Six of the Best 603

RIA Novosti archive

"If Brexit wins, it will be because a majority of British voters have simply lost confidence in the way they are governed and the people they are governed by. That loss of confidence is part bloody-mindedness, part frivolity, part panic, part bad temper, part prejudice. But it is occurring – if it is – in a nation that has always prided itself, perhaps too complacently, on having very different qualities: good sense, practicality, balanced judgment, and a sure instinct for not lurching to the right or left." Martin Kettle analyses why we have been brought to the verge of Brexit.

Bernard Aris says the Leave campaign has not thought about the implications for Ireland - north and south.

Mikhail Gorbachev still has lots to say finds Neil MacFarquhar.

The good news is that expensive libel cases are in decline, says David Hencke. The bad news is that the rich are using the 'right to be forgotten' to effectively silence their critics instead.

Daniel Ralston tells the story of the fake Zombies - the strangest con in rock history.

York Stories visits the threatened buildings of Ordnance Lane.

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Six of the Best 601

"Like most wars, this one will end inconclusively with a narrow margin on a low turnout and the losers promising to keep fighting once they have regrouped and rearmed." Vince Cable takes a humorous look at referendum campaign.

Martin Hancox on the insanity of the badger cull.

A proposed new law would make it harder to criticise the ruling regime on Jersey. Voice for Children has the details.

"Reiner ends his memory with an envious observation: 'The word fuck is a perfectly good word now.' 'I never minded Richard Pryor saying it,' says Van Dyke, 'but so many comedians use it constantly instead of good material. That’s when it gets offensive.'" Katherine Brodsky interviews Dick Van Dyke and Carl Reiner, who are both past 90 but still crackling with ideas.

"If you’d have said that to us 50 years ago, that’d we’d be doing this still, we would have not believed it. That was the time Lennon said that he didn’t expect to be still doing it when he was 30!" Midlands What's On interviews Rod Argent from the Zombies.

Can you name the six London Underground stations named after pubs? Londonist can.

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The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream

Time for another track from the Zombies' album Odessey and Oracle.

And time again to quote the band's bass player and Chris White, who wrote half the songs on it:

Even till the late 70s we were seen as a curiosity - a band who never quite made it - and then slowly in the 80s and 90s you found young bands quoting it as an inspiration. It's quite surprising to me to find that this album nobody wanted 40 years ago has become an icon. Some people have said it's their idea of the perfect album. It's all quite strange for us to be honest.

Odessey and Oracle was the first album to be recorded at Abbey Road after Sergeant Pepper. The Beatles' mellotron was still in the studio, so the Zombies made good use of it.

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Simon Dupree and the Big Sound: Like the Sun Like the Fire

I have written before about the first single I ever bought: Kites by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. It seems my preference for Mellotrons and psychedelia was present from the start.

There is a good entry on the band on All Music:

"Simon Dupree" was vocalist Derek Shulman, one of a trio of brothers (Ray and Phil being the other two) from Portsmouth, England, who started out in music as R&B fanatics and first formed a group in 1964. 

Their musical interests can be glimpsed by the choices that the Shulman brothers made between 1964 and 1965 in naming their bands, which included the Howling Wolves and the Road Runners. 

Those names aside, their repertoire was focused a lot more on the songs of Wilson Pickett, Don Covay, and Otis Redding than on the Wolf or Bo Diddley. "Simon Dupree & the Big Sound" came about in the course of their search for a flashy name.

And it explains how an R&B outfit came to record Kites:

Then, in October of 1967, the group's management and record label decided to try moving Simon Dupree & the Big Sound in the direction of psychedelia. It's entirely possible that they were looking at the huge sales and international recognition suddenly accruing to the Moody Blues, an R&B-turned-psychedelic outfit who had gone from near-oblivion to scoring a pair of hit albums and singles with their new sound. 

The result was "Kites," a song recorded in the early fall of 1967 at Abbey Road. The bandmembers were unhappy with the new song and the sound they were being asked to create, but they tried to make the best of it - they experimented with a Mellotron for the first time, and used it pretty much as impressively as the Moody Blues did. The melody was Asian-sounding, and the presence of actress Jackie Chan reciting some poetry over the music didn't detract from the single's "Eastern" sound. 

"Kites" wasn't R&B, but it was the right song at the right time, and it made the British Top Ten, a major commercial breakthrough for the group.

The Shulman brothers later formed the prog rock band Gentle Giant.

If they were in Abbey Road in the autumn of 1967 then they may well have coincided with the Zombies as they made Odessey and Oracle. And the Mellotron on Kites may be the one John Lennon left at the studios after recording Sergeant Pepper, which the Zombies made such good use of.

Listening to Kites today, it isn't very good. In fact I prefer the B side.

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The Zombies talk about Odessey and Oracle

View image | gettyimages.com

The other day I posted a video of the remarkable Zombies concert in which they played the whole of their great LP Odessey and Oracle 40 years after it was released to an unappreciative world.

In 2012 Rod Argent, Colin Blunstone and Chris White recorded a two-part interview with the BBC.

In part 1 they were interviewed by John Wilson.

In part 2 they fielded questions from the audience, which included a Mr Paul Weller from Woking,

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