tracks on LP: The Doctor “Prelude” | Mood Six “Just Like A Dream” | The Times “I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape” | Miles Over Matter “Something’s Happening Here”, “Park My Car” | The Silence “Love Letters | Mood Six “Plastic Flowers” | The High Tide “Dancing In My Mind” | The Earwigs “Keep Your Voice Down” | The Doctor “Mortal Dreams | The Barracudas “Watching The World Go By” | The Marble Staircase “The Long Weekend” | The High Tide “Electric Blue”
Record label: WEA K 58415
Released: January 1982
Purchased: 10/06/83
‘A Splash Of Colour’ (WEA K58415)**** “ENTER NOW minstrels and play . . .” The transatlantic enunciation of The Doctor is a familiar reverbed-ed-ed cadence to those who have grooved to his record collection during the last few months in the capital’s psychedelic niteries.
Regally dressed regulars will unashamedly clutch this to their Paisleyed bosoms, being as it is the first vinyl gathering of some of that scene’s emergent bands.
Apart from the misunderstood dress code of the Groovy Cellar and contrary to popular misinformed opinion, ‘correct’ attire was never a prerequisite for partaking of the good times and allowing one’s ears to be stroked and fondled by the swinging sounds.
Rabid accusations of REVIVAL! swiftly abounded, but in truth all that existed was a group of people having fun and enjoying shared interests.
A hollow recreation of the past was not the intention and it is on such like it or leave it terms that ‘A Splash Of Colour’ should be judged.
Mood Six‘s ‘Just Like A Dream’ and The High Tide‘s ‘Dancing In My Mind’ provide the major instances of bands being able to absorb and then transcend their influences.
The former is a powerful, rich and well-structured piece of polished pop, as likeable and as cogent a ‘nuclear protest’ as you’re likely to find. Their later ‘Plastic Flowers‘, despite the value of its wonderfully caustic storyline, is a trifle lame. The whole entity shakes on a dodgy framework and the previous suave sparkle is conspicuously absent.
‘Dancing In My Mind’ is a re-recording of The High Tide’s indie single. I saw them rattle through a 20 minute set at Le Kilt which included this tune, and I recall being thrilled by the instrumentals though the lyrical banality had me in hand to hide fits of laughter.
On record, however, the possibly hysteria-inducing words blend into the comfortably calm and controlled melody while the high octave backing singing provides the top layer of several minutes of gorgeously colourful poppy atmospherics. This is by far my favourite cut.
Again, like Mood Six, a second helping goes somewhat astray. The smooth gliding feel is forsaken in favour of a lumpy work-out almost reaching the horrors of a free-form freakout.
The Silence and The Earwigs are perverse and charmingly enigmatic, eccentrics at work. No alternative but to lie back and enjoy the lunacy.
The Marble Staircase impress with a jumpy, bass propelled Castaways-ish rhythm with dashes of organ and guitar. The package suddenly shifts into a dream-like mid-section. This is the kind of combo that should, I hope, slip subliminally into mass public consciousness and find themselves in an ongoing huge situation.
Studio trickery
Miles Over Matter take two songs and unceremoniously stuff them full of stock sixties musical (especially guitar) footage, perhaps the kind of thing Todd Rundgren did when he first discovered studio electrickery. Unfortunately MOM’S raw material is too insubstantial to withstand such heavy decorating.
Not an elpee beyond criticism, but overall ‘Splash’ is a more than commendable compilation. Considering the bulk of the contributors’ lack of studio experience the affair could have turned out a whole lot worse and become prey for the circling anti-psychedelic league vultures.
If there lurks the slightest penchant for sixties sounds within your musical appreciation faculties, you should shell out the notes and get the groove. You’ll not be disappointed. (Sounds, 16/01/82)
A Splash Of Colour (WEA)
THE NEW Psychedelics finally make it on to vinyl. ‘A Splash Of Colour’ presents eight of the groups you would have found playing at The Clinic, a London niterie at the heart of that groovy scene. For most of them, this LP is their first real exposure, and I guess it has a make-or-break significance for the much-derided Movement as a whole.
Aptly enough, it’s Clinic DJ The Doctor who hosts the record with two tracks of his distinctive heavily-echoed weirdness — in fact his monologues suggest he’s got a better grasp of the peculiar ’60s technicolour vision than anyone else, even if his imagination is macabre and warped. Mood Six, inevitably, feature with two songs (‘Plastic Flowers’ and ‘Just Like A Dream‘) as do Miles Over Matter (‘Park My Car’ and ‘Something’s Happening’.) Even those garage-band godfathers of the present revival, The Barracudas, get a look-in with ‘Watching The World Go By’. The Times specialise in ’66 English pop-art kitsch, and to prove it they contribute the Spencer Davies-ish ‘I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape’.
Flowers in the weeds
Mostly, it’s lightweight pop, straight from the time-bubble (if you except the occasional 1980s nuclear lyric and so on). Musically, the psychedelics have obvious links with mod and powerpop, as critics are never slow to gloat. Some of this bunch are frankly weak, it’s true, and should wilt before winter’s out. But some of it is fresh . . . and pleasant in an undemanding kind of way. The only moral for outsiders is: join their scene if it appeals to you, and if it doesn’t, just sod off and leave them in peace. (NME, 16/01/82)
Gigs: 1982
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