THE STORY OF SIMON SIMOPATH

I had quite different musical expectations from this group than what I eventually discovered from their albums. Instead of fuzzy psychedelia this first album of this group consists carefully constructed orchestrated pop gems similar in style of The Beatles. Though I'm not a big fan of this style, I enjoyed listening this record quite much. Psychedelic elements are present only in quite subtle amounts, mostly in surrealistic lyrics and small artistic arrangements and audio effects. Also Campbell-Lyons Irish accent brings a sincere personal flavor to the music.

"Wings of Love" opens the album with dynamic and effective manner, and listeners are introduced to the story of an Earth visiting alien Simon Simopath, his friends and lady companion, "shot down by a kind of bow and arrow" from the orbit. A melancholic minor waltz "Lonely Boy" which is followed by more uplifting "We Can Help You", describing Simon's situations among men further in detail. In "Satellite Jockey" Simon head's back to the stars with his woman, arriving "In The Courtyard of The Stars", a please described as more tender jazzy ballad with nice rhythmic pauses, beautiful dreamy singing melodies and flutes. "You're Just The One" is a more faster piano driven bluesy song in vein of 60's rhythm blues. Sweet pop ballad "Pentecost Hotel" was also released as a single cut, and it's really carefully tinkered tune, maybe just too sweet for my taste. "I Never Found A Love Like This" continues in mellow and romantic spheres, leading to the wedding sequence "Take This Hand", which has strong chorus verses. The finale "1999" is a jokey Dixieland tune, being quite funny but leaving a bit silly aftertaste for the whole story of this record. Well, this album isn't very serious in any aspect anyway.

Featuring the both stereo / mono mixes on the remastered CD I got appeared a bit futile to me, but there were some nice single B-sides included also, like "I Believe In Magic" from their fabulous first "Tiny Goddess" and "Feelin' Shattered" from their second single. "Life ain't Easy" is really pretty and melancholic song, and "Requiem to John Coltrane" starts promisingly with an abstract sound wall and distant unclear noises, but the stupid fooling done through the horn ruined the track in my opinion. I would recommend this album highly for those people who like orchestrated late 1960's pop music, and also fanatic sci-fi fans who want to check out all genre related stuff might be interested of listening this warmhearted album.

It's just isn't a Masterpiece 'cause it's one of the very first Rock Operas. To be honest this is a really small example of what Rock Operas would turn into later, with the all known Tommy from The Who, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway from Genesis, or even the almighty The Wall from Pink Floyd.

Still it has lots of good music, but it's a small record, about 25 minutes, so not quite the size a usual prog album has. I'd call this a psycheadelic record, it has lots of it about, and some really nice efects by the way. Highly recomended.

‘The Story of Simon Simopath’ released the same year as ‘Sgt. Pepper’, ‘Days of Future Passed’, and ‘The Who Sell Out’. Like all of them this was one of the earliest incarnations of a rock concept album (using that term fairly liberally in the case of the Who). But unlike them this wasn’t a collaborative effort by an established band; rather, the UK version of Nirvana was really just a duo of songwriters (Patrick Campbell-Lyons Alex Spyropoulos) who brought in session musicians to complete this recording. They would also employ some of those artists in a couple of brief attempts at touring and cameo live appearances, but in the end most of what Nirvana would put out in their sixties heyday would come from the work of Campbell-Lyons Spyropoulos.

The story line is rather trite today, but creative and clever enough for 1967 I suppose. Simon, the main and almost only human character, is a young daydreamer who wants to learn to fly and find someone spectacular to live rather than be confined to Earth and to his dreary job behind a computer terminal. This in itself is rather reaching considering the first personal computer wouldn’t be introduced for nearly fifteen years after the album released and very few non-scientific jobs of that day involved using a mainframe terminal.

Then again perhaps Simon had connections in the science world, since he manages to land a gig shooting around the cosmos in a shuttle ship (also something not invented at the time but which has been since) and sending reports back to Earth. In the course of his travels he encounters a space-bound centaur (okay, not everything in this story ends up coming true in real life). The centaur transports him to a faraway world of bliss and peace and beauty and – well, basically Nirvana. There he meets and marries his dream girl and presumably lives happily ever after.

So that’s the whole story, and the album isn’t much longer than that, clocking in at less than 26 minutes spread over ten very brief songs, each representing pretty much one scene in the tale. The album closes with the very premature “1999”, an inaccurate prediction of when such a story might come to fruition.

The music here isn’t really progressive, although in 1967 it was probably considered to be. The similarities to ‘Sgt. Pepper’ are stronger than to ‘Days of Future Passed’, with simple guitar riffs, jaunty piano and peppy rhythms abounding. Think a less pensive version of Klaatu’s ‘Hope’ and you’ll get the idea.

