“I’ve never been anywhere that had that kind of impact on me culturally,” the US actor Dennis Hopper said about the brief but culturally significant phenomenon of what has always been called Swinging London. “It was really about culture, painting, music, sculpture, fashion, clothes. I’d say for about five years no one could touch them. They were dictating culture to the rest of the world.”
As if to prove Hopper and his easy-riding pals on both sides of the Atlantic right, this compilation gathers more than 90 pop songs that soundtracked the period, and although there are novelty items that send the wrong kind of shivers down your spine (including Kinky Boots, by the Avengers couple Patrick McNee and Honor Blackman, and I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman, by Whistling Jack Smith), there are more gems here than you’ll find in a Cartier warehouse.
Pop classics such as I’m a Boy (The Who), Friday on My Mind (The Easybeats), Little by Little (Dusty Springfield), I Can’t Control Myself (The Troggs) and Whatcha Gonna Do About It (Small Faces) are complemented by unfeasibly groovy tracks like Walking Down the Street (Electric Banana, a nixer group of The Pretty Things), London My Hometown (The Chantelles), She’s a Raver (Dana Gillespie) and, with its none more Austin Powers vibe, I’ll Go Crazy (The Untamed). A well-designed booklet with informed track-by-track information completes the popadelic, prepsychedelic, shagadelic package.
