From Here To Uncertainty

Geranium Pond, 1968

This is going to be my last post for a while. During next few months, I will be far too busy to regularly update this blog. I can't really tell how long this hiatus is going to be, but hopefully I will be back before the end of this year.
Before I go, I want to share some great 1960's British Psych tunes I have been enjoying lately..

Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera - 'Dream Starts' - 1968 

Standout track from Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera's sole album released in 1968. Nice melody, and those distorted vocals sound really good..

Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, 1968

 Hat And Tie - 'Finding It Rough' - 1967

Hat and Tie were a duo consisting of Christopher Thomas and Patrick Campbell-Lyons (also a one-time member of July and Nirvana). 'Finding It Rough' was their second single, released in April 1967. Despite being incredibly catchy,this sitar-led piece of psych-pop did not chart, and Hat And Tie disbanded soon after.

Geranium Pond - 'Dogs In Baskets' - 1968 

I've heard this song at the Mousetrap last week, and I have been listening to it on repeat since. There is precious little information about Geranium Pond. According to British Music Archive, this group originated from London, and 'Dogs In Baskets' was their only release. There is also some evidence, that the Geranium Pond shared the bill with the likes of The Nice and The Move.

'Dogs In Baskets' is a mellotron and harpsichord-led ,whimsical lullaby in a style of Syd Barrett. Listen to it here.   

Tintern Abbey - Vaccum Cleaner - 1967

Unquestionable cult classic, 'Vaccum Cleaner' was a B-side to Tintern Abbey's single 'Beeside' from 1967. This highly collectible seven inch will today set you back nearly a grand. The lyrics of 'Vaccum Cleaner' were pretty risque at the time...

Break it up, break it up, let's have it now girl

Don't you know I need it all the time

Fix me up with your sweet dose, now I'm feeling like a ghost

Whoah whoah whoah whoah all the time

Now my head is really spinnin

maybe now I'll show some willin

To help you with house work, if you want to...

Yep, no prize for guessing what this song is about... Surprisingly, there is no mention of this song ever being banned by the BBC. But then again, it was only a B-side.

Now I finally have an excuse to post this great photo of Tintern Abbey. Psychedelic/Peacock style at its finest. I absolutely love that jacket on the left.

The Quik - 'I Can't Sleep' - 1967

Not much is known about The Quik. They released three singles on Deram in 1967. 'I Can't Sleep' was the final one - It is a fantastic piece of dark, Hammond-led psychedelia..

The Fox - 'Hey! Mr. Carpenter' - 1968

The Fox, 1968

Another cult classic. Great dance number, and obligatory play at any decent Psych night (I always get the those Hey's wrong when I try to sing along to it)

The Fox were a short-lived band from Brighton. They released an album For Fox Sake (see what they did there?) on Fontana in 1968, which disappeared without a trace, and the band split up soon after. 'Hey! Mr. Carpenter' has been popping up on various psych compilations (including Bam Caruso's Rubble) since 1980's, and since then it's been universally acclaimed by Psych fans as one of the British Psychedelia's finest moments. 

The Kinks - Big Black Smoke - 1966

I'll end with this lesser known track by The Kinks from their 1966 album Face To Face. It is a grim, cautionary tale about a young girl from provincial town and her misadventures in London. Healthy dose of reality after all this psychedelic stuff..

 The Kinks, 1966

So, That's about it for now. See you again in about 2 or 3 months!!!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Terry Rawlings, Then, Now an Rare: British Beat 1960-1969, Omnibus Press, 2002

