The Hollow Dogs

‘Lift Up Yer Wee Breasts, Jonnie’ c/w ‘Wash Yer Mother’s Feet’

 Released 22^nd October 1969. Regal Zonophone MR3546

Jimpy Tarr (vcls, tambourine), Roger Queensbury (bells), Gunman Hunt (percussion, vcls), Doon Young (bells, vcls), Jimpy McDougall (accordion, bells), Ajax ‘Jimpy’ Ramekin (penny whistle).

As far as strange records go, ‘Lift Up Yer Wee Breasts, Jonnie’ certainly takes some beating, even by the standards of late 1969. The Hollow Dogs were purportedly a Scottish folk collective, formed in the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. In reality, though, they were the brainchild of Jimpy Tarr, a 23 year old tambourinist/sing-artist from Arundel in Sussex, who hallucinated the entire concept of the group while high on a particularly potent strain of LSD, known as The Black Ladybird of Jesus or The Lady Blackbird of Jesus.

The song starts with just over sixty seconds of strident campanology from its three bell players, who are soon accompanied by tuneless meanderings on the penny whistle. This sonic assault is then stepped up a notch by an overpowering accordion and tambourine duet, while Tarr enunciates those remarkable lyrics in a strong, Scottish accent:

‘Lift up yer wee breasts, Jonnie.

Prove yer a girl before old God

I’ll marry thee upon the morn

If proof there be on yer old chest cods

Lift up yer wee breasts, Jonnie

I’ll milk ye if I may

To prove that our wains may suckle

‘Pon your breasts on our wedding day

Predictably, the single was immediately banned by all radio stations apart from the hovercraft pirate station Radio Crispian, who played it to the exclusion of all other records, as was their policy.

Station Manager Jason Ponce said at the time, “We’re going with this waxing as we believe it’ll be a huge hit. In fact, I’ve put on a huge bet with some people that it’ll be number one for the rest of the year and then it’ll be the Christmas number one. I’ve actually bet the hovercraft that we broadcast from. I’m never wrong about these things and I fully expect to be a millionaire in the New Year”.

The single, however, stiffed at number thirty-nine and soon dropped out of the charts completely. It’s thought today that Jimpy Tarr was actually the only person who performed on the record and that the other members were fictitious. This is disputed, however, by percussionist Gunman Hunt, who went on to be the drummer with The Crackpots (‘Time Is Best When It’s There’).

Tarr was never heard of in the music business again, but The Hollow Dogs and their solitary single have had a lasting influence, chiefly on The Piss Chickens (‘If Rain Smelled’), The Photographers (‘Snap Happy’) and The Unusuals (‘I Fear Retrospect’), whose lead guitarist, Martin Gulliver, reputedly owned one hundred and thirteen ties.

The Kray Twins

“Flowers For Iris” c/w ”Hold Him Down"
Palaver Records PR0001  Released February 1966

Ronald Kray (Vocals), Reggie Kray (Vocals, Maracas), Long Jimmy Felder (Guitar), Archie ‘The Flusher’ Burns (Piano), Lord Boothby (Harmonica), Frank Mitchell (Drums)

Many know Ronnie and Reggie Kray’s reputation as notorious London gangsters but few remember their attempt to launch a pop career. In 1966  they were at the height of their powers. They owned several clubs, including the glittering Club De Brick Lane, and, when not disposing of enemies in the Thames, could be found rubbing shoulders with show business stars like Felicity Wind and Hephzibah Goldblatt. Aware of the criminal activity rife in the music business, the boys knew they would feel at home and quickly formed a band.

Ronnie kick-started the group by masterminding Frank Mitchell’s escape from Dartmoor prison. Ronnie knew Frank was a large man given to random acts of violence but Frank had his own kit.

Reggie hired Long Jimmy Felder, a superb guitarist with ready access to stolen musical equipment, and Archie Burns. Burns earned the nickname ‘The Flusher’ after disposing of Fatty Kyriakos down the lavatory in his mother’s flat. Burns was a terrific pianist, having learnt to play the chapel organ in borstal.

A friend of Ronnie’s, Lord Boothby, joined on mouth organ and The Kray Twins were ready to take on show business.

But problems arose during the first recording session . The internal dynamics of pop groups being what they are, arguments are always likely. When you bring together five deranged gangsters and a Lord of the Realm, they’re inevitable. Before a note was recorded Reggie sliced up Mitchell’s drums with a sabre, a studio engineer ran from the building with his ears on fire and a tea lady found herself dangled from a fifth floor window for forgetting Ronnie’s biscuits.

The band did manage to complete the session, albeit at gunpoint. Ronnie and Reggie laid down the vocals separately and what comes through is their unnerving sweetness. The twins always claimed they had an artistic side and their gentle tribute to their dear mother, Iris, brings a tear to the eye.

