The Fourmyula - Inside The Hutt - New Zealand's Pop-Psych Kingpins 1968-1969 (2013)

The success of Fourmyula marked a major turning point in the development of New Zealand rock: to an industry long dependent on cover versions of international hits, this Hutt Valley-based quintet offered proof positive that native talent could reach the national charts on the strength of their own original material. Fourmyula evolved in early 1967 from the ranks of the Insect, a fixture of area high school dances and other social gatherings; comprising vocalist/guitarist Martin Hope, keyboardist Wayne Mason, bassist Alistair Richardson, and drummer Chris Parry, their popularity soared after they took home top honors in a "National Battle of the Sounds" competition, although the consensus was that they needed a stronger lead vocalist. Toward that aim, singer Carl Evensen was recruited from Kal-Q-Lated Risk, with Hope now focusing solely on guitar duties.

After buying an instructional book on songwriting, Mason and Richardson penned Fourmyula's first original composition, "Come with Me"; it was originally scheduled to appear as the B-side to their 1968 debut single, "Honey Child," a cover of a Martha & the Vandellas hit, but their label HMV took such a liking to the new song that "Come with Me" was instead promoted as the A-side. The single was a smash, reaching the number two spot on the Kiwi charts; overnight, Fourmyula became superstars, and Mason and Richardson quickly wrote a dozen new songs for release as their self-titled 1968 LP debut. Demand for the group was so high that HMV even issued two new singles, "Alice Is There" and "I Know Why," simultaneously; both rocketed into the Top Ten, and after quickly recording a sophomore album, Green B. Holiday, the band toured Britain, later recording the single "Lady Scorpio" at the famed Abbey Road studios.

Fourmyula spent four months overseas, catching live appearances from groups including Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Spooky Tooth; acknowledging that their mod aesthetic was out of touch with emerging trends, they grew their hair out and adopted a heavier, louder sound which they intended to introduce upon returning home. New Zealand audiences were baffled by the new, heavy metal-influenced Fourmyula, however, and after just one disastrous gig, they returned to their trademark four-part harmonies and softly psychedelic pop. Their third LP, Creation, appeared in late 1969, followed by the chart-topping single "Nature"; Mason was now the group's sole songwriter, and as the band returned to Europe to tour, his material again adopted a heavier approach. To avoid conflict with a similarly named group, Fourmyula rechristened themselves Pipp; after scoring a minor hit with the 1970 single "Otaki," their fortunes dwindled, and by the following year, they were no more. Parry later founded Fiction Records.
I like these guys very much. Enjoy it!
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The Cowsills - The Cowsills 1967 (2009) mp3

Featuring "The Rain, the Park, and Other Things," this debut album by the Cowsills really isn't half-bad mainstream late-'60s pop, with a heavy Mamas & the Papas fixation. It's not nearly as good as the Mamas & the Papas, of course, and doesn't stand up to in-depth listening -- nor are they saying anything quite as profoundly refreshing and personal as what the Mamas & the Papas conveyed on their best records. But it is pleasant, and it's also easy to hear how doing Beatles tunes for four hours a night at clubs had a profound effect on whatever musical impulses the group had, and there were worse places than that to use as a jumping off point. Echoes of the prettier and less daring parts of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's abound in the best of the harmonizing here, and also in some of the brass and percussion, and the guitar flourishes on numbers like "Pennies" (which could easily have been a hit).

