Monocled Alchemist

The story of a rare LP

The Five Day Week Straw People | Car Wash | Boulevard | 1968 | Just about ten years ago, as the crow swims, singer, songwriter and guitarist, John Du Cann, began to receive what became an agitated flurry of telephone enquiries regarding his activities in the later months of 1967. It wasn’t the ‘News of the World’, or the local Women’s Institute, nor the Grand Holy Order of Gnome Fanciers and Troll Titillators. No such luck. John’s past had caught up with him and no mistake. And it was a fair cop, guv’nor, they’d got him bang to rights this time, something rotten. So, what was Du Cann’s deep, dark secret?

Well, he had been the musical brain behind a recording which the highly respected UK music magazine, ‘Record Collector’, recently called “an indispensable album” in a “beautiful period-piece sleeve” (the inspiration for which came from John Du Cann) that is “splendid throughout and thoroughly recommended”.

THE FIVE DAY WEEK STRAW PEOPLE. It is a unique slice of BritPsych that exudes the very essence of Britain – and especially London – in the late-sixties. The telephone calls Mr Du Cann was receiving were from avid, bat-eared music fans who had noted a similarity in the playing style of a group called Andromeda, which had been led by John Du Cann, and that of the musicians involved in a very rare 1960’s album called ‘The Five Day Week Straw People’.

Did John play on this album, the sharp-eared music fans enquired, probingly? Yes, he did, and many other fine recordings, too.

From an early age, John Du Cann was immersed in music. At the age of five, he was already appreciating the music of Black America courtesy of his cousin, who was in the Merchant Navy, and travelled to the United States regularly. He was a great fan of the Blues, R&B and Rock’n’Roll giants of the time and brought home loads of records that were not readily available in 1950’s Britain. This banquet of the best of Black US music was not lost on the boy Du Cann – quite the reverse – it gave him a burning ambition to get into the music business himself and emulate his heroes.

The Five Day Week Straw People | Car Wash | Boulevard | 1968

Unlike most lads at that time, John didn’t go through the standard BritRock route of getting a ghastly, untunable acoustic guitar with an impossible action and a sound as feculent as thick mud. His first guitar was an electric, with a small amp, “Which may explain the lack of any ‘folky’ roots in my playing style”, John has said. He did, however, join a local band in Marlborough, Wiltshire – ‘The Sonics’ – as lead guitarist and vocalist, playing all the less ‘poppy’ songs of the era, as was the wont of all the best local bands. (‘They’re a local band for local people’). It wasn’t too long, though, before John was hankering to be somewhere far more hip and happening than the sleepy West Country of England – so, where better to be than the hippest and happeningest SWINGING LONDON?

There it was that John came to join The Attack whose other members became: Keith Hodge – Drums: Roger Deane – Bass: and Richard Shirman – vocals.

John Du Cann recalls: The Attack was very much a ‘Carnaby Street’ band. We were always in and out of the so-called ‘fabbest’ shops and boutiques, dressed in the wildest clobber we could lay our hands on (or afford).

Don Arden was our manager/agent at this time, and his office was in Carnaby Street. We did lots of gigs with other clients of his, like the Small Faces and The Move. The band got a four single deal with Decca Records – if one of the singles was a hit, we got to make an album”.

Sadly, none of the Attack singles made it big, but they did trump Jeff Beck by releasing their version of “Hi-Ho Silver Lining” before his rendering of the song got to the shops. Beck, whom John Du Cann has always rated very highly, got the hit single, though.

All was not gloom and despair with the band, however, because they were very popular throughout the UK as a live act, and gigged heavily in all directions, North, South, East and West, playing what is termed “Freak-beat” these days, though John does not recall their music having any particular tag back then: “It was quite a ‘poppy’ kind of group really, judged on our singles”,he says.

