Review: Jason Crest's 'A Place in the Sun'

Jason Crest (a band, not a guy) made some singles smothered in psychedelic phasing, wah-wahing, and Mellotron and got some decent exposure opening for the likes of The Who and The Moody Blues, but they just never cracked it. A few of their single sides, such as "Turquoise Tandem Cycle", the heavily Moodies-influenced "A Place in the Sun", and the audio horror movie "Black Mass", made it onto installments of the Rubble and British Psychedelic Trip series, but Jason Crest is definitely one of the more obscure British psych groups of the sixties. That's too bad because their songs are mostly appealingly poppy (well, maybe not "Black Mass"), their productions are imaginative, and well, any record that features the Mellotron owns my heart. 

Guerssen's new Jason Crest compilation A Place in the Sun mixes demos with studio recordings since the group's mere five singles do not provide enough material to fill an LP--and since notator David Wells assures us that the "Waterloo Road" / "Education" single stinks, both of those proper recordings are omitted (honestly, I don't know what the problem is. "Waterloo Road" is a bit corny but not egregiously so, and "Education" is a peppy, bluesy number better than a good deal of the tracks that made the cut). That leaves A Place in the Sun as a somewhat uneasy shuffle of buffed recordings and lo-fi ones. Some of the tracks are inessential. As I've already implied, "Black Mass" is interesting but pretty grating, and a by-numbers cover of (Here We Go 'Round the) Lemon Tree" won't make anyone forget The Move's superior original. However, tracks such as "Turquoise Tandem Cycle", "Two by the Sea", "A Place in the Sun", and "Good Life" should scratch my fellow British freaks psych itching for something relatively obscure to discover.