I See You Live On Love Street – Music From Laurel Canyon 1967-1975 (Grapefruit)

Grapefruit’s latest box of delights is a 3 CD trawl through the music of the denizens of Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon and its neighbourhood from the height of the summer of love to the coked out mid seventies. It’s a sort of follow up to the Heroes and Villains box from a couple of years ago that explored LA’s garage and psych scenes. Compiler David Wells, whose notes as ever are superb, apologises profusely for the lack of tracks by Neil Young, CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and the Eagles due to licensing issues (all of their rights holders won’t allow tracks to appear on multi-artist sets). However, most of those appear as musicians or songwriters on various tracks anyway. Besides, anybody with an interest in this kind of music will likely already own Blue, Harvest and Deja Vu.

What there is is a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. You can see from the picture some of the major names included: sometimes by big hits (“Love Street” obviously), sometimes by lesser known songs. Then there are cult figures, and a number of total obscurities. Susan Carter, Essra Mohawk and Russ Giguere are just three I’d never heard of before. There’s a logic in the sequencing, too, which can’t always be said for some box sets. It’s broadly chronological, but not strictly so. It is also one of the most consistently good boxes yet from Grapefruit. Sometimes ultra-obscurites dug out for their rarity value are obscure for a very good reason. Here, though, there’s a lot of stuff that never registered at the time that sounds just as good as the more famous songs. So, if you have even a passing interest in confessional singer-songwriterism, sunshine pop, folk rock and country rock (with a dash of Beefheart and Zappa thrown in), then I can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s a joy.

Patterns on the Window: The British Progressive Pop Sounds of 1974 (Grapefruit)

I thought this series may have ended with 1973. High in the Morning which came out around eighteen months ago was the weakest so far. These wee boxes are obviously only as good as the source material, and the pop charts that year were stuffed full of teenybop acts and novelty songs. 1974 was no different, as David Wells points out in his briliiantly detailed and droll sleevenotes (do you not feel there’s a book in you Mr Wells?). This time he’s come up with a really good blend of pop hits, deeper cuts by established acts and obscurites. In latter sets it has to be said that some of the obscurities unearthed should have stayed buried. That’s not the case here. And the net is cast really wide from Peter Hammill to Dr Feelgood, John Cale to Slade, and Status Quo to Richard and Linda Thompson. Stuff by the likes of Billy Kinsley, Tranquility, Holy Mackerel and Rescue Co. No.1 (household names all, clearly) sits comfortably among them. This series traces British pop from 1965 (Box of Pin-Ups), through the psychedelia of the late sixties, through to 1974 now. That’s eleven boxes of three CDs each (there are two volumes for 1967). That’s a hefty amount of listening, but all are recommended, and Patterns on the Window is one of the best.

You Can Walk Across It On The Grass (Grapefruit)

The latest of Grapefruit’s nifty triple CD box sets is subtitled The Boutique Sounds of Swinging London. Like all the label’s boxes, it is crammed (93 tracks) and has a generous booklet printed in a vanishingly small typeface. It is one of the oddest boxes they’ve put out. There is some of the perky Swinging London pop you would expect, but none of the post-Pepper paisley pop that crops up in other boxes. Instead you get TV themes (The Avengers and Man in a Suitcase), some library music, some novelty pop hits (“Kinky Boots”, Whistling Jack Smith, and Profumo flavoured ditties from Miss X and Mandy Rice Davies), some London soul from Jimmy James and Geno Washington, some mods, a number of genuine big hits from the Kinks, the Who, the Troggs and the Easybeats, and rather too much meat and potato British rhythm and blues. There are some genuine rarities that have never seen the light of day before, and a few real stinkers. And are they contractually obliged to put Bowie’s “I Can’t Help Thinking About Me” in every other box. Quibbles aside, it’s great value, and much of it is great fun. And David Wells’ (microscopic) sleeve notes are as ever extremely informative, but at the same time very droll.