Leaving the custodianship of Don Arden for the new Ellis Wright Agency, set up by Chris Wright and Terry Ellis, who later masterminded the Chrysalis Record label, The Attack found themselves with a whole slew of ‘bookings’, as gigs were also known in those days, this time with new agency-mates like Ten Years After, who were the agency’s major act, and Jethro Tull, an up-and-coming band, based in Luton, except for their lead singer/flautist, Ian Anderson, who used to cadge lifts back to London with the obliging members of The Attack.

The Five Day Week Straw People | Car Wash | Boulevard | 1968

The gigs were of a high standard, by and large; all the top universities, the Town Halls and Civic Halls and trendy clubs like The Marquee, Whisky A Go-Go, Revolution, Blaises, The Speakeasy, The Bag o’ Nails, Klooks Kleek, and on and on and so on – despite this, it was never certain that a venue would pay out cash at the end of the night, so there was often a shortage of cash for items like petrol for the drive home. Many members of many bands from those days went home with their breath foul from the stench of two-star fuel as a result of illegal petrol siphoning exploits. Well, you’ve gotta get home, haven’t you? And it made a change from the foul-tasting ‘Blue Boar tea. And needs must when the Devil drives (or answers).

There was a downside to The Attack’s deal with Decca, however. If no hits came from the four singles deal, the contract option was very unlikely to be picked up by the company. You guessed it. After four singles, Decca passed on The Attack. However, being an industrious and optimistic son of a Cann, John decided to go ahead and independently lay down some demo recordings of the group to attract offers from other record labels. He also had something else on his mind…

Notesmith’s Note: Some of you may be wondering when I’m going to get to the bit about those Five Day Week Straw People. Fear not and be of hale and hearty good cheer, dear persons all. We’ll be there in a tiddle and a trice – then you’ll realise what all this protracted promenading of peripherally pertinent prose has been in aid of.

John was musing about the realistic future prospects of The Attack, because he was feeling that he wanted to make music that had more weight and welly to it. As a younger chap, he’d been very impressed by the heavy chords of Richard Barrett’s strangely disturbing song, “Louie Louie”, also “You Really Got Me”, by The Kinks, who had also recorded “Louie Louie”. He loved the early, rootsier Tamla-Motown recordings and The Birds (UK version), a Decca band who had recorded a heavied-up version of an Eddie Holland Motown original, “Leaving Here”, which was covered by later by Motorhead and The Silence. John was thinking ahead, and thinking Andromeda.

Of The Attack, that august organ, “Record Collector” recently opined approvingly: “They progressed to an advanced psych-flavoured pop and were one of the premier British psychedelic rock bands.”

John says of The Attack: “It was a great, tight band, but the singles were too lightweight for my taste, though the B-sides tended to be tougher-sounding, like our gigs. Ultimately, it seemed that it was a group that wasn’t going to get hit records to lift us out of the endless grind of gig after gig after gig, which was very wearing and very wearying. The Attack just seemed to lose the will to ‘live’, really.”

Finally, therefore – let’s hear it for THE FIVE DAY WEEK STRAW PEOPLE”

So it was, then, late in 1967, that John is still busy gigging with The Attack, and thinking about Andromeda, when a strange little proposition for a strange little project is put to him by a couple of guys with a small, independent record label. They wanted a psychedelic album to add to their catalogue. Could John put something together for them? There was a £25 per person fee on offer, so, cash-strapped as every proper musician always was back then, John determined to go for it, decided on a theme for the album and set about writing a sequence of songs relating to “The Straw People” (at that time, most writers would have called them ‘plastic people’, but John wanted to avoid the cliche and made them of straw).

They were the people in tedious, repetitive, mind-grindingly dismal jobs, who spent their five day working week dreaming about the weekend and the release it would bring, and the songs tell the story of a typical Straw People weekend. At this time, John was sharing a flat in Clapham with a bass-playing friend called Mick Hawksworth, who’d been in another long-lost band that John had briefly enhanced.

