THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,213) The Alan Bown! — “You’re Not in My Class”
A super popular live UK soul and R&B band tries its hand at pop psych/baroque pop. The Bown shoots, the Bown scores! One of the “highlights” of an LP that contained “an embarrassment of riches”, the song is “wistful . . . whose harpsichord and brass arrangement reflected the increasing sophistication of post-Revolver British studio pop.” (David Wells, liner notes to the CD comp Come Join My Orchestra: The British Baroque Pop Sound 1967-73)
As to the album — Outward Bown — Dave Thompson writes:
[A]n album of light-psych whimsy . . . . great pop . . . . delightful as only second-division British psych can be, a collection of semi-detached suburban Ray Davies observations full of vaguely Edwardian lifestyle concerns, peopled by pretty girls who wash the dishes, toys that talk, and love that flies from the rooftops with the clouds. Signs of the band’s (and band members’) brilliance are all over the place. . . . And it’s all so impossibly sweet, so implausibly twee, and so utterly a child of its times . . . .
As to the band, Bruce Eder tells us:
[Trumpeter Alan Bown] completed a stint in the Royal Air Force at the outset of the 1960s [and then] found a music scene that was booming throughout England with an important extension to Germany, and which encompassed not only rock & roll but also blues, R&B, and jazz. The latter two areas were where Bown’s interest lay, and he was soon a member of a group called the Embers that was booked into the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany . . . . He returned to England after the extended engagement and joined the John Barry Seven . . . . [Bown] was actually more involved with the group than Barry, whose burgeoning careers as a record producer and film music composer were taking off in a big way . . . . When Barry disbanded the group in 1964, Bown picked up the pieces and formed an outfit of his own . . . the Alan Bown Set . . . . The sextet was an immediate success as a live act, and it became an audience and critical favorite in London. Oddly enough, Bown and company never even thought about a recording contract, intending the band as a vehicle for steady work for themselves, doing what they enjoyed. [A] couple of years into their history . . . an A&R man for Pye Records . . . got them under contract, which resulted in a string of 45s . . . . The Pye contract ended in late 1967, and the group was then signed to the British division of MGM Records . . . . By this time, they’d modified their image and sound — the interest in R&B and soul was fading somewhat in the London clubs, even as psychedelic music was starting to become all the rage. And so, for its MGM/Music Factory releases, a somewhat longer-haired and more flamboyant version [of the band] . . . . was simply known as the Alan Bown! . . . They cut a song called “We Can Help You,” which had originated with the British band Nirvana [see #287, 391, 475] — and the Alan Bown version started to make a splash in England in terms of exposure. But on the week of the record’s actual release, disaster struck on both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously. A strike at the plant where the record was pressed and due to ship from prevented its release, at precisely the moment when it had to be in stores. And MGM Records chose to abandon the Music Factory label — though the Alan Bown! would remain with the company on the MGM label proper, this also meant that the company abandoned all promotional and distribution efforts involving the Music Factory releases. “We Can Help You[]” . . . was left to die and rot on the vine, and the accompanying LP, called Outward Bown, was ignored. A pair of singles that followed . . . both failed to chart. . . . A contract with Deram Records . . . followed . . . . [D]espite a lot of touring and television exposure, and the reconstituting of its sound and image in a much more progressive rock vein, the group’s moment had clearly passed by the start of the new decade.
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