It ain’t rocket science but [I]All Back To Mine[/I] is pretty much the perfect pop TV show for a generation with a bite-sized attention span, an unhealthy obsession with celebrity minutiae and an immune system marketed into submission by record companies anxious to exploit their back catalogue. You get a peek at a pop star’s home, hear them banter off-guard about stuff for once not directly related to their own product and get to see/hear some top archive stuff as well.
So, hey presto, ‘All Back To Mine – The Album’; 16 obscurish tracks, some selected by the show’s participants and some, strangely, not. No matter. This really is a cool compilation, replayable endlessly on repeat with, as Larry Sanders would say, no flipping.
Gems include Love Unlimited Orchestra, [I]sans [/I]Barry White, opening up with the joyously fat bump’n’grind of ‘Strange Games & Funky Things’. Toothless Woodstock veteran folkie Richie Havens growls through a sultry version of ‘Going Back To My Roots’, made more famous by weird disco bods Odyssey; The Turtles go stark Hammond ga-ga on the murderous ‘Buzzsaw’; The Chambers Brothers get seriously superfly on our ass with ‘Uptown’ and The Crystalites‘ ‘Moses’ is [I]’Shaft'[/I] beautifully Bluebeaten up.
Of especial note are Electric Prunes‘ acid sacrament ‘Holy Are You’, traditionally used by The Verve as a gig appetiser, Anne Sexton‘s sexily asthmatic ‘You’ve Been Gone Too Long’, and ‘The Four Horsemen’ by Aphrodites Child, a chilly Book Of Revelations spook-out not dissimilar to Led Zep‘s ‘No Quarter’ featuring Demis Roussos and Vangelis. Really!
All absolutely fascinating stuff, compiled with an almost scary excess of good taste by the show’s presenter, Sean Rowley. Take a bow, man, and get a move on with Volume Two.