Dave Dearden & The Lonely Parsnips

Dave Dearden and The Lonely Parsnips

‘Build A House In Bricky Brick Bricks’  c/w ‘Cowslips & Hare Lips’

FOLLICLE RECORDS  FICLE 4050

Dave Dearden (Vocals, Harmonica), Martyn ‘Hand Of The’ Ripper (Guitar, slippers), Tom Kerridge (Sitar), John Goodison (Harmonium, Fiddle, Parsnip Pipes), Amish Beard (Coconuts).

“I won’t miss a tricky-trick-trick

When I build you a house in bricky-brick-bricks

Down by the banks of the Wicky-wick-wick”

Rising from the ashes of Polyp, this progressive folk band scored a surprise hit with the jaunty ‘Build A House In Bricky Brick Bricks’. Featuring the catchy off-key battery powered Cumbrian parsnip pipes of John Goodison and the phased rhythmic coconuts of Amish Beard, Dave Dearden’s merry singalong helped the tune to the upper reaches of the lower sixties in 1974.

Unfortunately, the song contravened local Scottish government building regulations at the time and, as a result, was arrested. Building inspector Gordon McHavatie was quoted as saying: “The Wick River is the second largest salmon fishing river in Caithness. There are long stretches of sluggish water. This slow water makes for difficult fly fishing and so is often fished with worm, very much the exception on the northern rivers. Despite the slow nature of the river, it can produce in the order of 400 salmon in a season, most being caught in the summer months. We can’t have some faux folk band building a house on it”.

Distraught at the possibility of his song being sent to jail, and therefore not accruing any royalties, Dearden offered to rewrite it. “I was prepared to change the lyrics for the sake of cash”, remembers Dearden. “But they said it was too late, as the offices closed at 4.30 in the winter time”.

Consequently the song was sentenced to one year in prison, with parole granted after six months for good behaviour and the fact that the song was a musical composition and not a physical human being.

By then the band had morphed into glam rockers Glitz Pepper who spent much of the mid-Seventies ensuring all their songs fell within established British local government guidelines.

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The Shyt – ‘Scarlet Morning’

Robin Bacon (vcls, oboe), Niblet O’Connor (harp), Fe’eal Cycle (bass), Colin-Campbell-Lyons (autoharp), John Morgan (drums, Chinese percussion)

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‘Scarlet Morning’ stands out one of the most charming psychedelic period pieces of the era. Lasting a mere 51 seconds, it gracefully meanders through a fairytale landscape of unicorns, pixies and lepers, as the singer lovingly describes a naked morning walk with his similarly naked girlfriend.

The Shyt, however, did not manage to get a hit with this song, though it was later pushed into the charts by Arthur Westminster, who sanitised the lyrics and gave it more of a calypso feel, with a jew’s harp to the fore of the mix.

At the time, there was speculation amongst music business cognoscenti that it was the group’s name that was holding them back. Although spelled with a ‘y’, the name was believed to have similarities to the word ‘shit’ and a record company press release claiming that the name should be pronounced ‘shite’ did nothing to relieve the problem (see below).

‘Shit’ or ‘Shite’, the band refused to change their name and quietly dropped out of musical history. Fe’eal Cycle went on to form the heavy metal band Titanium Asmodeus, who received a temporary notoriety when their drummer Trump Dimmer was killed on stage in 1972 when an over-excited member of the audience shot him in the head with a gas-powered Hechmann 834 crossbow.

 

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Press Release from the Paisley Halls of Fancy Records UK

Being of ye year 11^th November 1966

The Shyt

The boys in ‘’The Shyt’ are concerned that their many fans have been pronouncing the group’s name incorrectly. It is not, as is often supposed, pronounced to rhyme with ‘’‘pit’ or ‘’git’. The correct pronunciation does, in fact, rhyme with ‘’light’ or ‘‘’spite’. 

The lads in The Shyt hope that their many fans will now jive into their local record shop and ask for ‘’Scarlet Morning’ by The Shyt, as pronounced above. If you have previously bought the record asking for the latest waxing by The Shyt (to rhyme with ‘’slit’), may we humbly suggest that you purchase another copy of this fine record, this time pronouncing the group’s name to rhyme with ‘‘’tight’ or ‘’‘kite’.   

Luckily for The Shyt, this will give ‘Scarlet Morning’ an even better chance of hitting the charts and being the big, big success that the boys so surely deserve! 

Robin Bacon and the rest of the lads would like to take this opportunity to wish their many fans a very happy Christmas and a ’Shyt’ filled new year!

The Uprights

THE UPRIGHTS

"Margaret’s Hair" c/w “Awkward Uncle Barry”

Released January 20^th 1968

Eltham Records  Elth 4536    
             

Dermot McGinnels (Vocals), Francis Hut (Piano), Graham Wilshire (Bass), Anthony Grade (Guitar), The Cloak (Ouija Board).

