Music Reissues Weekly: Too Far Out - Beat, Mod & R&B From 304 Holloway Road 1963-1966

The thrill of hearing “Crawdaddy Simone” never wears off. As the September 1965 B-side of the third single by North London R&B band The Syndicats, it attracted next-to no attention when it came out. The top side of the flop 45 was “On the Horizon,” a version of a Ben E. King B-side. After this, The Syndicats’ time seemed to have passed.

Then, in 1982, a compilation album titled The Demention Of Sound turned up in shops. “Crawdaddy Simone” was on it, alongside tracks from singles by relatively well-known UK Sixties mod/R&B bands The Bo Street Runners (members of whom went on to Fleetwood Mac), The Mark Four (who became The Creation) and The Sorrows. The Syndicats’ contribution was wilder than anything else collected – a recording which began in the loosely Chuck Berry vein and, following a series of gear shifts, became an exercise in pure white-out noise. Thereafter, “Crawdaddy Simone” became a staple go-to for mod-beat or what was termed “freakbeat” compilations.

Most of the subsequent comps featuring “Crawdaddy Simone” focussed on British R&B or mod-rock. This changed when interest in producer Joe Meek began taking off: he was The Syndicats’ producer and, in the early 2000s, collections dedicated to his work began featuring the band. Demand for this lost record has never declined. If an original copy can be found, it will cost between £700 to £1300.

Joe Meek aimed most of his productions at the mainstream pop market. The records may have drawn from his fascinations with horror and outer space, his interest in the afterlife and love of Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly. They may have sounded odd. But he was looking to score hits. Consequently, he worked at the cutting edge of the beat scene, meaning that a record like “On the Horizon” / “Crawdaddy Simone” speaks to two constituencies: the Joe Meek collectors, and those looking for the wildest sounds which emerged after the beat boom bedded in. Other Joe Meek productions similarly in two camps include The Blue Rondos’ “Little Baby,” David John & The Mood’s “I Love to See You Strut,” The Buzz’s “You’re Holding me Down,” The Riot Squad’s “I Take it That We’re Through,” The Tornados’ contemporaneously unreleased “No More You and me.”

Too Far Out - Beat, Mod & R&B From 304 Holloway Road 1963-1966 includes the latter tracks, as well as “On the Horizon” and “Crawdaddy Simone.” This three-CD clamshell set is the latest release to draw from Meek’s “Tea Chest Tapes”: his master tapes. Although there was no surviving master for “Crawdaddy Simone,” it is included. As an example of how super-fi this collection can get, the version of The Buzz’s “I’ve Gotta Buzz” sounds extraordinary, as if multiple layers of aural Vaseline have been removed.

Too Far Out includes 88 tracks, 86 of which are sourced from the “Tea Chest Tapes.” Effectively and practically, it renders all previous collections of Meek’s ventures into the world of beat, R&B and mod-rock redundant. Naturally, this being the type of release it is, there is a ton of previously unreleased tracks.

Prime amongst this rescued material is The Impac’s “Hold the Door,” recorded at a session held before the one which resulted in their sole Meek-produced single, November 1966’s poppy “Too Far Out.” “Hold the Door,” then, must have been taped around September or October 1966. It is amazing, and very early for this type of thing – woozy, Indian-tinged psychedelia which sounds as if it were birthed in a San Francisco ballroom rather than a studio along North London's Holloway Road. The set’s liner notes say that this is one track from a ten-track session found on a single tape reel. The whole session was in this style. “Hold the Door” needs to be heard. As, in full, does the genuinely essential Too Far Out - Beat, Mod & R&B From 304 Holloway Road 1963-1966.

• Next week: Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy!! - from Heavyboots to Zacariah, the heaviest of the heavy from Britain’s early Seventies rock scene
  
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