Leicester, England-based Black Widow formed in 1969 from the ashes of blue-eyed soul band Pesky Gee! Jim Gannon (vocals, guitar, vibraphone), Kip Trevor (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Zoot Taylor (keyboards), Clive Jones (woodwinds), Bob Bond (bass), and Clive Box (drums) played dark, allegedly satanically inspired rock along the lines of Black Sabbath, and gained plenty of attention and controversy for their theatrical live sets. Black Widow made the U.K. Top 40 with their 1970 debut album, Sacrifice. Despite, or perhaps because of, the focus on their occult trappings, they moved away from their dark roots with their 1971 self-titled album and continued this trend with the following year's Black Widow III. By this time, however, lack of critical and label support, plus many lineup changes, caused the group to falter. Late in 1972, after losing their deal with CBS Records, Black Widow recorded Return to the Sabbat, a self-produced set that did not see the light of day until 1999, when it was released by Blueprint Records. A tribute album, Come to the Sabbat, appeared later that year as well.
by William Ruhlmann
Tracks
1. Tears And Wine (Jeff Griffith, Jim Gannon, Kip Trevor, Romeo Challenger, Zoot Taylor) - 8:58
2. The Gypsy (Jim Gannon) - 4:33
3. Bridge Passage (Jeff Griffith) - 0:30
4. When My Mind Was Young (Jeff Griffith, Jim Gannon) - 5:12
A pleasant and satisfying set of songs from Anno Domini, a melodic acoustic folk rock outfit formed in 1971 by former Eire Apparent lead guitarist David ‘Tiger’ Taylor. Eire Apparent specialised in heavy rock and toured America with the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967. Anno Domini provided a complete musical contrast. ‘On This New Day’ is a rare work, long sought after by collectors. Influenced by American folk rock, the Irish group featured a lively version of The Byrds’ ‘So You Want To Be A Rock’n’Roll Star’ among the ten album tracks. Other stand out items include a ‘cover’ of Dion’s ‘Daddy Rowlin’ and originals ‘Bad Lands Of Ardguth’ and ‘The Good Life I Have Known’. A single version of ‘Hitchcock Railway’ has been added as a bonus item.
Tracks
1. So You Want To Be A Rock 'N Roll Star (Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn) - 5:08
2. On This New Day (David Mercer, Kerry Scott) - 1:58
3. Bad Lands Of Ardguth (David Mercer, Kerry Scott) - 3:17
4. Regency Days (David Mercer, Kerry Scott) - 2:53
5. Hitchcock Railway (Don Dunn, Tony McCashen) - 5:13
6. This Good Life I Have Known (David Mercer, Kerry Scott) - 3:13
7. The Trapper (David Mercer) - 2:28
8. Daddy Rowlin (Dion DiMucci, Tony Fasce) - 4:16
9. Five O'Clock In The Morning (Kerry Scott) - 3:07
Produced by John Simon, 1972's cleverly-titled "The Staton Brothers Band" with several of these tracks were quite good in an imitative way. Largely written by Jeffrey Staton, 'S.F. To La', 'Take It Back' and 'I Need To Be Alone' showcased lots of strumming acoustic guitars, catchy melodies, and four-part harmony vocals.
The time the Staton Brothers record was released there was a major record strike on the west coast and as a result, no distribution. The record climbed the charts in the SF Bay area, but no one was able to get a copy of it. The records sat undistributed for over two months.
The band did tour all over the US and focused largely on the east coast. When they returned from the tour, no records had been distributed.
Jeff Staton who is now Jeff Jones went on to not only tour with Stephen Bishop and Art Garfunkel, and now has mainly focused on writing. He wrote several songs for Alabama - Calling All Angels - which went gold, Brooks & Dunn, and is currently writing and composing in Nashville, TN.
Mike Staton also lived in Nashville, recorded several CD's, and was the driving force behind the local Rockabilly Radio Show in Nashville.
Donny Mederos not only plays with the Blues Defenders, he is also the bass player for Mississippi Blues Man Johnny Rawls on the west coast.
Bad Cat
Tracks
1. S.F. To L.A. - 3:05
2. Take It Back - 3:03
3. April - 4:00
4. No One Listens - 3:14
5. I Need To Be Alone - 3:21
6. Four Days Gone (Stephen Stills) - 4:22
7. Mobile Blues (Mickey Newbury) - 3:04
8. One Man Woman - 2:10
9. Mother Nature's Son (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) - 3:59
In 1973 Bland's previous label Duke Records was incorporated by ABC Dunhill. Bland isn't thrilled at first, but when he learns that Steve Barri will be producing his next album, he agrees. His California album is the first for the new hosts and also marks Bland's transition from classic to modern soul. The opulent arrangements typical of modern soul came from Michael Omartian, who had the best studio musicians in Los Angeles at his disposal at ABC.
