act – not least on the now inconceivable “Six Bob Tour” alongside label mates Genesis and Van Der Graaf Generator – they also won the coveted Best British Single of 1972 award from Melody Maker for the gorgeous ‘Lady Eleanor’, and would spend 56 weeks on the album chart with Fog On The Tyne. This two-CD set of BBC radio


sessions and In Concert appearances showcases the band’s strengths to perfection: that folksy, beery bonhomie, the rootsy warmth generated by intermingled mandolin, harmonica and acoustic guitar, and above all the stirring, heartfelt songs of Alan Hull – a man of integrity often referred to, not unreasonably, as the Newcastle John Lennon.


How worthy are those songs?


There are five versions of ‘Lady Eleanor’ and three versions of ‘Fog On The Tyne’ here, and you’ll greet each and every one like an old friend. Taken in tandem with crowd- creaming gems like ‘We Can Swing Together’, ‘Meet Me On The Corner’ and ‘No Time To Lose’, they constitute one hell of a good night out – or indeed in. Marco Rossi


CAROLINE PEYTON Mock Up Intuition Numero CDs www.numerogroup.com


Fresh from her appearance on the excellent Numero compilation of obscure female singer-songwriters Ladies Of The Canyon, Caroline Peyton now gets


two of her ’7os albums reissued by that same label. Mock Up and Intuition benefit from the deluxe treatment – remastered sound, bonus tracks, in-depth sleeve notes and even video footage.


Mock Up is a mixed bag of


rhythmic pop, mildly freeform piano, occasional vocal yelps and – less fortunately – those snooze-worthy singer- songwriter jazz experiments that seemed de rigour after ’75. However, for an album released in ’72, it’s interestingly ahead of its time and is worth persevering with, if you can handle Peyton’s obvious and occasionally grating plagiarism of Joni Mitchell’s vocal trills. 1977’s Intuition is far less odd and


seems to be a stab at commercial success by Peyton. While this generally results in boring rock-tinged MOR, anticipating something like Tori Amos, the one exception is the ingenious falsetto pop of ‘Party Line’. Jeanette Leech


RODRIGUEZ Coming From Reality Light In The Attic www.lightintheattic.net Hot on the heels of the universally acclaimed reissue of Rodriguez’s 1969 debut Cold Fact comes its ’71 follow-up. Cold Fact’s daring mix of homespun Greenwich Village folk and FM-friendly pop nous more than deserved


70


those accolades and fans will be happy to hear that Coming From Reality is its natural extension and almost certainly just as good.


Rodriguez’s aim to cut “the perfect


pop album” took him to London where the crack session dudes of the day provided suitably lofty musical support. These are ear-poppingly vibrant and verbose odes to lost love and urban decay; character vignettes inhabited by barflies and low-lifes delivered in a style that flits between mid- 60s Dylan, Jose Feliciano and early James Taylor but sounds completely unlike any of them. Just listen to those sweet, sweet melodies, adorned with heart-breaking string quartet arrangements, funky beats, latin percussion and Rod’s warm, economic acoustic guitar work. It’s almost too much to hear a


record like this out of the blue. I found myself unable to get on with what I was supposed to be doing or even hold a thought for most of these 50 minutes in Rodriguez’s company. If I had to single out any tracks I’d plump for the startlingly beautiful ‘Sandrevan Lullaby/Lifestyles’ and the grin-inducingly happy ‘Halfway Up The Stairs’. ‘It Started Out So Nice’ is possibly the greatest hit movie theme that never was.


Better start clearing some more


space in the trophy cabinet, boys. Andy Morten


STARRY EYED & LAUGHING All Their Best Broadside www.cherryred.co.uk


They were both perfect and wrong in every way. Starry Eyed & Laughing inhabited that mid-70s post- Glam, pre-punk netherworld like


strangers in a strange land. They cut their chops as part of the thriving pub rock scene of the day but singled themselves out with their amphetamine-paced blasts of ’60s flavoured folk-pop – all 12-string Rickenbacker and three-part harmonies. By the time their self-titled debut


appeared on CBS in ’75 they’d already survived one potentially disastrous attempt to be marketed as the new Byrds and honed their firebrand urban powerpop to distinction. ‘Going Down’ is without doubt the finest three minutes of pop music recorded in that gloomiest of pop years and I can only implore anyone who counts themselves as a pop fan to invest in a copy of this song forthwith. That said, there’s plenty to enjoy


on this remastered 20-track pass through SE&L’s two studio albums with no less than three Byrds covers added for your pleasure. Points deducted for lack of liner notes. Andy Morten


SWEET Action: The Sweet Anthology Shout! Factory CD www.shoutfactory.com


Sweet was formed in 1968 but enjoyed little commercial success until bubblegum songwriters Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn took


them under their wing. Around ’75 the band went through the first in a series of stylistic transformations, adopting a glitter and bombast-heavy, androgynous stage image. Later musical direction shifts had them composing their own songs for their unique brand of arena rock and experimenting with powerpop and prog-rock as well. This definitive 32 track


compilation, brightly remastered from the original tapes, features all their US and UK hits, cue ‘Funny Funny’, ‘Little Willy’, ‘Co- Co’, ‘Blockbuster’ (their first chart-topper), ‘Ballroom Blitz’ and ‘Fox On The Run’. The synthesizer-enhanced ‘Action’, the ELO-like ‘Love Is Like Oxygen’ (their final worldwide top 10 single) and their lusty homage to the US West Coast, ‘California Nights’, are also here. Gary von Tersch


VARIOUS ARTISTS The Electric Asylum Past & Present CD


Freakrock is a newly coined term that aims to describe the weird stew of hard- rock/prog/psych/ glam that bubbled around in the early ’70s. Collected


here are 20 obscure gems that still manage to defy categorisation. The Mighty ‘Em’s ‘Jekyll & Hyde’


is tremendous fun and exemplifies everything that’s good about this stuff, with its spook cheese synth effects, hard riffs and ridiculous lyrics. Other winners include the proto-terrace-glam-sci-fi of Galahad’s ‘Rocket Summer’ and the title track from The Grumbleweeds underrated psych curio, A Teknikolor Dream. Worth the admission price alone


is JC Heavy’s ‘Is This Really Me?’, an incredible one of a kind female-led psych- metal freak-out. The A-side of this single (also included) is no slouch either. There’s nary a duff track to be


found here and great artwork and sleeve- notes complete the overall package. It’s time to quit your psych silo or your blues bolt hole and get freaky! Austin Matthews


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