Strawberry Alarm Clock - Anthology

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Music reviews of Anthology

Music Review: Harmless Psychedelia - And A Hit (Admit It!) You Had To Love
Rating: 4 Stars

The trouble was, what started as a b-side shot to the top of the charts. And they never again hit the kind of in-the-pocket freak accident that "Incense and Peppermints" was, but neither were they complete stiffs. Their experimental eclecticism was actually more endearing than the hipsters' ideas of psychedelic earnestness were producing (any two minutes of the Strawberries' madness beat the living bejesus out of any two sides worth of the Great Jefferson Dead Messenger Starship), and they had a cheerfully offbeat melodic flair that anticipates some of the late 1970s-early 1980s retropsych experimenters (the early Echo and the Bunnymen, Icicle Works, and Teardrop Explodes come to mind). They seem to have been sunk predominantly by some shenanigans involving an early but fired manager (who put a bogus version of the band on the road while they were trying to push their followup singles, including the underrated "Tomorrow" and an early version of "Good Morning Starshine" - which might have been a hit but for, rumour has it, someone once associated with the band who sent their pre-release demo of the song to the singer who ended up charting with it: Oliver) and a round of personnel changes; by 1971 they were through.

The anthology here gathers up the better of the band's peculiar output. And you find, as you listen on, that it's no great shakes to keep repeating "Incense and Peppermints" until the rest of the material grows on you slowly, whichever selections do. They weren't the first band who couldn't live up to the inadvertent promise of an unexpected blockbuster and they won't be the last. But they gave it one of the more memorable shots and, anyway, "Incense and Peppermints" has outlived its critics (probably to the band's surprise as much as anyone else's) and still sounds as refreshing as a roll of Lifesavers.

Description of Anthology

Classic Rock CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop
• Rock