LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

"My two biggest successes would have to be the Rolling Stones and the Small Faces; equally satisfying, but not as commercially successful, was Duncan Browne. Duncan was amazing...so talented. It may have said on the records 'Produced by Andrew Loog Oldham', but all I did was book the studio and watch the lad do his magic. And magic it was.

Thus spake former Stones manager Andrew Oldham, who signed the late Duncan Browne to his record label, Immediate, in 1967. Oldham duly oversaw the recording of Duncan's 1968 debut album Give Me Take You, which, as with several other Oldham projects of the time (notably the Billy Nicholls album Would You Believe), only received limited distribution due to Immediate's crippling financial problems.

Now widely acknowledged as a genuine UK baroque pop/psychedelic folk classic, Give Me Take You has long been a heavily sought-after album on the collectors' circuit, with original copies selling for several hundred pounds. It has also attracted significant critical acclaim, being described by one monthly music magazine as "an English Astral Weeks", and regularly compared to such Spirit of the Age masterpieces as the Kinks are the village green preservation society, the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle and Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left.

Track Listing:

• Give Me Take You
• Ninepence Worth Of Walking
• Dwarf In A Tree (A Cautionary Tale)
• The Ghost Walks
• Waking You (Part 1)
• Chloe In The Garden
• Waking You (Part 2) On The Bombsite
• I Was, You Weren't
• Gabilan
• Alfred Bell
• The Death Of Neil Bonus Tracks On The Bombsite (Demo)
• The Cherry Blossom Fool
• Give Me, Take You (Rehearsal)
• Ninepence Worth Of Walking (Rehearsal)
• On The Bombsite (Rehearsal)
• I Was, You Weren't (Rehearsal)
• The Death Of Neil (Rehearsal)
• On The Bombsite (Mono Single Version)
• Alfred Bell (Mono Single Version) /Here And Now (Recorded As Lorel)"