Sadly, the record failed to reach Number 1. Ronnie and Reggie did their best but found their acts of bribery were helpless in the face of Little Harry Knockandie’s novelty hit “Foot Bath”. A fifty year old midget who masqueraded as a blind girl of twelve, Little Harry was the comedy sensation of the year and turned his catchphrase of “Well, you could wash me in a foot bath” into a million-seller.

Disappointed at not hitting the high spot, Ronnie Kray went on a rampage which culminated in him shooting George Cornell in the Crown of Peas pub in Whitechapel. As he lay dying, Cornell raised himself up and whispered to Ronnie: "Well, you could wash me in a foot bath".

The Mighty Lord General Sir Captain Prince Charles

‘How Many Fingers, Darlin’?’ c/w ‘She Like Me Big Bamboo’
Released 22nd January 1959. Caribou Records 100A

Hailing from Tobago, The Mighty Lord General Sir Captain Prince Charles (real name: Herbert de Lorean Basquiat), was the most famous of the many calypso singers who dominated the UK singles charts in the late 1950s. His first two singles ‘She Squeeze She Melons When I Come Home From Work’ and ‘She Grind She Hips Against Me Banana’ only made the top twenty, but it was ‘How Many Fingers’, Darlin’?’ that really put de Lorean Basquiat on the pop map.

At the time, calypso was viewed as a rather jocular, innocent musical form. A 1957 hit ‘She Wear She Dress With Nothin’ Underneath’ by King Duke Arthur and his Mighty Stalin Invaders reached number three in the charts, despite its lyrics: ‘She tell I to keep me rocket in me pocket/I wail and gnash I teeth/ For this is Saturday night, my friend/ So she wear she dress with nothin’ underneath’.

‘How Many Fingers, Darlin’?’, with a raucous backing featuring pounding steel drums and a ragged horn section, was a popular radio hit and soon reached number one in the charts, knocking ‘My Best Slippers’ by Geoffrey Nutt & The Mayfair Girls from the top spot.

Before long, de Lorean Basquiat was invited to perform in front of The Royal Family at Buckingham Palace and reportedly turned in a spectacular performance (backed by the Roaring King Nelson Girl Butterfly Dancers and The Mighty Lord General Sir Captain Prince Charles Mighty Spitfire Macbeth Orchestra and Power Melody Dance Band).

The music apparently inspired Princess Margaret to lewdly act out the lyrics of ‘She Squeeze She Melons…’ before she had to be heavily sedated and committed to a private royal asylum for three years.

Just to give an idea of what the Princess’s performance might have entailed, it’s worth quoting some of the lyrics to this classic song:

I like she saltfish in the morning
I like she saltfish in the night
I like she grind she sweet papaya
On me sugar cane hard an’ tight

I like she lick the sweet banana
I like she lick the old beef jerk
Most of all I like she squeeze she melons
When I come home from work

Still performing regularly, despite being in his late seventies, de Lorean Basquiat recently put the finishing touches to his seventy-third calypso album ‘Tribute to Mr David Niven’, which features a re-working of ‘How Many Fingers, Darlin’?’, featuring a previously omitted verse, which de Lorean Basquiat himself deemed too tasteless to be included in the original waxing. Can’t wait!

Evan Harris

‘A Slight Tickle (Excerpt)’
Cromothone Records CROM 4
Evan Haris (Hockling), Edgar DeFries (Guitar, Bass, Drums, Piano, Autoharp)
One of the weirdest singles to be released in the early Seventies was ‘A Slight Tickle (Excerpt)’ by engineer turned warbler, Evan Harris. Harris had worked on many complex sessions in the Nineteen Sixties, including getting Humpet Harmony’s customised Hammond organ onto tape.

“It wasn’t like a conventional Hammond”, remembers Harris. “This one was made of straw bales covered in lamb fat”. Humpet had asked Hammond to come up with a lighter version of their famous keyboard and this was the solution.

For his first venture as a singer, Evan chose the unusual route of hocking up phlegm. “I didn’t have much of a singing voice and smoked sixty fags a day”, remembers Harris. “I had a track that Edgar DeFries recorded before he joined Egg Thermometer and I thought up a melody to go over the top”.

It was studio producer Nigel Mermaid who heard Harris coughing up some chesty phlegm into a wastepaper basket and thought the sound “original and quite catchy”.

The single combines an airy, slightly progressive tune, reminiscent of Calked Chimney’s ‘Tool Management In Airdrie’, with the echoey and phased regurgitation of trapped phlegm. There’s no doubt that it was a novelty at the time and its slightly intellectual approach guaranteed it a hearing amongst the hippy set. Listening to it today, without the benefit of mind-altering drugs, it sounds really, really bad.

The Frown

’24 Flowers A Day’ c/w ‘The Japanese Bollock Tree’

Released 12th October 1966. Decca F148694.

