Fab Gear - The British Beat Explosion and It's Aftershocks 1963 - 1967

Fab Gear draws heavily from the vaults of Pye Records and sister label Piccadilly, picking up where Castle Music’s Beat Beat Beat series left off many moons ago. Instead of concentrating on Beat’s initial boom of 1963/64, Fab Gear is focused instead on the scene’s later gems from 1965/66, which were often musically superior to those earlier works.

Other featured labels include independents such as Ember, President, and Oak, as well as a smattering of choices from the majors (Decca, Parlophone, Columbia, Fontana, CBS et al). Fab Gear includes many of the era’s biggest names such as The Kinks, The Moody Blues, The Searchers, and The Tremeloes and other hit acts such as The Marmalade, The Alan Price Set, The Rockin’ Berries, David and Jonathan, The Ivy League, Twinkle, Peter Jay and The Jaywalkers, Chad and Jeremy, The Tornados, Arthur Brown, Tony Jackson and The Vibrations, The Undertakers, Billie Davis, The Migil 5, The Truth, The Quiet Five, and The Sorrows.

The hefty booklet boasts band-by-band histories and details of each recording, including early works by David Bowie, Status Quo, Clifford T. Ward, Manfred Mann’s Mike d’Abo, Lemmy and future members of Yes, The Move, Mott The Hoople, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Deep Purple, Fleetwood Mac, Traffic, Lindisfarne, and Man.

The bonus disc 6 contains recordings which weren’t issued at the time, including many tracks which have never been heard before.