Review: The Mirage's 'You Can’t Be Serious: 1966-1968'

Between 1965 and 1968, The Mirage released a mere eight singles, one of which they put out under the name Yellow Pages, and no LPs. The Hertfordshire quintet still left behind a pretty terrific legacy. Yes, their first two singles for CBS —a cover of Betty Everett’s “Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” and a second rate Graham Nash composition called “Go Away”—were weak. Yes, the two singles they released under their own name and duress on the Page One label were downright lousy (their A-side as Yellow Pages, “Here Comes Jane”, is pretty good). But none of that matters on Guerssen Records’ You Can’t Be Serious: 1966-1968, because this compilation only collects the sides The Mirage recorded for Philips.

Review: The Fox's 'For Fox Sake'

Had the breaks been a little better, The Fox might now be spoken of in the same breath as Small Faces, The Creation, The Move, The Action, Traffic, and the other mod and/or psych bands they resemble. Alas, the Brighton quintet only made one album, because as frontman Steve Brayne relates in the liner notes of a vinyl reissue of the For Fox Sake LP, their management “poached” Black Sabbath and decided to put all of its eggs in that gloomy basket. Timing might have something to do with The Fox’s failure since their mid-sixties sound was so out of step the times when they released their one and only LP in 1970.

That The Fox is all but forgotten is a drag, but there’s nothing draggy about For Fox Sake. For lovers of the brand of fresh-faced British rock that the rains of Sabbath and Zeppelin washed away, this album is a revelation. Almost every song is a gem, inviting comparison to the works of more famous artists but offering enough originality to make it essential in its own right. You’d be hard pressed to find a song by a white band that used reggae off beats earlier than “As She Walks Away”, which also resembles Larks’ Tongue-era King Crimson three years ahead of schedule. Had Hendrix experimented with circus music, he may have been able to lay claim to the sound of the epic “Madame Magical”, but since he didn’t, he can’t. Most other tracks don’t strive for such uniqueness, but so who cares when For Fox Sake supplies the best Action (“Secondhand Love”), Creation (“Lovely Day”), and Small Faces (“Man in a Fast Car”) songs of 1970? Only the inchoate jam “Goodtime Music” is not up to snuff.

Sommor Records’ vinyl reissue of For Fox Sake affords this project some belated attention. The very cool album cover art is nicely reproduced. Sound is a bit flat and distorted, though that’s may be more a consequence of the album’s original lo-fi production than the digital mastering. The LP-sized booklet with Brayne’s notes and several band photos is a nice bonus. But great songs by a great band that almost nobody has heard are all the incentive necessary to hunt down For Fox Sake.

Review: 'Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production'

Producer Shel Talmy is a controversial figure in sixties pop. He got his first major gig by passing off records by The Beach Boys and Lou Rawls as his own productions (they weren’t). He foisted an old blues song called “Bald Headed Woman” on many of the artists he produced to collect royalties on a song he claimed to have written (he didn’t). He perpetuated a difficult-to-kill rumor that Jimmy Page played on The Kinks “You Really Got Me” (he didn’t), much to the infuriation of Dave Davies. He trapped The Who in a terrible contract that gave him a ridiculous chunk of their royalties, creating legal and financial troubles for the band for years (he did).

Talmy’s machinations were questionable to say the least, but there is no question that he cut some of the weightiest, greatest records released between 1964 and 1970. His signature Wall of Noise is evident in some of the best recordings by The Kinks, The Who, The Easybeats, and The Creation. However, there are also subtler colors and innovations in his work. He gave The Who the go-ahead to stir up so much aural chaos on “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” that most DJ’s thought the record suffered from some sort of awful technical glitch. He caught Eddie Phillips using his innovative guitar-bow technique on The Creation’s mighty “Making Time”. He etched the gentler acoustic sounds on Chad & Jeremy’s “A Summer Song” and beat The Beatles and Moody Blues to the punch by using the Mellotron on Manfred Mann’s “Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James” in 1966.

These are some of the unquestionable classics that appear on an essential and well-annotated new comp from Ace Records called Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production. This 25-song disc is not just a lesson in Talmy’s recording history, but more importantly, a simply smashing collection of sixties records familiar and obscure. The song selection is excellent with The Kinks represented by their finest early single (“Tired of Waiting for You”, personally selected by Ray Davies), rare alternate versions of common items such as Davy “Bowie” Jones’s “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” and The Easybeats’ “Lisa”, and other superb tracks by the likes of Roy Harper, The Nashville Teens, The Pentangle, and Lee Hazelwood, as well as less famous artists such as The Mickey Finn, The Rokes, Lindsay Muir’s Untamed, and The Sneekers, who put a few more bucks in Talmy’s pocket with yet another rendition of “Bald Headed Woman”. Oh, Shel.

Review: The Creation's 'Action Painting'

They never managed to get a hit like a lot of the other bands that Shel Talmy produced, but some rock cultists— such as Talmy— insist that The Creation was every bit as good as The Kinks and The Who. You have to take a lot of what Talmy says with a Rock of Gibraltar-size grain of salt, but in this case, there’s some truth to his assertion. With mighty, colorful, crazy records such as “Making Time”, “Nightmares”, and “How Does It Feel to Feel”, The Creation easily made records as good as the ’66-era Kinks and Who.

