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Velvet Fogg - Velvet Fogg (1969)

Track listing:
  1. Yellow Cave Woman 6:58
  2. New York Mining Disaster 2:57
  3. Wizard Of Gobsolod 2:58
  4. Once Among The Trees 5:40
  5. Lady Caroline 2:24
  6. Come Away Melinda 5:54
  7. Owed To The Dip 6:11
  8. Within The Night 4:47
  9. Plastic Man 4:47
  10. Telstar 69 (Bonus) 2:46

Notes

Velvet Fogg were one of the myriad of obscure late-60s one-album-wonder bands, but a name even to most collectors of prog-psychedelia. I picked up a copy of the original vinyl album for a song in the late 70s, and was intrigued to hear that I'd actually missed out on something rather better than the garish cover might have led me to expect. An early incarnation of the band (which like many had evolved out of an obscure beat outfit) was graced by the presence of Sabbath's Tony Iommi, but that seems to be Fogg's only claim to relative fame. Tony's eventual replacement, guitarist/vocalist Paul Eastment, then formed the mainstay of the band, which was one of a raft of "underground-style" signings to the then ailing Pye label at the tail end of the decade (in a last bid to give the label some prog-cred).

Velvett Fogg was more or less exclusively a studio band, and a fairly laid-back one at that; even John Peel's otherwise useful original liner note for the album admitted to an ignorance of the band personnel (which, apart from Paul, comprised keyboardist Frank Wilson, later of Warhorse, and Mick Pollard and Graham Mullett)! And the band's sole album (released in the first month of 1969) shouldn't be written off either, as in spite of the avowedly "cobbled-together" gestation of its various components it's a well-above-passable, nay very credible example of the then-burgeoning psych-prog crossover genre. Running an expectedly wide stylistic gamut in its nine tracks, you'll find shades of (early) Deep Purple (Yellow Cave Woman), definite overtones of Vanilla Fudge (a typical cover - the Bee Gees' New York Mining Disaster 1941), a token Jimmy Smith-style cool jazz organ-led workout (Owed To The Dip), a cheeky proto-Tolkien tale (the rather "hobbit-forming" Wizard Of Gobsolod), distinct eastern leanings (Within The Night), White Noise/USA-like electronic treatments (an eerie cover of Tim Rose's Come Away Melinda) and tuneless heavy thrash (Plastic Man).

The album has appeared on CD before (See For Miles), and this latest reissue also comes complete with the very same bonus track, the contemporaneous single A-side, a rather dumb retread of the Tornados' Telstar. But many will like me retain a soft spot for the album, for it really does typify the products of its era.