Jimmy Parrott (guitar, vcls), Harry ‘Guv’ Welchman (bass), Crombie Thistle (drums, percussion), Chair ‘Sad Face’ Kray (organ), Baps McGovern (saxophone)

Originally a typical mod band (their singles ‘Reversed Into A Van’ and ‘Where’s Me Pills?!?!?!?’ were favourites in ‘Tinkles’ club in Hersham), The Frown underwent a radical change of style in late ’66 after the whole band discovered the joys of sniffing dry-cleaning fluid.

Says Harry ‘Guv’ Welchman today: “We were all desperate to blow our minds to fragments like all the other bands, but we simply couldn’t find any drugs in Godalming, where we were all from. This meant we had to make do with dangerous solvents and the like. I believe we were the first group to inhale rat poison and lick sandpaper. In fact, Crombie Thistle nearly OD’d at his mother’s house when combining rat poison inhalation with bleach pessaries.

Welchman confirms other members of the band also used dangerous substances. “Jimmy Parrott did varnish...varnish and rust remover combined, with a side order of nail polish. This was on top of the dry cleaning stuff. But the gear Jimmy really swore by was butane and petrol mixed up together and sniffed from an old handbag. That really did it for Jimmy. One of his girlfriends died after eating a toilet block covered in penetrating oil”.

‘24 Flowers A Day’ was written by Parrott after a marathon Airfix glue session, a substance which he inhaled from a large carrier bag which no-one was allowed to touch. Parrot was known to scream if anyone came near it. In an interview about the song with Guys & Chicks magazine in January 1967, Parrot claimed: “Suddenly I knew the answer to everything and formed a new structure for the universe and stars within. This, and other things are reflected in the lyrics of our new waxing, when it will be released”.

At this point, the single had already been out for over three months, a fact which Parrott seemed blissfully unaware of. For those of you who are interested, the first verse of ’24 Flowers A Day’ ran as follows:

’24 Flowers a day, seven leeks in a week
Three hundred and sixty-five smiles in a year
A dog with a gigantic beak’

The single was a surprise number one only two weeks after its release. “We bribed all the pirate DJs with hopes of money’”, says Welchman. “That record was all that the hovercraft pirate station Radio Crispian ever played and, man, we all listened to it all day, hearing our own record. It was great! We cracked open the Winchester of carbon tetrachloride that night, I can tell you!”

A follow-up single, ‘Drop a Love Bomb on My Head’, fared less well and the band soon split up. They reformed in 1972, and then split up again. They reformed once more in 1983, but split up two weeks later. “Those reformations were Jimmy’s idea”, says Welchman. “He thought it was still 1966, basically. Time sort of stood still for him and although, say, seventeen years had passed, for him it was only two hours. I’m not really sure how it worked. You’d have to ask Jimmy, but he’s been asleep since ’97”.

Sax player Baps McGovern later joined The Buxom Wenches, while organist Chair ‘Sad Face’ Kray changed his name to Robin Kray and went on to become a renowned character actor, usually playing ageing, predatory homosexuals. “That sad face of his really paid dividends”, says Welchman.

Piers Shelley And The Inverts

‘Smoke My Hair’ c/w ‘The Dripping In My Head’
Released 7th January 1967. Regal Zonophone RZ 3032.

Piers Shelley (vcls, tambourine), Carl Connery (bass guitar), Stuart Morgan (flugelhorn), Flotral McGinnis (drums).




‘You smoke everything that’s going
Like you haven’t got a care
You smoke bananas in your pyjamas
So baby, won’t you smoke my hair’

Hailing from the Swansea area of South Wales, Piers Shelley (real name William Corbet) and The Inverts paid their dues by playing miner’s clubs, where they were regularly booed offstage by appalled and drunken audiences.

One of the many reasons for this was that the band sported a flugelhorn player instead of a guitarist. Says flugelhorn player Stuart Morgan today: “I don’t know why they asked me to join, really. Blame Piers Shelley. He told me I’d meet loads of girls if I joined. In fact, I didn’t get any. There was a strict blow-off girl hierarchy and I was at the bottom of it, even below the roadies... and Piers’ mates and family”.

Nevertheless, the out-of-time flugelhorn line on ‘Smoke My Hair’ is what makes the record. An inept mix (by discredited producer Arthur ‘Lummy’ Watkins) made sure that the drums and bass guitar were trebly and inaudible, leaving Shelley’s trembling vocals and Morgan’s flugelhorn to the fore. It’s a painful listening experience, yet one that influenced many subsequent Welsh psychedelic bands, such as The Unusuals, whose single ‘I Fear Retrospect’ also featured the flugelhorn and a child’s toy piano.

The single stiffed at number 49 in the charts (though it did make number 72 in Italy three years later with the vocals removed) and the band broke up, bassist Carl Connery joining The Bumdrops (led by Belgian tambourinist Rudy Snouters, later a famous terrorist).

