rep>>> The Griffin - The World's Filled With Love (1968 us, fabulous colorful beat psychedelia)

Griffin was an obscure flower power pop psych band  with their 1968 ABC label album, optimistically titled “The World’s Filled With Love.” And anyone with a sweet tooth for the first two Strawberry Alarm Clock long players, or the mystical but still pop-centrific later Monkees albums, or anyone who still believes the world is filled with bunnies and pink cotton candy clouds, will find Griffin ’s naïve but surprisingly trippy outlook on life pretty reassuring.  

Griffin summoning up their inner Kahlil Gibrans when they sing “Know thyself is just a phrase, till some have passed through the haze. I’ve figured out the maze, in my other life.” As Ravi Shankar’s dad, I’m guessing, since they surround it with the same kind of floaty, mystical sitar and tabla head zones that George did on his passages to India , all bellydancing rhythms, snakey sitar lines and om-like chanting background vocals. I’ll take a thousand of these ambitious, “Within You Without You” electric sitar headswirlers over another bad bar band boogie track, and that’s in this life and any of my past lives. 

Elsewhere, the excellent “Magic Carpet Ride” is not a cover of the Steppenwolf karaoke bar perennial, but a tremendous popsike original, with upbeat tempo, moody minor keys and groovy hip lounge bar vocals – definitely a close musical cousin to anything off the first Strawberry Alarm Clock albums. Not quite soft pop, since the frenetic fast-paced rhythm could power any Nuggets band’s next garage single, and not quite garage either, since the lush and trippy vocal harmonies sound positively Beatlesque – this one straddles the genres like some tougher flower power anthem, and features a super groovy electric piano solo that beats the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” by three full years. They’re still straddling genres on the killer “I’m Movin’ On”, a great organ-led pop punker with the kind of wild freakout break that lifted the Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction” to legendary garage punk status. But again, the melody’s more pop-savvy than your average Nuggets nugget, so this comes off sounding more like a harder, trippier Monkees – think “Circle Sky” from the soundtrack to Head . 

So if Griffin ’s album straddles the grey area between soft pop and garage punk, it’s only natural. Because the world is filled with love and anger, youthful innocence and teenage aggression. And since every song on “The World’s Filled With Love” is connected to the next by some faint calliope organ music, maybe the world really is filled with pink cotton candy clouds too. 

Worthpoint

Tracks
1. The World's Filled With Love (Vince Morton) - 0:25  
2. Baby, Won't You Come With Me? (Bruce Bentley) - 2:03
3. Give All Your Loving To That Man (Bruce Bentley) - 2:32
4. Small Talk (Vince Morton) - 2:50
5. I'm Takin' The Freeway (Bruce Bentley) - 2:30
6. I'm Movin' On (Bruce Bentley) -  2:50
7. Magic Carpet Ride (Vince Morton) - 3:45
8. The World's Filled With Love (Vince Morton) -  0:25
9. I Could Never Leave You (Bruse Bentley, Jerry Brown, Vince Morton) - 1:50
10.In My Other Life (Jerry Brown) - 3:25                
11.Who Wants A Girl Like You? (Vince Morton) - 2:15
12.Lovely Blossom (Vince Morton, Jerry Brown) - 3:27
13.Murder In The Cathedral (Vince Morton) - 2:32
14.The World's Filled With Love (Vince Morton) - 2:55

The Griffin
*Vince Morton - Keyboards
*Jerry Brown - Percussion And Drums
*Bruce Bentley - Guitars

Just Paste

Text Host
Free Text

rep>>> Tudor Lodge - Tudor Lodge (1971 uk, wonderful hippie baroque folk rock harmonies, 2011 remaster with bonus track)

Tudor Lodge was originally formed in 1968, featuring John Stannard and Roger Strevens. The group started playing at the White Horse in Reading, England and later made appearances at other clubs on the folk circuit. In 1969 Lyndon Green replaced Roger. Lyndon had just returned to England after treading the hippy trail to Turkey and within a year they were joined by American singer and flautist, Ann Steuart. Tudor Lodge then toured the English folk circuit for over two years, teaming up with manager Karl Blore in March 1970, and releasing their first album in 1971: “Tudor Lodge” (Vertigo 6360043). Later that year, the group appeared at the prestigious Cambridge Folk Festival and also at Weeley Festival in Essex.

Annie left the group in 1972 and was briefly replaced by Linda Peters, who became better known through her work with husband Richard Thompson. That year saw Tudor Lodge touring Holland where they featured on Dutch Radio after which the group disbanded with their various careers diverging.

Tudor Lodge

The eponymous debut album by Tudor Lodge taps into both the perpetual collectibility of the early-'70s Vertigo label catalog and the mid-2000s' growing fascination with British folk-prog of the same era. The trio of Lyndon Green, John Stannard, and Ann Steuart, backed by a heavyweight band of folk and classical legends (the redoubtable rhythm section of Danny Thompson and Terry Cox included), Tudor Lodge were unashamedly pastoral -- their music is the sound of a summer's day in centuries past, where "grey-backed squirrels run to safety," ("Forest"), ladies "disappear into the sunset, shrouded in organdie and wine" ("Willow Tree"), and even bloody battlefields become a place for quiet contemplation ("Help Me Find Myself"). 

And, all the while, clarinets twinkle, violins sigh, and cellos call to one another across the verdant fields. Recorded in a mere two weeks in early 1971, Tudor Lodge is very much a child of its times -- hopeful, gentle, and so delicately melodic that, even with harmonies hurtling like asteroids across "I See a Man," there is a Spartan simplicity to the record that surely exacted a major toll on the latter-day likes of Belle & Sebastian -- a comparison that the almost raunchy guitar and psych-soaked wah-wah of "The Lady's Changing Home" only amplifies. In its original vinyl form, Tudor Lodge was released in a grandiose six-panel die-cut sleeve, decorated with the intricate penciled sketches of artist Phil Duffy. In common with Akarma's other Vertigo reissues, this fabulous packaging has been restored in its entirety. Like the music, it's breathtaking. 

by Jo-Ann Greene

Tracks

1. It All Comes Back To Me (John Stannard) - 4:19

2. Would You Believe? (John Stannard) - 2:29

3. Recollection (Lyndon Green) - 3:18

4. Two Steps Back (Ann Steuart, Lyndon Green) - 2:53

5. Help Me Find Myself (John Stannard) - 4:19

6. Nobody's Listening (John Stannard) - 3:32

7. Willow Tree (Ann Steuart, John Stannard, Lyndon Green) - 3:21

8. Forest (Lyndon Green) - 3:36

9. I See A Man (John Stannard) - 3:01

10.The Lady's Changing Home (John Stannard, Lyndon Green) - 4:38

11.Madeline (Lyndon Green) - 4:05

12.Kew Gardens (Ralph McTell) - 2:26

13.The Good Times We Had (Noel Paul Stookey) - 3:01

Tudor Lodge

*Lyndon Green - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar

*John Stannard - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar

*Ann Steuart - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Piano, Flute

With

*Mike Morgan - Electric Guitar

*Graham Lyons - Bassoon, Clarinet

*G. Wareham - Oboe, Cor Anglais

*Douglas Moore - Horn

*Tony Coe - Alto Flute, Clarinet

*Sergei Bezkorvany - Violin

*David Marcou - Violin

*Fred Buxton - Viola

*Suzanne Perreault - Cello

*Danny Thompson - Bass

*Terry Cox - Drums

*Sonny Condell - African Drums

Just Paste

Text Host

Free Text