Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake by Small Faces

I’m still not entirely sure how Small Faces went from being a well regarded mod band playing R&B and Soul covers, to producing one of the strangest and most psychedelic concept albums ever recorded, but I’m glad they did. The record was originally released in a circular metal tin but that had to be abandoned because it was expensive and they kept rolling off the shelves in record shops!

The first side opens with the title track, featuring a Hammond organ and string session, moving on to a varied selection of styles including hard rock, soul and a proper blinky-blimey-cockernee singalong that anticipated the Britpop of Blur et al by a good thirty years. Side two is even stranger, with a surreal concept story narrated by comedian Professor Stanley Unwin, famed for inventing his own mangled version of English.

I can imagine a sixties hippie, having rolled up a giant Camberwell carrot on the back of their record tin being transported by this tale of Happiness Stan, a giant fly and a quest for the missing half of the moon.

Genuinely enchanting and Engly Twenty Fido-tastic!