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Sweet floral albion

Just played this cd. Have not played it in ages. What a great compilation.

Re: Sweet floral albion

Ahh yes, back in the early discovery days. The zine bought all sorts of new bands to track down and good sounds to listen to.

Re: Sweet floral albion

Yes a tremendous e-zine was Sweet Floral Albion,and it was very informative,bringing to my attention so much good music.
As for the cd,personally i feel with the amount of great little known tracks by UK acts they had every issue,i thought the cd played safe,at the time i was expecting a more obscure tracklist to those who where ardent UK psych and pop freaks from the late 60s and early 70s,of course to most people,the tracklist would be as obscure as they come,but for many who contributed to and read the zine,possibly not as unknown?I don't know how others felt,but i was surprised at the tracklist,of course i enjoyed immenseley,i also thought the mastering of it was not the greatest,it had a tinny sound,but i suppose we are talking about possibly 15-20 years ago.

Sadly once Dave Thubron passed away,who i feel was the spirit and drive behind SFA,and of course Paul Cross who valiantly continued it,and sadly it eventually stopped,with the e-zine Lauras Garden appearing later with Paul Cross,but for only 2 issues if i remember right.

Their discography of little known singles,Bsides,album tracks,european mainland only uk acts singles and recordings that featured in every issue was fascinating,interesting and made one want to hear them all.I'd loved to have saw a series of cds,covering all those tracks mentioned.

This was around the same period as Nigel Lees A-Z of UK Psych feature in Record Collector magazine,which ran for about 18 months -2 years.Luckily i was sneaky(working shifts had its advantages) enough to have physically photocopied every issue of SFA and Lauras Garden,plus every feature in Nigel Lees A-Z of UK psych,and put them in big full to the brim binders......and to this day,are still stored away in an easy to access cupboard,as for many years i used them as reference material.On occasion i still do.

Lets not forget it was SFA who pointed many off us to investigate the late 60s early 70s Australian and New Zealand psych and underground music,before that i'd never gave it a thought,and of course on the original RZ platform,we had some knowledgable and generous guys from that peninsual,who took part in this place,and generously mailed out cdrs of music from those enormous areas of land at their own expense,to do that now,you'd have to be a very wealthy individual,as postage rates globally have got ridiculous.

So for me personally,the e-zine called Sweet Floral Albion,was an essential source of information on music that i was rabid for at the time,and in time possibly cost me a fair amount of money tracking down a lot they covered,but the best part was,it was very enjoyable,it brought strangers together,it kind of made a community of sorts,where i was conversing with many involved in its creation,contributors,and others who read it,from all over the globe,and of course the likes of Andy started the original RZ.

I stayed in touch with quite a few people for many years after,but the last 6 years has saw a massive polarization in society,whether through politics or other things,and because of differences of opinions on certain issues,it seems some people i regarded as good friends,dropped me like a hot potato at around the same time,because of those issues outwith music,which to this very day i feel sad about,as i would NEVER drop any friend because of their beliefs,it's every humans right to hold any reasonable belief they so wish,but NOT everyone feels that way,and i can't do anything about that.I do miss my interactions with those people hugely,even being on the phone for ages......but the phone stopped ringing,the emails stopped coming,the conversations stopped happening.I was sent to Coventry...........