What Are You Listening To?

[gryphon]

Tracklisting:
1. Jude - Morning Morgan Town
2. The Shots - Keep Hold of What You've Got
3. Cliff Wade - Shirley
4. Motherlight - House of Many Windows by Babok !!!
5. Chimera - Peru
6. Fortes Mentum - Saga of a Wrinkled Man
7. Angel Pavement - Baby You've Gotta Stay
8. The Smoke - My Friend Jack
9. Orange Bicycle - Laura's Garden
10. Bob Grimm - It Never Stays The Same
11. Pussy - All of My Life
12. Magic Worms - Green Mello Hill
13. Chiitra Neogy - Leilla
14. Cliff Wade - Look at Me, I've Fallen Into A Teapot




I bought this for the sum of 3GBP whilst on holiday quite a few years ago. Upon listening to it I realised that this album had had another incarnation : infact it was a clone of "Morgan Bluetown Vol I" ....it seems also that during the cloning that one or two tracks have undergone name changes:

"The sound quality on this CD is imperfect, and the track listing is flawed and periodically factually incorrect ("House of Many Windows" should be credited to Bobak, Jons, Malone, and not Motherlight) but there are still some pearls on here which any self-respecting fan of the genre should hear, from Jude's marvelous reading of "Morning Morgan Town" to Cliff Wade's preposterous but ultimately lovable "Look at Me, I've Fallen Into A Teapot" - and he does too, right at the end."


The story of The Morgan Bluetown label............

Once upon a time, there was a North London based recording studio and record label called Morgan, who were extremely successful in their capacity as the former, attracting visits from the Rolling Stones amongst others, but disappeared completely under the radar as an independent house of hits. Some of their acts such as The Orange Bicycle found success on the continent, but in the UK almost all their bands were ignored, and the label failed to produce anything which charted.


Mindful of the changing tide, and perhaps sensing an opportunity to claw back some cash, the label and studio owner Monty Babson created a psychedelic and progressive outlet called Morgan Blue Town in the late sixties which issued a few slabs of vinyl before giving up the ghost. Astonishingly, though, a great many acts were waiting in the wings to issue material for MBT which never got heard outside the studio walls due to the label's demise.

Quoted from
Left and to the Back: The Best Of and the Rest Of British Psychedelia (aka Morgan Blue Town)

So what do you get ?

14 interesting and quite rare psychedelic tracks

The Smoke ....."My Friend Jack" I have listed on Tracks People Should Hear

We get a chance to hear an earlier line of of The Smoke .....The Shots and their excellent track...........Keep Hold Of What You´ve got.

The quirky Cliff Wade produces two tracks here the excellent " Shirley" and the down right odd " Look At Me I`ve Fallen Into A Teapot" ( Strangely I can´t find any connection between Cliff and Morgan Blue Town")

The "House Of Many Windows" and "Saga Of A Wrinkled Man" are both excellent tracks are rare .

Laura´s Garden is a great lost gem and is a taster for an excellent album.

"Leilla" by Chiitra Neogy is an indian influenced instrumental that makes me want to find the album it comes from.

Dude`s cover of "Morning Morgan Town" is a first class effort.

I think this is an really good introduction to the rare and exotic material produced in the shadows of one of London`s more popular studios ......shame there is not a volume 2!! "