Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake

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Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake
Small Faces studio album

Publication
(s)

May 31, 1968

Label (s) Immediate Records

Format (s)

LP , CD , MC

Genre (s)

Psychedelic rock , psychedelic pop

Title (number)

12

running time

41:46

occupation

production

Ronnie Lane , Steve Marriott

Studio (s)

Olympic Studios , London

chronology
Small Faces
(1967) 		Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake Playmates
(1977)
Single releases
5th April 1968 Lazy Sunday
December 1968 Mad John
March 7, 1969 Afterglow of Your Love

Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake is a concept album by British beat band Small Faces from 1968. It is their fourth studio album .

History of origin

The title is an allusion to the Liverpool- based tobacco brand Ogdens' Nut-Brown Flake from the Ogden company, which had been producing snuff , pipe tobacco and cigarettes since April 1899 . The Ogden's Tobacco Company was founded in 1860 by Thomas Ogden, in 1868 he built the first tobacco factory; In 1890 he already owned six tobacco factories in Liverpool, which were combined in 1899 to form a single factory in Boundary Lane. On the representative building of the company, which closed in June 2011, the apostrophes are correctly written "Ogden's", but the original tobacco box is labeled "Ogdens' Nut-Brown Flake", which the Small Faces had adopted.

Most of the album was written by the Small Faces on boat trips on the Thames . The title Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake had a deeper meaning for the Small Faces. Namely, they used Ogden's tobacco boxes to store their marijuana supplies. "Nut gone" explained Kenney Jones the music magazine Rolling Stone in 1991: "We named it, Nut Gone 'because our brains were gone after consuming." The A-side of the record consisted of shorter songs and was the slow instrumental theme song introduced, while the suite-like B-side was about a fairy tale told by the English comedian Stanley "Stan the Man" Unwin (* June 7, 1911, † January 12, 2002). The general theme of the B-side are the whimsical fairy tales about Happiness Stan , who goes in search of the missing half of the moon. On a psychedelic trip to the cave of the hermit Mad John , he learns from him that the disappearance of the other half of the moon is only temporary.

Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (A-Side)

Many of the songs are in the London Cockney - dialect sung, especially the last part of the A side, Lazy Sunday . It is about neighborhood problems and thematized the conflict-laden neighborhood life in a row house , the walls of which carry the noise. Steve Marriott was inspired by difficulties with his Chiswick neighbors on the lyrics , but had not intended the piece to be a single . It was garnished with a number of sound effects such as the chirping of birds, flutes, the sound of the sea ​​and - the flushing of a toilet. Immediate Records released Lazy Sunday / Rollin 'Over without the band's knowledge as a single on April 5, 1968, before the LP. Steve Marriott wasn't happy with Immediate's decision to release the track Lazy Sunday as a single as it was intended to be an album filler and didn't exactly represent his compositional skills. The LP was produced by Small Faces between November and December 1967 together with sound engineer Glyn Johns at the Olympic Studios in London . Many songs were alienated by the sound effect flanging in order to underline the psychedelic impression acoustically.

Publication and Success

The LP Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (IMLP 012) was only released on May 24, 1968. The round cover in the form of a tobacco box, an idea by bassist Ronnie Lane, was noticeable, which is atypical for LPs . The record cover was the original version of a round tin box with ornate print a snuffbox modeled by the company Ogden. However, this cover turned out to be too expensive and was replaced by a cardboard version, both versions came from the designer Mick Swan. The round format, which resembles a tobacco box and which can be opened several times, did not exactly meet the sympathy of record stores, as this LP threatened to roll off the shelves. It was the first album of its kind to be classified as design art.

The album became the number one hit on the British LP charts, where it stayed in first place for six weeks from June 29, 1968. In the USA it only reached 159th place on the LP charts after its release in September 1968. It became the best-selling British album of 1968 and sold 20,000 on the day of release, a total of one million copies worldwide, and was awarded a gold record . There were no regular live performances of the concept album, only in the British TV show Color Me Pop on June 21, 1968 seven of the twelve titles were presented by Small Faces.

List of titles

Page A:

  1. Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (instrumental recording) ( Marriott , Lane , McLagan , Jones ) (2:26)
  2. Afterglow of Your Love (Marriott, Lane) (3:31)
  3. Long Agos and Worlds Apart (McLagan) (2:35)
  4. Rene (Marriott, Lane) (4:29)
  5. Song of a Baker (Marriott, Lane) (3:15)
  6. Lazy Sunday (Marriott, Lane) (3:05)

Side B:

  1. Happiness Stan (Marriott, Lane) (2:35)
  2. Rollin 'Over (Marriott, Lane) (2:50)
  3. The Hungry Intruder (Marriott, Lane, McLagan) (2:15)
  4. The Journey (Marriott, Lane, McLagan, Jones) (4:12)
  5. Mad John (Marriott, Lane) (2:48)
  6. HappyDaysToyTown (Marriott, Lane, McLagan) (4:17)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Homes Plan for Tobacco Factory , Liverpool Daily Post, August 29, 2007 ( Memento September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ English Heritage about Ogden  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / list.english-heritage.org.uk  
  3. ↑ a b Uli Twelker / Roland Schmitt, The Small Faces & Other Stories , 2002, p. 52.
  4. ^ Andy Bennett (ed.), Britpop And the English Music Tradition , 2010, p. 49.
  5. ↑ Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake on Birmingham Aces
  6. ↑ In the second episode of the TV music series