Marmalade Skies

London In The Sixties by Rainer Metzger

In the recent few years, there has been a surge in numbers of new publications about 1960's London. The subject continues to fascinate fashion historians (like Richard Lester or Paul Gorman), pop historians (Barry Miles, who must have published at least a dozen books which touched upon a subject one way or another) or historians in general (Dominic Sandbrook, Jonathon Green, Arthur Marwick). Then, of course, there are all the photographers' albums, Taschen coffee table books, biographies and autobiographies of designers, pop stars, film stars and etc. London In The Sixties - Rainer Metzger's book published earlier this year by Thames & Hudson , does not quite fall under any of these categories, and although it is probably the closest in spirit to a coffee table book, it offers far more in-depth critical analysis. It is an ambitious attempt of analising every major form of art and culture that was happening in 1960's London - art, design, fashion, pop music, cinematography, theatre, literature, architecture and television. With 342 illustrations on 365 pages it does manage to get a point across really well. The book is a part of the series by Thames and Hudson about revolutionary cities in revolutionary (in cultural, not political sense) times. Previous books include: Berlin In The Twenties, Munich - Its Golden Age of Art And Culture (both by Metzger), Paris Between The Wars, and Vienna 1900 and The Heroes Of Modernism. Given the main subject of previous publications, it is not surprising that Rainer Metzger devotes a lot of space to painting and graphic design. The works of Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Pauline Boty are thoroughly analised and put in a social context. Same goes for illustrations of Alan Aldridge, Martin Sharp or Hapshash and The Coloured Coat. There is a competent review of cinema -  from early 1960's kitchen sink dramas - films of Tony Richardson, John Shlesinger and Karel Reisz through, of course, Blow-Up and swinging comedies of Richard Lester to decadent excesses of Donald Cammell's Perfomance. The importance of fashion is outlined through mentions of Mary Quant, John Stephen, Ossie Clark, King's Road boutiques and 'obligatory' images of mini-skirted dolly birds  strolling down Carnaby Street. Rainer Metzger also takes a look at the brutalist architecture of Erno Goldfinger , television programs such as The Avengers and The Prisoner, Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, The Anti-Vietnam protests and rise of counterculture , and many other cultural events that shaped 1960's London. Then, of course, there's the Pop Music. In this section, quite a lot of (and by quite a lot, I mean slightly too much) space is devoted to The Beatles. Let's face it, The cultural importance of  the Fab Four had been written about to death, and for some readers any mention of it is an instant page turner. What's more, there are some mistakes in the chapters about pop music. For example this photo on page 175:

  
It is captioned as 'The Kinks, c. 1967'. But actually, the photo is from 1976, when The Kinks were promoting their album Schoolboys In Disgrace (Hence the uniforms) released that year. John Dalton and John Gosling (the bearded ones on the photo) joined the band in 1969 and 1971 respectively, and were not in the line-up of The Kinks in 1967.
Similar mistake is on the page 223, where this photo of  Mick is dated 'January, 1969'.

But, in reality, the photo is from 1972, and I know it because Mick is wearing Ossie Clark stage outfit custom-made by Ossie himself especially for that 1972 American tour. Also, The Stones did not tour in January 1969, in fact they did not play any gigs between Rock n' Roll Circus (December 1968 - it was Brian Jones' last gig with The Stones) and Free Concert in Hyde Park (July 1969 - Mick Taylor's first gig).

Ok, so these are not massive mistakes, but any kind of mistake is surprising in such a high-profile publication. Perhaps Rainer Metzger - an Art History professor at University of Karlsruhe - was not that familiar with Pop history. Or maybe his team of researchers had let him down. Either way, it is a proof that you can't always trust what you read, no matter how respectable the publication might be.

The book could be described as 'Swinging London for Dummies' - if you have a good knowledge about 1960's London , there is little chance that this book will tell you something you don't already know. Still, it has enough great photographs to make it enjoyable. Some of the images might be interesting for readers of this blog..

 

   

Early incarnation of Granny Takes A Trip, circa 1966.

Michael Rainey outside his boutique Hung On You

Feature about Granny Takes a Trip and Hung On You from Nova magazine

 I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet, 1967

 Cover of OZ magazine from April 1967, designed by Martin Sharp.

 

   Ray Brooks and Carol White in Cathy Come Home (1966)- an uber-depressing and brutally realistic debut feature of director Ken Loach. The film tells a story of working class family which, as a result of various misfortunes, is forced to live a life of poverty and homelessness. This rarely mentioned but nevertheless important film highlighted many social issues of the time, and served as a sad reminder, that for most of the people in  1960's Britain, life was not ''Swinging' at all.  The surprising inclusion of it in the chapter about movies shows that Rainer Metzger tried to avoid easy cliches and explore the darker side of the 1960's.

