(2022) Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera -Long Nights of Summer
Review:
First-ever complete career anthology of late ’60s UK psychedelic band Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera. Mono and stereo versions of 1968 debut album plus their post-Elmer follow-up LP, several studio out-takes and numerous BBC radio session tracks. In the spring of 1967, London mod/soul act The Five Proud Walkers staged a musical volte-face after supporting underground sensations The Pink Floyd. They duly re-emerged that summer as irrepressible psychedelic adventurers Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera, making an immediate splash with debut single ‘Flames’, which appeared on popular CBS label sampler ‘The Rock Machine Turns You On’ and was added to the set-list of many young British bands including the embryonic Led Zeppelin. ‘Flames’ was sufficiently successful to justify a debut LP, a strikingly original offering that remains one of the freshest, most consistently entertaining albums to emerge from the British psychedelic scene. Charismatic frontman Elmer and guitarist Colin Forster then left, with rhythm section John Ford and Richard Hudson joined by singer Johnny Joyce and guitarist Paul Brett for a second Velvet Opera album, the more Folk/Blues-oriented ‘Ride a Hustler’s Dream’. The band split in early 1970 when the Hudson-Ford partnership joined Strawbs, although original guitarist Forster briefly revived the name later that year for a one-off single with his former Tintern Abbey colleague David MacTavish.The first-ever complete EGVO and VO anthology, ‘Long Nights of Summer’ naturally includes both albums as well as a US promo-only mono mix of that incendiary debut LP that now makes its first-ever CD appearance. Also including numerous studio out-takes, demo versions, non-LP singles and a revelatory 50 minutes of BBC session tracks (the bulk of which have never been released before). — cherryred.co.uk
Track List:
Disc 1:
01 - Intro
02 - Mother Writes
03 - Mary Jane
04 - I Was Cool
05 - Walter Sly Meets Bill Bailey
06 - Air
07 - Lookin' for a Happy Life
08 - Flames
09 - What's the Point of Leaving
10 - Long Nights of Summer
11 - Dream Starts
12 - Reactions of a Young Man
13 - Now She's Gone
14 - Flames (Single Version)
15 - Salisbury Plain
16 - Mary Jane (Single Version)
17 - Dreamy
18 - Volcano
19 - A Quick 'B'
20 - Talk of the Devil
21 - And I Remember
22 - To Be with You
23 - The Painter
24 - Salisbury Plain (Extended Demo)
25 - Flames (Demo Version)
Disc 2:
01 - Intro (Promo-Only Mono)
02 - Mother Writes (Promo-Only Mono)
03 - Mary Jane (Promo-Only Mono)
04 - I Was Cool (Promo-Only Mono)
05 - Walter Sly Meets Bill Bailey (Promo-Only Mono)
06 - Air (Promo-Only Mono)
07 - Lookin' for a Happy Life (Promo-Only Mono)
08 - Flames (Promo-Only Mono)
09 - What's the Point of Leaving (Promo-Only Mono)
10 - Long Nights of Summer (Promo-Only Mono)
11 - Dream Starts (Promo-Only Mono)
12 - Reactions of a Young Man (Promo-Only Mono)
13 - Now She's Gone (Promo-Only Mono)
14 - Dream Starts (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 26 November 1967)
15 - Reactions of a Young Man (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 26 November 1967)
16 - Flames (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 26 November 1967)
17 - Mother Writes (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 26 November 1967)
18 - Mary Jane (Live, BBC Radio One Saturday Club Session, 27 January 1968)
19 - Flames (Live, BBC Radio One Saturday Club Session, 27 January 1968)
20 - I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 19 May 1968)
21 - Mary Jane (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 19 May 1968)
22 - Dreamy (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 19 May 1968)
23 - Air (Live, BBC Radio One Top Gear Session, 19 May 1968)
24 - All Along the Watchtower (Live, BBC Top of the Pops Radio Show, 5 July 1968)
25 - Mary Jane (Live, BBC Top of the Pops Radio Show, 5 July 1968)
26 - Something Else (Live, BBC Top of the Pops Radio Show, 5 July 1968)
27 - Flames (Live, BBC Radio One Saturday Club Session, 1968)
28 - All Along the Watchtower (Live, BBC Radio One Saturday Club Session, 1968)
Disc 3:
01 - Ride a Hustler's Dream
02 - Statesboro Blues
03 - Money By
04 - Black Jack Davy
05 - Raise the Light
06 - Raga
07 - Anna Dance Square
08 - Depression
09 - Don't You Realise
10 - Warm Day in July
11 - Eleanor Rigby
12 - Anna Dance Square (Single Version)
13 - Don't You Realise (Single Version)
14 - She Keeps Giving Me These Feelings
15 - There's a Hole in My Pocket
16 - Statesboro Blues (Live, BBC Radio One David Symonds Show, 8 June 1970)
17 - Water Wheel (Live, BBC Radio One David Symonds Show, 8 June 1970)
18 - She Keeps Giving Me These Feelings (Live, BBC Radio One Club Session, 4 January 1971)
Media Report:
Genre: rock
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
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