INSTANT | A trip through the vaults of Instant Records, where music is magical

Exploring the vaults of Instant Records, where music is magical.

This set features rare single sides and vintage radio adverts from another dimension in time.

Featured songs in order of appearance:

• The Monkees – ‘Head’ radio advert #2
• The Outer Limits – Sweet Freedom
• Twice As Much – Night Time Girl
• Mike ‘Abo – See The Little People (Gulliver Travels)
• The Stone Poneys – Pepsi radio spot
• The Outer Limits – Great Train Robbery
• Samson – Traffic
• The Beach Boys – ‘Dance Dance Dance’ promo spot
• Excelsior Spring – Happy Miranda
• Vashti – Winter Is Blue
• The Troggs – Miller Beer radio spot #3
• Sonny Burke Outfit – All You
• Twinkle – Micky
• The Beatles – KLIF Dallas, Honer harmonica contest
• Copperfield – Any Old Time (You’re Lonely And Sad)
• Samson – Venus
• Square World of Ed Butler TV promo spot
• Excelsior Spring – It
• Copperfield – I’m No Good For Her

IT MAY NOT have quite the same cachet amongst collectors as its parent label, the rather more celebrated Immediate, but the short-lived INSTANT was nevertheless a bona fide part of Andrew Loog Oldham‘s kingdom before the former Stones manager’s business world came crashing down around him at the end of the 1960s.

Revolution Records

By the time of Immediate’s demise, which dovetailed neatly with the close of the decade, Instant had issued four albums and five singles, with a further two 45rpm releases coming from an agreement with the little-known Revolution Records.

Instant Karma includes all A and B sides, extracts from all album releases (except for the first, which was merely radio commentary of the 1968 European Cup Final) as well as alternative versions and outtakes to bring you nothing less than the full Instant story.

Appropriately enough, Instant only operated for a matter of months, and even its raison d’etre remains shrouded in mystery. Oldham, after all, had enough on his plate with the high-rent maintenance of Immediate without adding to his woes by attempting to launch another, clearly overlapping label.

Nevertheless, that was the route he chose to take, and in August 1968 Instant launched its first product. Presumably issued to coincide with the start of another domestic football season, Instant’s first album (INLP 001) consisted of BBC Radio commentary highlights of the April 1968 European Cup Final, in which Manchester United, inspired by a two goal Bobby Charlton, brought the prestigious trophy to England for the first time.

The best of Instant Records

In terms of late 60s pop culture, however, the inaugural Instant single release was a rather more enticing proposition, though even this was surrounded by some typically Oldhamesque confusion. Led by singer and songwriter Jeff Christie, Leeds band THE OUTER LIMITS had recorded a couple of songs with Oldham and arranger Tony Meehan (formerly with the Shadows) in the spring of 1968.

“Great Train Robbery” b/w “Sweet Freedom” had been readied for release by Immediate in May 1968, with demo copies showing a catalogue number of IM 067. For some reason, the Immediate release was never made commercially available the number was re-allocated to .P P. Arnold‘s “Angel Of The Morning”, and the Outer Limits had to wait a further four months before an alternative mix (which omitted the gunfire that topped ‘n’ tailed the original version) of “Great Train Robbery” was chosen as Instant’s first single in September 1968.

But despite the winsome harmony pop nature of the A-side (both Immediate and Instant versions, incidentally, are included herein), the single failed to click.

Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London

The Outer Limits, who’d previously recorded for Deram as well as cutting a rag week single back in Leeds, moved on to Decca, but without Jeff Christie, who turned up in the Epics and the Move-sponsored Acid Gallery before finally scoring as leader of Christie, who hit big with “Yellow River” in 1970.

The next Instant release encapsulated the wilful hedonism and blissful confusion of the era: Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London was filmmaker Peter Whitehead‘s statement on both the Spirit of the Age and the epicentral nature of London (shame, then, that Oldham decided to use the ugly, Americanised spelling of the word `tonight’).

The soundtrack juxtaposed snippets of interviews with such counter-cultural giants as Allen Ginsberg, David Hockney, Alan Aldridge, Mick Jagger and Oldham himself with music from the likes of the Pink Floyd, Chris Farlowe and the Small Faces, though we’ve chosen to sample two of the more obscure acts (relatively speaking, that is) who contributed to the album.

Swinging London pop duo (and Oldham favourites) TWICE AS MUCH donate the glutinous “Night Time Girl”, while VASHTI gives us the sublime ice-cold beauty of “Winter Is Blue”.

