1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 121. Small Faces – Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968)

 

I’m most familiar with the Small Faces’ cheeky Cockney knees-up number Lazy Sunday (or as lead singer Steve Marriott styles it “Lazy Sundee h-afternoon-ah"), but there are only two other track on here that are of that ilk – Rene (about a lady who is the “dockers’ delight”) and the final track HappyDaysToyTown (that’s not a typo, it’s really strung together like one word) in which the meaning of life is revealed – apparently it's like a bowl of All-Bran; you wake up in the morning and there it is.

Other tracks are more classic late-Sixties psychedelia/folk/rock, but done well, with some good thumping grooves going on. The second “side” is a great little surrealist rock opera, narrated by Stanley Unwin. Unwin was famous for his nonsense language Unwinese, a kind of tortured English that is close enough to be understandable and had a great rhythm to it. Oh deep joy in the highly mode!

Unwin narrates the story of Happiness Stan, who sets out on a quest to discover why half the moon is missing. On the way he feeds a hungry fly, magically turns it big enough to ride, and flies off in search of the affable Cockney hermit Mad John. Since Stan’s quest takes over a week, remarkably the half of the moon is growing back. Mad John then imparts to Stan the secret to life (See above). The Unwin bits are as delightful as his stuff ever was (it helps that he has the voice of a kindly grandfather), and the musical tracks in between are all really good, so it holds together as a piece of creativity on its own grounds, even without the novelty narrative device.

I really liked this one, and in a way I’m kind of glad it wasn’t all “Cor blimey Mrs Jones, ‘ow’s yer Bert’s lumbago?” as this, I think, would have made it a weaker album. Just as Blur’s Park Life isn’t all Phil Daniels getting intimidated by the dirty pigeons, and all the better for it.