Soundhog - Mix90 #3 (25th December 2007) "...Something To Make Us All Happy..." ------------------------ Side 1: BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Ideal Home Exhibition The Elastic Band - Room Full Of Room The Zerfas - You Never Win Heads Hands And Feet - Warming Up The Band Legend - City Sidan - Dwi Ddim Isio The Nic Rowley Group - Not The Nine O'Clock News Brian Bennett - Ticket To Ride The Small Faces - Grow Your Own Traffic Sound - Yesterday's Game The Move - The Words Of Aaron The Pretty Things - She's A Lover Tyrannousarus Rex - King Of The Rumbling Spires Traffic - Dear Mr. Fantasy Side 2: Leaf Hound - Freelance Fiend (Soundhog Extended-Edit) Jody Grind - Plastic Shit Flied Egg - Leave Me Woman Steve Miller Band - My Dark Hour Radiohead - The National Anthem Paul McCartney - Oh Woman, Oh Why Free - Trouble On Double Time Bert Jansch - Poison The Liverpool Scene - The Raven Gerry Rafferty - The Long Way Round Inigo Kilborn - A Tune For Lucy Fleetwood Mac - Only You Rod, Matt and Jane - Garden Song Ohio Express - Sausalito (Is The Place To Go) Roger Fiske - Jackanory The Who - Sunrise ------------------------ Record to a low noise C90 compact cassette for best effect, and keep Dobly noise reduction switched off. ------------------------ Track notes, Side 1: BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Ideal Home Exhibition I could bang on for hours about the RW, and frequently do. Briefly put, it was founded by a group of BBC radio producers who were inspired by the musique concrete movement which was taking off in Europe (and in the USA to a lesser extent), and saw the possibilities of this new form of composition - based on manipulating natural sounds with the use of magnetic tape, in the main - to provide new soundscapes for use in radio plays. The early output of the RW was fairly 'non-musical' in a traditional sense, and it wasn't until the likes of the celebrated original Dr. Who theme that the Workshop really moved into "tunes", but even before that a few melodic oddities escaped from Room 13 at the Maida Vale studios. Maddelena Fagandini was responsible for this percussive echo-fest, which was used on the BBC's stand at the 1961 'Ideal Home Exhibition' at Olympia. heaven only knows what the visitors must have thought, but it certainly fits in retrospect - a perfect backing for the brave new world of plastic chairs and smooth surfaces. Maddelena was only with the Workshop for a few years, but she was responsible for the first appearance of Radiophonics on vinyl, after future Beatles producer George Martin heard one of her pieces used during the intervals between programmes on BBC TV, and turned it into an almost-hit. This may well appear on Mix90 #4, if I ever do it... The Elastic Band - Room Full Of Room 18 miles from where I'm sitting typing, lies the town of Wrexham. There is currently quite a good music scene over there - the presence of an art school probably helps - and indeed there was a thriving band culture there in the 1960s. R&B favourites "The Silverstone Set" got picked up by Decca Records after appearing on a TV talent show, changed their name and released a single "8 1/2 Hours To Paradise" which was compiled onto one of the 'Rubble' albums many years ago. The band never really became a full on psychedelic outfit, their soul/R&B roots proved a bit hard to shake off, and their only long playing album "Expansions On Life" was a bit of a let-down (not helped by some pretty lousy production and an awful stereo mix) when it finally came out in 1970. This track is a killer though. Singer Gus Yeadon ended up in The Love Affair, while guitarist Andy Scott joined The Sweet and became a Top Of The Pops regular as the '70s progressed. The Zerfas - You Never Win I know very little about The Zerfas, other than they were from the Indianapolis area and released one album in 1973 off their own backs. It was discovered and issued on CD a while ago, and while nothing earth shattering, it's not a bad LP at all. This track opens the album and is a lot more of a rave-up than what follows. Still, there's nothing wrong with the odd 1968 hangover... Heads Hands And Feet - Warming Up The Band HH&F were a band tipped for a greatness that never really came, which is amazing since not only did their country-rock influenced sound fit right at home with what was happening around 1970-72, but they had a well respected line up of players. In fact, word got out about the band forming and they found themselves surrounded by record company executives waving blank cheques in their faces before they'd hardly played a note. A culmination of various bands who were well known on the '60s London scene, HH&F boasted Tony Colton on vocals (still a successful songwriter), Chas Hodges on bass (the Chas of "'n Dave" fame) and guitar virtuoso Albert Lee. This track was one of their best known, an 'Old Grey Whistle Test' performance of it no doubt helped, and was issued as a single. But by 1973 the band was history, with the members going on to other acts of varying success... or infamy... Legend - City Mickey Jupp is the legend of the Essex music scene that you've never heard of. With a career stretching back to the early 1960s, he always stuck up for the roots of rock and roll, while never taking it to the reverential extremes that certain people do to this very day... (yes, get that quiff cut off - it looks stupid on a 63 year old...) The band he formed in the late '60s carried on the tradition, but updating or modifying the formula in various places. 