Consequently, The Creation have been anthologized a few times, though the most thorough collections are kind of a mess. I’m specifically referring to Retroactive’s 1998 comps Making Time (Volume One) and Biff Bang Pow! (Volume Two). Both discs are loaded with great music, for sure, but they’re programmed in a nearly unlistenable manner. Different mixes of the same songs are sprinkled about in such a way that the listening experience becomes vexingly repetitive. 

Numero Group’s new collection Action Painting solves this problem with more considerate programming. All of the original mono mixes are gathered on Disc One with only one repeated song: “How Does It Feel to Feel” appears in both its original UK version and its superior US remake, which is tacked onto the end of the disc long after the other version has played. Disc Two begins with four decent cuts by The Creation’s initial incarnation as The Mark Four before moving on to new, Talmy-approved stereo mixes of most of the songs on disc one.

This approach is much more listenable than Retroactive’s, even though I would have given that buzzsaw US version of “How Does It Feel to Feel” pride of place early in the disc and arranged the tracks according to when they were recorded rather than when they were released so that “I Am the Walker” and “Ostrich Man”—two of The Creation’s finest—aren’t buried so far at the end of the disc. But these are minor quibbles. Really, Disc One of Action Painting is superb and basically all The Creation you’ll ever need to hear with nice, thick remastering by Talmy and Reuben Cohen.

The stereo mixes on Disc Two are more of a curiosity, though they do reveal some interesting, heretofore-buried sounds, such as some keening backing vocals on “How Does It Feel to Feel” and “Through My Eyes”. The tracks are allowed to play out completely without fades, which discloses interesting tidbits too. “Through My Eyes” has certainly never sounded more psychedelically demented than it does here.  Disc Two is also the only spot where The Creation’s covers of “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Hey Joe” appear on Action Painting, but these are fairly inessential tracks and you’ll never miss them if you decide to only keep Disc One in rotation. I certainly don’t miss having them in mono.

The hardback book/slipcase packaging is very attractive with a bevy of color photos, including repros of all The Creation’s picture sleeves , as well as some informative biographical and track-by-track essays. The too-tight pockets for the CDs could have been thought out a lot better, though. Nevertheless, Action Painting is a lovely package of some of the sixties’ most brutal music. It may even be definitive.

Psychobabble's 20 Greatest One and No-Hit Wonders of 1966!

1966 was the final year in which the 45 rpm single was the unchallenged dominating force in Rock & Roll. Although that year included such major statements as Revolver, Blonde on Blonde, and Pet Sounds, the L.P. didn’t become the ultimate Rock delivery system until the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in mid-1967. 1966 was a year flooded with amazing singles from Rock’s most popular artists—“Paperback Writer”, “Good Vibrations”, “Paint It Black”, “Substitute”, “Eight Miles High”, to name just a few—but groups that never achieved the celebrity of The Beatles or The Stones contributed just as integrally to the rainbow quilt of ’66 pop. Some of these groups went on to develop mighty cult reputations. Some sank into obscurity. But they all made at least one monumental statement, whether it climbed into the top forty or not. Here are twenty of the most incredible one-off hits and flops of 1966.

Note: I had to amend my original list when I learned that Question Mark and the Mysterians had a #22 hit in the U.S. with “I Need Somebody” and Los Bravos hit #16 in the U.K. with “I Don’t Care”. That’s why “96 Tears” and “Black Is Black” didn’t make the final cut even though they’re often remembered as the work of one hit wonders.

20. “Why Don’t You Smile Now” by The Downliners Sect

While Lou Reed and John Cale were infecting the New York underground with their new band, Twickenham’s The Downliner’s Sect were attempting to climb the charts on the other side of the pond. They’d heard “Why Don’t You Smile Now” in demo form, perhaps unaware it had already flopped for R&B group The All Night Workers. The Downliners’ reimagining of the song as a hard-driving, echo-laden variation on “Louie Louie” didn’t win them a hit either, but its status as an early co-composition by Reed and Cale, who’d been grinding out made-to-order ditties for the Pickwick label, guaranteed its place in history. Its relentless fuzzy funk guaranteed its status as one of the great misses of 1966.


19. “Fight Fire” by The Golliwogs

With its nagging riff, hip-shaking percussion, pulsing rhythm, and mid-song freak-out, “Fight Fire” is the quintessential 1966 rocker. Yet San Francisco’s Golliwogs failed to turn it into a hit. No matter. A 1968 change in name and musical approach resulted in one of the biggest and best bands of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s: Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Fight Fire” isn’t as monumental as “Green River”, “Fortunate Son” or “Up Around the Bend”, but it is early and convincing evidence of John Fogerty’s songwriting talents… especially when played alongside The Golliwogs’ otherwise weak output.


18. “Eventually” by The Peanut Butter Conspiracy

With their universal love philosophy and ultra-dated psychedelic moniker, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy seem like prime candidates for irrelevance. But