  

Chair by Allen Jones, 1969

Eduardo Paolozzi, The City of The Circle And Square, 1963-1966.

Eduardo Paolozzi, Signs of Death and Decay in the Skies, 1969-1970.

Bridget Riley inside her installation Continuum, 1963

Poster for This Is Tomorrow - a very influential 1956 exhibition in Whitechapel Art Gallery which predicted direction art and design would take in 1960's.

Overall, London In The Sixties is a really enjoyable book, and I'd recommend it to anybody interested in the subject. It would also make a great Christmas present...    

Binder, Edwards & Vaughn

Binder, Edwards & Vaughn were a design group specialising in psychedelic murals and paintings. They were active in London between 1965 and 1967, and during that short period they received a lot of attention from press, most notably The Sunday Times, and they attracted 'hip'  clientele - Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, London boutiques Dandie Fashions and Lord John and many others.
Their brand of psychedelia was characteristic for its rejection of Art Nouveau as an influence. They tried to make their work unique and forward-looking.
Doug Binder, Dudley Edwards and David Vaughn met in Bradford Art College where they studied in the early sixties. Binder and Edwards main designers, while Vaughn took on the role of a manager. Dudley Edwards remembers: The Input between me and Doug was 50/50. To begin with the earliest influences were the panted door fronts in the Asian ghettos near Bradford Art College. Those doorways glowed like gems in the dark. We also loved the dissonant color combinations they used. It was similar to the effect that Thelonious Monk would get on the piano. (...) There was also an influence of certain Marvel comics, like the backgrounds in Steve Ditko's "Dr. Strange" (Norman Hathaway, Dan Nadel, Electrical Banana, p 65).

Article in The Sunday Times Magazine, 1966. From left Doug Binder, David Vaughn and Dudley Edwards.

Binder, Edwards and Vaughn moved to London in the mid-1960's and set up a studio on Gloucester Avenue. They started out from painting and selling furniture. One of their earliest clients was their Gloucester Avenue neighbour, photographer David Bailey, whom they tricked into buying a painted chest of drawers by 'accidentally' displaying it right outside his front door. We thought, If we put a painted chest of drawers on David Bailey's doorstep in the middle of the night, it'll be the first thing he sees in the morning and he's bound to want it. It worked! (Hathaway, Nadal, p 65). Soon after they began exporting their painted furniture to USA, Canada and Belgium.
They also began beyond the furniture buisness. A design group Wolff Olins commissioned them to paint the facade of their studio.

 The address was number 81, so we used a combination of numbers and words, '8ONE' where the 'O' served a dual function as both a digit and a letter, all portrayed in 20th Century Fox style (Hathaway, Nadal, p 65).
They also started painting cars. They have painted a 1960 Buick convertible.

 The car have captured attention of The Kinks, who have used it for a photo on a cover of their 1966 'Sunny Aftenoon' EP.

The cover was noticed by Tara Browne, who commissioned Binder, Edwards and Vaughn to paint his AC Shelby Cobra....

...and a facade of his new boutique, Dandie Fashions

1967

Through Browne, they have met Paul McCartney , who commissioned them to paint his piano.

1967

Other famous projects by Binder, Edwards and Vaughn was a mural for Lord John boutique on Carnaby Street..

  1967

and  a mural for fashion departament of Woodlands 21 store.

1965

Binder, Edwards and Vaughn parted ways in mid-1967. Dudley Edwards, who struck a friendship with Paul McCartney, was commissioned to do some more work for a Beatle. Paul called and asked if I was free, and would I like to stay at his place and paint a mural for him. Stash (Stanislas Klossowski De Rola) was staying there as well, so it was just the three of us. A lot of the time I got the feeling Paul wasn't really bothered with me doing a mural, really. He just wanted a mate around. So every time I started painting Paul would say, 'Let's go off to a studio and lay off some tracks' or 'Let's go to a nightclub' (Hathaway, Nadal, p 66)..
Edwards also did a mural for Ringo Starr.

 Edwards' mural for Ringo, 1967.

Dudley Edwards formed a buisness partnership with Mike McInnerney, an art editor of International Times. They did a few projects together, of which the most impressive one was the mural for The Flying Dragon Cafe in King's Road.

