AUGUST PLAYLIST

1.  Max Roach – ‘Freedom Day’ (1960)

“Freedom Day, it's Freedom Day. Throw those shackle n' chains away.” With lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr, sung by Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach’s We insist! Freedom Now Suite is a potent, unflinching album fuelled by the civil rights movement.

2.  Ken Jones – ‘Chicken Pot Pie’ (1963)

The label credit reads Ken Jones, His Piano and Orchestra but you can add Kitchen Sink to that list as Jones cooks up a swinging OTT instrumental feast of go-go goodness.

3.  Darlene McCrea – ‘My Heart’s Not In It’ (1964)

Darlene sang with the Cookies but this Gerry Goffin/Russ Titelman song and production tops anything they did.

4.  Him - 'It's A Man Down There' (1966)

He was Doug Sham and this featured on the first Sir Douglas Quintet LP but curiously was released as a 45 under the more mysterious name. Either way it's swampy Texan blues to get down to.

5.  Jimmy McGriff – ‘Miss Poopie’ (1969)

When Starsky and Hutch busted some badass pimps in a New York strip joint, the band played on.

6.  Frumpy – ‘Indian Rope Man’ (1970)

Worst band name ever and although teetering on the brink of proggy, German rockers Frumpy knock out a pretty groovy version of the Richie Havens via Brian Auger/Julie Driscoll classic.

7.  The Supremes – ‘Life Beats’ (1970)

Earmarked for their first post-Ms Ross single, only for it to be ousted at the last moment for ‘Up The Ladder To The Roof’, it showed there was still plenty of life in the Supremes.

8.  The Deep Six – ‘Heading For A Fall’ (2017)

Makin’ Time were one of the shining lights in the mid-80s Mod scene so it’s good to hear from co-singer Mark McGounden again. New album with new band, Introducing The Deep Six, doesn’t have the gloss of his illustrious past – sounds like it was recorded on a tight budget – but Mark’s knack for breezy 60s toetappers remains with ‘Heading For A Fall’ the pick of the bunch.

9.  Childhood – ‘Californian Light’ (2017)

My thanks to Ian Pople of The Acoustic Egg Box for repeatedly nudging me about Childhood who’ve transformed themselves into a sleek modern soul band – part MGMT, part Isley Brothers - all top down, arm out the window, cruising the coast of Santa Cruz via the mean streets of South London.

10.  Len Price 3 – ‘Telegraph Hill’ (2017)

Forthcoming Kentish Longtails (out 15 September) is currently in pole position for the Monkey Picks album of the year, it's that good. The usual bish-bash rowdy singalongs remain, as do the mod-pop Townshend windmilling anthems, and while they’ve done subtler songs before (‘Medway Sun’ for example) they’ve truly up their game here with a handful of soft-centred corkers. ‘Telegraph Hill’ is truly beautiful: full of tea-and-biscuits romanticism, with echoes of the old Hovis advert and Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag. Bonus points for “The hurly-burly and the hullabaloo, won’t stop us doing all the things we want to do, before we get much older”. Song of the year for sure.

KEN LOACH GOES MOD: THE END OF ARTHUR'S MARRIAGE (1965)

The Wednesday Play ran on BBC Television between 1965 and 1969. Ken Loach directed ten in total, including perhaps the two most talked about and memorable: Up The Junction in 1965 and Cathy Come Home the following year. These thought-provoking documentary style dramas helped establish Loach as a filmmaker (they didn’t look like plays in the traditional sense) bringing social issues – including abortion, poverty, unemployment and homelessness – to greater prominence and generating further debate. Three Clear Sundays (1965) looked at capital punishment and In Two Minds (1967) dealt with schizophrenia and mental health. These four plays and more are available, in their entirety, on YouTube posted by Ken Loach Films and – like, of course, Poor Cow and Kes - are essential viewing; still powerful after all this time.  

However, tucked amongst these is The End Of Arthur’s Marriage. Written by Christopher Logue and Stanley Myers, filmed in May and June of 1965 and broadcast on 17 November (two weeks after Up The Junction, incidentally much grittier and bearing little resemblance to the film version which came later) it’s something of a curio in Loach’s collection. Although it pokes a stick at the class divide, the generation gap and consumerism, it’s more light-hearted in manner and tone and mixes narration, music, realism and fantasy to create an engaging film. Loach would later suggest the result was “a total cock up” but it was an adventurous project and if for nothing else other than to record some of the best footage of Mods I’ve seen, it was nothing short of a success.

The story centres on Arthur (played by Ken Jones, best known as Ives in Porridge) whose in-laws hand over their life savings of four hundred pounds to put a deposit on a house for him, his wife Mavis and daughter Emmy. When Arthur fails to secure the property he treats his Emmy to a day of extravagance in London, swanning around the West End buying everything she wants; beginning with sweets and ending with something far larger.

There are three notable “Mod scenes”, starting with Arthur’s elderly in-laws sat in front of the television watching young Mods dancing to a Long John Baldry song on a Ready, Steady, Go! type programme. Dad can’t work his new Japanese “armchair channel selector” so they are lumbered but their loss is our gain as these sharp dressed individuals show off their clothes, shoes, hair and dance moves. It’s a brilliant sequence of Mods at arguably their peak; looking young, fresh, stylish, carefree and modern; in contrast to the old order and values enshrined by Arthur’s in-laws who scrimped and saved, never setting foot abroad or even visiting the cinema. Later, Arthur and Emmy, in a rather random scene in an abandoned gas works, encounter a Mod couple on a GS playing “Kinky Dolly” by Samantha Jones on a portable radio and towards the end a whole herd of Mods appear on scooters and foot to party with Arthur and Emmy on a boat winding through East London on the Regent’s Canal.

Mods or no Mods it’s an interesting watch with lots of sharp satire and social commentary but for all Mr. Loach’s passionate work in championing the working class, the underdog, the downtrodden, who doesn’t get a kick out of kids embracing continental styling and riding around on Lambrettas?