Above is a rare picture of The Uprights, taken on the day their contract was torn up in front of them by Chairman of Eltham Records, Sir James “James” James.

After the photo was taken three of the band leapt to their deaths from the bridge on which they are standing.

We here at ROCK’N’POPOPEDIA often find ourselves relaying rather sad stories of bands that didn’t quiet make it, or who broke up under distressing circumstances (for example, The Bluebellerelles, a close harmony girl group who shot each other in a bizarre four way suicide pact). But the story of The Uprights is one of the strangest of all.

The band met in a psychiatric unit where musical therapy was used to help those suffering from rare mental conditions. Anthony Grade was convinced he was his own grandfather, refusing to acknowledge the invention of electricity. Dermot McGinnels, who spoke with a strong Irish brogue, was actually an Egyptian sailor called Mahmood. Transsexual Francis Hut was incapable of using vowels. Graham Wilshire believed his hands were made of grass and The Cloak (his real name remains a mystery to this very day, but it is believed to be The Cloak) was a spirit medium with a fear of ghosts.

This did not bode well for the formation of a pop beat group. Nevertheless, under the guidance of their psychiatrist, Professor Gertrude Strumpfel, the boys in therapy began to write tunes, including ‘My Hands Are Made Of Grass’, ‘You Can Call Me Grandfather’, ‘A Knock-Kneed Coleen from Cairo’, ‘Th Frst Tm Vr Sw Y’ and ‘Shit, Was That A Ghost?’.

Using instruments supplied by the unit, and rehearsing in front of fellow patients, the band grew confident enough to choose a name, The Uprights, and search for a record deal. In a moment of supreme weakness, brought on by a 48 hour opium bender, Eltham Records A&R halfwit Harrington Recollects signed the band. “I knew it would be a disaster but then we need chaos in the music business”, remembers Recollects. “How else could we get attention? They weren’t going to impress anyone with their musicianship. A man who thinks his hands are made of grass is not going to be very good at a blues scale in D”.

Recollects took his deranged charges into Uppington Studios on Lower Street on the North side of the Westway in East Ham. At least he would have if they had not become completely disorientated by the traffic directions. In the end Recollects had to use Mongo Debussy’s mobile studio and record the band in their psychiatric unit.

This pumping piece of late Sixties pop is a plea for a girl called Margaret not to cut her hair.

‘Margaret, your hair/Is over there/On your head/Where it looks fair/Not on the bed or a chair/Nurse, I think my hands are made of grass’

“Not the best lyrics I ever heard”, recollects Recollects. “But they were written by five madmen”.

The band managed to record a second song ‘Awkward Uncle Barry’ before the sedatives kicked in. “It’s best not to dwell on the lyrical content of that one”, Recollects recalls. “The police were called in”.

On hearing the single Sir James “James” James confronted the band on Waterloo Bridge during a photo shoot. The rest is history.

The surviving members, Graham Wilshire and Anthony Grade, cousin of Michael, returned to their home town of Ringwood. Here, while living in a commune of artists, bakers and medically certified lunatics, they put together Caveat.

CAVEAT "A BAKERY AT ST.PETER'S"

Side One

1. Mobile Flour Mill

2. Caw Caw, The Wheat

3. Last Crumbs of Comfort

4. Flour Grading Blues

Side Two

1. The Pestle Suite

a) Overture

b) Shellings

c) Grind On

d) The Pestle Breaks

e) New Pestle Purchase

"A tantalising, mesmeric symphony of sounds, THE PESTLE SUITE is a triumph of complex time signatures, synthesized saxophones and the noises of the flour mill. It is Graham Wilshire's masterwork, right up there with his best composition for The Uprights, 'My Broken Frenulum' ".  MELODY MAKER

Following this review, Wilshire suddenly left the commune.  "The Maker review went to his head", says Anthony Grade, now a grandfather who believes he is his own nephew. "Also, Graham was servicing the flour grinder's old lady. It was very messy for a while. Dough everywhere. After Graham left I enjoyed the simple life of making bread, as opposed to being a bread head. I opened a breakfast bar specialising in wholemeal baps in '76 and never looked back".

The Bumdrops

The Bumdrops – ‘Time Is Best When It’s There’ c/w ‘Dance, Lucy, Dance!’

Released February 30th 1967 Columbia DB 9754

Arthur ‘Spanker’ Watkins (psaltery, vcls), Lucas North (organetto, rackett), Cleophas Edmond (pipe and tabor, backing vocals), Toby Octavias (zink, claves), Geoff ‘Suzie’ Flittermouse (lizard, bladder pipe).

Durham band The Crackpots originally recorded ‘Time Is Best When It’s There’ in late 1965. It was released on the Pye International label and soon sunk without trace, the band splitting up shortly afterwards. 

