Pressing: UK
Year: 1967-1969
Genre: psych
Packaging: digipack
• First-ever release of lost psychedelic pop album from post-Lomax Alliance Anglo-American trio.
• Classic Beatles-meets-West-Coast sound from band who played at the Fillmore and the Whisky a Go-Go but failed to land a recording contract.
When post-Undertakers, Brian Epstein-managed UK/US group Lomax Alliance split in mid-1967, Jackie Lomax signed as a solo act with the nascent Apple while his three former colleagues returned to New York. After a US- only single (recorded with Lomax still involved) was issued in the name One, the trio renamed themselves Rain after their favourite Beatles B-side.
With the assistance of Young Rascals engineer (and former Undertakers guitarist) Chris Huston, they cut an acetate-only album of original material that combined Beatles-indebted song construction and harmonies with an early Buffalo Springfield/Byrds-style West Coast feel.
Despite playing in and around Los Angeles and San Francisco at such venues as the Whisky a Go-Go and the Fillmore, they were unable to place the LP, and split after a brief spell as The Gypsy Wizards Band. Now gaining its first-ever issue, ‘Tomorrow Never Comes: The NYC Sessions 1967-1968’ features a selection of superb original songs, three of which were reworked from the aborted Lomax Alliance LP plus six previously unissued bonus tracks cut a few months later as The Gypsy Wizards Band. Housed in a package that features reproductions of some vintage US handbills and posters as well as photos from Rain's young NY friend Linda Eastman, this revelatory piece of lost musical history is highly recommended to anyone who values the more melodic end of the West Coast psychedelic pop spectrum.
TRACK LISTING
1 Sapphire Skies
2 One Is All, And All Is One
3 No Deposit, No Return
4 Sundrops
5 So Unhappy
6 Didn't Lie
7 You Can't Hide Your Love
8 Something Is Happening
9 Midnight Blue
10 You, You, You
Bonus tracks
11 The Brightest Light
12 A Daily Thought
13 Spreading Love All Around
14 The Old Man
15 She
16 In Deadication
Tracks 1-10 The unissued Rain album, recorded autumn 1967-spring 1968
Tracks 11-16 From the unissued Gypsy Wizards Band album, recorded autumn 1968-spring 1969