'Legend' never had a very stable line up, and on each of their three albums Jupp is pretty much the only constant. The first album, simply called 'Legend', was released on Bell Records in March 1969 and is an almost-entirely acoustic affair with a very blues/country feel to it, as you can hear on 'City'. A switch to the Vertigo label for the next album saw everything being plugged in, and both that album (confusingly also called 'Legend') and the follow up anticipated the pub-rock movement which would gain momentum a couple of years later. Legend broke up in '72, and Jupp drifted in and out of various record labels over the next 10 years or so, never gaining the success he deserved. However he was always a popular draw on the live circuit, and was gigging regularly right up until the dawn of the 21st century. However it seems as of mid-2006 he's finally decided to pack it all in, which is a real shame but all good ends come to a thing... The first Legend album was given a limited CD release in early 2007 on Repertoire Records in Germany, but here it's taken from a C90 cassette, which I recorded about 25 years ago from an original stereo LP and have played to near-death ever since... Sidan - Dwi Ddim Isio The Welsh-language music scene of the late '60s and early '70s has been going through a bit of a critical reappraisal in recent years, with the release of a couple of well-recieved compilation albums and re-issues of much of the work of the leading lights of the day (Mike/Meic Stevens being probably the best known example). However, tread carefully - there is much dross to avoid in the back catalogue of the Sain label. Sidan's sole album "Teulu Yncl Sam" from 1975 is one of the exceptions, happily. Although suffering from some dreadfully ham-fisted production when compared to what was going on elsewhere in the world in the mid '70s, the 5-piece girl harmony group from Mold tackle everything from wistful ballads to this shuffle-stomper that Suzi Quatro would have been proud of. The LP has been deleted for years, and has been seen for ridiculous prices on the websites and walls of various 'collectors records' empires in recent times. It's funny how things change... Sidan only lasted a couple of years, with the various members either vanishing into obscurity, or rooting themselves in the Welsh media for evermore. Watch the Welsh language TV channel S4C for a couple of hours and you'll probably see at least one of them. The Nic Rowley Group - Not The Nine O'Clock News Continuing with the pub rock/glam rock/shuffle beat theme, here's the original version of the title music from the legendary BBC2 topical satire-based sketch show. The show would make stars of Mel Smith, Griff Rhys-Jones, Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson (Chris Langham was in the first series but was controversially ousted in favour of Rhys-Jones). Nic Rowley's beery theme suited the irreverence of the show perfectly, although it was later re-arranged in a faster=paced, harmonica-led version around the turn of the third series. Rowley is currently the Vocal School Manager at the Academy Of Contemporary Music in Guildford, and their website has this to say about him: "...Nic has worked on countless record, television and film sessions for artists including Kevin Ayers, Dire Straits, Mike Heron, Lindisfarne, Johnny Nash, Vivian Stanshall and Marty Wilde. He has also conducted three West End musicals including; the original production of ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ and toured widely as a bandleader with artists such as Lulu, The Supremes, and The Three Degrees. As a composer he has written countless advertising jingles, 12 theatre scores and more than 50 signature tunes/scores for TV, plus on-screen logo packages for ITV. He has also produced 30 albums. Nic was a choral scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has been vocal coach to numerous stage and screen performers." So now you know! I wish I had a CV like that... Brian Bennett - Ticket To Ride Brian is most famous as being the longest-serving drummer in The Shadows, but he also carved out a substantial extra career as a composer and arranger of countless hours of library