Sands — “Listen to the Sky”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — January 2, 2024

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

1,066)  Sands — “Listen to the Sky”

’67 Brit psych B-side is the band’s “finest moment”, “[m]indblowing stuff” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited), “a pretty far-out creation, starting as a nice Carnaby Street pop sike excursion before distorting into sirens, explosions, [and] dive bombers . . . . [q]uite a trip” (happening45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhdmcqTtrs0&t=1s), “a remarkable recording that conclude[s] with air raid sirens and an unnerving arrangement of the Mars section of Holst’s Planets Suite played on a distorted electric guitar”. (David Wells, liner notes to the CD comp Let’s Go Down and Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967).

The song “begins innocently enough as a cheerful ditty about ‘ordinary guy’ Buddy Baker going to war as a fighter pilot, but soon shifts gear into an extraordinary recreation of the Battle of Brittain – complete with sirens and dive bombing guitars”. (liner notes to the CD comp MOJO Presents: Acid Drops, Spacedust & Flying Saucers: Psychedelic Confectionery from the UK Underground 1965-1969) ”It’s one of those songs that sounds happy, but then you realize it’s about a kid being drafted to war and dying in a plain crash. I imagine the happy music represents people being distracted from reality.”  (zachperkins688, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzoBrw44ypo)

As to Sands, the Middlesex band was “[o]riginally known as the Tridents . . . [and] first recorded as The Others”.  (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) David Wells tells us that:

[B]y April 1966, [they] were regulars at the Marquee Club, often on a double bill with The Move. After being spotted at the Cromwellian by Brian Epstein, they signed to his NEMS management company, which in turn led to Robert Stigwood taking an avuncular interest in them. A single for Stigwood’s label reaction coupled Bee Gees song Mrs. Gillespie’s Refrigerator’ with band original “Listen to the Sky”. . . . Sadly Epstein’s death a week before the release of the single saw it disappear without a trace.

liner notes to Let’s Go Down and Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967

“Sands split after this single with members Rob Freeman and Ian McLintock becoming Sun Dragon”. (twerptwo, https://www.45cat.com/record/591017)

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