Swingin' London Scene

"Five o'clock on a Sunday morning. Sleeping city grey and still. Even the early milkman's yawning ..." A number written by one John Britten (and certainly not the Subway Sect/Orange Juice one) First Impression's Swingin' London Scene pops up on a glorious round-up on the valuable RPM label of what it calls "the accidental genius of Saga Records 1968-1970". Saga was a budget label that a little late in the day decided to cash-in shamelesly on the Swingin' London pop scene. As is so often the way with these things it just so happens that some of the material it 'processed' was as good as anything else on the market. First Impression's Swingin' London Scene also appears on an excellent Spiral London-themed mix called Teatime At The Circus which I'm very grateful to Nick Hamilton (who produced the excellent London-themed Lost Steps show on Resonance FM)for pointing out. The mix itself features a number of London songs I certainly wasn't aware of, and I will resist the urge to pinch them. Another thing I particularly like about mass produced cash-ins is that they often go off at odd tangents which purists would never countenance. So, for example,I love Swingin' London numbers where things aren't quite what they seem. A modern variation on that theme would be the Noonday Underground, named after the archetypal Tom Wolfe mod essay, and yet their London. Well ...