Rolled Gold

All tracks have been digitally remastered.
With interest from Beatles producer George Martin and a deal with Parlophone Records, '60s mod masters the Action could have been somebody. Somehow--despite an extraordinary spate of sides in the mid to late '60s--the band fell through the cracks and never achieved their much merited success. Enter Reaction Records, a British imprint that gathered these demos and released them as ROLLED GOLD in 1998. As a collection of songs, ROLLED GOLD easily stands with the Zombies' ODESSEY & ORACLE as a pinnacle of the era's mod psychedelia. Its meticulously crafted tunes restlessly morph, but never lose their tight hummability as they foreground the criminally underrecognized lead vocals of Reg King. Backed by charmingly roughhewn harmonies and shifting, elliptical riffs, King hitches a dreamy lyricism to his expressive pipes on lost classics like "Strange Roads," "Something to Say," and "Icarus." Despite their low visibility, the Action--and specifically the charms found within ROLLED GOLD--influenced a wide gamut of later musicians from Phil Collins to Guided By Voices.