VARIOUS

Superb second volume charting a counterculture in transition, steeped in prog.

“S uddenly everything was longer, louder, hairier and heavier,” says this series’ compiler and annotator David Wells, and so it was with the period 1968-73 when pop music, liberated from its three-minute straitjacket, became progressive, not always strictly in sound, but definitely in mindset.

This second three-disc collection provides another perfect summation of a period in flux with tracks by Edgar Broughton Band, The Deviants, Patto et al. Andromeda’s Let’s All Watch The Sky Fall Down is among many stand-outs; fronted by John Du Cann, formerly of mod band The Attack, the short-lived trio seek transcendence through beautiful noise. Taking The Yardbirds’ Happenings Ten Years Time Ago as their blueprint, a frenzied guitar attack and choral voices drive its dark rhythms forward to create an uneasy end of the world ambience. Du Cann’s also here on Atomic Rooster’s Death Walks Behind You: the title track from their Top 20 album is harder edged, a Blakian nightmare of trippy effects and heavy organ. Their organist Vincent Crane had started in The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, and their inner workings are captured here on a demo of Fire!. Minus the orchestral passage added later, it’s otherwise fully formed, although it’s Crane rather than Brown centre-stage: his bass pedals/organ creating a template for heavy rock to come.

Another foundation is put in place by Jeff Beck and his group’s muscular revisit of The Yardbirds’ Shapes Of Things, which he’d appeared on, of course – and with Rod Stewart on vocals and Ronnie Wood on bass it’s also a forerunner to The Faces. Elsewhere, The Move’s Turkish Tram Conductor Blues is an attractive amalgam of skronking sax, menacing riffs and a runaway beat;

Love Sculpture’s Sabre Dance is a playful meshing of Russian ballet and amphetamine-fuelled flying guitar solos; the Lemmy-voiced Horse (by Sam Gopal) is an edifying psych-rocker.