Everything is also decidedly middle-brow and middle class in its sensibilities, very family friendly even in the relatively safe trippiness that colors the mood of numbers like "River Blue" -- this was sort of sunshine pop for teens from stable middle-class homes. Musically, it all recalls the two Boyce & Hart LPs and, even more so, the Monkees' first two records -- it's not as smooth or accomplished as either of the latter, though the presence of a fair number of band originals and the lean sound of the core group give it a slightly less contrived feel than the Monkees' records. (allmusic.com)

Here is the debut album of the Cowsills from 1967. It peaked at 31 in the Billboard LP charts in early '68. I will later post more of the Cowsills . Have fun

Cheers
           Frank
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The Fox - For Fox Sake 1970 (2003) Flac

 The Fox formed in Brighton in 1968 when veterans of several local bands teamed together. Hammond organist Alex Lane, drummer Tim Reeves, and percussionist-singer Nick Apostiledes had been in the mod-soul band the Alex Lane Group. Reeves had also been in the soul band Omega Plus, as had bassist-keyboardist Dave Windross. Songwriter and guitarist Steve Brayne, who had known Lane and Reeves since primary school, completed the first lineup, though Apostiledes was soon replaced by guitarist Winston Weatherill (formerly in Gary Farr & the T-Bones). The band made test recordings at a 12-hour session in Radio Luxembourg Studios, which worked out so well that most of them were issued as For Fox Sake, though a couple tracks were re-recorded. Management interest cooled off, however, and the Fox broke up soon after the album's release.

Although it's considered a desirable psychedelic rarity in some collecting circles, For Fox Sake is an also-ran British psychedelic pop album of the sort that was a year or two behind the times upon its 1970 release. The best thing the Fox have going for them on this record is the swirling, at times piercing Hammond organ of Alex Lane. The songs, however, are ordinary trendy U.K. psychedelic pop with some solid vocal harmonies and light shades of soul music from time to time. Certainly "Second Hand Love" and "Lovely Day" sound extremely close in spots to the sort of music the Spencer Davis Group made just after the departure of Stevie Winwood, with some of the late Zombies' Baroque melodic sense coloring parts of both "Lovely Day" and "As She Walks Away." Some curve balls arrive in the form of a pretty folky acoustic guitar ballad, "Butterfly," the dull good-time soul-rock of "Goodtime Music," the blunt sledgehammer anti-straight world rant of "Mr. Blank," and the epic-to-little-purpose "Madame Magical," whose nine minutes feature some extended jazzy psychedelic organ improv. [The 2003 CD reissue on RPM adds historical liner notes and two bonus tracks in the original demo versions of "Lovely Day" and "Mr. Blank."](excerpts from allmusic.com/Richie Unterberger.

For sure this album came two years late. For me it's a pretty good album. Also because here and there you can here the impact of american west coast sounds. As i said before the album was sixties psych pop two years late but not yet really seventies. Anyway it's 2017 so give it a try and enjoy!

Cheers
           Frank
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Jeff Lynne - Long Wave (2012 SHM Japan in Flac)

Hello guys and gals, i want to post a solo album of Jeff Lynne today!!! Lol, i'm just kidding. Shure it is an official so-called ''Solo'' album but we also know Jeff is the producer, main musician, songwriter, chief and whatever makes a bandproject to a one-man band like the Electric Light Orchestra. So it's quite regardless how it's named. Except maybe for commercial aspects of the marketing. I'm a fan of Jeff Lynne and the most things, he was musically involved. For ''Long wave'' i needed a little more time before i falling in love with the songs. But, naturally, at last it happened. And i should have known better: If Jeff Lynne/ELO want you(me) he will get you(me). Marvelous pop record!


Here is the review Stephen Erlewine of Allmusic.com:

When Jeff Lynne was growing up, he listened to music on longwave radio, soaking up all the sounds coming through the big radio in the living room. His 2012 tribute to these days, appropriately called Long Wave, is a far-reaching salute to the glory days of pop in the years before the Beatles. It's too easy to peg this as a standards album, a designation that isn't quite accurate. Lynne may cover many show tunes along with '50s favorites of big-band vocalists but he spends nearly as much time with rock & roll, and not just the operatic pop of his fellow Traveling Wilbury Roy Orbison, either. He cranks through Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock," slides
into the silken harmonies of the Everly Brothers on "So Sad," and grooves through Don Covay's "Mercy, Mercy." These are the cuts that stick the closest to the original hit recordings. When Lynne tackles Rodgers & Hammerstein ("If I Loved You"), Rodgers & Hart ("Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"), Fain & Webster ("Love Is a Many Splendored Thing"), and Chaplin ("Smile"), he breaks the song down to its melodic basics then builds up candied, layered arrangements that are distinctly his own, suggesting the gorgeous cascades of sound that were the signature of prime ELO. Indeed, when these sweet reinterpretations are combined with the straight-ahead rockers, Long Wave adds up to a blueprint in reverse for Lynne; by going to back to his beginnings, he winds up figuring out why he went in the direction he did.

