Nice to see the troll a couple of posts back who wouldn’t waste his time arguing with us but spent five paragraphs doing so.

This would explain the strained politeness of the verse vocal and the explosive chorus, with Steve in a similar state of agitation to Billy Fisher sitting in the graveyard with his chaste girlfriend. All Or Nothing is a more obvious hit title than You And Your Bloody Oranges, granted.

As for the nutty, Artful Dodger-meets-lollipop lady line “come on children!”, Marriott uses it on virtually every song on their first album, most notably on a track called Come On Children.

Itchycoo Park aside, I’m not sure which Small Faces songs people are referring to that are so clearly superior to All Or Nothing (Sha La La La Lee? Lazy Sunday? My Mind’s Eye? Here Come The Nice?). Tin Soldier and Afterglow Of Your Love are both comparable but feature hammier soul stylings. Also, their second single I’ve Got Mine had a similar brooding menace and bombed completely, so this certainly wasn’t the way to a surefire hit; I think that’s just the wisdom of hindsight.

Look, Steve Marriott was a soulman, and if you want to fault the song for interjections of “My my my!” and “Hear my children sing!”, you may as well toss every ’60s soul record ever cut. Not that this is a soul record per se, but a record cut by a rock band with a soul singer, so classify it as you will. Steve was working within his idiom. Why not just attack their “bullish” use of guitars instead of bassoons?

“The pop audience can only stand quality and originality for so long.”

A comment even colder than that heartless review! I won’t waste my time arguing with you people. Some people don’t care for sunshine, some people don’t care flowers, some people don’t care “All or Nothing”. Don’t even bother trying to convert them.

10.

Mark Grout

That deserves to be repeated.

Or maybe they just thought that records about young love/lust/loss with savage guitars and excited teenagers are better for dancing to than pseudo-sophisticated string-quartet milksoppery?

TM

I can’t stand Marriot’s boorishness, either, I prefer his professional theatrical cockney (he did play the Artful Dodger in Oliver! after all).

I do love, however, the idea of this replacing Eleanor Rigby at Number 1. We had something of the same thing in the US when Strangers in the Night and Paperback Writer (which had been trading off at Number 1) were replaced by Hanky Panky and Wild Thing). The pop audience can only stand quality and originality for so long.

Anyway - we skip ahead and note that the Small Faces in a later form , backing Rod Stewart, were loved for that sloppy , in your face, FTW , boozy , ballsy attitude. ANd certainly Marriott got that with Humble Pie ( “I Don’t Need No Doctor ” )….

But I actually agree with you. Most bands of the era were not up to The creative ” diversity” of the Beatles. And there was still that whole ” blue eyed ” soul thing coming along.

Here in Canada , we were in different camps. Thoise who listed the soul ( and usually drank ) were ” greasers “. Those who listened to rock ( and usually smoked ) were ” heads “. And somewhere in the middle were ” Mods ” who drank, smoked and listened to both.

It’s a little known that fact that there were actually pitched and running battles in Toronto’s Yorkville between these rival equivalents if Mods & Rockers.

All I can say was the pot smokers were real easy to catch.

Brian in Canada

Early 1974, Connecticut, USA, 10 PM
Phone caller (me) to DJ at WDRC: “I’m amazed that you played ‘Rock and Roll’ by the Velvet Underground. Could you play something by the New York Dolls or Slade?!?”
DJ: “Well, Frank, I’ll be honest with you. That stuff is teenybopper music, punk rock. It all sounds the same, the New York Dolls, Slade, Humble Pie. In the evening we get adults listening.”

(Emphasis added.)(Next song he played was by Elton John.)

TM

TM

the point i wz makin in the pub to tom and martin is interestingly borne out by tommy mack re this SF song (which i barely know) (telling in itself surely) — that on the whole what i like abt the younger steve marriott is his market-stall cockney front, ie the yell has a kind of “we all know this is bullshit but it’s win-win fun cz i’m such a cheeky chappie” jollity to it, which is possibly fairly new to pop (and quite easily lost: i’m not sure anyone in britpop attempted anything so subtle)

it is about playful but blatant dishonesy, in other words — the all-veg slicer-dicer you buy from his stall will in fact BREAK when you first use it and he knows it and you knoty and you both know the other one knows it, but you enjoy his patter enough to give it a whirl anyway, and he knows THAT and in a way your exasperation w,the rubbish he is selling you is the price you pay for the zing you get from pure blarney of the sell in the first place

(phew)

anyway, my guess is that there is not enough of this in this particular song, which is why i can’t recall it

Yes this is unfair on the Small Faces as a whole - I was in the pub last night and “Itchycoo Park” was on in the toilets as if to chasten me, and “Lazy Sunday” is a lot more fun too. I was trying to explain my low opinion to Martin and hit on “it’s a nasty combination of “Hear me roar!” and “Feel my pain!”"

Sorry–it’s late and I forgot to sign the above post. It’s mine and mine alone.

Surely “All or Nothing” is not their best work–which is so often the case, as other have observed, with artists who have otherwise done some absolutely superb work. Rosie is quite right to mention the Hollies. One could say the same for Dusty Springfield (I believe I already have) and Sandie Shaw (whose biggest and worst hit is coming soon). It could also be part of the public taste loves banality and mediocrity and shies away from artists’ best work. Let us not forget what records remained at #1 for the longest number of weeks back in ‘65-’67. (Some of those “gems” are also coming soon.)

The Small Faces’ recordings I know best–the aforementioned “Itchycoo Park,” “Lazy Sunday,” “Whatcha Gonna Do About It,” “In My Mind’s Eye”–don’t display what’s so irritating here. It’s that “bullishness” Tom mentioned. I’ve heard it elsewhere in the SFs’ cover of “Every Little Bit Hurts,” which, by focusing exclusively on the “Hurts,” loses the depth and real emotion of Brenda Holloway’s original.

In retrospect, Steve Marriott’s “bullishness” was turned loose once he left the band. To the best of my recollection, wailing and shouting was what Humble Pie was all about. Yet, back then, what with all the clouds of marijuana smoke drifting around, one could almost imagine that HP was actually saying something.

That’s what I think anyway.

Tommy Mack

And of course The Who, whose influnce can’t be overestimated, won’t be troubling us at all, I think.

This division between Rock and Soul - I never really understood that there should be a real distinction (obviously not as the Small Faces did drop right in the gap). I knew vaguely, as a teenager, that you weren’t supposed to like The Who and The Stones at the same time, but you did. I was never really into the tribal thing.

There was a sequel - in the late 70s, when I was teaching in Hull, the kids I taught were Northern Soulers. They wanted nothing to do with punk at all - yet it’s punk that seems to dominate the history of the time.

Sorry, I’m wibbling - maybe it’s just the indifferent song, a weed amongst so many roses in 1966

I think that ” Eleanor Rigby ” is one of the worst Beatle songs as it is Mac & Martin in the studio and it has nothing to do with the Beatles. A load of wank, really.

At least the 2 other songs mentioned are attempts to keep things real and if The Faces sound bullying it;s no more so than The Sex Pistols when everything around them was too fuckin’ nice for rock ‘n’ roll.

Brian in Canada

-henry s