THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,855) Forever Amber — “On a Night in Winter”
This “Kinks dusted” (Obladada, https://obladada.com/2020/10/14/revisio-forever-amber-the-love-cycle/) song is from The Love Cycle, one of the rarest and most sough-after relics of the UK’s psychedelic era (well, only 99 copies of the LP were pressed!). “A lo-fi psychedelic pop masterpiece. . . . this . . . song-writing is incredible”. (Gabriel_II, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/forever-amber/the-love-cycle/) “If ever there was a place on the map where I could put down a finger, and say, “This is the place where Lo-Fi began …,” it would be here”. (streetmouse, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/forever-amber/the-love-cycle/) The LP “merged Swinging London-era basement psychedelia . . . with the guileless innocence, melodic invention, ambitious arrangements and irresistible pop hooks of ’65-era Beatles.” (David Wells, liner notes to the CD reissue of The Love Cycle) “The album “resides in a secret garden all of its own, bursting with unfettered melodic glee and the pop experimentation prevalent in the provinces in 1968. . . . English as tuppence, [it] has a distinctly Grantchester Baroque atmosphere – the nearest comparisons are the Zombies [see #1,138] and neighbours Pink Floyd [see #13, 38, 260]”. (Bob Stanley, https://www.thetimes.com/sunday-times-rich-list/profile/article/forever-amber-the-love-cycle-t955b5rlm5b?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqduTckaQoTvavsX1c5UJOFAd5aF-WR1WSFNkq5shTXtsVsrhqX-gA40izGZBpg%3D&gaa_ts=69728243&gaa_sig=Emj86EP52IQRQhF7AzfxY9a-ArUNAFcnIKS9QG9CznlECdykTNurVNKjN1jNP3qflvtlslbaWSGU06JMChUwCw%3D%3D)
Obladada puts it exquisitely:
[This is a] brand of late 60’s psych pop that exudes a vibe like footage on bleached out 16mm reels, full of duck ponds, rose gardens and wide-eyed wonder. . . . The album continues to jump through odd stylistic hoops that feel like a compilation gathered from a previously invisible 60’s dimension. . . . In an age where it seems many try to ration and drip feed creativity, careful to avoid giving up all of their ideas – [the band] delights in throwing everything they have at you, in one unwieldy 42-minute serving. A packed, spacious, moody, groovy and gloriously flanged elevator pitch in sound.
https://obladada.com/2020/10/14/revisio-forever-amber-the-love-cycle/
David Wells expands on the band’s achievement:
The Love Cycle was the brainchild of undergraduate John M. Hudson, an aspiring Brian Wilson-style pop auteur who wrote the entire set, co-produced it and also helped out on piano and harpsichord. Bearing in mind the limitations of the set up — the six-piece Forever Amber’s semi-professional status, their extreme youth, the fairly makeshift studio facilities and minuscule budget — [it] was a ludicrously ambitious work. A concept piece chronicling the development and ultimate break-up of an adolescent love affair, the album featured no less than five lead vocalists over its 16 cuts, which ranged from ornate, Left Banke-leaning harpsichord-based pop to full-blown psychedelic freak-out. . . . The overall effect is akin to a low-budget garage band version of the Zombies’ masterpiece Odessey And Oracle, and would have been a notable achievement for a major label act. For a bunch of provincial kids, it’s an absolutely staggering achievement.
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Keep in mind that clinikillz points out that while the “album features a collection of unique, well-written and catchy psychedelic pop songs. . . . it sounds like it was recorded on an Edison phonograph device. The audio leveling is atrocious and it sounds like they recorded the entire album in a giant tin can. (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/forever-amber/the-love-cycle/) But Jerry Kessler notes that while “the music does suffer without a producer, but for my way of thinking, that element just makes it all the richer and enticing, being that the music is exactly what the lads heard in their heads.” (https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2018/06/from-vault-forever-amber-love-cycle-1969.html#google_vignette)
Lindsay Planer explains:
Love Cycle (1969) from the virtually unknown and short-lived sextet Forever Amber is practically the definition of an obscure sleeper album. . . . [T]he no-budget band only pressing up a mere 99 copies of the album to avoid having to pay a purchase tax . . . . In a decidedly unorthodox combining of talents, the author and arranger was not actually a member of the Cambridge-based combo. Prior to adopting the moniker of Kathleen Winsor’s racy novel Forever Amber, the group played the lucrative local cover band circuit of private parties and the like as “the Country Cousins”. The Cousins’ manager Derek Buxton became the liaison between the band and John M. Hudson. Made for around [£200], the [LP] was documented in a mammoth 19-hour recording session in September of 196[8] at the D.I.Y. Studio Sound in Hitchin, England.
Bob Stanley notes that “Hudson went on to run his own accountancy firm. Of the band, only Chris Parren turned pro, ending up as the keyboard player on George Michael’s Careless Whisper, which outsold The Love Cycle by roughly three million copies.”(https://www.thetimes.com/sunday-times-rich-list/profile/article/forever-amber-the-love-cycle-t955b5rlm5b?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqduTckaQoTvavsX1c5UJOFAd5aF-WR1WSFNkq5shTXtsVsrhqX-gA40izGZBpg%3D&gaa_ts=69728243&gaa_sig=Emj86EP52IQRQhF7AzfxY9a-ArUNAFcnIKS9QG9CznlECdykTNurVNKjN1jNP3qflvtlslbaWSGU06JMChUwCw%3D%3D) Ha, ha, ha . . . .
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