Bobby Bland's bluesy vocals fit into this sound like a made bed. By the way, it's no wonder that he brings the blues into soul. Because Bland learned his craft in the clubs of the legendary Beale Street in Memphis, where he also worked with B.B. King.
The ten-song album climbed to number three on the Black Album Charts in 1973. Two single releases, namely "Goin' down slow" and "This time I'm gone for good" also hit the charts. Bobby "Blue" Bland's California album is just waiting to be rediscovered.
Tracks
1. This Time I'm Gone For Good (Deadric Malone, Oscar Perry) - 3:32
2. Up And Down World (Deadric Malone, Vernon Morrison) - 3:33
3. It's Not The Spotlight (Barry Goldberg, Gerry Goffin) - 3:52
4. (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want To Be Right (Luther Ingram, Mack Rice) - 3:50
5. Goin' Down Slow (James D. Odom) - 5:35
6. The Right Place At The Right Time (Deadric Malone) - 2:55
7. Help Me Through The Day (Leon Russell) - 3:50
8. Where Baby Went (Deadric Malone) - 3:19
9. Friday The 13th Child (David Clayton Thomas) - 3:14
10.I've Got To Use My Imagination (Barry Goldberg, Gerry Goffin) - 4:14
Wishful Thinking is one of those bands prized by obscurantist pop collectors apparently due mostly to the obscurity surrounding the band. There are several websites that detail the group's torturous history in surprising depth, but here's the short version: Wishful Thinking were an obscure R&B-pop combo that released two singles in 1966 with original singer Roy Daniels and then a handful of singles and an album of cover versions, Live, Vol. 1, in 1967 and 1968 with new singer Kevin Scott. Another lineup revision brought in bassist and co-lead singer Tony Collier and the band was signed to the U.K. indie B&C Records, which would later transform into the far better-known prog label Charisma Records.
Producer Lou Reizner (later responsible for the freakishly over the top travesty All This and World War II) tapped another B&C artist, singer/songwriter Dave Morgan (who had written a couple songs for the Move and was a late-era member of the Electric Light Orchestra), to write an album's worth of songs and the result was 1971's Hiroshima. A flop upon its first release, the album later got an unexpected second wind when the single "Hiroshima" was reissued in Germany in 1976 and became a national hit, causing the band to briefly re-form for a pair of unsuccessful follow-ups. In the meantime, Wishful Thinking had landed a song on the soundtrack to Ringo Starr and David Essex's 1973 film That'll Be the Day. Later, Scott joined the final incarnation of the New Seekers under his real name, Danny Finn.
So Wishful Thinking was tangentially connected to enough big names and cult figures in British pop music to make Hiroshima an object of interest to the hardcore record nerd, but overlooked in this collector's frenzy is the fact that most of this album is rather dreadful. "Hiroshima" itself is an appealing prog-lite pop single matching Reizner's dramatic production style, Morgan's portentous lyrics, and Collier's slightly weedy voice into a suitably apocalyptic song pitched somewhere between Odessa-era Bee Gees and Barclay James Harvest. It's a nice little prog rock nugget worthy of inclusion on any mixtape or compilation CD of obscurities in the style, but the other ten songs on Hiroshima, with the possible exception of the amusingly fretful "United States of Europe '79," are uniformly bland pop songs given too-sweet production.
Collectors who simply must own the single are better advised to locate one of the several '70s-vintage 45 rpm reissues, or perhaps one of the unauthorized CD bootlegs of the album floating around the prog underground; paying top-dollar prices for the album itself is bound to disappoint all but the most undiscerning "rarity equals quality" folks.
The Walflower Complextion were an 1960s garage band. What was not average about them was that, even though they were American, they were formed, recorded, and performed in Bogota, Colombia. The five bandmembers, ranging in age from 14 to 17, were Americans attending high school in Bogota. Rock groups of any kind, let alone American ones, were rare in Colombia at this time. So despite their callow youth and primitive equipment, they were signed to Daro International Records after the label's president heard about them at a cocktail party.
