The Baby Squad

In the beginning they were called the Fenways. Hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they were a major draw on the regional circuit. Spunky singles such as “Be Careful Little Girl” and “The Walk” translated into huge local hits. The Fenways also played on “You’re The One” by the Vogues, which peaked at the No. 4 spot on the nationwide charts late in 1965. But as was the story with a host of bands, they were floored by the newfangled nuances of psychedelic music, and wasted not a second altering their outlook and approach. Garbed in Nehru jackets and love beads, the Fenways switched their name to the Racket Squad in 1967, and signed a contract with the Jubilee label. During their tenure, they recorded two full-length albums for the roster, which have been scrabbled together in 1999 by Collectables Records as a solitary disc. Bonus tracks are a plus, as well as informative history of the group…

Curated by Acid Jazz Records and Modcast founder Eddie Piller, “British Mod Sounds of The 1960s Volume 2: The Freakbeat & Psych Years” is the follow up to the hugely successful “British Mod Sounds of The 1960s”, featuring 95 original tracks across a 4CD set - a deep dive into the post-Mod scene in '60s Britain. Featuring a selection of classic and rare tracks, tracing the scene from early '65 to the dawn of a new decade.

Previous Grapefruit genre anthologies have shown how the various strands of British psychedelia developed tangentially in subsequent years: I’m A Freak Baby observed how the blues-based, harder-edged element of the genre gradually morphed into hard rock/proto-metal, Dust On The Nettles examined the countercultural psychedelic folk movement, while Come Join My Orchestra looked at the post-“Penny Lane” baroque pop sound. Our latest attempt to document the British psychedelic scene’s subsequent family tree, Lullabies For Catatonics charts the journey without maps that was fearlessly undertaken in the late Sixties and early Seventies by the more cerebral elements of the underground, inspired by everyone from Bartok, Bach and The Beatles to Dada, Dali and the Pop Art movement. Suddenly pop music was no longer restricted to moon-in-June lyrics and traditional song structures. Instead, it embraced the abstract, the discordant and the surreal as pop became rock, and rock became Art.