I’m not a huge fan of late 60s bubblegum in general – though I respect it as a root for a lot of stuff I do love – and “Dizzy” is a puny specimen at any rate. A rewrite of Roe’s earlier (and cuter) “Sweet […]

 
“The Beatles as nature intended”, according to the single’s ad copy. It’s familiar enough now, this back-to-the-roots move: something of a cliche even, in the way bands like Oasis invariably trail their latest album by prom[…]

“Get up in the morning slaving for bread Sir”
The intro to “Israelites” – two chords, and Dekker’s naked voice – is one of the most striking in 60s pop. Taken slower than the rest of the verses it’s a […]

Some of my favourite soul performances go to the ragged-throated extremes of the style – Lorraine Ellison’s apocalyptic “Stay With Me”, for instance. But more of them are like “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, wh[…]

 
In an NME interview, John Peel once named this record as his personal worst of all time. The man heard a really very large number of bad records so this claim made quite an impression on me. And it’s easy to imagine the young Peel, earnest[…]

Amen Corner flap dangerously on the boundary between dreamy and drippy, and then tip right over thanks to the washed out vocals of Andy Fairweather-Low, whose voice is a pale and smeary thing, a wimpy croak that leeches any real delight out of the so[…]

The first time I heard this – one of the songs from this era that was entirely new to me – I thought it sounded like a terrible mess. Everything about it was heavy-handed, lead-footed, fuzzy, all its elements slopping into one another and[…]

 
The appearance of not one, but two instrumentals in the late 60s lists shouldn’t be taken as any great sign of a revival: the first months of the year are generally the time when minority tastes can break through. This represents a hiccup in[…]

 
The link between bouncy music-hall and Jamaican pop would create whole careers for some people, though Paul McCartney didn’t get the mix right. The crucial ingredients he’s missing are wit and bite – there’s no reason that […]

As a small schoolboy a yearly highlight was “Camp 200” – this was something my school organised whereby 200 boys would go to a campsite in the wilds and woods of deepest Surrey and spend a weekend there. For an 8 or 9 year old it wa[…]