music for the likes of KPM, de Wolfe and Bruton, as well as being a session musician par excellence. An advantage of this was that he was on the best of terms with the other leading lights of the session scene, and as such could always call on them when needed. In 1968 he recorded an album for EMI's 'flagship' imprint "Studio 2 Stereo" (named after the big room at Abbey Road where much of the early material for the label was recorded, as well as some group from Liverpool's stuff), and the result was a pretty good collection of instrumental funk and soul takes on a number of big tunes of the day, as well as a couple of originals. "The Illustrated London Noise" has long been prized by beatheads, and is well worth investing in - a budget CD version was available a while back. The Small Faces - Grow Your Own I shouldn't think I need to write any sort of potted biography for this act, suffice to say that if you don't own any of their material then get the situation rectified straight away. This instrumental rave-up originally appeared on the b-side of their third single "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" in 1966, and showcased recent recruit Ian McLagan's Hammond antics to the full. Traffic Sound - Yesterday's Game Traffic Sound were one of the biggest groups in Peru in the late '60s (it's all relative). After a debut release where they slavishly copied and covered all the big UK and US hits of the day (Hendrix, Cream etc.) they began to develop their own sound, drawing on the traditional sounds and instruments of South America and merging them effectively with the Western psychedelic rock that they loved so much. By the time of their third eponymously-titled LP in 1970, the group was firing on all cylinders and delivered a set of recordings which are more than a match for anything else around at the time. The band could take on any style, from the refective "Those Days Are Gone", to the gonzo-rock "You Got To Pay" and this terrific, driving number which is my personal stand-out track on the album. The band split in 1973 after recording one more album, and most of the members abandoned music (the political climate of the time didn't exactly encourage Western pop-culture either, which didn't help matters) although they briefly reformed in the early '90s to critical and popular acclaim. The albums "Virgin", "Traffic Sound" and "Lux" are well worth tracking down. The Move - The Words Of Aaron After the original poptastic Move fell apart as the 1970s dawned, Roy Wood got his friend Jeff Lynne involved on a journey that would eventually result in The Electric Light Orchestra (see Mix90 #2), While the metamorphosis was taking place, a few Move recordings did see the light of day however, including the 1972 album "Message From The Country". Sonically it's a million miles away from the likes of "Fire Brigade", and a heavy dose of humour was added to the proceedings. ELO has often been described as 'what the Beatles would have gone on to do', and the 1970-73 Move material joins everything together, as you can hear on this keyboard led epic. "Message From The Country" is a fantastic album from start to finish. Go out and get it. The Pretty Things - She's A Lover Once the scruffiest herberts on the R&B scene, The Pretty Things were renowned for taking no prisoners, both live and on record. Their 1965-66 recordings are some of the wildest UK R&B performances ever committed to disc, and their concerts usually ended up in a fight of some sort or other. During 1967 and 1968, they began to push the psychedelic button harder than almost anyone else, producing a couple of truly astonishing singles and probably the first genuine psych concept album "SF Sorrow". A series of wrong moves always seemed to thwart their progress though, and by 1970 founded member Dick Taylor had had enough. This could have easily spelt the end of the group, but remarkably they carried on and produced another classic album in "Parachute". Carrying on from where "SF Sorrow" left off, the album was another concept work but unladen with the kind of pretentious baggage that blighted the majority of the "prog" movement in the early '70s. In a shocking show of good taste, Rolling Stone magazine named it their album of the year, but it still only sold to a fraction of the audience it should have reached. I think it was Pete Townshend who said 'The Pretty Things invented everything, and were credited with nothing', but whoever said it, they were bang-on. The band finally called it a day in the mid '70s, but have reformed a couple of times in recent years - and they can still take on any hyped-up modern day guitar act and beat them to a bloody musical pulp. Tyrannousarus Rex - King Of The Rumbling Spires After cutting a mod-ish flop single for Decca, and having been ousted from freakbeat hype machine John's Children, Marc Bolan hooked up with Ladbrove Grove freak Steve Peregrine-Took and embarked on a career as a purveyor of mysical epics. With the full support of John Peel, Tyrannosaurus Rex produced numerous albums and gained a substantial underground following. After a spell of strictly acoustic recordings, Bolan got himself another electric guitar and amp, and the process of change which would eventually lead him to be the biggest pop act of the early 1970s was put into motion. 