Various Artists "Simla Beat 70" 1970***

I don't know if that happens to other record lovers (I hesitate to call myself a record collector, as I buy albums for the music as opposed to collectability) but I often dream I'm at a record fair or antique shop and come across a rare album on sale for peanuts. It's never actually happened, best case scenario was finding an album worth around €40 in a crate of mostly blunt 70's pop rock all priced €3 per piece. Anyway I recently dreamt I was browsing the wares of a street vendor in India, and among his other stuff he had a crate of LP's for something like 30 cents per piece. I didn't recognise anything, the album covers were mostly of girls with red dots on the forehead and nose jewelry. Maybe that's stereotypical to the point of racism, but what can I do? The image bank of my subconscious is somewhat lacking in this subject. Among those I nevertheless discovered a pristine copy of "Simla Beat 70" which I knew to be worth up to €2000. I was contemplating whether I should buy just this one copy or the whole basket to make the old man happy...

 

...until I woke up. So I am still not the proud owner of an original vinyl copy of this, rather of a semi-legal CD reissue - there is also a regular CD reissue compiling both Simla Beat albums ('70 and '71) with a different cover. These records were originally tied to a Battle Of The Bands-type contest sponsored by the Simla cigarette company. It's interesting to note that while Indian music was becoming popular in the West and Ravi Shankar was mesmerising festival crowds at Monterey and Woodstock, Western rock was barely making an impression in India. Which may explain why these songs by the finalists of the Simla Beat competition are out of synch with their Western contemporaries, sounding more like they were recorded in an American garage circa 1966-67. With the exception that an English or American record of that era may easily have featured Indian instruments like sitar or tablas, but there are none to be heard here. The closest they come to the Orient is the two instrumentals, a loose jam called "Psychedelia" with some Misirlou-like surf guitar and Greek folk tune "Zorba's Dance" - of course from the Indians' point of view these Greek melodies wouldn't be oriental, more like another strain of Western music. The best tunes here are garage rockers like The Confusion's "Voice from the Inner Soul" and Troggs cover "You Can't Beat It". The two Genuine Spares tracks  "Proper Stranger" and "Whats Goin On" and Innerlite's "Baby Baby Please" also have a '66 sounding garage folk sound while two Creedence tunes (Dinosaurs' "Sinister Purpose" and X'Lents' "Born On The Bayou") are quite rough, reminding me of some Japanese rock covers from the era. The vocals throughout have a slightly alien quality, but none of what I've come to think of as Apu accent, from the Simpsons character (which I thought was comically exaggerated until I met some Indians studying abroad and realized that yes, that's a realistic Indian accent). "Mist" is another winner, a long psychedelic blues jam with organ, like The Animals jamming with an early version of Grateful Dead. So here's my advice to you; if you spot this LP cheaply on an oriental bazaar, first pinch yourself. If it turns out you're not dreaming, just add it to your collection.

**** for Voice From The Inner Soul (Confusions), You Can't Beat It (Dinosaurs), Mist (Great Bear) 

*** for Psychedelia (X'Lents), Proper Stranger (Genuine Spares), Whats Goin On (Genuine Spares), Born On The Bayou (X'Lents), Baby Baby Please (Innerlite)

** for Zorba's Dance (Innerlite), Sinister Purpose (Dinosaurs)