Have Mersey! Nobby's On The Beat Dept.

Full color arrived in the UK in 1967

It's got a beat [claims Nobby - Ed.] and it comes from Liverpool, everybody knows that, it even had a music paper named after it. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I discovered the real origin of the name.

Bill Harry, the founder of the Mersey Beat magazine, went to art school in 1958 were he fell in with John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe. He had always had an interest in magazines, having started with a science fiction mag when he was 13. As a teenager he had also been penpals with a teenage Michael Moorcock. Whilst at the Art College he produced the in house magazine but always wanted to publish his own music paper, which he did when he left. His original idea was for it to be about jazz but when he realised that there were over 300 rock 'n roll, country and folk groups playing around the Liverpool area he wrote to the London newspapers to try and promote them. When he didn't receive any replies he decided to produce a local listings paper instead.

With the aid of a £50 loan from a friend, together with a photographer and the help of his girlfriend, later wife, Virginia, he rented an office and began production of the fortnightly paper with Bill doing all the writing, layout, design, artwork, selling the advertising and distribution. In search of a name for the publication, he realised that it was not just Liverpool, but the whole of Merseyside that he wanted to cover and thinking this over in the early hours of the morning a picture of a policeman walking his beat around Merseyside came into his head, and the title came from that, rather than from the music.

He printed 5,000 copies of issue 1 dated 6th July 1961 [left - Ed.] and distributed them by hand to the major distributors and local newsagents, clubs and record shops. When he went to the NEMS record shop he saw the manager, Brian Epstein, who agreed to take 12 copies and later that day rang back for more as they had already sold out. Epstein took 144 of the 2nd issue in July 1961, which featured The Beatles on the front cover, with the story of them releasing the My Bonnie record in Germany. Fascinated by what the paper was showing him of the local scene, he asked if he could write record reviews for it. His column "Stop the world I want to get off" appeared from issue 3. In November 1961 he asked Bill to arrange for him to see The Beatles in The Cavern and world domination was just round the corner.

Mersey Beat, the paper, was a phenomenal success and it is claimed that it changed music journalism forever with the writing being about the music rather than the musician's favourite colour or food! Harry also encouraged his photographers to take pictures of the bands playing live or in their locale rather than just using the usual posed publicity shots. Other cities started to produce their own magazines, often travelling to Liverpool to seek advice from Bill, promoting local bands in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle etc. Eventually the London press took an interest, and began to cover the regional scene leading to the demise of the local music papers. As a footnote, Stuart Leathart, featured recently by our genial host as singer, guitarist and songwriter with The Kubas was also a talented cartoonist and provided Mersey Beat with many illustrations.

Bill Harry went on to act as a press agent for many bands including The Kinks, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Beach Boys, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin, and still appears to be on the go at 83, with a recent interview here.

So to some music : Mersey Beat 1962-64

Compiled by Andrew Lauder and issued by United Artists in 1977. On the inside sleeve he credits Lenny Kaye's Nuggets for initial inspiration. To my mind the music is "of it's time", historically important but it always seems to lack a bit of oomph, nevertheless I enjoy listening to it's distinctive sound. The presentation of the double album is very impressive it includes a facsimile Mersey Beat paper specially compiled by Bill Harry with articles, photographs and write ups of the bands. The paper inner sleeves contain adverts for Beatle wigs and the like and the inside sleeve has a collage of some of the source 45s. The download includes them all, and hopefully you should be able to read the magazine, if you squint a bit.

Nobby's proud sponsor for this piece? Step forward, Shed And Outbuilding Monthly magazine!

How Clarence Pune Missed That Lovin' Feelin' Dept.

Clarence Pune wires screed from the horse shop in back of the pool room!

I’d heard of him, of course.

Legendary British blues singer.

Worked with Elton John, the Stones, Rod Stewart.

I’d heard, too, that he had semi-retired to Vancouver. (This was the late 70‘s.)

But it was a surprise to meet him in a neighborhood Kitsilano pub and to start talking. (Not that he was hard to miss at 6‘7“)

He told me he was doing voice acting for animations.

I told him that I wrote and produced commercials.

“Keep me in mind,” he said.

We exchanged phone numbers.

We often met at the same bus stop for the short hop across the bridge to downtown.

A month later I was writing some radio commercials for holidays in Jamaica. I wanted a deep resonant voice. I called him and asked if he could do a Jamaican accent.

“Give me a day or two,” he said, and next day this deep baritone called me back with the full patois.

We recorded together several times.

One day he invited my wife and I to a recording session. He’d found this girl he adored - no, not that way, he was openly gay - for her voice.

He saw a duet for them.

She was an unknown  session singer from Anacortes, just south of the US/Canada border.

For reasons I regret we didn’t get to the recording session.

