Appletree Theatre — “Hightower Square”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — July 7, 2023

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

884) The Appletree Theatre — “Hightower Square”

A favorite of Johns everywhere (well, at least Lennon and Peel), the Appletree Theatre give us a pop classic that “draw[s] from The Beatles’ Penny Lane”. (Kingsley Abbott, https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/album/playback)

The album (see #363) is “a ’60’s lark by the Brothers Boylan that received virtually NO advertising or radio play in [the U.S.] at the time.” (https://psychedelic-rocknroll.blogspot.com/2009/05/appletree-theatre-playback-sunshine.html)

John Peel loved the album — he “praised [it] in International Times, calling it ‘one of the best and most adventurous LPs I’ve heard‘, played tracks from it on his shows in 1968 and 1969, and returned to it periodically in later decades.” (https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/Appletree_Theatre) And Psychedelic Rock’n’Roll raves:

The songs are so strong. It’s grade-A Sunshine Pop with occasional psychedelic arrangements, dipping occasionally into hard-edged soul and music-hall . . . . offer[ing] up a rather weird concept piece, though admittedly the plotline was largely lost on us. [T]he collection offered up a bizarre collage of interlaced vocal narratives, sound effects, song fragments, balanced by an occasional Pop piece [including] “Hightower Square . . . .  There was no doubt the Boylans were talented: on the other hand, the set was simply too experimental for the normal listener.

https://psychedelic-rocknroll.blogspot.com/2009/05/appletree-theatre-playback-sunshine.html

Kingsley Abbott calls it a “strangely beguiling album . . . . essentially a mixture of folkish pop and some Greenwich Village social commentary/satire . . . . The songs here are punctuated by stoner references and outside influences . . . . Charming, weird, questionable, interesting – though not to all.” (https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/album/playback) And Jason Nardelli throws in that “[i]t’s an inventive pop album with great songs, strange sound effects, comedy bits and trippy dialogue in between some of the tracks.” (http://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2011/10/appletree-theatre-playback-1968-usuk.html)

The story of Terence and John Boylan, as Brian Sweet describes it on Terry’s website:

Following a chance meeting with Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village in ’62, after which Dylan, [Terence] Boylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot went to Izzy Young’s Folklore Center and traded songs for a long evening, Boylan returned to Buffalo, N.Y. with encouragement from his new hero, and began performing in many of Buffalo’s most popular coffee-houses . . . . still a sophomore in high school. . . . He formed a band with his brother, John, The Ginger Men, playing in Greenwich Village[] . . . during summers and ‘field-periods’ [while he attended Bard College] and singing solo [in the Village]. The NY Times’ Robert Shelton gave him a brief but laudatory mention following an appearance at the Village Gate, and the record companies started calling. . . . [B]efore beginning a solo album, he recruited brother John for an experimental ‘rock meets theatre’ album. The duet, along with a dozen top studio musicians, recorded The Appletree Theatre in 1967, a ground-breaking effort among the so-called “concept” albums of the late sixties, fusing brief Saturday Night Live type comic sketches with slightly tongue-in-cheek parodies of contemporary musical genres. John Lennon, in an interview with Penny Nichols in London, called The Appletree Theatre one of his favorite new albums, Time Magazine lauded the Boylans’ sense of humor, and Phillip Proctor acknowledged their influence on his own group, The Firesign Theatre.

http://www.terenceboylan.com/biography.html

Oh, and John Boylan later became a producer for the Eagles.

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