Over the course of a week, John wrote, and the two of them arranged, the of-necessity, swiftly-penned songs, then advised the record company fellows that the music was ready. A date and venue for the recording session was booked at a studio with a Swiss Cottage, North London, address, though John and Mick knew of no recording studios in that area. And there weren’t that many recording studios around in the Year of The Summer of Love, in Lovely London Town.

The Five Day Week Straw People | Car Wash | Boulevard | 1968

Arriving at the address given, at the time given, 4pm – John was astonished to find that the studio appeared to be a children’s playschool or kindergarten, and the child-goblins were streaming out in seething, screeching droves, to be picked up by their mummies and daddies.

Laden down with band equipment, John, Mick Hawksworth and drummer, Jack Collins, struggled through the stampeding, hyperactive brats and up to the main doors, where John enquired as to where the recording studio might be located. A second major astonishment of the day was coming John’s way. “This is it”, he was gaily informed by one of the matronly kinderhelpers, pointing him to a large, empty room, with none of the accoutrements of a normal recording studio.

Still, this was the late 1960’s, and nothing was too weird, so in they lugged their equipment, and up they set it, as fast as they could. There was one other slight problem to cope with, apart from being in a recording studio with no recording equipment, screens, acoustic treatment, sound booth, etc., etc….. drummer, Jack Collins had NOT HEARD ANY OF THE TEN SONGS YET. Nothing too minor, then!

So, with their equipment: John’s Marshall 100 watt top and 4 X 12’s cabinet, his stoic Fender Telecaster and Freakadelic Wah-Wah Pedal, Mick’s Sound City 100 watt top and 4X12’s cabinet and Jack’s Ludwig Super Classic Drum Kit – the best rock drum kit ever invented – all set and ready to go, as if by magic mushroom, a chap appeared clutching a heavy load of portable recording equipment, including two Ferrograph stereo quarter inch tape machines, boxes of microphones, stands, cabling and a minute mixing desk.

The Five Day Week Straw People | Car Wash | Boulevard | 1968

John recognised him as Robin (the surname now eludes Mr. Du Cann) who had been Roy(Thomas)Baker’s tape operator on sessions for The Attack singles at Decca’s Studios in West Hampstead. He set up in a small, adjoining room and, whilst he set his levels and sorted out sounds on his equipment, the band frantically ran-through the ten songs that two of them had barely played and to which Jack, the drummer, was a total stranger.

“Luckily”, the laconically understated John Du Cann has remarked, “Jack was really good at picking things up quickly and remembering arrangements.”

The group’s difficulties weren’t aided by the large room’s booming reverberation, which made hearing what they were doing difficult and which is clearly discernible on the recording. No headphones were available, and John would need to sing some of the lead vocals live, too.

Today’s recording artists would pass out at the thought of recording sixteen bars of music under these circumstances, but REAL men-in-groups just get on with the job. And so they did, they did.

Of course, there was one more shock to come. Having completed his set-up, Robin came in to the “studio” and informed John and Co. that he was only booked until 8pm -in other words, they had only 4 hours, less the set-up time, to commence and complete the recording of a ten title album.

This, I can reliably inform you, is a tall, TALL order. So these guys just did it. Just like that. Du Cann, Hawksworth and Collins just delivered the goods like the true professionals that they were/ are.

the backtracks

During the sessions, to give a little technical flavour, the backtracks – and maybe a lead vocal or many – were recorded in stereo on tape machine one. The idea then would have been to play back (or foldback) the backtracks through headphones, or a speaker, so that the singer and/or instrumentalists could add the lead vocal, backing vocals, guitar solos or whatever, and this would be mixed live onto a copy of the backtrack being transferred simultaneously onto tape machine two, with the overdubs being played/sung-in and live-mixed onto the copy of the backtrack.

