Free From The City - The Poppy Family

Introducing, from the snow-peaked talent vacuum that is Canada, husband and wife Terry and Susan Jacks on vocals and guitar and Satwant Singh with the killer suitar rhythms.

The Poppy Family made two great pop albums before they split. Terry later re-emerged as a solo artist and scored a worldwide hit with Seasons In the Sun - a Movie of the Week-style tear-jerker that was played at least once a night on Brian Measures' Plymouth Sound of Love radio show in the 1980s - the uncredited inspiration for Bubblegum Machine.

With names like theirs, Terry and Susan were never destined for sustained pop success - they look and sound like the sort of couple your parents knew... the childless couple with the two berth caravan, the shelf-full of Lladro, the daily delivery from Kay's Catalogue and the eventual trial separation.

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Path Through the Forest - The Factory

The band formally known as the Souvenir Badge Factory weigh-in with a superb piece of trippy acid pop. One for space cadets and viewers of Countryfile alike.

I can never quite figure out why every British psychedelic song is about having tea and marble cake on the Village Green with Alice, dancing 'round the Maypole or walking through the park with Lemon Emily... it's almost as if the lyrical rulebook of 60's UK pop was written by Cliff Michelmore from Holiday '83 while he was reporting on canal breaks in Weston Super Mere and jam making weekends in Mevagissy.

I still have some souvenir badges from my youth: Mr Wimpy's birthday club; the Yealmpton Shire Horse Centre Parade; the Buckfastleigh Butterfly Farm... Coincidently, all psychedelic song titles from the golden age of pop.

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Manifesto & Book News

If it's ever been on K-Tel or Ronco, it's in. If it features hand claps, cow bells, syrupy orchestration, walls of sound, wrecking crews, sha-la-las, toothy teen idols, candy-based metaphors for carnal acts or lyrics about hugging, squeezing and rocking all night long, it's in.

We are the Village Green Preservation Society. God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties.



> Martin Lampen (latest book news, contact details and other stuff)

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