Runcible Tales

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.