Shelley blamed Morgan’s flugelhorn for the single’s lack of success and never spoke to him again. To Morgan, however, this chart failure was a relief: “To me, the whole record industry was like some horrific, predatory disco in some degenerate, dirty sex basement down the docks, with swarthy, foreign criminal people acting as waiters and slaves, deconsecrated nuns, special keys to forbidden rooms, the undead, retired teachers, corrupted animals, toothless women playing saxophones and suitcases full of money. I went into one club and everything was painted green. I’m glad ‘Smoke My Hair’ wasn’t a hit. If it had been, we’d all be looking like Dorian Gray’s portrait by now, like most other beat group members do”.

Nykolas Synystre

"Welcome To My Priest Hole" c/w "Satan's Evil Twin"
Released 15th August 1967. Piccadilly PIC 67646

Nykolas Synystre was a familiar face in the Soho of the Nineteen Sixties. He stood out from the local gangsters, hawkers and flesh traders thanks to his distinctive red velvet cape, stag-horned crown, fishnet tights, rubber gloves and German Army boots. "Today, you'd not notice him at all", remembers nephew Toby Bartam-Covering. "But jaws dropped back in '66 when Uncle Nyk rode down Berwick Street on the back of one of his naked supplicants".

Synystre, an Eton schoolboy, had hoped to make his name in The City. However, at a ball in Cambridge he drank a powerful cocktail of liquid LSD, London Gin and Trumpers cologne. He awoke the next day a fully-fledged Satanist with, as he put it, "the love bites of Beelzebub spotted across my derriere".

While those around him embraced the Summer of Love, Synystre set about creating a 'dungeon of evil with tapas snacks': the infamous Priest Hole club in St. Anne's Court. "It was a filthy basement infested with vermin", bragged Synystre. "Plaster was falling off the walls, exposing brickwork covered in slime. It stank terribly".

Synystre commissioned design agency Emerald Glow'd She Were And Fairy Haired Too Limited to deliver this concept, converting what had been a quiet cellar bookshop into the most disgusting venue in Britain. It cost seventeen thousand pounds which, at the time, was seventeen thousand pounds.

"It was my sickest dream made real", said Synystre on his release from prison in 1978. "A disgusting pit of degredation where fellow worshippers of the Dark Arts could gather to drink very expensive red wine, watch groovy bands and commit horrible acts of Satanism after hours. George Best was a frequent visitor".

Despite the revolting decor and inflated prices, The Priest Hole was extremely popular with television professionals. Said Synystre: "I think it appealed to both their general lack of self-esteem and their insatiable desire to waste money on acohol whilst being whipped by leather-clad freaks".

Thanks to her role in the BBC's 'Group Captain Grainger's Guildhall Of Pop', Felicity Wind was the talk of the town. She often took drugs at The Priest Hole. "My mind is not what it was", she says down the telephone from her sheltered accommodation in Lewes. "I do remember some kind of dark cellar filled with people wearing horns and stabbing goats...but that could have been anywhere in Soho".

Before his eventual arrest, Synystre decided to capitalise on his reputation as one of London's most deranged inhabitants by asking Terry Quick's Baroque 'n' Roll to back him on a one-off single, the amazing 'Welcome To My Priest Hole'. It begins with a searing blast of feedback as Terry Quick forces the output of four electric harpsichords through a WEM fuzz-o-naut.

We then hear Synystre's trademark growl and the crack of a whip, followed by a small yelp of pain from virginal player Jimmy Pilgrim. There then follows two minutes and ten seconds of the most explosive freakbeat ever committed to vinyl, as Synystre pleads with us to 'enter my priest hole and see where Satan lives, we serve all sorts and sell the best Spanish olives'.

The track ends with Terry Quick throwing one of his harpsichords against the studio wall, accidentally killing an engineer.

Hephzibah Goldblatt

‘Doggy Dentist’ c/w ‘Eventually There Is You’
Released 22nd April 1959. Parlophone R4021

The daughter and protégé of popular bandleader Harry Goldblatt, Hephzibah ‘The Girl with the Cough in Her Voice’ Goldblatt was only fourteen when this, her first single, hit the top ten in May 1959.

Despite her tender years, Hephzibah had a mature, deep singing voice somewhere between the normal male ranges of bass and baritone. She was inclined to cough when attempting higher notes, hence her charming soubriquet.

This cough was partly caused by smoking seventy-a-day Capstan Full Strength. The habit had been encouraged by father Harry in an attempt to compete with the influx of deep-voiced Jamaican calypso singers who monopolised the UK charts in the late nineteen fifties. Singers like The Mighty Lord General Sir Captain Prince Charles with ‘How Many Fingers, Darlin’?’.

At a time when the lyrics of popular songs were taken literally, Hephzibah’s first single caused some controversy when she sang :

‘I want to be a doggy dentist
Holding dog jaws open with my knees
I’ll drill their teeth with a doggy drill
Then find me a man that I can please – yee-hah!

“I was never really sure what that song was about", says ‘Doggy Dentist’ arranger Dennis Vaccari. “I just thought that if I stuck enough pizzicato strings on it, nobody would care. Reading those words today, they don’t really make much sense and rarely rhyme. At the time, veterinary surgeons all over the country were up in arms about the inference that a fourteen year old singer could easily do their job, but I think they missed the point. There’s something deeply disturbing going on here”.

