The Pretty Things, Promotional Video 1969

Here's a promotional movie for The Pretty Things, 1966.

I find it astounding how many music videos there are that were made before there were music videos that are only now being seen, after videos themselves are over and done with.

I can't quite figure out what's going on, but that may be because I'm not sufficiently groovy.





As well as their own albums, the Pretty Things recorded for films, under an assumed name. According to Wikipedia,

Electric Banana was a pseudonymous 1967 album of the band. The band recorded this album and two subsequent ones for the De Wolfe Music Library. De Wolfe provided stock music for film soundtracks. The Electric Banana music wound up on various horror and soft-porn films of the late 1960s, such as What's Good for the Goose (1969). When the album was released, the stage name the Electric Banana was used to hide the band's identity. ^[2]

Due to the magic of the interwebs, the entire album is available on YooToob.



I have a copy of What's Good For the Goose and I have to say you'd be disappointed if you rented it as either soft porn or horror. It's one of those British movies of the time period, of an ilk with the "confessions of a window cleaner" films, which features Norman Wisdom as a little old unhip guy who wows the hippy scene, man, and gets the chick.  I've never known what people see in those trolls-get-great-girls movies (possibly because I'm a chick meself) but they sure are popular - the modern equivalent would be the Manic Pixie Dream Girl selflessly furthering the ambitions of the unlucky man out touch with his emotions.

Goose doesn't just feature the music of the Electric Banana, it actually features performances by the Pretty Things, as the Electric Banana, having one of those rave-ups, or perhaps freak-outs, that were dee rigger in youth films at the time.

And of course, that's available on YouTube too. The drummer with the band in the movie is, of course, the one and only Twink. He does appear to be truly both raving up and freaking out, so Norm got his money's worth (twelve and six, true fact) at the Screaming Apple Discotheque. (First number starts about 22:50, next one (the better track) at 1: 05:20 and one at 1:26:20 or so.)

(Edited: Alas no longer available on YouTube)

This movie reminds me that I haven't seen that shade of honey blonde hair since the mid-seventies. I wonder what happened to it?