The Sunday Times Style October 20 2024

Complete 3CD anthology of harmony pop band who had a Top 30 UK single in 1969 with 'All The Love In The World'. Features all of their singles as well as a huge number of demo recordings, including 20 tracks now gaining a first-ever issue. After being signed by producer and songwriter Tony Macaulay, North London harmony pop group West Coast Consortium issued a handful of sophisticated, lushly-orchestrated late Sixties singles for Pye. In the spring of 1969, they reached the No. 22 spot in the UK singles chart with the ballad 'All The Love In The World', issued under the abbreviated name Consortium. Unable to build on that success, the band splintered in 1972, although lead singer Robbie FaiR. Would put together an entirely new Consortium line-up a few years later. A 3CD set, 'All The Love In The World' features all of their Pye releases as well as subsequent recordings for the short-lived Trend label and no less than four acetate-only 1967-1969 albums recorded in the band's home studio. These demo recordings reveal them to have been a garage psychedelic pop band at heart, utilising Mellotron, fuzz guitar and Vox Continental organ while also suggesting a parallel debt to the lo-fi, DIY approach of 'Smiley Smile'/'Friends'-era Beach Boys. While some of these recordings have been issued before, this package sees the first-ever release of twenty additional tracks to provide the first-ever complete anthology of a band that deserve better than to be remembered as one-hit wonders.

Complete 3CD anthology of harmony pop band who had a Top 30 UK single in 1969 with 'All The Love In The World'. Features all of their singles as well as a huge number of demo recordings, including 20 tracks now gaining a first-ever issue. After being signed by producer and songwriter Tony Macaulay, North London harmony pop group West Coast Consortium issued a handful of sophisticated, lushly-orchestrated late Sixties singles for Pye. In the spring of 1969, they reached the No. 22 spot in the UK singles chart with the ballad 'All The Love In The World', issued under the abbreviated name Consortium. Unable to build on that success, the band splintered in 1972, although lead singer Robbie FaiR. Would put together an entirely new Consortium line-up a few years later. A 3CD set, 'All The Love In The World' features all of their Pye releases as well as subsequent recordings for the short-lived Trend label and no less than four acetate-only 1967-1969 albums recorded in the band's home studio. These demo recordings reveal them to have been a garage psychedelic pop band at heart, utilising Mellotron, fuzz guitar and Vox Continental organ while also suggesting a parallel debt to the lo-fi, DIY approach of 'Smiley Smile'/'Friends'-era Beach Boys. While some of these recordings have been issued before, this package sees the first-ever release of twenty additional tracks to provide the first-ever complete anthology of a band that deserve better than to be remembered as one-hit wonders.

Julie London A sultry, smoky-voiced master of understatement, Julie London enjoyed considerable popularity during the cool era of the 1950s. London never had the range of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, but often used restraint, softness, and subtlety to maximum advantage. An actor as well as a singer, London played with heavyweights like Gregory Peck and Rock Hudson in various films, and was married to Jack Webb of Dragnet fame for seven years before marrying songwriter Bobby Troup ("Route 66"). London performed her biggest hit, "Cry Me a River," in the Jayne Mansfield film The Girl Can't Help It. After recording her last album, Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, in 1969, she continued to act – playing a nurse on the NBC medical drama Emergency from 1974 until 1978. London left show biz altogether in the late '70s. In the mid-'90s she suffered a stroke, which led to a half-decade of poor health and ultimately contributed to her death on October 18, 2000.

Four-hour, 3CD, 91 track anthology of late 60s American bubblegum pop. Hit singles, cult collectables and obscure album tracks. Featuring The Archies, The Monkees, Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Co., The Lemon Pipers and Crazy Elephant. In the late summer of 1966, manufactured pop quartet The Monkees – a Beatles-inspired concept inevitably nicknamed the Prefab Four – made their TV and vinyl debut. Overseen by industry veteran Don Kirshner, whose Brill Building-honed team supplied most of the songs, The Monkees were aimed at the pre-teen market effectively disenfranchised by the increasingly sophisticated nature of mid-60s pop.

Four-hour, 3CD, 91 track anthology of late 60s American bubblegum pop. Hit singles, cult collectables and obscure album tracks. Featuring The Archies, The Monkees, Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Co., The Lemon Pipers and Crazy Elephant. In the late summer of 1966, manufactured pop quartet The Monkees – a Beatles-inspired concept inevitably nicknamed the Prefab Four – made their TV and vinyl debut. Overseen by industry veteran Don Kirshner, whose Brill Building-honed team supplied most of the songs, The Monkees were aimed at the pre-teen market effectively disenfranchised by the increasingly sophisticated nature of mid-60s pop.