B.B. Blunder - Worker's Playtime

B.B. Blunder - Worker's Playtime - 1971

In the mid-to-late 1960s, during the height of the mania stemming from the British Invasion, the UK was teeming with psychedelic rock bands of all shapes and sizes, many of whom enjoyed the din of obscurity beneath the gargantuan shadows of such titans as the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Pink Floyd and, of course, the Beatles.  Among those bands was Blossom Toes, an acid-pop group signed to famed English rock impresario and Yardbirds/Soft Machine manager Gorgio Gomelsky’s Marmalade Records label. The band did not receive the commercial success enjoyed by their peers in the British Invasion, but released two albums to massive critical acclaim and counted Frank Zappa, with whom the group once jammed (as documented on the recently released double-live compilation Love Bomb: Live 1967-69), amongst their fans.

In December of 1969, Blossom Toes were on their way back from a gig when they suffered a terrible auto accident that didn’t kill anyone in the band, but left the lads shaken up enough to decide to dissolve their union shortly thereafter. While guitarist Jim Cregan went on to join the equally underappreciated UK group Family (who also counted Blind Faith’s Ric Grech amongst its ranks), second Blossom git “Little” Brian Godding and bassist “Big” Brian Belshaw still remained tight, temporarily backing up UK folk chanteuse Julie Driscoll for her 1970 tour. The duo continued to casually jam together after the Driscoll gigs, eventually bringing former Toes drummer Kevin Westlake back into the mix. They rechristened themselves B.B. Blunder, picked up on the heavier, more California-inspired sound the Toes left off on with their 1969 swan song, If Only for a Moment, and took it to new creative heights on their single album, 1971’s Worker’s Playtime.

Recorded at Olympic Studios at the same time that the Stones were laying down Sticky Fingers (Godding claims that Mick Jagger even lent the band a right-handed guitar for the album sessions), Playtime was looser and more AOR-oriented than the Blossom Toes material, featuring guest spots from the likes of Driscoll, electric piano guru Brian Auger, and Stones guitarist Mick Taylor. The songs B.B. Blunder were creating signified a sonic evolution similar to that of the way the Faces emerged from the Small Faces, or the Pretty Things circa Freeway Madness, with one foot in their British rock roots and the other pointing towards the sounds of the Los Angeles canyons, resulting in a warm, freewheeling sound effectively symbolic of the times while signifying something more progressive altogether. At the same time, songs like “Research”, “Seed”, and “Rise” were quintessential ‘71, and would certainly not sound out of place during a WNEW rock block alongside Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” and “Under My Wheels” by Alice Cooper.

01. Sticky Living

02. You're So Young

03. Lost Horizons

04. Research

05. Rocky Yagbag

06. Seed

07. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

08. Rise

09. Moondance

10. New Day

11. Backstreet

12. Freedom

13. Black Crow's Nest

14. When I Was in the Country

15. A Hard Day's Night

16. Come on Eyes

17. Snippet with Tippett

18. Square Dance

19. Earache

20. Robots

21. Waltz

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