Before they were Sparks, brothers Ron and Russell Mael were teenagers growing up in Pacific Palisades. More than the sunbeams, they bathed in the sound waves of the mid-to-late Sixties’ rock product, nourishing themselves on the transcendent and the trash alike. A decade later, after Sparks had achieved champion status on the international rock market, Russell Mael went on the radio to play his favorite songs from that period and talk about his LA adolescence.
The broadcast is about two hours long. According to the blog stranger than known, where I came across this remarkable recording, it’s a tape of Russell Mael’s appearance on BBC Radio 1 around November 1979. If the date’s correct, Mael would have been promoting Sparks’ collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, No. 1 in Heaven.
Mael sets up each song with a cultural observation, bit of rock lore, or a memory: seeing the Doors at local dances, auditioning bass players for garage bands with the ascending line from “Hey Joe,” driving up to San Francisco to see Moby Grape, watching surfers put lemon juice in their hair, playing the “Louie Louie” single at 33⅓ rpm in the hope of hearing a secret, lewd message, and so on.
In May 1968, The Small Faces promoted their latest album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake with a parody of the Lord’s Prayer:
Small Faces
Which were in the studios
Hallowed by thy name
Thy music come
Thy songs be sung
On this album as they came from your heads
We give you this day our daily bread
Give us thy album in a round cover as we give thee 37/9d.,
Lead us into the record stores.
And deliver us Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake
For nice is the music
The sleeve and the story
For ever and ever, Immediate.
Of course back then, when people believed in the Father, Son and Whole Wheat Toast, this little ad caused an outrage. Across the tea rooms of England, cups and saucers rattled in anger, while the press filled their pages with BANNER HEADLINES OF SHOCK! AND HORROR! and gritty letters from Angry (Colonel) of Milton Keynes, Slough, and Lower Perineum. Guitarist and lead singer, Steve Marriott blamed the mad men who’d devised the campaign:
“We didn’t know a thing about the ad. until we saw it in the music papers. And frankly we got the horrors at first. We realise that it could be taken as a serious knock against religion. But on thinking it over, we don’t feel it is particularly good or bad. It’s just another form of advertising. We’re not all that concerned about it. We’re more concerned in writing our music and producing our records”
It was not as damaging as John Lennon’s bigger than Christ quote, but that was because The Small Faces never really cracked America—though they left their fingerprints at the scene with “Itchycoo Park”. The failure to crack America was a bind, of all the bands that came out of that sixties pop revolution, The Small Faces were amongst the best, most accomplished and definitely most fun.
Thankfully then, that the following month, on Friday June 21st, The Small Faces appeared on the BBC arts series Colour Me Pop—a fore-runner to The Old Gray Whistle Test—where they performed (mimed) most of their album. This and performances by The Move and The Moody blues are all that remains of the interesting catalogue of artists (from Zappa and The Mothers, The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Free and Gene Pitney), that appeared on Colour Me Pop, which were all wiped on the say-so of high-level, BBC, lower intelligence.
Here then is The Small Faces, Steve Marriott - vocals, guitar, Ronnie Lane - backing vocals, bass guitar, Kenney Jones - drums, Ian McLagan - keyboards with guest Stanley Unwin performing extracts form their classic album Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, on Colour Me Pop.
01. “Song of a Baker”
02. “Lazy Sunday”
03. “Happiness Stan”
04. “Rollin’ Over”
05. “The Hungry Intruder”
06. “The Journey”
07. “Mad John”
08. “Happy Days Toy Town”
One of my all-time favorite bands, The Move giving a truly incendiary performance of “Watch Your Step,” at a concert in Holland from 1966.
Lead singer, the late great Carl Wayne takes an ax to a TV set; while the genius composer Roy Wood keeps out of the way, playing guitar; and drummer Bev Bevan keeps beat, as Ace Kefford and Trevor Burton keep rocking. This is a great piece of theatrical anarchy—like Hendrix setting fire to his guitar, and far better than The Who smashing instruments, for there is a sense that anything could happen.
Watch out too for the fire blazing at the side of the stage—this was the kind of exuberant behavior that led to The Move being briefly banned from every venue in the UK.
