Especially in music, it seems there are a lot of names that most prominently exist as a footnote. I’m sure that’s a peculiar place to find oneself in. You see this often in the quite communal scenes of the late ’60s and early ’70s, the best example being the Beatles and how everyone associated with them gets the distinction of “sixth Beatle,” “seventh Beatle,” and so on. Marmalade is such a group. Most music dorks seem to immediately associate Marmalade as simply the group that did a decent cover of a Beatles song, and that Jimi Hendrix was really stoked on the group in 1967.
Hendrix was particularly impressed by “I See the Rain,” and for good reason – it’s a flawless psychedelic pop nugget. They had other great songs as well, but as the group progressed through the end of the decade and into the early ’70s, it was cleared that the group was abandoning its sensibilities (originally acting as the Scottish response to English beat groups like The Hollies), taking off in a very, very pop friendly direction. Not cool quirky pop like the Free Design, but like, sickly, lazy AOR boogie like Seals & Crofts and Bread. You can hear the degradation on the Very Best of… compilation, from beginning to end. Of course, it wasn’t just that Marmalade was altering their sound to glide with the times – they endured countless lineup changes, vividly recounted in this AMG article.
With that said, however, the Marmalade, in their early years, was a painfully underrated psychedelic British pop outfit. They maintained two bass players (something I appreciate as a bass player myself) – one traditional four-string bass and a super low-end six-string, which concocted a subtly unusual sound amidst the flurry of major key melodies. “Man in a Shop” is the type of sweet, overpowering baroque pop song that warps your mind and makes you think you could land softly if you leaped off a building holding an umbrella. And with that said, below are two songs that, in my opinion, make Marmalade memorable. If only they followed this direction, lineup circumstances notwithstanding, Marmalade, in a personal and respectful hypothesis, would’ve had the rabid cult following that many of their late-’60s psych pop contemporaries enjoyed then, and today, rather than be relegated to the footnote realm.
MP3 :::
The Marmalade – I See the Rain
The Marmalade – Man in a Shop
