THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,600) The Liverpool Five — “She’s (Got Plenty of Love)“
These British invaders decided to stay in the States, where they gave us two sterling LPs, a song that reached #98, and this unforgettable and definitive version of a Coventry band’s ’65 B-side.
RDTEN1 tells us of the LP:
1967’s Out of Sight is an overlooked genre classic. Like their debut, it offered up a mixture of covers and group-penned originals. The mixture of material showcased the group’s almost chameleon-like ability to mix different musical genres and US and UK influences ranging from Merseybeat to snotty garage rockers. Propelled by Steve Laine’s first-rate voice, the band exhibited the flexibility and enthusiasm necessary to handle everything from blue-eyed soul . . . Merseybeat . . . and tough-as-nails garage rockers . . . . [T]here was also a tentative step towards psych . . . . While the whole album was worth hearing, the group were at their best on harder rocking numbers . . . . [I]t’s still an album that grows on me more every time I play it.
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/liverpool-five/out-of-sight/
Nostalgia Central tells us of the Five:
The Liverpool Five (four of them were actually from Fulham[, London]!) left the UK and went travelling throughout Europe. They somehow ended up playing at the Tokyo Olympics before moving to the US and signing a major label deal. In 1966 their recording of Chip Taylor’s “Any Way That You Want Me” marked their only appearance on the national chart, spending one week on the Billboard Hot 100 at #98. Before finally disbanding, they recorded one last single for RCA under the name Common Market.
https://nostalgiacentral.com/music/artists-l-to-z/artists-l/liverpool-five/
Bruce Eder tells us more of the Five:
The Liverpool Five is one 1960s band that is ripe for rediscovery. The fact that they’ve slipped through a few cracks may have to do with their odd history — after starting out in England, the quintet spent most of a year in Germany and touring the Far East and effectively became an American group just as their recording history began in a serious way. Formed in Liverpool, England . . . . [t]hey cut one single, “Lum D’ Lum D’ High” . . . for the Pye Records budget Piccadilly label that was released in England, but their main base of activity in 1964 and 1965 appears to have been Germany and Asia, where their German-based manager kept them touring. They managed to release a single of their own on German CBS in 1964 under the name of the 5 Liverpools, but otherwise were largely invisible as a recording act. After an extended tour of Asia, the group made their way to Los Angeles in 1965 and eventually ended up in Spokane, Washington. Ironically, it was [there] that they were finally signed to a major label in 1965 and got a contract with RCA-Victor Records. The Liverpool Five released a half-a-dozen singles over the next two years and a pair of LPs, all of which displayed an extraordinary degree of musical dexterity — they could sound as American as the Remains or the Standells in their approach to playing — a solid garage punk sound with some unusual melodic touches — and then turn around and cut cockney novelties like “What a Crazy World (We’re Living In)” or romantic rock ballads like their version of Curtis Mayfield’s “That’s What Love Will Do,” . . . and follow that with a shouter like “Just a Little Bit.” . . . The band charted nationally only once, with a version of Chip Taylor’s “Any Way That You Want Me,” and left behind some other superb white soul sides that managed to embrace both American punk and British beat elements, before they finally called it a day in 1970. The Liverpool Five Arrive is one of the best garage punk albums of 1966, with a startlingly honest and vivid, soulful edge . . . amid the fuzztone guitars and pounding, roaring rhythm section. Its follow-up, Out of Sight, is even better, with harder playing and better singing, laced with some unexpected lyricism.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/liverpool-five-mn0000824962#biography
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