Track Listing

1. Flowers Around Me
2. I'm Not The Devil
3. Tony Bastable V John Noakes
4. You Make Me Say It Somehow
5. Mary Won't Come Out To Play
6. I Had An Excellent Dream
7. Kinder Still
8. The Little Engineers Set
9. Back To The Grave
10. Tangerine
11. The Arrow Points To The Spot
12. Everything In The Garden
13. One Of Our Psychedelic Beakers Is Missing
14. Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden (And It's Wintertime) (Bonus Track)
15. Burning The Thoughts From My Skin (Bonus Track)
16. Doreen (Bonus Track)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24791 in Music
• Released on: 2005-09-05
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

Album Description
Long before they became the indie darlings and international recording artistes they're usually remembered as, The Dentists were the black sheep of the mid '80s Medway rock 'n' roll family. Railing against the tried and tested garage rock of The Prisoners and The Milkshakes, The Dentists blended the contemporary guitar pop of The Smiths, The Go Betweens and REM with the classic '60s rock of The Who, The Kinks and The Byrds, added a generous sprinkling of heavy-lidded psychedelia and played the resulting sound stew very loudly at 90 mph on beaten-up old guitars and drums. A recipe for great pop music you may think... and you'd be right!

In 1985 they self-financed and released the classic neo-psych single 'Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden (And It's Wintertime)' (soon to appear on the Son Of Nuggets box set) and the equally sublime and cheekily titled album, "Some People Are On The Pitch They Think It's All Over It Is Now" to great acclaim, but unfortunately, limited success; 'Flowers Around Me', 'I'm Not The Devil', 'You Make Me Say It Somehow', 'I Had An Excellent Dream', any number of tracks on this album could have have been hit singles in an alternate universe.

Now, for the first time ever, Rev-Ola presents the album and single on CD, remastered and expanded. Ripe for rediscovery and re-evaluation, these earliest Dentists recordings are dripping with the kind of ramshackle charm and youthful zest that make so many debuts unbeatable.

Fans of mid '80s British guitar pop who preferred the harder edge of Creation Records to the tweeness of Postcard and Sarah should look no further. Likewise, mod and psych revivalists will also find plenty of Revolver-esque thrills to revel in here.

Features in-depth liner notes, rare and unseen photos and track-by-track comments from the band themselves! This is a must for all fans of '60s influenced mid '80s British psychedelic guitar pop…!

Customer Reviews

One of the best albums of all time.
Quite simply, 20 years on this is still one of my favourite albums of all time, from the most underrated band of all time.
It's crammed full of wonderfully melodic psychedlic pop songs, check out Flowers Around Me, I'm Not The Devil and the awesomely catchy I Had An Excellent Dream - if you don't like this song first time you don't like music,period!
The Dentists were such prolific songwriters, and hopefully some of their other records will make it to cd one day, but for anyone who's never heard of them(a criminally common occurence!)this is a superb starting place.

It's A Gas
As a weedy teen in pursuit of Smithsian guitar shapes and Beatlesque melodies, I had embraced C86 and the likes of REM and The Smithereens with open arms. But somehow I missed out on The Dentists. The anniversary release of CD86 remedied that, though 20 years too late. "I Had An Excellent Dream" stood out like a damaged digit so much that I'm unsure why it was included in the first place. But I'm as pleased as chuff that it was as it led me to "Some People Are On The Pitch..." and its glorious revved up dumbed down Byrdsy jangle, full of poppy psychedelia, polite vocals and a large coating of melodic twang, all complemented by a rudimentary production which gives it a real "Nuggets" feel.

It's no surprise that Kenneth Wolstenholme's now legendary commentary opens the album - it too resides in 1966. The brutal retro garage rush of "Flowers Around Me" then propels you like a Bobby Charlton volley, opening the account with considerable oomph, the haunting, yearning vocals shaken by surfy riffs and Townsend power chords. The heartbeat is sent into paroxysms of glee, and the album rides this wave of adrenalin. "I'm Not The Devil" travels the rather beatific middle ground between The Jam and The Monkees, a bit of muscle to your la-la-la, while "Tony Bastable v John Noakes" pounds the floor with a grubby Motown stomp. And on it goes.

The more introspective songs such as "Mary Won't You Come Out To Play", "Everything In The Garden", "Kinder Still" are bedsit dreams made real, the latter's gentle swirl of guitar sending this listener off into a swooning reverie. Bonus track and debut single "Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden..." is a revelation, melodies, harmonies, guitars all merging into a glorious blend of gentle psyche. It's over before it's barely begun and you're in bits. This song could single-handedly be responsible for Sarah Records, but don't hold that against it - that label rarely got it THIS right.

A couple of slightly aimless affairs (the filler of "Back To The Grave", the dippy jump of "Tangerine"...) don't detract from the sound of a band absolutely buzzing with enthusiasm in their attempt to make their own "Revolver". The thrill of the likes of "...Excellent Dream" and "One Of Our Psychedelic Beakers Is Missing" (WHAT titles!) is tangible, the songs tumbling over one another, desperate to make themselves heard.

Lyrics err on the dafter but snappier-sounding side of psychedelia (e.g., "I hear a voice that sounds like thunder but tastes like lemon and lime" - the album's full of `em!) though sometimes they hit a stinking dead end - rhyming "the tears I cried" with "the egg I fried" appears to be a rather unpleasant case of writer's block.

But this barely registers on the quibble scale. Ok, the album's hardly a classic: it's naïve, one-dimensional, grubby; but it soars, marvelling at the sunshine from the muck of the sandpit, smelling the flowers with one foot in a puddle, bouncing in a sweaty club with its nostrils full of perfume. It would never have been off my turntable in 1985, and it's getting some heavy rotation in 2007. I'm off to dig out my paisley shirt...

The Dentists -
I've only quite recently got into Medway Garage, so don't have a broad base to compare against, but I can assure you that this album is QUALITY, and well worth buying.
The Dentist's have a really unique sound - they have very noticable influences by the Kinks, The Who and oddly the Beatles. Sounds weird, but they really carry it off - yet at the same time still sounding really original and fresh.
I liked every song on the album, with maybe just one slightly weaker track (in my opinion)- "The Little Engineer's Set", which is still nevertheless a good song. Each track is very different but equally catchy - you start tapping your foot and nodding your head right from the first chord change. "One Of Our Psychedelic Beakers Is Missing" and "Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden..." in particular stand out as pure gems.
If you are into good Indie and like something a bit different, then I can't recommend this band and their tunes enough - if you like decent music, get this album.