The Now Generation were the type of band whose LPs sold in supermarkets rather than record shops. A studio concoction comprised of top Nashville session musicians, they released five albums on the tiny Spar label in the space of a few years, mostly containing facsimile versions of hits of the day. I say mostly because weirdly their first release was all original material. The bulk was written by the instigator of the group, Bobby Russell – the same Bobby Russell who wrote hits for Bobby Goldsboro, Vicki Lawrence (his wife for a time), Gary Lewis and Bryan Hyland (‘The Joker Went Wild’, a Northern Soul bargain 45!!).

Now, this isn’t a great album by any means. The material may well be ‘original’ but it’s still pretty derivative and very much in the soundalike vein of later LPs. So you get a hodgepodge of surf music, teeny bopper pop, soul – basically whatever was popular at the time. The good news is the time was 1967, so The Now Generation were obliged to serve up a helping of psychedelia, and this they did with aplomb on the opener ‘Crawl Along The Sand’. Written by Nashville arranger Bergen White, it’s a strange mélange of two very distinct worlds: a clean-cut girl group backed by a snotty garage band who have been experimenting with illicit substances. The result is unlike anything else I can put my finger on, and for that reason I love it.