Friday on My Mind

by

The Easybeats

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This is the Easybeats' big international breakthrough album, produced by Shel Talmy (the Kinks, Who, David Bowie, Creation). They had just arrived in the U.K., having completely saturated Australia. They had not yet absorbed any of the new sounds in London.

This album catches the Easybeats at the peak of their teen scream phase. Check out the great two-guitar interplay on most of the songs; this is one band that did not relegate the second guitarist to a minor supporting role. In fact, think of a 1960's era version of Television. That goes for the adenoidal vocals and tortured lyrics as well.

The extra tracks mop up most of the odds and ends recorded with Shel Talmy until he and band parted company after the commercial failure of "Heaven and Hell," the band's first real Vanda/Young mini-opera and their first track reflecting their exposure to the exploding London pop music scene.

In 1967, this album was probably a bit out of date. It would have made more sense in 1966. From the distance of thirty-odd years, however, this doesn't matter at all. Just buy this record as a fine 1966 effort and forget that it was really recorded a little later.

This CD purports to be a "remastered and expanded" version of the Easybeats' "Friday on My Mind." And it is...to a degree. See, Repertoire released this same exact disc in 1994; the only difference between this version and the 1994 version is some additional processing and some "single versions" of some tracks. As many of those single versions were hitherto unavailable on shiny disc, I foolishly plunked down the cash for this upgrade.

...and felt, well, somewhat let down. The "single mixes" are forgeries, created by simply folding the stereo programme down to mono. I cannot fathom why Repertoire felt compelled to do this...especially as the real mono mix of the title track is so widely available on CD.

So yeah. Get the cheaper, better-sounding 1994 edition instead of this one. You'll be glad you did.