Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 123

Record label: Fleetwood

Produced: Quinn & Johnson, Inc. and Charlie Dreyer

Recorded: Fleetwood Studios, Revere, Massachusetts; 1968

Released: April 1968

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Jack Kerivan (p, o, v); Phil Dubuque (g, recorder, v); Rick Doyle (g, pc, v); Curt Girard (d); Paul Carter (b, v)

Track listing: Feelin’ Much Better; Midnight Hour; I’m So Happy; When You’re There; Four And Twenty Miles; Prelude For The Town Monk; Shadows; Dark Street Downtown; Portrait In Grey; In My Window; Satori

Running time: 32.16

Current CD: Arf-Arf AA-042

Further listening: There’s nothing at all, unfortunately. But the Arf-Arf label has lots of similar curiosities in its catalogue.

Further reading: www.arfarfrecords.com

Download: Not currently legally available

For some bands obscurity seems almost inevitable: for the Flat Earth Society it was assured. When the Boston-based FB Washburn Candy Company decided to promote their tasty new Waleeco candy bar by holding a competition amongst local groups to write a radio jingle, the prize they offered the winning band was the chance to cut an album. After submitting the chosen song, the Flat Earth Society, a group of talented teenagers from Lynn, Massachusetts, assembled at Fleetwood Studios. With no previous recording experience they found that they had only rehearsed enough songs for half the album and so the rest had to be written on the spot. Time was at a premium and the studio facilities were crude, but with considerable ingenuity the results were remarkable. Paul Carter recalls that in order to give his bass more definition he had to place his amplifier in the studio’s bathroom: in Feelin’ Much Better, a phasing effect was achieved by spraying an aerosol can into a bucket!

The band were heavily influenced by Jefferson Airplane and, of course, The Beatles, but also by folk music, which comes to the fore on When You’re There and Prelude For The Town Monk. There’s a beautiful electric piano rendition of Midnight Hour – the only non-original track – but it is on the second side that the group, forced to improvise, really show their talents; the atmospheric Dark Street Downtown; Portrait in Grey is an extended instrumental with haunting recorder playing; Satori, the album’s mysterious, psychedelic climax, a wash of backwards piano spiked with sitar-like guitar. As the hype on the back cover put it: ‘Their bag is that they’re in no particular bag at all.’

Unfortunately, anyone who wished to hear the album was required to send off $1.50 together with six Waleeco wrappers. Few bothered and, with little else in the way of promotion, the record was destined to become a land-fill. Happily, now that it’s reissued on CD, everyone can hear it without rotting any teeth.