251) The Electric Banana — “Grey Skies”
As I said regarding song #94, the Banana’s “Alexander,” the group was the Pretty Things in disguise, making some much needed money by providing songs for films trying to be hip. David Wells’s liner notes to The Complete De Wolfe Sessions comp explain that:
[The] Swinging London phenomenon had led to a profusion of groovy movies chronicling life [there] that, naturally enough, required an appropriately switched-on soundtrack for added verisimilitude. However, film companies soon discovered that the cost of licensing bona fide hit singles was prohibitively high [so, the music library de Wolfe] started searching for a young, vibrant pop group who were capable fo providing an authentic but relatively inexpensive sound.
Wells calls “Grey Skies” “classily neurotic” and notes that it was “featured in the proto-slasher, Swinging-London-cum-Hammer-horror exploitation film The Haunted House of Horror.” IMDb unraps the plot of the ’69 cult classic:
A group of sixties teenagers [including Frankie Avalon!] bored with the party they’re at drive out to a deserted old mansion, but their laughter turns to fear when one of them is killed in a frenzied knife attack. Another of them persuades the rest that they should solve the murder themselves rather than go to the police, not surprisingly opening the way to further carnage.
Here is the complete Haunted House of Horror:
Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations 