A Splash of Colour

The Paisley Underground was a musical and fashion movement from the late 70's that took its influence from the psychedelic era of the late 60's. For some it was a natural extension of the mod movement, many mod clothing shops in Carnaby Street started selling paisley and polka dot shirts with big floppy collars. 'A Splash of Colour' was a seminal compilation album which collected together some of the more interesting sounds of this short lived movement, it was released in 1981.

1. Just Like A Dream - Mood Six

the album kick started with this song, with it's groovy introduction. The Mood Six were formed from the remnants of mod revival bands such as the Merton Parkas and The VIPs, the two tracks on this album were their debut on vinyl but they are probably best remembered for their chart hit 'Hanging Around'.

2. I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape - The Times

the Times, who featured the wonderful Ed Ball personified pop art music, taking influences from the Creation amongst many, eventually becoming one of the first bands signed to the record label named after this 60's band.

3. Something's Happening Here - Miles Over Matter

a minor player from the scene, and virtually nothing on the net about them.

4. Park My Car - Miles Over Matter

5. Love Letters - The Silence

6. Plastic Flowers - Mood Six

this was the mood six's biggest hit, hanging around but plastic flowers was also independently released as a single but not until 1985, and the re-recorded. The band limped on until 1987.

7. Dancing In My Mind - The High Tide

sadly not much footage exists of most of these bands, the high tide not to be confused with a prog rock band of the same name and a late sixties sea shanty singing group!

8. Keep Your Voice Down - The Earwigs

9. Mortal Dreams - The Doctor

the doctor who added his voice to the opening track, and I believe was the same doctor from Dr and the Medics!

10. Watching The World Go By - The Barracudas

easily the most famous of the bands on this compilation, a delightful surf garage sound with dress to match! not really having much in common with the rest of these bands. I have included the video of their better known 'hit' summer fun!

11. The Long Weekend - The Marble Staircase

12. Electric Blue - The High Tide

a splash of colour is of it's time and is a wonderful sampler of this period.  Definately an underground movement but was an essential cog in the mod revival.

Ian Shillinglaw reports live from Barrowlands!

Ian Shillinglaw kindly wrote a live review of the Beady Eye concert at the legendary Barrowlands on Saturday 5th March, support from the very able Miles Kane, many thanks Ian. More please!

    Walking towards the Barrowlands on a cold March night to see Beady Eye you could sense the anticipation in the air with the banter between the fans good natured but excited with a certain edge to it.

 

    Queuing up to get in is always interesting as we are searched and go through metal detectors ( Barrowlands is a tough little venue ! ) but no one bothered too much as they all wanted to get in.Next a few beers at the bar to loosen the vocal chords and get in the mood and off we go ! The atmosphere is fantastic with great chat between everyone and instant friends being made for the night. The crowd is a lot younger than i expected being mainly 20's and 30's with a few of us older lags mixed in. A good crowd.

 

    First up is support Miles Kane who comes bounding on full of energy and gives us 30 minutes of energetic indie rock with a very capable band. Well received by the crowd and me with highlights being Come Closer and Inhaler.Always difficult to tell how a band works on a short support slot but sounded really good and well worth looking him up if he's near you for a gig or give his music a listen.

 

    As the time came near for the main event the atmosphere was electric. A mass sing-along to That's Entertainment by The Jam and I Am The Resurrection by The Stone Roses pushed things up a notch and the place went wild as the band came on and launched into Four Letter Word leading to drink,bodies and anything else to hand being thrown about.Mr. Gallagher was in fine voice and the band were stunning recreating and enhancing the songs from the album expertly.Now i'm not going to give a list of songs played as they basically played the album but highlights for me were The Roller,Morning Son ( beautiful ! ) and Sons of the Stage.The audience reaction to all this was stunning  singing along to every song , dancing , jumping, throwing beer over themselves and generally rioting ! Now i've been going to gigs for more years than i can remember but i have rarely felt this sort of atmosphere and the last time it was as good as this was at one of the many Jam gigs i went to. I know people will taken aback by that statement but it really was that good.

 

    All good things come to end however and and as Liam stood on the stage looking at the crowd looking at him you could tell it was not arrogance in his face but pride in himself and his fans. I feel privileged to have been part of the beginning of an interesting journey.

 

    Out into the cold night air the crowd was still charged with chants of Beady,Beady,Beady F******g Eye resounding around the streets outside and no doubt many sore heads in waiting for the next day.

 

 

    Ian S

Coming Soon............................

Groovy Uncle interview part two interviews with Master Colony & Modern Glory Matt Berry new album review

mixtapes by James Spence, Nick Ward & Capt Stax!

Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances....................