John recalls: “We had a lot of ideas for overdubs on the songs, but the lack of recording time and the poor quality of the foldback system, or an inability to run the two tape machines without being able to effect record/playback synchronisation with each other, meant that we had to abandon most of our ideas. I got to use my Wah-Wah pedal, though, which was some consolation”.

Given the problems John describes, it may be that he had to do all his vocals live, plus live guitar solos and live backing vocals. The memories of this session are not too detailed in John’s mind, now. After all, as he points out, the Five Day Week Straw People recording was a four hour experience in a career jam-packed with experiences, and, odd as it may seem to some, it was really no big deal at the time, just another gig.

“I think that Robin, the recording engineer, did a brilliant job, though, given very difficult circumstances. Come to that, I think that WE did a pretty good job, too,” said John, recently.

Andromeda

And I wouldn’t argue that point with J. Du C., or Record Collector. I’ve a feeling that you won’t, either. Has it occurred to you that, had the ‘Five Day Week Straw People’ emerged in the 1970s, during Edward Heath’s second term in office, they’d have had to have been ‘Three Day Week Straw People’? And these days, maybe the ‘Five Day Week Jack Straw People’?

Meanwhile, back on Earth: As The Attack ebbed away, Andromeda was becoming a reality, with the personnel of the ‘Four Hour Five Day Week Straw People’ being the band’s founder members. “We’d all worked so well together under pressure, it seemed natural to use the ‘Straw’ line-up for the new band,” John explains. “We did try out Richard Shirman, the former Attack vocalist, for Andromeda, but things didn’t work out, so I did the vocals”.

And the band worked VERY, very well, too. John says that once they had attracted the attention of the nascent Grand Pooh-Bah of Music, John Peel, and they’d recorded a session for his show, things really began to take off.

One thing that this story demonstrates clearly is the speed at which things happened in the music business in the 1960’s, and how casual was the attitude of the musicians to their work. It was a gig and an “earner”. It paid the rent. There was a lot of talent and, in most cases, a marked absence of ego and tantrums. Being hard-up was almost a ‘badge of honour’ then, though there was always the latent voice of optimism that whispered of great things ahead…soon…soon…soon..

And the ‘Five Day Week Straw People’ only ever existed for those few hours of recording in a bare room in Swiss Cottage, then – Phfft! – they were gone. ‘They’ lived and died right there. It was just an illusion, mist, smoke – such things as dreams are made on. Perhaps the most perfect group that 1967 could proffer? First they existed, didn’t they, then they were gone, weren’t they? And no-one knew who they were. John never performed any of the songs again with any other of his groups, nor as a solo artist. That ‘dream’ was over.

Hello And Goodbye To All That So, enjoy the taste, aroma and sound of Swinging London from thirty (very) odd years ago. Those Straw People provide a wonderfully kaleidoscoped feast of titbits, insights and aural snapshots from the Wonderworld of 1967, when the Straw People played just that once. There really was a feeling of anticipation in the air, then, an almost tangible expectation that “something” very special was going to happen at any moment. And maybe, just maybe, it did. Close your eyes and you will be there by tea-time next Tuesday. Half a pound of magic mushrooms and a couple of extremely dodgy pills are optional extras, but cannot be recommended, nor approved of, by The Management. (Dale Griffin)

And now I get to the reason why I wanted to research the Five Day Week Straw People and create a YouTube video featuring their songs “Car Wash” and “I’m Going Out Tonight”.

I found a cheap budget label LP in a local book hub for FREE last year. As you can see from the album cover it featured dancers at a Club and rather predictably the LP was called ‘Discotheque’ Volume One. I’ve found no evidence that the Boulevard label released a second ‘Discotheque’, so their series appears to have ended with this.

The music on the album is quite strong and varied, all of the tracks are by professional groups and musicians. On display for your ears to enjoy are numbers by the Brunning Sunflower Blues Band, the Good Earth, Linda & Noel, Dave Smith & the Pylots, Herbie & the Royalists and of course the Five Day Week Straw People.