Could The Pretty Things have achieved more than cult success
in America if their manager didn’t have the lack of vision to book them on a
New Zealand tour instead of taking them to the U.S. in the early days of their
career? Did this possibly fatal decision allow The Rolling Stones to swoop in
and swipe the title of Rock’s dirtiest, nastiest band in the world’s biggest
pop market, leaving The Pretty Things doomed to cult act status? I kind of
doubt it. Just hold up photos of the two bands circa 1965 side by side. See how
relatively short the Stones’ hair is. See how nattily they dressed, even if
they weren’t wearing matching suits like those fit-for-grandma Beatles did. See
how long and unkempt The Pretty Things’ hair is, and I don’t just mean singer
Phil May’s celebrated mane. Dick Taylor’s facial scruff looks like it reeks of
beat clubs and pot stench and stage sweat. Had this mob appeared on American
shores in 1965, they probably would have been tossed in the nearest zoo.
But could they have made it here if radio played their
records more aggressively? I doubt that too. Unlike the Stones, who had good
noses for pop hits, the Pretties were too uncompromising in their devotion to
the hardest blues. They were so unwilling to bend to the strictures of radio
that they not only recorded an obscure R&B song called “Come See Me” as aggressively
as possible, they left in the line about laying a girl, and had the sheer
madness to put it out as a single. Naturally, U.S. stations refused to play it.
By the time The Pretty Things went psychedelic with “Defecting Grey”, a “song”
that sounds like it was pieced together from bits of tape during some sort of
arts and crafts class at the local mental institution, the possibility that
they’d ever hit it big in America had long since gone AWOL. Hell, we didn’t
even give them credit for putting out the first LP-length rock opera!
Normally, bands who don’t come within a mile of taking
America as assuredly as the Stones did don’t get the kind of treatment The
Pretty Things do with their new box set Bouquets From A Cloudy Sky: The Complete Pretty Things Deluxe Boxset Collection. Once again, they have little interest in such rules.
This heavy duty set audaciously expects cultists to plunk down some serious
coin for all eleven of the band’s studio albums, two extra discs of rarities, a
replica acetate disc, two DVDs, and sundry books and posters and artwork.
Actually, Bouquets isn’t terrible
value if you don’t have all this stuff already. Compare it to another fairly
recent box from Snapper records: Small Faces’ Here Come the Nice. That 2013 set only had four CDs and no DVDs and
went for about £95.00 on Burning Shed.com compared to the £125.00 they’re
asking for Bouquets as of this
writing. Granted, that deal is less enticing for anyone who already owns all
the Pretties CDs that have been available for years, because they are
apparently identical to the ones in this new set. I only received a fifteen-song
sampler, but listening to its tracks against the discs already in my
collection, I detect no mastering differences. There is no indication otherwise
in the pdf of the hardback book I also received (it’s a well-illustrated,
critically balanced mini-biography of the band’s fifty years of bad behavior,
though it does contain a few minor errors and really just whetted my appetite
for the full-blown biography the band really deserves). Snapper’s decision to
go with the stereo mix of S.F. Sorrow
instead of the far superior mono one is a questionable decision, and the true
completist will want to purchase it elsewhere.
Nevertheless, you still have three discs of material
unavailable anywhere else. I am unqualified to assess those two CDs of rarities
(which do not contain any of the fabulous recordings the band made under the
name The Electric Banana, probably because of rights issues) since I didn’t
receive it, but I did get to stream Midnight
to Six 1965 – 1970, Reelin’ in the Years Productions’ documentary that was
supposed to see release back in 2011 but was derailed by clearance and
distribution issues. Like other entries in Reelin’ in the Years’ British
Invasion series, Midnight to Six
features new interviews with band members intercut with vintage song
performances in their entireties. The interviews are interesting, though there’s
a lot of informational overlap with the book included in this set. Still it’s
cool to hear these wild stories right from the guys’ mouths, just as it’s cool
to see them perform even when they’re only lip-syncing to recordings. The totally
live performance footage, however, is spellbinding. It’s one thing to listen to
these albums. It’s another to see 21-year old Phil May flipping his
outrageous-for-1965-length hair while dropping to his knees as Viv Prince drums
on his spine and an army of Dutch teens go to war with the cops in the
audience. You wanna know why Rock & Roll used to scare the shit out of
parents? This is why, motherfucker. Even seeing an awful, awful mime mugging
while the band lip-syncs to “Private Sorrow” isn’t enough to make this early
footage less potent.
The most well known footage of the Pretties from this era is
the 14-minute short film “Pretty Things on Film” (sort of a grungier A Hard Day’s Night without all the plot
and dialogue bits), which received wide release as a video bonus on Snapper’s Get the Picture CD in 1998. Midnight to Six doesn’t cheat by
including this relatively familiar film within its two hours, but “Pretty
Things on Film” is conscientiously included as a bonus. Hopefully the whole
highly anticipated DVD will receive a stand alone release for the many Pretty
Things diehards who already have every other disc in this box set.
Bouquets also
throws in the band’s 1998 performance of S.F.
Sorrow at Abbey Road, This is another readily available video, but it is an
excellent one with the band performing their greatest work impeccably with
bonus narration by Arthur Brown and occasional guitar support by Dave Gilmour.
The name of this box set’s game is completeness, and it would not be complete
without S.F. Sorrow Live at Abbey Road.
Despite having a pretty limited concept of what’s in Bouquets from a Cloudy Sky, I can say
that anyone whose Pretty Things collection is currently pretty skimpy and wants
to get everything in one swoop—and really, if you have any interest in sixties
R&B and psychedelia, why wouldn’t you?—Bouquets From A Cloudy Sky: The Complete Pretty Things Deluxe Boxset Collection would probably be a wise purchase. Hopefully if enough of
this limited edition set’s 2,000 pieces sell in the U.S., the Pretties will be
a little less underrated here.
Get Bouquets from a Cloudy Sky on Burning Shed. com here.
