We All Live on Candy Green – Rare and Obscure Sounds From the British Psychedelic Era
If I had my way, everybody would have at least one song by Rodney Bewes in their record collection.
“Rodney Bewes?” I hear you say. “He of Bob Ferris/Likely Lads fame?” The one and same, I retort. The man with the helmet hairdo and sad eyes. It’s true that the singing talents of Bewes may not be what he’s primarily known for, but 1969 did see him make an assault on the charts with ‘Dear Mother, Love Albert’, the theme tune to his post-Likely Lad sitcom of the same name. The B-side was called ‘Meter Maid’, and it’s that song that features here on We All Live on Candy Green.
As this is a compilation of obscure and arcane psychedelic/power pop from the late sixties, the aforementioned ‘Meter Maid’ slots in perfectly. It’s a sub-Beatles, child-friendly interpretation of psychedelia, of course, with shades of Keith West whimsy thrown in for good measure, and, to be quite frank, it’s bloody awful. But that’s awful in a quite wonderful way. It’s like the bumblebee; it shouldn’t be able to fly but it does. Rodney Bewes’s ‘Meter Maid’ is terrible but endearing at the same time. His camp “oohs” towards the end are a particular joy.
But that’s just one song on a collection of 25, and we’ve spent more than enough time on it, so how’s about the rest?
Imagine distilling a moment in time that captured the sound of late 60′s British pop with a predominately psych edge and pouring it into a paisley patterned decanter, to enjoy at a later date. That is what Elastic Cat Records have done with We All Live on Candy Green, volume one of their Electric Sound Show Series, which, in turn, is the first reissue of the Incredible Sound Show Series, originally released on vinyl and described as 15 volumes of 60s psychedelia.
Pulling together a cast of the forgotten, the never heard of, the no-hit-wonders and Bewes, We All Live on Candy Green lives up to its title; skirting the edges of a more innocent time, when the skies rippled with a rainbow of colours, men wore flowery shirts without fear of arrest and LSD was handed out with the free school milk.
Not everything’s a winner on here, as is to be expected from such a large choice. For instance, the occasional track sounds as though it’s more of an estimation of the psychedelic sound put together by a committee. The sort of thing you might hear on the soundtrack to a chirpy sex-comedy starring Robin Asquith, when the plot requires him to pull some swinging sort in a badly mocked-up underground club, filled with over-aged extras dressed in flowery fashions six years out of date. But the occasional misfire is forgiven, when the rest of We All Live on Candy Green, is fizzier than a quarter bag of flying saucers and a handful of sherbet dabs.
Expect plenty of Hammond organ, spitting out brief bursts of swirling melody, and the occasional crunching guitar, complimented by lyrics that need a couple of bags of sand to stop them floating away.
Worth singling out for particular praise is the Motivation’s ‘Delighted to See You’, a cover of The Honeybus song, complete with a pleasingly pastoral flute motif, and Ken Saul’s ‘Pictures Framed in My Mind’, a hauntingly phased effort from 1970.
And then, of course, there’s young Rodney of Bewes. What more could the psych-pop aficionado ask for? Roll on Volume Two.
We All Live on Candy Green is released by Elastic Cat Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk
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