Sandy Salisbury - Everything For You Vol. 1

  by Malcolm Carter

published: 10 / 2 / 2009

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Review

The music that Sandy Salisbury made in the 1960s has, in recent years, attracted much more attention that it ever did when it was originally put down onto tape. The bands that Salisbury was originally involved with, namely the Millennium, the Ballroom and Sagittarius have been given a lot of praise and space in music magazines for a number of years now but let’s be honest (and I was a young Beach Boys fanatic in the mid-sixties so I already knew of Gary Usher and Curt Boettcher who also played a part in the stories of the above bands) did many English pop-loving teenagers really know much about those bands when they were actually making their music? I doubt it very much. The most well-known at the time song from Sagittarius was a cover of a Carter / Stephens song, ‘My World Fell Down’ originally recorded by the band John Carter was a member of, The Ivy League. The long, confusing and interesting story of the above mentioned bands has been told many times and it’s not going to get repeated here, but for the uninitiated Sandy Salisbury was a very big part of that ‘collective’ and was making excellent sunshine-pop for a number of years without ever really breaking through and making a name for himself. He was far from a backseat member but he never really made a name for himself outside of those groups, and especially outside of America. With the advent of CD and an ever growing interest in the melodic pop of the sixties like the Beach Boys early records it appears that every sound that any musician who ever put any of their ideas down on tape was being released on a shiny new silver disc. For the most part the very reason they never got released in the first place was because they were simply raw demos or not good enough to be released. And now many of these ‘lost classics’ are making their second or third return on CD. The music Sandy Salisbury made with Sagittarius and the Millennium has been reissued a number of times on various labels. When one of the labels that have issued those songs is Sundazed then we can be assured of a job well done but Rev-Ola, part of the Cherry Red group of record labels, have done a mighty fine job too over the years in putting the CDs out with informative booklets and, for the most part, fine sound quality. Poptones was one of the first labels to issue the Sandy Salisbury related CDs in the U.K. before Rev Ola took over the task and thankfully apart from the albums released under those various band names we have been treated to a number of solo Sandy Salisbury CDs. It should also be noted that Salisbury wasn’t the only one of this collective who has had albums issued ; Joey Stec, Lee Mallory, Curt Boettcher, Bobby Jameson and even Tommy Roe have all had solo albums issued over the last few years many of which made their debut on CD and all had connections with the above named bands. Now a label named Sonic Past Music has issued a collection of Sandy Salisbury’s demos under the title of ‘Everything For You Volume 1’. It would appear that the label is owed by none other than Salisbury’s old musical buddy Joey Stec. And yes, that title is familiar; Rev Ola also issued a collection of Sandy Salisbury’s work under the same name but without the indication that maybe further volumes would follow. The good news is that the two collections share only five songs between them and this latest issue by Sonic Past Music doesn’t even include the title song which the Rev-Ola album does. If you’re already a Salisbury fanatic then you can buy this album knowing that many of the songs haven’t even been included on any of the earlier issues of Sandy’s demos. And while this album is being promoted as a collection of demos as many of Salisbury’s recent releases have been it has to be said that a Sandy Salisbury demo is a somewhat polished affair; even on songs such as ‘Dealer’ where the only instrument apart from Sandy’s vocals is an acoustic guitar it still doesn’t come across like some lo-fi home recording. These songs sound like completed works not like a bunch of songs that the songwriter was committing to tape to hawk around to publishing houses in the hope of finding an artist to record them. Compare them to any song that made the charts back in the sixties or seventies and any one of these songs has been crafted just as well, if not better. It’s amazing looking back now to think that artists such as Tommy James and the Shondells were getting critical acclaim for albums like ‘Cellophane Symphony’ and ‘Crimson & Clover’ while all the time Sandy Salisbury was making these demos, many totally by himself, which not only matched those classic sunshine pop / psych-lite songs but actually surpassed them. Salisbury has described his music as being ‘bubblegum love songs’ and in some ways he is right. Surprisingly even after 40 or so years after he originally recorded them the songs still sound fresh and don’t sound dated at all but describing a song as being ‘bubblegum pop’ is sometimes a derogatory remark. It’s taken in some parts to mean that the songs have no substance and no real value. The fact that Salisbury’s work still stands up today proves that apart from being a talented composer, producer and musician the guy can also sing like no other and that his songs are light years away from being mere throwaways or lightweight slices of pop music. Admittedly many of his songs have that bubblegum beat and are undoubtedly of that ilk but there is a lot more to Sandy Salisbury than disposable pop as the twenty five songs on ‘Everything For You Volume 1’ show. Sandy writes, in the sleeve notes here, that the songs…”came from my bubblegum heart”. He goes on to say that “My songs are not deep. But they are pure to me”. No one has the right to tell Sandy Salisbury a thing about pop music and maybe the guy is just being over modest but Sandy knows, as anyone who listens to this collection of songs will, that music is meant to be enjoyed and if songs that were recorded up to four decades ago can still be enjoyed and connect with people today then there were deep enough in the first place. These songs are timeless and we can only hope that Sonic Past Music follow this album up with further volumes from one of the most talented and underrated musicians not just from the sixties but from any era.

Track Listing:-

1 So Close To Heaven
2 Missouri Weeps
3 Candy Kisses
4 Our Love Is An Unwritten Song
5 Here Comes That Feeling
6 Dealer
7 Leave It To Love
8 Content Am I
9 A Lot Of Love In Me
10 Bring Me On Home Again
11 My True Confession
12 I'm Moving On Back To You
13 I'll Do The Crying
14 Love Came To Strawberry Lane
15 Over And Over Again
16 Pretty As A Picture
17 Warm Of August
18 Tender Loving Care
19 So Much Yourself
20 Yesterday Today And Tomorrow
21 Together In The End
22 Thank You For Loving Me
23 Some Other Place
24 Tomorrow
25 A Little Bit Of Love