'King Of The Rumbling Spires' was their fourth single, and proved a shock to an audience expecting more gentle hippydom - pounding drums, distorted doomy guitar and harsh organ chords were now the order of the day. Within a few weeks of the single's release in early 1969, Steve Took found himself out on his ear after indulging in too much rock star excess, and for daring to suggest that he should be on an equal footing with Bolan creatively. Mickey Finn was duly recruited, and within a short space of time the band's name was abbreviated to T.Rex and they found themselves at No.1 in the charts with "Ride A White Swan". The rest is history. Obviously. Traffic - Dear Mr. Fantasy While finding pop success in The Spencer Davis Group, the sickeningly young and talented Stevie Winwood wanted to stretch his creative wings. He did so by forming Traffic in 1966 with drummer Jim Capaldi, flautist Chris Wood and guitarist Dave Mason - all well known figures on the Midlands music scene at the time. As the legend has it, they retired to a cottage miles from anywhere in the Berkshire countryside to write and practice. The result was a band whose recorded work hit the ground running, with a peerless debut single "Paper Sun" and a first album which was a wonderful mix of soul, jazz, R&B, pop and psych. Dave Mason's part in the band was always yo-yo like, leaving twice during 1968 and 1969. After two albums proper and a third which was a combination of studio offcuts and live recordings, the band fell to bits in mid '69. Winwood joined the ill-fated supergroup Blind Faith, alongside ex-Creamers Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, and ex-Family bass player Ric Gretch. By early 1970 Clapton had decided he wanted to be somewhere else, and Winwood started work on a solo album. Capaldi and Wood were called in to contribute to the sessions, and soon enough Traffic were back together as a three piece which lasted until 1974. However it's hard to beat the first album, "Mr. Fantasy" for wide eyed musical optimism, so I've dug out my well-played mono copy to present some of their early magic here. Side 2: Leaf Hound - Freelance Fiend (Soundhog Extended-Edit) One of the heavier exponents of the UK blues rock sound, Leaf Hound formed in 1970 from the ashes of the band 'Black Cat Bones', who managed to gain a loyal following and one album on Decca. Leaf Hound trod the same path as the earlier band, and carried most of the audience over with them. The new band also went into the studio to record an album for Decca's new progressive 'Nova' imprint, but for reasons known only to the company, it wasn't released until over a year after it was finished. By that time the Nova label had been canned (so it came out on regular Decca), and the group itself was history, having fallen apart due to the disinterest of both the record label and their management. As a result, the 'Growers Of Mushroom' album sold fuck all (in fact, it did better in Germany where is was released by Telefunken long before the UK issue) and surviving copies of the LP change hands for a staggering amount of cash these days. 'Freelance Fiend' became one of their signature songs, and here I've done a bit of extending and phasing, taking it from three to five minutes in length, making the most of the awesome riff. Vocalist Peter French would go on to front Atomic Rooster amongst other bands, and has recently got a new group together under the Leaf Hound name who are touring and recording at the moment. Jody Grind - Plastic Shit An example of what drummer Pete Gavin was up to before he joined Heads Hands & Feet (see side 1), Jody Grind were a short lived jazz/progressive/hard rock trio, who managed three line up changes and just two albums. The third line up featured Gavin, guitarist Bernie Holland (formerly of Bluesology with Long John Baldry and Reg Dwight) and keyboard player Tim Hinkley, who was the only constant in the band's various incarnations. This was the line up which recorded the hilariously titled album "Far Canal" for Nat Joseph's Transatlantic label, and 'Plastic Shit' was the only live recording on the LP, having been captured at London's famous Roundhouse venue. Recently reissued on CD in Japan, if that's any help... Flied Egg - Leave Me Woman Talk of Japan leads us neatly to Flied Egg. Another trio, but keyboardless this time around with a drummer-vocalist. Usually a recipe for disaster, and the