THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,764) The Bunch — “Spare a Shilling”
Oh man, does John Pantry (see #494, 1,242) kick ass. OK, since he followed his calling and embarked on a notable career in Christian music and broadcasting after the 60’s came to a close, let me just say “Hallelujah” for John Pantry. A singer and songwriter for the ages. Pantry wrote this enchanting and “jaunty ditty” that was “heavily plugged by Brian Matthew and Tony Blackburn, who made it his record of the week, but it failed to take off”. (Bournemouthbeatboom, https://bournemouthbeatboom.wordpress.com/the-bunch/)
OK, but was it actually performed by the Bunch or by Peter & the Wolves (see #983, 1,392)? David Wells tells us that:
[B]oth John [Pantry] and drummer Garry Nicholls are certain that the released version is actually a Peter & the Wolves performance: Nicholls feels that another singer (possibly a bona fide Bunch member) may subsequently have been overdubbed . . . onto the Peter & the Wolves’ master tape, while Pantry has listened to the single and believes that he is the singer, deliberately pitching his vocal in a different register to suit the song’s requirements. Or perhaps you’d prefer Peter & the Wolves bassist Nick Ryan’s version, which is that he didn’t play on the track and that that the singer on the disc displays Pantryesque nuances simply because he would have learned the song from John’s demo recording.
liner notes to the CD comp The Upside Down World of John Pantry
Jason tells us of Peter & the Wolves:
[O]ne of Pantry’s first groups, Sounds Around. . . . played straight pop with slight soul and psych influences – they released two singles in 1966-1967. Peter & The Wolves came shortly after Sounds Around’s demise (they were essentially the same group). This is the group with which Pantry is most associated, along with The Factory [see #5, 460, 761] . . . . [Peter & The Wolves’] most productive period was probably the years of 1967-1969, where they released a string of pop gems.
Bournemouthbeatboom tells us of the Bunch:
Dave and The Concordes were formed in the summer of 1963 by members of the Christchurch Youth Club. . . . [F]ound[ing] member John Sherry . . . . took on the job of managing the quintet, organising rehearsals at his parent’s home . . . and booking numerous dates . . . .On Sunday, 2nd February 1964, the group entered the inaugural ‘Big Beat and Vocal Contest’ held at the Bournemouth Winter Gardens. . . . [and] came in a creditable fourth . . . . Fast forward to Sunday, 25th October 1964, and they were back . . . for the second ‘Big Beat and Vocal Contest‘ as a quartet of Sherry, Huntley, Lake, and Willoughby and a new name, The Bunch. . . . [T]hey were worthy winners. . . . As their popularity grew and their diary bulged with an ever-expanding list of dates, John bought a vintage 1949 ambulance, which he converted into a bandwagon to transport the gear and group members. . . . There were also trips abroad with a month’s residency at the Star Club in Hamburg . . . . In the summer of 1966, John had a rethink. As the initial excitement of the Beat Boom gradually faded, he decided it was time to drop the quintessential early sixties pop group format and expand the lineup to a seven-strong soul band with completely different personnel. Apart from John remaining on drums, the newly configured septet comprised Chris Redwood on guitar, John King on bass, a pair of saxophonists, Mike Berry and Dave Potter, keyboard player Dave Cooper, plus vocalist Pete Beckett . . . . Their repertoire also received a complete overhaul from gritty R&B to songs selected liberally from the Tamla Motown and Stax songbooks . . . . The band also picked up a benefactor and manager in Jeffrey Rothner, an estate agent by trade, who financed the band, allowing them to turn professional in October 1966. With the added clout of the Roburn (Theatrical) Enterprises agency behind them, the quality of gigs improved overnight . . . . There were . . . prestigious dates in London at the Flamingo Club, in Wardour Street, the Whisky A Go-Go also in Wardour Street, Tiles on Oxford Street, the Scotch of St. James, and Marquee Club in Soho . . . . At the turn of the new year, the band gained a residency at the Playboy Club in Park Lane before embarking on a busy April. They started the month by taping two songs . . . for the BBC radio show Monday Monday . . . . They also filmed a sequence for a Canadian TV documentary called Swinging London, [and] appeared at Brian Epstein’s Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue with Bo Diddley and Ben E. King . . . . The following month, the band entertained suave French hipsters in the clubs of Paris for a week and recorded a session for French radio before returning to London to tape another couple of numbers for BBC’s Saturday Club. Through the summer months of June and July, they were back in France for a three-week residency at the Papagayo club in Saint-Tropez . . . . Rothner secured the band a recording deal with CBS, and over an eighteen-month period they released four singles under the auspices of their in-house producer Eddie Tre-Vett at IBC Studios . . . . At the outset they mined a similar pop/blue-eyed soul vein as Amen Corner with punchy, dominant brass and a steady backbeat aimed at filling dance floors, which is ably demonstrated on their first single, “You Never Came Home . . . (January 1967). . . . [F]or a debut, the record is surprisingly strong, with either side having the potential of becoming a hit, if only their label had got behind it. The follow-up, “Don’t Come Back to Me . . . (May 1967), was a Chris Redwood composition . . . . a blue beat/pop hybrid that could easily have been recorded by The Equals, yet, despite a session recorded for Saturday Club to aid promotion, the single flopped. During the summer of 1967, there were changes in the ranks. Pete Beckett left to be replaced by Eric Jones on vocals, and Dave Cooper succumbed to pressures from home to help run the family business back in Bournemouth, a dog and cat boarding kennels located in St. Leonards. For single number three [including “Spare a Shilling”], released in November 1967, the band changed tack altogether by becoming psychedelic dandies, as they realised they were out of whack with the prevailing trend for drug-inspired off-kilter weirdness. . . . Almost a year later, their fourth and final single, the disappointingly bland singalong “Birthday . . . (September 1968), left the psychedelia behind and went straight for the pop market but missed by a mile. . . . John Sherry’s son James . . . thinks the “Birthday” single had no input from his dad’s band and was put together by John Pantry and released as The Bunch in name only. . . . By the time the record hit the shops, the game was up anyway, as the band had already split asunder.
Jason gives us a sense of Pantry’s B.C. history:
John Pantry is one of those artists that deserves to be heard by more people, especially those who value melodic British pop. . . . [He was] a talented studio engineer for IBC Studios (working with Eddie Tre-Vett), producing for the likes of Donovan, The Small Faces, The Bee Gees, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Cream. He was also a member of Peter & The Wolves, an accomplished mid 60s pop group from Leigh-on-Sea/Southend and had a major hand with many other IBC studio projects of the time: the Factory, Sounds Around, Wolfe, The Bunch and Norman Conquest. . . . Besides being a savvy studio technician, Pantry was a gifted songwriter and vocalist and an accomplished musician (. . . keyboards). . . . John Pantry was asked to write two tracks for The Factory, a legendary psychedelic group who had previously released the classic “Path Through The Forest” 45 [see #5]. Pantry wrote and sang lead on the two Factory standouts, “Try A Little Sunshine” [see #460] and the more folk-like “Red Chalk Hill [see #761]” . . . .
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