The Idle Race – The Birthday Party

The quirky, lyrical and often whimsical Idle Race emerged out of the ashes of The Nightriders – the Birmingham beat group that had one time counted Roy Wood amongst its ranks – following the arrival of Jeff Lynne, Wood cohort in The Move and then the Electric Light Orchestra. With the core Nightriders line-up of Dave Pritchard (rhythm guitar), Greg Masters (bass) and Roger Spencer (drums), Lynne took on vocal and lead guitar duties, got busy writing some psychedelic tunes, and in 1968 they released their debut album, The Birthday Party.

Maintaining a steady balance between psychedelic rock and psych-pop, The Birthday Party avoids slipping into the heavily phased and prolonged freakouts that sometimes characterised the former, without drifting into the overt feyness that often brushed a ruffled shirt cuff against the latter.

Jaunty is a good way to describe the album, with plenty of quirky touches and lyrics to match. Jeff Lynne’s vocal style and delivery (long before he acquired the mid-atlantic accent of later ELO records) match his subject matter perfectly and the use of sound effects throughout – and in the case of the exquisite ‘The Lady Who Said She Could Fly’, orchestral lavishment – is spot on.

The starter for ten, and first single to be taken from the album, ‘Skeleton and the Roundabout’ seems to sample a brief burst of The Magic Roundabout at the start before launching into a playful ditty concerning “a fairground man at heart” who becoming so thin from constantly turning the handle of his roundabout, falls ill and finds himself unable to do his job. Salvation comes in the form of the ghost train owner with the offer to hang from the gate of his ride as the ghost train skeleton!?!?!

Biting satire on capitalist exploitation or unadulterated psychedelic zanery? I’d wager the latter, and it’s this that sets the tone for much of the remainder of the album, with nearly all the songs sharing an almost absurdist vein of humour.

‘I Like my Toys‘ is a gleefully impudent wee composition concerning a shameless fellow of thirty-one who shuns responsibility in favour of his toys, which he goes on to list with relish. It also contains the priceless lines: “…  But my mother says I should get a job, Or my father she will tell, She says sixteen years is a long enough rest, Though I say that I’m not well …” A man clearly after my own heart.

‘Sitting in My Tree’, ‘Lucky Man’  and to a certain extent the music hall-styled ‘Don’t Put Your Boys in the Army, Mrs. Ward’ all continue this rich seam of jaunty tomfoolery, though that’s not to say there aren’t the more serious moments.

‘The Birthday‘ is a prime example of a song being both quirky and dark, conjuring images of sadness and loneliness, resulting in possible death, whilst the aforementioned ‘The Lady Who Said She Could Fly’, is epically moving  fayre.

Lynne’s love of The Beatles is well documented (he would namecheck all four in ‘Girl at the Window’ on the follow-up album, Idle Race, and of course, the original aim of ELO was to take up where ‘I Am the Walrus’ had left off) and the influence of their more off-the wall moments can be felt throughout The Birthday Party.

A sterling, in places genuinely funny, debut from a HFoS favourite.

The Birthday Party is part of the Back to the Story compilation, containing all three of The Idle Race’s albums plus bonus tracks, and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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album reviews, psych-pop, psychedelic rock