This remarkable 3CD set is virtually the story of the evolution and development of British music throughout the 1960s. With the exception of The Beatles who, contrary to popular myth, never played there, pretty much every band who became anyone in this period and beyond played at the Eel Pie Island Hotel (EPI). Rod Stewart was allegedly discovered playing harmonica outside EPI after seeing a Long John Baldry gig in 1964, when Baldry invited Rod to join his band.
In London during the 1960s there were certain venues which have since gone on to become legendary .. The Marquee, UFO, Flamingo, Middle Earth, etc, and EPI can be included here because not only was it a popular venue for ‘live’ music, it was also a place where bands had to prove themselves before they could move upwards to play larger venues like The Roundhouse.
The sixties saw very rapid and, in some cases, seismic changes in the music scene. EPI was not responsible for any of them, but it remained a venue where you could see and listen to the changes. If EPI was the only venue you ever attended in the 1960s, you’d have had a ringside seat to a swirl of musical changes before your very eyes.
Getting Ready is a three disc set containing eighty tracks, mostly short pieces. Disc one begins with a few tracks from early sixties acts like Mike Berry, Cliff Bennett and Lord Sutch, while disc two charts the growth of blues influenced R&B acts, and there are good songs from iconic acts like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Georgie Fame, Manfred Mann and Rod Stewart with PP Arnold. Seminal figures in the growth of British blues are also featured, notably John Mayall, Alexis Korner (The Stones first played together in his club) and Cyril Davies. There are also contributions from some of the legendary US bluesmen whose influence on young UK blues musicians was immeasurable, such as John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and Jimmy Reed, whose song ‘Baby, What You Want Me To Do’ was a staple in most blues bands’ early sets.
Disc three sees the influence of the blues waning as newer bands began to pursue a more adventurous agenda. Cream, whose members grew out of the blues, began to play it in a far more dynamic and lengthy fashion, with the emphasis on the band stretching out, and bands like Ten Years After and Chicken Shack followed their lead. The set also includes contributions from bands who never had any desire to play blues, being of a more psychedelic bent, like July, Blossom Toes, Colosseum, Fairport Convention and The Nice. Incidentally, the Amboy Dukes listed are a UK band, not Ted Nugent’s US band, also called The Amboy Dukes, in case you thought they were.
Getting Ready charts the changes in the UK music scene right through the sixties. The range of acts offered here, from those who became stellar to those who remained unknown, gives you a well chosen potted history of UK music, and if ever a three CD set screamed ‘Value For Money’, this one is it.