This is what we missed:

T.V's Sir David Of Attenborough Small Faces Drug Dealer Shock! Dept.

Cover Art © IoF© Art Department Of Art® Dept. All Rights Reserved (and some of the lefts)

You'll know T.V.'s Sir Attenborough from his award-winning kids' puppet shows such as like We Fucked Up Our Beautiful Planet And All The Elephants Are Dying, but did you know he was hemp enthusiasts The Small Faces' go-to guy for recreational pharmacy? That's right, subscribers! Leave us lissen in as Sir Attenborough reveals shocking truth via Foam-O-Fone©!

The Nice, high above the fertile tundra, yestiddy

FMF Sir Attenborough! Looking cool there! Which is where?

SA Here, five thousand feet above the fertile tundra of -

FMF Right, right! So what's with this Small Faces story?

SA Ah! I am honoured to be the inspiration for their chart-topping disc, Here Comes The Nice! Back in Swingin' London, one was very much the globetrotter, bringing back treasures galore from exotic lands, steamer trunks bursting with rare herbal remedies! So of course one shared one's bounty, being a nice chap, and that was how muggins here became known as The Nice!

FMF And you have an album for us?

SA Indeed I do! It's an unissued compilation of their, shall we say, jazz cigarette tunes? Andy [Andrew Loog Oldham - Ed.] put it together before the whole thing went pear-shaped. And a very evocative Gered Mankowitz photograph on the front. Gerry [Gered Mankovitz - Ed.] and I were oft to be seen getting off our heads at the Roundhouse [The Roundhouse - Ed.]! (laughs) He came up with the name for this L.P., incidentally, during one of our "sessions"!

FMF Maryon Park? Any clues?

SA The lads in the group liked elliptical titles, something a little more imaginative, and this is no exception. Perhaps you might quiz th' Four Or Five Guys©? Maybe one of them might come up with an explanation!

FMF Uh ... yeah. Or likely not, probably. I doubt they read this far. Some of 'em can't even. But thanks for sharing this with us, and drop by th' Isle any time! It's a copacetic microcosm of microclimatical nanoculture!

SA (laughs) Shall I bring my - steamer trunk?

FMF (laughs) That would be swell, Sir Nice!

SA (laughs) 

FMF (laughs) 

Oright, oright, you've 'ad your fun, settle down, settle down ...

I *cough* curated this because in their appropriately short lifespan The Small Faces made music that expressed the times better than just about anybody, their super-smashing pop hits as slyly subversive as they were memorable. Steve Marriott is possibly the greatest male vocalist the U.K. ever produced, with a staggering emotional range, and deceptively accomplished technique grounded in his drama studies and acting experience [←original critical aperçu - Ed.]. He's always bang in the middle of the note, and he inhabits the song using phrasing and inflection in a way that seems natural and unthinking but is pure - and brilliant - technique. The Artful Dodger knew what he was doing with every note he sang.

So why this album again? I wanted the definitive, cohesive, pop-psych masterclass minus the overwrought stuff, omitting the knees-up sing-alongs, and without the Hammond-heavy club groovers. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake gets a lot of love, but the Stanley Unwin story-telling gets old very quickly, and side one's a little ragged. Autumn Stone is at once too much and not enough, and sounds like what it is, a bit of a barrel-scrape. So this, then. I've paced the hits so they don't dominate, and maybe they sound fresher in a new context. 

That tracklist in full:

Become Like You/Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire/Here Comes The Nice/Just Passing/Show Me The Way/I'm Only Dreaming/Green Circles/Itchycoo Park/Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass/The Universal/Call It Something Nice/The Autumn Stone

Why isn't [YOUR CHOICE HERE] included? Because reasons. Like other similarly humble exercises in improving on artists' original brilliance here on th' IoF©, this is above all a playable album with a flow to it, at listenable length, with more thought behind it than playlists or bonus tracks editions or completist archival sets. You'll dig it on account which it's swell.

This post homologated thru our sponsors: Pearl Necklaces By Dirty Sanchez™, Beverly Hills, L.A.

Nobby Flips Off The Flip Side Dept.

Four Or Five Guy© Nobby files screed from the potting shed at the bottom of his garden.

Mark-Almond, where the hyphen matters! Some weeks ago Steve Shark entertained us all with some three sided albums and we've recently discussed double albums so I now give you a one sided album. Not that it was physically one sided, it's just that I love one side and can't stand the other and yes you're right neither side has Tainted Love on it.

Now, just to get this straight from the start I have always been in awe of anyone who can play a musical instrument, sing or write a song. I can't do any of that and so I don't feel comfortable criticising a piece of music. I know that I couldn't even start to produce a bad bit of music never mind a good bit, but let's just say that I hardly ever turn the record over.

