Record Collector, June 1999

The Small Faces renaissance continues apace with this immaculately (or should that be immediately?!) conceived, 50-track double-CD, that round up all the magic midgits' recordings for the label. "oh no, not another repackage, and hasn't it been done before?", I hear you grown. True, but this is the definitive article. Granted, Charly Records exhaustive 4-CD box-set attempted the same job of rounding up every stray mix, but a cursory comparison reveals this collection to be superior, to these ears, anyway. Remastered from the original tapes, the stereo mixes of singles like I Can't Make It (intended as their label debut but contractually released as a swansong to Decca) and Here Come The Nice leap like a pilled-up "ticket". The "first" album and Ogden's Nut Gone Flake are presented here in their entirety, plus the studio side of The Autumn Stone- the group's posthumous last gasp- and various rarities, including 35 seconds of an unissued backing track to Green Circles, hidden at the end of CD2. Add a colourful sleeve insert showing the original tape boxes and rare memorabilia, plus David Wells' effective sleevenotes, and you have a contender for reissue of the year. This is the first collection to be officially endorsed by the band and all royalties will be reaching their rightful destination (at last). If, like me, you're a 'Faces retentive, you may quibble over Ogden's flow being interrupted between CDs (Note: but it was interrupted over sides on the original LP. MP) and wonder where the original drum-roll segue from Afterglow into Long Agos and Worlds Apart has got to. Still, mustn't grumble: invest with confidence. Happy Boys Happy...

Andy Neil

• Making Time Review

(Sequel Records, Castle Music/Immediate NEECD 311, Import)

The Small Faces have been treated extremely poorly in the reissue department. There have been seemingly hundreds of reissues, vinyl and CD, even though the band themselves only released 14 singles and three LP’s during their career. All the previously issued material from their Decca years (1965-‘66) was recently repackaged in essentially intelligent fashion. The Immediate years (1967-‘68) were covered by a comprehensive 4-disc box set released a few years back in England that contained all but 3 tracks previously issued anywhere from that period, and the remaining 3 could be found on a German Repertoire 2-disc box. But still, a 4-disc box was more than many fans wanted, and the German 2 disc-er had one great disc, and one that was pretty disposable.

This collection attempts to cram all the essential Immediate material and rarities onto two full discs. It’s billed on the cover as being an "official anthology approved by the band" but you should be aware that while one or two members and possibly an or heirs of the late Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott might have been notified in advance of its pending release, NO ONE in the band had any role in its compilation, and at least some of them the principals are downright furious about the release billing itself as "authorized." I’ve noted in some British magazine ads it’s now billed as "authorized by Kenney Jones." Here’s the bottom line. T: this compilation includes nearly all the essential material recorded for Immediate Records from early 1967 to late 1968. It includes nothing previously unreleased, except for a 30-second snippet of a song fragment appended to the end of the final song (which is still its regular length, not 6:35 as the CD cover notes), and a minor variant of "Mad John" as released on a rare US 45 in 1968. If you already own the The Immediate Years boxed set on (Charly (CD IMM Box 1 ), this package includes only two additional tracks you won’t own, both taken from the German Repertoire reissue (The Definitive Anthology of the Small Faces Repertoire REP 4429-WO): an unfinished instrumental, "Take My Time," and an alternate version of the Marriott/Lane number "(If You Think You’re) Groovy," which features the Small Faces backing P.P. Arnold (one of my favorite tracks of theirs, but I’d still question its inclusion on a Small Faces album). It omits some of the most essential true rarities in favor of some crap that should never have been released. Here’s details.

The album includes on disc one: their first 4 Immediate singles and b-sides (tracks 1-4 and 18-21) in stereo; the brilliant first Immediate album Small Faces, originally released in June 1967 two weeks after Sgt. Pepper’s... (tracks 5-17); and the first half of their massive British hit album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake from 1968 (tracks 22-27).

On disc two you’ll find: the second side of Ogden’s... (tracks 1-6, the concept side of the album with narration by Stanley Unwin); mono versions of the 5th Immediate single (tracks 7-8) and the mono b-side of the 6th and final Immediate single (track 9, the version featuring Nicky Hopkins in place of Ian McLagan); several outtakes originally found on the non-authorized 1969 Immediate double album release The Autumn Stone (tracks 10-17); several instrumental backing tracks with no vocals from various previous unauthorized reissues (tracks 18-20); and the aforementioned US 45 of "Mad John" (track 21, this collection’s only true ‘rarity’), "Groovy" (track 22), and finally, the infinitely superior outtake stereo version of "Wham Bam Thank You Ma’amn" featuring Ian McLagan on organ, which was previously released on both the German and British boxed sets. It should be noted that the latter is actually 3:09 in length, not 6:35, and includes a lengthy silence followed by a brief snippet of a ‘bonus track."

The real rub with this album, and reason why at least some of the band are so mad about it, is that the compilers chose to include six tracks NEVER EVEN CONSIDERED for release by the band. They’re all instrumentals, most apparently backing tracks with jokey titles for songs that were intended to have vocals and ‘real’ titles, but were never completed before the band broke up. Every single release that includes these tracks have seriously angered Marriott, Lane, and McLagan. The offenders are: "Collibosher," "Picaninny," "Wide Eyed Girl On The Wall," "The Pig Trotters," "The War of the Worlds," and "Take My Time." While none are terrible, and all are of some interest to fans, it could be argued that they should never have been released at all, as they would NEVER have been approved for release by the band, and in fact serve to seriously damage the playability of disc two, and therefore the overall value of this collection to fans, both new and old.

With no extra cost, merely a bit of intelligence, the compilers could and should have included the following: the mono 45 of "Afterglow," which is substantially different; the vastly superior alternate stereo version of "Donkey Rides, Penny A Glass" (a personal top five Small Faces fave); the stereo US LP alternate mono b-side version of "I’m Only Dreaming;" the stereo ‘clean’ version of "Rollin’ Over" found on the German Repertoire set; the slower, alternate take of "I Can’t Make It" found on the Repertoire set and nowhere else; the alternate version of "Green Circles" with Marriott instead of Lane taking the lead vocal from the Charly box; and that would perhaps leave room for at least one of the live tracks from the Royal Albert Hall in 1968, preferably "If I Were A Carpenter." This would have rendered irrelevant Charly box, the Repertoire box, and all the other reissues with crap instrumental backing tracks and alternate mixes done by Andrew Loog Oldham without the band’s involvement. That would leave no truly valuable or remotely essential Small Faces track from the Immediate days, except for the remaining 4 live tracks, which are available elsewhere anyway if you must have them.

In summary, they came so close, yet still missed by a mile giving us the ultimate compilation of Small Faces tracks that the band’s legacy and fans really deserve. That said, it’s in all fairness nevertheless the best single item to buy if you can’t afford the 4-disc Charly Immediate box. The Small Faces were one of the half dozen best British bands of the ‘60's. Let’s hope they put this out in America with those six outtakes deleted and replaced with more excellent tunes that show the band for what it was - one of the all-time great and most influential British pop groups.

Kent H. Benjamin