Pretty Things [Bonus Video] [Digipak]

Performer: The Pretty Things
Producer: Ian Shepherd
Distributor: E1 Distribution (USA)

Notes: THE PRETTY THINGS is an Enhanced CD containing both a full audio program as well as multimedia computer files including a promotional video of "Rosalyn." The Pretty Things: Phil May (vocals); Dick Taylor, Brian Pendleton (guitar); John Stax (bass); Viv Prince (drums). Includes liner notes by Paul Du Noyer. All tracks digitally remastered from the original master tapes by Mark St. John and Andy Pearce (February 1998, Masterpiece Mastering, London, England). This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files. The Pretty Things: Phil May (vocals); Dick Taylor (guitar). Audio Remasterers: Mark Saint John; Andrew Pearce . Liner Note Author: Paul Du Noyer. Arranger: The Pretty Things. Raucous to the point of making their peers the Rolling Stones look tame, the Pretty Things took the emerging British blues-rock sound of the mid-1960s and injected it with a heavy dose of manic energy. Given guitarist Dick Taylor's initial musical camaraderie with classmates Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (Taylor was in the Stones briefly before bowing out to attend art school), it's no surprise that the lesser-known group had much in common with the soon-to-be superstars. The Pretty Things' self-titled 1965 debut is a restless set of tunes largely made up of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry covers, with the quartet surging through a feisty take on Diddley's "Roadrunner" and a breakneck-paced rendition of Berry's "Oh Baby Doll," among others. Phil May, the group's hyperactive vocalist, makes Mick seem positively polite, while the rest of the band has clearly borrowed pages from the Keith Moon book of freewheeling musicianship. The resulting album may be too raw for some listeners, but for ardent fans of early Stones, Animals, and Kinks, THE PRETTY THINGS will be a welcome discovery. The Pretty Things' debut LP was a legendary exercise in anarchy -- 30 minutes into the two days' worth of sessions, their original producer, Jack Baverstock (the head of the label, no less), walked out, and was eventually replaced by a slightly more sympathetic personality in the hopes of salvaging something from the efforts of the band, who, whatever their shortcomings in decorum or sobriety, were on their third successive charting single. The resulting album, made under the coordination (if not control) of drummer-turned-producer Bobby Graham, made the early work of the Rolling Stones -- rivals and one-time bandmates to the Pretty Things' Dick Taylor -- sound more like the work of the Beatles: very calculated, lightweight, and -- genteel. Pretty Things is recorded with practically every song and instrument pushing the needle into the red (i.e., overload). Normally, that would be a problem, except for the fact that a third of the repertory was written by Bo Diddley and most of the other two-thirds was inspired by him (even their version of Chuck Berry's "Oh Baby Doll" sounds like it was lifted from the Two Great Guitars sessions where the two legends crossed swords) -- and Bo spent most of his career with his amplifiers set on "11" in a world where ten was the max. "Roadrunner" is about as raw and loud as British rock & roll ever got up to that time, and it's just the beginning -- "Judgement Day" has a lead guitar buried somewhere in there, beneath rhythm instruments that sound like metal being ground-up, and "13 Chester Street" is, strangely enough, an homage to the house the band once shared with the Stones' Brian Jones; appropriately enough, it mixes the band's crunchy rhythm guitar-centered sound with a Slim Harpo-style lead (all of the stuff that Jones was identified with musically), in a group "composition" that shimmers and pulses around Phil May's dissolute vocals. "Big City" takes them back to Chess Records territory, from which they never stray -- "Mama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shut" even sounds like a Chess outtake, what Leonard Chess would've said needed one more pass to get right (and he'd have been wrong). And just to show that there is some justice in the world, Pretty Things did reach number ten on the U.K. charts, bewildering all of the more "professional" hands at Fontana Records by grabbing the ears of that harder, more intense part of the Stones' larger audience, and throwing them the sonic equivalent of raw meat to chew on. Phil May reveals himself as a fairly powerful singer, though lacking some of the charisma that Mick Jagger projected, but the group's own raw power made for quirky appeal all of its own that would carry them for many years beyond this roaring start. And in the meantime, records like this would point the way not only toward the work of such American garage band icons as the MC5, but blast a path through the wilderness that the likes of Billy Childish, his band the Milkshakes and their successors would traverse. [The album was reissued in 2000 on Snapper with multimedia content.] ~ Bruce Eder

Rolling Stone (4/1/99, p.100) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...THE PRETTY THINGS packs the band's lock-up-your-daughters-and-liquor-cabinets stage charm into tightly wound Bo Diddley covers...and white R&B bullets..." Q (10/00, p.148) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Apocalyptic R&B, Stonesy rock and Kinksy pop..."

The party line on the Pretty Things is that they were early British blues-rockers as good as (or better than) the Stones but never got the same breaks. While this notion has merit, it overlooks the fact that in the late 1960s, they went on to create a psychedelic-tinged concept-rock masterpiece (S.F. SORROW) on par with the artiest creations of the Beatles. Though the band went through numerous breakups and personnel changes, they emerged in the '90s with their core membership intact, playing live and releasing new material.

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