One of the few people who actually bought the record, though, was Cleophas Edmond, then a sixteen year old schoolboy in Durham, who became obsessed with the song’s strange chorus lyrics:

"Time is best when it’s there, baby

When it’s not there it’s a drag

Sometimes it isn’t there at all

Just like you when you smoke a fag".

"I couldn’t imagine what this song could be about!" says Edmond today, while serving in his fish and chip shop in Rhyl, North Wales. "It wasn’t so much the bit about the girl smoking the fag, but the whole idea that time could not be there. I found that rather creepy and wanted to put those lyrics in a more appropriate setting than the Carmen Miranda influenced calypso rhumba style of The Crackpots original, great and danceable though it was, if you like that sort of thing".

Taking as his starting point the actual sound of time, which he imagined to be the heavily overdubbed sound of many people whispering from various religious texts, the track soon explodes into a cacophony of medieval instruments, with Lucas North’s organetto to the fore. Immediately, one is transported back to the eleventh century, possibly observing a band of drunken troubadours prancing down a filthy, excrement-covered lane in what was then the north of England (now St Albans). After a full eleven minutes (yes; this was the longest single ever made at the time*), we hear Arthur ‘Spanker’ Watkins’ ugly croak of a voice capture the perfect mood for those uncanny lyrics.

‘Mummy! What are you and daddy doing that makes so much noise?
Can you not see that I am playing with boys?
Another birthday party ruined by your screaming and grunts
I’m sick sick to death of your sexual stunts.’

Cleophas had excised the other three verses and Watkins just repeated the first one again in their place. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’ he says ‘It was Toby Octavias’s idea. He though it would be interesting. He later had a major nervous breakdown.’

Described by Beverly Staines from Record Mirror as ‘the ultimate flop’, it didn’t make the charts, but was the inspiration for a whole concept album by North’s later band The Inaniloquent. The b-side, ‘Dance, Lucy, Dance!’, later re-released as an a-side, fell afoul of the BBC’s then ban on songs featuring the word ‘knees’.

*clocking in at an incredible 24’ 22” – unheard of for a single at the time and only surpassed by ‘Uruguayan Pissing Tree’ by Zoe & The Underdogs (112’ 71”).

ALBUM CHARTS 1967

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ALBUM CHARTS

 A look back at the charts of yesteryear!!

Long Player Album L.P. Chart

(week ending 27/7/67)

(previous week’s placings in brackets) 

(reprinted from ‘Top Pops & Music Now’ 03/08/67)

1 (1)   I Give Myself To God - Lena Grimstone (Christ)

2 (-)   Caramba! (Soundtrack) - Wim Velasquez’s Maraca Ensemble (RCA)

3 (6)    Live Soul And Now! - Various Artists (Stax)

4 (17)   Lady, Roll Them Dice! (Original Stage Recording) – Various Artists (Pye)

5 (5)   Greatest Hits 2 – Enrico Bazalgette (Columbia)

6 (1)  Greatest Hits – Enrico Bazalgette (Columbia)

7 (20)   My Name Is Monique – Monique Bouillabaisse (Phillips)

8 (4)  Roll Your Sleeves Up And Sing – The Norfolk Folk Explosion (Tent)

9 (9)     Hava Nagila (Soundtrack) – Mike Fruit Singers (CBS)

10 (2)   Cor Blimey, Mrs Crumpet! – Anthony Carpet (Regal Zonophone)

11 (15)   Happy Tunes For Happy People – Sally Dripper (Felt Hat)

12 (-)  The Bazalgette Family Album – The Bazalgette Family Singers (Columbia)

13 (7)   10,000 Nights Of Soul – Various Artists (Red Bird)

14 (19)   A Wee Dram Afore Ye Go – The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (Warner Bros)

15 (-)      Live At The Pizza Express – James Criterion & The Playboys (Heroin)

16 (-)    Best Of Various Artists – Various Artists (CBS)

17 (11)    Twelve Songs For Jesus – Hilary Fallopian-Hicks-Newt (Fart)

18 (13)    I Can’t Get Myself Off – Samantha Pitts (Twank)

19 (-)      A Little Baby In My Tummy – Sally Dripper (Felt Hat)

20 (14)  Relax With Doon Chipperfield – Doon Chipperfield & His Orchestra (London)

Bubbling under – ‘Various Artists Now!’ – Various Artists (Bubble). ‘Hello, It’s Little Me!’ – Hamish Bazalgette (Columbia). ‘Swingin’ Sisters’ – Phoebe & Naomi Bazalgette (Columbia). ‘My Brain Turned Inside Out’ – The Warlock Hobby (Anus). ‘Mr Ed Theme & Other Horse Songs’ – Mr Ed Orchestra (Mr Ed Records Inc.). ‘Blues For Breakfast’ – Eric Blenkinsop (Shop).