Peter Janes - Emperors and Armies/ Go Home Ulla

Ex-Cat Stevens partner on an epic psychedelic folk trip

Label: CBS

Year of Release: 1967

Peter Janes may not seem like an immediately familiar folk name, but it could all have been so different. His career began in a duo with Cat Stevens, and had fate wriggled a different way, there's every possibility his harmonies could have intertwined with Stevens' melodies, propelling both of them to stardom as some kind of British answer to Simon and Garfunkel.

Sadly, for every person who has success there's usually a long list of could-have-beens left behind, who might have also become millionaires had they only stuck with the project - well, kinda. Naturally, it's never quite as simple as that. Winning formulas sometimes only emerge when elements have been removed from, rather than added to, the equation. We can speculate all we want, but Cat Stevens did more than many artists do for their ex-associates and continued to support his friend and ex-partner's career producing his records and playing on them, and presumably giving them the mightiest promotional push he could.

Janes (along with and independently of Stevens) played numerous gigs on the British sixties folk circuit, playing on the same bills and in the company of Paul Simon, Al Stewart and Sandy Denny, and "Emperors and Armies" gives an impression of just how powerful his work could be. Moody, despondent but still somehow strident and distinctly 1967 flavoured, it's a towering tune which sounds like a hit. Sadly, the era was littered with powerful songs, and this one seems to have become ignored despite CBS's obvious push - that picture sleeve, rare in the sixties, is proof that they were spending extra money on him.

The track was recorded at Olympic Studio in Barnes and featured a large menagerie of session musicians who, Janes felt, made the track feel somewhat over-produced, and the sessions were also poorly timed to coincide with a bout of tonsillitis; but whatever his original vision or his vocal weaknesses on the day, you'd have to be extraordinarily picky to find an awful lot of fault with this. If anything, the slightly chocolate box arrangements make it sound like a mid-winter anthem.

Self Service - How Am I Spozed To/ Heavens Above!

Self-released swipe at New Wave success

Label: Racket

Year of Release: 1983

As I recently mentioned on Twitter, one of my money-draining habits is to take a punt on cheap self-released or vanity pressed records from eBay and Discogs users who offer "no extra postage for two additional records on any order". Usually, this results in me receiving some poorly pressed vinyl containing a tragic Totnes based singer-songwriter weeping into an electric piano about his many lost loves. Stick to playing background music in the nearest "high end" Indian restaurant, mate. Occasionally, though, the odd surprise gets netted.

While "How Am I Spozed To" is absolutely not a lost classic, it's a neatly phased bit of New Wave which chugs along propulsively, treading a well-worn hip disco groove but delivering a hook that remains in your brain for the rest of the day. It's definitely stylistically closer to the less credible end of things - think Boomtown Rats or BA Robertson rather than Blondie or Talking Heads - but manages to dodge the irritating attention-seeking of Robertson and the sub-Springsteen posturing of Geldof quite neatly. 

Please don't ask me who is responsible for this, though, because I haven't a clue. Clearly, we have to assume it's Peter David, as he's credited as the songwriter and producer on the label, but if he did anything besides this, I'm drawing a blank. There is an online estate agent in Halifax called Peter David who specialises in "Self Service" house sales, and while it would be hilarious and lovely if this turned out to be the same chap, it seems pretty damn unlikely he consistently used the "self service" moniker throughout the rest of his career. "Hey, I'm your estate agent, but you may remember me from a piece of vanity released vinyl I put out in 1983" doesn't seem like much of a selling point.

Reupload - Kris Ife - Give and Take/ Sands of Time

Former Quiet Five hit-maker in less successful solo guise. A borderline case for the Northern Soul files, though.

Label: Music Factory

Year of Release: 1968

Pop music history is littered with people who were relatively successful for about six months before losing relevance. Often their career's decline from mid-table chart finishers to niche fanbase performers isn't too unkind - they might suffer the ignominy of the occasional "What Exactly Is Kate Nash Doing These Days?" styled article, but they're still able to maintain a gentle media presence.

