Reviews

The Riot Squad
Album: I Take It That We're Through: Anthology 1965-1967
Label: Strawberry
Tracks: 29+27+27
Website: https://www.cherryred.co.uk/

The Riot Squad was a 60s mod beat group who originally played the kind of jazzy R&B and soul favoured by the 60s mods, straddling the lines between that music and beat pop, with excursions into folk-rock and even proto-flower-power and freakbeat. Much of their output was produced by the legendary Joe Meek, and his distinctive "RGM sound" is a strong presence on a large number of the tracks (54 in total, 41 of which are unreleased); many of these come from Joe's Tea Chest Tapes.

Disc 1 kicks off with the original Riot Squad lineup and their clutch of vogueish and highly respectable 45s before plunging headlong into their Joe Meek era and the broadening of the group's musical horizons to venture into beat-pop and beyond. Disc 2 provides much more from the Tea Chest Tapes sessions, including a number of alternate mixes, stereo takes and backing tracks/overdubs; an exhaustive trawl indeed.

Disc 3 contains most of the real interest, starting with 12 tracks from the sessions for a planned-but-never-finished album pairing The Riot Squad with singer Glenda Collins. These feature plenty of honking sax and soulfulness, and include an especially feisty cover of Can I Get A Witness and the spacey Magic Star (which recycles the melody from Telstar). In March 1967, The Riot Squad recruited (temporarily) up-and-coming songwriter and thespian David Bowie, and together they recorded four demo tracks - three of Bowie's own songs and, most notably, a cover of The Velvets' I'm Waiting For The Man. The final 11 tracks on Disc 3 come from the group's final studio sessions in late October 1967 (formerly given a limited release back in 2013 as Making Up For Lost Time); they range erratically from freakbeat (Say You Don't Mind, the funky Everything's Gonna Be Alright and a cover of The Creation's Making Time) to customised treatments of Morning Dew and Like A Rolling Stone via a tough revisit of Bowie's Little Tin Soldier to the plainly silly (The Vicar's Daughter). The musical value of some tracks is compromised however by the overuse of studio effects and messing about, but at their best the group were still a force to be reckoned with, as the frenetic instrumental Freaking Out (Steppin' Out) demonstrated.

This set can be seen to supersede the Jump! anthology that Sanctuary Records put out a couple of decades back. It's a completist's dream, in that it anthologises everything recorded by each incarnation of The Riot Squad, but in truth a certain amount of Disc 2 may be of interest only to the diehard Meek aficionado since it contains a fair amount of duplication of material. Presentation, however, is well up to the Cherry Red "house standard".

David Kidman

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