They stop me from groovin' - they bang on me wall

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

11/08/68 : Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake - The Small Faces

I know we've met a Faces album, but I had to check whether we'd met their diminutive relations yet - but no, this is our first visit.  I'm expecting some 60s sounding Rod - even though I've no idea whether he was in the group at the time.

Which, of course, he wasn't because Rod was never in The Small Faces - but it still sounds like it's him singing on some of the tracks, so you can understand why he was recruited into Faces.  The album is very much a game of two halves - the first sounds very English and reminded me of The Kinks and you can really see their influence on Blur and other similar sounding groups from the Britpop era.  It also includes "Lazy Sunday" which is an enjoyably bonkers song - there's all sorts in there.  

And then there's the second side.  Well, yes - that's an interesting one.  The songs are all in a similar vein, but they're linked by Stanley Unwin narrating a story about (I think) Happiness Stan and a big fly - I suspect Wikipedia is going to have some words on the matter.  I actually think I preferred the songs on the second side but all the rest of the stuff is just very off-putting.  All in all, it's a very "errr - yeah" kinda album and very much of its time.

We're back in the top ten this week at #6 on their tenth week of a nineteen week run, which feels pretty generous to me - but nothing like the generosity shown in keeping this album at #1 for SIX consecutive weeks.  How very peculiar indeed!  The top five this week were Simon & Garfunkel (their first week of five at the top), TCWOAB, Tom Jones, John Mayall and Engelbert, the highest new entry was Cream (#14) and there are no new women involved in the chart this week.

Wikipedia has much more than we've generally seen for albums from this year (127 milliPeppers) and there's all sorts in there (there's a lot to unpack with this album).  Firstly, "the album title and distinctive packaging design was a parody of Ogden's Nut-brown Flake, a brand of tinned loose tobacco" - all of which just makes me think "why?".  There is, unsurprisingly, quite a bit on side two - you might want to sit down for this.  Apparently Happiness Stan was worried about why half the moon was missing, so went on a quest to find it - and on this quest he (quite obviously) saves a fly from starvation. This fly turns out to know where Mad John the Hermit lives (who knows all the answers), so Stan makes the fly get a lot bigger and rides on its back and everything gets sorted.  Apparently Stanley Unwin wasn't the band's first choice for narrator, but Spike Milligan was just too awkward during the negotiations so they gave up on him.  The suite of songs has only been performed live once for BBC2's Colour Me Pop - and it looks quite the thing!

Despite all that information, we ain't even close to being finished with this album - apparently at one point it was going to include a cover of The Ronette's "Be My Baby", which I imagine was really quite something but has apparently been lost to history.  The original packaging was an album size replica of a tobacco tin but this "proved too expensive and not successful as the tins tended to roll off of shelves".  

And finally, we get to my favourite section - "controversy"!  And it's a goodie (and very much of its time).  Immediate Records, the label, released an advert in the form of a rewritten version of The Lords Prayer - and it's really very harmless ("for nice is the music") but it caused uproar in the press with many letters from disgruntled readers.  How quaint!

"Customers also listened to" Amen Corner, The Yardbirds, The Kinks and Love - a selection of groups very much of the time.  As, based on the evidence offered up by this album, are The Small Faces - this is certainly an intriguing album and it doesn't feel like one listen is enough to come to a verdict, but there's certainly a lot of everything on display, including plenty of skill.

04/08/68 - An album nobody needs
18/08/68 - Fine, but bafflingly successful