Friday 21 May 2010

Sunday Afternoon in Belgrave Square

"With my friends surrounding me I should smile most happily but I'd rather spend my afternoons with you ..." sings Trevor Billmuss at the end of his gorgeous song Sunday Afternoon In Belgrave Square, which came out on the b-side of a 1970 single on Charisma, and has since turned up on the Fading Yellow series of rare psych/sunshine pop sounds. There was an LP too, but that's pretty elusive. Would love to hear it though. There's the famous '60s quote from, I think Roger Daltrey (or was it Pete Townsend?) about becoming famous and buying a flat in Belgravia and spitting out of the window any time you wanna just to annoy the Conservative geezers. Punk group The Depressions borrowed the line for their Family Planning single which had the familiar punk refrain of dad's in the pub, sister's in the club, and so on. Fantastic flipside though, called Living On Dreams, which had this real '60s blue-eyed soul growl to it. The Pretty Things were notoriously based in Belgravia too, and famously used their address, 13 Chester Street, as the title of one of their tracks. What a fantastic group the Pretty Things were ...

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