Mod’n’roll part two.
For the sequel to the highly rated British Mod Sounds collection, acid jazz maestro and broadcaster Eddie Piller has hand-picked another clutch of classic and rare tracks, this time tracing where the mods went next. The R&B train as they describe it splits roughly into four sections: harder freakbeat/ garage, Eastern-influenced psychedelia, pastoral folk and jazz-progginess.
As with the previous release, arrangement isn’t by chronology or musical progression. Some tracks slot neatly into the aforementioned styles, but a few defy categorisation. In that respect it’s not unlike the Island Records samplers of the late 60s, in that it embraces a diversity of artists under a single canopy. Again, the Stones and Beatles are noted absentees (the latter represented by a cover of Taxman), but in a way that’s the point of this four CD/two-LP collection: it’s a good method of releasing all those sparks of brilliance from the shadowy beatnik cellars that didn’t make the charts.
Setting the scene on the freakbeat path we find The Fairies with a Pretty Things soundalike song, plus cult classics from The Birds
