"VARIOUS: Peephole In My Brain"

1971 stands as an odd, rather surreal year in British pop history: while American soft-rockers and singer-songwriters were dominating the album charts, the year in which the country ch-ch-changed over to decimal currency saw the homegrown pop/rock scene becoming increasingly eccentric. Marc Bolan invented glam rock, David Bowie wore a dress on the front cover of his latest album, The Kinks provided the soundtrack for a film about a penis transplant, DJ Tony Blackburn chose a single by The Edgar Broughton Band as his Record of the Week, and Jonathan King was backed on Top of the Pops by Fairport Convention. "Peephole In My Brain" documents the progressive-pop sounds of the year as the underground rock scene crossed over to the mainstream. Our 71 tracks from ’71 include major hits for the likes of Curved Air, Atomic Rooster and John Kongos as well as a selection of key album cuts from Procol Harum, ELP, Magna Carta, Barclay James Harvest, Cressida, Help Yourself, Legend and many others. We also include tracks that were first issued in 1971 but which would only make a mark later on: Status Quo would have to wait a while for "Mean Girl" to hit the charts, Terry Dactyl & The Dinosaurs would find success twelve months later when "Sea Side Shuffle" was reissued, and the Curtiss Maldoon album track "Sepheryn" would be discovered more than twenty years later by Madonna, who used it as the basis for "Ray of Light". We disinter bona fide classic 45s from Kevin Ayers, Medicine Head, Wishful Thinking and The Move along with the song that Bowie wrote for his old friend Dana Gillespie, a clutch of righteously obscure but fascinating singles, a handful of essential singer/songwriter cuts and a raft of unissued-at-the-time nuggets from bands who existed outside of the major label pop bubble. Featuring a 40-page booklet crammed with rare illustrations and the stories behind the songs, "Peephole In My Brain" is an essential addition to Grapefruit’s acclaimed year-by-year series of late Sixties/early Seventies British rock and pop. (in Amazon)

Cherry Red/Grapefruit's alernative chronology of the lower leagues of British pop/rock reaches 1971. This time they're focusing on what they call "progressive pop", which isn't and never really was any kind of genre but is a shorthand for "serious" artists making catchy/commercial-sounding records, whether or not these ever came anywhere near the singles charts, or were ever intended to do. That sort of thing accounts for a lot of the contents of these three discs, though some of it is just people doing what they do, be they singer-songwriters, studio hacks, or sixties hitmakers trying to make a comeback. There are also a few big names, a few names from the next level down, some reliable cult figures the now-inevitable trawl through the catalogues of labels like Ember, Dawn, President and Vertigo, and, of course, Grapefruit's inexpicable but oddly touching fondness for the ever-underwhelming outputs of Fickle Pickle/Morgan Studios. Also present: Jonathan King. Let's hope he's not getting much by way of royalties. "Progressive pop" or not, the contents are remarkably diverse. You get, among other things, proto-glam, folk, singer-songwriter ballads, hard rock, prog-rock, CS&N harmony soft-rock, novelties (including Terry Dactyl & The Dinosaurs' "Seaside Shuffle", which I thought was the best record ever made for about three weeks when I was ten), and bands who sound like it's still 1967 in their brains. Some were actually hits, such as The Move's "Tonight", Curved Air's "Back Street Luv", and Atomic Rooster's "Devil's Answer". Possibly because of the diversity, and possibly because of improved recording technology leading to better sound quality (and, in line with that, fewer demo recordings), this is one of the more consistently enjoyable listens in this series of complilations. There are a few stinkers, inevitably, but there also some absolutely wonderful tracks here, such as Kevin Ayers' "Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes" (what the Velvets would have been like if they'd been British and addicted to Pimms rather than American and addicted to methamphetamine) and The Kinks' "God's Children", the best Ray Davies song most people have never heard of. Those are old favourites, of course. The track new to me that I liked best was Jackie McAuley's staggeringly great "Turning Green", which is worth the price of admission alone. Of course, your view on what's good and what needs to go out with the bins will be different from mine. The important point is that this set is so diverse and so consistent it's a probable twelve to seven that anyone with even the vaguest interest in it will love it to death. (in Amazon)