"Yeah, I was a Mod. It was my life. There was as little club called The Scene, just a Ham Yard, off of Great Windmill Street, and there, on several nights a week the greatest records you can imagine were being played. There were records like “Ain’t love good, ain’t love proud” by Tony Clarke; Major Lance’s stuff; Smokey Robinson, early Curtis Mayfield’s Impressions stuff, you know, which was eminently danceable by people who where not emotionally involved with other people. There was a lack of women in those things. I mean we all dig women, but if you are in the West End, you know that you pay for your women, and well, you don’t get them, ‘cos the girls that come up are mysteries, right. You get girls that come up and dance around, little girls that just dance around in the pubs, just having a little dance, just having a little groove."

"I was the feller who saw the potential in Modism, which is the greatest form of life-style you can imagine – it’s so totally free – totally anti-family London – In so much as that there were lonely people having a great time. Not having to be lonely, not having to be worried about relationships, being able to get into the most fantastic interesting, beautiful situations, just out of music. You could dance by yourself, you could groove around. I saw this as a weekend. I mean, imagine this, on a Friday night I would go to Ready, Steady, Go! groove around there, and one weekend I had three people on there: I had The Crystals, Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones – doing publicity for those three people. There’d be all the faces and people I knew. A face is just someone you recognise, you might not even know his name, but he’s known as a face".

Groovy Uncle's Mix Tape

The first of a regular feature on the blog, I will be asking some mover's and shaker's to compile an imaginery mix. First up is Groovy Uncle's Glen Prangnell who has chosen some obvious and not so obvious and pointed me in the direction of an excellent Pretty Things clip! The notes are all Glenn's and I would imagine the mixes are all wonderful mono! Enjoy!

SIDE ONE:

The Beatles - "Rain"    Obviously any Beatles track will do for me but this is so damn good! The bass line is exquisite that people are still ripping it off to this day and Ringo's drumming is incredible. Why do people say he was a bad drummer? There's not a single Beatles record on which he plays badly so I don't know where that notion comes from. Fantastic-see also "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Shelagh McDonald -"Peacock Lady"  I've only recently discovered her work. I bought an acid folk compilation which featured a track by her called "Liz's Song" (another favourite) and was knocked out by her. It was here that I also discovered Vashti Bunyan for the first time. Shelagh McDonald is a kind of female Nick Drake I guess. There's a beautiful, haunting sadness to her music that I find compelling. She disappeared in the early 70's after a bad acid trip and only reappeared 6 years ago. This track is sublime.

The Kinks- "The Village Green Preservation Society".  A criminally overlooked album for many years, thankfully it's had a reappraisal in recent times. It was made in an era when everyone else was going all "San Fransisco hippy". The Kinks were banned from America so Ray Davies stayed at home and wrote about yearning for a dying England. One of my faves.

Sammy Davis Jr. "Who Can I Turn To?" Anything by Sammy! I always rated him higher than Sinatra. If SAmmy hadn't been on this list it would have been Nat King Cole.

SIDE TWO:

Divine Comedy-"National Express"  Everything Neil Hannon does is immaculate. I can't think of anyone else in today's music industry who possesses so much genuine wit and gift for melody. This song is just straight ahead good fun.

The Pretty Things- "Baron Saturday"   Another underrated classic album! Don't believe what they tell you-THIS was the first Rock Opera!

Noel Harrison- "Windmills Of Your Mind" From the original "Thomas Crown Affair" movie, this was written by Michel Legrand and is often annoyingly chosen by people as a "guilty pleasure" track. It's beautiful and everything about the song is circular. Genius.

Alice Cooper- "School's Out"  A bit of a nostalgia trip for me this one because I remember when it came out in the Summer of '72 to coincide with the school holidays (nice marketing!). It was just so damned exciting! Contains one of the best   double meanings ever written in a pop song: "We got no class and we got no principals!"

Gilbert O'Sullivan-"Nothing Rhymed"  No sniggering at the back!! Another great song listed under "guilty pleasures" by many. He wrote some terrific songs and I don't care what the cool kids say.

Jimi Hendrix- "Voodoo Chile"/"Hey Joe"  'Nuff said!

Thanks Glenn, some great choices! My sister will be happy you chose Alice Cooper, and I was happy you chose the Beatles, The Kinks and The Pretty Things! 

Second part of our Groovy Uncle interview soon!

Check Out Groovy Uncle as soon as you can, before he goes massive!

www.craftweb.org/web/glenn/index.html

The new Tony Christie album 'Now's The Time' out on Acid Jazz, is a mixed bag of 60's sounding cabaret type songs, northern soul music , etc. I'm not sure it works but it's compelling enough for me to have on my turntable.

For the album 'Jug of Love', Mighty Baby, the band formed from the embers of 60's Mod icons The Action, had moved on from the driving psychedelic sounds of the previous album, eponymously titled 'Mighty Baby'. Their sound now hovered somewhere in that dreamy-hippy world between the gentle country rock of The Byrds, the unhurried and extended nature of The Grateful Dead and the eclectic Englishness of early Caravan. It's amazing that an album this atmospheric, good-natured and downright joyous had until recently, still not been reissued (other than a couple of bootlegs), and that the internet has no reliable information     , a real lost classic and worthy of a listen!

