My bed is made of candyfloss, my house is made of cheese

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

04/02/68 : Mr Fantasy - Traffic

I know Traffic for two things - they were formed by Steve Winwood (amongst others) and they did the original version of "Hole In My Shoe", which I obviously know best from the version by Neil from The Young Ones (which, quite obviously, got to #2).  Neither of which really give me any idea what we're going to get here.

Well, to my surprise, I really quite enjoyed this.  A lot of it is complete nonsense, but it's got skilful instrumentation (on a lot of instruments!) and also, somewhat surprisingly, pretty skilful singing as well - I was reminded of early Genesis stuff in quite a few places.  It also, amazingly, manages to feature quite a lot of flute and sitar without being really annoying - which isn't something that anyone else has managed this year!  I really liked "Dear Mr Fantasy" which wasn't a track I previously knew - it was also amusing to hear their version of "Hole In My Shoe", which wasn't on the original album but I actually listened to all of the deluxe version, which gives you an idea how bearable it was!

We're at #25 in the charts this week on their seventh week of an eight week run, having peaked at #16 in its sixth week.  The top five this week were The Four Tops best-of, TSOM, The Supremes best-of, Sgt Pepper and a Tom Jones best-of, the highest new entry was Motown Memories (#31) and there are no new women in the charts this week.

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the album, but most of it is just talking about how the UK and US versions of the album were pretty different and then there were mono and stereo versions of each which were also significantly different, so there were four different versions of this floating around.  It also tells me that The Small Faces were involved on one of the tracks - listening to this, it doesn't surprise me they were mates.  It was well received critically though - Steve Winwood's voice was called out as being a particular strong point and I'd certainly agree.

"Customers also listened to" Cream, Blind Faith, Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane - all very much of their time.  As, I guess, are Traffic since they only really lasted for these couple of years - but, having listened to this, I'd be tempted to check out the rest of their stuff.  It's the sort of thing I was hoping to find - far out, but not too far out with some interesting sounds and fine musicianship on it.

28/01/68 - More cheese, sir?
11/02/68 - Third time's a charm (relatively)