David Skinner (one half of Twice As Much, also the co-writer of “Winter Is Blue”) subsequently turned up as a sideman in the 1979 Roxy Music regrouping, while Vashti went on to record (as Vashti Bunyan) the Just Another Diamond Day album, now one of the rarest artefacts of the early 1970s UK folk scene.

The best of Instant Records

Naming themselves after a 19th Century bedspring company, THE EXCELSIOR SPRING seem to have been a vehicle for the songwriting and production team of Mike Finesilver and Peter Ker, who also wrote and/or produced other late 1960s releases by the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (including “Fire”) and Love Sculpture.

Issued three weeks before Christmas 1968, Oldham was possibly hoping to score some kind of novelty festive hit (“yule be lucky”, responded the punters) with the bouncy “Happy Miranda” (Instant IN 002), though the far darker B-side “It” has arguably stood the test of time rather better. And, while I wouldn’t want to start any rumours, could that possibly be Noosha Fox on backing vocals on the A-side?

The release of the Excelsior Spring single in December 1968 coincided with the appearance of yet another Immediate-affiliated label. However, Revolution was clearly the brainchild of Dave Hadfield, who’d been in charge of the Maximum Sound studios in the Old Kent Road for the last couple of years.

Hadfield, who’d written “Bert’s Apple Crumble” for Deram act the Quik and had also worked for specialist ska label Pama, was keen to start his own label, and agreed a sub-licensing deal with Oldham that lasted for a mere two singles at the end of 1968.

Ska labels

Those two singles reflected Hadfield’s interest in what he described at the time as “West Indian sounds”. “Sitting In The Park”, a gorgeous rock steady version of the Billy Stewart/Georgie Fame hit by OWEN GRAY (misspelt ‘GREY’ on the label), appeared as the A-side of Revolution REV 001, backed by “You’ve Got It”, which was credited to PETE HUNT, with backing on both tracks by MAXIMUM BREED.

Jamaican-born Gray was already an established solo act, having recorded over the years for such ska-friendly labels as Bluebeat, Coxsone, Trojan and the early Island, as well as cutting the original “Oh Carolina” (a UK No I for Shaggy in 1993) back in 1962 as part of the Folks Brothers.

By the mid-70s Island were attempting to market Gray (together with compatriots Bob Marley and Junior Murvin) as a crossover act with releases like the Lennon song “Jealous Guy”.

While Gray’s position in the reggae world is a matter of record, the identity of Pete Hunt is rather more debatable. However, I would hazard a guess that it’s the Pete Hunt who, as the Quik’s drummer, had already recorded with Hadfield at Maximum Sound, and that the Maximum Breed band was an ad hoc line-up of Maximum Sound regulars (including, quite possibly, future Vinegar Joe/Dr Feelgood man Pete Gage, who wrote “You’ve Got It” and was very active in London during the era as a behind-the-scenes producer/songwriter for labels like CBS, NEMS and Direction).

The best of Instant Records

Despite the unalloyed magnificence of “Sitting In The Park”, the second Revolution single was arguably more interesting. A member of Georgie Fame’s band the Blue Flames, West Indian JIMMY SCOTT was a regular figure on the London club scene, as Paul McCartney recounted in Barry Miles’s biography Many Years From Now. “I had a friend called Jimmy Scott who was a Nigerian conga player . . . a real cool guy.

He had a few expressions, one of which was ‘Ob la di ob la da, life goes on, bra’. I used to love this expression. Every time we met, he’d say ‘Ob la di ob la da, life goes on, bra.’ I said to him ‘I really like that expression, and I’m thinking of using it,’ and I sent him a cheque in recognition of that fact later because, even though I had written the song and he didn’t help me, it was his expression.”

Scott, who’d played congas on the White Album recording, immediately worked up his own song around the phrase (Yoruba for ‘Life goes on’, apparently), recording ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da Story’ over both sides of a single (Revolution REV 002, issued December 1968).

Marmalade

It’s probably fair to say that his release made less of a splash than the song of the same name had done for either the Beatles or The Marmalade, though he could take some consolation from the fact that the B-side ‘Doh (Part Two)’ would also provide Grand Funk Railroad fan Homer Simpson with a catchphrase a few years further down the line.

Scott later recorded for Deram, though his last release prior to his death in 1986 had been a single for the small Move label.

