One of the great functions of this blog for me personally has been to fill in the gaps of my own personal music awareness. So Big Star were by no means the only band doing that kind of thing when they were making music at that point of time. Neither were The Stooges. Neither was Nick Drake.There were actually plenty of others working in similar areas at round about the same point but these three have with time come to represent that particular sound and sensibility. The same is true of many others who have come to stand as archetypes whereas in probability they were surrounded by plenty of others singing from similar hymn sheets. Just not doing it quite so well.
So to Marmalade. Originally The Marmalade. A band from the East End of Glasgow who originally formed under the remarkable name, (with hindsight), of The Gaylords and achieved no little commercial success both towards the end of the sixties and throughout the early seventies once they'd switched it. Where do they stand in the scheme of things? They sound not a million miles away from The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Who, The Creation and countless others from their early psychedelic phase which is what I've chosen to focus on and post up here. Hendrix thought I See the Rain, 'the best cut of the year' in 1967. There's plenty else from that period which is also worth listening to.
Man in a Shop veers towards psychedelic Beatles orchestration and sentiments but applies a slightly more sugary layer upon what they were doing at round about the same time, as befits Marmalade's name. They later moved further in the same direction and had their greatest success with a cover of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da which reached Number One in the UK in 1970 by which point they weren't a million miles away from bubblegum. Perhaps they're now seen by posterity in those terms as providing largely sugary confection but this by no means tells the whole story, Underrated.
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