The Walflower Complextion recorded two albums for Daro in their short lifetime, the first appearing in late 1966, the other a few months later in early 1967. In both performance and material, the LPs were quite similar to that mini-genre known among '60s collectors as "prep school" rock: vanity records, done by kids at private school, that were pressed in small quantities, pretty much just for the benefit of themselves, their family, and friends. Like almost all of those prep school LPs, the pair by the Walflower Complextion were populated by many cover versions, principally of British Invasion songs. Obviously they were huge fans of the Rolling Stones; their first album had four Stones covers, while the second had a couple of non-Stones originals that were nonetheless most likely learned from the Stones' covers of those items.
The Walflower Complextion actually appeared on television in Colombia, whose TV facilities were so crude at that point that on one of them they were filmed by the first television video camera in the country. The albums were only distributed in Colombia, and the group broke up in June 1967. Both of the LPs were reissued on a double CD by Normal/Shadoks.
by Richie Unterberger
Tracks
Disc 1
1. All It Is (Richard Sampson, Fred Sampson) - 2:45
2. Empty Heart (Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman) - 3:00
3. Tell Me (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards) - 3:27
4. Chris's B's (Chris Kryzs, Fred Sampson) - 3:28
5. Blue Bells (Richard Sampson, Chris Kryzs, Fred Sampson, Pat Sinex) - 1:51
6. Last Time (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards) - 3:08
7. Hanky Panky (Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry) - 2:27
8. Sapphire (Chris Kryzs, Fred Sampson, Pat Sinex) - 3:42
9. Blue Turns To Grey (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards) - 2:29
10.Long Tall Shorty (Don Covay, Herb Abramson) - 2:23
11.Yack The Ripper (Link Wray) - 2:18
12.Open Up Your Door (Richard Sampson) - 2:34
All Tracks from "Walflower Complextion" 1966
Disc 2
1. Baby Please Don't Go (Big Joe Williams) - 2:22
2. Route 66 (Bobby Troup) - 2:26
3. When I'm Far From You (Fred Sampson) - 3:01
4. Not Fade Away (Norman Petty, Charles Hardin) - 2:46
5. El Caiman (Jose Maria Penaranda) - 2:23
6. La Bamba (Traditional) - 3:03
7. From Head To Toe (Fred Sampson, Chris Kryzs) - 2:40
8. Needles And Pins (Jack Nitzsche, Sony Bono) - 2:22
In the brightly colored beehive where rare psychedelia drips like honey from the walls there's been buzz on this mysterious LP for several years, partly due to its musical appeal, partly due to the background story, which is a tale worth telling. Rick Saucedo is mainly known as an Illinois-based Elvis impersonator, and a successful one at that, but some time when the King's ghost wasn't looking he sneaked out and cut himself two sides of music that were as far to the other end of the spectrum as you can imagine; dreamy, melodic 60s-style psychedelia. The acidrock sleuths and dead wax bloodhounds tracked him down (of course), but were forced to deal with his manager -- possibly a "connected" guy -- who wasn't likely to see the merit of throwing light on this bizarre sidetrack in Saucedo's career. In fact, when a bunch of psych fans rounded up a healthy bag of coins in the hope of getting a few "Heaven Was Blue":s in return, the manager simply kept the money and made himself scarce!
Thus: a $900 price tag, continuing buzz, and the exact reissue now present before us. But the strangeness doesn't end quite there, because this LP has a skeleton in the closet, one that the psych mafia honchos were reluctant to share except behind locked doors. If you pressed your ear to the wall you could pick up references to a dread "50s medley" that screwed up the LP and, it was said, kept it from being bootlegged. It certainly explained why most tapes of the LP being traded only contained about 28 minutes of music; I know because I had one, and it was one of my most played tapes of an incomplete album ever. The "50s medley" rumor seemed a terrible waste as the rest of the LP was spellbinding, almost like a psych head's fantasy invention rather than an actual vinyl object.
So let's get that brylcreem skeleton out into direct sunlight and see what it's made of. Well, to begin with it's two separate tracks rather than a medley. Secondly, I wouldn't call them "50s" in some heinous Sha-Na-Na retro manner, but rather examples of the roots rock material you can find on albums by thousands of 1970s artists big and small. They're originals (I think) and do sound like a tribute to a bygone era, but I actually was expecting worse. My guess is that the Elvis impersonator angle influenced this urban myth out of proportion. These two tracks do not exactly improve or belong on the LP, and I'll probably skip by 'em -- easy to do as they close side 1 -- most times I play it, but that's about how bad it is. Case closed. Onward to the real meat.