Hope you enjoy
                        Frank
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The Aerovons - Resurrection 1969 (2003 RPM) Flac

 HISTORY:
The Aerovons' story sounds like a fairytale, and in most respects it was a fairytale come true, except for the anticlimactic and grim ending. It was probably the dream of millions of teenage American boys to meet the Beatles and record at Abbey Road Studios in the late '60s. The Aerovons, unlike virtually every other such band, did so. Personnel instability intervened, however, and the group only got to issue a couple of rare singles before splitting up. They did record an entire album of promising material heavily influenced by the late-'60s Beatles, which finally saw release on CD in 2003.
The Aerovons were formed in 1966 in St. Louis, and in late 1967, guitarist/pianist Tom Hartman recorded a demo of his composition "A World of You" at the instigation of his mother. The demo was heard by a representative of Capitol Records, and though he offered the group a session in Los Angeles, Hartman's mother told him the band wanted to record in London. In early 1968, the still-young Aerovons -- Hartman was 16 -- flew to London to play their demo for EMI. EMI was impressed enough to sign them when Hartman and his mother returned to London in August 1968, and the Aerovons even got another offer at the time with Decca. The whole band came back to London in March 1969 to record.

Over the next few months the group cut about an album's worth of material at Abbey Road. Unsurprisingly considering the surroundings, and considering that the Beatles were the group's heroes anyway, the material sounded much like the Beatles did circa 1967-1969, though on the lighter side of what the Beatles themselves came up with. More surprisingly, the album was produced by Hartman himself, who also wrote most of the songs laid down in the studio. Though the sessions were quite well-produced and well-arranged, with some of the settings also reminiscent of the late-'60s Bee Gees or (more distantly) Hollies, the songs were still too derivative to have stood much chance of making a big mark had everything been issued at the time.

In a perfect world, perhaps such a young group should have been given some more time to hone a more original sound. It was and is an imperfect world, however, and before an album could even be released, fate intervened to end the Aerovons' brief career. The sessions had themselves been done as a three-piece, although they'd come over to London as a quartet, when guitarist Phil Edholm left before recording began. Shortly after returning to St. Louis in mid-1969, drummer Mike Lombardo left. EMI, concerned about the personnel shifts, canceled the album, and the band split up shortly afterward, though a couple of rare singles were issued on Parlophone in 1969. Hartman did a single for Bell in 1970 before abandoning the record business to go to college, though he later got into writing music for television, radio, and film. The Aerovons' canceled album was issued on CD by RPM in 2003, with both tracks from a non-LP single, a demo, and an unreleased song added as bonus cuts.

