THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
968) Frabjoy and Runcible Spoon (Godley and Creme) — “Today”
From another contender for the greatest lost album of the 1960’s comes a “beautiful ballad” (David Wells, liner notes to the Frabjous Days: The Secret World of Godley and Creme 1967-1969 CD comp), a “primal, brilliant, pre-10cc” cut (Dave Thompson, https://web.archive.org/web/20220603185543/https://www.goldminemag.com/columns/frabjous-days-with-godley-creme) that is truly God-like and the cream of the crop.
Mark Deming tells us that:
In 1970, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme would score their first serious hit with the oddball stomp of Hotlegs’ “Neanderthal Man,” and in 1973 they would become half of 10cc, who would release some of the smartest, wittiest, and best-crafted British pop of the decade. Dial back to 1969, and the two were veterans of the U.K.’s beat music scene who’d evolved into a pop-psychedelic duo called the Yellow Bellow Room Boom. Giorgio Gomelsky, who had previously helped guide the careers of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. signed them to his Marmalade Records label and gave them a different (and similarly whimsical but clumsy) stage name, Frabjoy & Runcible Spoon, in hopes of transforming them into a British answer to Simon & Garfunkel. . . . [T]hey released only four poor-selling songs under that banner before Marmalade Records went under, and the album they’d been working on was doomed never to see the light of day.* Thankfully, the tapes survived, and the British reissue label Grapefruit Records has released an approximation of that long-lost LP . . . . [including] seven unreleased tracks that were completed for the aborted . . . album [and] the four rare tunes that did see release . . . . Godley & Creme were showing off the compositional skills that would be the hallmark of their later work . . . . The pair were also well on their way to perfecting their vocal blend . . . . If there’s a difference . . . it’s in the absence of their pointed satiric wit, and a gentler melodic style more beholden to folk and pop-psych and lacking the splendid and shameless hooks that would reinforce the jokes on 10cc’s albums. . . . [T]his is fine and imaginative pop with a psychedelic edge . . . a splendid look at the juvenilia of one of the most fascinating partnerships in British rock.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/frabjous-days-the-secret-world-of-godley-creme-1967-1969-mw0003721503
Dave Thompson adds:
Kevin Godley, a former member of Graham Gouldman’s Mockingbirds, and Lol Crème, once Godley’s bandmate in the early-’60s group the Sabres. . . . had studied for diplomas in graphic design . . . . [B[y the end of 1968, the pair were making demos . . . . Gouldman . . . was working as a session man at Giorgio Gomelsky’s Marmalade label, and one day asked Godley to join him at a session. Gomelsky took one listen to Godley’s ethereal falsetto and promptly offered him and Crème a deal. As Frabjoy and the Runcible Spoon, the duo began work on an album in September 1969. Basic tracks were recorded at Gouldman and Mindbender Eric Stewart’s own Strawberry Studios, with that pair as backing musicians. A single, “I’m Beside Myself,” appeared in early 1969, while another track from the sessions, “To Fly Away,” appeared on Marmalade’s 100% Proof label sampler . . . . Unfortunately, Marmalade folded only shortly after this pair of releases and the Frabjoy album was abandoned. . . . [T]he quartet returned to Strawberry to set in motion the sequence of events which would, three years later, see them emerge as 10cc.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/frabjoy-the-runcible-spoon-mn0001919409
* As Lol Crème put it: “Giorgio ran out of money, and out of people who were prepared to lend him more, and the whole thing fizzled out[.] But we did get the single out of it, and that tot us a few radio plays.” (liner notes to Frabjous Days: The Secret World of Godley and Creme 1967-1969).
Godley and Creme’s pre-10cc Band Hotlegs did release a version of “Today” in ‘71:
Here is a version they released as coming from the band Festival, which was “one of the many aliases 10cc used, in order so that they could release a bunch of tunes on different labels”. (Mr. Bashpop, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYrs4OkiVWk):
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