We decided to ask composer Harry Goldblatt about his unusual lyrics but he is dead, so we can’t.

Hephzibah’s only album ‘The Girl with the Cough in Her Voice’ went gold on Christmas Day 1961 and was the first long player to spin at 113 rpm.

Sadly, Hephzibah was not around to enjoy this success; she had died of an overdose of laxatives in early 1960. Strangely, her death was kept secret by father Harry. It was only when he passed away in 1983 that his papers revealed Hephzibah’s death and the lengths he had gone to in order to avoid disappointing her fans.

This included answering the phone pretending to be her, kissing souvenir photographs while wearing her lipstick, wearing her clothes and recording many waxings under her name, doing the singing himself.

Hephzibah was secretly buried in Harry Goldblatt’s back garden by her father. Thanks to a resurgence of interest in this wonderful, jaunty single, fans have marked where she is buried with a statue of a dog having its teeth fixed – a fitting tribute to a much loved teen star.

The Recipe

'The Recipe For Success' EP

RCA/Victor 1466729 Released November 12 1965

Keith Orwell (vocals), Nicholas McGuire (vegetable mandolin, harmonica), Vernon Colour (bass), Frankie Groves (drums)

From the start, inherent tensions in The Recipe were all too obvious. Keith Orwell's psychedelic Conservatism clashed with the Mod Marxist beliefs of Vernon Colour. Nicholas McGuire’s attempts to encourage the band to embrace the anti-materialistic teachings of Shri Bikram Yoga met with general disdain.

Meanwhile Frankie Groves walked his own jagged path towards self-destruction, fuelled by an addiction to addiction and mental problems derived from years of playing the drums with his head.

The band’s flame flickered brightly but all too briefly. They recorded just one song, brought together on a long deleted four track EP. On the front sleeve Keith Orwell uses a stick of celery as a microphone, Vernon Colour's bass is replaced by a side of lamb, Nichols McGuire holds a vegetable mandolin (which was a mandolin made out of vegetables) and Frankie Grove can be spotted at the back, banging his head against a watermelon.

Sessions for the EP were fraught. Booked to record three songs in one two hour session, Orwell and Colour spent the first hour arguing over where the blame lay for Britain's huge balance of trade deficit. McGuire waited patiently, tuning his vegetable mandolin, and Groves warmed up by banging his head against his knees.

As the session disintegrated around them, producer Colin McCollin was forced to wake up and take action. Entering the studio, McCollin floored Keith Orwell with a single punch. Vernon Colour immediately struck up the catchy bassline to 'Carrot and Leek' and the band completed the song in two takes, with McCollin holding the vocal mic under Keith Orwell's flattened nose as the singer lay on the studio floor.

The resulting muffled vocal proved affecting enough to catch the ears of the public. And The Recipe's only song, a trite but pleasant enough ditty in which the male character is a carrot and his girlfriend a leek, made it to the lower reaches of the pop charts.

Released as an EP to make the purchase more attractive to music fans, 'Carrot And Leek' was accompanied by three tracks of studio out-takes, including the sound of Keith Orwell being repeatedly punched by McCarroll, Nicholas McGuire tuning his vegetable mandolin (subsequently a much sought after Psych classic) and the Frankie Groves composition 'Banging My Head On My Knees'.

Hitler

'I Would Enter Your Mind' c/w 'I Am Aghast' c/w 'Child Slaves'

Released 22^nd March 1968.

Marmalade Records Marmalade 598902

Danny Calvert (vocals, spinet), ‘Sticks’ Foster (lead guitar, singing bowl), Kevin LeRoy (autoharp, gong, vocals), Sheila Lyndhurst (castanets, dancing, lead kazoo), Spanzy Bluteau (backing vocals, bagpipes, gong)

"I know what you’re going to ask!" laughs Kevin LeRoy, now a sixty-six year old lollipop man. "Why on earth would anyone in their right mind call their band Hitler!"

One of the later signings to Giorgio Gomelsky’s Marmalade label (other artists included The Feeling Hands and Tiffany Spellman’s Nice), Hitler were a rather folk-influenced, jazz psychedelic combo, whose dancer, Sheila Lyndhurst, gained some notoriety for her rhythmic kazoo playing and on-stage intercourse with Spanzy Bluteau.

‘I Would Enter Your Mind’, a swimmy, gong-heavy, nasal affair, was typical of the Hitler’s output and the single was unusual for having two b-sides (although ‘Child Slaves’, a castanet and gong piece, was only thirteen seconds long).

The record label felt they had a hit on their hands and it was only when radio stations started to feel uncomfortable with the band’s name that Hitler’s problems began.

