Pretty Things S.F. Sorrow LP Rare Mint Canada Pressing

$

96

Up for auction

The Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow

Rare Earth stereo RS 506. The vinyl is in near mint condition and appears to be unplayed. The gatefold cover is in excellent condition and is only starting to show slight signs of aging. There is small punchhole in the bottom right hand corner. Comes with the original psychedelic Phonodisc original inner sleeve. An original Canadian pressing distributed by Phonodisc Limited out of Scarborough, Ontario. This cover is different than both the U.S. and UK issues. A rare record in this condition to add to your collection.

Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 — which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration — that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to 7 or 4, or even 2, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass — natch); and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus, and harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful, and sitars included in the array of stringed instruments, plus an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron. Sometimes one gets an echo of Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn or A Saucerful of Secrets, and it all straddles the worlds of British blues and British psychedelia better than almost any record you can name. The album, for those unfamiliar, tells the story of "S.F. Sorrow," a sort of British Everyman — think of a working-class, luckless equivalent to the Kinks' Arthur, from cradle to grave. The tale and the songs are a bit downbeat and no amount of scrutiny can disguise the fact that the rock opera S.F. Sorrow is ultimately a bit of a confusing effort — these boys were musicians, not authors or dramatists. Although it may have helped inspire Tommy, it is, simply, not nearly as good. That said, it was first and has quite a few nifty ideas and production touches. And it does show a pathway between blues and psychedelia that the Rolling Stones, somewhere between Satanic Majesties, "We Love You," "Child of the Moon," and Beggars Banquet, missed entirely.

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