Blossom Toes

Brian Belshaw: Bass Guitar
Brian Godding: Guitar, Vocals
Jim Cregan: Guitar, Vocals
Kevin Westlake: Drums (1967-68)
Poli Palmer: Drums, Flute, Vibes, Harp, Vocals (1968)
Barry Reeves: Drums (1968-69)

    The beginings of the Blossom Toes go as far back as to 1962, when Brian Godding and Brian Belshaw met as apprentices at the Hilger and Watts scientific instrument factory at Highbury, Islington. There they formed a group called The Grave Diggers and eventually played in The Ingoes, a R&B outfit. As The Ingoes, they teamed up with The Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky and went to Paris where they developed a strong cult following. When back in London for a break, they recruited Jim Cregan, and returned for a second spell in Paris. It was during this time that The Ingoes recorded a single version of Help!, sung in Italian for the Italian market, and an EP on the Riviera label. Right after their London return, drummer Colin Martin, left and was replaced by Kevin Westlake. It was around this time that The Ingoes became Blossom Toes.

   They were then housed in a flat in Fulham by manager Giorgio Gomelsky and entered the studio to record their debut album. The backing of much of the album was recorded by an orchestra and sessionmen. The album was a 15 track collection of inventive psych pop (i.e. Telegram Tuesday, When The Alarm Clock Rings) with it's share of weirdness (i.e. The Remarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dog). Unfortunately, their live act suffered due to the inability to reproduce most of the album on stage. In the late 80's, there was a Blossom Toes bootleg which surfaced featuring live material from a 1967 gig at one of Sweden's top clubs and shows the band did a lot of Captain Beefheart numbers which is hard to imagine how that fit in with material from their debut, but it did show what changes in style they were to make by the time of their second album two years later. During 1968, the band just released two singles, both featuring new member Poli Palmer, on drums, and vibes.

   They released a cover of Bob Dylan's I'll Be You Baby Tonight and followed that with a true lost gem, Postcard backed with Everyone's Leaving Me Now. The latter was written and sung by Poli Palmer and shows them playing on the jazzy side, while tThe 'A' side was a tightly crafted psych pop song. Palmer left shortly after the single and was replaced by Barry Reeves from the soul band Ferris Wheel.
   

    Their second album, If Only For A Moment was released in 1969. It was much less psychedelic than their debut, but still has some fine moments in the epic Love Bomb and the madness of the first track, Peace Loving Man. There is some off-air recordings of the Blossom Toes on the BBC which feature a few tracks off their second LP that show what the songs might have sounded like if Palmer stayed with them. Also of note, two unreleased gems were also recorded for the BBC, but never appeared on any album or future compilation, Collect Little Girls and Ever Since A Memory.
   Wonder if there is a lost 1968 album by these guys!! Hmmm.

Diskografia:

1967 - We Are Ever So Clean Marmalade

1-LOOK AT ME I'M YOU
2-I'LL BE LATE FOR TEA
3-THE REMARKABLE SAGA OF THE FROZEN DOG
4-TELEGRAM TUESDAY
5-LOVE IS
6-WHAT'S IT FOR
7-PEPLE OF THE ROYAL PARKS
8-WHAT ON EARTH
9-MRS MURPHY'S BUDGERIGAR
10-I WILL BRING YOU THIS AND THAT
11-MISTER WATCHMAKER
12-WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK RINGS
13-THE INTREPID BALLOONIST'S HANDBOOK VOLUME ONE


1969 - If Only for a Moment

1-PEACE LOVING MAN
2-KIS OF CONFUSION
3-LISTEN TO THE SILENCE
4-LOVE BOMB
5-BILLY BOO THE GUNMAN
6-INDIAN SUMMER
7-JUST ABOVE MY HOBBY HORSE'S HEAD
8-WAIT A MINUTE

1987 - The Psychedelic Sound of Blossom Toes

   Not only must The Blossom Toes count as one of the most obscure '60s bands ever to merit a bootleg, but this document of a 1967 show at a Swedish club must rank as one of the weirder '60s boots by any criteria. At this point, The Blossom Toes had one album to their credit, a very good one of veddy British, orchestral psychedelic pop. In harsh contrast, this is a shambling, raucous, discordant, even free-form electric set, in which the group take their interest in Captain Beefheart (still very much a cult figure) to barely listenable extremes. A great deal of the record's time is occupied by the 11-minute "Electricity" and the 16-minute "Captain Trip," freakout jams that haven't aged well despite strange chanting and virtually no conventional song structure. The relatively disciplined guitar psychedelia of "Listen to the Silence" (which would appear on their second official LP) is actually pretty good, but the sound isn't so hot. What's more, the two (faintly recorded) acoustic numbers that compose the rest of the album are not in fact Blossom Toes, it has been revealed, but British singer Gary Farr, a roadie who took the stage occasionally (and also takes some vocals on "Electricity"). This isn't even especially recommended to the small clique of Blossom Toes fans, but if find it you must, this limited edition can still be detected via mail-order collector companies.

1989 - New Day: Blossom Toes '70

   Originally titled Workers Playtime, this album was attributed to B.B. Blunder when it was first released in 1971. It appears under the Blossom Toes discography because it was reissued, confusingly, as New Day in 1989 by Decal, who attributed the LP not to B.B. Blunder, but to "Blossom Toes '70 (formerly B.B. Blunder)." Featuring ex-Blossom Toes Brian Godding, Brian Belshaw, and Kevin Westlake, B.B. Blunder's sole outing had some nice typically thick circa 1970-British rock guitars, and some bits of promising melodies buried in the mix. Overall, though, one gets the impression that the group went into the studio before getting the songs into shape — there's a lot of meandering, and the songs either don't say much or never get to the point. Mick Taylor makes a little-known cameo appearance on bottleneck guitar on "New Day."