THE ALBUM:
The dozen songs that would have been on the Aerovons' album had it come out (though a couple of the songs did come out on a 1969 single) form the core of this release, Resurrection,the U.K. bonus edition also tacks on four bonus tracks. The Aerovons' unusual story -- a band from the American Midwest recording in Abbey Road in 1969, led and produced by their 17-year-old singer-songwriter -- might be the main reason there was interest in excavating these sessions, but this CD is not a mere curio. It's quite respectable late-'60s Beatles-style pop/rock, if a little green around the edges and pretty derivative. In fact, in a couple of spots it's downright imitative, with "Say Georgia" taking licks from "Oh! Darling," and "Resurrection" itself lifting from "Across the Universe." (Neither of those songs had yet been released by the Beatles at the time of the sessions, but the group heard them by virtue of working in Abbey Road.) Fortunately, those are the only blatant cops, though Beatles comparisons abound throughout, particularly in the Paul McCartney-esque piano-playing. Songs like "With Her" and "The Years" recall the acoustic outings of both John Lennon and Paul McCartney on The White Album, while "Bessie Goodheart" uses McCartney's more vaudevillian Sgt. Pepper-era outings as an obvious launching pad, and "Something of Yours" brings to mind "Michelle." To this list you could also add the very Lennon-esque echo on the vocal of "The Children." The Aerovons leaned more toward wistful and sadness-tinged moods than the Beatles did, though. One of the best tracks, "World of You," brings out that quality very well, recalling the better late-'60s orchestrated Bee Gees opuses. The bonus tracks include both sides of a non-LP 1969 single ("The Train," their poppiest number, which echoes both the Hollies and the Bee Gees), the outtake "Here" (very much like McCartney's piano ballads), and a demo of "World of You." (Richie Unterberger allmusic.com)

If you love the Beatles mid- to late 60's than you maybe will love this (like me) or you will hate it because you think this is nothing more than a rip-off or plagiarism. But this is really well done and the songs themself are quite good. I like this record very much. Hope you like it and have fun
Frank
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To Jangle Around With Sixteen Baroque Tambourines - More from ''The Three O'Clock'' in Flac

Sixteen Tambourines/Baroque Hoedown both on one disc!

Like i said a few days ago i post some more of the band today. It's the ep ''Baroque Hoedown'' and the album ''Sixteen Tambourines''.
The band recorded ''Baroque Hoedown'' in August '82 and released it in December on ''Frontier Records''. It was a big success for the band and the ep sold very well. The word was they sold around 15000 copies then. Anyway, for the album ''Sixteen Tambourines'' Gutierrez and Quercio did the most songwriting and the whole band arranged the songs together.
''Sixteen Tambourines'' is a great album with a giant pop quality and the psychedelic sound aspect never feels old or retro. That's just my two cents.

Hope you have fun with this post,
cheers
          Frank

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The Cowsills - Global (1998) Flac

The real-life inspiration behind the hit television series The Partridge Family, the Cowsills -- comprised of teen siblings Bill, Bob, Barry, John, Susan, and Paul in tandem with mother Barbara -- were one of the biggest pop acts of the late '60s, scoring a series of hits including "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" and "Hair" with their angelic harmonies and sun-kissed melodies. The group's origins lie with Bill and Bob, who as children began their singing careers covering Everly Brothers hits. Given guitars by their father, Navy man William "Bud" Cowsill, the siblings soon recruited younger brothers Barry and John to play bass and drums, respectively, and as Beatlemania dawned, the teen foursome began performing live at school dances and church socials throughout their native Newport, RI. Soon, the Cowsills landed a regular weekend gig at the local club Bannisters Wharf, and in 1967 recorded the single "All I Really Wanta Be Is Me" for the Joda label. The record generated little response, however, and after an appearance on NBC's The Today Show, the group signed to Mercury Records, where they issued three more singles to negligible interest.