band's output can best be described as "variable", but on the occasions that they dropped the flowery '60s cliches (a hangover from their previous incarnation as 'Strawberry Path') and cranked up the volume, they could rock with the best of 'em. Here's proof, the opening track from their second and final album - a half live and half studio affair entitled, fittingly, "Goodbye" which came out on the Japanese wing on the Vertigo label in 1972. Bits of this sounds rather like "Dear Mr. Fantasy", come to think of it... Steve Miller Band - My Dark Hour Another mix, another Steve Miller track. And your point is? Whatever it is, it pales into insignificance when confronted by yet another killer riff. This one was so damned good that Miller used it again for his epic "Fly Like An Eagle", and during recording he was helped out by a man going under the pseudonym of 'Paul Ramon'. His identity will be revealed after the next track. 'My Dark Hour' can be found on Miller's third album, "Brave New World" from 1969. Radiohead - The National Anthem I'm not going to say anything about this, other than the fact that I'm not much of a Radiohead fan but this track from "Kid A" pushes all my buttons. And it fits nicely into the proceedings, if only for a short while as it's rather long... So there. Paul McCartney - Oh Woman, Oh Why Also known as Paul Ramon a few minutes ago. Again, old Macca needs no introduction, but this track may have escaped your attention, tucked away on the B-side of his early 1971 single "Another Day". In marked contrast to the 'play side', this is a fuzzy rocker and an absolute belter. John Lennon famously used 'Another Day' as a device in his snide whinefest 'How Do You Sleep?' as a way of getting at Paul for being "safe". I assume he waS just too lazy and wrapped up in his own ego at the time to get up off his arse and flip the record over. Free - Trouble On Double Time Ignoring his recent fronting of a reformed Queen, Paul Rodgers's voice was (and still is) one of the very best ever to come out of the UK in the late '60s. Young and cocky from the start (bass player Andy Fraser was only 14 when they signed their record deal), they dismissed Island Records' idea to change their name to "Heavy Metal Kids" and ploughed their own blues rock furrow. They'd have a hit in 1970 with the evergreen (and overplayed) "All Right Now", but their earlier work is often a great deal more satisfying. On 'Trouble On Double Time', the band strut their funky credentials with gusto - Fraser's bass playing is super slinky, Simon Kirke's drumming a perfect combination of groove and minimalism, Rodgers gives it just the right amount of vocal voodoo sass, while 'Koss' demonstrates just why he's possibly the most unfairly overlooked person when it comes to 'guitar hero' awards... incredible stuff. Good job they never used this track for that chewing gum ad. Bert Jansch - Poison Bert Jansch's legend is such that I shouldn't have to go into it here, but briefly he's one of the most influential artists ever to pick up a guitar. His teenage years were spent frequenting the folk clubs of Glasgow and beyond, soaking up every note played by lumineries such as Davy Graham. Jansch would take Graham's revolutionary guitar styles and interpret them in such a way that the masses (well, a greater section of the public) could understand them, and this led to him first becoming a solo star, then a sensation as part of the late '60s jazz-folk pioneers Pentangle. Even while Pentangle were drawing huge audiences and critical acclaim from every corner, Jansch kept his solo career ticking over, and his 'Birthday Blues' album sneaked out in 1969. Aided by Pentangle rhythm section of Terry Cox and Danny Thompson, 'Poison' also features one-time face of the late '50s 2-Eyes Coffee Bar pop scene Duffy Power on harmonica. Like the early Pentangle albums, 'Birthday Blues' was produced by Shel Talmy, who'd previously defined the mid '60s hardcore R&B slash with The Kinks and The Who, but he also brought previously unheard depth and clarity to Jansch & Co's acoustic sounds. The Liverpool Scene - The Raven A product of the art and poetry movement which gave them their name, The Liverpool Scene were a defining example of the post-Merseybeat sound. More a collective than a band, with several line up changes, they featured well known 'Liverpool Poet' Adrian Henri, along with guitarist Andy Roberts. An album for CBS was followed by a couple for RCA, but they never had the same populist angle as The Scaffold, who visited the charts several times in the late 1960s. 