Pretty Things Live Abbey Road Studios S F Sorrow 1998

First live performance of their classic album released in 1967 with guests Dvid Gilmour and Host Arthur Brown
The first rock opera ever. Hope the 13th Floor Elevators or somebody didn't beat them to it, or I'll really be flunked.Show more

Track listing: 1) S. F. Sorrow Is Born; 2) Bracelets Of Fingers; 3) She Says Good Morning; 4) Private Sorrow; 5) Balloon Is Burning; 6) Death; 7) Baron Saturday; 8) The Journey; 9) I See You; 10) Well Of Destiny; 11) Trust; 12) Old Man Going; 13) Loneliest Person; [BONUS TRACKS:] 14) Defecting Grey; 15) Mr Evasion; 16) Talkin' About The Good Times; 17) Walking Through My Dreams.
I'm not getting into the discussion over whether S. F. Sorrow kicks the shit out of Tommy or whether Tommy bashes the chitlins out of S. F. Sorrow. It's clear that, since S. F. Sorrow came out first, Townshend was heavily influenced by the storyline and the concept in general; however, if you hear misguided rants about how S. F. Sorrow has no pretentions and no bombast as opposed to Pete's overbloated project, don't you go around believing it - this is an equally mystical and convoluted tale, with a plot that's even harder to guess, especially if you haven't read the story it is supposed to accompany, and while the subject matter of Sorrow is a wee bit more grounded (after all, the protagonist does have to deal with a lot of ordinary life problems before having his magical dream about Baron Saturday), the overall message is even less clear than that of Tommy. And that's all I'm gonna say. Draw your conclusions yourself after you've heard this.
But one thing's for certain - hear this you must, as it's undoubtedly the Great Lost Psychedelic album of the Sixties. The Pretties are really one unjustly forgotten band: having achieved no success with their gritty blend of R'n'B and having effectively reinvented themselves as one of swinging London's coolest psycho outfits, they achieved even less success. R'n'B fans naturally thought they were betrayed, and as for the new breed of hippies and loony Tolkienists, they didn't want no aliens, being perfectly happy when entertained by the likes of Barrett's Pink Floyd, Marc Bolan and the Soft Machine. As a result, S. F. Sorrow bypassed the public eye completely, and it's a shame.
It's not even that the album has a great load of melodies. It doesn't; none of the band members were perfect songwriters, and there ain't a single instantly memorable riff or a single absolutely smashing vocal melody on the record. It's the incredible, exciting atmosphere that one just has to soak in. To a certain extent, S. F. Sorrow takes a little bit of everything Britain was living on at the time: pop, psychedelia, hard rock, magic and mystery, illusions and naiveness, beauty and ugliness, whatever. In these songs I can feel everything that the Pretties were raised on - Beatlesque harmonies, Rolling Stones grittiness, Kinks humbleness, Hendrix guitars, and early Pink Floyd schizophrenia, and, what's more, lots of things that would follow on. Seems like the Who weren't the only band who got their clue from this record. Listen to the flute rhythms in 'Private Sorrow' and tell me this doesn't sound like vintage Jethro Tull. Listen to the aethereal chantings in 'Trust' and tell me Peter Gabriel didn't rip this off for a section in 'Supper's Ready'. Listen to 'Balloon Is Burning' and tell me this doesn't predict the chaotic jams of Yes. Listen to the 'love love love' chants on 'Bracelets Of Fingers' and tell me this doesn't render Freddie Mercury superfluous. Come on, you tell me all this and I'll just reply that you're not able to build up a solid historic perspective. :)

Anyway, in case you're just an unexperienced reader who doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about, here's the rub. S. F. Sorrow is a rock opera (concept album, whatever - one can make some nitpicks and say that since there are no clear differentiations between singer parties it ain't no opera, but well, that's just a nitpick), based on a short story by some author whose name I have forgotten. It tells about a guy named S. F. Sorrow who is very lonely all his life, has an unhappy romance, joins the army, ends up in America, gets disillusioned in life and then dreams of a certain Baron Saturday who leads him away to the Moon, which he used to dream of when he was a child, and shows him his true self. It all ends up rather sadly, with S. F. Sorrow just getting further disillusioned and spending the last days of his life in isolation and misery. In other words, Ray Davies (the 'little man' line) meets Pete Townshend (the 'mystery' line).

But to hell with the story. Like I said, it's just great fun to take this as a whole without bothering too much about the concept. A couple of the tracks are nothing more than dated psychedelic collages ('Well Of Destiny'), and a couple are rather primitive pop songs with rudimentary melodies ('She Says Good Mornings'), but every now and then the band falls upon a deep and rich psychedelic gold mine which, combined with their existent pop instincts, provides you with everything that, for instance, Syd Barrett could never provide you with. 'Bracelets Of Fingers', where S. F. Sorrow dreams of the moon, starts with some breathtaking accappella lines and goes from a heavenly chant to a wah-wah-driven rocker to a sitar-embellished mantra. 'Private Sorrow', as I already said, predicts Jethro Tull: the main melody, represented by a war march accompanied by a Celtic-sounding flute, is perhaps the most memorable moment on the album, and it brings such images to my mind as Tull rarely can - armies marching high up in the cold mountains, under a gray sky... wow, sorry for the lyrics. 'Death' is gloomy, dreary and sends shivers down your back. 'I See You' could threaten to conquer the world in its pomposity, if only 'hallucinogenous' didn't squeeze out from all of its openings. And 'Trust' is gorgeous beyond words, simply gorgeous beyond words. It's songs like that that really give 'psychedelic' a good name, apart from all the Beatles stuff, of course. Are you listening? Notice how the echo reprises everything Phil May chants out in that calm, awesome voice of his, too.

To diversify the picture, the band rocks out in a couple of places, notably on the shrill, frantic 'Baron Saturday' and the grizzly 'Old Man Going', and they certainly haven't lost any of the roughness of the early R'n'B days. But it's not the rocking out that really makes the record, no. If you want to summarize the Pretty Things at that stage of their career with just one phrase, it would be something like this: "The Pretty Things weren't the only band to go psychedelic after the Beatles showed the way, but they were the only band that were able to expand the theme of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' over the length of an entire album and get away with it'. 'Nuff said.

And don't forget to grab the re-issue, too: it adds four excellent bonus tracks, taken off the Pretties' psychedelic singles. 'Defecting Grey' in particular is a classic, one of the definining singles of its era: a multi-part psychedelic 'mini-suite' glued together from many pieces ranging from lightweight shuffles to backward sitar gimmicks to astral collages to heavy guitar freakouts. The others are no slouch, either.