Mercury producer Artie Kornfeld remained convinced of the Cowsills' commercial appeal, however, and set up another recording date independent of the label. This time, however, he convinced their siblings' mother, Barbara, to contribute vocals to the session, which yielded the stunning "The Rain, the Park and Other Things." With their wholesome family image serving as a marketing godsend, Kornfeld sealed a deal with MGM, which issued the single in the fall of 1967; it eventually rose to number two on the national charts, selling over a million copies in the process. The Cowsills' self-titled debut LP soon followed, and with the title track from 1968's We Can Fly, the family scored their second hit, in the meantime adding two more siblings -- sister Susan and brother Paul -- to the lineup. "Indian Lake" reached the Top Ten later that year, and in 1969 the group scored its biggest chart entry with the title song from the rock musical Hair. Around that same time, Columbia Pictures' television division dispatched a group of screenwriters to observe the Cowsills' daily lives for a possible series based on their story. The show never panned out, but was later fictionalized as The Partridge Family. By the time The Partridge Family hit the airwaves in 1970, however, the Cowsills' career was on the decline, and in the wake of the 1971 LP On My Side, the group disbanded. That same year, Bill Cowsill (who was briefly considered to replace Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys' touring lineup) issued a solo LP, Nervous Breakthrough, but otherwise the siblings were musically inactive for much of the decade. In the late '70s, Bob, John, Susan, and Paul recorded a batch of original material with producer Chuck Plotkin, but the sessions were never unreleased. Barbara Cowsill died on January 31, 1985, and her children spent the '90s in regaining some of their former musical prominence. Barry mounted a solo career, Bill founded the country group the Blue Shadows, and Susan joined the Continental Drifters, an all-star New Orleans-via-Los Angeles combo also featuring her husband, ex-dB Peter Holsapple, and onetime Bangle Vicki Peterson. In 1994, the "core four" -- Bob, John, Susan, and Paul -- contributed a newly recorded Cowsills track, "Is It Any Wonder," to the Yellow Pills, Vol. 1 pop compilation. A new studio album, Global, followed in 1998.

 The Cowsills were the real world's Partridge Family. The talented Cowsills teens -- Bob, Bill, John, Barry, Paul, and Susan -- all siblings working along with their mother, Barbara, landed a number of hit songs during the '60s. Three decades later the renewed Cowsills, though smaller in number, began performing and recording music again. One of the group's later offerings is Global. This bubblegum pop album carries 11 tracks, including "What About Love," "You've Got No Time," "Cross That Line," and "Under the Gun." All of the songs were co-written by Bob Cowsill and his wife Mary. Though the major record label the group had worked with before didn't bite on this deal, the Cowsills found a label, Robin Records, and plenty of old and new fans waiting for more pop music harmonies.

 When Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans on August 29, 2005, Susan and her family had already evacuated the area. However, brother Barry -- also a New Orleans resident at the time -- had not. Susan had received a phone call from Barry as late as September 1. The family searched for any sign of him for four months before his body was recovered and identified on December 28. Another death followed in 2006, when Bill passed away in February at the age of 58 after lingering health issues.allmusic.com
I always loved the band/family and the musical things the different siblings created. Continental Drifters, Blue Shadows, the whole sixties stuff all that was great. It's sad what happened to some of the members.
This is fine pop music and if you don't know it...try it.
Cheers
           Frank
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The Kinks - The 45' at Pye Records 1964-1978 (28 singles) mp3@320

Hello Folks and Friends,
hope you had a good start into the week and a fine weekend. Today i wanna share a collection of  ''Kinks'' singles. The 28 singles were released by Pye Records from 1964 until 1978. A lot of classics are gathered here. There is nice artwork included with the different singles covers from the different countries. If you like the ''Kinks'' take a listen and a look, it is a fine collection of the band and her singles work.