"We saw it as a pure name" says LeRoy. "Also, the swastika, which we used on our uniforms and drum kit, is a symbol that goes back to Neolithic times and isn’t necessarily connected to the Nazi party, which none of us were members of. At least not in those days. We saw it as a white hot emblem of ferocious, burning purity that was unconnected to anything in the real world. Black is white and white is black. Also, no-one else had used it – it’s not as easy as you think trying to think up a group name!"

At the time of the single’s release, vocalist Danny Calvert explained Hitler’s choice of name to Trudy Bean-Cameltoe of Girl Trend magazine: "People have to look at Hitler’s other qualities – he was a vegetarian, he had a girlfriend, he had a dog and he made the trains run on time. Now I have all of those qualities and no-one calls me an insane dictator!"

Unfortunately, a national newspaper picked up on this article and ran it as a front page story with the headline ‘I LOVE HITLER, CLAIMS INSANE DICTATOR OF POP’.

It was unfortunate that the band’s first album was released the following week and had a large flaming swastika on the cover and the word ‘HITLER’ emblazoned across the centre in letters made from skulls.

Record shops refused to stock the band’s product, their contract was cancelled and several attempts were made on Calvert’s life. LeRoy, although only twenty-two, immediately became a lollipop man, a job he has held ever since. "Today when kids ask me what I did when I was young, I just shout out ‘Hitler!’ And they think I’m mad. It’s great!"

Mary Tippett

"Not In A Million Years" c/w "Beggin'"

HMV HMVPOPS 65788

"I was working as a secretary for Harold Silverman of Silvershine Music in Old Portland Street", says Mary. "He was a lovely man...always sweet to me, buying me trinkets and flowers. I was very surprised when he arranged a recording session with Meryck Kirkman. Harold was always doing things like that, coming up with little surprises".

It was 1962 and Mary Tippett was about to embark on an astronomically successful career in music. "I was just lucky, I suppose", sighs Tippett.

At that time Meryck Kirkman was the number one pop producer in London. A mentor/fashion advisor to several homeless boys from Spitalfields, Kirkman lived above a greengrocer's shop in Shoreditch. His mother was a kleptomaniac and Meryck's recording studio, which was also the kitchen, was filled with stolen shopping baskets. Meryck himself was obsessive compulsive.

Meryck's condition exhibited itself in strange ways. "He couldn't produce a record unless he had flushed the toilet, which was also the vocal booth, seventy three times exactly. After every take he had to run up and down his stairs shouting the names of Bristol City footballers".

Mary's recording sessions were carefully monitored by Silverman. "He would stand with me in the vocal booth, which was also the toilet, and you can hear the faint whisper of his asthmatic breath on 'Not In A Million Years'".

Mary not only sang well but she also proved to be very adept at writing lyrics. "I just started making up lines for Meryck's melodies. Silly little things. They just came out of nowhere, really.

Her songs, like "I Can Read You Like A Book" and "Wrapped Around My Finger", have proved to be some of the catchiest of the era and Mary looks back on her career with pride.

"I was extremely lucky. Harold was a successful businessman. Very wealthy. And he took a shine to me, I suppose. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time". Mary was certainly in the right place to take over Silverman's business in 1971.

In June of that year, Silverman received the very first stereo HiFi system in the UK. The system, constructed in Japan, subsequently exploded in Silverman's office, killing A&R guru Barry Mansfield-Park, Silverman and two female assistants, all of whom had their clothes blown away in the blast. "It broke my heart to hear the news", says Tippett with a sigh. "When I bought the equipment for Harold, I had no idea anything like that might happen".

The Warlock Hobby

‘The Incredible Changing Girl’ c/w ‘Early Morning Whimsy’
Released 21st February 1969. Philips 836 992-4
Jimmy Paltrow (electric organ, vcls), Cornelius Moon (Aeolian Wind Harp), Seth le Mesurier (drums & percussion), Noel Dards (tympani, bonang)

Accrington’s The Warlock Hobby (formerly The Dinners and The Heavy Mob) were formed from the ashes of several bands in the Accrington and Burnley area. Jimmy Paltrow had originally been the guitarist in Hostile Parrots, until a disagreement with bass guitarist Vivian Klooger (later of The Gorgon Field) made him decide to leave and join The Rainbow Men.

The Rainbow Men’s line-up included one Noel Dards, who left to join The Apricot Moths (later famous for their single ‘Open Pie’, although Dards did not play on this waxing) after a decision to pursue his interest in Gamelan instrumentation such as the bonang.

Although Dards and Paltrow were not in The Rainbow Men at the same time, both men’s decisions at this time meant that they would meet again, even though they had not met before. Neither had met The Apricot Moths’ autoharpist Jeff ‘Jif’ Keeler.

Paltrow’s decision to switch to electric organ caused friction in The Rainbow Men, who already had an electric organist (Captain Jimpy ‘Nonce’ Cummings-Townshend), so he became the electric organist for Kirstan Teague’s backing band, The Standing Men (which also featured Steve Hunt-Balls, later of The Piss Chickens). Teague had been the harpsichordist with Grunt fArMm, a band whose line-up also boasted Aeolian wind harpist Cornelius Moon.