While the duo enjoyed brief success and critical acclaim for the record, they were never able to make the band work as a live act and would disband just a few years later after managing to release four additional albums, all of which are slightly more progressive musically than this one. This is a mildly interesting and entertaining record, but nothing to get too excited about. I’m going to say it merits three stars for being innovative in its day, but not enough so to rate the label ‘essential’. Check out ‘Local Anaesthetic’ first, which is my personal favorite and features one of the greatest progressive music album covers of all time. If you’re still interested then this one will likely appeal to you as well. Otherwise just spin ‘Sgt. Pepper’ again and call it good.

peace

This very charming album is one of the first concept/story albums around, predating the greats like THE WHO's "Tommy" by two years. The album is pretty tight regarding the story and not some loosely concept flowing about. In 10 short songs we hear the story of Simon who is bored of his work behind the computer, wishes to fly and find love. While it starts of just a bit dreamy but realistic, the story does get well, psychedelic for the lack of terms. It is very easy to follow and no one should have trouble grasping the lyrics, I think vocals Patrick Campbell are very enjoyable. The songs themselves are nice psychedelic pop and I think the comparison to BEATLES of Sgt.Pepper era isn't far behind. Not really progressive but nice little record (around 25 minutes), recommended to fans of 60's pop.

NIRVANA (U.K) were around long before the Seattle grunge rockers of the same name first emerged onto the music scene in the late 1980's. A dispute over the use of the name "Nirvana", led to the American band settling out of court in the early 1990's. The British Nirvana were formed in swinging London back in 1965. Their first album of Proto-Prog "The Story of Simon Simopath" was released in 1967, and their second album - released in 1968 - deserves a place in the annals of rock history for having probably the longest album title of all time. Here it is in its entirety:- "The Existence of Chance Is Everything and Nothing Whilst the Greatest Achievement Is the Living of Life and So Say ALL OF US". Wow! That's quite a mouthful! The long- winded album title is not easy to remember at the best of times, so for the sake of brevity, the title is usually shortened to "All of Us". The album contained Nirvana's best-known song: "Rainbow Chaser". Three further albums followed:- "To Markus III (Aka: Black Flower)" (1969), "Local Anaesthetic" (1971) and "Songs of Love and Praise" (1972). Nirvana were led by Patrick Campbell-Lyons's, who released his first solo album "Me and My Friend" in 1973. Nirvana had one more album up their sleeve with the release of "Orange and Blue" in 1996, a collection of unreleased material from their earlier years. It's time now to delve into the mysterious world of Simon Simopath and find out what's the story, morning glory.

We're taking off and flying on the "Wings of Love" for our opening number. This delightful and unashamedly twee-sounding Pop tune could only have come from England in the late-1960's. The story concerns our hero schoolboy, Simon Simopath, who dreams of sprouting wings so he can fly away - just like Peter Pan - and escape being bullied at school. He later suffers a mental breakdown in adulthood and ends up in a lunatic asylum, but escapes after getting aboard a rocket and meeting a centaur and a goddess who take care of him in a place called Pentecost Hotel, where they presumably live happily ever after in a state of heavenly bliss and spiritual Nirvana. Yes, the Story of Simon Simopath really IS that wacky, and yes, you've guessed it, it's a proggy concept album before prog-rock or concept albums had even been invented. Simon Simopath is just a lonely boy at heart, and "Lonely Boy" is the title of the second song where all he wants to do is cry. The mournful lyrics might tell a sad tale, but the music is bright and uplifting as it romps merrily along on a wave of joyous hope and exuberance. There's a rousing chorus too in this lively Pop song, so it's not all doom and gloom, despite the lyrics. There's a healthy burst of optimism on the way with "We Can Help You", a bright and sparkling burst of golden Sunshine Pop which sounds as quaint and quintessentially English as a thatched cottage in the Cotswolds, or a game of croquet served with tea and crumpets on an English summer lawn. We have lift-off, because next up is the bizarrely-titled "Satellite Jockey", the most commercially appealing song on the album, which could potentially have gone into orbit and risen up into the Top 10 of the Hit Parade, back in the days when the chart placings still mattered to Pop pickers. Space: the final frontier. We're "In the Courtyard of the Stars" now for this out-of-this-world 1960's sci-fi Pop hokum. It's Proto-Prog, Jim, but not as we know it. This is a lovely jazzy Pop tune that's light years away from classic 1970's Prog-Rock.

Our silly but charming story continues with "You Are Just the One", another pleasant Psych-Pop diversion in an album full of sparkling good Pop tunes, and there's a gorgeous Baroque Pop song on the way with "Pentecost Hotel", a magnificently ornate grand hotel featuring a lush string symphony. We're getting all romantic now with "I Never Had a Dream Like This Before", a lilting piano ballad with rich orchestration, where Simon Simopath dreams of being carried away to distant parts of the universe, or failing that, watching the latest episode of Star Trek. Beam me up another great Pop song, Scotty! There's the sound of wedding bells in the air for "Take This Hand", as Simon Simopath prepares for his betrothal to his loved one, so it looks like we're headed for a happy ending to our story with this gentle Folk Pop refrain. There's a complete change of musical style for the final uplifting song "Nirvana", which sounds like a good old-fashioned knees-up in a pub. It's a Dixie-land-jazz-style number, featuring a honky-tonk piano and with the singer sounding in a merry and jubilant mood, which indeed he would be if he just got hitched to his romantic love interest. All's well that ends well in the weird and wonderful world of wacky 1960's concept albums.

This cheerfully zany slice of sixties sci-fi hokum is a Psych-Pop album that's in another universe altogether from Prog-Rock, and it's barely even Proto-Prog, but if you're in the mood for some jolly good English Pop tunes from the Beatles' era, then "The Story of Simon Simopath" might just be the album for you. The twee music is joyful and exuberant with a bright message of hope for the future, but if you hope to attain a state of spiritual Nirvana from listening to this album, then it's best to look elsewhere - back to the future of the proggy 1970's perhaps.