I’ve been going through a “phase” recently, where I’m gorging myself on music that was made by, or by fellow travelers of, The Pretty Things—The Deviants, Pink Fairies, Twink’s Think Pink and Lost Experimental Recordings 1970, Mick Farren’s darkly unhinged Mona – The Carnivorous Circus) as well as some of the music made by The Pretty Things themselves under their nudge-nudge, wink-wink work-for-hire pseudonym, The Electric Banana.

During the period from 1967 to 1978, for extra money, the Pretties (like Soft Machine) recorded material for the De Wolfe Music Library. De Wolfe sold low cost, royalty-free stock music for use in film and television soundtracks (Monty Python used De Wolfe for their TV series, for instance) and the Pretties’ music was used in the likes of soft-porn films and low budget horror movies. The songs were looser than their proper material, but still sounded quite good, especially to my ears, the material produced around the same time when they were recording their masterpiece, S.F. Sorrow at Abbey Road Studios and the early 70s material of the Parachute vintage (One Bananas track, “I See You,” did actually turn up on S.F. Sorrow).

Amazingly, the Pretties turned up portraying the Bananas in a comedy vehicle for British funnyman Norman Wisdom, as a middle-aged “square” banker chasing after a young, “free-spirited” London dolly bird in What’s Good for the Goose. Tell me that Twink wasn’t tripping his face off with this was shot…

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Keep It Together! Mick Farren and The Deviants, LIVE, Hyde Park, 1969