New York Public Library — “Got to Get Away”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — April 19, 2023

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

800) New York Public Library — “Got to Get Away”

After yesterday visiting “the freaked-out, drugged-up street world of New York’s Lower East Side” circa 1968 (Mister Mark, http://thedirtymindofmistermark.blogspot.com/2010/11/lotti-golden.html?m=1), I thought I’d let us listen to New York Public Library — a British band! — appropriately play “Got to Get Away“, a ‘68 UK A-side. A lovely tune — as Anhalter Udo puts it “so simple & so powerful – this was a great flower song on the way to more peace in the dreams of this time” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhWR95X6LK8)

As to the NYPL, it was a “BBC session band . . . [that] debuted in ‘66 with a Rascals cover and then disappeared for two years, returning with this aggressive pop tune, like a milder Wimple Winch [see #49, 384].” (liner notes to the English Freakbeat Vol. 5 CD comp)

The liner notes to the Piccadilly Sunshine: Volumes 1-10: A Compendium of Rare Pop Curios from the British Psychedelic Era CD comp, give us a few more details:

[The band] hailed from Leeds in 1961 as The Cherokees who [had] . . . a handful of minor hits after debuting with Seven Golden Daffodils in 1964. After their 1966 attempt at Chris Kenner’s Land of 1,000 Dances and battling it out with the Loose Ends with a version of the Rascals’ “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” . . . [they] changed their name to New York Public Library. . . .

NYPL released another single in ’68 and one in ’72. (https://www.discogs.com/artist/1282012-New-York-Public-Library)

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