Fabulous Four- Rotten Rats/Goodbye My Love Swedish Fontana 271 257 TF 1966
The next one up for my Swedish sixties pandemonium is this Stockholm group with the probably Beatles-influenced name of Fabulous Four. The group was mostly known for their light harmony pop, but this is about as far from light harmony pop as you can get.
"Rotten Rats" is a perfect example of what might happen when the charts and producers doesn't get all the power. There is lots of aggressive fuzz noise and gritty (in a good way) production.
The B-side, a cover of "Goodbye My Love", is more in the "light harmony pop" vein. It is not bad, albeit not really my thing.
(I could not find a picture of the 45 on the internet. Here is instead a picture of The Moderations themselves.)
(No, that is NOT Jimmy Page sitting on the left)
The Moderations came from Malmö and released this classy piece of pop perfection in 1966. They consisted of:
Anders Netshagen: vocals
Peter Clemmendson: lead guitar
Lars-Åke "Lacke" Kellgren: rhythm guitar
Anders "Jonte" Bjellerup: bass
Per-Ove "Muffe" Kellgren: drums.
This, their only single, seems to be recorded in the Metronome studio in Copenhagen. "Hard To Forget" is a driving Mod-pop track with great "twanging" guitar and a tinkling piano in the background. The vocalist's English is also very good for being a Swedish teen in the mid-60's. On the flip there is a cover of Sam Cooke's "Shake". It is an okay version, not bad but not as excellent as "Hard To Forget" by any means.
Ok, first off I would like to say I'm sorry that I haven't been able to post anything in the latest days. I was planning to post a lot, but then I had to work a lot so I didn't get any time to post. I'll stretch it out anyway, the "Swedish special" will go on for eight more posts.
Here we have "14" (yes, it is supposed to be spelled with quotes) with their second and last UK 45, "Umbrella/Drizzle" (Olga OLE 006). "14" came from Finspång and released impressive eight singles and one LP on the Olga label, (run by local hitmakers The Hep Stars), something very unusual for a fairly unsuccessful Swedish pop group in the 60's.
"Umbrella" is a jolly piece of baroque psych with great lyrics. The harpsichord that we hear in about the middle of the song really drives it home. My favourite is the flip, though. "Drizzle" also features the harpsichord, albeit a little bit more of it which is not a bad thing at all. A bad thing is, though, that they only included phasing on the demo copies of the 45.