The failure of the first two Revolution singles coincided with a parting of the ways for Oldham and Dave Hadfield, though Revolution continued to release records for the next year or two (including a great McCartneyish single by actor Rodney Bewes — Hadfield also co-produced the Likely Lads theme tune ‘Whatever Happened To You’ a year or two later) as an independent concern.

the Sonny Burke Outfit

It’s possible, however, that the next Instant single, which appeared in January 1969, had been slated as a Revolution release. “Baby Be My Girl” was credited to THE EDDIE THORNTON OUTFIT, though its B-side partner “All You” (arguably the more commercial of the two sides) appeared under the name of THE SONNY BURKE OUTFIT.

The exact relationship between the two acts is unclear (to me, anyway): Thornton – a trumpeter who’d worked with Ronnie Jones & the Night Timers, the Amboy Dukes (that’s the UK act who recorded for Polydor rather than Ted Nugent’s US crew, of course) and Georgie Fame – wrote and produced the A-side, but also produced the Sonny Burke composition on the flip.

Though Thornton briefly re-emerged in the late 1970s with a single for the indie label Plastic Fantastic, it was Burke who had the stronger pedigree, having recorded a quintet of singles for Island and a variety of sides for specialist reggae labels like Bluebeat, Ska Beat and Black Swan.

It was a common practice in reggae circles, of course, but having a deal with a record company to provide just a B-side still seems the thin end of the wedge to me . . .

Gulliver Travels

On the face of it, Oldham reverted to more familiar territory in February 1969 with the release of the album Gulliver’s Travels (Instant INLP 003), which appeared to be the soundtrack of the play of the same name, with Manfred Mann’s Michael d’Abo as the star, was packing them in at the Mermaid Theatre in London.

However, as was par for the course in the often surreal late 60s world of Andrew Loog Oldham, all was not as it seemed. Far from being a literal soundtrack to the stage show, the Instant album was a bizarre aural montage that, aside from occasional moments of near-lucidity, included various snippets of songs both from and outside the Immediate vaults.

The best of Instant Records

For your delectation and delight, we’ve selected a couple of tracks from the project. “In The Beginning” was recorded by MICHAEL D’ABO with the assistance of the Mike Sammes Singers and the Small Faces duo of Ronnie Lane and Kenney Jones, though it should be noted that, inexplicably, Oldham left the track off the album.

Meanwhile, a playful cover of “Afterglow” comes from BOB KERR’S WHOOPEE BAND, a trad combo put together by trombonist/saxophonist Kerr, who’d also done time with the New Vaudeville Band and the Bonzos. Would it be sacrilegious to say that I prefer this version to the Small Faces original? Thought as much . . .

For the next few months Oldham seems to have concentrated on keeping Immediate afloat, but Instant briefly re-appeared in the summer of 1969 with a trio of final offerings. First up were COPPERFIELD (now there’s a name to conjure with!), a soul/pop quintet from Birmingham who’d been given a Tony MacAuley song to record as their debut single (Instant IN 004, issued July 1969).

Foundations number

“Any Old Time (You’re Lonely And Sad)” had already been a minor hit for the Foundations the previous year (it would also be covered by another of MacAuley’s charges, Pickettywitch), but Copperfield’s confident cloning of the song failed to make even that kind of impact.

The B-side, the self-written “I’m No Good For Her”, is arguably the more interesting selection, if only for the fact that its Merseybeat-style sound was a good five years out of date even then. The group quickly moved on to Parlophone for a second, equally unsuccessful single, though group members Derek Arnold (bass) and Mike Hopkins (lead guitar) would re-emerge a decade later with heavy metal band Quartz.

The best of Instant Records

If at least two members of Copperfield had the good times ahead of them, the pop successes of TWINKLE (“Terry”, “Golden Lights”) were firmly behind her in August 1969 when, following a chance meeting with Oldham, she wrote and performed “Micky” b/w “Darby And Joan” (Instant IN 005) with the assistance of producer and pianist Michael d’Abo.

Both tracks are enjoyable bubblegum pop with the same lightness of touch that characterised a good deal of d’Abo’s songwriting/production work during the period, but the single wasn’t about to reverse the fortunes of either Oldham or Twinkle.

UK progressive rock

And, as befits their strongman name, it’s SAMSON who were given the highly responsible job of propping up the rest of the Instant empire with their album Are You Samson (Instant INLP 004), which appeared as the label’s final release in November 1969.

Prototypal UK progressive rock, Samson are represented on our anthology by “Traffic” and “Venus”, which always sounds to me as if it’s escaped from the first Caravan album. The group included Ian Kewley, later Musical Director and occasional songwriter for Paul Young on his first, highly successful solo album No Parlez. (David Wells, December 2001)