"Heaven Was Blue" opens with "Reality", a dreamy yet concise trip of rich guitar tapestries and nice folky hooks. It sounds rather similar to those two other lost-in-time psych masters, Bobb Trimble and Michael Angelo, and could be seen as the perfect halfway house between them -- flowing and multilayered like Bobb's music (even to the point of having ghostly voices speak in the background), while the wistful vocals and droning melody come straight out of the 1967 Lennon school of Michael A. Rick Saucedo was obviously unaware of these competing acts, yet it's remarkable that three such outstanding psych timewarps exist with so much in common. If anyone finds the explanatory "X" factor be sure to send it my way. It's one hell of an album opener anyway.
Saucedo then spins a few wheels on his kaleidoscope and via a single echoing guitar note we flow into "In my mind", a counterpart and alternative to the "Reality" of almost the exact same duration. It's at least as strong as the opening track, a little heavier with fuzz chords chugging underneath the multilayered guitars and a more cutting vocal style, albeit still totally in a 1967-68 flowerpsych mood, while a reference to Jesus towards the end may recall D R Hooker. Along with the great use of organ and booming bass the track is reminiscent of the best tracks on Rain Parade's classic 1983 debut album, and one could spend a few hours discussing why "Heaven was blue" is one of the last relics of the original acid music era while the Parade's "Emergency" is instead one of the first (and best) retro LPs. We don't have time for such nonsense here, though.
Skipping past the two roots rockers discussed above it's time to flip the LP over and parachute into the marvelously painted landscape that constitutes Saucedo's sidelong title track. If it seems that "In my mind" and "Reality" gave promises of melodic psych nirvana, then "Heaven was blue" is the realization. Clocking in at almost 19 minutes it is something unique in the psych world; a successful transportation of the acid heritage from John Lennon's "Revolver" into the domains of carefully composed suites usually associated with bad 70s rock. It could have been just another J D Blackfoot, except that Saucedo pulls it off like a charm, don't ask me how -- stacking new melodies, guitar figures and arrangements atop the old ones every 3 minutes or so, each more swirling and enchanting than the last, and retaining a sense of progression throughout. The fact that it's less than a perfect performance, with guitars occasionally strolling off-key and the drummer seeming to wing it as he goes along, enforces the human warmth and removes any progrock specter forcefully.
There is a particular segment that begins around the 5:30-minute mark and lasts about 120 seconds which I am inclined to take as a glimpse of a place BEYOND psychedelia, beyond Lennon and Trimble and Michael Angelo and all the other acid geniuses, great or small, and everyone must hear this because it's the place where we should be. Exactly how a moonlighting Elvis impersonator found it is one for our children's children to ponder; in any event the whole "Heaven was blue" track is an amazing display of creativity and control, and when it's over it's like having been subjected to a dazzling Ludovico-method technicolor montage of everything you hallucinated on the walls when discovering the greatness of psychedelia long ago: "Sunshine superman"; "Porpoise song"; "Renaissance fair"; "Matilda mother"; they're all in there, along with thunder and rain sound FX, meandering acid guitars, and howling dogs.
You will notice I haven't said much about Rick Saucedo's lyrics and I have to admit it took a while for me to even notice them, considering the spellbinding nature of the music. But they're rather interesting I must say, and just like Trimble and to some extent Michael Angelo there's a darkness lurking beneath the hippie vibe. The lyrics for Saucedo's title track are thankfully printed on the back cover and at first I took them as some kind of agnostic love & brotherhood statement, but if you really get down to it they look a bit, um... sacrilegious, like maybe it isn't a coincidence that his dog is named Satan. The three psych tracks all deal with Death, its consequences and meaning; a theme reinforced by the back cover drawing of a graveyard with tombstones for the various people involved in making the LP. I've heard say that the whole LP came about after the shock Saucedo got from the King's death in 1977, and if so that provides an interesting subtext for the ambiguous message he delivers.
The "Heaven was blue" album as a whole is a challenge for a reviewer, and for once I'm going to abandon my principles and comment directly on the numerical rating. The three psychedelic tracks are as perfect "10"s as I've come across, while the two rockers get slapped with a "4" each. Taking the playtime of the tracks into account, this yields the formula (9*10 + 7*4 + 19*10) / 35 = 8.8. Quod Erat Demonstrandum. I could take another point off for Saucedo being such a schmuck to screw with what could have been one of the greatest psych LPs of all time, but truth is that about 5 minutes into side 2 those two rockers seem a distant memory, like a bad dream about to be forgotten. Oh yeah, the current reissue is a bootleg but looks and sounds real nice, certainly better than my old CD-R, so get it quick before it sells out.
