excursion into a sometimes whimsical interpretation of psychedelic blues, gift-wrapped in an equally famous riot of day-glo colour by Martin Sharp, encapsulating its acid-drenched mood. Right album, right place, right time.
Disraeli Gears broke the band in the States, with Sunshine Of Your Love (its war-dance rhythm suggested to Ginger Baker by Tom Dowd) becoming Atlantic’s biggest-selling single. The album reveals Cream at their most cohesive: from then on, the pressure of touring, resentments over writing royalties and the resurgence of animosities between Bruce and Baker led to their inevitable break-up just a year after this album’s release.
Kaleidoscope
Tangerine Dream
One of the very few genuine British psychedelic albums.
Record label: Fontana
Produced: Dick Leahy and Jack Baverstock
Recorded: Stanhope Place Studios, London; mid-1967
Released: November 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Peter Daltrey (v, k); Eddie Pumer (g); Steve Clark (b); Danny Bridgman (d); John Cameron (ar); John Paul Jones (b); Clem Cattini (d); Dave Voyde (e)
Track listing: Kaleidoscope; Please Excuse My Face; Dive Into Yesterday; Mr Small The Watch Repairer Man; Flight From Ashiya; The Murder Of Lewis Tollani; (Further Reflections) In The Room Of Percussion; Dear Nellie Goodrich; Holidaymaker; A Lesson Perhaps; The Sky Children
Running time: 36.20
Current CD: Repertoire REPUK1077 adds: Flight From Ashiya; Holiday Maker; A Dream For Julie; Please Excuse My Face; Jenny Articoke; Just How Much You Are
Further listening: As Fairfield Parlour – From Home To Home (1970)
Further reading: http://hem.passagen.se/chla10-14/
Download: Not currently legally available. Dive Into Yesterday can be found on iTunes
The clever money in early ’67 was on a pioneering bunch of groups whose trade was neither R&B nor hit-parade pop, but something altogether odder, more visual, quite new. Pink Floyd, The Soft Machine and Kaleidoscope hogged the column inches but the latter – the ones with the nimblest melodies – were destined for a long run of near-misses.
Originally The Sidekicks, a beat group from Harrow, they became The Key in 1965 and, on signing to Fontana in late 1966, Kaleidoscope. As their line-up had remained constant, their debut 45 (Flight From Ashiya c/w Holidaymaker) sounded supertight. Replete with Pumer’s nerve-jangling guitar line and exquisite vocal interplay, Flight was played to death by the pirates and, though not a hit, encouraged Fontana enough to proceed with the album.
Opening with plucked harp and ferocious drums, the self-titled signature tune sets the scene for Tangerine Dream. Like The Bee Gees or The Kinks, Peter Daltrey’s songs are vignettes; pilots on their final flights, elderly watch repairers (prescient of Mark Wirtz’s Teenage Opera), Dickensian murder scenes. Everywhere there are beautiful drones courtesy of Pumer, fine high harmonies. All is crisp. Ultimately there is Dive Into Yesterday – five minutes of ebbing and flowing, atonal scraped guitar and a dive-bombing Duane Eddy hookline – and The Sky Children, which maintains beautiful fairytale imagery with an astonishingly simple and hypnotic arrangement for a full nine minutes.
‘Their songs are the best since The Beatles,’ said that pop oracle The Daily Sketch. Radio One offered them session after session. Kenny Everett called them ‘incredible’. Tangerine Dream exuded summertime optimism, but it was sadly misplaced. Three more albums followed (two as Fairfield Parlour, the last not obtaining a release until the ’90s) but a place deep in the heart of psych fanatics is all Kaleidoscope earned after such a promising start.
The Moody Blues
Days Of Future Passed
Birmingham beat group turn into lush art-rockers.
Record label: Deram
Produced: Tony Clarke and Michael Dacre-Barclay
Recorded: Decca Studios, West Hampstead; May 9–June 29, 1967
Released: November 11, 1967 (UK) December 14, 1967 (US)
Chart peaks: 27 (UK) 3 (US)
Personnel: Justin Hayward (g, v); John Lodge, (b, v); Michael Pinder (k, mellotron, v); Ray Thomas (hm, flute, v); Graeme Edge (d, pc); Hugh Mendl (executive producer). With the London Festival Orchestra; Peter Knight (conductor)
Track listing: The Day Begins; Dawn: Dawn Is A Feeling; The Morning: Another Morning; Lunch Break: Peak Hour; The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?); (Evening) Time To Get Away; Evening: The Sun Set; Twilight Time; The Night: Nights In White Satin
Running time: 41.47
Current CD: Decca 9832150 SACD contains a second disc of alternate versions, outtakes, BBC radio sessions and mono versions of the 1967 singles.
Further listening: The Moody Blues maintained a consistently high level of artistry through 1972’s Seventh Sojourn.
Further reading: www.moodyblues.co.uk
Download: iTunes
When The Moody Blues recorded Days Of Future Passed in October 1967, most of the record-buying public thought that the group’s day had indeed passed. Their original lead singer, Denny Laine, was gone, and despite the addition of new members Justin Hayward and John Lodge, they hadn’t managed a hit in over two years. Their label, Deram (a Decca subsidiary), was losing patience and had assigned staff producer Tony Clark to oversee The Moody Blues’ recordings after Laine’s departure, with a mandate to create hit singles that would recoup the group’s £5,000 advance.
After two singles missed the charts entirely, the label gave the group an album project – of a sort. They were to make a demonstration record of the label’s new ‘Deramic Stereo’ process to show the potential it held for rock and classical music. Specifically, they were to create a rock version of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, augmented by Peter Knight’s orchestrations. It is unclear if the group ever really intended to create the album Deram wanted. They requested one week of ‘lockout time’ at the label’s studios so they could have them for 24 hours a day instead of just the usual morning sessions. Then they convinced Knight to allow them to record the stage act that they had been working on for the past year, a song cycle chronicling a day in the life of an Everyman called Moody Blue. (Yes, they beat a certain song cycle about Mr Pink Floyd by about 12 years.) They also sought to replicate the feel of what Hayward later called ‘the first concept album’ – not Sgt. Pepper or, in fact, the work of a band, but a studio concoction – The Zodiac by Cosmic Sounds.
‘That was the birth of that sound, the tinkling bells and weird effects,’ Hayward explained. ‘It was our oracle. It was a simple concept – 12 songs based on the signs of the zodiac.’
The group debuted the album at a party for Decca’s brass. According to Lodge, some of the label’s staff didn’t know what to make of it. ‘When it finished, initially, stunned silence reigned. The singles head didn’t like it, neither did the managing director, who said, “You can’t dance to it. You can’t play this at a party.”’ Although Tuesday Afternoon was a reasonably-sized US hit, Days Of Future Passed is forever identified with Nights in White Satin. The wistful ballad made Number 19 in the UK in 1967 and became a surprise US smash five years later when it was rediscovered by a Seattle DJ. Hayward, while proud of the song’s lyrical depth, would later confess that