Buying the albums sampled on “You Can All Join In”.
The CD insert folds out as large square to show on one side a facsimile of the front cover. It lists the group members in the text on the other side:
“Mike Harrison – piano, vocals
Greg Ridley – bass
Mike Kellie – drums
Luther Grosvenor – guitar, vocals”.
There then follow these anonymous notes:
“ART evolved from the mid-60’s beat quartet The VIPs, who hailed from Carlisle, and who, for a short period, included a pre-Nice (*) Keith Emerson in their ranks. As The VIPs they made a couple of singles for Island, “I Wanna Be Free” and “In A Dream”, and then mutated into ART, who made this one album for Island, produced by the legendary Guy Stevens. “Supernatural Fairy Tales” was wrapped in a stunning full-blown psychedelic sleeve designed by Hapshash And The Coloured Coat, and released in the Summer of Love, 1967 (appropriately enough, its original catalogue number was ILP 967). The group then added American keyboard player and vocalist Gary Wright, and emerged the following year as SPOOKY TOOTH, making seven albums for Island.”
* The Nice were a brilliant group which split in 1970 when Emerson left to form Emerson Lake And Palmer.
In the next post we shall look again at the photograph which adorned the front cover of the sampler to look for ART.
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