'The Raven' is a solo piece by Roberts, taken from their second RCA album "Bread On The Night", which also contained humourous pieces such as 'The Day We Danced At The Dole' and 'I've Got Those Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, John Mayall, Can't Fail Blues' as well as more 'serious' work. Gerry Rafferty - The Long Way Round A man known for his dislike and distrust of the music business, Gerry Rafferty's professional career stretches back to 1969 when he introduced himself to an act known as The Humblebums. Well known on the Glasgow folk scene, The Humblebums consisted of Tam Harvey and Billy Connolly. Gerry hit it off with Connolly straight away, and after playing him some of his songs, he was invited to join the group. This didn't sit well with Harvey, who soon quit the act. The 'New' Humblebums recorded two albums for Transatlantic, and these LPs, whilst very fine indeed, show the difference between Connolly's more jokey, folk inspired numbers and Rafferty's finely crafted pop songs. Eventually a rift developed between the two, especially as Connolly's between-song banter had started to become the focal point of performances, so it was no surprise when the duo split before 1970 was out. Rafferty duly delivered a solo album to Transatlantic, which already contained hints of his mistrust of the biz. 'Can I Have My Money Back' is a joy from start to finish, and you can already hear the roots of the melodic genius which would first lead to chart success as part of the duo Stealers Wheel, and then late '70s megastardom with the albums 'City To City' and 'Night Owl' that he recorded for United Artists. If I was a lesser man, I'd make some crap comment along the lines of 'you won't want your money back if you buy it'... but it's true nonetheless. Inigo Kilborn - A Tune For Lucy I'm heading into deep nostalgia territory again, which probably won't make any sense unless you're UK-born and more or less the same age as me... you'll know if you are soon enough, but for those others who won't get the references: don't worry about it, just take the music for what it is. In this case, you have to put yourself in the position of a 14 year old, sitting in front of the school television set around 1974, waiting for the weekly edition of 'Scene' or '20th Century History' on BBC 1. In between the various programmes you'd be subjected to various identification symbols and graphics, and two minutes before each programme started they would show a special 'ident' for the teachers to know how long they had to get everyone to shut up and stop messing about. My generation were treated firstly to an animated diamond affair, which first pulsed and then split up into lots of smaller diamonds. Later this was replaced with a series of dots arranged in a circle which would vanish one by one... obviously there was lots of imaginary gun-pointing during this one. Various pieces of music were used as a backing, and "A Tune For Lucy" would herald a programme meant for a more 'mature' audience. Fleetwood Mac - Only You Another band who virtually everybody in the world will have heard of, but it always amazes me how many people can't name any 'Mac song apart from 'Big Love' or 'Go Your Own Way'. The band was three years into it's existance here (1970), still in the grip of the '60s blues boom which gave birth to them, but they've hit a rocky period which will only get worse as time goes on. Founder member and guitar god Peter Green is on the verge of leaving the band to ease his conscience, and he will be followed by the band's other two guitarists - Jeremy Spencer nipped out to get a newspaper and ended up in a religious cult, while Danny Kirwan would hit the bottle in a big way, smash his guitar against a wall and walk out. 'Only You' is one of Kirwan's originals, never recorded for an official album, but it exists on a couple of live recordings and the version here, from a BBC Radio session which finally made it to CD over 20 years after it was put onto the Beeb's two-track tape recorders... Rod, Matt and Jane - Garden Song I wrote a few, fairly poor, articles for the fledgeling TV Cream website in the late 1990s. At the time it was cool to take a slightly ironic look back at the things which had made your childhood more bearable, or sometimes downright idyllic. Today, it's impossible to turn on the TV without seeing some 4th rate 'comedian', who you've never heard of, pouring 'hilarious' scorn on those things (usually from a carefully prepared script, as the talking heads in question weren't actually alive to witness them first hand most of the time - cunts.) If I'd have known where it would end up I'd have stayed away from the keyboard. The TV show 'Rainbow' is something which comes in for a good kicking more often than not. Premise: slightly camp man lives in a house with a full sized bear, and two one handed mutants whose bodies are never seen. Camp bloke explains various aspects of life to the threesome, by way of making things with rubber bands and tissue boxes, and by relating moralistic stories. During the show, three happy minstrels in dungarees arrive, and sing a song about rain, or elephants, or