Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera: Long Nights Of Summer, The Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera Anthology 3CD

Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera: Long Nights Of Summer, The Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera Anthology

• First-ever complete career anthology of highly-regarded late 60s UK psychedelic band Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera

• Mono and stereo versions of much-loved 1968 debut album plus their post-Elmer follow-up LP, several studio out-takes and numerous BBC radio session tracks

In the spring of 1967, London Mod/Soul act The Five Proud Walkers staged a musical volte-face after supporting underground sensations The Pink Floyd.

They duly re-emerged that summer as irrepressible psychedelic adventurers Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera, making an immediate splash with debut single ‘Flames’, which appeared on popular CBS label sampler ‘The Rock Machine Turns You On’ and was added to the set-list of many young British bands including the embryonic Led Zeppelin.

‘Flames’ was sufficiently successful to justify a debut LP, a strikingly original offering that remains one of the freshest, most consistently entertaining albums to emerge from the British psychedelic scene.

Charismatic frontman Elmer and guitarist Colin Forster then left, with rhythm section John Ford and Richard Hudson joined by singer Johnny Joyce and guitarist Paul Brett for a second Velvet Opera album, the more Folk/Blues-oriented ‘Ride A Hustler’s Dream’.

The band split in early 1970 when the Hudson-Ford partnership joined Strawbs, although original guitarist Forster briefly revived the name later that year for a one-off single with his former Tintern Abbey colleague David MacTavish.

The first-ever complete EGVO and VO anthology, ‘Long Nights Of Summer’ naturally includes both albums as well as a US promo-only mono mix of that incendiary debut LP that now makes its first-ever CD appearance.

Also including numerous studio out-takes, demo versions, non-LP singles and a revelatory 50 minutes of BBC session tracks (the bulk of which have never been released before), ‘Long Nights Of Summer’ features a new 6000 word essay on the band and many rare images.

It’s the final word on a legendary late 60s British underground band.

Tracklist:
DISC ONE:
1 Intro
2 Mother Writes
3 Mary Jane
4 I Was Cool
5 Walter Sly Meets Bill Bailey
6 Air
7 Lookin’ For A Happy Life
8 Flames
9 What’s The Point Of Leaving
10 Long Nights Of Summer
11 Dream Starts
12 Reactions Of A Young Man
13 Now She’s Gone
Bonus tracks
14 Flames (single version)
15 Salisbury Plain
16 Mary Jane (single version)
17 Dreamy
18 Volcano
19 A Quick ‘B’
20 Talk Of The Devil
21 And I Remember
22 To Be With You
23 The Painter
24 Salisbury Plain (extended demo version)
25 Flames (demo version)

DISC TWO:
1 Intro
2 Mother Writes
3 Mary Jane
4 I Was Cool
5 Walter Sly Meets Bill Bailey
6 Air
7 Lookin’ For A Happy Life
8 Flames
9 What’s The Point Of Leaving
10 Long Nights Of Summer
11 Dream Starts
12 Reactions Of A Young Man
13 Now She’s Gone
Bonus tracks
14 Dream Starts (BBC session)
15 Reactions Of A Young Man (BBC session)
16 Flames (BBC session)
17 Mother Writes (BBC session)
18 Mary Jane (BBC session)
19 Flames (BBC session)
20 I Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die Rag (BBC session)
21 Mary Jane (BBC session)
22 Dreamy (BBC session)
23 Air (BBC session)
24 All Along The Watchtower (BBC session)
25 Mary Jane (BBC session)
26 Something Else (BBC session)
27 Flames (BBC session)
28 All Along The Watchtower (BBC session)

DISC THREE:
1 Ride A Hustler’s Dream
2 Statesboro Blues
3 Money By
4 Black Jack Davy
5 Raise The Light
6 Raga
7 Anna Dance Square
8 Depression
9 Don’t You Realise
10 Warm Day In July
11 Eleanor Rigby Bonus tracks
12 Anna Dance Square (single version)
13 Don’t You Realise (single version)
14 She Keeps Giving Me These Feelings
15 There’s A Hole In My Pocket
16 Statesboro Blues (BBC session)
17 Water Wheel (BBC session)
18 She Keeps Giving Me These Feelings (BBC session)

Label: Cherry Red
Released: 2022