Jon Mark (vocals, guitar) had been a folk singer in the early sixties and then in the mid sixties was guitarist, arranger and sometime songwriter for Marianne Faithfull followed by a spell in the short lived Sweet Thursday, with Nicky Hopkins amongst others. Johnny Almond (sax, flute and backing vocals) came up through Zoot Money's Big Roll Band and The Alan Price Set before forming The Johnny Almond Music Machine.They then met as part of John Mayall's band featured on Turning Point and Empty Rooms both from 1969. Following which they teamed up with Tommy Eyre, Piano and Roger Sutton, Bass to form Mark-Almond.The band have variously been called, jazz, jazz rock, blues, prog rock, jazz pop rock, and so on, take your pick, I'm no expert at pigeonholing.

Their first lp, simply called Mark-Almond, but sometimes called Mark-Almond I to differentiate it from their second, is the one under discussion today. I've been listening to this lp on and off since about 1973. My sister, for some reason had it, not sure why, all her other albums were by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. She mustn’t have rated it too highly as she didn't seem to notice when it slipped into my prog rock collection. To my mind side one is sublime and side two is not.

Side One starts off with acoustic piano, bluesy vocals and bass with a sort of gospelish chorus with an insistent melody played on the piano. The song builds from a quiet intro going up in volume to the chorus. It then moves into a jazzy instrumental bit with an excellent sax solo over the piano before reverting back to the quiet piano vocal and bass and then the gospel chorus again. The City (or parts 2-4) starts with acoustic guitar and electric piano, vocals going into the chorus before another jazzy instrumental section featuring lots of sax and piano, acoustic guitar, flute, and bass. All in all the whole of side one moves around in pace and volume with lots of nice gentle instrumentally bits, finishing off with Tramp and the Young Girl (or part 5) which is my least favourite part, the lyrics and vocals verging towards the pretentious. Maybe it's just to prepare you for side two.

"The Other Side" starts off pleasantly enough with some almost medieval sounding acoustic guitar and flute noodling. The "funky" bass then comes in and should perhaps be seen as a warning that not all was going to be well. Then at 4 minutes 21 seconds it's all over. The vocals start wailing and I can't take anymore. To me it sounds like a different singer to side one, but the lp credits Jon Mark with lead vocals with the other three as vocal harmonies, so I'm none the wiser.

They went on to make other lps which I've tried to like but sadly had to lump in with side two of the above. Reluctantly I've had to satisfy myself with just half an lp. Jon Mark went on to produce many albums of ambient music after emigrating to New Zealand and Johnny Almond became a session musician and settled in San Francisco touting his saxophone around bars and restaurants.

To give Babs some time off I'm asking for your choice of one-sided LP. If anyone says side two of Mark-Almond then I'll gladly get out my stanley knife and we can split it down the middle.

Older readers will remember Nobby from his Children's Hour radio show, "Uncle Nobby's Nap Time".

The Dickey's Best Band Dept.

Album Art © IoF© Department Of Art© Dept.

Apart from the Allman Brothers, you could argue that the line-up for his 2006 tour was never bettered. Go ahead - find someone else to argue with, I'm agreeing with you. I'm not going to list the musicians - d0ur0w r3srcH ya lazy-ass schnook!

This double live CD is a career high point. Even allmusicdotcom wets its knickers: "His finest moment on tape, period. It also rivals any post-Duane Allman live set by the ABB. For Betts fans, and actually any rock guitar flameout fan, this set is indispensable." He ain't whistlin' Dixie!

So how come you never see this in lists of Best Live Doubles? Here's what did they do to cripple the album's chances:

☠️ "Dickey Betts & Great Southern"? Nobody ever gave a shit about Great Southern, and these guys aren't remotely the same band that cut the disappointing Great Southern albums back in the 'seventies. Did anyone ever say "I gots tix fer Great Southern, man!" Nope. "I gots tix fer Dickey Betts, man!" - if they were being formal.

☠️ An unmemorable mouthful of a title: "The Official Bootleg 2006 North American Tour". Couple this with "Dickey Betts And Great Southern" and you've got enough reading matter to furrow the dainty brows of a (North) American High School class. Also, calling it any sort of bootleg, even an official one (whatever the fuck that is), is strictly low budget.

☠️ A wretched cover [left - Ed.] which would disgrace any bootleg. It's also uncredited. Maybe it just happened while nobody was looking. Fooey.

Does this matter? Of course it matters. But the music is ... fantastic. Mostly consisting of Dickey's greatest Allmans tunes, including a phenomenal half-hour version of Elizabeth Reed and a none-better version of Southbound, it's a total blast.

To round out the loaddown, it's bundled with the great man's finest studio album, Highway Call. No, don't thank me. Just be swell, dude!

Proud sponsors for this post? Step forward, the Corndog Cream Pie Company, CT!