something. Everybody says goodbye, credits roll with some ace noodly rock over the top.... ...fuck's sake. Now I'm doing it... Anyway, Rainbow was great if you just put away your snide-goggles for two minutes. The three happy minstrels went through a few changes in line-up. Jane Tucker and Rod Burton (he of the scary goatee) were always there, but that tricky third member was always difficult to pin down. In the early days Matthew Corbett filled the role, as can be heard here in a song from a 1975 album on the Tempo label. Corbett would leave soon after, taking over his father's role as the bloke who shoved his hand up Sooty's bum (...stop it, stop it... I'll end up on BBC 6 Music at this rate) and the trio became Rod, Jane and Roger Walker. In 1980 Roger left, and Freddy Marks saw out the rest of the group's TV days. Lightweight stuff it may be, but so what? And just listen to that bassline - who else would put so much effort into something written for 5 year olds? Ohio Express - Sausalito (Is The Place To Go) While much of the music scene in the late '60s saw the future as heavy and serious, the sassy people knew that the kids still needed pop fluff. The masters of the time were "Super K", comprising of Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz. From 1967 to 1970 they ruled the roost, matching bands who had the right image with the right songs. Of course, half the time the bands didn't actually perform on the records - typically the vocalist would be retained while the backing was laid down by top New York session musicians, the original band reduced to miming on variety TV shows and posing for publicity shots. The Ohio Express were such an act, hailing as they did from Mansfield in Ohio. "Yummy Yummy Yummy" was a monster hit in 1968, as were the follow ups "Chewy Chewy" and "Down At Lulu's". However The Ohio Express didn't even get to use their own voices, as session singer Joey Levine was the man heard on the records. By late '69, Super K had started using the Manchester (UK) born Graham Gouldman as a songwriter, and in some cases as a lead vocalist. 'Sausalito' is such an example, recorded in Manchester by Gouldman and some of his friends, who would soon become a massive pop group in their own right as 10CC. Bubblegum was on the wane in the US by 1971, but the infection spread to the UK where producers such as Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman started their own gum factory, and the form mutated into the glam rock which dominated the British charts up to the mid 1970s. Roger Fiske - Jackanory Back to sitting in front of the television in 1974, but now we're out of school and taking in the delights of afternoon BBC children's programming. Musicologist Roger Fiske wrote a haunting melody to introduce 'Jackanory', a daily programme where a well known star of the time (Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Williams and a host of others) would simply sit on a chair and read a story over the course of the week. This might sound a bit dull these days, but it was nothing of the sort... I'm not sure who actually played this version of the theme tune, as Fiske's original was performed on the claranet, but he certainly wrote the tune. Actually, haunting might be describing things a bit lightly, as when married to the opening visuals (pictures mutated through a revolving kaleidoscope) the effect was somewhat frightening to many people. The claranet original gave way to this simple piano version, and this in turn was replaced by a slightly more jazzy take with an electric harpsichord taking the lead honours, arranged by Paul Reade. This one is beautiful in its simplicity, although you would have thought someone might have seen fit to oil the piano pedals and get a less squeaky stool in for the occasion. The Who - Sunrise Between their beginnings as R&B neanderthals, and their 1970s proto-stadium-rock heyday, The Who briefly embraced the psychedelic rock movement. The high water mark of this period was their 1967 album "The Who Sell Out". Using jingles and adverts, it was constructed to stand as a tribute to the recently departed pop-pirate radio stations. A loose concept, but it was mere mashed potato compared to the songs within. As well as the full acid experience of 'Armenia City In The Sky' and the unrivaled "I Can See For Miles", there were ditties about underarm deodorant, tattoos and the two part epic "Rael". Tucked away near the end of side two is "Sunrise", a thing of absolute beauty which has few equals anywhere else in tho Who catalogue. You keep expecting it to turn into some crashing powerhouse monster, like "Behind Blue Eyes", but it stays acoustic and gentle to the end. Seeing as how it's now 7am on December 25th as I type this, it seems quite an appropriate way to end this side of the tape. Until the next time, should there be one... / ben sH, 25/12/07