Others just disappear from the gaze of the mainstream press without explanation. Kris Ife was one example - as a member of The Quiet Five in the mid-sixties, he managed a couple of well-received singles which just about charted, "When The Morning Sun Dries The Dew" and "Homeward Bound". When he jumped off that particular ship to forge a solo career, it would seem that record companies invested a great deal of faith in him building on those foundations - MGM financed three singles in total (including this one on their short-lived Music Factory subsidiary) and Parlophone two. United Artists gave him a third crack of the whip in the late seventies.

Despite the promise, as a solo performer he never really seemed to shift units, and by the mid-seventies his recorded output dried up. That's not to say that he didn't leave a very firm mark on music history in the process, mind - his version of "Hush" was popular in clubs and was the one that members of Deep Purple heard in a Manchester nightclub before deciding to record it themselves. Without him, maybe Kula Shaker would have been denied an extra top five hit... and far beyond "Hush", his Mark Wirtz produced single "Imagination" is one of the more unreasonably ignored bits of lost British psychedelia.

Duffy - Running Away/ The Joker

Thumping cowbell dominated groover from Switzerland based rockers

Label: Chapter One

Year of Release: 1973

Life's unfair. When unknown British groups score hits in the USA, we always make a huge fuss about it, marvelling at their superhuman ability to get to number 25 in the Billboard 100. "Bring out your Union Jack flags, British rock is back on the map again!" journalists cry, while people in the streets of Idaho claim never to have heard of whoever the hell it is we're celebrating.

When British bands score success in mainland Europe, on the other hand, we tend not to care and it seldom wins extra headlines or favours. This is probably how Duffy only managed to get one single out in the UK despite scoring some minor success across the Common Market with "Rock Solid". 

There's no good reason for that, of course. Their sole UK 45, "Running Away", proves that Duffy were a powerful proposition, offering a thumping groover which owes as much to early seventies hard rock as it does the dominant rumble of glam. The flipside "The Joker" is even heavier and more impressive, moving into freak-rock territory with a pair of heavy hands.

The group consisted of Barry Coote on guitar, Joe Nason on keyboards, Stuart Reffold on lead vocals, Patrick Serjeant on bass and backing vocals, and Will Wright on drums. Reffold managed to put out a solo single in 1978 ("Kiss Your Lover Goodbye") and join groups such as Rock Island Live, Poker and The Fugitives, but apart from that, the group's activities as both musicians and a working group seemed to have petered out in all "territories" by the end of 1975.

Greengage - 20 Flight Rock/ Don't Cry Little Girl

Under-the-radar Moog-infested glam rock

Label: Philips

Year of Release: 1975

Given the numerous CD compilations which have sought to hoover up the best glam rock offcuts of the seventies, it's surprising how many decent singles are still lying beneath the radar of even most collectors. Take this one, for example - it's a cover of Eddie Cochran's "20 Flight Rock" which rips the original out of the fifties and slams it nose-first into a Moog with loose greetings card glitter all over its keys. 

Clearly, Greengage were working to a successful formula here already, and they wouldn't be the first or last artists of the era to take a fifties rock and roll classic and paint it dayglo. It's an unfamiliar joy, though, and will have you stomping your feet around your boudoir and distressing your downstairs neighbours in no time. Those Moog screeches and whines only add to the sense of crunching anarchy and excitement.

Greengage consisted of Denny Brooks, Geoff J. Lord, Lee Stevens, Mike Brooks, Paul Haines and Phil Stonehouse, and managed to put out seven singles in the seventies, four on RCA and three on Philips. Despite the faith shown by both labels, they never managed to produce a hit, and as the eighties dawned only appeared on vinyl again through vanity pressings presumably intended for the cabaret and working man's club circuit. Judging from the noise on offer here, there's little doubt they'd have been in demand for knowing their way around a rocker, and the B-side hints at their abilities with starry-eyed weepies too, although it's a little bit too teenie in its tones for my taste.