The Head Shop were a short-lived band that only managed this one LP in 1969 on Epic and broke up shortly thereafter for lack of promotion and performance opportunities. The mastermind of the group was a certain Milan who came from Serbia in the fifties. Along with Max Ellenhe was responsible for the songwriting and the musical orientation.
The Head Shop make truly psychedelic music! Stereo effects, screams from Milan and alienated sounds of the instruments are interspersed and spread a spooky atmosphere or sound futuristic, as if the band were about to reach new musical dimensions. Track 10 starts out as a regular rock song, but fades out after less than two minutes. They are replaced by sci-fi-like sound collages that take you on a fascinating journey. "Infinity" doesn't walk on well-trodden paths - still psychedelic or ahead of the progressive revolution?
The opening title track is a psychedelic song that starts with some effects but ends in a tangle of guitars and voices all screaming "The Head Shop" - a humorous calling card. The boys must have been particularly fascinated by the vastness of the universe, because the theme is taken up again in "Heaven Here We Come" and the organs determine what is happening. Then we get the first cover version with "Sunny" (how often was that song actually covered?), the 1966 hit by Bobby Hebb , which gets the typical Head Shop sound. Here comes the exalted-theatrical, but at the same time convincing singing by Joe Sianoas well as on the following "Listen With The Third Ear", which unfortunately faded out much too early.
"Opera In The Year 4000" is including a version of the Beatles evergreen "Yesterday". The Fab Four are back - the interpretation of "Revolution" is convincing, it rocks and rolls as if punks are about to dismantle the kings of the beat. "I Feel Love Comin' On" is a solemn, ballad-esque jam number, featuring famed fusion guitarist Larry Coryell as a guest. With its spoken texts, "Prophecy" looks like an excerpt from a theater play - you can tell the standards Milan and Max Ellen had.
The original LP is supplemented by 7 bonus tracks, all of which seem like a footnote to the Head Shop story. Two numbers come from the previous formation The Aladdins . The later sound is revealed on "Scars", while "Second Best" could be a The Doors outtake. The last 5 songs have been compiled from Milan's earlier projects, ranging from folk with acoustic guitar accompaniment ("Sunshine", "In Central Park") to psychedelic pop ("Groovy Feelings") to rock flower power -Songs ("Flowers", "Kissing Game").
Another well done and beautifully presented release from World In Sound, as The Head Shop were able to create an original, almost unique form of Psychedelic. Pretty good stuff you music addicts!
by János Wolfart
Tracks
1. The Head Shop (Maxim Ellen, Milan Radenkovich, Ron Craig) - 3:00
2. Heaven Here We Come (Milan Radenkovich) - 2:45
3. Sunny (Bobby Hebb) - 3:14
4. Listen With The Third Ear (Milan Radenkovich) - 2:35
5. Opera In The Year 4000 / Where Have All The People Gone / Yesterday (Milan Radenkovich, John Lennon, Paul McCartney) - 4:23
6. Revolution (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) - 2:29
7. I Feel Love Comin' On (Milan Radenkovich) - 5:50
8. Prophecy (Maxim Ellen, Milan Radenkovich) - 2:19
Pan was a Danish rock band, formed in October 1969 in Copenhagen by Robert Lelièvre and Arne Würgler . The band released just one album, which bears the group's name and is considered to be among the very best in Danish rock history. Lelièvre and Würgler joined four other Danish musicians: Brothers Thomas and Michael Puggaard-Müller (guitar and drums), jazz organist Henning Verner (who had previously performed with Dexter Gordon ) and singer and songwriter Niels Skousen, who initially shared lead vocals with Lelièvre but left Pan as early as January 1970.
Their first single "In a Simple Way" / "Right Across My Bed" released January 1970, followed by their debut album Pan in May. All music and lyrics were written by Lelièvre (with two of the songs in French and the rest in English), and the production highlights the sophisticated mix of rock, blues, folk, jazz and even a few splashes of classical. At the time of its release, Pan was praised by the Danish press, and Dagbladet Information proclaimed it "the best Danish rock album so far". Over time, the record has achieved the status of a classic in Danish rock history. It is thus mentioned as the fourth best Danish rock album from the 1970s in Politiken's Dansk Rock . It was released in 2010 on a CD – boxset Dansk Rock Historie 1965-1978, vol.II. Besides that, it is also available on the original vinyl edition, and on the occasion of Record Store Day in 2016, it was reprinted on vinyl in a limited edition. The 2016 pressing itself is also in green vinyl .
