The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968)

Ogden's Nut Gone Flake.  Or is it Brightest Selection Ogden's Special Nut Gone Celebrated Flake Tobacco? Because that's what it says on the cover. Where did calling it Ogden's Nut Gone Flake come from? Who decided that?

Opening salvo "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" (oh, I guess that's where it comes from), sets the tone that this is an "album", so sit tight and listen up!

I am so familiar with Flo & Eddie's version of "Afterglow", the sumptuous following number that I'm not sure which is better, but it don't matter none anyhow! It's a beautiful song.

It seems an injustice that the greater world knows of The Faces, but I know sure as shit that most Canadians don't know diddly squat about the far superior Small Faces which preceded them. And small they were indeed! What an odd bunch of little hobbit men they were, but cuter.. almost Disneyesque, really.

Shall we just give singer, guitarist and defacto genius of the group, Steve Marriott, an award for inventing "the" vocal style for hard rock? Yes, let's do. Well, you go ahead and I'll applaud it from here, comfortably on the couch...

...as I do this album, a classic and hard to find in its original pressing with yon roundly shape and comely sleeve.

Marriott was famously furious with the record label for releasing piss-take Lazy Sunday Afternoon as a single; indeed, so much so that he left the group and formed Humble Pie, effectively ending the group (before they rose anew as The Faces propped up by Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood). But c'mon Sookie Stevie, it's a rousing number and everybody loves it!

By measures rocking, crooning, arvin' a larf and grooving, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake is a deservedly celebrated work of heady pop art, its tenured status firmly assured in the cream of the 1968 crop (though personally, I could do with a bit less of the storybook gibberish between songs on side 2).