the band started to peel off.
Moving to Warner, they cut Beau Brummels ’66 and then in 1967 hit on a folk vein which they mined for the moderately successful but quite exquisite album Triangle. Their Warner contract demanded another album forthwith, and the last remaining original members, Valentino and Elliott, decided to decamp to Nashville to come up with the goods. It was