Hope you have fun
                              Frank   mp3@320

Price And Walsh - Temptation Eyes: Price & Walsh Songbook 2006

The title of RevOla's 2006 disc Temptation Eyes: Price & Walsh Songbook implies that this collection rounds up the original hit versions of songs they wrote but that were recorded by other artists, such as Bobby "Blue" Bland, Lulu, Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, Cher and the Grass Roots, whose hit version of "Temptation Eyes" brought Michael Price (aka Harvey Price, as he was initially credited) and Dan Walsh into the consciousness of the music mainstream after years of toiling away behind the scenes. That's not the case. Temptation Eyes offers a chronicle of those days behind the scenes via a selection of 25 songs, almost all previously unreleased, recorded between 1966 and 1969.
The story begins here with a handful of demos Price and Walsh recorded after the disbandment of their first group the Motleys, music co-written with their collaborator Mitchell Bottler, that finds them firmly within the breezy, precious California sunshine pop sound, yet it was accomplished enough to earn the interest of record producer Gary Zekley, who had the trio pen a tune for the Visions ("Small Town Commotion," included here) before Price and Walsh embarked on a Sgt. Pepper-inspired album in 1967. This record was teased with a single -- "Love Is the Order of the Day" backed by "The House of Ilene Castle" -- but was never finished due to a falling-out between Zekley and the duo, with the surviving tracks finally seeing the light of day here. They are thoroughly ambitious, melodic psychedelic pop, clearly and proudly wearing the inspiration of McCartney's work for Sgt. Pepper, but presented through an L.A. filter so it has a studio polish and a commercial sensibility -- both evident beneath the somewhat shaky audio of the surviving recordings -- that made it akin to the sunny pop released on White Whale.

Following that aborted project, Price and Walsh parted ways with both Zekley and Bottler (the latter pair would later become a songwriting team) and after a year of work they wound up at Dunhill/ABC publishing, largely on the strength of their demo "The Publisher and the Poet," also heard here. While at Dunhill, they wrote for many artists on the label's roster, including Cass Elliot and eventually the Grass Roots, and the great majority of the rest of Temptation Eyes consists of their original, fully produced demos from this time. The Dunhill era begins with "Billy," a single released by Cotton Candy, and immediately it's clear that Price and Walsh had made a leap forward from their sunshine/pych pop. The precious layers have fallen away and their melodies, which have always been strong, are placed at the forefront, as they are for all their work on Dunhill. They still delved into this territory during the late '60s, but their work became more versatile and soulful, with even bubblegum-styled pop songs benefiting from propulsive rhythms and urgent melodies: the kind of music that became the backbone of AM pop as the '60s turned into the '70s, thanks to the likes of the Grass Roots and Three Dog Night.

This is undoubtedly commercial mainstream music -- it was designed as such, after all -- but Price and Walsh were experts at this music, which is why it retains its appeal years after it was recorded. The very fact that there is only one big tune here -- the title track, of course -- but that the entire second half of the album still feels as effervescent and energetic as the late-'60s and early-'70s standards speaks volumes to their strengths as writers: even when they didn't make the charts, they were writing with the charts in mind, and at their best they came up with music that felt like hits even if they never were. Nowhere is that talent better heard than on this pretty irresistible (and long overdue) collection of the duo's formative years.

These guys were fantastic pop songwriters and if i listen to this songbook i often can't believe why only a couple of people knows this guys. For people with love for commercial pop of the mid to late sixties a must. A lot of beautiful songs here. Pop music written on a top notch level.
Grab it
          Frank
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The Toms - The Toms 1979 (2005 Not Lame) 2 CD edition Flac

This is a power pop classic from the late seventies, exactly 1979. ''The Toms'' was a project of Thomas Marolda. A project in that sense that he had some free time between the work for other artists in his studio (recording, playing, songwriting). I think he made the whole recordings ( playing, recording, producing, all by himself ) in three days what became ''The Toms''. And a power pop  legend was born. At the time he did the recordings he was already a well engaged musician with his skills and the recording studio. ''The Toms'' was for sure a good publicity for his further life as a successful musician. He worked on gold and platinum albums for many world known artists, soundtracks, TV specials and has written numerous award winning television commercials, radio jingles and other songs. He was nominated as writer and producer for best album of original score written for the motion picture ''Stayin' alive''. And there was and is a lot more. Just a great musician.

In 1997 ''Not Lame'' released the album on CD for the first time and 2005 once again with seven bonus tracks and twelve (then) unreleased songs ( and i think for making that possible we, who love this gem, owe also Bruce Brodeen a debt of gratitude).
Tom Marolda created a real power pop treasure with ''The Toms'' and everyone who loves this kind of pop music should hear it.

