Review: The 23rd Turnoff's 'Michael Angelo: The Complete 1967 Recordings'

The 23rd Turnoff were one of those other Liverpudlian artists of the sixties. And unlike Gerry and the Pacemakers or Cilla Black or You-Know-Who, they never managed to rack up a satchel of hits. Unlike even less successful locals like The Koobas, The Mojos, or Wimple Winch, The 23rd Turnoff didn't even manage anything more than one single. But what a single it was! Released on Deram in that most fragrant of years, 1967, "Michael Angelo" b/w "Leave Me Here" was a two-headed tab of atmospheric, tuneful acid folk-pop. These were the best songs band leader and future solo artist Jimmy Campbell managed, but the Turnoff had some pretty good other songs in a similarly psychedelic mode ready to go. Sadly, Joe Meek and George Martin passed on producing the group, leaving The 23rd Turnoff to shuffle off into cult-rock history with nothing more than that one single and a handful of demos. 

Most of those recordings were originally included on RPM Records' 2004 CD compilation The Dream of Michelangelo, which also included eight tracks by the group's original freakbeat incarnation, The Kirkbys (best known for the strutting single "It's a Crime"). Think Like a Key's new comp Michael Angelo: The Complete 1967 Recordings loses the Kirkby's material, but it gains a couple of demos Campbell recorded shortly after The 23rd Turnoff turned off: one is a 1968 remake of "Another Vincent Van Gogh" and the other is the Kirkbys-like rocker "Lovely Elisa Cope Is Dead", which either boasts one of the all-time-best or all-time-worst titles, I haven't decided which yet. 

Better yet, Michael Angelo: The Complete 1967 Recordings is a vinyl release and a vinyl release on very quite plastic with a perfectly centered spindle hole. Because this stuff all comes from acetates and ancient singles, the audio quality varies from "that does not sound half bad!" to "is there even a song under all that snap and crackle?" But that shouldn't deter fans of this kind of heady stuff, who know some things are much more valuable than audio perfection.