Peter Law and the Pacific
Listen/Download – Peter Law and the Pacific – Remains to Be Seen
Greetings all.
I hope the new week finds you well, and that all of you have pulled down the ones and zeros for this month’s Iron Leg Radio Show.
I was lucky enough late last week to sneak in a little bit of unscheduled digging in one of my old, once great, vinyl repositories.
I say “once great”, because way back in the day, when I was but a sprite one would walk through the doors of this place and reel at the massive amount of records to paw through.
So large and wonderful a place that should you become bored looking through the rock and soul you could stoop down to floor level and start looking through the comedy, spoken word and international sections, all filled with interesting stuff.
Sadly, those days are gone, and with the influx of vinyl cut short, the outflux into the collections of my friends and I has also shrunken and the pickings, in the word of a great philosopher can only be described as slim.
That said, it’s still worth taking a ride out there every once in a while, if only to flex the digging muscles and get a taste (however slight) of the old ways.
Though most of the solid stuff is no more (the funk and soul section is probably 60% brand new reissues), there are still interesting things to be had if you put in enough effort.
So, dig I did, and I managed to pull out a handful of very cool things for the Iron Leg ‘to be blogged” folder, including today’s selection’.
I’d never heard of Peter Law and the Pacific before I laid hands on their album, but I could not very well leave a menagerie of mod haircuts and clothing sitting in the ‘New Arrivals’ bin, never having sampled its delights.
Said delights were not exactly abundant, but as is often the case, there, buried in a haystack of ordinariness and attempts at mass appeal, was a gem waiting to be discovered.
That gem was a tune called ‘Remains to Be Seen’.
Peter Law and the Pacific were a showband out of Northern Ireland that plied their wares through the 60s.
Showbands were (and still are) a kind of all-purpose entertainment machine, performing a wide variety of pop sounds in clubs, bars and theaters for an equally diverse audience. Most of the showbands included small horn sections, truncated from the days when the same kinds of entertainment were provided by full orchestras.
Peter Law and the Pacific played pop, rock and country, the latter bringing them a Canadian hit in 1968 with their cover the Mel Tillis song ‘Ruby’.
I did mention that they also recorded pop and rock, which is how they came to cover a fairly obscure but very groovy bit of Australian popsike (originally recorded in 1968) called ‘Remains to Be Seen’ which was originally recorded by the duo of Steve and Stevie.
Law and the Pacific recorded their version in 1969 and released in it Canada on the Capitol label.
What you get is a very nice approximation of Deram/Decca popsike with vocals by the band’s second singer Sean Fagan.
The original recording of ‘Remains to be Seen’ was released in the UK on the Toast label, which is where Law and the Pacific probably heard it.
It’s a very groovy, very obscure number, and I hope you dig it.
I’ll see you all next week.
Peace
Larry
Iron Leg 