If you love what you hear you can buy ''The Toms'' and a lot more here

Wish you a lot of fun
                                 SB1(Frank)
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The Three O'Clock - Arrive Without Travelling '85 & Ever After '87 (2002 EMI Records)Flac

The Three O'Clock were the quintessential L.A. Paisley Underground band. Lead singer and bassist

Michael Quercio in fact coined the term to describe the set of bands, including the Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade, Green on Red, and the Bangles, who incorporated the chiming guitars of the Byrds and the Beatles into their pop songs with a psychedelic bent, and the clothes to match. Beginning as the Salvation Army in 1982 as a three-piece and forsaking the name due to a conflict with the actual organization, the Three O'Clock originally included Quercio and guitarist Louis (formerly Gregg) Gutierrez. The band plied a garagey sound on its self-titled debut in 1982. When ex-Weirdos drummer Danny Benair and keyboardist Mickey Mariano joined for the follow-up EP Baroque Hoedown and the LP Sixteen Tambourines in 1983 (both released by Frontier Records), the band found a more polished, perfect pop sound.

In 1985 they released Arrive Without Travelling for I.R.S., followed by Ever After. Gutierrez departed in 1986. For their Warner Bros./Paisley Park debut (Prince was a fan), Vermillion, Jason Falkner was added on guitar. Sadly, it proved to be their undoing, as they never really fulfilled the label's expectations and Quercio refused to be pigeonholed as a pretty-boy pop star or spokesperson for the premature retro revival. Quercio continues to play in L.A. pop bands, while Gutierrez became a principal member of Mary's Danish, and Falkner is a solo recording artist. After years of turning down offers to reunite, the original lineup of the band (minus Mariano, who was replaced by Adam Merrin of the 88) re-formed to play the 2013 Coachella Festival. Soon after, Omnivore Records released The Hidden World Revealed, a collection of album tracks and rarities from the years with Frontier.

This is a release of E.M.I. records in 2002 with two albums on one disc. The first two releases for the band on a major label. For many critics ''Arrive Without Travelling'' is the most complete album of the band. For me personally the first three releases (Baroque Hoedown (ep), Sixteen Tambourines and Arrive...) are their best. But also later albums was quite good. A disappointment for sure was ''Vermillion'' from 1988. I think i will post later more from the band. Below is a review from allmusic.
I hope you enjoy the double album edition.

Cheers
           SB1

Review by allmusic.com:

The Three O'Clock's first major label album, after the superb Sixteen Tambourines and Baroque Hoedown, is a bit slicker and less specifically psychedelic than their earlier releases. Recorded in Berlin with British producer Mike Hedges, Arrive Without Travelling (the title, complete with U.K. spelling, comes from George Harrison's "The Inner Light") has a big, brash sound, from the blaring opener "Her Head's Revolving" to the multiply overdubbed choral vocals and hypnotic drum patterns of the droning closer "Spun Gold." The arrangements are slick, but they don't have the sterile, computerized feel of many mid-'80s pop records; Mike Mariano's keyboards are at the center of the sound, but Louis Gutierrez's guitar is prominent enough to recall the group's '60s roots. As always, Michael Quercio's inimitable voice and puckish lyrics are the album's love it or hate it factor, but song by song, this album probably features his strongest songwriting. "Her Head's Revolving" is a lost classic of a single, arguably the band's finest three minutes, and the gloriously hooky "Underwater" is nearly as good. "Mrs. Green," which shifts from a church organ-based verse to a swooning chorus, and the tenderly acoustic "The Girl With the Guitar (Says Oh Yeah)," co-written by Game Theory's Scott Miller, vary the otherwise power-poppy album. Later albums would continue Arrive Without Travelling's move away from the band's early paisley underground days with less impressive results, but this album rivals Sixteen Tambourines as the Three O'Clock's artistic peak.

FLAC