Shortly after Teague quit, Moon left to form his own band, The Moon Men and recruited Roger ‘Pisspot’ Farbes, who had met Seth le Mesurier when le Mesurier played bongos with The Deciders (of ‘Really Frail Girls’ fame), due to the fact that le Mesurier and Farbes had the same girlfriend (Jenny Green, sometime dancer with Grunt fArMm). Paltrow quit The Standing Men and joined The Teenage Babies in August 1968, shortly before Teague disbanded the group and became a solo act.

Incidentally, Jeff ‘Jiff’ Keeler was the cousin of Kirsten Teague and later joined The Deciders as autoharpist (after le Mesurier had left the band).

When The Apricot Moths broke up in September 1968 (the 14th, Paltrow’s birthday), Noel Dards started going out with Jenny Green, who introduced him to Seth le Mesurier, with whom she was still having a relationship (she was also involved with top Manchester hairdresser Rupert Timbleby at the time and ‘Blow Off’ actors Terry Cocker and Rudy Schmidt, both of whom frequented Jangles club in Manchester on ‘dirty night’, which took place on the second Wednesday of each month).

Dards and le Mesurier took an instant dislike to one another but decided to ‘try some things out’ to see if a musical collaboration might be on the cards, even though le Mesurier was about to join The Deciders and was edging away from percussion.

Dards and le Mesurier felt the interplay between bonang and drums to have commercial potential and thought about recruiting an Optivideophone player or a third bonang player until Dards broke his leg in a skiing accident (caused, indirectly, by Ajax Rampling from Gog Army).

Anyway, they all joined up eventually and formed The Warlock Hobby (after it had been called The Dinners and The Heavy Mob). Jenny Green was later briefly engaged to Martin Van Gogh of The Eventually.

‘The Incredible Changing Girl’ was deleted five days after release, but, strangely, its b-side, ‘Early Morning Whimsy’, was not.

Ironically, ‘Early Morning Whimsy’ was later covered by The Teenage Babies and became their first single.

Johnny and Hilary Spencer-Powell

Johnny & Hilary Spencer-Powell
‘Mummy’s Gone Shopping, Let’s Get Married’ c/w ‘Santa’s Stuck In The Chimney And It Hurts’.
Piccadilly 7N350006
Released October 21st 1960

It seems hard to believe now but the 11 year old Spencer-Powell siblings were a sensation in the early, pre-Swinging Sixties.

Once described as ‘The King and Queen of Piccadilly Records’, they released twenty seven singles and six EPs between 1959 and 1961, including four top twenty hits. 'Mummy's Gone Shopping...' was the most succesful, reaching Number 2 in April 1960.

Quite often the songs cast the pair as young sweethearts desperate to break away and start a life of their own. Audiences lapped them up, even though a few commentators considered the lyrics a little troubling. Today, some modern music fans think Johnny and Hilary's music to be rather dangerous and even avant-garde.

‘Mummy’s Gone Shopping…’ is no exception. Over a saccharine backdrop of celesta and pizzicato strings, Johnny and Hilary warble their good luck…

"HILARY : Mummy’s gone out shopping
JOHNNY : She’ll be back in an hour or two
HILARY : Let’s get teddy to marry us
JOHNNY & HILARY : So we can do all the things that married couples do"

They followed this hit up with several more on the same theme: ‘Our Little Love Nest By The Sea’, Canoodling In The Dark’, ‘I Remember Our Wedding Night (With Glee)’ and ‘Love Me Until I Fall Asleep’.

An album, ‘Joined Forever’ is still available today. The track listing will give an idea of the general atmosphere.

Side One
1. Trying Out New Things
2. A Special Birthday Present
3. Clumsy With Your Buttons
4. Ickle-Wickle Love Spot
5. Keep The Lights On Tonight

Side Two
1. Mummy’s Gone Out Shopping, Let’s Get Married
2. A Little Touch Of Blasphemy (Works Wonders)
3. Eager Fingers In The Night
4. A Baby On The Way
5. Swollen Love
6. Our Loving Prayer To Jesus

After ‘Gonna Build A Beatnik House of Love’ flopped in 1961, the Spencer-Powells vanished from the scene, though Hilary did emerge a few years later (as Mistress Spencer Powell) with a single ‘Girls Like Girls Better Than Boys’ and an album ‘As I Stroke Her Raven Hair’, both of which gained some popularity.

Johnny Spencer-Powell became a fairly successful choreographer and, in later life, a television producer and presenter.

Mark Of The Covenant

Mark of the Covenant

‘My Dream of Gooseberry Heaven’ c/w ‘Mummy, Not The Shears’.
Released 16th July 1968. Regal Zonophone RZA 93356.

Mark Steele had spent most of his life in mental institutions of one sort or another and was signed to Regal Zonophone the day after he was released from The Feltham High Security Bedlam Zoo House For The Very Deranged.

