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.
Newly I've listened a lot to more obscure, Swedish 60's beat/freakbeat/psych/garage bands, so I decided that until next Thursday I am just going to write about Swedish bands and artistes.
Jack Downing, the group's leader, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas but moved to Sweden in 1963. In October '65, he formed The Other Side together with three Englishmen and one Swede. They released one 45 in 1966 on a label called Karusell, before changing their name to Jack Downing & The Other Side and releasing four more country-sounding 45's on RCA Victor and CBS from 1969 to 1973. Downing also had a solo career for some years in the 70's.
This is the one single they released as The Other Side, and by far their best 45. The A-side is a song many have tried to cover, but few has made a good version of it. This version is OK, but nothing more. The flip, on the other hand, is great. The organ riff is brilliant, Downing's vocals are brilliant and everything else is rather brilliant as well.
Since a young man called Mac MacLeod was a member of the Other Side, both songs can be found on a compilation called "The Incredible Musical Odyssey Of The Original Hurdy Gurdy Man: Mac MacLeod".
The Mascots in '67, left to right: Gunnar Idering, Anders Forslund, Roffe Adolfsson & Stefan Ringbom
The Mascots were a fairly successful Swedish 60's group, issuing around twenty singles and two LP's between 1964 and 1968, and reaching the Swedish Top Ten with five of their 45's. The group was very influenced by Merseybeat and did some pretty lightweight, but sometimes charming pop. However, there were some exceptions, such as the song 'I Want To Live' from the 1966 album 'ELLPEE' (LP pronounced in Swedish).
(Note that the record company misspelled 'Different')
This song stood out from anything else the group recorded, with the weird lyrics, insanely cool fuzz-break and bouncing The Sorrows-esque drumbeats, this song is way ahead of it's time Freakbeat at it's best, and has been included on a few freakbeat compilations. The Mascots split up in 1969, and the groups members went on to play Progg in a band called Fria Proteatern.
