The Alan Bown The Alan Bown!

2016 three CD collection. As that noted hipster Plato once observed, when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake. And there was certainly a whole lotta shakin' goin' on in 1967. A distended Summer of Love saw psychedelic pop emerging from the underground clubs to infiltrate the home-grown music scene mainstream, with the vast majority following in the footsteps of perennial market leaders The Beatles in surrendering to the new genre. As the year progressed, it seemed that more or less every element of the British pop world had been swept up in the blissed-out UFOria. Beat boom survivors, R&B stalwarts, sharp-suited mods, Swinging London soul revues, earnest acoustic folkies, Denmark Street hustlers, traditional pop acts… all abandoned or refined their previous identities to make music that reflected the ubiquitous influence of psychedelia in it's myriad paisley-patterned guises. Across four hours and eighty tracks, the all-singing, not-much-dancing Let's Go Down And Blow Our Minds anticipates the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love to chronicle a tumultuous twelve-month period of music-making within the British Isles.

Keeping The Faith / 28 Stompin' Northern Soul Classics consists of Northern Soul classics from the late '60s until the early '70s, including artists like Jimmy James, The Sapphires, The Showstoppers, and Kim Davis. Many of the tracks on this compilation are the rare grooves that those original fanatics of Northern Soul would have hunted down relentlessly and paid big bucks for had they found them.

First-ever legitimate anthology of British toytown pop, a much-loved sub-genre among. Four-hour compilation with 87 tracks including hits, misses, rarities and previously unreleased. Issued at the start of 1967, Beatles’ single ‘Penny Lane’ coupled a widescreen production (bolstered by a phalanx of session musicians on brass and woodwind) with a mildly hallucinogenic lyric populated by mundane characters going about their unremarkable suburban lives.
It proved to be an enormously influential record. For the next year or two, British pop was awash with records that married quasi-classical arrangements with newly-minted fairy tales and character vignettes based around the grey everyday lives of ordinary small-town folk.

Three CD set. Although the lushly-arranged, harmony-based late 60s Sunshine Pop sound is most readily associated with America in general and the sun-kissed California region in particular, the reality is that it was always an international phenomenon. What A Groovy Day is a thrilling four-hour celebration of Britain's contribution to the genre, ranging from household names (The New Seekers, Cliff Richard, Petula Clark, The Hollies, Herman's Hermits) to terminally obscure acts like Infinity and The Mellow Yellow, who failed to release anything at the time. Naturally our compilation includes contributions from the two uncrowned kings of the 60s British harmony pop sound, vocalist Tony Rivers (who provides us with our title song) and studio all-rounder John Carter, represented as both performer and songwriter. Other highlights come from posthumously-acclaimed Sunshine Pop maestros Design, a trio of music library recordings by the largely overlooked but hugely talented backroom auteur Barbara Moore and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, the first-ever release of The Sweet's first demo recording, cut when they were still known as Sweetshop.

In 2016, Cherry Red’s psychedelic imprint Grapefruit Records released the 3CD set ‘Let’s Go Down And Blow Our Minds’, a hugely successful, widely-acclaimed anthology of lysergically- inclined music made in Britain during the epochal year of 1967. In response to the many requests we’ve received, here’s the long-awaited second volume, housed like its predecessor in a clamshell box with a lavishly annotated and illustrated 48- page booklet. Featuring 79 mind-melting tracks from British psychedelia’s key year, ‘Too Much Sun Will Burn’ covers all bases, incorporating the era’s big hitters (The Move, The Who, Small Faces, ISB, Pretty Things, The Zombies), huge singles (Traffic, Procol Harum, The Hollies, Eric Burdon & The Animals, The Troggs), cult 45s (Paper Blitz Tissue, Made In Sheffield, Caleb and many others) and such future legends as Bowie, Genesis, Alex Harvey and Elton John, with a track from his legendary aborted debut LP ‘Regimental Sgt. Zippo’.

Embracing psychedelic pop (The Mirage, Jason Crest, Shy Limbs, Crocheted Doughnut Ring etc), the burgeoning progressive rock scene (T2, Czar, Fat Mattress) and acid folk (the likes of Simon Finn and Mark Fry), ‘Love, Poetry And Revolution’ draws on a number of catalogues, including Beacon (The Fut, Information, pre-Damned act Taiconderoga), the Vic Keary stable and various collector labels (Sunbeam, Acme, Tenth Planet/Wooden Hill) to give a fascinating, all-embracing overview of what was a tumultuous few years in British pop/rock history. Cherry Red’s dedicated UK psych imprint Grapefruit is proud to announce the re- press of the 3CD anthology Love, Poetry and Revolution: a journey through the British psychedelic and underground scenes 1966-1972.

Embracing psychedelic pop (The Mirage, Jason Crest, Shy Limbs, Crocheted Doughnut Ring etc), the burgeoning progressive rock scene (T2, Czar, Fat Mattress) and acid folk (the likes of Simon Finn and Mark Fry), ‘Love, Poetry And Revolution’ draws on a number of catalogues, including Beacon (The Fut, Information, pre-Damned act Taiconderoga), the Vic Keary stable and various collector labels (Sunbeam, Acme, Tenth Planet/Wooden Hill) to give a fascinating, all-embracing overview of what was a tumultuous few years in British pop/rock history. Cherry Red’s dedicated UK psych imprint Grapefruit is proud to announce the re- press of the 3CD anthology Love, Poetry and Revolution: a journey through the British psychedelic and underground scenes 1966-1972.

Four CDs. Demon are proud to release Eddie Piller Presents British Mod Sounds Of the 1960s, the follow up the The Mod Revival. Featuring 100 original tracks, it's a deep dive into the Mod scene in '60s Britain. Including a selection of classic and rare tracks, tracing the scene from it's R&B roots to a soulful finale. Curated by Acid Jazz Records and Modcast founder Eddie Piller, and featuring new sleeve notes from respected author and broadcaster Paul 'Smiler' Anderson. As Eddie Piller points out in the forward to the extensive sleeve notes that accompany this collection, he chose the word 'Sounds' carefully, reflecting the variety of talent contained here, from uncool session musicians without an ounce of style in them, acts who saw an opportunity to jump on the Mod bandwagon and bands who whole heartedly embraced Mod way of life. And so this new collection mixes the Mod mainstays (Small Faces, The High Numbers, The Action, The Fleur de Lys), with a generous selection of future superstars (David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Marc Bolan, Jeff Beck and Graham Gouldman of 10cc are all represented here), and a few artists so obscure, so rare, that they never got to release a record in the '60s, but Eddie has tracked down the tapes nonetheless. "Be in with the In Crowd once more."

Although the lushly-arranged, harmony-based late 60s Sunshine Pop sound is most readily associated with America in general and the sun-kissed California region in particular, the reality is that it was always an international phenomenon.
The three-CD set, ‘What A Groovy Day’ is a thrilling four-hour celebration of Britain’s contribution to the genre, ranging from household names (The New Seekers, Cliff Richard, Petula Clark, The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits) to terminally obscure acts like Infinity and The Mellow Yellow, who failed to release anything at the time.