THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
2,121) Tages — “It’s My Life”
“One of [the] grooviest tunes” (Dylan Cameron, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pAMeDA_o90) by Sweden’s greatest band of the ’60’s (see #286, 1,282, 1,353, 1,358), “a bit of stomping mod rock” (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/studio-mw0001278543) that “growls out dark guitar distortions straight from the Move arsenal under workout vocal leads.” (Brendan, https://therisingstorm.net/the-tages-studio/)
As to Tages’ Studio LP, Wikipedia tells us:
On 4 December 1967, Tages released their fifth studio album Studio. A blend of psychedelic music, rock and Swedish folk music, it was largely written by bassist Göran Lagerberg and producer Anders Henriksson. . . . [who had] introduc[ed] them to elements of Swedish folk music . . . . Studio had become a commercial failure . . . . [taking] a toll on the band, particularly Lagerberg, who considered the album to be “some of the best” he had written . . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_Blind_Man_Playin%27_Fiddle_in_the_Street
Richie Unterberger adds:
Tages were more well equipped than most other bands from Scandinavia to move with the times after the beat era waned, considering that unlike most such bands, they sometimes sounded pretty close to an actual mid-’60s British group. Considering how adeptly they’d absorbed British Invasion styles, it’s unsurprising that the 1967 album Studio finds them getting into much more florid pop-psychedelia, with various ornate production dabs, bouncy whimsy in much of the songwriting, and touches of soul and orchestration in the arrangements. Perhaps it’s a testament to 1967 British psychedelia being harder to assimilate and copy than Merseybeat or mod, but though this is a carefully produced and ambitious set of songs, the material itself just isn’t up to the level of the probable inspiration. None of the songs are either great or lousy; they’re just average examples of approaches that were in fashion . . . . More typical were upbeat midtempo cuts that sounded something like audio equivalents to amiable strolls by hip tourists through London . . . .
Hey, I was once a hip tourist amiably strolling through London, and I’ll take the audio equivalent anytime!
As to Tages, Unterberger opines that:
The[y] were without a doubt, the best Swedish band of the ’60s and one of the best ’60s rock acts of any sort from a non-English speaking country. Although the group’s first recordings were pretty weak Merseybeat derivations, in the mid-’60s they developed a tough, mod-influenced sound that echoed the Who and the Kinks. More than any other continental group, the Tages could have passed for a genuine British band . . . . Big throughout Scandinavia, the group actually made a determined effort to crack the English market in 1968, playing quite a few U.K. shows and releasing records there; they failed, and disbanded at the end of the year.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tages-mn0000155257#biography
And Nostalgia Central tell us:
The band released a number of singles and LPs in their native Sweden to considerable success, making the Swedish Top 10 more than a dozen times. Though remembered as one of the finest non-English speaking bands of the 1960s, they failed to ever really break into the US or UK markets. In . . . 1967 . . . they signed directly to Parlophone and one of their singles . . . was the (at the time) very controversial She’s Having A Baby Now which many radio stations refused to play because of the subject matter. The Tages also produced one of the world’s first psychedelic albums, named Extra Extra in 1966. Then they wanted to create a pop-music that was totally Swedish by learning old Swedish folk-music. After this, they produced their fifth and last album – named Studio – at Abbey Road in 1967. The album is very influenced by Swedish folk music and psychedelia and is remembered as the finest album from the sixties from a non-English speaking country (it has been called the ‘Sgt Pepper Of Sweden’).
https://nostalgiacentral.com/music/artists-l-to-z/artists-t/tages/
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