Pan gave countless concerts in 1970, played at festivals in Denmark and Germany and appeared in two Danish radio broadcasts and a TV programme. The two radio broadcasts were recorded by DR and released on CD in 2004 by the Danish company Karma Music under the title Pan on the Air – Danish Radio Sessions 1970 . They also wrote and recorded 20 minutes of instrumental music for the Swedish film Deadline and themselves filled the role of a touring band in the film. However, despite the success on stage and in the media , Pan did not sell well and the band slowly disbanded during the autumn of 1970.
Writing on the Wall, from Edinburgh, Scotland is the epitome of an underground rock band. Their one and only album was entitled The Power of the Picts, released in 1969 on a label called Middle Earth (the band also happened to perform at the Middle Earth Club as well).
The label only had something like five albums released between 1969 and 1970 before disappearing. The band consisted of vocalist Linnie Paterson, guitarist Willy Finlayson, bassist Jake Scott, drummer Jimmy Hush, and keyboardist Bill Scott. Anyway, since this album came out in 1969, it should come as no surprise that Writing on the Wall sounds like how many other prog rock bands sound like at the time: not having yet abandoning their roots, in this case, hard rock, blues, and psychedelia. You can tell these influences right away from songs like "It Came On Sunday" or the ever heavy "Ladybird".
The real gems on this include "Mrs. Cooper's Pie", "Aries", and "Bogeyman". "Mrs. Cooper's Pie" is amazing, because with a title like that you might think it should sound some shitty song your mother sung to you in bed as a kid, but that's hardly the case at all! Basically, this is simply a wonderful, ingenious psych and prog number, with great Hammond organ work. "Aries" is the epic on this album, at over eight minutes, it really lets the band stretch out.
You'll hear some spoken dialog with a uniquely Scottish accent, some unbelievably heavy guitar riffs, and parts of it sounding like The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Plus there's a way cool jazzy solo as well. "Bogeyman" is a rather short number, and it starts off the most stupid way: a polka version of the famous Scottish song played on concertina (a song that everyone associates with bagpipes), but it's only 30 seconds, and the real song come in, and it's a totally amazing heavy bluesy piece that's the total epitome of underground. "Shadow of Man" starts off borrowing from Holst's The Planets, then it kicks in with Hammond organ and spoken dialog not unlike "Aries". "Ladybird" is another song, like "Bogeyman" that shows the band at its heavier side.
Most of the rest don't stick out for me, a couple songs seem to drag on too long (particulary the last song, "Virginia Water"), but none of them are bad. "Hill of Dreams" is a rather mellow number, and also least bluesy, so it ends up sounding like many countless early '70s British prog rock bands. The CD reissue also contains two bonus cuts, "Child on a Crossing" and "Lucifer's Corpus", both were originally released as a single in 1969 on the same label The Power of the Picts was released on (Middle Earth).
Unsurprisingly, these two songs are in the very same vein and could easily fit on the album. Oddly, the band won't be heard from again until 1973, when they released a single called "Man of Renown" and "Buffalo", but no followup LP materialized. After that the band broke up, with Linnie Paterson joining Beggars Opera for their 1973 album Get Your Dog Off Me (Beggars Opera being a prog rock band also from Scotland, although you should apparently only worry about their first three albums, 1970's Act One, 1971's Waters of Change, and 1972's Pathfinder).
Willy Finlayson was later a member of the final verson of Bees Make Honey, and made a guest on Manfred Mann's Earth Band's Chance (1980) and was a member of Meal Ticket. The rest of Writing on the Wall, unsurprisingly, hadn't been heard since that band broke up. The Power of the Picts is recommended if you like the bluesy and heavy end of the early prog rock spectrum, although it falls short of being the long lost gem I hoped it was, it's still worth having.
by Ben Miler
Tracks
Disc 1
1. It Came On A Sunday (Robert Smith) - 4:18
2. Mrs Coopers Pie (Billy T. Scott, Willy Finlayson, Jake Scott) - 3:21
3. Ladybird (Jimmy Hush, Billy T. Scott, Willy Finlayson, Jake Scott, Linnie Patterson) - 3:46
