Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Peddlers
Suite London
(Philips 1972; reissued on Mercury/Eclipse 2006)
Cabaret kings get conceptual in 1972 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra!
A Liverpool-Newcastle-Dorset trio with pop pasts in Rory Storm & The Hurricanes and The Tornados, The Peddlers spent the ’60s making ace, acceptable-to-grandma LPs of what they called “pop-art-jazz” – weirdly arranged showbiz cover versions with big-voiced organist Roy Phillips yodelling fruitily as crack drummer Trevor Morais and bassist Tab Martin kept swinging. Guests on the TV shows of Les Dawson and Roger Whittaker, the band’s records were formerly carboot sale staples, except for one - Suite London. With songs written by Phillips and strings provided by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, this collection themed around a day in London was a startling departure. The jaunty trio jazz they were hitherto known for is still here in places, but for the most part this lovelorn, mysterious song cycle, with songs linked by fractured instrumentals like In Juxtaposition, is a feast of cryptic introspection and velvet despair. This existentialism-at-the-Batley-Variety-Club is particularly manifest in the two parts of A Year And A Day; in the first Phillip sits alone with his Fender Rhodes piano, soulfully counting down the moments to his own death, while the second, subtitled (Metamorphosis), ups the weirdness ante with the kind of modern classical atonality later heard on Scott Walker’s Climate Of Hunter LP in 1984. Suitably, this was the last Peddlers album made by the original line-up.
Ian Harrison
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 19/04/2008
Further Listening
The Peddlers – How Cool Is Cool (Sony Jazz, 2002)
David Axelrod – Songs Of Innocence (Capitol, 1968)
Scott Walker – Scott 2 (Philips, 1968)
SUGGEST YOUR OWN DISC OF THE DAY ON OUR MESSAGE BOARD HERE, OR, MORE PRIVATELY, HERE!
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I know this band is very very cheesey, but they are very very good. I have, I think, all their CDs/albums. I think this one, Suite London, is their most serious, and probably least enjoyable, well to my ears anyway.
If you can, try the others, or track down a copy of "How Cool is Cool", which is a compilation of the 60's stuff.
Posted by darren at 2:07 PM GMT 18/10/2010 Report Abuse
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