Hotlegs Thinks: School Stinks (1971) [remastered 2006]

Thanks to the novelty hit nature of the million-selling forty-five ‘Neanderthal Man’ (only prevented from topping the British singles chart in the summer of 1970 by Elvis Presley’s ‘The Wonder Of You’), little attention was paid at the time to the other recordings cut by pre-10cc act Hotlegs. That’s a shame, because the album Hotlegs Thinks: School Stinks (quickly remodelled and repackaged as Song) was a veritable smorgasbord of turn-of-the-decade studio pop moves that deserves to be considered alongside the heavyweights of the era. With its roots in the aborted 1969 Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon (aka Kevin Godley & Lol Creme) album for Giorgio Gomelsky’s Marmalade label, the Hotlegs LP was a daringly ambitious creation, peaking on the White Album-era McCartneyish ballads ‘Take Me Back’ and ‘Today’…

Octopus's sole long-player Restless Night is something of a treasure among '60s Brit-psych fans due to its mixture of proto-progressive riffs, accomplished pop tunes and sparkling Beatlesque flourishes. The band evolved out of the thriving Hertfordshire beat scene that also gave us The Zombies, The Gods and those other cult pop-psych heroes Forever Amber. Octopus' music was coloured by the use of keyboards and layered vocal harmonies in much the same way. As The Cortinas they enjoyed several years of local success which culminated in the 1968 CBS single "Phoebe's Flower Shop". The single was pure pop confectionery and betrayed little of the band's tight, melodic brand of rock. By the time they'd been signed to Larry Page's Penny Farthing label in 1969, their sound had expanded to encompass the burgenoning progressive scene, the dawn of the solo troubadour and the omnipresent influence of The Beatles…

Scratch the surface of early-seventies progressive rock and underneath all the classic albums and famous musicians you will find a series of lesser-known bands and artists who failed to hit the big-time but still managed to create all manner of excellent prog. Dig a little deeper and you'll find Mainhorse, a little-known European prog-rock group who produced one excellent album and introduced the world to the enigmatic swiss-born keyboardist Patrick Moraz, who would later on find fame with both Yes and The Moody Blues. The eponymously-titled Mainhorse debut was released to little fanfare in 1971 after the group had signed with Polydor Records 12-months previous, but dis-banded soon after the completion of their one-and-only album…