of baroque Anglocentric pop psychedelia. Densely layered in an everything and the kitchen sink kind of a way, produced by Gary Usher and


originally released just as the summer of love was drawing to a close in September 1967, Of Cabbages And Kings survives as a vividly realised artifact of the times. The album starts strongly with ‘Rest In Peace’ and ‘The Gentle Cold Of Dawn’ but there’s never any escaping the fact that its centrepiece is the ambitiously out there ‘Progress Suite’ which takes up the entire second side of the original vinyl album. Featuring contributions from avant-garde comedy troupe The Firesign Theatre who embellish the themes of doomsday breakdown and nuclear annihilation hearing the extraordinarily genre-defying ‘Progress Suite’ today truly is believing. Grahame Bent


VINCE TAYLOR Jet Black Leather Machine Ace CD www.acerecords.com


Lionised by David Bowie, who used the rise and LSD- fuelled fall of his life as the template behind Ziggy Stardust, as well as the Clash (who covered his 1959


hit ‘Brand New Cadillac’) Hollywood-based Taylor was one of the most remarkable rock ’n’ roll stars to emerge from late ’50s Britain. This 22-track compilation is the first to tell his story with material drawn from all the flamboyant phases of his musical career. His classic, Presley oriented British recordings (along with ‘Cadillac’, the tough rocker ‘Jet Black Machine’ is here) introduce the cream of his French-made sides (including totally abandoned covers of ‘Hi Heel Sneakers’, ‘My Baby Left Me’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’) while affairs close with the eerie soundscape ‘RockNRoll Station’, created by Taylor and experimental musician Jac Berrocal. Taylor died in Switzerland of


cancer in ’91 — this photo-packed project is a fitting tribute. Gary von Tersch


VARIOUS ARTISTS File Under Male Vocal: The Golden Age Of The Beat Balladeer Psychic Circle CD


There’s nothing obscure about the theme of this compilation, more a matter of being hidden in plain sight (why has no- one done this before?). The


obscurity lies in the records. There’s no MOR about the tunes on here either. Take Dominic Grant’s ‘Don’t Stop


Girl’ an up-tempo fuzzed out mod winner, or future Flowerpot Man Neil Landon’s ‘I Still Love You’, another modtastic floor stomper. Elsewhere, Nicholas Hammond’s ‘I Can’t Stop Myself’ and Don Adams’ ‘The Feeling Is Gone’ exemplify the mid-paced and moody beat ballad style perfectly. Essentially this is a collection of


psychedelic refusenick singers who wanted to continue in a pop/beat vein as their errant bands went day-glo round the edges. Others are one-off have-a-bash mic worriers caught like prehistoric insects preserved in a musical time- warp resin for us to marvel at. Buy and enjoy. Paul Martin


VARIOUS ARTISTS Gonks Go Beat & I’ve Gotta Horse Original Soundtracks RPM Retrodisc CD www.cherryred.co.uk


Released in 1965, these two soundtracks under the musical direction of Mike Leander are reissued on a single disc. Having attempted to watch


both, the good news is that the music stands up better when divorced from the films. The bad news is that this is rather like saying Arthur Mullard was a better singer than Keith Moon. RPM, to their credit, make no


bones about the dated content; when pop was considered no more than light entertainment.I love Billy Fury yet there’s nothing on IGAH that I’d consider for a Best of C90. Only The Gamblers’ ‘I Cried All Night’ is worth checking. The Gonks half, however, is rather


better, featuring minor beat gems from Lulu, The Nashville Teens, The Graham Bond Organisation and Titan Sound Orchestra (Bobby Graham’s vehicle apparently). Paradoxically, the film’s highlight ‘Drum Battle’ is almost unlistenable without the visual feast of brightly coloured Ludwigs and Trixons. Vic Templar


VARIOUS ARTISTS Instro Beat: 28 British Instrumentals Of The ’60s


Legacy Sounds UK CD www.instroworld.com


Tony Hoffman is an instrumental 45 collector and this is his first, in a projected series of UK instro compilations. All titles are licensed from EMI and are


transferred from the master tapes. Many appear for the first time on CD and there are several previously unissued and stereo version recordings (The Shadows’ ‘FBI’ for instance). This is a set of twangy, early ’60s


guitar strutters that flooded the market in the wake of The Shadows success with ‘Apache’. Once loftily snubbed as “youth club music”, these records are experiencing a new renaissance (see Psychic Circle’s recent Phantom Guitars Volumes 1 & 2 for instance).


THE ANIMATED EGG Guitar Freakout Sundazed CD www.sundazed.com


Like Austin Matthews’ excellent Shindig! features on psych- exploito cinema and literature, the studio concoction of aging straights The Animated Egg


(session guitar supreme Jerry Cole and friends, not the hippies on the cover) ably aped the zeitgeist in a Hollywood recording studio laying on the freakouts thick and heavy. And like the material Matthews has covered, Guitar Freakout’s attempts at every drugged-out head music trick in the book come out sounding a little contrived and not that overly weird at all. It’s surf music for freaks with fuzz and tremolo and a Hendrix tone thrown in for measure. A tad goofy, but not without merit. Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills


61


Here you have the opportunity to


sample 28 great tracks including Bert Weedon’s finest moment, ‘Night Cry’, the gnarly ‘Work Out’ by The Flintstones (yes really!) and the dexterity of Jud Proctor’s fingers on the frets in ‘Cavaquinho’. There’s a 15-page booklet packed with biogs and pics as well, so what’s not to like? Paul Martin


VARIOUS ARTISTS An Outbreak Of Twangin’: Phantom Guitars Volume 2 Psychic Circle CD


British rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s and pre-Fabs ’60s was often definable by the hesitant intonation of the singer’s voice; regional accents corseted into


strained faux American. No such inflections hampered the electric guitar instrumental combos that sprung up in the wake of the Shadows.


Here we have a second helping of


gems from the very dawn of the ’60s. The Boys’ ‘Polaris’ foregrounds the baritone guitar as lead (as popularised so successfully by Duane Eddy). A real standout form me is the Arabic sounding ‘Neb’s Tune’ by Ahab & The Wailers. Bert Weedon must be the most


unpretentious use of a birth as stage name ever, but other British ghost riders on the storm featured here are Alan Caddy, Richard Harding, Jim Gunner and The Gordon Franks Orchestra, all worth your ear time. The cranked-up reverb on this bunch will have you shuffling like the Shads in next to no time! Paul Martin


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