A fine group who deserved better in the UK.
Songs like Cherish,and Time for living are masterpieces,but surprised to find Pandoras golden heebie geebies doesn't make this tracklisting.
A song which is so psychedelic, it takes my breath away each time I play it (glad to have a near mint copy on UK London
having read the note to the merkin lp and the wikipedia article on on the haeco-csg system of producing a stereo-playable-mono lp that would automagically fold down to a properly-mono-balanced sound when played on mono systems, the existence of a separate mono version of the lp seems nonsensical, unless pye records did not in fact use haeco-csg-processed master tapes to produce their uk editions of the lp.
- yr hmbl srppnt. is not certain whether pye records did, "nevertheless"°, produce haeco-csg stereo-playable-mono and mono versions; or have access to non-haeco-csg-processed master tapes for their two editions - which seems a trifle unlikely; or produce the one, haeco-csg-processed version with different matrix nos. and labels, and sell one of 'em as mono, t'other as stereo. . .
° - eclection, and not associational at all, at all
Yes, "Cherish" and "Never My Love" were covered by lots of people and essentially became modern day standards so is a bit odd they didn't really dent the UK charts.
Maybe their odd multiracial image didn't help much either since a couple of the guys did look rather geeky - a problem I believe that seriously hampered The Zombies in the UK.
Good point too about Jan and Dean in the UK. "Surf City" was the only real hit they had.... most of those singles just never charted at all since the UK buying public were just happy enough to have one act of that kind plus there was a clash too since EMI owned Capitol and were distributing Liberty at the same time so when it came to publicity, The Beach Boys would had been given automatic priority, helped also by the fact the Beach Boys did come over to the UK in 1964 whereas I'm not sure if Jan and Dean ever did... if so, they must had been very brief visits.
Au Contraire biffbampow with your idea about promotion. The early Association 45s in The U.K. were released on London (I have "Windy" on U.K. London) and it was only after their British label was switched to Warner in 1968 that they had their sole U.K. chart hit with "Time For Living".
I think you are right about a lot of their material being a bit too flowery and saccharine but in addition to "Mary" I think "Cherish", "Never My Love" and "Windy" should have all been big U.K. hits, as "Cherish" and "Never My Love" have gone on to be much covered standards. I think I shall have to trawl through the Pirate Radio charts from the mid-60s to see if they appeared there as I'm sure they all got plenty of airplay.
I also think you are right that they were overshadowed by the likes of The Mamas And Papas and The Beach Boys. The same could be said for Jan And Dean, who were totally overshadowed by The Beach Boys in The U.K.
Just an opinion but I think some reasons why The Association weren't that successful in the UK was partly down to lousy promotion - WB weren't scoring many hits at all in the UK once the Everly Brothers hits began drying up in 1965 and 1966. Then there was The Beach Boys and The Mamas and The Papas giving us plenty of American harmony pop. The late 60's saw the Beach Boys take a big tumble in the States yet in the UK and Europe, their success and hits continued, so maybe they were enough for us Brits so The Association got shunned.
I dunno... I can't really warm to them myself. I love "Along Comes Mary" but I find much of what they put out a bit too flowery and saccharine for my liking. That's not dissing them since they're good well constructed records but the overall tone of them just doesn't work for me.
I've never understood why this group weren't much bigger in Britain as they never really had a big hit.
I remember hearing "Along Comes Mary" being played a lot on the radio though .....
swbcfc: can you confirm the warner bros. cat.no. - i'd've expected it to be W.1767 (though pye records / warner bros. uk were quite capable of making cat. no. errors of their own).