The End / From Beginning to End / 4CD career spanning box

Demon Music give the Bill-Wyman-endorsed but sadly overlooked Sixties’ psychedelic group The End a reboot with a career-spanning 4CD box set, From Beginning to End…

The End was formed in 1965, by singer Colin Giffin and Dave Brown, previously members of Mike Berry and the Innocents. The Innocents had toured with the Rolling Stones in 1964, and Giffin and Brown, with their new band, joined the Stones on the road again in 1965. Bill Wyman, in particular, took a shine to their work and offered to help them in future, and went one to produce Introspection the group’s sole album for Decca (the Stones’ label). The band wrote all their own material on the album except for Shades of Orange which was co-written with Wyman and is widely considered to be psychedelic classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnTYmY-sXMs

Introspection was slated for release in 1968, but ended up being shelved for a year, something that is attributed to the fallout from The ‘Stones bust-up with Allen Klein. Decca gave it little marketing support when it was finally put out in December 1969, and by that time psychedelia was rather out of fashion. Consequently, it sunk without trace, despite its undoubted qualities.

One of the unusual and charming aspects of the album is the spoken interludes by Wyman’s gardener George Kenset. As Giffin explained Kenset’s guest appearances in an interview with online magazine Salon thus: “We’d be hanging out or rehearsing at Bill’s house and George would wander in during a break and just drop these little gems of nonsense into the conversation. And it would make us laugh. And at some point in the proceedings, somebody said, ‘We should record this stuff! Because if it makes us laugh, it’ll make other people laugh.’”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI3vL-YHO0Y

This four-CD set pulls together all of The End’s recordings still in existence, the material on discs one, three and four having only previously been released on vinyl in the Nineties. The first disc covers the early days from 1964 to 1967, while disc two is the 1968 Introspection album with two bonus tracks. Disc three features outtakes (including four previously unreleased bonus tracks) from 1968-1969, while the ten-track fourth CD rounds up the band’s recordings from 1969 and 1970 before they reinvented themselves as Tucky Buzzard.

The four CDs in From Beginning to End  are packaged in a clamshell box with the suitably psychedelic band logo, and photo of the band sporting fantastically shaggy hair and shag-pile coats. The box also includes a booklet, photos and ephemera, a note by founder member Colin Giffin, and the band’s comprehensive story written by David Wells. 

From Beginning to End is released on 27 November 2015.

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Disc: 1 – In The Beginning (1964-1967)
1. I Can’t Get Any Joy
2. Hey Little Girl
3. I Want You Around
4. I Can’t Believe It
5. Lost Without You
6. Baby Stay Like You Are
7. It Won’t Be Long
8. She Believed Me
9. I Got Wise
10. You’re So Right
11. You Better Believe It Baby
12. Please Do Something
13. Why
14. Yo – Yo
15. Searching For My Baby
16. Daddy Loves Baby
17. We’ve Got It Made
18. Shades Of Orange (November 1967 mix)

Disc: 2 Introspection 1968-1969)
1. Dreamworld
2. Under The Rainbow
3. Shades Of Orange (album version)
4. Bromley Common (talk)
5. Cardboard Watch
6. Introspection (Part 1)
7. What Does It Feel Like?
8. Linen Draper (talk)
9. Don’t Take Me
10. Loving, Sacred Loving
11. She Said Yeah
12. Jacobs Bladder (talk)
13. Introspection (Part 2)
14. Shades Of Orange (mono single version) (bonus track)
15. Loving, Sacred Loving (mono single version) (bonus track)

Disc: 3 – Retrospection (1968-1969)
1. Loving, Sacred Loving (February 1968 mix)
2. Building Up A Dream
3. Little Annie
4. Morning Dew
5. Tears Will Be The Only Answer
6. Today Tomorrow
7. Lady Under The Lamp
8. Black Is Black
9. Mister Man
10. Call Me
11. Shades Of Orange (June 1968 remix)
12. Mirror
13. We’ve Got It Made (Mellotron Mix)
14. Bypass The By – Pass
15. Mister Man (instrumental version) (bonus track)
16. The Fly (bonus track)
17. Sometimes I Wish I Were Dead (bonus track)
18. Stones In My Banana (bonus track)

Disc: 4 – The Last Word (1969-1970)
1. Son Of Lightning
2. Second Glance
3. Mistress Bean
4. For Eleanor
5. So Free
6. North Thames Gas Board
7. Do Right Woman Do Right Man
8. Turn On Waterstone
9. Smartypants
10. My Friend