The Studio 68! only released two records in their
lifetime: a five and half minute single “Doubledeckerbus” in 1991 and a 12 inch
“Smash” EP the following year. Both were great records, full of swirling Prisoners
organ, big Small Faces chords, a splash of The Creation’s red with purple
flashes, and topped with a sprinkling of the Nazz.
In August 1992 they recorded their intended debut album, Portobellohello, only for Sussex
constabulary to seize the tapes after a raid on the band’s accountant for
financial irregularities. That, combined with the young band self-destructing
on their mythology and a lifestyle more in keeping with 70s rock stars than a
group playing to a handful of people in the Camden Falcon, plus main man Paul
Moody taking a job writing for the NME meant their career was short lived.
Listening, finally, to that album thanks to a rescue
mission by Paisley Archive Records it’s a pity events transpired against them.
Although recorded in the era of Seattle grunge and Berkshire shoegazing, The Studio
68! were one of a number of bands – Five Thirty, Spitfire, The Revs, The
Stairs, The Dylans - who, with their pilfering from the past, would do the
spadework for a future breed of flag waving British popular beat combos.
From today’s position, few would claim Studio 68! were anything
but a mod band (white jeans, desert boots, Tootal scarves, sunglasses, good
hair) but in the early 90s it wasn’t wise to closely associate with a movement
that was dead on its arse and viewed with ridicule from the outside. I didn’t
think of The Studio 68! as card-carrying mods back then, more as people (and
there were a lot of us) who’d been teenage mods and taken that foundation and
built upon it. It was good period, horizons were now wider than Peter Meaden’s
labels, the strict modernist scripture thrown away, and an interest in the 60s
underground, International Times, the Oz trails, beat writers, Joe Orton, pop
art, Parisian riots, Black Panthers, psychedelia, garage rock, Deep Purple, the
Stooges, biker movies, Peter Fonda, Aleister Crowley and Funkadelic blossomed
and sat comfortably next to The Who and traditional mod icons.
This is where The Studio 68! were coming from and what informs
the ten songs on Portobellohello and
the six bonus tracks. As stated earlier, The Prisoners and, to a lesser extent,
the Small Faces are the two most obvious influences (although Moody lacks the
vocal prowess of either Day or Marriott) but they’re their own band. There’s a
real drive, a strange kind of urgency, to the mod-rock of “Goodbye Baby and
Amen”, “Afternoon Sun”, “He’s My Sister” and “Pop Star’s Country Mansion” which
scorch their way into the consciousness, hammered home by Will Beaven’s
incessant Hammond. The occasional druggy references are a little obvious but
elsewhere there’s a healthy dose of cynicism in the lyrics. The one cover, an instrumental
version of Python Lee Jackson’s “In A Broken Dream”, is their impressively
played, acid drenched, “Maggot Brain” wig-out moment.
Kula Shaker’s first album would be another four years
coming but The Studio 68! had it all here – without the faux Eastern mysticism
shtick. Don’t let the Kula Shaker reference put you off, I know we’re not
allowed to like them but I’ve just dug out K
to double-check what it sounds like and it’s mostly rather good and remarkably
similar in scope to Portobellohello (Shaker
organist Jay Darlington travelled the same roads The 68). It just shows, once
again, how the music business dice roll more favourably for some than others.
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