It seem's trendy to drop the name Tame Impala and their debut album innerspeaker, its even more trendier now a certain Mr Weller has dropped their name. I personally brought this cd at a whim after hearing it over a speaker at a Rough Trade pa by Wilko Johnson, it was a bad night for this kind of thing because i brought three albums on the strength of hearing them in the shop that night! two were good, the third was a donkey!

Kings Go Forth, named after a 1956 Sinatra and Curtis movie, and just as cool, reminds me of a Stax soul revue, of Jimmy James and Geno Washington, funky, tight and joyous! A feel good album that i wished I had on vinyl, as good music deserves this type of media.

No i'm not being paid by Groovy Uncle! I don't need that kind of bribe to like this infectious beat music, these are lost classics that you need to find, ignore this kind of music at your peril! I'm loving the discovery!  

COMING SOON -

interview and new cd review

part two of the interview 

These cheeky buggers contacted me, and said interview us! So I will! In the meantime, give them a look on their website http://www.moderngloryband.co.uk/

"Groovy Uncle-Mantras With Melody" 

The Medway sound is a rich stream of authentic beat music from the Prisoners though to the Milkshakes and onwards with Billy Childish.
Groovy Uncle is the solo project of Medway musician Glenn Prangnell, the name from a David Bowie review 'prancing around like some groovy uncle at a family disco' we all have them, maybe we're one ourselves? Groovy Uncle was once a trio, but this dissolved and after a couple of years Groovy Uncle re-emerged onto the platform that is myspace. I became aware of them after a recommend on face-book (from Jon Abnett), instantly likable tunes, it was like listening to the Beatles but all their eras at once from Hamburg to lovable mop tops to psychedelic innovators! and they record in mono too! But don't for one minute think this is another Beatles tribute band, oh no, this and the medway sound is far too clever for that trick, go discover, 'dig' and 'groove' a little deeper! and there's also a bit of humour in there too, never a bad thing.............


Glenn has agreed to be my first victim on my blog, and very honoured I am too, I suggest you check out Groovy Uncle now!
Two questions now, more later as I want you to come back!


do your influences change for each recording?

I'm constantly influenced by different things-including stuff I don't like! I don't think one necessarily has to LIKE something to be influenced by it. I'm a huge fan of melody. There is no bigger compliment than someone telling me they can't get one of my tunes out of their head. Obviously The Beatles are a massive influence and always have been but I take in a heck of a lot of other stuff to particularly with regard to melody. If I want to write a particular type of song, then I might use something as a starting point, or point of reference. For instance "Count On Me" is one I wrote at a time when a lot of "naval gazing" stuff was being churned out and it was all getting a bit downcast and earnest for me-I wanted to write something upbeat and life affirming. So, as a starting point I used The Action's "Never Ever" and Tony Hatch's "Call Me" -the latter has very similar sentiments too. It's all smoke and mirrors and trickery. Ask Noel Gallagher

how did you get started on this album, what is your process for recording?

I had-and still have- a backlog of songs that I've wanted to record for a long time and it was with these in mind that I kicked off the whole Groovy Uncle project. Initially I hooked up with State Records to record on a purely "let's see how it goes" basis. As it turned out it all went swimmingly and we all got on well. Marty and Mole (who run State Records) really liked my stuff so I suggested we release a single, which we did in March 2010- "Monkey Trousers"/"Now Your Pain Is Over" (THS-003). On vinyl only, thus far. I knew I wanted to continue to record as much as I could with State because I love what they do and how they do it but I didn't have any grand plan. Then one day Mole said "Let's release an album". It means a lot to me that they think so highly of my songs that they were willing to release a top notch vinyl album!

          As for the process..... Taking into consideration there is no "set-in-stone" line up for Groovy Uncle it's worked out extremely well. I'd decide on which songs to record and we'd do either 2 or 3 tracks at each session. The band line up would depend upon availability and whose style of playing suited those particular songs. I've been lucky to have such good musicians to work with and they've all been enthusiastic and supportive. So we have Ben Jones (lead guitar), Paul Moss (bass), Marty Ratcliffe (lead guitar), Allan Crockford (bass), Ian Snowball (drums), Mole (drums and backing vocals) and Yours Truly (rhythm guitar, vocals, percussion, melodica). We'd record the backing tracks on day one, vocals and overdubs on day two then leave mixing for a separate day, which is always best. I'm happiest when recording. Like a pig in s**t!

http://www.craftweb.org/web/glenn/index.html

http://www.myspace.com/groovyuncle

and buy this now from the website