The Pretty Things: article in Guardian today (10/25/18)

The Grauniad has a long piece on the Pretty Things today, as it's the 50th anniversary of SF Sorrow and there's an upcoming gig at the O2 on the 13th December.

The Pretty Things are a favorite of this blog.  The Norman Wisdom film, What's Good For The Goose. The Electric Banana album. The various sixties and 1970 videos and more.

The Guardian piece (link at top) is worth a read. I won't reproduce it all here, but I will reproduce the videos and accompanying remarks.

“The Blokker festival,” nods May. “It turned into a riot. The security were hitting the crowd with truncheons. I always think that was the first time the kids kicked off, instead of being knocked about and told to behave. They picked up the fucking crash barriers and charged the security. You could see the looks on the security guards’ faces: this shouldn’t be happening, I’ve just hit you with a truncheon and now you’re fucking smashing me over the head with a barrier.”

drummer John “Twink” Alder does a mime in white face and Napoleon hat, while May shoots him a succession of furious glares. He looks as if he wants to kill him. “Oh God, yeah,” nods May. “We all did. He got completely carried away. It was like: what are you fucking doing? It was his Marcel Marceau period.”

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?

The Pretty Things - Midnight to Six Man

No reason except I love the mid-sixties garage / nuggets music.

Pretties for you . . .

Excellent clip of the Pretty Things on Beat Club. It's from 1970 - at least judging by the waist-length hair of 1970_Beard!Phil. And of course the song, Cries From The Midnight Circus, which is from Parachute.

It's quite magic.

As is de riguer on Beat Club, Phil is wearing an orange t-shirt - but alas the TV studio's standard matching Orange amps are nowhere to be seen. The Pretty Things manage to color up the videospace quite nicely without them, however.



Outstanding stuff.

While we're at it, here's the Pretty Things singing "Balloon Burning" from S. F. Sorrow, with added Hindenburg video footage. I choose it for its resemblance to my dreams last night, which were probably similar to that of every Led Zeppelin fan after we tried and tried and tried and tried to register for tickets for the O2 reunion concert in November yesterday. . .

Pretty Things: Come See Me

Well, I'm sad to report I can't find a video of the famous incident with Led Zeppelin, a succulent young lady and a mudshark, but I did find a video of The Pretty Things, a very fetching young lady and a goat. (And a drummer who clearly has too much energy for one person. ) They are all together in an alley singing Come See Me, as shown on Popside. It's part of the same 1966 Swedish TVshow I mentioned earlier.



I have no idea why the Pretty Things were not famouser than they actually were. I'm sure there's one of those biographies out there, where in among all the standard 60's pop boilerplate text about being war-babies, taking pills, Transit vans, exploding drummers, naff gigs in Stevenage, split trousers and pie and chips at motorway service stations, there's a paragraph or two about why. If anyone has such a book, perhaps they can look up why the song's called Come See Me rather than I'm Your Man. Answers in an envelope, please.

Edit: Link updated 06/06/08

LSD

I still miss my fave poster Alquit and his trove of grooves. But there's still gems on YouTube.
Here's The Pretty Things on a Swedish show in 1966, singing "LSD".
(No relation to the Deviants' "Takin' LSD". )



LSD: For any whippersnappers out there, in 1966 English money was known as Pounds, Shillings and Pence. Shillings are easy to abbreviate. They get an S. Pounds, from Libra, the Latin for 'pound', were abbreviated L. And pence, from the little Roman coins 'denarii', were abbreviated D. So there you go. And the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about a kid's drawing.
I think - I haven't looked into this too closely – that the Deviants' song was about drugs.

Don't the Pretty Things look pretty in this? I seem to remember they were considered famously ugly – worse than the Stones, even – but Phil's looking hot in this one.