The Five Day Week Straw People
The Five Day Week Straw People(Record Store Day 2018 )(Rock and pop|Record Store Day 2018 )

*****RECORD STORE DAY TITLE AVAILABLE IN STORE from 8am SATURDAY 21ST APRIL 2018. Limited to one per customer. Will be available to buy on-line from Saturday 28th April 2018, if still in stock.*****

Listed as one of Record Collector’s “100 Greatest Psychedelic Records” (nestling immediately below the Moody Blues “In Search Of A Lost Chord”!), this is an album that deserves a place in any discerning record collection.

This album recorded the Five Day Week Straw People, relates the imagined “typical weekend of the average nine-to-five worker” as they recounted in an interview at the time.

The songs had been written by David Montague and Guy Mascolo, who had first met when they were hairdressers in Clapham in 1963. Guy had just co-founded a salon with his brother Toni, which since then has mushroomed into the hairdressing juggernaut that is “Toni and Guy”.

However, in 1967, Guy and David were songwriting in their spare time and, having completed demos for a number of songs, happened to bump into an engineer from the small independent Saga Records. They were quickly signed to the label and put into the recording studio, with backing from Mike Hawksworth on bass guitar, John DuCann (later of The Attack, Andromeda and Atomic Rooster) on guitar and vocals and Jack McCulloch on drums.

Perhaps inspired by the extraneous noises used on “Sergeant Pepper”, David and Guy recorded sound effects for use on their own album, which they employed to better evoke the feeling of the weekend. Thus, car engines revving, children playing, a woman in high heels descending a staircase and a rainstorm complete with thunder all find their place.

Mix in some spoken word vocals and a judicious sprinkling of special effects, and the result is a quirky and entirely charming album that will transport the listener to those heady days when just about anything seemed possible.