OldNewRockMusic: Blossom Toes - We Are Ever So Clean (1967) CD

Friday, February 5, 2021

Blossom Toes - We Are Ever So Clean (1967) CD

Year: 1967 (CD 2007)
Label: Sunbeam Records (UK), SBRCD5035
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Rock
Country: London, England
Time: 70:31
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 424 Mb

Blossom Toes were the twee-est band of all time-- twice as twee as the Dukes of Stratosphear covering "(Listen to the) Flower People" in front of an audience of animated chipmunks, thrice as twee as a Keane painting magically brought to life by a sprinkling of fairy dust and singing the Fluff Fluff Fluff Fluff and Cuddleyness catalogue. Originally the Ingoes, one of ten million British blues bands who desperately wanted to be the Yardbirds, they hooked up with their idols' manager Giorgio Gomelsky; just as flower power was taking off, they were directed to become psychedelicists and change their name, for reasons having less to do with LSD than pounds-shillings-pence.

In the new reissue's liner notes, the Toes claim their songs were all written by the time somebody played them an acetate of Sgt. Pepper's in the studio. If so, "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever" seems to have hit them like an acid bomb, because virtually every song here can trace its DNA to the Beatles' psychedelic moment, from the harmonies to Kevin Westlake's Ringofied drumming to the quick-changing orchestrations accompanying the chime of their twelve-string guitars to their general sense of persistently tuneful music-hall whimsy as the corridor behind the doors of perception.

They don't waste time getting around to it, either: The opening track begins with a backwards-guitar fade-in before singer/guitarist Brian Godding exclaims "Look at me I'm you! Look at me I'm you!" Godding was the band's main songwriter, although guitarist Jim Cregan also gets in a couple of good ones, especially "When the Alarm Clock Rings" (later recycled as the closing track of the Nuggets II compilation), and Westlake contributes a song called "The Remarkable Saga of the Frozen Dog", which is as look-at-me-I'm-high as you'd guess.

(pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10497-we-are-ever-so-clean/. Contributor: Douglas Wolk. August 8 2007)

01. Look At Me I'm You (03:55)

02. I'll Be Late For Tea (02:42)

03. The Remarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dog (03:02)

04. Telegram Tuesday (02:37)

05. Love Is (02:41)

06. What's It For? (03:03)

07. People Of The Royal Parks (02:20)

08. What On Earth (02:52)

09. Mrs. Murphy's Budgerigar (02:38)

10. I Will Bring You This And That (02:55)

11. Mister Watchmaker (02:22)