Saturday 26 March 2011

Sandy Salisbury - Rev-Ola vinyl release


Last week I was very pleased to receive a copy of Sandy by Sandy Salisbury on vinyl. A lovely piece of work both as an artefact and in its content. It's certainly true to say it's a reissue though perhaps truer to say in this case it's a re-imagining. Sandy was a proposed 1969 release on Gary Usher's short-lived Together label. It never appeared and has only really been around in the last decade on CDs on Poptones and then Rev-Ola


Sandy Salisbury worked extensively with Curt Boettcher; they're both icons of sunshine pop. He was in The Ballroom, The Millenium, and Sagittarius. Boettcher produces and plays on this album. The list of players is certainly distinguished; apart from Usher, credited for moog, there's Lee Mallory from The Millenium, Jerry Scheff, Red Rhodes, and Waddy Watchel. It's an exceptionally poppy album diminished not a jot by a decided lack of those psychedelic elements that saturated other contemporary projects drawn from this well 


Mainly consisting of Salisbury compositions and co-writes, it kicks off with ' I Just Don't Know How To Say Goodbye', a submission to John Barry as the Midnight Cowboy theme song and under serious consideration for a while. As that brackets it with 'Lay Lady Lay' and 'Everybody's Talkin'" you can tell we're dealing with quality here. A touch of country in there, and more so in 'The Hills Of Vermont'; Salisbury is published by Acuff-Rose. Then a Beach Boys cover 'With Me Tonight' and a nice reading of The Fleetwoods' 'Come Softly'. 


This album comes from Rev-Ola in its latest incarnation which is as part of the Glasgow-based PoppyDisc (POPPLP009). It's due for release on Monday and if you can find a copy you should snap it up. 

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