Zonophone’s A&R man, Sussan (sic) Taylore had seen the trend for weird, psychedelic lyrics become ‘trendie’ (sic) after The Trembling Hands hit number forty-one in the pop charts with ‘Hide In The Attic’. He decided to get his own casualty to cash in and get promoted.

"I was on the lookout for people who had been recently released from the Loony Bin. I know it isn’t very fashionable to call them Loony Bins now but that’s what they were called then", he says today. "And they still are today, as far as I’m concerned. Loony Bins, Loony Bins, Loony Bins. Where the mad and demented are housed. I reckoned that all that psychedelic nonsense came from there 'cause it sounded like it had been written by a madman, so I wanted to get one of my own".

Rushed into the studio on a stretcher, Steele was given half an hour to write both sides of his debut platter. He came up with ‘My Dream of Gooseberry Heaven’ in two minutes seven seconds, using a cheap Biro.

This was a place where:

Gooseberries squeak and quack and tingle
With pingle wringle fingle wingle

Accompanied by Morgan Rapsfield and Roddy Ginseng from The Acrobats, the resulting recording was a delightful mesh of Japanese traditional folk and squealing feedback. Says Ginseng: "Mark had no melody, so I pinched this melody from a traditional Japanese folk song and it seemed to fit. The original words were something about hedgehogs, so we jettisoned them and replaced them with Mark’s unhinged, toxic, but ‘trendie’ (sic) view of the world. I thought it would be number one in the hit parade for sure, but nobody bought it. Not one copy".

There were rumours (and still are) that an album had been made by this wayward genius, but this was not true, according to Taylore. "There were rumours that an album had been made, but this was not true. There still are rumours that an album had been made, in fact. Who are we talking about?"

There was no album but there was a single. It was called ‘My Dream of Gooseberry Heaven’. The b-side, ‘Mummy, Not The Shears’, was covered by Niblet O’Connor (formerly of The Shyt) on his fifth solo album ‘Gonk Crazy!’.

SCHLANKETTE

SCHLANKETTE
‘Trauma Elektriche’ c/w ‘Futurik Der Zeitgeschlunger’
EINGANG RECORDS EINS 2783.1
Gerhardt Gerhardt (Synthesisers), Manfredd Schnelke (Drums), Heni Brown (Electronics), Rolf-Harische Wubblebodt (Percussion)

At the forefront of the new wave of Kosmiche Musik, Gerhardt Gerhardt and Manfredd Schnelke met at the Schwarzkopff Institute of Hair & Music in Munich.

“We study under the great German avante garde composer Julius Eissel”, Gerhardt tells me on the phone from his farm near Dusseldorf. “Eissel was a genius. He tore up the book of rules, starting with conventional compositional structure, then traditional time signatures and eventually destroying the concept of the orchestra, the orchestra arena, the audience and instruments”.

In 1969, in his work ‘Deconstructing Destruction’, Eissel staged a performance during which an entire venue was torn down and burnt as the audience and musicians fled into the night. “Eissel arrived on a steamroller”, remembers Gerhardt. “He had laid out the music sheets in front of him. He conducted the piece as his steamroller crushed the stage”.

The recording of the event was held up as a sacred landmark pointing a new direction for German popular music . Up to that time, it was generally considered to be 'trapped in a whirlpool of bland' as musicians copied the tired grooves of American rock and roll.

“Manfredd and I were in a beat group called The Crazy Boy Guys and released ‘Hey, Look At Me Over Here Please, I’m German and I Am Enjoying The Dancing’.

But their experiences with Julius Eissel changed everything. “We threw away our instruments. In fact, we recorded the sound of us throwing away our instruments. It was a big seller. That helped us forge our new direction. And we also saw the advantages of taking many drugs”.

In 1970 Gerhardt and Schnelke started a commune in Hamburg. “We built a giant vagina out of willow and lived inside the wicker womb with our animals. We tended our livestock and made love to our women. Sometimes vice versa”. They were also introduced to an early version of a synthesiser by electronics genius Heni Brown. Remembers Gerhardt: “It was a machine that made very strange oscillating noises if you looked at it the wrong way. It would not respond to touch. You had to look at it”.

“It would go ‘whoooooowhooooo’ if you looked at it in a sarcastic way. Or ‘brittttttah brittttah’ if you looked at it very quickly and then looked away as if you didn’t mean to look at it”.

With their first synthesiser on board, and having invited the eccentric percussionist Rolf-Harische Wubblebodt to flesh out their sound, SCHLANKETTE became a reality. In 1971 they released the definitive Krautrock epic ‘Drohn’, featuring the insistent driving sound of Schnelke’s drums and the ethereal dream landscapes of Rolf-Harische’s whistling.

A single, ‘Trauma Elektriche’ followed:

‘I need to drill a hole
In the wall I drill a hole
In the wall is a wire
Elektriche trauma’

The band folded in 1972 following a spate of sexually transmitted disease and foot and mouth.