Among the CD treats you’ll find inside your bulging ‘Games for May’ freebie sack an absolute killer compilation from Stylus Music entitled ‘a collection of spellbinding instrumentals from the sixties’ – essentially a 30 track twang-a-ramic feast of bad boogie strut gouged ju-ju that features a whole host of lost nuggets from pops neglected backwaters which had we had the time we’d love nothing more than giving mention to them all individually. One or two familiar names stare out of the grooves like the smoking chill dipped ‘the supernatural’ by John Mayall and the bluesbreakers, the Dakotas found here doing a wigged out shuffle courtesy off ‘oyeh’ and Jack Parnell whose experimental and zany ‘white suit samba’ is clearly the work of fried genius. Trekking through the grooves there’s plenty of gems to be had such as the Baron’s uber cool comic strip superhero groove ‘whirlwind’, while for those well attuned to in the arts of old school TV theme covers will do well to check out ox populares’ version of ‘out of limits’ done in a very wig flipped Stingray styled stylee while the adored ‘randall and hopkirk (deceased)’ incidental (one of the finest themes to grace a TV show) is summarily given the lush sweeping majestic treatment by Norrie Paramor and his orchestra from a rare Polydor single from 1970. Somewhere else there’s the mysteriously woozy dream dipped ‘journey into the fourth dimension’ by London studio group who were rumoured to feature Basil Kirchin in their celebrated ranks and released a plethora of library lounge soundtracks for de wolfe in the 60’s. a particular ‘shout out’ goes to Fay Craig’s ‘mirage’ – a deeply disorientating slab of Meek-esque strangeness featuring ghostly fairground carousels, b movie mysticisms and a spy school shakedown. Link and Dale enthusiasts will do well to fast forward to impala’s twang-a-hula ‘pueblo / experiment in terror’ while clearly winning hands down the vote for best named band goes to mandrake paddle steamer whose ‘carmen’ is equally freaked. Also worth hooking up to are the secrets quite sublimely mellowed Shadows on chill pills ‘the enchanted sea 2006’ and don shinn’s ‘pits of darkness’ – the latter is just off the radar. On a final note – for those of you into the smaller details of matters we’ve just noticed that the CD sleeve incidentally comes replete with red underlined spell check errors – we know a lot about those here – ha ha.
Here are a selection of wiggy treats from some of the featured personnel…..
London studio group…
Don shinn and the soul agents…who we believe featured a very young Rod Stewart if reports are to be believed…
Wynder k frog doing a killer kooky version of ‘green door’…..
The graham bond organisation…..
the sunday experience 