THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
839) Bobak, Jons, Malone — “On a Meadow Lea”
A “masterful” prog/psych number with a very “eerie mood [and] genuinely psychedelic” (Jason, https://therisingstorm.net/bobak-jons-malone-motherlight/), “somewhere between Procol Harum and the early Floyd, with some more fractured wordplay, heavy-lidded vocals and monstrous fuzztone guitar”. (David Wells, http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2011/04/bobak-jons-malone-motherlight-1970-uk.html) It comes from Motherlight, an “odd little delight[]” of an album, “generally pitched somewhere between acid folk bliss-out and the kind of heavy riffage starting to coalesce into heavy metal, with sometimes strident piano tying all the songs together”. (Ned Raggett, https://therisingstorm.net/bobak-jons-malone-motherlight/)
As to BJM, Jason says:
The individuals behind the Motherlight LP never played a live gig as they were essentially a studio vehicle for Mike Bobak, Andy Johns, and Wil Malone. . . . Wil Malone had previously led the prolific UK psych group Orange Bicycle and would go on to release a folky solo disc in 1970 and also play in another psych pop group named Fickle Pickle [see #568]. The Motherlight project saw him write most of the album’s lyrics, sing lead, play keyboards and lead guitar while Bobak and Johns supplied the rhythm section. In my mind, the Motherlight LP is Malone’s finest work ever. The feel of this album is low key but ominous, unlike anything I’ve heard and it’s this quality that makes the LP so special.
https://therisingstorm.net/bobak-jons-malone-motherlight/
David Wells expands on the band, and our minds:
By the summer of 1967 [independent producer Monty] Babson was working with on outfit called Orange Bicycle, whose mainmon was Wilson Malone – a multiinstrumentalist who could write, sing, produce and arrange with equal dexterity. . . . [Babson] founded the Morgan Sound Recording Studios. . . . [and] the Morgan label . . . [I]t was the nascent progressive and underground bands who were capable of making the serious money. . . . [and] Babson’s response was to introduce the Morgan Blue Town label . . . to cater for the left-of-centre rock and pop audience. [In addition to Malone, s]taff engineers Mike Bobak and a teenage Andy Johns (younger brother of Stones producer Glyn) were already experienced studio hands. . . . [and] accomplished musicians. . . . With Wil Malone on drums, keyboards, vocals and songwriting duties, Bobak on guitar and Johns . . . contributing bass as well as performing various feats of studio trickery, the ad hoc studio trio agreed to create their own Morgan Blue Town long player. “Monty Babson had a deal with Wil Malone”, recalls Mike Bobak, “and it went from there. The album was definitely a low-key thing, really just us having fun. We used dead studio time late at night to record the music, and part of the agreement was that we lost all rights to the frocks as soon as we created them.[“] . . . Motherlight duly emerged in the summer of 1969, but without a band to promote it, the Morgan sales team were facing an uphill struggle. The album came and went . . . .”
http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2011/04/bobak-jons-malone-motherlight-1970-uk.html
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