891 The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968)

 891 The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968)

Studio Album - Psychedelic Rock




About the Act:

The Small Faces were a British Rock band from London. They started in 1965 with Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Jimmy Winston, and were initially a "Mod" band. They morphed into a psychedelic band.  In 1969, Marriott left to form Humble Pie, and the remaining three members teamed up with some others, including Rod Stewart, to be Quiet Melon, and then The Faces. In 1975 both the Faces and Humble Pie broke up, and The Small Faces reformed with their original line-up. They existed for a further three years until hanging up their towels in 1978. 


About the Album:

This was the third album by the band, and was a concept abum. It is named after a brand of tobacco.


My History with this Album:

I have heard the album before, a couple of times.


Review:

1968 and there was a thing happening at the time in British Bands, where psychedelic songs were being mixed in with storytelling songs. This trend was where The Beatles were, and others like Procol Harum and The Moody Blues, and The Kinks were in this trend. In particular, cockney comic songs, reminiscent of the Music Hall days were being peppered into their albums. There is no song more archetypal of this trend than Lazy Sunday from this album. It's a classic.

The first half of this album is a disconnected collection of songs, a couple of them cockney comics, the rest more or less psychedelic, although at times I wonder if they are poking fun at psychedelic tropes.

The second half is a connected set of songs, with spoken links, telling a story, a kind of fairy-tale really. This is spoken by Stanley Baldwin who has a particular style of mixing in a lot of nonsense words in a way that you get the sense of what he is saying without it making semantic sense. It's quite clever really. The songs support the story also, finishing off with "HappyDaysToyTown" which proclaims that life is a bowl of all-bran.

It's an engaging and varied album, worth a good listen. I enjoyed it. I have a soft spot for the gentleness of 60s psychedelia, and the musicianship is good. It's a bit of a light-hearted bumble along, but demands to be more than background music. To my mind it's on the cusp of being a classic.


7.8/10 


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/7HpNZHNfECoHoFHaB5tnSk

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0hBGL74y9uZ9Q45rC8sFqReG8pOTmmBV

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogdens%27_Nut_Gone_Flake


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

840 Various Artists - The Best of Girl Groups Volumes 1 and 2 (1990)

Image
 840 Various Artists - The Best of Girl Groups Volumes 1 and 2 (1990) Compilation (double) - Girl Group (Soul/Bobby Soxer/Do-Wop) About the Album: This is a highly acclaimed compilation in 2CDs by Rhino Records. It's the sort of thing that in this country you might expect to see at 3.99 in a Garden Centre. My History with this Album: None Review: There are not many multi-artist compilations in this series for reviewing. There is not information about it on Wikipedia, but the reception seems to have been positive. It is choc-full of hits with a smattering of lesser-known songs, and it's hard not to imagine Grease or similar situations - girls with cardigans and white socks, listening to the juke box while sipping milkshakes in the drug store. On one level it's a fun collection of songs that you could use to feel nostalgic, or as the music for a themed party. On another level it's kind of like a cultural artefact. I feel honour-bound to describe it, even though if I drop
Read more

944 Manu Chao - Próxima Estación Esperanza (2001)

Image
 944 Manu Chao - Próxima Estación Esperanza (2001) Studio Album - World Music About the Act: Manu Chao is a French-Spanish musician of Spanish descent who grew up on the outskirts of Paris. In the mid-80s he was in a Spanish/English rockabilly group called Hot Pants. In 1987, with his brother and cousin he founded the band Mano Negra, combining punk and world music influences and playing on the Paris Metro. This band took off and had 4 studio albums. In 1995 Manu "went solo", forming the band Radio Bemba Sound System to be his backing band. The punk elements were less prominent, but he started to make music that "replicates the sound of street music and bar scenes from a variety of cultures". He has been really popular in parts of Europe.  About the Album: This album was Manu Chao's second studio album as a "solo" artist. In Spanish, the name means "Next Station: Hope", after a real station on the Madrid Metro. The album reached top 10 slots
Read more

591 Harry Smith, Ed. - Anthology of American Folk Music (1952)

Image
 591 Harry Smith, Ed. - Anthology of American Folk Music (1952) Compilation Album - Americana About the Act: Harry Smith is not the performer here, he is the collector. He was a film-maker, occultist, and eccentric. About the Album: Harry Smith had a collection of early 78rpm records of various "folk" styles dated from 1927 when such things first started to be commercially available to 1932 when the Great Depression put a stop to the sales of folk records. In 1947 he approached a label, Folkway Records, about releasing a collection of them transferred onto LPs. This they did in 1952, without seeking copyright permission, making this technically a bootleg. It was released as three double-LP boxed sets, and sold very poorly. In the first year it sold 50 copies, 47 to libraries and colleges. It was reissued later, and gained traction and sold better. It now has a reputation for being one of the most influential compilations in the history of Americana, and is cited as being a ma
Read more