Things 3.9

For whatever reason, Pretty Things failed to make significant inroads in the U.S. when the window of opportunity was open widest. Perhaps the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Animals more than fulfilled the quota for invading bad boys. Maybe their sophomoric (and less than artistic) obsession with drugs played a role, though that's doubtful, given the preponderance of mind-altering substance cheerleading by '60s bands. Like the Stones, Pretty Things incorporated garage, R&B, and psychedelia into their aggressive style of rock & roll…

The most comprehensive collection of the Pretty Things’ BBC ‘live’ recordings on the market, with several previously unreleased tracks, now all together for the first time on this newly remastered 4CD set, assembled with the assistance of the BBC. Sourced from the BBC archives, this newly updated 60-track set covers numerous songs from the 1960s & 1970s period - including smash hits such as ‘Rosalyn’, Don’t Bring Me Down’, ‘Midnight To Six Man’, R&B standards ‘Road Runner’ and ‘Route 66’, and later classic album tracks ‘Defecting Grey’, ‘S.F. Sorrow Is Born’, ‘Singapore Silk Torpedo’ and ‘Dream / Joey’. These sessions were recorded by the world renowned broadcasting organisation for radio and TV. Our CDs explore all the Pretty Things’ BBC Radio One output, including 1960s ‘Top Gear’, ‘Saturday Club’, the later ‘Peel Sessions’ and ‘Sounds Of The 70s’…

Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 – which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration – that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to seven or four, or even two, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass – natch), and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus; harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful; sitars included in the array of stringed instruments; and an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron…

Disc 1 recorded on April 1 and 2, 1994 at Onkio Haus, Tokyo. Disc 2 to 4 recorded on March 29, 1994 at Pit-Inn, Tokyo.