And hamsters grew wings and flew on the doors

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

08/09/68 : The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown - The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

"Arthur - I can call you Arthur, right?"
"No man - I only answer to The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown"
"OK, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown - what do you want to call your album?"
"Man - I've had the ker-aze-iest idea.  It's gonna blow your mind!"

I am aware of TCWOAB, but only because of their reasonably well-known single "Fire" - I'm expecting the rest of the album to sound like it but madder - and worse.

And well, it does - but rather like The Moody Blues, it's quite an enjoyable mad and bad.  A lot of it also sounds remarkably like stuff that David Bowie was doing 5-10 years later so it's certainly worth checking out from a musical completist point of view.  No, I'm never going to listen to it again but we're certainly on an intriguing run of albums after a very poor start to the year.  And, once again, we've got quite an album cover to gaze upon in wonder.

We're at #6 in the charts this week on his eleventh week of a sixteen week run, having peaked at #2 in weeks four and seven.  The top five this week were Simon & Garfunkel, The Hollies, Cream, Tom Jones and The Moody Blues, the highest new entry is The Seekers (#31) and we have another new woman mentioned on an album (Nancy Sinatra) taking the running totals to 6 named and 6 featured.

Wikipedia tells me this is a psychedelic soul album - I've no idea how many different types of psychedelia there are but I'll take their word for it.  Apparently the album had an interesting creative process because after it had been recorded the record company said they liked it, but not the drumming, so a two week overdubbing exercise took place to hide it being horns and strings.  At which point they played it to the drummer and he was NOT HAPPY.  

It also tells me that "I Put A Spell On You" is a Screamin' Jay Hawkins track (I always assumed it was a Nina Simone song) and "I've Got Money" is a James Brown track.  The album was produced by Pete Townsend and Kit Lambert (who was The Who's manager at the time) - it did OK in a few countries but not nearly as well as "Fire" which got to #1 in the US.  His entry told me that the flaming headdress he used to wear when performing "Fire" on stage wasn't very well insulated and used to cause him a lot of pain - at which point I think most people would just ask for a better headdress, but not our Arthur.  I was also very pleased to learn he's still with us, he released an album last year (at the tender age of 80) and he's very much admired by musicians of all ages.

"Customers also listened to" Atomic Rooster, Neil Davidge, John Otway and Status Quo (I REALLY don't see the Quo link there).  I really quite enjoyed the madness of this - without people like this the music scene wouldn't have progressed in the way it did over the years, so they have to be celebrated.  So thank you, Arthur!

01/09/68 - Hard to describe!
15/09/68 - Tiresome and incongruous