 

1968

After that Dudley Edwards went into designing poster art. He is still a graphic designer today.

Because Binder, Edwards & Vaughn did not work  within a usual popular media, like album covers, posters or even ads, their work is not very well remembered today. But between 1965 and 1967, they were called 'The Beatles of the art world' and during their short existence , they had a tremendous impact on visual culture in Swinging London of the 1960's.

For the full story of Binder, Edwards and Vaughn (and more examples of their artwork) read 'Electrical Banana' by Norman Hathaway and Dan Nadel.

  

Mick Avory from The Kinks modeling for John Stephen, Pt. 2

Here's some more pictures of Mick Avory from The Kinks modeling for John Stephen circa 1966.

In these ads , we can catch a rare glimpse of John Stephen's ladies range. The model is Kiki Dee - a pop singer today mostly remembered for her 1976 duet with Elton John, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart".  

Mick Avory from The Kinks modeling for John Stephen

I have found this photo of Mick Avory, drummer from The Kinks, modeling a John Stephen suit in 1966. It was in Uncut magazine. I wouldn't take for granted that it really is John Stephen's suit, because there were some mistakes in the article (They actually referred to a designer as John Stephens), but it is quite likely, as it is quite typical for John Stephen's designs from that period. If anybody knows more about this photo, please leave a comment. 

Dave Davies - 1960's Peacock Style Icon

Dave Davies  is mostly known for his guitar riffs in such Kinks' classics as "You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All Of The Night"As a songwriter, Dave always stood in the shadow of his older brother, Ray. But his skills as a guitarist, perfectly complemented Ray's brilliant songwriting, making them one of the most dynamic duos in popular music history.

However, the aim of this post is not to talk about Dave Davies - the musician, but to say a few words about his very flamboyant dress sense in 1960's.

As far as fashion goes, The Kinks were in the avant-garde.  In late 1964,while most of other London groups were sporting sharp, minimal Mod style (usually designed by John Stephen), The Kinks were wearing more dandified clothes - Victorian style morning jackets and frilled shirts (sometimes combined with riding boots). This was one of the first sights of Peacock look, which became so popular in London around 1966. Dave Davies remembers: When we first started, me and Pete Quaife (Bass Player) we were as much into clothes and fashion as we were into music. Pete was a graphic artist and we used to go out and look at clothes and draw them (www.punkglobe.com/davedaviesinterview0111.php).

Dave Davies was a regular customer in Carnaby Street and King's Road boutiques. He took Peacock style to the extremes , mixing epochs and centuries - from Victoriana , through Regency to 18th Century court dress. His clothes and his trademark Oscar Wilde-style haircut made him possibly the most eye- catching male pop star of 1960's Swinging London.     

Performing his song, "Death of the Clown" in an outfit inspired by 18th century court dress, 1967.

Cover of Dave's solo EP from 1967

From the same photoshoot...1967

The Kinks, 1965

The Kinks with Mike Nesmith (far left), 1966

 Dave Davies, 1966

Dave Davies modeling for Terylene adverts, 1966.

From the photoshoot for a cover of Dave's solo EP, 1967 

With female fans, 1967

Riding horses through London with The Kinks, 1967

The Kinks, September 7 , 1964 - soon after their first number one, "You Really Got Me"

Dave Davies, early 1965

Dave Davies, 1965

1966

Dave Davies, 1966

Dave Davies on the covers of Dutch teen magazine, 1966-1967

1966

1967

Dave Davies, 1967

Dave Davies, 1967

The Kinks, 1967

The Kinks, 1967

1967

Pete Quaife and Dave Davies performing on The Beat Club, 1967

Cover of an album released in 2007 , containing Dave Davies' solo tracks from late 1960's.

Brilliant Kinks' song, written and sung by Dave, "Mindless Child Of Motherhood" - a B-side to their 1969 single "Drivin' "

1966

Dave Davies, 1974

Ray and Dave in Konk studios, early 1970's

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Images scanned from various issues of  Mojo and Uncut.

Also, many thanks to God Save The Kinks Tumblr